Page 6 of Eruption

But now he was in the middle of this awkward moment in the auditorium—drums silent, dancing stopped, audience restless. Tako nodded at Billy Malaki, the master of ceremonies, who was standing at the edge of the stage; Tako had already told him what to do.

Billy grabbed the microphone and said with a big laugh, “Heya,even Madame Pele gives her blessings to our festival! Her own hula! She got rhythm,ya!”

The audience laughed and burst into applause. Mentioning the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes was exactly the right touch. The tremors subsided, and Tako relaxed and turned back with a smile to Ellen Kulani.

“So,” he said, “where were we?”

He was acting as if he himself had ordered the tremors to stop, as if even nature obeyed Henry Takayama.

CHAPTER 4

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, Hawai‘i

Time to eruption: 114 hours

In the men’s room, John MacGregor leaned over a sink, buttoned the collar of his blue work shirt, tugged up the black knit tie, and ran his fingers through his hair. Then he stepped back a few feet and looked at himself in the mirror. A dispirited face stared back at him. He tried to smile, but it looked painted on. John MacGregor sighed. He hated doing press conferences even more than he hated running budget meetings.

When he stepped out, he found Jenny Kimura waiting for him. “We’re ready, Mac.”

“They’re all here?”

“Honolulu crew just arrived.” Jenny was thirty-two, the scientist in charge of the lab. She was a Honolulu native with a PhD in earth and planetary sciences from Yale, well-spoken, very attractive.Extremelyattractive, MacGregor thought. Ordinarilyshe did the press conferences, but she had flatly refused to do this one.

“Sounds like a Mac thing to me” was what she’d said.

“I’ll pay you to make it a Jenny thing.”

“You don’t have enough money,” she’d said.

Now MacGregor fiddled with the knot on his tie. “What do you think?” he asked her.

“I think you look like you’re on your way to the electric chair,” she said.

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Does the tie make me look like a wimp? Maybe I should take it off.”

“It’s fine,” Jenny said. “You just have to smile.”

“You’ll have to payme,” he said.

She laughed, took him gently by the elbow, and steered him into the changing room. They passed rows of lockers and a line of green heat-resistant jumpsuits that hung from wall hooks, each with a name over it.

“These shoes hurt,” Mac said. He was wearing polished brown oxfords he’d thrown into the truck that morning. They squeaked as he walked, a shoe-store sound.

“You look veryakamaifor akama‘aina,” she said. Sharp and with it—for someone who wasn’t a native. “I’ve put the big map on an easel for you to refer to,” she continued, back to business. “The rift zones are marked. The map’s been simplified so it’ll read clearly on TV.”

“Okay.”

“Will you want to use the seismic data?”

“Is it ready?”

“No, but I can get it for you in a blink. The past three months or all of last year?”

“Last year will be clearer.”