Hot liquid sloshes onto his hand. Looking down he realizes that no, his hand isn't trembling; it's the whole cabin that's swaying. The woman jumps up, hurries into the other room. The crow tilts from side to side, then starts to thud up and down as though it's being dragged down a flight of stairs, like turbulence except they're in a crow, not a plane. Ken puts his cup down, stupidly, and it immediately falls over, the steaming liquid disappearing into the stain­ absorbent floor.

"I don't know," she says. "I-we're still moored ... " She raises her eyes, and they both get it at the same time, their imaginations following the long anchor line down from the ship to the supposedly stable building it's linked to.

"Jishin da," Ken whispers, the fear in his tone so elemental that the interpreter doesn't even bother. "It's the earthquake."

The crow is yanked earthward.

The early warning alerts go off as far away as Okinawa, where Yoriko pulls over her taxi and waits for a tremor that she barely feels.

In Almaty, Domaine gets on to Information perhaps half an hour after the quake. It is clearly too soon to have much data, especially since-and this is not a good sign-most of

the live feeds in Tokyo and the surrounding area have been disrupted. He opens ten or twelve feeds at once, all of them scrolling frantically. The numbers range from two thousand to one hundred thousand dead, so he feels comfortable discounting all of them and assuming that for the moment nobody has the slightest idea. He tries to think if he knows anyone in Tokyo but doesn't come up with any names. Highly organized and strongly democratic, the Kanto area has never been a target for him.

He scrolls farther. The little footage that has gotten out already, of wavering buildings and dust-covered, stunned inhabitants, is disturbing, so he doesn't watch too much of it and tries to think practically instead.

What will this mean for the election? Cold as it seems, Domaine is not the first person to ask that. All of the governments with hopes of a Supermajority send their top representatives to HonshuHonshu before the ground stops shaking. Some of them were already there; one of the questions flooding feeds is what losses were sustained, both personal and material, that might affect the outcome of the race.

A major earthquake had been predicted for the Kanto area for decades, the meme resurfacing in morbid feeds and (correctly) alarmist commentary every couple of years. As usual, however, Ken finds himself without a flashlight, spare solar charger, or alternative communications option. Not to mention naked. Fortunately, their sharp fall didn't stop with them hitting ground, but with a sharp deceleration that left them both sprawling, cushioned by the crow's airbags. As the bouncing slows, Ken scrambles to his feet and, finding himself more or less unharmed, stumbles back into the

bedroom to pull some pants on. He considers going into the bathroom to throw up on the way but isn't quite enlightened enough to be able to do that in front of this woman he's just slept with. More rationally, he's not sure he should be dumping any underutilized calories right now. He may need them later.

His hands might not have been trembling before, but they're shaking now.

As he’s getting dressed the woman comes in, gives him a shaky grin, and pulls on a pair of cargo pants under her robe. "Do you have people in the city?" she asks.

Ken shakes his head. "My family . . ." He rarely tells people about his family, but right now he can't spare enough brain function to think of a reason not to. "My family's in Brazil." What family he has. She nods. "Friends, though, some." He thinks of the architect from the night before, wonders if the old elevated subway held. It should have; it’s held for years, through other earthquakes before this. This must have been a big one, though. "You?"

She gives a half-nod. "Work colleagues, mostly." She frowns, remembering the frustrating meeting the day before. It no longer seems so bad that she is not tasked with chasing down the lies of a particularly devious rogue government. "Where are you headed? I mean, not to kick you out. You're welcome to stay. Really." She puts her hand on his arm, and Ken feels a tingle like an electric shock, but maybe it's the adrenaline of the moment. "Staying here might be the safest thing ... "

He's already shaking his head. "I have to go check on some people. Actually" -he glances at the time on his handheld with an uncertain laugh-"I had a work meeting half an hour from now."

She nods and then pulls out her handheld and transfers him her details using line-of-sight. "If you want to come back here," she says, then shakes her head. "I don't know if the network's working or will be ..."

"We'll figure it out," he says, happy to see her name. Mishima. That's right. "I'll be back, if not tonight then ... once ... "

She nods too.

Domaine has to tear himself away from the disaster feeds to board his next flight. The casualty numbers are still unstable, no one knows what industrial horrors may have been released, and at least a dozen governments with bases in or around Tokyo are completely offline, opening the potential for anarchy in their centenals around the world. Domaine actually considers ditching his flight to keep watching but decides there won't be any concrete information for the next six hours anyway, and goes on to Istanbul as he had planned.

After that dramatic farewell, it takes them a while to separate. First, it takes each of them some time to convince themselves that they won't be able to access Information. Mishima spends fifteen minutes adjusting configurations and logging in to various high-security portals. Ken, who has long since given up on getting anything other than error messages, wonders again exactly what it is she does. The longer they stay, the harder it is to leave, especially after feeling the gentle sway of the pendulum start up again during three separate aftershocks. Each time, their eyes meet as soon

as they sense it; each time leaves them feeling sweaty and knotted.

But once it is clear that they cannot only do nothing but also know nothing while in the crow's protective cocoon, staying is unbearable. Disembarking, however, turns out to be nontrivial. Mishima hesitantly points out that the sharp fall at the height of the earthquake was probably the building they’re moored to crumbling, and suggests that they try to find a safer landing spot. She realizes as she says this that she will have to navigate manually, since all Information links are cut. Fortunately, she's done that before and, although not in many years, in almost as dire circumstances. Ken agrees, remembering how he had wondered if she might give him a ride to work, although that seems like it was in a completely different world.

But the anchor won't disengage.

"Something must have . . . caught it," Mishima says, from the control panel. They share a look and without words, she starts reeling them in, closer to whatever destruction lies below. In her eagerness to get on Information, Mishima had forgotten about the outboard cameras; now she flicks a switch that turns them on, and swivels them down.

Her first glance at the city, as the cameras pan past the horizon on their way to a bird's-eye view, is not as bad as she expects. But then, Mishima generally expects the worst. She sees most of a skyline, the uneven pattern of tall buildings breaking up the sky. Something still stands. The pale roof of the hotel comes into view below them in time to see a broad crack across it before they settle gingerly to a landing.

"Do you think it-do you think it's completely collapsed?" Ken asks.

Mishima tilts her head slowly, eyes wide. "I don't know."