The End is Nigh (The Apocalypse Triptych)

by Adams, John Joseph

  “Is that what’s happening now?”

  “No. Nothing’s really close to the area.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “We’re still working on it, Judy.”

  • • • •

  I was on my way to the university after the show when Tom called. “Can you come by my office?”

  “Sure,” I said. “When?”

  “When can you get here?”

  “I have a class in forty minutes. I can come in after that.”

  “Artie Thompson will cover for you. Come here now. As soon as you get back to the campus.”

  When I arrived, he was at his desk talking with a thin white-haired man who was seated in one of the two armchairs. Tom said hello and gave me a pained smile. “Maryam,” he said, “this is Paul Crenshaw. He’s the director—”

  “—of the Kitt Peak Observatory. Yes, of course! Hello, Professor Crenshaw. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  “Call me ‘Paul,’” he said. His eyes were tired behind thick bifocals, and he nodded without any show of welcome. “You’re the young lady who discovered the first comet, I take it?”

  I nodded. And managed maybe a flicker of a smile. “Yes, that’s correct, Profes—Paul. But what was so urgent?”

  Tom pointed to the other chair, waited for me to sit, and took a deep breath. “First off, Maryam, if you get into any more conversations with reporters, we’d like you not to mention that there’s a problem.”

  “I didn’t say anything about a problem.”

  “Just don’t go into details about why we have three comets, okay?”

  Crenshaw was nodding.

  “All right,” I said. “Sure.”

  Tom and Crenshaw exchanged glances without speaking. I was getting scared. Had I done something seriously stupid?

  Tom pushed back in his chair. “Paul flew in this morning,” he said. “Kitt Peak has been looking into this.”

  “Kitt Peak has? Why?”

  “Along with a lot of other people.” His eyes locked on mine. “This conversation does not leave this room.”

  “Okay.”

  Crenshaw took over: “We know why there were three comets.”

  “What do you mean were?”

  “The trajectories are changing. If that continues, and we’re pretty sure it will, they won’t make it into the inner solar system.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “There’s a brown dwarf nearby.” Brown dwarfs are failed stars. They lack the mass to power a fusion reaction in their cores. They’re big, they’re heavy, and you don’t want to get too close to one of them.

  “Where is it?”

  “About thirty million miles from the comets. Unfortunately, it’s coming in our direction.”

  “My God.”

  “We’re pretty sure it won’t hit us.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that. But—?”

  Tom picked up the thread: “It’s going to disrupt some orbits. Including ours.”

  No way that could be good. We could expect either to get pitched into the sun, or dragged away from it altogether.

  His framed dictum caught my eye. Enjoy the moment. “How bad’s it going to be?” My voice shook.

  “We’re working on the details.”

  Right. The details.

  • • • •

  Brown dwarfs can be almost invisible. They put out very little heat, often not much more than you’d have in your kitchen. This one was about the size of Jupiter, but had about sixty times its mass.

  “So how’d your day go?” asked Warren.

  I’d given my word. “Okay,” I said. “How about yours?”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d lied to him. I hadn’t told him the truth about his cooking, about whether I’d loved anyone before he came along, about how good looking I thought he was. But that was all minor league stuff. This was the first time I’d deceived him about anything important.

  But he told me about a deal he was closing over on Shepperton Avenue. And I began recalibrating what mattered in life.

  The following day I did another TV interview, in which I tried to brush aside the issue of the trajectory change. “Nothing of any significance,” I said.

  Liar, liar.

  Tom promised he’d let me know any further data that came in, so you can understand that every time the phone rang over the next few days, I stopped breathing.

  And finally, while I was on my way to a morning class, it came. “When you’re finished with your lecture, Maryam, come down to my office.”

  “Good news or bad?” I said.

  “Just come when you’re free.”

  I kept walking, trying to keep cool. I went into my classroom. The class was Principles of Physics II: Electromagnetism and Radiation.

  That I got through it at all remains one of my proudest achievements.

  • • • •

  Tom was talking with a couple of visitors when I walked in. He excused himself immediately and explained we had important business. They left and I sat down. He closed the door and remained standing by it, his hand on the knob.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s going to drag us out of orbit. Same as it did to the comet.”

  I sat, not moving, not surprised, but with my life draining. “Do we have any chance at all?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  I sat staring at him. “When?”

  “Well, that’s the good news, I guess. The thing’s moving slowly. The process won’t begin for nineteen years.”

  I just sat there trying to breathe. Trying to take it all in.

  “The embargo is still on, Maryam. Say nothing.”

  That shocked me. “You can’t really keep something like this to yourself. People have a right to know.”

  “Sure they do. And they have almost two decades left to live normal lives. Let them know what’s happening and you’ll take that from them.”

  “It’s not your call.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. They’re telling the president as we speak.”

  • • • •

  I broke my promise three minutes after I got home. There was no way I could keep that kind of secret. Liz was up in her room, so I sat down and told Warren everything. As well as extracting his word that he would say nothing to anyone. And hoping he was better at it than I had been.

  “End of the world?” he said.

  “The data aren’t complete yet, but it doesn’t look as if there’s any way out.”

  We were on the sofa. He leaned over and we embraced. “You okay?” he asked.

  “What do you think?”

  He shook his head. “Real estate values along the river are gonna crash.” I don’t know if I ever loved him more than I did at that moment. “Nineteen years is a long time,” he added. “But it’ll be hard on Liz.” He sat for a minute, eyes focused on a distance place. “I’m not sure where we go from here.”

  “Tom’s worried about what will happen if the news gets out. He thinks there’ll be panic in the streets.”

  “He’s probably right. But I won’t say anything.”

  “Good.”

  “How long before it’s visible to the naked eye?”

  “It’s very dull. It’ll probably be ten years, at least.”

  • • • •

  We collected Liz and went out for pizza that night. I got pepperoni on mine. Liz, as usual, ordered black olives. And Warren got his plain. I don’t ever recall an evening during which the details stood out so sharply. I can close my eyes now, and recall exactly what everyone was wearing, what we talked about, which server we had, and what the weather was like. Oddly, the brown dwarf had retreated into the darkness of my mind, and I was aware mostly of how fortunate I’d been over my lifetime, and how I appreciated having that night with my family.

  I remember thinking how easy it was to forget that we live day to day under a shadow. A car accident. A crazy guy with a gun. A brain tumor. You never know. Enjoy t
he moment. And I did. If there’s an evening in my entire life that I could go back to and relive, that would be it. We were getting ready to leave the restaurant when we noticed that it had grown quiet around us. The Italian music which routinely played had been turned off. People at the other tables were whispering, shaking their heads, and looking anxiously at each other. We asked our server what was happening. “News report,” she said in a low voice. “They’re saying the end of the world is coming.”

  When we got home, it was all over the TV. Every show had been interrupted. Sources were cited around the planet. It looked as if everybody connected with the investigation had broken whatever pledge had been made. There was even an unidentified White House source. Then we learned the President was about to speak.

  Ten minutes later he was talking from Air Force One. “My fellow Americans,” he said, “we have reports that a giant collapsed star has entered the solar system and is expected to collide with the Earth in twenty years. The story comes from several reliable sources. Our best and brightest minds are looking into it as I speak. We should keep in mind that we are talking about an event two decades away. So we have time to consider our options. Rest assured, I will keep you informed . . . .” He looked shaken. “They’re calling it the Maryam Object.”

  Warren was staring past me, and I wondered if he was reliving my birthday party.

  • • • •

  Three days later Hollywood star Jessie Wood was caught on camera suggesting the world would be a better place if women would stop trying to grab power and stay the hell in the kitchen. It was the sort of story that would ordinarily have dominated the news cycle for the better part of a week. On this occasion, hardly anyone noticed.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jack McDevitt has been described by Stephen King as “The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.” He is the author of nineteen novels, eleven of which have been Nebula finalists. His novel Seeker won the award in 2007. In 2003, Omega received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel. McDevitt’s most recent books are The Cassandra Project, a collaboration with Mike Resnick, and Starhawk, which follows the young Priscilla Hutchins as she seeks to qualify as an interstellar pilot. Both are from Ace. A Philadelphia native, McDevitt had a varied career before becoming a writer. He’s been a naval officer, an English teacher, a customs officer, and a taxi driver. He has also conducted leadership seminars. He is married to the former Maureen McAdams, and resides in Brunswick, Georgia, where he keeps a weather eye on hurricanes.

  PRETTY SOON THE FOUR HORSEMEN ARE GOING TO COME RIDING THROUGH

  Nancy Kress

  The school hallway smells of chalk and Lysol and little kids. That smell don’t never change. What’s changed is that this time I’m called to school and missing time I can’t afford from my job ’cause of Carrie, not Sophie. Which don’t really make sense. What kind of trouble can a kindergartner get into?

  “Ms. Drucker? I’m Olivia Steffens,” Carrie’s teacher says. “We met at the Parents’ Open House.”

  We did, but we didn’t talk much. She was the property of the moms with sunglasses on top of their heads and highlights in their hair. I moved to this school district so’s my girls don’t have to go to that rat-ridden disgrace on Pelmar Street, but that don’t mean I really belong. I shake her hand, the nails manicured pink but one broken off. That helps a little bit.

  We sit in tiny chairs that she fits into better than I do. Slim, pretty, she can’t be any older than me—but then, I had Sophie at sixteen. I face a row of cut-out paper pumpkins on the wall. It’s October.

  Ms. Steffens says, “I’m so glad you could come today. There’s been an incident on the playground involving Carrie.”

  “What kind of incident?” If it was Sophie who’d made trouble, I’d already know. Fighting, taking lunch money—kid is on my mind all the time. Last Sunday I lit a candle to St. Pancras that we didn’t move here too late for Sophie to outgrow all the shit she learned at Pelmar Street.

  Ms. Steffens says, “Some older girls caught Carrie and another child, Tommy Winfield, on the playground at recess. The girls taunted them, and, well, two of the girls pulled Tommy’s and Carrie’s underwear off. I only learned about this when Tommy’s mother called me, quite upset.”

  And I didn’t learn about it at all. Little bastards. I keep my face rigid—you don’t never give people that sort of edge over you. “Is that all?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. Carrie went through the rest of the day, apparently, with no underwear, but your older daughter is in the perpetrators’ fourth-grade classroom.”

  So this is about Sophie after all. I might of known.

  “She found them laughing about the state of the underwear and has threatened to ‘get even.’ Her teacher would have been at this conference, too, but she’s quite ill and the class had a substitute that day, who is now out of town. Carrie—”

  “Why wasn’t these kids being supervised on the playground?”

  “They were, of course, but apparently not adequately. The same illness that hit Sophie’s teacher has kept us really short-staffed for a week.”

  “You still got an obligation to protect my kids!”

  “I know that.” Ms. Steffens’s voice gets colder. “The girls responsible will be punished. But Carrie didn’t fight back, which is what I want to talk to you about. She did whatever they told her to, without even a protest. And when James LeBlanc hit her two weeks ago—the principal called you about that, I know—she also didn’t fight back. She just stood there and would have let him hit her again if the lunch lady hadn’t intervened.”

  I say, “What about the state of the underwear?”

  “What?”

  “You said the girls were laughing about the state of the underwear. What about it?”

  Ms. Steffens looks like she said too much, which she did. She don’t answer.

  I say, “Never mind.” The panties was probably ragged. Carrie needs new underwear, but Sophie’s shoes came first because you can see shoes and not underwear. Supposedly. “So what do you want me to do about it?”

  “Two things.” Ms. Steffens is tougher than she looks. “First, talk to Sophie—we cannot have revenge violence in this school. Second, consider having Carrie see someone about her passivity, which does not seem entirely normal. The school counselor, Dr. Parker, is—”

  “No.” I stand up. “Carrie don’t need no therapy. I’ll handle this.”

  “But—”

  “Thanks for letting me know.” I walk out, past the rows of pumpkins with crayoned-on faces, all grinning at me like demons.

  • • • •

  When the volcano blew up, I was three months pregnant with Carrie. It was one of the worst times in my life. Jim had just disappeared, no forwarding address, no ways for the Legal Aid lawyer to get me any child support. They never did find him. Sophie’s daddy was in prison—still is—so no help there.

  I got lousy taste in men. Since Carrie was born, I just stay clear of all of them. Safer that way.

  So I wouldn’t of paid any attention to the volcano, except that nobody could not pay attention to it. It was everywhere, first on the news and then in the air. Even though it blew up somewhere in Indonesia, killing I don’t know how many people, the ash blew all over the world. Somebody at work told me that’s why the sunsets and sunrises were so gorgeous, red and orange, like the sky itself was on fire.

  • • • •

  I pick up Sophie from school and Carrie from after-school daycare. Carrie gives me her sweet smile. Two like her and my troubles would be over. But instead I got Sophie.

  “Carrie,” I say in the car, which is making that clunking noise again, “did some older girls pull off your underwear on the playground?”

  “Y . . . e . . . ss.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You weren’t there, you were at work,” she says, with five-year-old logic. Actually, she’s just barely five, the youngest kid in h
er class. I probably should of held her back to start kindergarten next year, but it’s a lot cheaper to pay for just after-school care.

  “Why didn’t you fight back?”

  Carrie just looks at me, her little face wrinkled, and I sigh. Sophie is, weirdly, easier to talk to.

  “I pounded those bitches bloody!” Sophie said, once we got home.

  “Language!” I tell her. “We don’t talk that way.”

  “You do.” She faces me, hands on her hips, lip stuck out. Sophie’s been feisty since she was born. Also, she’s going to be pretty, and I know how full my hands are going to be when she’s a teenager. But she’s not going to mess up her life at sixteen the way I did. I’ll kill her first.

  She says, “I was defending my little sister!”

  “I know, but—”

  “You told me to take care of her at school! Well, do I or don’t I?”

  “I told you no more fighting! Christ, Sophie, do you want to get expelled or something? We moved here for the school, you know that, and yet you go and—”

  “I didn’t go and do nothing!”

  “Don’t talk back to me! I said that if you got into any more fights, I was going to ground you, and I am! You come home right after school for a week and stay here, no playing with Sarah or Ava—nobody in and nobody out!”

  “That’s not fair! I wouldn’t have to fight if Carrie would ever fight back herself!”

  “She’s not a—”

  “I know what she is! A wimp!” Sophie flounces off to her room. But then she says it, over her shoulder: “Just like all the rest of them!”

  “The rest of who?” I call, but she’s already gone.

  • • • •

  The volcano blew up on February 20 and it just kept blowing up for days. The scientists knew ahead of time that something was going to happen there, but not such a big something. It was the second-biggest blow-up since before Christ was born. Huge walls of flame rose up—I seen pictures. The explosion was heard a thousand miles away. Everything got dark for a couple hundred miles, from all the ash and rocks thrown up in the atmosphere, some as high as twenty-five miles up. Aircraft had to go way around the whole area, after a few of them got caught and fell out of the sky. Whole villages disappeared in lava and hot ash.