Extinction

by Ray Hammond

  Everywhere he visited, he was struck by the silence of the hordes who gathered to watch their progress. The men stood, sullen and mute, some armed with knives or ancient automatic weapons, just staring at this interloper from the rich civilization over the horizon. Though simply dressed in navy sweater and jeans, his thick brown hair covered by an old woollen hat, Michael was aware that his shining whiteness alone marked him out as belonging unmistakably to that other world.

  At each pause he was announced to them in their own language as the American attorney who intended to fight for their rights to official refugee status, for their unhindered rights of passage across the seas in search of better weather conditions, and eventually for the basic entitlements of immigration and resettlement. But, equally importantly, he aimed to win for them all some financial compensation for what they had suffered at the hands of the giant energy corporations.

  But after three hours of exhausting progress, he realized that all he was hearing in return were the dreams they harboured of finding sanctuary in his own rich, unflooded, well-fed world. It seemed that these people didn’t want to fight global capitalism; they merely wanted to join it.

  ‘United States? We go to United States – America.’

  ‘England, please.’

  ‘Canada, my brother is there.’

  ‘Please, Germany – I have friends to live with. I work hard.’

  Only one person, a short, teak-coloured man in early middle age, raised an alternative subject. ‘We need rain, proper rainfall,’ he insisted. Michael caught the trace of a Western education in his voice.

  ‘I have already arranged some real rainfall,’ he announced loudly, ‘though not as much as I’d have liked. You can expect to see a Volume Two precipitation here for approximately seventy minutes next Tuesday afternoon, starting at oh-two-hundred GMT. And that comes with the compliments of my law firm – Gravitz, Lee and Kraus, of San Francisco.’

  The little man smiled, then turned to translate this news to others. Amid further smiles, a single hand waved an acknowledgement of thanks. The visitor wondered what their religious leaders must make of a world where rain could only be guaranteed to fall in any quantity after prior payment had been made to some invisible extraterrestrial controlling force.

  ‘And we also need that diesel fuel,’ said Chanda quietly in Michael’s ear. ‘For our main generators.’

  The lawyer nodded. He had been given a list of his clients’ requests over one of their old-fashioned voice-only satellite phones before he came here, but it had proved difficult to find a tanker company willing to deliver fuel to the ‘hulk people’ of the Southern Ocean.

  ‘It’s on schedule, Mr Zia,’ he told his client. ‘Arriving Friday, as agreed.’

  Chanda smiled, then pressed his hands together in thanks and bowed.

  Although Michael’s tour took over four hours, he estimated that he had visited only twelve or fifteen vessels. But he knew that there were over 900 hulks of varying sizes lashed together in this one floating community alone. And he also knew there were four other similar hulk nations of the environmentally dispossessed scattered across – but tightly corralled within – the angry seas of the unpopulated southern latitudes.

  ‘How many people do you reckon live here altogether?’ he asked Chanda Zia.

  ‘We can’t be sure, Mr Fairfax,’ said his guide, after a short silence. ‘We tried to do a proper count last year, but with over sixty languages, a dozen religions, and ships arriving every month . . .’ He tailed off, then hazarded, ‘At least three-quarters of a million.’

  Financial Times

  Tuesday, 23 May 2055

  INSURERS DIVERT TYPHOON AWAY FROM JAKARTA

  A group of Western insurance companies led by Zurich Indemnity, has contracted directly with the ERGIA Climate Management Corporation to provide atmospheric energy to steer a Category 5 typhoon away from Jakarta. It was forecast that the storm would have made landfall on the outskirts of the capital within the next 72 hours.

  The insurers’ intervention follows the Indonesian government’s refusal last year to pay increased charges for annual climate management and typhoon control.

  Chapter Two

  Champagne does not fizz in space, so Perdy Curtis shook her ball-valve plastic glass vigorously up and down in the hope of producing some bubbles. But, despite her efforts, when she pushed the spring-loaded ball down into the glass with her little finger, nothing happened. She frowned and shook the glass again.

  As a television producer, Perdy was an interloper into what was an otherwise exclusive briefing for almost eighty of the world’s most influential stock-market analysts. They were being ferried in four separate shuttles up to the ERGIA Climate Control Space Station where it sat in a permanently maintained deep orbit, 66,000 kilometres above the Earth. The occasion for this visit was the company’s announcement of a new natural energy resource and of its plans to float shares in this new service on the world’s stock markets.

  Despite her respected position within the BBC and the wider broadcasting community, it had been Perdy’s first trip into space and when Narinda Damle, her executive producer in London, had arranged for Perdy’s participation in this exclusive financiers’ junket she had been quietly delighted.

  At thirty-two she seemed to have been the only space virgin remaining amongst her many high-flying media friends. And in the year 2055 – the age of so-called ‘walk-on, walk-off’ space travel – that was not something to boast about.

  Their ferry ride into orbit had been short but exhilarating. It had taken the hybrid rocket-plane just eight minutes to escape the Earth’s atmosphere and although many of her fellow passengers had exhibited an air of cultivated boredom at the mundane routine of going into space, Perdy had not tried to disguise her own curiosity and sense of wonder.

  The analysts and fund managers joining this trip had been invited to visit the largest of the world’s weather-control space stations, and Perdy had joined the group to assist her research for a forthcoming documentary, a co-financed BBC-MSN production called ‘Nice Weather We’re Having – 25 Years of Global Climate Management’. It was scheduled to air worldwide in six months’ time, to mark the quarter-century since Mankind first took control of the planet’s weather and began to manage away the worst effects of global warming.

  As they approached their destination Perdy could not help but exclaim, ‘My God! That’s quite something.’

  Framed in the small triple-layered window beside her was a giant silver object that seemed to hang in space. It looked just like a chrome-plated windmill.

  ‘That’s the ERGIA space station – where we’re headed.’ The man seated next to her was an investment banker from Morgan-Stanley New York. ‘Those fan blades are directional mirrors reflecting sunlight back down to Earth.’

  Perdy thought she had never seen anything more beautiful. The giant fan hung absolutely stationary in the night sky – a shining man-made jewel against the backdrop of a billion stars. She had only ever seen this ‘night-sun’ from Earth, of course, and from such a distance she had never been able to make out its precise shape.

  As their orbital ferry approached the space station, Perdy realized that she had seriously underestimated the size of the ERGIA control centre. She glanced down at the information the investor-relations staff had provided to the guests.

  The diameter of the solar reflectors from tip to tip is almost twenty miles, while the central hub of the space station is a triple-skinned titanium sphere over 900feet wide. It carries a permanent staff of sixty-five, with accommodation for up to 100 visitors. In Earth’s gravity, the space station would weigh 245,000 tons.

  For the next five minutes the ferry edged its way through the final 300 metres of computer-controlled slow manoeuvring and, as Perdy watched – now glued again to her window – the hub of the space station came to seem like a huge hemispherical building. It was certainly as high as any of the towers in downtown London or Manhattan.

  Fina
lly they felt a series of shudders as the space station grasped the ferry and locked it into the main docking hold alongside four other passenger transports. All around them, numerous smaller shuttles and escape craft also sat in the vast docking bay at the base of the space-station hub.

  Their one-hour tour of the ERGIA control centre was packed with information. Perdy had already read a lot about the company’s climate-management systems, but it was not until she actually witnessed exactly how entire regions of the Earth’s weather were controlled and directed that she fully understood just how impressive this achievement was. By reflecting concentrated sunlight onto the upper atmosphere, the ERGIA Corporation and its competitors could change the temperature and altitude of the stratospheric winds. This allowed whole weather systems to be seeded, grown, aborted, directed or dispersed. Perdy recorded everything she was shown with her personal micro-cams.

  Each visitor was given a pair of Velcro-soled overshoes to wear throughout their visit, and guides escorted them in separate groups of twenty to visit the living accommodation, the extensive gym and leisure facilities, the canteen, the computer centre and, last but not least, the main weather-control centre and its famous viewing gallery.

  ‘The trick is not to raise one foot until the other is securely grounded again,’ their guide reminded them, as the doors to the viewing gallery rose to admit them. ‘And please hold firmly onto the handrails at all times.’

  As the party carefully foot-sucked its way into the main observation centre, they were confronted by a huge panoramic viewing window, in which their home planet hung suspended like a giant three-dimensional Imax image.

  The concave window pane was a one-hundred-feet-high sheet of thick, armoured ceramic-glass which, despite its perfect transparency, was proof against all radiation, space dust and even sizeable particles of stray space debris. The vast expanse of glass stretched from side to side for a distance almost three times its height, making the observation chamber itself seem like a giant floating aquarium.

  Behind the visitors, the men and women busy controlling the climate on the planet down below were seated in an amphitheatre of steeply tiered rows of workstations, so that each one of them had a clear view of the blue and white planet Earth and its beautiful swirling weather patterns. The space station itself, the visitors were informed, was currently positioned precisely above the day-night meridian.

  ‘I’ve got a bid of eleven million dollars for a one-hour Volume Six rain storm in Marrakesh,’ yelled one of the controllers suddenly.

  ‘I’ve got thirteen million two for that precipitation – if we can send it on to Cairo,’ called another.

  Another shout announced a further bid from Marrakesh. The next voice asked if anyone had two hours of late-night sunshine available, for a film shoot in Seattle which had overrun on its schedule.

  ‘If you could make your way up to those spare seats above –’ the tour guide pointed ‘– we can begin the presentation.’

  As she took her seat, Perdy found another glass of champagne at her elbow. She had now got the hang of the ball-valve mechanism. The trick was to just touch the ball with the tip of your nose while sucking the champagne up through the built-in straw.

  ‘May I have your attention, ladies and gentlemen?’

  As the room quietened, the cosseted visitors – collectively advisers to funds with over $118 trillion under investment – turned their attention towards the podium positioned in front of the vast viewing window. A sharply suited woman with a short haircut was holding up her hand to gain their attention.

  ‘Well, we have now come to the main purpose of your visit with us today,’ she continued. ‘Please join me in welcoming the president of the ERGIA Corporation, Mr Nicholas Negromonte.’

  The clapping was necessarily subdued because many of the bankers were still holding their glasses of champagne. Others were busy adjusting cameras and personal information systems to record or to relay this event down to ERGIA-approved colleagues on the ground.

  The world-famous entrepreneur bounded onto the stage, waving cheerfully. Everybody in this audience felt that they knew him personally, simply because his face appeared so often in the media. Apart from his celebrated business activities, he was a keen pilot of vintage airplanes and spacecraft and in his youth he had pursued a career as a junior tennis champion – until his older brother had been killed in a terrorist incident and Nicholas Negromonte had retrained to take over the family-run business.

  ‘Welcome aboard, everybody,’ he said, grinning widely. ‘Today it is my pleasure to give you a private preview of the latest and most powerful of our company’s climate-management resources. Over the past three years we have been building a new solar-energy resource on the moon that we call LunaSun.’

  He paused to underline the significance of this announcement.

  ‘Very soon I hope that you and your colleagues will react with enthusiasm to our first public offering of shares. We plan to bring LunaSun to market at the beginning of October this year.’

  Negromonte gazed keenly around the faces of this group of influential banking analysts. Their recommendations would decide the fate of his company’s share offer.

  ‘OK. Let’s roll the video,’ he said, stepping off stage. As the room darkened, the huge viewing window transformed itself into a 3-D screen.

  The opening clip revealed the moon as seen from an approaching spacecraft, then the action cut to a massive building site being created on the lunar surface. Using time-elapsed photography, the video then followed the construction of a vast array of solar reflectors that had been installed successively on the moon’s barren terrain.

  As a reverential voice-over reminded them, the United Nations had granted the ERGIA Corporation a unique licence to utilize a tract of the Earth-facing lunar surface for solar capture. As a result, 2,600 square miles on either side of the moon’s equator had in recent months been covered with over 42,000 high-luminosity, self-cleaning, self-repairing, curved mirrors that could be individually directed and angled towards different sections of the Earth, each by its own set of solar-powered servo motors.

  The moon was the latest, and by far the largest, solar-reflector project to be developed by the ERGIA Corporation and, although not yet fully on-line, it had already become the most powerful light source to shine in the night-time sky – a nocturnal sun that would soon quietly adjust atmospheric temperatures, disperse clouds and provide light and heat precisely where it was required, playing its part in the ongoing battle to keep global warming in check while simultaneously providing the world with low-cost, low-intensity energy.

  This newly equipped moon still went through its primeval phases, of course – from new moon, to full, to waning crescent – but in each part of the visible lunar cycle it now shone in the sky like a celestial halogen lamp. By day it was like a small sibling of the sun; by night it became the burning centrepiece in a string of fairy-light reflectors that, to the fury of Earth-bound stargazers, now outshone the natural stars in the night sky and made ground-based astronomy almost impossible around heavily populated areas.

  Then the presentation switched to a live link. TV cameras were sending signals back from the company’s main administration building – a ten-acre extension to Luna City, the international moon colony that had been growing rapidly over the last twenty years.

  As the commentator reminded them, focused heat from geostationary reflectors in lunar orbit not only provided a warm environment inside the human settlement but had also melted a small part of the moon’s buried polar ice reserves to provide the colonists with a plentiful supply of fresh water.

  The finale of the telecast presentation showed off-duty engineers and support staff diving into LunaSun’s indoor swimming pool, a facility constructed inside a small impact crater and filled with melted polar ice. Then the video faded to black, and the large screen resumed its function as a viewing window.

  The hub of the space station had rotated meanwhile, and now they were sus
pended over the dark side of their home planet. The moon itself was in view in the distance, shining full.

  As they watched, it seemed as though someone had suddenly set fire to that lump of lifeless rock; the visitors were dazzled as all the mirrors on the lunar surface turned in unison to reflect the sun’s rays directly towards the space station. Then, just as suddenly, the reflectors were redirected away and, blinking, the audience once again adjusted their eyes to the dim light of the viewing gallery.

  Someone then started to clap and necks craned all around as others sought to identify what had prompted this applause. Then, as more joined in, Perdy saw what had caught their attention.

  Right in the middle of the dark mass of the Indian Ocean, far below, shone a bright light reflected onto the Earth’s night-time surface by the solar mirrors up on the moon. The image it formed was the encircled E of the ERGIA corporate logo.

  Very smart, Perdy thought, as she too joined in the applause. She ran her fingers through her short, blonde-highlighted hair as she wondered just how bright and how extensive that image of light on the water must be for them to be able see it from 66,000 kilometres up.

  The guide was now ushering the visitors down to stand by the viewing window themselves, for a better vantage point. Though Perdy found herself standing at the back of the throng, she was quite tall and could still see clearly. She marvelled again at the sleeping Earth laid out below her, then gazed up at the moon which once again appeared no brighter than normal.

  ‘I hear you’re making a film about us, Perdita?’ said a quiet, deep voice at her shoulder.