“Maybe it’s because you don’t get to see much of it so far north.”
Mikhail was taken aback. Was that an actual joke? He forced a laugh. “Come,” he said, standing. “I think it’s time we visited the monitor room.”
They had to pass through a short, low tunnel to another dome. And in the monitor room, the younger man stared around, openmouthed.
The room was a twenty-first-century shrine to Sol. Its walls were coated by glowing softscreens that showed images of the sun’s surface or its atmosphere, or the space between Earth and sun, crowded with dynamic structures of plasma and electromagnetism, or Earth itself and its complicated magnetosphere. The images were displayed in multiple wavelengths—visible light, hydrogen light, calcium light, infrared and ultraviolet, at radio wavelengths—each of them revealing something unique about the sun and its environment. Even more instructive to eyes trained to see were the spectral analyses, spiky graphs that laid bare the secrets of Earth’s star.
This was a graphic summary of the work of the Space Weather Service. This lunar post was just one of a network of stations that monitored the sun continually; there were sister stations on all the continents of Earth, while satellites swarmed on looping orbits around the sun. Thus the Service kept myriad eyes trained on the sun.
It was necessary work. The sun has been shining for five billion years, breathing out heat and light and the solar wind, a stream of high-energy charged particles. But it is not unchanging. Even in normal times the solar wind is gusty; great streamers of it pour out of coronal holes, breaks in the sun’s outer atmosphere. Meanwhile sunspots, cooler areas dominated by tangles of magnetic fields, were noticed by humans on the sun’s surface as early as the fourth century before Christ. From such troubled areas, flares and immense explosions can spew high-frequency radiation and fast-moving charged particles out into space. All this “weather” batters against the layers of air and electromagnetism that shield the Earth.
Through most of human history this went unnoticed, save for the marvelous aurorae irregularly painted over the sky. But if humans aren’t generally vulnerable to the storms in space, the electrical equipment they develop is. By 2037 it was nearly two centuries since solar-induced currents in telegraph lines had started to cause headaches for their operators. Since then, the more dependent the human world became on its technology, the more vulnerable it became to the sun’s tantrums—as Earth was learning that very day.
For a fragile, highly interconnected high-technology civilization, living with a star, it had been learned, was like living with a bear. It might not do you any harm. But the least you had to do was watch it, very carefully. And that was why the Space Weather Service had been set up.
Though now led by the Eurasian Union, the Space Weather Service had developed from humbler beginnings in the twentieth century, starting with the Americans’ Space Environment Center, a joint enterprise of such agencies as NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Defense.
“Back then the data gathered were patchy,” Mikhail said. “Scavenged from science satellites dedicated to other purposes. And forecasting was just guesswork. But a few solar-storm disasters around the solar max of 2011 put paid to that. These days we have a pretty comprehensive data set, continually updated in real time. The forecasting systems are big numerical-prediction suites based on magneto-hydrodynamics, plasma physics, and the like. We have a complete chain of theoretical modeling from the surface of the sun to the surface of the Earth—”
But Eugene wasn’t listening. He tapped a hydrogen-light image. “That is the problem,” he said.
It was the new active region. Visibly darker than the surrounding photosphere, it was an ugly S-shaped scar. “I admit it’s a puzzle,” Mikhail said. “At this stage of the solar cycle you wouldn’t expect something like that.”
“I expected it,” Eugene said. “And that’s the whole point.”
Carefully Mikhail said, “The end of the world?”
“Not today. Today is just a precursor. But it will be bad enough. That’s why I’ve come here. You have to warn them.” His eyes were huge and dark, haunted. “I have time-stamped predictions.”
“You told me that.”
“Even so they won’t pay any attention to me. But they will listen to you. After all, this is your job. And now that you’ve got proof, you’ll have to do it, won’t you? You’ll have to warn them.”
Eugene really had no social skills at all, Mikhail thought, with a mix of resentment and pity. “Who are they? Who exactly do you want me to warn?”
Eugene spread his hands. “For a start, everybody vulnerable. On the Moon. On the Space Station. On Mars, and aboard Aurora 2.”
“And on Earth?”
“Oh, yes. And Earth.” Eugene glanced at his watch. “But by now Earth is already being hit.”
Mikhail studied his face for a long moment. Then he called for Thales.
7: MASS EJECTION
Siobhan worked the screens in the conference table, seeking information.
It wasn’t easy. Solar studies and space weather simply weren’t in Siobhan’s domain of specialty. Aristotle was able to help, though he seemed somewhat absentminded at times; she realized uneasily that the erosion of the world’s interconnectivity, on which he was based, had to be affecting him, too.
She quickly discovered that there were solar observatories all over the world, and off it. She tried to get through to Kitt Peak, Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and the Big Bear observatory in southern California. She didn’t reach a human being in any of these sites, predictably enough; even if the comms systems weren’t down, they were no doubt already overwhelmed with calls. But she did learn of the existence of a “Space Weather Service,” a network of observatories, satellites, data banks, and experts that monitored the sun and its stormy environs, and tried to predict the worst of its transgressions. There was even a weather station at the South Pole of the Moon, it seemed.
Despite decades of watching the moody sun, though, only one person had predicted today’s unusual events, a young scientist on the Moon called Eugene Mangles, who had logged quite precise forecasts on a few peer-review sites. But the Moon was out of touch.
Thirty minutes after last speaking with her, Siobhan called Phillippa Duflot again.
“It’s all to do with the sun,” she began.
Phillippa said, “We know that much—”
“It has given off what the sungazers call a ‘coronal mass ejection.’”
She described how the corona, the sun’s extended outer atmosphere, is held together by powerful magnetic fields rooted in the sun itself. Sometimes these fields get tangled up, often over active regions. Such tangles will trap bubbles of superheated plasma, emitted by the sun, and then violently release them. That was what had happened this morning, over the big sunspot continent the experts were calling Active Region 12688: a mass of billions of tonnes of plasma, knotted up by its own magnetic field, had been hurled from the sun at a respectable fraction of the speed of light.
“The ejection took less than an hour to get here,” Siobhan said. “I understand that’s fast, for such phenomena. Nobody saw it coming, and nobody was particularly expecting it to happen at this stage of the sun’s cycle anyhow.” Except, she made a mental note, that lone astronomer on the Moon.
Phillippa prompted, “So this mass of gas headed for the Earth—”
“The gas itself is sparser than an industrial vacuum,” Siobhan said. “It’s the energy contained in its particles and fields that has done the damage.”
When it hit, the mass ejection had battered at the Earth’s magnetic field. The field normally shields the planet, and even low-orbiting satellites, but today the mass ejection had pushed the field down beneath the orbits of many satellites. Exposed to waves of energetic solar particles, the satellites’ systems absorbed doses of static electricity that discharged wherever they could.
“Imagine miniature lightning bolts sparking aroun
d your circuit boards—”
“Not good,” Phillippa said.
“No. Charged particles also leaked into the upper atmosphere, dumping their energy on the way—that was the cause of the aurorae. And Earth’s magnetic field suffered huge variations. Perhaps you know that electricity and magnetism are linked. A changing magnetic field induces currents in conductors.”
Phillippa said hesitantly, “Is that how a dynamo works?”
“Yes! Exactly. When it fluctuates, Earth’s field causes immense currents to flow in the body of the Earth itself—and in any conducting materials it can find.”
“Such as our power distribution networks,” Phillippa said.
“Or our comms links. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers of conducting cables, all suddenly awash with fast-varying, high-voltage currents.”
“All right. So what do we do about it?”
“Do? Why, there’s nothing we can do.” The question seemed absurd to Siobhan; she had to suppress an unkind impulse to laugh. “This is the sun we’re talking about.” A star whose energy output in one second was more than humankind could muster in a million years. This mass ejection had caused a geomagnetic storm that went far off the scales established by the patient solar weather watchers, but to the sun it was nothing but a minor spasm. Do, indeed: you didn’t do anything about the sun, except keep out of its way. “We just have to sit it out.”
Phillippa frowned. “How long will it last?”
“Nobody knows. This is unprecedented, as far as I can make out. But the mass ejection is fast moving and will pass over us soon. Only hours more, perhaps?”
Phillippa said earnestly, “We need to know. It’s not just power we have to think about. There’s sewage, the water supply…”
“The Thames barrier,” Toby said. “When is high tide?”
“I don’t know,” Phillippa said, making a note. “Professor McGorran, can you try to nail down a timescale?”
“Yes, I’ll try.” She closed down the link.
“Of course,” Toby said to Siobhan, “the sensible thing to do would be to build our systems more robustly in the first place.”
“Ah, but when have we humans ever been sensible?”
Siobhan continued to work. But as time wore on the comms links only worsened.
And she was distracted by more images.
Here was an immense explosion in the great trans-European pipeline that nowadays brought Britain most of its natural gas. Like cables, pipelines were also conductors thousands of kilometers long, and the currents induced in them could increase corrosion to the point of failure. Pipelines were grounded at frequent intervals to avert this problem. But this pipeline, a very modern structure, had been made of ethylene for economy’s sake, and was a good deal easier to ignite. Numbly Siobhan studied the statistics of this one incident: a wall of flame a kilometer wide, trees felled for hundreds of meters around, hundreds feared dead… She tried to imagine such horror multiplied a thousandfold around the world.
And it wasn’t just humans and their technological systems that were affected. Here was a random bit of news of flocks of birds apparently losing their way, and a haunting image of whales beached on a North American shore.
Toby Pitt brought her a phone, a clunky set trailing a cord. “I’m sorry it took so long,” he said.
The phone must have been at least thirty years old, but, connected to the Society’s reliable fiber-optic backup lines, it worked, more or less. It took her a few tries to get through to Guy’s, and then to persuade a receptionist to find her mother.
Maria sounded scared, but in control. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “The power outages have just been blinks; the emergency system is working well. But things are very strange here.”
Siobhan nodded. “The hospitals must be overwhelmed. Heat victims—the accidents in traffic—”
“Not just that,” Maria said. “People are coming in because their pacemakers are playing up, or their servo-muscles, or bowel control implants. And there’s a whole flood of heart attack victims, it seems to me. Even people with no implants at all.”
Of course, Siobhan mused. The human body itself is a complex system controlled by bioelectricity, itself subject to electrical and magnetic fields. We are all tied to the sun, she thought, like the birds and the whales, tied by invisible lines of force nobody even suspected existed a couple of centuries ago. And we are so very vulnerable to the sun’s tantrums, even our very bodies.
Toby Pitt said, “Siobhan, I’m sorry to interrupt. You’ve another call.”
“Who is it?”
“The Prime Minister.”
“Good Lord.” She thought it over, and asked, “Which one—?”
The phone came alive in her hand. As electricity jolted into her body the muscles of her right arm turned rigid. Then the phone shot from her grasp and slid over the table, showering blue sparks.
PART 2
PRESAGINGS
8: RECOVERY
Somebody was hammering on the door of the flat.
Bisesa had learned to mask her reactions in front of Myra. Fixing a smile on her face, ignoring the racing of her heart, she got up from the sofa slowly and folded away her magazine.
Myra turned her head suspiciously. She was lying on her belly watching a softwall synth-soap. There was a lot of knowingness in those eight-year-old eyes, Bisesa thought, too much. Myra knew that something strange had happened to the world a few days ago, and it was odd that her mother was here in the first place. But there was a sort of understanding between the two of them, a conspiracy. They would act normal, and maybe at some point things would turn out to be normal after all: that was their unspoken hope.
Bisesa could use a whispered command to Aristotle to turn a section of the door transparent. But as a British Army officer trained in combat technology, she had never quite trusted electronic senses, and she peered through the old-fashioned spy hole to double-check.
It was only Linda. Bisesa opened the door.
Linda was a short, stocky, competent-looking girl. Aged twenty-two, she was Bisesa’s cousin, a student at Imperial College studying biospheric ethics. For the last two years she had served as Myra’s nanny during Bisesa’s long postings abroad. Right now she held two bulging paper bags of groceries, with two more stacked by her feet, and she was sweating profusely. “Sorry for kicking the door down,” she said. “I thought these damn bags would give way.”
“Well, you made it.” Bisesa let Linda in and carefully double-locked the door.
They hauled the groceries to the flat’s small kitchen. Most of what Linda had bought were staples—milk, bread, quorn products, some limp-looking vegetables, and mottled apples. Linda apologized for the meagerness of her haul, but it could have been worse; Bisesa, who followed the news assiduously, knew that London had come close to a strict rationing system.
For Bisesa, unpacking groceries was oddly nostalgic, something she used to do every Friday evening with her mother, who would do her “big shop” at the end of the family farm’s long week. These days family habits had changed; most groceries were remote-ordered and delivered. But days after June 9 the transport and distribution services were still clogged up, and everybody had had to return to the stores in person to go through the rituals of carts and checkouts.
This was a new experience to Linda, and she was complaining briskly. “You wouldn’t believe the queues. They actually have bouncers on the meat counters. The checkout registers are operating now, so that’s a blessing; no more hand-calculated bills. But a lot of people still won’t swipe through.” A sight you often saw since June 9 was the telltale forearm scar of somebody who’d had to have her implanted ident chip replaced, the original having been wiped and fried by the solar frenzy of that day.
“Still no bottled water,” Bisesa said.
“Not yet, no,” Linda said. She reflexively turned on the taps at the kitchen sink, to no effect. The solar storm had induced corrosive currents in London’s hundreds of kilometers
of aging pipe work. So even when they got the pumps working, no water could be delivered to many parts of the city until the engineers and their smart little mole-shaped robots had fixed up the network once more. Linda sighed. “Looks like it’ll be the standpipe again.”
Right now a corner of the softwall was showing an aerial view of London, overlaid by an outline map of the continuing power-outs, with a few sparks that marked riots, lootings, and other instances of disorder. Blue asterisks showed the positions of standpipes, most of them along the banks of the Thames. Bisesa found this evidence of the resilience of the old city oddly moving. Long before the Romans came to found London in the first place, Celts had fished the Thames in their wicker boats, and now in this twenty-first-century crisis Londoners were drawn back to their river once again.
Linda looked at her callused palms. “You know, Bis, I can manage the shopping. But I could sure do with some help with the water.”
“No,” Bisesa said immediately. Then, more considered, she shook her head. “I’m sorry.” Reflexively she glanced across at Myra, who was engrossed once more in the endlessly elaborating luridness of her softwall soap. “I’m not ready to go out yet.”
Linda, still packing food away, said in a deliberately casual tone, “I’ve been asking Aristotle for advice.”
“About what?”
“Agoraphobia. It’s more common than you’d think. I mean, how would you know if somebody was a prisoner in her home? You’d never meet her! But there are treatments. Support groups—”
“Lin, I appreciate your concern. But I’m not agoraphobic. And I’m not crazy.”
“Then what—”
Bisesa said lamely, “I just need more time.”
“I’m here if you need me.”
“I know…”
Bisesa returned to her vigil with Myra, and the softwall.
Maybe she wasn’t crazy. But she couldn’t explain to Linda any of her strange circumstances.
She couldn’t explain how she had been on patrol with her Army unit on its peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan, how she had suddenly found herself hurled beyond the walls of space and time, how she had learned to construct a new life for herself on a strange patchwork other-Earth they had called Mir—and how she had somehow been brought home, through a kaleidoscope of even stranger visions.
A Time Odyssey Omnibus Page 37