Ear to the Ground by David L. Ulin

rent even if he found a job. He had two days to rescue his phone. An auto-registration-due notice was propped against his computer monitor, next to some parking tickets, which he sometimes used as bookmarks. And he did need electricity. He had lied to his creditors about having already sold Ear to the Ground. The price, he’d told them, was in the high six figures, but studio business affairs were slow-moving. At first, the collection agents had been friendly, even congratulatory. But they’re not idiots. Once they found out the truth, he’d never get any credit for the rest of his life. Ian sat there, having nothing, owing everything, and for a long time he didn’t move. Then he yanked a cord, and the dusty blinds went down with a crack. What a delightful image, Ian thought, for my biographers.

SHAKING ALL OVER
    CHARLIE WAS HEADING OUT TO THE FIELD. IT WAS TEN o’clock on a Thursday evening, and he was in the kitchen, preparing a Thermos of coffee for the night ahead. Ever since he’d deciphered those prime numbers, he’d been running computer simulations of local faults, and if his data was right, there would be a small earthquake along the San Andreas sometime before dawn. It was a long shot, he knew, but he had to see.
    Charlie packed the coffee in a rucksack, then loaded his laptop and a couple of empty sample trays. He thought again about the numbers, the alkalinity of the soil. The Northridge data had been the first indicator, but when he’d gone back and looked at the information from Indio, he’d begun to understand that this was bigger than he’d thought. He remembered the day his grandfather had explained how fault lines were interrelated. “Think of the faults as highways,” the old man had said, “and earthquakes as cars. Some cars remain on one road, but others take exits and branch off. It’s the same with temblors. Conceivably, a big enough jolt could trigger any number of quakes up and down the line.”
    Indeed, Charlie thought. Up and down the line. He shouldered the rucksack and moved toward the door.
    Outside, Charlie ran into Ian coming up the path. Ian looked more disheveled than usual, with big black circles under his eyes.
    â€œHey,” Charlie said. “How you doing? Haven’t seen you around.”
    â€œEverything’s fucked.” Ian put his hands in his pockets and attempted a grin. His face looked hollow, like a lost little boy’s. “Grace up there?” He nodded toward her apartment.
    â€œCouldn’t tell you.”
    â€œYeah, well …” He stared at her windows for a moment, then focused on Charlie’s rucksack. “Where you off to?”
    â€œDuty calls.”
    â€œA seismologist’s work is never done?”
    â€œSomething like that. Earthquakes are unpredictable.”
    â€œSo they say.” Ian threw him a sly grin. “You want company? I’m dying to see what you do.”
    â€œMaybe some other time,” Charlie said. “The desert’s no place…”
    â€œThe desert ?” Ian’s eyes lit up like fluorescent bulbs. “You going to the San Andreas?”
    â€œYeah,” Charlie said. “There’s something there I have to do.”
    Charlie took the 10 to San Bernardino, his Miata cutting like a laser through the night. Just east of the city, he turned north off the freeway, then went east again to position D-55 of the San Andreas Fault.
    The desert night was cool and still, and Charlie uncorked his Thermos of coffee immediately. Sipping slowly, he walked around the perimeter of the site. Here, the San Andreas cut a visible rift through the brown rocky earth; it looked like a furrow, made by some gigantic plow. He sat on one raised edge of the fault line and turned his face to the sky.
    Charlie loved the desert at night. The sky was filled with clustered stars, dotting the blackness in pinpricks of light. Sitting with his coffee, Charlie