There, only thirty feet below him, lay the San Andreas Fault, the time bomb that ticked away under California. The earth was broken and cracked there. Remo remembered from his geology texts the aerial views that showed the fault to be an almost perfectly straight line separating the two “plates” which cut through California. There was one flaw in the straight line. The Richter Institute was built right here, right on the bend in the fault, the spot where the fault was locked and had been for fifty years, building up pressure that could blow at anytime, tearing California apart.

  At that moment, Remo realized why the bridge to the shelf had been so loose. It was designed that way so that it would drift if there were an earth tremor. A solidly anchored bridge might be destroyed.

  Down around the bend of the shelf, near the fault below, Remo could see a pair of pipes jutting up from the ground. Near them was a small trailer-cabin, a Volkswagen bus parked in front of it. Remo craned his neck and looked left. Far away in the distance was another pair of pipes, barely perceptible at this distance, even to his eyes.

  Remo put the car in gear and burned rubber, heading up toward the institute building.

  There was only one car in front, a dark blue Cadillac Brougham, and Remo pulled up alongside it. He reached out to feel its hood. The car was still hot—too hot for sitting in the shade. The Mafia men had not been here long. And Remo entertained for a moment the idea that there was an easy way to get rid of the Mafia: stop making Cadillacs. He’d have to be sure to mention it to Dr. Smith.

  There was only one door into the building. Remo pushed it open, then stood inside the coolness for a moment, listening. His ears picked up the sound of voices to his left. He turned that way down a long corridor that ran along the front of the building, with all the offices on its right.

  One door was open and Remo walked in. He was in a laboratory, a large open room illuminated brightly by overhead lights, the lights glinting off the glass and chrome tables on which there were rows and rows of test tubes, piles of dirt and stone.

  In one corner of the room, there was a computer console that covered almost half the wall. Its tapes whirred softly as they spun. Multi-colored lights flashed on and off and dials pulsated with information gathered from God knew where.

  The voices came from a door alongside the computer and Remo stepped toward the door to listen in. The voices were muffled by the rhythmic thumping of some kind of machinery; Remo strained to listen.

  A harsh voice said: “Forget that scientific jazz. How do you make an earthquake? That’s all we want to know.”

  And the deepest voice Remo had ever heard answered, the words coming so slowly that it seemed to take all the speaker’s energy to drop his voice into the basement of his throat, “But you can’t do it without science, don’t you see?”

  “Well, just tell us how you do it.”

  “I don’t do it. But it could be done.” The voice ponderously moved on. “Now try to understand. Along the different fault systems—a fault is a break in the earth—pressure builds up along the crack. When the pressure gets too great, there is an earthquake. Now what could be done—mind you, could be done—would be to relieve some of this pressure before it builds so high that it must blow. It’s rather like boiling water on a covered pot on the stove. If you tilt the cover up slightly, it releases the pressure and then the water doesn’t boil over or the cover blow off. It’s the same principle.”

  “All right, all right. How do you relieve the pressure?”

  “No one can yet. I’ve been trying to develop a new kind of pump that would use water pressure to do it. That would make many small tremors to relieve pressure slowly and thus prevent a big quake. But the work is slow, particularly since the government cut off my research funds. I don’t know if it will ever be done.”

  There was a long pause. Then the first voice said, “Dr. Quake, I don’t believe you. Somebody out here is making earthquakes. You’re either doing it or you know who’s doing it. Now you’re going to tell us about it or we’ll make you wish you had.”

  “I don’t believe that you’re really from the FBI,” came Dr. Quake’s voice of doom.

  “You’re very smart, professor. Now if you’re really smart, you’ll tell us what we want to know.”

  All right. Time, Remo thought.

  He stepped in through the partially opened door. “Good afternoon, professor,” he said, smiling stupidly. There were only three men and it took no imagination at all to pick Dr. Quake. He was a heavy man, not really fat, but heavy, wrapped in a tweed Jacket and pants that matched neither each other nor him. His face was a perfect sphere and an electric shock of graying black hair ran halfway down his forehead, where it met the upward thrust of a giant set of iron-gray eyebrows that splayed in all directions like frozen splashes of hair, shooting up to the sides and down over his metal-rimmed glasses. He was sitting on a high stool next to the laboratory table. The other two men were standing. They were young, Mafia types.

  A typical Mafia pair. One looked as if he had an IQ of seven. The other looked intelligent enough, but had all the facial character of the third boy from the left in the road production of Guys and Dolls.

  IQ Seven turned to Quake. “Who the hell is this creep?” he said, nodding his head in derision at Remo, who still wore the white trousers, shirt and sneakers of the morning.

  “I’m Remo Blomberg, the professor’s assistant,” Remo said. “Professor, there’s no point in trying to fool these men any longer. I think, yes, I truly think that we should give them the secret of the earthquakes.”

  The two Mafia men stared at Remo and did not notice Dr. Quake start to say “but… ”

  Remo talked to the two men directly. “It’s a new machine we’ve invented,” raising his voice to carry over the steady thumping that filled the room. “We call it the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scalerizer.” So much for Smith’s geology textbooks.

  “Yeah?” said the smart one. “Well, how do you work it?”

  “It works off Vitamin E compound. You treat the ground as if it were a yeast, you see, and you pump it full of carbon dioxide. This creates a gaseous imbalance. Then you inject large quantities of Vitamin E—not the stuff you buy in the drugstore, of course—but real, power-packed Vitamin E. And you pump it into the fissures with pneumatic ninja shots. It relieves the gaseous imbalance and you have an earthquake. It’s really quite simple,” he said, bending over, playing with the crease of his pants, trying not to laugh.

  He looked up. “Anyone can work it. A geological belch. We’ve caused a few minor earthquakes with it, already. Do you want to buy one? Got a town you want destroyed?”

  The two hoodlums were confused now. Their instructions obviously did not carry this far. They looked at each other, then the smarter one spoke again: “We want to see it first.”

  Remo addressed Dr. Quake. “Professor. There’s really no use in not cooperating. I’ll show them the Mercalli Scalerizer.” That’s two for Smith. Remo was fast becoming a convert to the cause of education.

  Remo turned to go back through the door. Get them away from Quake. The one hood who had done all the talking waved at the professor. “You stay put, Professor, and don’t try anything stupid. We’re not forgetting that you tried to lie to us. We’ll be back.”

  The two men followed Remo who led them through the next laboratory and out into the hall. Remo heard one of them say: “Blomberg, eh? Trust a Jew to know when to play ball.”

  Remo led them down the stone hall toward the other end of the building, looking for a door that was sure to be open. To his left, he saw one slightly ajar.

  “It’s in here, men,” he said, waving his arm to the left. He pushed open the door and walked in, the two men right at his heels.

  He was in a small kitchen.

  “This is a kitchen,” one man said.

  “That’s right,” Remo said. “We keep it in the refrigerator. You don’t think we’d leave it laying around where prying eyes could see it, do you?”

  He opened the refrigerator door and beckoned the two men closer. “There it is,” he said, pointing with a royal index finger into the bowels of the refrigerator where a quarter-pound stick of margarine sat on a red saucer. The two men stepped forward. A step, two steps, then around the door and in front of the refrigerator. Remo went up in the air and came down with an elbow on the top of the skull of the one who had yet to speak a word; the skull went all soft and mushy under his elbow, then the man dropped to the floor.

  Remo was behind the second man, his right hand around the back of the man’s neck, his fingers like talons, biting into the clusters of the nerves. The man screamed. His arms were extended rigidly at his sides, frozen there by pain.

  “All right,” Remo said. “Which one of you is Musso?”

  He relieved the pressure a little so the man could answer.

  He gasped. “Musso ain’t here. He went back. He told us to call him later and tell him what we found out.”

  Remo squeezed again. “Which one killed Curpwell?” then released the pressure and the man hissed, “Musso did. With an icepick. That’s how he works.”

  “What are you guys after?” Remo asked.

  The man’s arms were still extended stiffly at his sides. He answered: “Somebody’s making earthquakes and shaking down people. Don Fiavorante sent Musso to find out about it.”

  “Don Fiavorante?”

  “Yeah. Pubescio. He’s the head man.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Festa. Sammy Festa,” the man sniveled.

  “All right, Sammy. I’m going to let you live. For awhile.” He squeezed harder again. “You go back. You tell Musso and you tell Pubescio that they stay away. Tell them to forget earthquakes if they know what’s good for them. Tell them to stay away from Doctor Quake. Tell them if they come back to San Aquino County, they’re going out in a doggy bag. Especially Musso. You tell him that” He squeezed even harder. “You got that?”

  “I got it. I got it.”

  Remo released his grip on the man’s neck and Festa made a clumsy move for a gun under his jacket. He wheeled toward Remo. Then Remo’s hand was around Festa’s and around the gun.

  “That Cadillac got power steering?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you can drive it with one hand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good,” Remo said and with his right hand, fractured Festa’s forearm. The gun clattered on the floor. Festa screamed with pain, then looked down at the gun, then up at Remo.

  Remo was smiling. “Remember to tell Musso what I said. My name is Remo. He may want to know that.”

  Festa clutched his broken arm, pain contorting his pretty-boy features. “I’m sure he’s gonna want to know that.”

  “Be sure to tell him. Remember, my name is Remo. Now get out of here, before I change my mind.”

  Festa was out the front door before Remo reached the corridor. When Remo passed the front door, he saw the Cadillac swerving back out of its parking space and speeding away from the institute.

  Good. That’ll bring Musso back. Remo wanted him… for Curpwell. But his chief job was to track down the earthquake people and he couldn’t spend time on side trips. But if Musso came back? Well, not even Smith could complain if Remo defended himself. After all, what else can you do against a man with an icepick?

  · · ·

  Doctor Quake was still seated at the high stool in his laboratory office when Remo returned.

  The infernal machine in the corner was still running, filling the laboratory with thumping, and Remo said: “Can’t you turn that damn thing off?”

  “No,” Quake said. “It’s an endurance test. It’s been running for three days. The goal is a whole week. You know, I don’t think they were from the FBI at all.”

  “They weren’t,” Remo said. “Mafia.”

  “Mafia? Oh, dear. What would they want with me?” Dr. Quake’s eyebrows lifted, as if with a life of their own. When they lowered, they threatened to cover his entire eyeball.

  “They want to know how to make earthquakes. Someone around here knows how and those two goons thought it was you.”

  “Two? Oh yes, two. But there were four before.”

  “Four? What happened to the others?”

  “They went off with my girls. The laboratory assistants.”

  “Now where the hell did they go?,” Remo asked. “The girls might be hurt.” He was worried now.

  Then another voice came. “We’re not hurt.”

  Remo turned behind him, toward the door, and his eyes opened wider. Two girls stood there, perhaps in their early 20’s. They wore identical clothing, white tee shirts with a clenched red fist on them and the imprint N.O.W., and blue jeans. But that wasn’t what caught Remo’s eye.

  What caught Remo’s eye was the extraordinary breasts on both of them. They were bra-less, but their breasts were firm and vibrant, and so large that they intimidated the fabric of the tee-shirts they wore. Remo thought of the two girls instantly as the eighth and ninth wonders of the world. Or considering two each, the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh wonders of the world.

  Only as an afterthought did Remo look at their faces, alabaster white and lovely under jet-black hair—which proved that Remo had been in California too long because he regarded as an oddity any girl who wasn’t blonde and tanned. He thought all this, then realized the girls were identical twins.

  “Are you all right, daddy?” one of them asked, and they walked up to Doctor Quake’s side, boobs a-jiggle, bubbly and bouncy under the tee shirts, butts a-wobble under the tight blue jeans. Remo felt a sudden lust that he told himself was sick and degenerate, then leaned back to savor.

  He sat back onto a chair, crossed his legs discreetly, and if he had it in him to blush, he would have blushed.

  Imagine. Two of them looking like that,

  One girl put a hand on Dr. Quake’s shoulder. “We were worried,” she said.

  “Oh, no. Nothing to worry about. This gentleman here saw to that.”

  Both girls now looked closely at Remo and one stepped toward his side, and stood next to his chair.

  Remo said, “But we were worried about you. Those were Mafia guys, you know. What happened to the two you were with?”

  The girl by Quake hesitated. Then she said, “They left.”

  “Without their car?”

  The girl looked confused. The girl by Remo’s side spoke up. “They decided to stretch their legs and walk. They said their friends would pick them up along the road.” The other girl giggled. Obviously, she thought that was funny.

  “Oh,” Remo said.

  “By the way,” said the girl standing next to Dr. Quake, “who are you?”

  “Name’s Remo. Remo Blomberg.” He tried to force his eyes to her face, tried to meet her eyes, tried desperately to look at something beside her breasts.

  He was not successful. If he had been, he would have seen surprise. Instead, he saw only bosom. The girl next to Remo moved even closer to him, then put her hand on the back of his chair. She was only a bite away, throbbing and pulsating with each heart beat and breath.

  “What are your names?” Remo said.

  “I’m sorry,” Doctor Quake said. “These are my two daughters. They assist me. This is Jacki and that’s Jill.”

  Remo looked up at the girl next to him and caught her eyes past the edge of her bosom.

  “Jacki and Jill,” he said. “That’s cutesy-poo.”

  The girl leaned down close to his ear. “Would it be cutesy-poo if I grabbed you and squeezed?” she whispered.

  “No,” Remo said. “That would be a no-no. Or, maybe a no-no no-no,” he said, recalculating his arithmetic.

  “They’re identical twins,” Doctor Quake said, belatedly and unnecessarily.

  Remo nodded, then to the girl at his side, he said softly: “You’re not really identical.”

  “No?”

  “No. I make you out to be a 42D. I figure she’s only a 41½.”

  “Mother always liked me best,” Jill said, then added, “I didn’t think you’d notice.”

  “Yeah. And if you put me in the Sistine Chapel, I wouldn’t look at the ceiling.”

  “A lot of men don’t. In California, anyway. You know how they are. I thought maybe you.”

  “Don’t let the sailor suit fool you,” Remo said. Then louder, “What is it you do here?”

  Remo had addressed the question to Quake, but the scientist’s head was turned, looking over toward the corner from which the steady thumping sound came.

  Remo repeated the question, this time to the girls. “What is it you do here?”

  “If you can stand up without embarrassing yourself,” said 41½D at Doctor Quake’s shoulder, “we’ll show you.”

  Inhale. Heavy on the oxygen. Drain blood out of the groin. Flood the lungs, the brain. Think of fields of daises… daisies. It took Remo a split second and he was able to stand almost straight up.

  “The power of negative thinking,” he pronounced. Then Jill, standing next to him, put her hand on the small of his back.

  Remo sat down again. “On second thought, why don’t you tell me about it while I sit here? I’m rather comfortable.”

  He crossed his legs awkwardly.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” Jill said, whispering hotly in his ear. “We do that to people sometimes.” Her hot breath didn’t help. Neither did her left breast laying heavily on his shoubblder.

  “You’re like a pornographer’s daydream,” Remo said. “Go ahead. I’ll give you a head start.”

  Jill walked away from Remo to the far corner of the room where the machine thumped away. Carefully and with great effort, Remo arose and followed her. Jacki’s eyes played with Remo as he passed her, and then she followed him. Doctor Quake brought up the rear.

  “This is daddy’s invention. The way we’re going to make the world earthquake proof,” Jill said, pointing to the machine on the table. It was the size and shape of a five-gallon gas can and was painted bright blue.

  “What is it?” Remo asked.