Nemesis (18 page)

That evening, Vincenzo was offered the chance either to confess and recant or take five days to prepare his defence. To the Grand Inquisitor’s astonishment, Vincenzo refused both options. Instead, he made a simple statement. It was brief and to the point. He hesitated briefly, feeling the weight of the Inquisition’s hostility crushing down on him like a collapsing house, but then began to speak, his voice quavering but determined.

“I deny the
simplicitas
of Aristotle’s universe, whereby the Sun, Moon and planets orbit in epicycles upon epicycles about a stationary Earth. Through the Galilean tube, we see that the Moon is imperfect. It is pitted with craters. With our own eyes we see mountains and valleys like those on Earth. If the Moon is like the Earth, then the Earth is like the Moon. It
is therefore just one of the heavenly bodies. The four Medicean planets, revolving around Jupiter, are the clearest proof that not everything revolves around the Earth. We see too, with the tube, that Venus goes through all the phases of the Moon, with the illuminated crescent always turned towards the Sun, and so clearly orbits the Sun and not the Earth. If our Earth is a heavenly body like the Moon, and also a planet like Venus, then we too must orbit the Sun.

“This Holy Congregation has referred to Aristotle, Ptolemy and the Holy Scripture as witnesses for the central position of the Earth. Aristotle also stated that the heavens are immutable. But did we not see a new star in 1572, one which was born, rose in brightness and then died? And if he was wrong in one astronomical matter why can he not be wrong in others? As for Ptolemy, have the new discoveries of the great navigators not made his geography obsolete? Why then should his chart of the heavens not be equally so? Many wise philosophers throughout history have believed that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still.

“As to the Scriptures, we should heed the warning of Saint Augustine, who tells us not to be concerned when the astronomers seem to contradict the scriptures. It implies only that another interpretation must be sought for the Sacred Texts. Pererius, of the Collegio Romano, tells us that
non potest Sacrarum Literarum veris rationibus et experimentis humanarum doctrinarum esse contraria
. In any case, what are we to make of the words of Job: ‘Who moves the earth from its place?’Your Eminences are not trained in natural philosophy and are not competent to make judgements in that realm. In the interpretation of the world, it is the book of Nature which we must read, not that of the Holy Scripture.”

A tangible ripple came from the cardinals’ table. Vincenzo, his die cast, carried on. “I believe that the stars are made of fire. There are many more stars in existence than those we see. The perspective tube of Galileo resolves the light of the
Milky Way into myriads of stars. These must be suns like our own, at immense distances. That is why the constellations do not change and the stars do not trace out ellipses in the sky as the seasons progress: the stars are at such immense distances that the parallax is too small to be seen. You declare that the Earth is stationary as a matter of faith, and that I am therefore a heretic to hold otherwise. But suppose that, in years or centuries to come, the astronomers prove beyond doubt that it is the Sun which is stationary and that the Earth moves around it? Then you who try me, the cardinals of this congregation, will be seen as the heretics. The Mother Church will be exposed to scandal, and forced to reverse Her doctrine, and Her enemies will delight in exposing Her to ridicule. Eminences, you commit a grave error in making matters of faith out of astronomical questions.”

The old man flopped down, drained. The cardinals, virtually accused of heresy, sat stunned. Terremoto’s expression had gone through all the stages of amazement, horror and finally outrage as Vincenzo’s audacious statement had proceeded. Their Eminences filed out without a word.

That night, Vincenzo slept not in the luxurious apartment of a Holy Office official, but in a damp cell in the Castel Sant’ Angelo. And while he slept, his judges discussed his case by candlelight, and decided on their next step: the
territio realis
.

Sacheverell sat, his stomach churning, in the front row of the little theatre. The door opened and a tall, elderly man peered in. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and he was wearing an outrageously multi-coloured waistcoat.

“Coffee, son?” the old man asked.

“Thank you, sir. Two sugars.” The man shuffled out. Minutes passed, while Sacheverell’s mouth dried up. Then the door was opened with the push of a foot and the man reappeared, a paper cup in each hand. He sat down beside Sacheverell and passed a cup over. The astronomer noticed that the old man had one sock black, one blue.

“Two sugars. Now before we get started. We’re farmers; we’re bankers; we’re lawyers. Me, I’m just a country boy from Wyoming. So keep it simple.”

“Will do, Mister President.”

“Okay. This will be new to most of the people here. I’ve had a preliminary briefing from the Secretary of Defense and he tells me this asteroid thing will devastate us when it hits. But what does he know? You’re the horse’s mouth, son, and that’s where I want to hear it from.”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” Sacheverell gulped.

The President grinned. “What is an asteroid anyway?”

“An asteroid is a lump of rock, sir, going around the Sun just like the planets. They’re a few miles across and blacker
than soot, very hard to find. Maybe there are a thousand or two big ones in orbit between the planets. It could be half a million years before one of them hits the Earth but when it does you get a giant explosion.”

“How giant?”

“Say a big one hit Mexico City. The blast wave would hit us here at three hundred miles an hour. Now with an ordinary explosion, say from a bomb, the blast is just a sudden wind, over in a fraction of a second. But with this one, a wind following the blast would go on for hours. Air temperature while it’s blowing would be four or five hundred degrees Centigrade, more or less like the inside of a pizza oven.”

“That was quite a speech, son. But I thought you said these things are only a few miles across.” The President’s country-boy grin had faded as Sacheverell had talked.

“It’s their speed, sir. You have to think of it as a big mountain covering twenty miles every second. When it hits the ground it vaporizes in about a tenth of a second. You could get half a million megatons easy. I’ve prepared a movie which should give an idea what to expect.”

The door opened and half a dozen men wandered in and spread themselves around the little theatre. Sacheverell had spoken to two of them, Heilbron and Hooper, only a few hours previously. Heilbron caught Sacheverell’s eye and nodded. The Secretary of Defense sauntered over and sat down beside Sacheverell. He was about fifty. Away from the television cameras, Sacheverell noticed, Bellarmine had a slightly jaundiced complexion and a receding hairline. “Hail!” he said. The Chief nodded amiably. Sacheverell, wedged between the President of the United States of America and the Secretary of Defense, felt his skin tingling.

Heilbron walked over. “Mister President, I’ve got a movie.”

“Okay let’s get into this,” said President Grant. He finished the coffee and crumpled the paper cup, letting it fall to the floor. “Seems we’re in for a matinée performance.”

Heilbron stepped up on to the dais and picked up a short pointer. The lights went down. Maps and photographs appeared in succession on the screen. Heavy-jowled Slavic faces appeared under fur hats. Heilbron kept waving the pointer flamboyantly. A shaky amateur movie showed a military transporter leaving some camp surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence; another showed tarpaulin-covered train wagons being hauled across an icy, blasted landscape. When the dark conical shape of the hydrogen bomb appeared the President said “Stop!” and the movie froze, the black shape filling the screen in blurred close-up.

Grant stood up, the picture of the bomb illuminating his face and chest. “Jesus, is that it?”

“Just about, Mister President. We’ve intercepted a coded message from Phobos but it’s got us beat.”

“Rich, this strikes me as paper thin.”

“Sir, we’ve often had to act on less. I believe the balance of probability is strongly tipped towards a hostile act against us.”

“By whom?” The Russians alone? Khazakhstan? The whole damned Federation?”

Heilbron shrugged.

“Just what is the significance of this?” the President asked, turning grimly to Sacheverell.

Sacheverell put down his cup and walked nervously to the dais. Heilbron sat down wearily in Sacheverell’s chair, and the President sat on the edge of the little platform, his knees crossed. Suddenly, in the half-light, the astronomer found himself facing men who had shed their homely television faces, men with calculating eyes, and ice in their veins, and powers beyond those of the gods. He fought back a surge of near panic.

“Sir, it is technologically possible to divert a near-Earth asteroid on to a collision course with any given country.” Sacheverell realized with horror that his mouth had dried up, he was almost croaking. “It would take state of the art
technology and extreme precision. The technique would be to blast some material off the asteroid at an exact place and time, diverting its orbit. The problem would be controlling the devastation, which could spill over into neighbouring countries. My movie illustrates a range of possibilities. Movie, please.”

The projector whirred quietly at the back of the room. Mysterious numbers and crosses appeared on the screen. A black and white title read

Impact: 10
⁷
Mt, vertical incidence
.

Assailant: Nickel iron, tensile strength 400 MPa, H
₂
O = 0.00 by mass
.

Target: Bearpaw shale, tensile strength 0.2 MPa, H
₂
O = 0.14 by mass
.

The title disappeared, replaced by a grid of lines covering the bottom half of the screen. The only movement was a tumbling of numbers on the top right of the screen, next to a label saying
Lapsed time
=. The audience waited.

A green spot came in rapidly from the top. It struck the grid. The lines buckled, and formed a hole with a raised rim. Green splodges hurried off the edge of the screen. Away from the hole the grid of lines was vibrating at high speed, like a violently shaken jelly. The lines vanished and there was an old movie taken at the Nevada test site. There was a timber-framed, Middle America house. At first, nothing was happening. But then the paintwork started to smoke, and curtains were burning. And suddenly the house was splintered wood and smoke streaking into the distance and Sacheverell was saying this is what to expect a thousand kilometres away.

Now there was a coloured map of the USA, with cities marked in bold font. Circles were radiating out from a spot in the middle of Kansas, like ripples on a pond, as if the map were under water. The numbers were loping along in minutes now, rather than seconds, and Sacheverell was saying
you expect Richter Nine up here on the Canadian border and down here in Chicago. The map disappeared and more old footage followed; this time the camera was panning over horribly flat rubble. A few dazed individuals in Arab dress stared at the camera. Others were crawling over a mound of debris, like ants over a hill. Sacheverell was saying of course these are stone houses and we can’t be sure this applies exactly to New York or Chicago but you would surely cause massive destruction coast to coast. He was aware that he was beginning to gabble but he couldn’t help himself. His voice was now a croak.

Then of course there’s the fire, he said, rising to the tension he sensed in his audience. About thirty per cent of the land area of the States is combustible in the summer and twenty per cent in the winter. You would expect thousands of fires over an area the size of France. They could merge into one giant conflagration so you would take out the whole of central USA with flames from the exposure to the rising fireball and this is Hamburg during a firestorm only with red hot ash thrown over the whole country you might set the whole country alight and then of course there’s the biomass the biomass yes especially as fat melts at forty-five Centigrade I mean Celsius but they’re the same really you expect living people to fry in their own fat over most of the States your skin will bubble and peel off in a few seconds and then your blood and water will boil and then your fat will combust and you will just carbonize while the blast is sweeping you along at the speed of a jet.

The audience sat riveted.

Now the movie was showing something that looked like one of the more lurid products of a Hollywood studio. An ocean was boiling. Now the boiling green lines formed into a pattern; they reared up into a wave, a tumbling, foaming breaker which washed over little cartoon skyscrapers like a wave over pebbles, and Sacheverell was saying we’re not sure about the stability of waves that big but we’re working
on it with the Sandia teraflop but a splash like this off the Eastern seaboard would wash over the Eastern States but the Appalachians would stop it and you would be okay in Bozeman, Montana. Then there were more flashing symbols, the projector stopped whirring and the lights went up. Sacheverell swallowed nervously, blinking in the light.

His audience remained frozen.

“You got casualty estimates for this, son?” The President finally asked, quietly.

“Hard to judge, sir. Most of the USA is less than two thousand kilometres from Kansas. A million-megaton bang on Kansas I reckon would leave two hundred million casualties from the prompt effects.”

“You mean injured?”

“No sir, dead.”

“What about survivors?” the Vice-President asked.

“With this scenario one to ten per cent of North America would survive the initial impact. But they would have big problems. Mainly lack of food, medical care and sanitation. I reckon most of them would be taken out with starvation, typhus, cholera, bubonic plague, stuff like that.”

“Comment, anyone?” the President asked, turning round.