Portent (9 page)

    Of the twenty-five million square kilometres of tropical rain forests that had once covered the planet's land surface, there was now little more than eight million left, despite the United Nations' Deforestation Limitation Agreement of 1995. Another resolution universally agreed upon and actioned by separate governments was the inclusion of catalytic converters into every automobile engine produced during and after 1993; the manufacture of low-petrol-consumption cars was also encouraged by special tax concessions, and grants were awarded for further research into the still unpopular battery-powered automobile (the latter pleased the fancons-the fanatical conservationists-only moderately, for they claimed pollution caused by nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants in the making of batteries to run these vehicles more than negated the benefit derived from them). However, the introduction in the UK of punitive tax registration fees on existing and newly produced high-performance automobiles, together with the Alternate Week Road-Use Act, 1996, caused minor riots and protest marches throughout the cities during the first few weeks of its enforcement. Now there was also a 'carbon' tax on fossil fuel use, plus a ninety per cent grant scheme for the installation of solar panels on private dwellings, fifty per cent on business premises, and a twenty-five per cent grant on wall and roof insulation for older buildings, domestic or commercial. The phasing out of chlorofluorocarbons was proceeding steadily, as was the reduction of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power stations and factories, while conventional coal-burning power stations were being fitted with low nitrogen oxide burners. But it was all small fare against the immense damage already caused to the planet and its atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial age, and, even so, not every country was in full accord as to the extent of that damage, or the methods to reduce it. As an ecological 'activist' was quoted as saying in one of the more recent newspaper cuttings: 'Too little is being done too late by too few.'

    Rivers paused and looked towards Hugo Poggs, who by now was sitting in the old leather chair at the trestle table, the whisky glass held distractedly in his plump hand, its contents almost drained.

    'Please continue,' Poggs urged.

    Rivers saw no reason not to. Besides, although depressing, the compilation laid out before him held a morbid kind of fascination.

    He read of the insect infestation of the northern hemisphere, the spread of diseases such as malaria and yellow fever across Europe, North America and Canada, the increase of asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory problems in both hemispheres, and of animal diseases like Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, which two years ago had returned to the United Kingdom and-wiped out over a third of its cattle herds. He moved on: last year a cyclone had hit the Bay of Bengal claiming 13,000 lives and destroying over four million homes; Algeria's entire annual rainfall had fallen in one afternoon, while the USA's western corn belt had been ravaged by the worst drought America had ever experienced; the waters of the Nile were slowly drying up, mining Egypt's irrigation system and reducing hydro-electric power from the Aswan Dam by a calamitous eighty-five per cent; the same was happening to the contaminated waters of the Euphrates; in the defeated state of Israel, 300 Israeli POWs had frozen to death in open prison camps during the region's coldest night on record; a forest fire in British Columbia had destroyed two million hectares of prime woodland; a party of six tourists were lost in a blizzard on Grand Canary Island, their frozen bodies found floating three days later when the snow rapidly melted.

    He stopped when he came upon a caption that said: HURRICANE ZELDA DEVASTATES JAMAICA. Another clipping was tagged below it, a photograph under the headline of a wrecked aeroplane, recognizable only by its tail and one broken wing, the main structure a tangled mass of blackened metal. Rivers felt chilled as he read the words. MIRACLE SURVIVAL OF THREE. Included in the article were pictures of the two crew members and of Rivers himself, all stock shots obviously released from their files. The one of him was ringed in red.

    He turned, a different rage inside him now. 'What is this?' he said tightly. 'Just what the hell is going on here?'

    Poggs raised a placating hand. 'Look at some of those other cuttings that are marked,' he said calmly.

    'What?'

    'Mr. Rivers,' said Diane, 'please. Our concerns are the same as yours. We're not trying to trick you, we're not into anything devious. Just do as Hugo asks, then hear us out.'

    He needed a cigarette, but remembered he was wearing another man's clothes. He shook his head, confused and frustrated by these people.

    'What do you have to lose?' Diane said simply.

    He mentally shrugged. She was right-there was nothing to lose and maybe, just maybe, there was something to gain. Precisely what, he had no idea, but he was going to find out in the next ten minutes, or, so help him, he was out of there, car or no car. A walk to the nearest phonebox would do him no harm at all.

    He returned to the board and glanced over the display of cuttings once again. Those marked with red pentel were the earthquake in Alaska, the eruption on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the cyclone in India, the forest fire in Canada and, of course, the plane crash that he, himself, had survived.

    'So you've singled out certain disasters,' he said, still studying the news cuttings for a clue of some kind. Finally giving up, he rounded on them again. 'What's the point?'

    Poggs leaned forward on the table, elbows resting on scattered papers, fingers curled around his whisky glass as if it were a communion chalice. 'The point is that in every one of those incidents eyewitnesses claimed to have observed a tiny ball of light just before the tragedy occurred.'

    Rivers was momentarily surprised. Then his mind moved back into gear. 'Luminous phenomena aren't uncommon, especially around the time of earthquakes and suchlike. There's nothing unusual about such sightings.'

    'Admittedly there are numerous forms of, as you say, luminous phenomena that defy geophysics, many of them to do with tectonic events. I can give you a long list of the variations, if you like, from the piezoelectric effect to chemiluminescence, but I fear I would try your patience even more. In this case I'm talking of a peculiarly different kind of light, a single floating orb that was witnessed before each of those occasions marked. One of the witnesses, a woman who was airlifted from the forest fire by a Fire Service helicopter, described it just before she died. It seems that even though her body was charred black and she should have been dead long before they got to her, there was what could only be described as a wondrous look in her eyes. The woman told her would-be rescuers that she had watched a "fairy light" a moment or so before the blaze. A single "fairy light".' Rivers spoke the word quietly: 'Tinkerbell.'

    He walked to the table and picked up what was left of his drink. He eyed Poggs coldly. 'How did you know I even mentioned Tinkerbell? There was a clampdown-no news service or journal ran that part of the story.'

    Poggs smiled and he almost appeared abashed. 'I suppose, er, you could say we were reliably informed.'

    'No more runaround,' Rivers warned.

    'The children told us,' Diane said quickly. 'Josh and Eva.'

    He switched his gaze to her. 'The children…?'

    'Yes, my friend,' said Poggs, sitting back in his seat. 'They pointed out your face to us in the newspaper. They were very excited. You see, they have seen this mysterious light, too. In fact, before each of those disasters you see marked on the wall behind you.'

    

    

    

    
1,094 fathoms below sea level

    The information-gatherer skimmed along the seabed, avoiding rocky protrusions, rising over smaller mounts, the onboard computer re-routing its direction completely when any obstacle proved too difficult to negotiate. The compact metal body was generally ignored by the life around it, although a few minutes before a blue marlin, suffering from misguided overconfidence, had tried to club it to death with its long, pikish upper jaw, giving up only when the hard-shelled alien, apparently oblivious to attack, had moved into deeper waters.

    It had been a long voyage for Dolphin V (so called because this model was a direct descendant of the original Dolphin of the late '80s), for it had begun off the coast of North Africa where it had slipped from the mother vessel, the RRS (Royal Research Ship) Arthur C. Clarke, into the choppy waters of the Atlantic. From there the information-gatherer had made its way across the ocean floor like some roaming missile of the deep, navigating its way over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge via the Vema Fracture until it reached the warmer regions of the Caribbean. Its intention was to traverse the Aves Ridge and eventually rejoin the mother vessel somewhere in the deeper waters of the Venezuelan Basin.

    Frequently during Dolphin F's lengthy exploration it had risen from the depths, although never quite all the way to the surface where the waves were far too rough and too dangerous for such a sensitive instrument; from its position below the surface, it had released small radio-capsules which bobbed to the top and floated there waiting for a satellite to pass overhead. When that happened, the radio-capsule beamed information into space, whigh was then directed back to dry land. The main tasks of Dolphin V were to measure the strengths of currents and storm intensities as well as to take the temperature of the water and to note its salinity; but by far the most important charge of this mission was to send back information on plankton presence at each stage of the journey. The importance of these minute sea-dwelling organisms that drifted between the poles and the Equator was immeasurable, for they absorbed carbon dioxide in the colder parts and released it on reaching the tropics, creating an even balance in the Earth's atmosphere. However, the planet was warming, the icecaps were melting, and the amount of CO2 had increased alarmingly: and the oceans' plankton was behaving strangely.

    Scientists and governments alike were desperate to know just how well or how badly the plankton was coping at this point in time.

    The little machine had braved the fierce storms of the deep, those colossal surges and titanic tides that were a thousandfold more powerful than any storm in the atmosphere, intrepidly gliding onwards and never resting. It hungered only for data and so much did it gather that it was not until recent years that computers had been devised that were capable of absorbing it all.

    Now it had reached a less harsh environment and even the unfriendly blue marlin had been left far behind to search for frailer prey. Dolphin V sank with the seabed's natural gradient.

    But as it travelled onwards something stirred beneath its hard underbelly. Great swirls of sand eddied upwards, creating murky clouds through which myriad shoals of bright-coloured fish swam frantically. A three-foot-long albacore bumped into the cruising machine, stunning itself almost into senselessness. It spun round in a full circle, then recovered enough to join others of its kind in a dash for clearer waters. A team of three barracuda, halfway through their feast of king mackerel, decided the main course was over and took flight also. The remains of the five-foot-long mackerel sank to the sea floor where it vibrated as though still in a death spasm.

    A low rumble began to build from below and time-eroded rocks started to crumble and break. The deep waters became turbulent; they seemed to boil in agitation. Old currents were re-directed, new ones initiated. Surface waters became choppy. Dolphin V was buffeted in the undersea storm, yet barely faltered in its course; unlike the sea creatures around it, the machine had no fear.

    A fissure in the rock below the seabed of sand and sediment began to open, a seismic fault where none had existed before; the massive rending sound was dulled only slightly by the waters above. The split stretched for thirty miles or more and pressure from beneath the top layer forced a canyon wall of almost that same length to rise slowly like some immense and fantastic monolithic slab, its face sheer and dark, the sound it made a deep grinding roar.

    Dolphin V was tossed into a spiralling dive by the maelstrom, then dashed repeatedly against the newly risen wall, its toughened shell finally breaking and the complex inner circuitries smashed. Tiny parts sparked momentarily before dying, and within seconds the machine was rendered useless, a piece of junk metal that continued to be pummelled by the incredible forces around it. Soon it disintegrated completely, its separate pieces falling away to drift like flotsam.

    The vast displacement of the sea floor shifted the sea itself, causing a seismic wave, a tsunami, that rushed outwards, gathering pace as it went, rapidly reaching a speed of 450 miles an hour.

    The wave grew higher and higher as it reached shallower water, and before long it had become massive.

    It headed towards a nearby chain of islands.

    

    

    
A hillside overlooking St George's Harbour

    Nello Kwame Lewis brought his gleaming minibus to a shuddering halt on the verge that ran alongside the dusty, potholed road. As the vehicle was doorless-as well as windowless-and because it was never a habit of Grenadians to switch off their engines unnecessarily, it took him no time at all to jump out and stomp over the short, tough grass to a spot that gave him a clear view of the harbour below. But he was in no mood to enjoy that view's idyllic beauty, the turquoise and cerulean sea washing lazily into this Caribbean haven, the brilliantly white passenger liner moored by the customs dock, the schooners and tiny dinghies tied to iron cannon posts on the Carenage side, the white sails of yachts gliding effortlessly to and fro from the lagoon; and overhead, a sky so blue-apart from a vague grey patch in the far, far distance that seemed to touch the sea itself-it would have made a postcard look phony. Nello was too vexed and perhaps too familiar with the everyday scene to appreciate any of it.