Kill The Monster, Chapter 16

XIV. RETOUCHING THE MONA LISA

The mobile phone rang even before they'd reached Piazza San Marco. The man on the other end of the line was one of Adam Hamed's security detail, speaking so quickly with a heavy Israeli accent that Sean would hardly have understood him if he had not already known what the message would be.

"Understood." He trudged through a dusty micro-piazza leaving sodden footprints, his thousand-dollar suit ruined. "Both killed. Did any of our men die?"

"I mean our security men." He looked across at Sam, waiting for the answer.

"Adam Hamed. I see. We will have to see to his family."

"Yes, they did make me a target too, about five minutes ago. I was foolish enough to dismiss my own security detail."

"No, don't worry about me. I'm not allowed to die until I've rolled my rock uphill. An angel told me."

He clicked the phone off. A procession of portieri crossed his path, carrying three heavy refrigerators on their backs out of one sestiere into another. The same thing happened in Minneapolis - when one part of town's electricity went off, the cheaper restaurants and food stockists loaded their refrigerators into panel vans and rushed them to migration sites across town. Some even kept their food in refrigerated trucks in the yard outside. Most newer freezers nowadays were equipped with UPS and well-insulated enough to keep their contents below zero right through a power outage, but there was always someone who considered a bad back to be more bearable than the bill for new white goods, and in Venice, the lack of roads had to make brownouts a far more serious issue.

They were approaching St. Mark's Square.

"Adam Hamed is dead", said Sam.

Sean nodded. "And before he died, he must have known I'd betrayed him. He refused to shift position to the Ponte delle Gondole. Dispatched his men there, but stayed put at the Doge's Palace himself. Four of the palace curators were antecumenicali. Objectors to the Church. They'd smuggled in guns and hidden them in the palace safes. They shot Adam and dragged John, Adrian, Leo, Rabbi Israel and Imam Hamadi to the Sala del Maggior Consilio, the grand audience chamber. Then they put Adrian, John and Leo up against the big Paradiso on the south wall. It's, uh, the largest oil painting in the world?"

"The one with all the angels", said Sam.

"Three angels more than yesterday", said Sean. "They crucified them. With an industrial bolt gun. They also used the gun to nail Imam Hamadi's fez to his head. Then they, uh, dragged Rabbi Israel downstairs to the new garbage-burning furnaces in the utility rooms and pushed him into an open furnace. Head first."

Sam shivered in the heat. "Why would they do that?"

"It's actually quite appropriate." They were in Piazza San Marco now. Sean kept to the left hand side, along the colonnade, where a rooftop sniper might not get such an easy shot. The piazza was empty in its centre, apart from carabineri standing guard at the entrance to the Palazzo Ducale and policemen shooing excited onlookers back behind the lines of columns with whistles, loudspeakers, and ostentatiously displayed automatic weapons. "I've been reading far more religious history than is strictly healthy recently. The job, you know. The symbolism of the way they did John and Adrian is fairly easy to understand - Adrian is English, so he gets a Cross of St. George, arms out at right angles to the body, what a way to spend Easter. John was born in Scotland, though, so he gets to die like St. Andrew, legs and arms spread out at right angles to each other, whilst Leo died in the same way Jesus is depicted being crucified in fourteenth century church art from the time of the Western Schism. At that time there were two popes, one in Rome, one in Avignon, and the one in Rome was about as corrupt as popes get, which as you can imagine is pretty darn corrupt. The Roman papacy at this time used to issue crucifixes showing Christ crucified by one arm only; the other hand was falling down to pat the purse the sculptor had put at his hip, as if he was saying hey kids - it's okay even for Jesus to have money. I kid you not."

"What about Hamadi and Israel?"

"Hamadi was killed in the same way as Vlad the Impaler once punished a Turkish dignitary for refusing to doff his turban. He had the turban nailed to his head. Vlad was the model Christian monarch, holding out in a tiny brave principality against the might of the Ottoman Empire. Many Christians still consider him an anti-Islamic hero. Israel, meanwhile, is easy - he died by being pushed into a burning fiery furnace. A fitting punishment for a Jew, in the eyes of some."

"You sound very sure of your symbolism."

"Believe me, I can be." He cackled hollowly. "It was all my idea, after all."

Harry's bar was coming up on the left hand side. Although there was a press of people rubbernecking through the columns, nobody seemed to be sitting at the tables. It made sense. No-one would be inside drinking coffee when they could watch history being made.

Sean walked inside. The room was dimly lit after the fierce sun of the square, and he could not make out faces.

"PROUD OF YOUR DAY'S WORK?" he said loudly.

"Oh hush", said an arch voice from the dark. "The ears of the law will hear you."

He sat down at the bar and asked for an espresso.

"Pagherò questo", said the same voice. The bariste nodded and turned to his gleaming machine.

Sam was peering through the gloom with an expression of extreme disquiet.

"Sean", she said warningly.

"May I introduce", said Sean, keeping his eyes forward while waving a hand back, "me."

He was afraid to look round at himself this time. When he finally did, he realized that he had gained weight again. In six years, Sean had gained only a few pounds, but in five, Sean Senior seemed to have gained a full stone. His face was redder, and he was clearly developing a spare chin. He licked his lips on seeing Sam. There was still love there. Love or lust. Though the man in front of Sean seemed to have lost all lust for anything but pie and mash long ago. He seemed to be wearing the sort of kaftan that might be favoured by a mack daddy religious fanatic. There were no bad women this time, and no obvious security, though Sean was not so naïve this time as to believe it was not all around him.

"You learned Italian, then", said Sean.

"Had to", said Sean Senior. "Live here. Most of us do. Idyllic, these last few days of Venice before the final flood. Around three thousand Level-Twenty-Five-and-Aboves have holiday homes here."

"In two thousand and thirteen", said Sean disbelievingly. "In the present day."

"Twelve years before the present day", corrected Sean Senior. He bowed to Sam. "Dear young lady."

Sam stood stiffly, immune to blandishment. "Is it true, what he says?"

Sean Senior blinked sunken cadaverous eyes. "What does he say?"

"You're him. You know what he's just said." She lowered her voice. "About you murdering John and Adrian."

"It's all right", said Sean. "You can raise your voice. He'll have everyone in this bar liquidated as soon as we leave. It's the way he works."

Sean looked interrogatively at Sean Senior, who shrugged.

"What can I say?" he said. "Occasionally such things are necessary." he heaved himself onto a bar stool like a walrus dragging its way out of surf. He pulled a gun, a later-model Metalstorm Glock by its appearance, from his pocket and laid it on the counter. He made a sign at the bariste, who nodded back and reached for a bottle marked Absinthe.

"I have to be drunker than I have ever been", announced Sean Senior, "by five o'clock this evening."

"Why?" said Sam.

"I have to Drink to Forget", said Sean Senior. He accepted the glass given him by the barkeep, drained it in one gulp, coughed only briefly. "You leave him, you know." He jerked his head indicatively towards Sean. "For Craig."

Sam stood silent. Sean knew this to be a bad sign.

"It's all right", said Sean. "I know."

"I didn't know", said Sam. "Was anyone planning on telling me?"

"I'm telling you now", said Sean. The bariste looked at Sam. "E per la signora?"

"A Hoegaarden", said Sean Senior. "She throws it in my face in ten minutes' time."

The barkeep nodded and went to work.

"It was Mickey", said Sean. "You turned my own son against me."

Sean Senior nodded. "The Committee catch him eventually. Turn him round."

Sam had not blinked for over ten seconds. This was very bad. "What do you mean, turn him round?"

Sean Senior rapped his glass on the table for another absinthe. "I sense your fear, dear young lady, and there really is very little mind control and genital electrocution. He is a Level Thirty-One, after all. Who could we get to electrocute him?"

A long salt tear oozed down one of Sean Senior's flabby cheeks.

"How many people are there above Level Thirty-One?" said Sean.

Sean Senior held up a single finger. "In the Western Hemisphere, at any rate." He accepted another absinthe and drained it.

"What's a Level Thirty-One?" said Sam.

"Ah", said Sean Senior amusedly. "Yes. He hasn't told you yet, has he?" He jerked a finger at Sean. "He'll be one in ten years' time. And you'll be one in eleven. Until the average world threshold of turannone tolerance advances another notch, and you both have to be moved up another level."

"What's turannone tolerance?"

"Tell her", said Sean Senior. "She deserves that much."

"Turannone is a drug", said Sean awkwardly. "A drug that allows one human being to control the actions of another. It was first synthesized in Book Church laboratories at Thunder Bay a year ago." He laid his elbows on the bar top, made a shelter for his head with both hands. "It, uh, has two components, both spread using a virus as the delivery mechanism. The first is airborne, and that's the one that makes people slaves. The second is spread only by blood-to-blood contact, and is the one that makes them masters. Pope Leo, for example, was infected with Turannone's first component. John and Adrian were infected with the second component, though I'd like to stress that this was without their knowledge, they had no part in it. The slave virus is already out in the general population. There's really very little you can do about it."

Sam was now blinking rapidly. A storm was brewing. Rather than exploding, however, she turned on her heel to leave.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" said Sean Senior sadly.

She stopped and stared into his bleared eyes.

"Go on", he said. "You know you want to."

The beer hit him full in the face. He blinked against the force of it.

"I'm leaving you", she said, and left.

"It's all right", said Sean. "I know."

"Told you", said Sean Senior, picking a cocktail lemon out of his hair.

"I deserve it", said Sean.

They clinked glasses. Sean Senior drained his absinthe; Sean Junior downed his cappuccino.

"So", said Sean, staring at the bar top. "What do I do next?"

"Well", said Sean Senior, "first of all you'll have to infect her with Level Thirty-Two gradatim over the next eleven years. She won't be able to take the full dose straight off; a resistance has to be built up. She won't really leave you right now, you know. She's very strong; stronger than you or I. She'll stick by you for a few years yet. You'll even have happy times - you, her and Mickey - affording plenty of opportunity for you to slip turannone to her via exchange of body fluids. It works via semen-to-blood contact as well as blood-to-blood, you know." He winked grotesquely. "And the general public get to know it, too - there gets to be real value in being a starfucker. Screw a High Primate, become a High Primate yourself. The Monica Lewinsky strategy writ across the sky in letters of fire."

Sean turned his empty cup over in his fingers. "Do I have to infect her?"

"Yes. Believe me, if she's not a Level Thirty-Two, some lower-grade wannabe will assassinate her." Sean Senior exhaled heavily. "Successively higher turannone levels in the body play merry hell with the metabolism, by the way. It's necessary to take a Pick 'n Mix of drugs every day to counter the effects. And the drugs themselves have side effects." He raised one ponderous buttock off his stool and farted. He made a face and waved a hand to disperse the effects. "I knew Mickey was going to make an attempt on your life, of course. After we overran Wuhan, he used one of our very first experimental 4D transmitters to send himself back now. Forgetting, of course, that the Committee of today already have their own transmitters, and monitor time very carefully. We picked him up almost immediately, of course. But it was decided to use his assassination attempt as a diversion for our attacks on Lamb and Lang."

"You had no choice. His attempt had already happened."

"And if he'd known anything about cause and effect, he'd have realized that that meant he had no hope of killing you either. But time travel was still in its infancy back then, and his mother filled his education with all sorts of foolish literature, fine art and ethics rather than proper hard science."

"How's the war going?" said Sean.

"Oh, a few million dead here, a billion there", said Sean Senior. "For the first time, we have control of bridges over both the Hwang Ho and the Yangtze. We deliberately didn't nuke Baotou and Wuhan precisely for that reason. Our forces in central China aren't split into two or three any more. We can begin consolidating our gains."

"Did they hit any cities of ours?"

"Oh, Christ, yes. Washington, Moscow, Jerusalem. And they drowned London, Rotterdam, New York, San Francisco. And Venice, of course. Our ABM defences worked better than we'd hoped. Knocked out fifty per cent. The unexpected bonus is that the mini-nuclear winter all this has caused is offsetting global warming." He nodded to the barman and accepted another glass of absinthe.

"How do we gain control of Russia and Europe?" said Sean. "Assuming the Church wins the election in the US?"

"It wins the election in the US", said Sean Senior. "Russia and many countries in Europe are dealt with by adapting helotonovirus to a sexual vector. Secrecy and illegality still surround sex in many nations, and this can only increase as the Church's grip grows stronger. In Britain, good use is made of the complimentary bar peanut. Many men and women do not wash their hands after defecating, and transfer faecal matter to the peanuts. Japan is a tougher nut to crack. We're forced to adapt helotonovirus to infect Minke whales, and from here it gets absorbed through the food chain. In China, we're using gang rape of conquered populations as an effective means of increasing Take-Up. 'Spreading the Love', we call it -"

"Okay, okay, I'm not sure I need to know right now." Sean spread his arms out on the counter. "I'm nervous about FTL travel. The time transmitters. Hirondelle have had three major facilities in the US, Canada and Israel looking into the problem for four years now, and we've gotten nowhere."

Sean Senior nodded, and held up a finger. One second. He rooted in his breast pocket, brought out a clenched fist, held it out to Sean.

"Open."

Sean held out his hand; Sean Senior dropped a small black pill into his palm. It resembled a suppository.

"What is it?"

"Not a suppository. Ten exabyte data jigger. More information in there than in every mainframe computer underneath Langley, Virginia. It's got what you need."

Sean squinted at one end of the device. "Uh, I'm not sure we have an interface that can read this right now -"

"Then build one already. Sheesh. Do something for your money. I had to." He nodded at the barman again for another glass.

"Should he really be feeding you that much alcohol? I'm concerned for your health. It's my body you're using."

"He's got no choice. He's only a Level Ten."

Sean looked at the barman. The barman caught Sean's eye and deferentially lowered his gaze. There was a mole on his right cheek.

"He killed John Lang", said Sean.

Sean Senior grinned. "Bravo. Very perceptive of you." He cast an arm out around the shoulder of the barman, put a hand under the man's chin, trying to make him raise his head. The man did his best to keep his eyes downcast, like a shy child. "Marco here has been Dr. Lang's constant companion since childhood. John is a key figure in Church history. His wisdom is considered one of the Church's greatest assets. For this reason, Church hagiographers have recorded every minute of his life. Marco here holds a doctorate in Primitive Religion, which is what folks used to call Christianity, Islam, all that jazz. He's also a dab hand with an industrial bolt gun, aren't you, Marco?"

Marco lowered his eyes.

"The three men who are supposed to have carried out the murders", said Sean. "They're innocent?"

"Several shades purer than the driven snow. Greater love hath no man, etc., etc. They were profiled by Committee analysts as being optimal sacrificial lambs for the continuing cause. Two of them were Lefebvrists, thorns in the side of the Church's fight for control of world Catholicism - the Lefebvrist church steals converts from us, swelling its number by a good five million before we finally stamp it out in around 2018. Two of our lambs, meanwhile, were Goans; although they were Christians and experts in Renaissance ecclesiastical art, they were also Indian Christians, and hence fine scapegoats for the unprovoked attack on India you make shortly, the first occasion on which the Church is forced to get military. In about -" Sean Senior consulted his watch - "fifteeen minutes' time, an entirely spontanteous mob motivated solely by religious devotion is going to storm in here, rip the supposed murderers out of the hands of the carabineri, and tear them limb from limb."

"Jesus." Sean stared into space. "What have I done?"

"Less of the wounded sanctity, kid. Marco here did the dirty job you weren't prepared to. You're prepared to be President, but you're not prepared to do an honest day's walking over your own murdered grandmother to get it."

"Is there anyone in Venice who isn't a Devotee?"

"Precious few. We have to import Illuminated staff. Otherwise no-one over Level Twenty would be able to eat in restaurants. The turannone kick they put out would kill any staffer who hadn't built up a tolerance." He nodded at an elderly gentleman sitting at a side table. "That's Pastor Zubaid, head of the Scientific Redemption group, and his lady wife. We're trying to breed a subspecies of humanity that is incapable of sinning. So far we're only getting dribbling cretins. We're rehousing them on Manhattan Island."

"What happened to the people who lived on Manhattan Island?"

"They were exterminated. Fifty per cent Failure To Take Up. It was considered a statistically inviable population." He looked sidelong at Sean, eyes narrowed. "I hope you realize", he said, "that after this I'm going to have to get on a hypersonic transport and fly a thousand miles across the Atlantic."

Sean frowned. "Okay, you've got me. Why is that?"

Sean Senior reached over and jabbed Sean painfully in the notebook with one long index finger. "Because you couldn't be arsed to check your dates, that's why."

Sean pulled out the notebook, opened it to the first page, read it carefully.

"Oh shit."

"Oh shit, he says. You put down 15th of January 2025 twice, moron. Oh, you change the time of the appointment, in two minutes' time, after you realize your error. But that still means I have to have a hypersonic launch station built at Marco Polo airport, with a runway a kilometre long and tracking radars the size of cathedral domes. What was left of the poor old Duomo San Marco gets shaken to pieces by the sonic booms. And of course, I have to build a dimensional receiver station at Newark -"

Sean continued to gape at the dates. How the hell could I have been so stupid?

"You could have just jumped backward a day in time."

"Oh, yes, I could", rasped Sean Senior indignantly. "But way back in the year 2013 I listened to me telling myself I'd done it the long way round across the Alps with elephants, so of course now I've got to do it that way. Have you any idea what the jetlag is like on a hypersonic flight?"

"I'm truly sorry", said Sean. "It is me who'll have to do it, after all." He couldn't help but grin, however, despite himself.

"Yeah, but you only have to do it twelve years from now", muttered Sean Senior. "Not in twenty minutes' time." He simmered down slightly, and added: "It's still safer to restrict dimensional travel to single-coordinate translation anyhow. Time, in this case. The mathematics of multiple-coordinate transfers increases the risk in some way, don't ask me how. The Committe's subcommittee on patriarchal safety recommends I travel through either space or time, never both." He cast a murderous glance around the bar, searching every face, as if unsure who was Committee and who was not. "Bunch of moaning minnies'll try to stop me crossing the street without roadblocks in both directions if I let them."

Sean pulled out a pen and hastily changed the time of the second 2025 appointment by five hours. As he did so, a young man in a grey-and-scarlet uniform bearing the Church's logo ran in breathless, stood to attention in front of Sean Senior, and saluted. Sean Senior flapped him to ease with a lazy hand and and pointed to his own ear. "Talk in here." The young man bent to Sean Senior and spoke urgently and quietly. His eyes nearly bounced out of his head when he saw Sean.

Sean Senior nodded and waved the young man away.

"Rogue Chinese cruise unit just nuked Panama City and Suez", he said. "We can't get matériel through to China." He licked his lips. "They'll pay for this, in the blood of their own goddamned children."

"I'll leave you to your war", said Sean, rising to leave.

Sean Senior nodded. He raised his glass to the bartender for another shot. He looked sidelong at Sean.

"I'm not as black as I paint myself, you know. There are reasons why."

"I know", said Sean.

"It's like having the Mona Lisa hanging in your living room", said Sean Senior, "and having a big bottle of thinners and a brand new box of paints. You know there's something up with that smile, and you think you can touch it up somehow. But somehow no matter what you try, it never seems to quite work, and because you change a corner of the mouth you have to make the whole head bigger, and before you know it the lady has no head at all."

Sean nodded. "Don't I know it."

He put a hand on Sean Senior's shoulder. "Wait till tomorrow before you take your revenge on China. You're drunk right now."

Sean Senior looked back sadly out of a prison of fat. "You don't understand. If I feel like doing bad, our Church's generals and missionary superintendents will do far worse. None of them are military men, only devotees playing at soldiers. They have never seen a little girl's blown off in a friendly fire incident. Whatever they decide to do will be far more terrible unless I am there to moderate it. And many of them", he said solemnly, "will also be drunk. It eases the pain. You should try it."

"Not yet", said Sean. "Maybe later. Be seeing you."

"In a mirror, sooner than you think."

Sean walked out of the café into a barrage of camera flashes. The café entrance was now flanked by a large and uncompromising group of Adam Hamed's security guards, not even bothering to conceal their weapons in their jackets, and a few carabineri openly toting submachineguns. His presence in the café had evidently become common knowledge. Of course, none of Hamed's staff would have dared come inside - if the place was staffed by Level Tens and above, even a sharp word from a washer-upper would have them waiting outside like naughty little boys, and a Level Twenty-Five, whatever that might be, could probably order any present-day devotee to nail his own scrotum to a table without complaint. Besides, any establishment catering for Sean Senior and most of 2025's High Primacy would be swarming with its own security.

Someone attempted to brain him with a microphone. "Is it true, Pastor Angelo, that an attempt has been made on your own life?"

"Do you consider it miraculous that a hail of machine gun bullets completely missed you while killing at least six people in the crowd around you?"

"Are the stories we're hearing of an angel appearing to you complete fabrications?"

"How do you feel about the deaths of so many close friends and co-worshippers?"

"Pastor Agnello, is it true to say -"

"MY NAME IS NOT PASTOR AGNELLO." The words, spoken at parade-ground volume, silenced the entire crowd instantaneously, particularly as they did not seem to be true. The fusillade of questions ceased, and microphones quivered expectantly in excited hands, each eager to gather the great scoop that would make its journalistic career. Behind the ring of press men and security guards, the general public stood as quiet and expectant as any other. This was only to be expected; the helotone blowers had been going at full blast all morning.

"FROM THIS DAY ON", said Sean, "I RENOUNCE THE NAME AGNELLO; I TAKE ON, INSTEAD, THE NAME OF A FAR BETTER MAN THAN I, WHO DIED UNJUSTLY. THOSE OF YOU WHO UNDERSTAND ITALIAN WILL KNOW THAT AGNELLO MEANS LAMB IN ENGLISH. MANY OF THE PRESS HAVE COMMENTED ON THE COINCIDENCE BEFORE. FROM THIS DAY, IN HONOUR OF MY MURDERED FRIEND, I TAKE ON THE NAME OF JOHN LAMB, COMMEMORATING TWO SLAUGHTERED INNOCENTS; AND I HOPE I MAY BE A MAN ONE HALF AS WORTHY AS EITHER."

So far, so true; I haven't told a lie yet. Time to roll out the forked tongue.

"THE DEATHS OF FIVE GOOD MEN HAVE BEEN ACCOMPLISHED TODAY BY PEOPLE WHO I AM SURE THOSE GOOD MEN WOULD HAVE FORGIVEN FOR THEIR CRIMES. LORD HELP ME, HOWEVER, AS I JUST ELABORATED, I AM NOT SO GOOD A MAN. I CANNOT STAND BY AND WATCH THE CREEPING INFLUENCE OF GOD'S ENEMIES SLITHER INTO OUR SOCIETY UNCHECKED TO KILL FURTHER GOOD MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, FOR I HAVE A CHILD OF MY OWN.

"I WILL RUN FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AS IS MY DUTY AS ADRIAN LAMB'S RUNNING MATE. IF ELECTED, INSHALLAH, I WILL END THE COWARDLY COMPROMISE OUR NATION HAS BEEN OBSERVING TOWARDS THOSE ACROSS OUR BORDERS WHO FAIL TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE IS BUT ONE GOD. IN PARTICULAR, MY CHURCH SUPPORTS THE CAUSE OF OUR MOSLEM BRETHREN IN KASHMIR, WHO SEEK ONLY FREEDOM TO UPHOLD SIMPLE UNIVERSAL TRUTHS IN THE FACE OF PAGANISM AND PAINTED DEITIES. IF INDIA DOES NOT STAND DOWN OVER KASHMIR, WE SUPPORT TOTAL ECONOMIC ISOLATION OF INDIA AND HER ALLIES. I ALSO DRAW INDIA'S ATTENTION TO THE INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY, WITH WHICH IT FAILS TO COMPLY IN EVERY POINT, AND I DO NOT RULE OUT MILITARY INTERVENTION. I WILL DO NOTHING IN ANGER; BUT I WILL DO ANYTHING, ANYTHING AT ALL, IN THE NAME OF DIVINELY-APPOINTED JUSTICE. THAT IS ALL."

There were further questions; he ignored them. He walked determinedly through the crowd, and it parted like the Red Sea, opening an avenue across the piazza to his quarters in the Alsin amphibian. The pilot of the plane and Naveh Ben Eleazar, Adam Hamed's number two, were suddenly at his left and right as if by magic. This sort of service happened for a Presidential hopeful.

He noticed that a large crowd of angry veneziani was already gathering around the Doge's Palace where he could only assume the alleged terrorists were under guard. He had no desire to see what happened next, even if he'd caused it.

"Ensure the Italian people and city of Venice are thanked for their hospitality", he said, "and have the ship fuelled up. We are going back to Minneapolis."

As he stepped onto the inflatable pontoon bridge leading to the Alsin, walking on water, he heard the crowd surge toward the Doge's palace like an ocean pushed by an earthquake.