Roger grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. An “expert” was in the middle of explaining how the whole thing was a hoax. “What about denial?”
“That’s in the first phase as well.” Ben waited for the network to accept a connection. He opened his phone and turned it on. “Still nothing?” He flicked his chin at the Gaia image on Roger’s laptop.
“Nothing.” Roger shook his head. “Don’t you think they should have found something by now?”
Ben leaned back in his chair and stretched. “I don’t know. I mean the thing is, just like we humans somehow imagine we’re separate from our environment, we also imagine that the solar system is separate from the interstellar environment, but it’s not.”
He pointed at the star field on Roger’s laptop. “Sedna, our tenth planetoid beyond Pluto, was captured when our solar system collided with another star system a billion years ago. Thirty-five million years ago, the Earth’s orbit changed, triggering a massive ice age and asteroid impacts that formed the Chesapeake Bay. I’d bet it was caused by another star passing through our solar system, just like Scholz’s star grazing us only seventy thousand years ago. ”
“Four million years ago, a star three times the size of the sun passed a half parsec from it.” Roger had obviously done some homework. “And a million years from now, a K7 dwarf will skim us at less than a tenth parsec.”
“Exactly,” Ben said. “We’re intimately connected to other stars around us in interstellar space. How many extinction-level events have there been in Earth’s history?”
Roger scrunched his face and smiled. It was one of his favorite topics. “Five big ones that wiped out more than half the life on Earth, plus dozens of smaller ones. Two hundred and fifty million years ago, the Permian extinction took out over ninety percent of life worldwide. It was tens of millions of years before the planet was inhabited by more than protozoa.”
“Caused by what?”
An almost rhetorical question, but Roger played along. “Asteroids, comets, and volcanoes...”
“But the real answer is, we don’t know. What about a star exploding, a supernova, within a few dozen light years?”
“That would do it,” Roger agreed. “Irradiate the Earth and kill nearly everything.”
“With no warning.”
“Nope. Can’t outrun the speed of light.”
Ben pointed at a new image on Roger’s screen. “In our galaxy there are billions of stars, bright points we can see, but there are hundreds of millions of neutron stars, collapsed remnants of stars, that float around between them and are almost invisible. That’s what we know, but it’s what we don’t know that I’m worried about.”
“And that is?”
“Dark matter. Ninety percent of the material that makes up our universe, that makes up our own galaxy, is made of something we can’t see. All those stars”—Ben stabbed a finger at the screen—“there’s ten times more stuff floating between them that we can’t see, but we know it’s there by its gravitational signature, by the way the galaxies hold together. Exactly the same way we know Nomad is there, that something is coming. We detect the effects of its gravity, but we can’t see anything.”
“So what are you saying?”
“That we don’t know. Who knows what wiped out life on Earth before? Maybe we’re about to have a cosmic encounter with something we don’t understand.” Ben hung his head. “I’ve always had the feeling we think we’re wizards.”
“You mean astronomers?” Roger’s face twitched into an expression halfway between a grimace and a grin. “Like we gaze into our crystal balls? It’s called scrying, I think.”
“Right. We stare at patterns of light, and imagine that we can divine the history of the universe, even predict the future. It’s pride, pure hubris. Five big extinction-level events, but maybe this one won’t just destroy life. Maybe it’ll actually destroy the planet.”
Roger turned his laptop off. “Do you think it’ll hit us?”
“Doesn’t need to. We can’t see it, but whatever it is, it has a massive gravitational field. The Earth is like a giant water balloon, the solid crust beneath our feet just the thin, stretched plastic surface. If this thing comes close enough, past the Roche limit, the Earth will burst from the tidal forces.”
“No matter what, it’ll fling the Earth into interstellar space,” Roger added quietly. “The atmosphere would freeze solid in a few weeks.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” The connection symbol on Ben’s laptop winked on. He logged into his email. “We don’t know what it is; we have only a general sense of its path. Maybe it’ll miss the solar system. Maybe it will disappear.”
“Maybe.” But Roger didn’t sound convinced.
Ben scanned his inbox, flooded with media requests and colleagues requesting calls. But…there, an email from Jess, and not just one but a dozen. He opened the first one. “Oh, no…”
Roger blinked. “What?”
Ben read one email and then another. “Jess and Celeste didn’t get on that flight. They came to find me. Damn it.”
“Where are they?”
“I have an address. Go get Dr. Müller. I need him to arrange a pick-up in Rome. Arrange a military transport.”
“Okay.” Roger snapped out of his daydream, stood, but stopped and turned. “One thing, Ben. You said this was predictable, the shock and emotion. That this was the first step of grief.”
“And?” Ben chewed on his thumbnail. Why didn’t Jess take that flight? On the TV, an image of the candlelight vigil in the rain at St. Peters’s Square at the Vatican. Over a million people.
“What’s the next step?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Ben looked Roger in the eye. “The next stage is anger.”
16
ROME, ITALY
“ANGELA POLIDORO,” JESS yelled into the intercom. “Amici di Angela.”
“No, appartamento trecento,” crackled the reply. “No Angela.”
“Please, buzz us in,” Jess pleaded. “We’re stuck outside.”
They hung up.
Jess cursed in frustration. It was dark out. Rain hammered onto the cobblestones in a downpour. A river flowed down the middle of the alley, plastic bottles and papers from the garbage piles clogging a drain in the middle. They buzzed all the apartments. Nobody would let them in. Jess tried to explain, but they spoke no English, and her Italian wasn’t good enough to charm her way past their suspicions.
“Sit down for a second,” Celeste urged. She found wooden packing crates around the corner and arranged them, upended, under a small awning next to the apartment entrance. It offered some shelter.
Shivering, Jess took Celeste’s offered hand and hopped over to sit. They huddled together. Jess wore only a thin tank top and jeans. Celeste offered her soaked sweater, but Jess refused, told her to keep it.
“We can’t stay here, we’ll freeze to death.” Jess’s teeth chattered. Clenching her jaw to stop it, she wrapped her arms tight around herself. It had to be past ten. No shops were open. Reaching down, she rubbed the stump of her leg. Not used to being exposed, the cold and wet made it ache.
Celeste put an arm around her daughter and laughed. “You wanted some bonding time…”
Jess gritted her teeth, but despite herself, laughed as well. “Not quite what I had in mind.”
“I know. Come on, let’s think.”
That was just like her mother. Jess wanted to kick and scream, find someone to take her frustration out on, but Celeste was more cerebral. She said Jess was hot-headed like her grandfather, Giancarlo. “We need to get in touch with Dad, that’s what we need to do.”
“No, what we need to do is take care of you,” Celeste said, her voice low and soothing. “Get you some crutches, maybe a replacement.”
Jess pulled away. She hated feeling like a cripple. She didn’t need anyone’s help.
“Baby, come on.” Celeste gently pulled her back. “I’m your mother.”
Jes
s relaxed her shoulders and leaned back into Celeste. She was right. Without her prosthetic, without even crutches, she was a liability. The humiliation. Worse, she couldn’t protect her mother; not even herself. “There’s a hospital just across the river,” she sighed. “Maybe we can get a taxi there. I’m sure we could stay the night.”
Celeste smiled and squeezed Jess harder. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“No.” Jess flashed a tiny smile and wiped her soaked, long blond hair from her eyes.
“And where could we get a taxi?”
“Three blocks on the other side of the Piazza, there’s a main road.” Jess straightened up. “And there’s a pay phone at the bottom of the square.”
“We can call the police.”
If they got to a police station, maybe they could call Darmstadt. “And we could get to the American Embassy.” It wasn’t far, half an hour walk from where they sat. Jess went there to renew her passport a few weeks ago.
A block away to her left, another group of people huddled. Homeless. Surrounded by piles of shopping bags and blankets. What Jess would give for one of those blankets. Glancing right, a shape came out of the dark rain, two people walking.
“Hello?” Celeste stood. “Please, can you help us?” She took two steps toward the people, stepped out into the pouring rain.
It was a man and a woman, tight together under an umbrella.
“We have an emergency.” Celeste reached toward the man.
He shied away, exclaimed, “Ehi! Non mi tocchi!” his body language screaming, Get away. They hurried off and disappeared back into the fog of the rain.
Jess stood, balancing with one hand against the wall. “Mom, don’t beg. Come on, let’s go.” One of the homeless people, a young woman, came closer and stared at them. Jess stared back at the woman, then looked away.
Celeste came to support Jess, and they slowly made their way through the downpour to the piazza. Water streamed into Jess’s eyes, and she strained to remain stable on the slick cobblestones. All the shops were shuttered; all the restaurants closed. Not another soul around. They walked across the square to the other side, past the fountain, and continued two more blocks to Via Rinascimento where they stood in the sheeting rain and waited. No taxis. No police. A car appeared and Celeste almost threw herself in front of it, but it honked and swerved, then sped off in a spray of water.
The rain hammered down. Leaning against a stone wall, Jess shivered violently. She couldn’t stop her teeth chattering now. Her leg ached. A cold fire burned in her thigh. “Let…let’s try the phone box,” she stuttered. They’d been out in the rain for maybe two hours already, and Jess felt her core temperature dropping, her fingers going numb.
Celeste stood at the edge of the road, her hands in tight fists, her arms shaking. Water poured down her face. “Okay, let’s try it.”
“Excuse me?”
Jess glanced to her left. Someone stood under an umbrella, huge raindrops exploding like staccato gunfire off it.
“You need help, yes?”
The person stepped next to Jess. It was a young woman, slender, shorter than Jess. Smooth skin with freckled cheeks, her eyes so blue they seemed to pierce the darkness.
“I have somewhere warm,” the woman said. “I am Massarra, come. Come with me.”
“Yes…yes,” Celeste stammered, coming to hold Jess. “Please.”
“This way.” Massarra turned and disappeared into the rain.
Jess and Celeste followed. Jess hobbled and leaned onto her mother. “Do you think this is a good idea?” she whispered to her mother.
“We don’t have much choice. We need to get out of this, get warm somehow. Maybe I can go and try the phone.”
“Don’t leave me alone.” Jess said this without thinking. “I mean, that’s fine, but don’t go—”
“Don’t worry.” Celeste squeezed Jess.
They followed Massarra back across the empty piazza, back down Angela’s street. Water flowed in torrents around their feet as they struggled. Jess was about to ask where they were going when Massarra pointed at a gap between the buildings, barely two feet wide. She peered down it through the rain. A light glimmered at the end.
“It’s okay, it’s safe,” Massarra assured her, and she turned sideways and shimmied her way through the gap.
Celeste and Jess stood shaking in the rain. “What do you think?” Celeste asked.
Jess didn’t answer, but hopped forward. Anything to get out of this rain. She pushed herself between the buildings and edged forward. Empty beer cans and discarded food containers littered the gap, a waterfall pouring from the tops of the buildings onto her. The light at the end glimmered brighter. A fire. The gap widened into an interior courtyard between the buildings, and, finally, no rain. Looking up, awnings stretched between the walls, interlacing one over the other for four stories. Rainwater gushed from drainpipes. Reaching the end of the gap, she hopped forward, steadying herself with one arm against the wall.
Three old men sat around a low concrete urn containing a bright fire. They looked at Jess and nodded before returning to staring into the fire.
Massarra came to Jess with a blanket. “I saw you in the street.” And she had crutches. “One of my uncles had this from an old accident.” She offered Jess both.
“Thank you,” Celeste said from behind Jess, taking the blanket and wrapping it around her daughter.
“Come, sit.” Massarra indicated a wooden bench to the side of the fire. She smiled at Jess. “These are my uncles. Two of them speak English, just so you know.” She said something in what sounded like Arabic, and all three of them nodded.
Jess convulsed in a fit of shivering, her leg almost buckling. She held back. Four of them, and just her and Celeste. She doubted anyone would even hear them scream from the alleyway. Even if the streets weren’t deserted. Even if the rain wasn’t pounding, drowning everything out.
“Come on,” Celeste whispered into her ear. “They look nice.”
They didn’t look nice. The three old men sat like goblins, hunched over, their beards hanging between their knees. The closest turned and looked at Jess, one eye seeing, the other an opaque silver pool reflecting the firelight. She shuddered again, this time only half from the cold.
But the fire’s warmth beckoned.
Leaning on Celeste, she muttered, “Thank you,” to Massarra and stumbled to sit on the bench. Celeste sat beside her. Jess put the crutches down but kept them close, in case she needed to stand quickly. Or fend off one of the goblins. Shivering, she held her hands to the fire, beautiful life-giving warmth spreading into her fingertips.
“Most of our luggage was stolen.” Massarra brought Celeste a blanket she took from a backpack next to the fire. “My uncles and I were traveling home. Tomorrow we get money, drive north.”
“Really?” Celeste took the blanket and wrapped it around herself and Jess, pulling her closer on the bench. “That’s what happened to us, too.”
“I suspected,” Massarra said as she sat opposite them. “I heard you asking for help.” She pointed out the gap between the buildings. “The world is going crazy today.”
Jess stopped shivering. “Yes.”
“You heard, then? About Nomad?” Massarra asked.
“Yes.”
“And you believe it? There was a man on television today that said they didn’t know yet. The one with a graying goatee, black rimmed glasses…did you see him?”
Jess leaned toward the fire, watched the flames dance. She had to mean her father. Jess nodded, clenching her fists. Where was he? “He’s lying,” she grunted. Celeste clutched her under the blanket, frowned at her.
“Lying? Why would you say that?”
Jess pushed her mother away, ever so slightly. “Because they had to know, for a long time.” And that was true. When she spoke to her father two nights before, he said he had evidence of Nomad over thirty years ago. Data he recorded when he was a grad student. Mysterious flashes in the night sky.
>
One of the old men, the one with the silver eye, asked, “So, they’ve been hiding it?”
It wasn’t true her father had exactly hidden it. He’d theorized about it in a research paper—rejected by his peers as far-fetched speculation. But why had he abandoned Jess and Celeste? Why hadn’t he called? “Yes, that man on television is a liar.”
Her mother’s nails dug into Jess’s arm under the blanket. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
The old men exchanged glances, muttering in a guttural language Jess didn’t understand. Silver-eye looked at Jess again. “And now the world is unprepared to meet God.”
Jess clenched her fists. “Nobody is ever prepared to meet God.”
Silver-eye erupted into a phlegmy laugh. “Not true. You only fear God if you haven’t made your peace, haven’t placed death at the center of life.”
Thawed out, blood pumped through Jess’s veins again. “Now that sounds cheerful.”
“The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of life.” Silver-eye worked his mouth around into a rotten-toothed grimace. “Hell is no punishment, but a process of freeing the soul. If you are frightened of dying, you’ll see devils tearing your life away when death comes. But, if you’ve made peace, then you’ll see angels freeing you when death comes.”
Rubbing her hands together, Jess stared at Silver-eye. “I appreciate you letting us sit here, but I don’t want to talk. Is that okay?” It creeped her out. He creeped her out.
“Sorry, my uncles, this is affecting them,” Massarra apologized.
Silver-eye looked at the other two old men and shook his head. He looked back at Jess, held her gaze. “As you wish. But you might want to think, what is it that holds you here? What demons tear at your soul, keeping you from freedom?”
Jess stared at the man’s silver eye, a puddle of light, a boy’s face disappearing into it. Clenching her fists, she turned away and huddled under the blankets with her mother.
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