Waiting for the Earthquake

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It was eleven weeks and two days and three hours—plus or minus a little—until the earthquake that was going to devastate the planet, and suddenly Morrissey found himself doubting that the earthquake was going to happen at all. The strange notion stopped him in his tracks. He was out strolling the shore of the Ring Ocean, half a dozen kilometers from his cabin, when the idea came to him. He turned to his companion, an old fux called Dinoov who was just entering his postsexual phase, and said in a peculiar tone, “What if the ground doesn’t shake, you know?”

“But it will, ” the aborigine said calmly.

“What if the predictions are wrong?”

The fux was a small elegant blue-furred creature, sleek and compact, with the cool all-accepting demeanor that comes from having passed safely through all the storms and metamorphoses of a fux’s reproductive odyssey. It raised its hind legs, the only pair that remained to it now, and said, “You should cover your head when you walk in the sunlight at flare time, friend Morrissey. The brightness damages the soul.”

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