"Pick a year, any year."
They stared back, silent and confused.
"Come on," Eric smiled. "This isn't a trick. Just pick a year at random."
"1547," Philip Marcus shouted.
"A.D. or B.C.?"
"A.D."
"Good choice," Eric nodded, writing the number on the blackboard. "Any particular reason you picked it, Philip?"
Philip shrugged, embarrassed by the praise. "It's the combination to my bicycle lock."
Everyone laughed, including Eric. "Well, then you'll all be glad to know that Philip's combination is your next assignment." This time everyone groaned. "I want you to write a paper exploring the events of 1547, explaining their causes and ramifications. Any questions?"
Hands shot up.
"Lisa?"
"How extensive is this paper supposed to be?"
"Very extensive."
She looked annoyed. "How extensive exactly? What kinds of stuff?"
"All right, for example. Let's see, 1547." Eric scratched his scar. "What happened that year? Ah, yes. Henry VIII died and was succeeded by his son, Edward VI, aged 10. Francois I of France also died and was succeeded by his son, Henri II. England invaded Scotland. Ivan IV, known among partygoers as Ivan the Terrible, assumed full power in Russia, including the title of Tsar."
Philip Marcus interrupted. "So you're mainly interested in the politics of that year."
"Nope. I'm feeling greedy. I want it all. Philosophy, religion, art, science. Everything. Tintoretto painted his version of the Last Supper that year. The first Protestant doctrines were introduced into the English church. Calvinist reformer John Knox was exiled to France. I want to hear about all the important events and how they relate to each other."
Dayna Stewart shifted her broken leg, knocking over the crutches she'd stacked next to her desk. They clattered against each other and everyone in the room looked uncomfortable as they thought about how she was injured. And why there were so many empty seats in the classroom. "Sorry," she said sheepishly to Eric.
"That's okay, Dayna." Then to the rest of the class, "And before you ask, the paper's a minimum of twenty pages, including footnotes and a selected bibliography."
Lisa waved her hand. "Typed?"
"As always."
"Well, I just thought, considering what's happened…" Her voice trailed away.
"Anything else, scholars?"
"Footnotes," David Weathers asked. "At the bottom of each page or at the end of the paper?"
"The end is fine. No need struggling with that mess."
There was some muttering of approval over that.
"All right," Eric said, nodding at the clock on the wall. "I think that should give you something to do between now and the two weeks you have to write it. Now get out of here."
"Two weeks!" several protested aloud. Everyone else merely grumbled as they shuffled out the door.
Eric stuffed his roll sheet back into his battered briefcase and watched his students funnel out. European History Until 1700. Two weeks ago there had been thirty-one students. Now there were twelve. Two were dead. Ten were injured, a couple seriously. He'd visited them in the hospital, their limbs in thick white casts balanced at odd angles by weights and pulleys. Four people to a room, no more semi-privates or privates. Those days were gone. Even the corridors were lined with occupied gurneys, their groans drowned by fretting relatives pacing the floors. Makeshift hospitals had been set up by Red Cross at several public schools, but according to radio reports, those too were overcrowded.
The other seven missing students Eric wasn't sure about. A few, he suspected, had moved out of state, back to their parents, or just to safety. A couple were probably just not in the mood to go to school anymore. Something about disasters like this make people question the worth of what they do. Eric could understand that. Vietnam had been a two-year disaster, and he'd done a lot of questioning.
The earthquake had been devastating. Over three hundred people killed, mostly elderly patients at the Garden Grove Hospital where one of the older wings collapsed; most of the balance of victims were shoppers at the Fountain Valley Shopping Mall hurrying to buy one more item before the stores closed. Rescuers were still digging bodies out, one limb at a time. Eric had seen news photos of workers trying to reassemble the bodies, matching bloody parts in an effort to identify the dead. One Times photo showed a gloved workman gripping a severed leg by the ankle like a baseball bat as he wandered up and down aisles of partially assembled bodies.
Even the university had contributed its share of corpses. A ten-foot square plate glass window in the Student Union building had rattled violently, then exploded, showering the half a dozen students below who were watching a basketball game on the lounge TV with dagger-sized shards of glass. Two of the dead were Eric's students, Angela Hopkins and Jerry Martin. Both nineteen. They'd met the first day of Eric's class and had been inseparable ever since. A week before the quake they'd made love together for the first time.
Injuries were running in the thousands. Over two thousand so far. Most of the utilities and phone services had been restored, and businesses were all getting back to a kind of normalcy now despite the boarded windows and limping salespeople.
For once there'd been no hesitation from the president in declaring a federal disaster area. He'd even flown over the area in a helicopter for fifteen minutes, though he'd landed and immediately jetted home to Washington. But what he'd seen shook him, gripped a fear inside with a stranglehold that forced him to pop a glycerine pill he didn't want the public to know he took. Fortunately, the single news camera he'd allowed aboard the chopper ride had been too busy recording the gnarled remains below to notice. That night, the rest of the world witnessed the dusty remains of California on TV, shaking their heads in awe.
From the air it looked as if some careless giant had stomped angrily across the state. In some areas, houses had crumbled while only one street away there'd been no damage at all. A gas line had broken in Covina causing an explosion and fire that burned four homes to the ground. In Santa Ana a transfer pipe between vats at a chemical company ruptured spilling noxious chemicals and forcing the evacuation of three nearby residential neighborhoods. The land itself looked suddenly aged and battle-torn. Huge fissures wriggled through several areas along the various fault lines. Deep gashes in the ground webbed across parking lots and farm lands like bloodless wounds from a hacking sword. Eric particularly remembered the film of that Fallbrook farmhouse ripped in half when the ground under it split and began moving in opposite directions.
Eric snatched up his briefcase, slapped the light switch as he passed by, and locked the classroom door behind him. His was the last class that day. All evening classes had been canceled since the quake. Maneuvering at night through the debris was too dangerous.
He hurried down the hall and out the front door of the building. A burst of hot California sun washed over him and suddenly it was hard to believe anything bad could happen here, under such a benevolent sun. But he had only to look around to know differently. Large machines were grinding away everywhere, reinforcing some buildings, blocking off others. Hauling away the wreckage. Students wandered about like convalescing patients, books clutched protectively to their chests, walking gingerly, yet in a hurry. Nervous. Jittery. Expectant.
There'd been a faculty meeting to discuss the situation with the administration. The question had been simple, whether to close down the school for the few remaining weeks of the spring semester, or continue on with classes. There'd been the usual amount of shouting and name-calling that accompanied any faculty issue, but the final decision, spearheaded by Eric's mother, had been to stay. "We've got to keep going," she'd said, adjusting those skinny bifocals that always slid down her nose.
The opposition had been forceful. "Keep going? Like imbeciles, as if nothing had happened?" Dr. Everett had blustered.
"No, Bill," she'd replied. "Not as if nothing had happened, but despite what has happened."
Eric smiled. The old lady sure could handle a crowd. And if he didn't hurry home she and Annie would be handling him.
"Professor Ravensmith."
Eric knew the voice without looking. "Hi, Philip."
"Hi." Philip Marcus hurried to catch up. He was a thin, bookish student, who seemed most comfortable in a classroom. Outside a school building he somehow hunched his shoulders more, looked smaller. Once Eric had seen him off campus at a movie theater and he'd seemed almost shrivelled. But in the classroom he sat tall and confident. At twenty, he was in his Last year of undergraduate work as a history major. He'd already been accepted into UC Berkeley's graduate program in history. As Philip's academic advisor, Eric had spent a lot of time with him, more than with most students. He knew that Philip had developed some kind of hero worship for him; he had tried to discourage it, but still it was there, And so was Philip, almost every time he turned a corner on campus.
"What's up, Phil?"
"Nothing. Heading for the library to bone up on 1547. I could kick myself for picking it. If I'd known what you were going to do, I'd have picked something in the seventeenth century. More romantic."
"Not to the people who lived it."
"Yeah, that's true."
Eric waited. He knew something was on the boy's mind.
"Uh, Professor Ravensmith?"
"Yes?"
"What are you going to do about this earthquake business?"
Eric laughed. "I appreciate the confidence, Phil, but there's not much a history teacher can do about an earthquake/'
"That's not what I mean. I mean, are you going to pack your family up and move back east like a lot of others are doing?"
"I doubt it. My wife and I talked it over, decided we'd see it through. And hope the worst of it is over."
Philip smiled. "Good. I mean, my folks are talking about moving back to Pittsburgh. They want me to go with them, go to school at Penn State or someplace. I told them I was staying."
"Well, don't make that decision too hastily, Phil. There's something to be said for playing it safe. And Penn State is a fine school."
"Yeah, but Pennsylvania? I'd rather be buried in an earthquake."
Eric smiled, patted him on the back, "See you next week."
"Right." Philip jogged off, somehow happier than before.
Eric walked around the building to the bicycle racks, trying to locate his old three-speed among the dozens of sleek new ten-speeds. Since the quake, many of the roads had been closed for sewer repair or repaving. Damage to several refineries threatened the gasoline supply, so many people had gone back to riding bicycles or mopeds. Bike accidents were becoming a major source of conversation.
Eric's bike was a rusty old hunk with chipped blue paint, a torn leather seat, and no kickstand. He spotted it leaning against the wall. When he walked closer, he stopped, his mouth tightened, his stomach clenched.
A note was pinned to the seat.
He approached the bike slowly, glancing around quickly for a suspect. He dropped his briefcase, circled the bike, studying it everywhere for a boobytrap. Nothing was out of place, no hidden grenades. Of course, there were other possibilities. Certain fatal poisons smeared on the handles to be absorbed through the skin. But that wasn't Dirk Fallows' style. At least not in this case. For Eric he'd want something more dramatic. More painful.
Eric flicked away the straight pin and grabbed the note, unfolding it roughly as if it were Fallows himself. His eyes lingered on each word. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," Henry VI, Part II, IV, u, 86. Yours for justice, Luther Nichols.