Worlds in Chaos (36 page)

They arrived at the main gate of the air base. A sentry checked them through and directed them to the terminal building, where the rest of the party due to leave for Los Angeles was assembling. As the car drew to a halt, Keene turned and extended a hand. “Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out as bad as some people are saying. But just in case . . .”

Cavan clasped it solemnly. “It’s been an interesting few years, Landen. You know, it’s a pity you didn’t go to Kronia long ago. That’s where you should be.”

“And take care of Alicia. I never did get to meet her.”

“Ah, she’s crazy.”

“You never told me why.”

“Look at the company she keeps, for heaven’s sake.”

Keene paused and looked up as he climbed out of the car. There was a distinct reddish tint to the Moon. The sky everywhere was lit up continuously by brief flashes crossing an eerie background of violet, pink, orange, and green traceries.

28

Maybe because of West Coast connotations and constant mentions of the observatories in Hawaii, Keene had been half expecting somebody chubby and jovial in sandals and a beach shirt. Charlie Hu turned out to be of Oriental origins, sure enough, but lean and soberly attired in a light gray suit with necktie, even at an unearthly hour of the morning. He was in his fifties, Keene judged, with streaky graying hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He greeted Keene and his companions formally but warmly, standing as they were shown into his office and bowing slightly when they shook hands. “What in God’s name are they doing in Washington?” were his first words after the introductions. “Everyone else in the world knows what they’re supposed to be announcing, yet they have to send you here to ask me?”

The news media, abuzz by now that something big was about to break, were pressing the scientists, and many of the scientists were getting impatient and starting to talk. Rumors of the wealthy and famous quietly commencing arrangements to board up and vacate waterfront properties in Argentina and Brazil, the African Cape, Hong Kong, and to move themselves and their valuables to higher, inland retreats didn’t help to assuage the rising anxieties of average people without such options. Religious groups of every persuasion were thumbing through their tracts and finding the fulfillment of a score of prophecies, all different. Several cities in India were seeing unrest and demonstrations demanding more positive action from the government—although precisely what action was left unspecified. Several places reported mob unrest, and a number of states were preparing to proclaim martial law.

But not everyone was overreacting. Holiday package-tour operators and cruise lines reassured customers that they would get full refunds for any schedules that had to be canceled, or a discount if they let them carry over to next year. The British Prime Minister, after returning from his Scottish estate for an emergency session in Parliament, had urged his cabinet to enjoy the fireworks display, put off for a month any plans they might have to go sailing, and returned to continue his vacation.

The mood among the workers at JPL, when Hu took the arrivals from Washington out to meet them, was very different, ranging from numbed shock through restless nervousness to open fear barely being kept under control. They hadn’t had the distraction of the activity going on in Washington, and they were under no illusions as a result of contradictory accounts. After spending the night in consultation with Russian astronomers at the Pastukhov observatory, they
knew
. And although a direct collision with Athena was not indicated, some of the further consequences of the close pass that was expected exceeded even the horror stories that Keene had heard before leaving the East Coast. A white-haired astrophysicist whom Hu introduced as Margaret Ikels explained in a room where about a dozen somber-faced scientists and assistants were gathered:

“What they told you before about the electrical effects might be only part of the story. You see, the plasma tail streaming ahead of Athena generates an intense magnetic field. Earth’s iron core passing through it at the distance that’s predicted will become a gigantic induction generator of huge circulating electrical currents. According to our estimates, the heat generated could open up fault lines in the mantle and melt through to the crust.” Ikels nodded her head to indicate a lanky, yellow-haired young man in shorts and a sweatshirt, sprawled across one of the chairs, his arm draped along the back of another, one foot resting on a third. “John has some interesting thoughts on plate tectonics that you might like to hear.” Keene merely jerked his chin inquiringly. This latest revelation had left him momentarily incapable of saying anything.

“The conventional picture might be wrong by orders of magnitude,” John said. “The ocean floors didn’t take millions of years to spread from the rifts. That’s just the answer you get when you extrapolate back the cooled-down rate of spreading that we measure today. If the Kronians are right about Venus—which is what a lot of us here have thought for a long time—it happened only thousands of years ago, maybe in days or weeks.”

For several seconds, Keene stared, aghast. If the upswelling of the sea-floor ridges and sideways spreading that created the ocean floors had taken place on the kind of timescale that John was talking about, the rates of lava flow had to have been immensely greater than anything previously imagined. So, therefore, would the amount of heat necessary to produce it—which was what Margaret Ikels was saying.

“You’re talking about boiling oceans, here,” someone threw in from the side, as if confirming Keene’s thoughts.

“So . . . in that case, what wrote the stripes?” Keene asked, finding his voice at last. He meant the parallel lines of alternately directed magnetism found across seabeds the world over. The generally accepted theory was that they had been produced by unexplained reversals of the Earth’s field, occurring at intervals of thousands of years or more.

John shrugged. “The Russians think they’re also tied in with all the electrical activity somehow. I guess we’re about to get some interesting lessons in planetary physics. Too bad nobody will be taking notes.”

A silence fell over the room. Keene saw hopelessness written on every face. Charlie Hu looked uncomfortable, as if aware on the one hand that the morale of the group was his responsibility, yet at the same time unable to insult their intelligence by trying to tell anyone that things mightn’t be as bad as everyone knew they were.

“Maybe these guys should get some rest,” Keene suggested, looking at Hu. In case they hadn’t been informed, he added, “The President is due to make a national statement at three o’clock Pacific Time today. The main input regarding what’s to be expected will come from here. Maybe we could get together at, say, around ten to compare notes and check numbers? That would give us about four hours to get a final line together.”

John straightened up suddenly, his feelings now venting themselves as anger. “What’s the point?” he demanded. “Do you think there’s anything they can do that’s going to make a difference? Look, if they want to make speeches and play survival games, that’s okay by me—but don’t drag me into it. I might decide I wanna spend my time getting drunk, getting high, or getting laid, but I’m not gonna pretend anything.” Charlie Hu looked at his shoes. He knew that John was out of line but apparently couldn’t argue.

“It’s over,” a girl sitting near Keene told him. “It’s taken me all night to face it, but it’s real. Nobody’s going to survive this, Doctor.”

Keene turned away and paced across the room to a wall board covered in scrawled diagrams and calculations rendered in assorted colors. Maybe she’d had all night to get around to facing it, but he had not. There were people in Washington still of a will to do what they could and who were depending on him. He couldn’t let this come apart now.

“
No!
” he said sharply, turning to confront them. “I won’t accept that.” His tone surprised everyone. He looked around at them. “What is this? It’s easy to pretend things about yourselves when everything is going your way. It’s when things are at their worst that you find out who you really are. Did any of you imagine that it was going to last forever? Life is the chance to show that you’re up to doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be, the best that you can. That’s still as true if the time you’ve got to do it in is weeks, or thirty more years, or a thousand. Everybody can be someone special tomorrow, when everything will be just right. But it’s what you can be
today
that matters, when it’s not.” He extended an arm to point at the window, although it was still dark outside and he had no idea whether it faced eastward or not. “That’s what the President and the First Lady of this country are doing. The last time I saw them they hadn’t slept for two days either. They’re doing what needs to be done, as best they can, because it’s their job. . . . Well, I have a job too. And so do you.”

He looked around. Some of the eyes met his for a moment, then shifted away. Others remained staring back at him. He was getting through to them. He went on, “I know what some of you are thinking. That might be fine when it’s all for a better future. But what’s the use when there isn’t any future? You all heard it a moment ago: ‘Nobody’s going to survive this.’ Well, I don’t buy that either, and I’ll tell you why. John said that a lot of you here believe the Kronians were right about Venus. Very well, I do too. And that means it happened before—three and a half thousand years ago. And some of those people back then
did
survive! And they didn’t have what we’ve got today. They didn’t have underground shelters, nonperishable foods and medical supplies, generators, water pumps, communications equipment, and transportation to get away from the bad spots, or our knowledge and education. And they didn’t have the Kronians out there, able to preserve that knowledge and help with the rebuilding when the time came. But some of them made it. Maybe it was just a couple here and there, or the remnants of a tribe on a mountain, but some of them had what it took to rise to something more than just getting drunk and waiting to go down in the mud. It was because of them that we were here to have a second chance. And some are going to make it this time too—and because of them there will be another chance one day to get it right.” He studied the faces searchingly for a second. “Who knows? Some of them could be you.”

Keene moved across to a table where he had placed the papers he had been given and collected them together. “If anyone here is planning on going over the hill because there’s no hope, I’d appreciate it if you leave whatever notes and figures you have available. A final, considered report
will
be sent from here to Washington this afternoon. When the President goes on camera to face the nation, I’ll have done my job. Who else here will be able to say the same thing?”

There was a long silence. John’s anger had subsided. He exhaled, closed his eyes, and nodded. It wasn’t necessary to say anything. Finally, Charlie Hu took it. His manner was still grave, but with a new decisiveness. “Dr. Keene is right. We all need to get some rest,” he said quietly. “Can I take it that we will all convene back here at ten?” There were no dissenters.

With all the rushing around in Washington, Keene hadn’t learned much about the three who had traveled with him until they got a chance to talk on the plane. Barbara was built on the heavy side and moved slowly, but she was systematic and methodical in her work. Her White House job was to tide her through while she looked after an invalid mother. After that, she had planned to go abroad, maybe to take up political journalism. Gordon was the opposite: lively, impulsive, constantly on the move or on the phone with some new angle. He had intended making some kind of a career in Washington and was due to be married in August. Clearly, they were both rational, realistic people, and yet each had talked as if those plans still meant something. Keene wondered if it was because letting go of the things which at present filled those spaces in their minds would leave no way of dealing with having nothing to replace them with. Whatever the explanation, he had tried to avoid saying things that would dispel their illusions.

Colby Greene was in his thirties, slightly built with prematurely thinning hair and large, rimless spectacles that dominated his face. Originally a mathematical chemist before joining Sloane’s staff via a stint in one of the regulatory agencies—which he had despised—he was knowledgeable and quick witted, with a weirdly cynical humor that pervaded everything he did. He was under no illusions about what Athena meant, but seemed almost to regard it as not especially surprising—as if some kind of disaster or other had been the inevitable destiny toward which the absurd theater of human existence had been directing itself from the beginning. “Life is a plane you never wanted to get on, which you know is going to crash,” he’d explained to Keene in the bus that had brought them from March Air Force Base to JPL. “So what’s the big deal if you get shot down a little bit sooner?”