Sunstorm Read online

  Siobhan was briefly baffled; that never happened. “Aristotle, redial, please.”

  “Yes, Siobhan.”

  Her mother’s voice returned after a couple of seconds. “Hello?...”

  “I’m here,” Siobhan said. “Mother, professional astronomers don’t do much stargazing nowadays.” Especially not a cosmologist like Siobhan, whose concern was with the universe on the vastest scales of space and time, not the handful of dull objects that could be seen with the naked eye.

  “But even you must have noticed the aurora this morning.”

  Of course she had. In midsummer Siobhan always rose about six, to get in her daily quota of jogging around Hyde Park before the heat of the day became unbearable. This morning, even though the sun had long been above the horizon, she had seen that subtle wash of crimson and green in the northern sky—clearly three-dimensional, bright curtains and streamers of it, an immense structure of magnetism and plasma towering above the Earth.

  Maria said, “An aurora is something to do with the sun, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Flares, the solar wind.” To her shame, Siobhan found she wasn’t even sure if the sun was near the maximum of its cycle right now. Some Astronomer Royal she was proving to be.

  Anyhow, though the aurora was undeniably a spectacular sight, and it was very unusual to be so bright as far south as London, Siobhan knew it was nothing but a second-order effect of the interaction of solar plasma with the Earth’s magnetic field, and therefore not particularly interesting. She had continued her jogging, not at all motivated to join the rows of slack-jawed dog walkers staring at the sky. And she certainly wasn’t sorry she missed the brief panic as people had assailed the emergency services with pointless calls, imagining London was on fire.

  Everybody was still at the window. It was all a bit strange, she conceded.

  * * *

  She set aside her coffee and, phone in hand, walked up to the window. She couldn’t see much past the shoulders of jostling cosmologists: a glimpse of green from the park, a washed-out blue sky. The window was sealed shut to allow the air-conditioning to work, but she thought she could hear a lot of traffic noise: the blaring of horns, sirens.

  Toby Pitt spotted her at the back of the pack. A big, affable bear of a man with a strangulated Home Counties accent, Toby worked for the Royal Society; he was the manager of the conference today. “Siobhan! I won’t make jokes about the Astronomer Royal being the last to show any interest in the sky.”

  She showed him her phone. “No need. My mother’s already been there.”

  “It’s quite a view, though. Come and see.” He extended his massive arm around her shoulders and, with a skillful combination of physical presence and smiling tact, managed to shepherd her through the crowd to the window.

  The City of London Rooms had a fine view of the Mall, and of St. James’ Park beyond. The grass of the park glowed lurid green, no longer a native specimen but a tough, thick-leaved drought-resistant breed imported from southern Texas, and the relentless sprinklers sent sprays of water shimmering into the air.

  But the traffic in the Mall was jammed. The smart cars had calmly packed themselves up in an optimal queuing pattern, but their frustrated drivers were pounding at their horns, and heat haze rose in a shimmer in the humid air. Looking up the road Siobhan saw that the traffic control lights and lane guides were blinking, apparently at random: no wonder the traffic was snarled.

  She looked up. The sun, riding high, flooded the cloudless air with light. Even so, when she shielded her eyes she could still make out a tracery of auroral bands in the sky. She became aware of a noise beyond the blare of the traffic in the Mall, a softer din, muffled by the thick sealed window. It was a growl of frustrated driving that seemed to be rising from across the city. This snarl-up wasn’t local, then.

  For the first time that day she felt a flicker of unease. She thought of her daughter, Perdita, at college today. Perdita, twenty years old, was a sensible young adult. But still...

  There was a new silence, a shift in the light. People stirred, perturbed. Glancing over her shoulder Siobhan saw that the room lights had failed. That subtle change in the ambient noise must mean the air-conditioning had packed up, too.

  Toby Pitt spoke quickly into a phone. Then he held up his hands and announced, “Nothing to worry about, ladies and gentlemen. It isn’t just us; the whole of this part of London seems to be suffering something of a brownout. But we have a backup generator that should be coming online soon.” He winked at Siobhan and said softly, “If we can persuade the ratty old thing to start up in the first place.” But he raised his phone to his ear again, and concern creased his face.

  In the heat of the June day, thirty-plus degrees Celsius, the room was already warming up, and Siobhan’s trouser suit was starting to feel heavy and uncomfortable.

  From beyond the window there was a crumpling noise, a series of pops, like small fireworks, and a din of wailing car alarms. The cosmologists gasped, a collective impulse. Siobhan pushed forward to see.

  That queue of traffic on the Mall was just as stationary as before. But the cars had lurched forward, each smashing into the one in front like a gruesome Newton’s cradle. People were getting out of their vehicles; some of them looked hurt. Suddenly the jam had turned from an orderly inconvenience into a minor disaster of crumpled metal, leaking lubricants, and scattered injuries. There was no sign of police or ambulances.

  Siobhan was baffled. She had literally never seen anything like it. All cars nowadays were individually smart. They took data and instructions from traffic control systems and navigational satellites, and were able to avoid cars, pedestrians, and other obstacles in their immediate surroundings. Crashes were virtually unheard of, and traffic deaths had dwindled to a minimum. But the scene below was reminiscent of the motorway pileups that had still blighted Britain during her childhood in the 1990s. Was it possible that all the cars’ electronic guidance systems had failed at once?

  Light flared, dazzling her. She flinched, raising her hand. When she could see again, she made out a pall of black smoke, rising from somewhere to the south of the river, its origin lost in murky smog. Then a shock wave reached the Society building. The tough old structure shuddered, and the window creaked. She heard a more remote tinkle of glass, the blaring of alarms, and screams.

  It had been an explosion, a big one. The cosmologists murmured, grave and apprehensive.

  Toby Pitt touched her shoulder. His face had lost all its humor now. “Siobhan. We’ve had a call from the Mayor’s office. They’re asking for you.”

  “Me?...” She glanced around, feeling lost. She had no idea what was happening. “The conference—”

  “I think everybody will accept a postponement, in the circumstances.”

  “How can I get there? If that mess outside is typical—”

  He shook his head. “We can videoconference from here. Follow me.”

  As she followed his broad-shouldered form out of the City Rooms, she raised her own phone. “Mother?”

  “You’re still there? All I heard was chattering.”

  “That’s cosmologists for you. I’m fine, Mother. And you—”

  “So am I. That bang was nowhere near me.”

  “Good,” Siobhan said fervently.

  “I phoned Perdita. The line was bad, but she’s all right. They’re keeping them at college until things settle down.”

  Siobhan felt huge, unreasonable relief. “Thank you.”

  Maria said, “The doctors are running everywhere. Their pagers seem to be on the blink. You’d think casualties would be coming in but I’ve seen nobody yet... Do you think it was terrorists?”

  “I don’t know.” Toby Pitt had reached the door and was beckoning her. “I’ll try to keep the connection open.” She hurried from the room.

  4: VISITOR

  THE ROVER REACHED THE Station long before Mikhail had clambered his way back down the trail. The visitor waited at the hab entrance with an impatien
ce the surface suit couldn’t disguise.

  Mikhail thought he recognized the figure just by his stance. Though its population was scattered around its globe, on the human scale the Moon was a very small town, where everybody knew everybody else.

  Thales confirmed it in a whisper. “That is Doctor Eugene Mangles, the notorious neutrino hunter. How exciting.”

  That cursed computer-brain is teasing me, Mikhail thought irritably; Thales knows my feelings too well. But it was true that his heart beat a little faster with anticipation.

  Encased in their suits, Mikhail and Eugene faced each other awkwardly. Eugene’s face, a sculpture of planed shadows, was barely visible through his visor. He looked very young, Mikhail thought. Despite his senior position Eugene was just twenty-six—a maverick boy genius.

  For a moment Mikhail was stuck for something to say. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t get too many visitors out here.”

  Eugene’s social skills seemed even more underdeveloped. “Have you seen it yet?”

  Mikhail knew what he meant. “The sun?”

  “The active region.”

  Of course this boy had come here for the sun. Why else visit a solar weather station? Certainly not for the crusty, early-middle-aged astrophysicist who tended it. And yet Mikhail felt a foolish, quite unreasonable pang of disappointment. He tried to sound welcoming. “But don’t you work with neutrinos? I thought your area of study was the core of the sun, not its atmosphere.”

  “Long story.” Eugene glared at him. “This is important. More important than you know, yet. I predicted it.”

  “What?”

  “The active region.”

  “From your studies of the core? I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Eugene said, apparently careless of any offense he might cause. “I logged my predictions with Thales and Aristotle, date-stamped to prove it. I’ve come here to confirm the data. It’s come to pass, just as I said it would.”

  Mikhail forced a smile. “We’ll talk it over. Come inside. You can see as much data as you want. Do you like coffee?”

  “They have to listen,” said Eugene.

  They?… “About what?”

  “The end of the world,” Eugene said. “Possibly.” He led the way into the dustlock, leaving Mikhail standing openmouthed.

  * * *

  They didn’t talk as they worked their way through dustlock and airlock into the hab. Every human on the Moon was still a pioneer, and if you were smart, no matter what was on your mind, as you moved from one safe environment to another through seals and locks and interfaces and in and out of EVA suits, you concentrated on nothing but the life-preserving procedures you were going through. If you weren’t smart, of course, you would be lucky if you were forcibly shipped out before you killed yourself, or others.

  Mikhail, slick with daily practice, was first out of his EVA suit. As the suit slithered to its cleaning station—somewhat grotesquely, its servos dragging it across the floor like an animated flayed skin—Mikhail, in his underwear, went to a sink where he scrubbed his hands in a slow trickle of water. The gray-black dust he had picked up handling the suit, grimy despite the dustlock’s best efforts, had rubbed into his pores and under his nails, and was burning slowly with his skin’s natural oils, giving off a smell like gunpowder. The Moon’s dust had been a problem since the first footsteps taken here: very fine, getting everywhere, and oxidizing enthusiastically whenever it got the chance, the dust corroded everything from mechanical bearings to human mucous membranes.

  Of course it wasn’t the engineering problems of Moon dust that were on Mikhail’s mind right now. He risked a look around. Eugene had taken off boots and gloves, and he lifted his helmet away, shaking his beautiful head to free up thick hair. That was the face Mikhail remembered, the face he had first glimpsed at some meaningless social function in Clavius or Armstrong—a face freshly hardened into manhood, but with the symmetry and delicacy of boyhood, even if the eyes were a little wild—the face that had drawn him as helplessly as a moth to a candle.

  As Eugene stripped off his spacesuit Mikhail couldn’t help dwelling on an old memory. “Eugene, have you ever heard of Barbarella?”

  Eugene frowned. “Is she at Clavius?”

  “No, no. I mean an old space movie. I’m something of a buff of pre-spaceflight cinema. A young actress called Jane Fonda...” Eugene clearly had no idea what he was talking about. “Never mind.”

  Mikhail made his way to the dome’s small shower cubicle, stripped off the last of his clothing, and stood under a jet. The water emerged slowly, in big shimmering low-gravity droplets that fell with magical slowness to the floor, where suction pumps drew in every last precious molecule. Mikhail lifted his face to the stream, trying to calm himself.

  Thales said gently, “I’ve brewed some coffee, Mikhail.”

  “Thales, that was thoughtful.”

  “Everything is under control.”

  “Thank you…” Sometimes it really was as if Thales knew Mikhail’s moods.

  Thales was actually a less sophisticated clone of Aristotle, who was an intelligence emergent from a hundred billion Earth-side computers of all sizes and the networks that linked them. A remote descendant of the search engines of the late twentieth century, Aristotle had become a great electronic mind whose thoughts crackled like lightning across the wired-up face of the Earth; for years he had been a constant companion to all humankind.

  When humans had begun their permanent occupation of the Moon at Clavius Base, it had been inconceivable that they should not take Aristotle with them. But it takes light more than a second to travel from Earth to the Moon, and in an environment where death lurks a single error away, such delays were unacceptably long. So Thales had been created, a lunar copy of Aristotle. Thales was updated continually from Aristotle’s great memory stores—but he was necessarily simpler than his parent, for the electronic nervous system laid across the Moon was still rudimentary compared to the Earth’s.

  Simpler or not, Thales did his job. He was certainly smart enough to justify the name he had been given: Thales of Miletus, a sixth-century Greek, had been the first to suggest that the Moon shone not by its own light but by reflection from the sun—and, it was said, he had been the first man to predict a solar eclipse.

  For everybody on the Moon, Thales was always there. Often lonely despite his stoical determination, Mikhail had been soothed by Thales’s measured, somewhat emotionless voice.

  Right now, thinking wistfully of Eugene, he felt he needed soothing.

  He knew that Eugene was based at Tsiolkovski. The huge Farside crater was host to an elaborate underground facility. Buried in the still, cold Moon, undisturbed by tremors, shadowed from Earth’s radio clamor and shielded from all radiation except for a little leakage from trace quantities in the lunar rocks, it was an ideal location for hunting neutrinos. Those ghost-like particles scooted through most solid matter as if it weren’t even there, thus providing unique data about such inaccessible places as the center of the sun.

  But how odd to come all the way to the Moon, and then to burrow into the regolith to do your science, Mikhail thought. There were so many more glamorous places to work—such as the big planet-finder telescope array laid out in a North Pole crater, capable of resolving the surfaces of Earth-like planets orbiting suns spread across fifty light-years.

  He longed to discuss this with Eugene, to share something of his life, his impressions of the Moon. But he knew he must keep his reactions to the younger man in appropriate categories.

  Since his teens, when he had become fully aware of his sexuality, Mikhail had learned to master his reactions: even in the early twenty-first century, homosexuality was still something of a taboo in Vladivostok. Discovering in himself a powerful intellect, Mikhail had thrown himself into work, and had grown used to a life lived largely alone. He had hoped that when he moved away from home, as his career took him through the rest of the sprawling Eurasian Union as far as Lond
on and Paris, and then, at last, off the Earth entirely, he would find himself in more tolerant circles. Well, so he had; but by then it seemed he had grown too used to his own company.

  His life of almost monastic isolation had been broken by a few passionate, short-lived love affairs. But now, in his midforties, he was coming to accept the fact that he was never likely to find a partner to share his life. That didn’t make him immune to feelings, however. Before today he had barely spoken two words to this handsome boy, Eugene, but that, evidently, had been enough to develop a foolish crush.

  He had to put it all aside, though. Whatever Eugene had come to Shackleton for, it wasn’t for Mikhail.

  The end of the world, the boy had said. Frowning, Mikhail toweled himself dry.

  5: EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

  SIOBHAN WAS TAKEN TO the Council Room on the first floor of the Royal Society building. The room’s centerpiece was an oval conference table large enough to seat twenty or more, but Siobhan was alone here save for Toby Pitt. She sat at the head of the table uncertainly. On the wall was a slightly surreal Zulu tapestry, meant to show symbolically the rise of science, and portraits of former fellows—mostly dead white males, though the more recent animated images were more diverse.

  Toby tapped at the table’s polished surface, which turned transparent to reveal a bank of embedded softscreens. The screens lit up, variously showing scenes of disaster—crashes on the road and rail systems, raw sewage spilling from a pipe onto a beach somewhere, what looked horribly like the wreck of a plane plowed into a Heathrow runway—and concerned faces, most with softscreens in their backgrounds and earpieces clamped to their heads.

  One serious-looking young woman seemed to be calling from a police control room. When she caught Siobhan’s eye, she nodded. “You’re the astronomer.”