'In Sunside,' Lardis deciphered, 'when a man has something to do — a wrong that needs righting — he makes a vow, usually in public. And he holds to it until it's done. I made just such a vow one time, and it still isn't done. But if I can't be killing the bloodsucking bastards there, at least I'm helping to kill them here.'
Jimmy Harvey, despite that he wasn't privy to Jake's past, believed he'd got the drift of it. 'So how about you, Jake?' he said. 'You mentioned things you "need" to get sorted out: present tense. So like Lardis, you're not finished yet, right?'
'Not quite, no,' Jake shook his head. 'But there's plenty of time yet.' And to change the subject: 'Why don't you tell me about Brisbane, fill in whatever it is I've missed?'
The other wasn't about to start prying; the one thing he'd learned in his time with the Branch was that these people hated to talk about their private lives almost as much as about their weird 'talents'. And as far as their powers were concerned: the majority didn't see them as bonuses at all, just extra baggage. Jake hadn't been around too long and was a new one on Harvey. Still, he was on the team and so must be an esper. Well, no one can be expert in everything. But… the Great Fire of Brisbane? Something like that had escaped his notice? Jake had to be pulling his leg. But he didn't look like he was. And so:
'It was about this time of year,' Harvey started out. 'And what do you know, 2007 was another El Nino year, just like this one — synchronicity, or something! Anyway, these freaky weather years have been coming around far too often. 1997—98, and again in 2002, and finally in 2007. And this current one, of course.
'In an El Nino the currents in the Pacific go all to hell. They circulate the wrong way, or something like that. The water gets warm where it should be cold, and vice versa. Since everything is connected to ocean temperatures — like, you know, the ecosystem? — the weather goes to hell in a bucket. Everywhere, everything, and everyone gets affected.
'Add to this the depletion of the rain forests, soil erosion, acid rains, holes in the ozone, the not-so-gradual melting of the ice caps, earthquakes, volcanoes blowing their tops left, right and centre… the whole thing seems symptomatic of planetary and climatic upheaval. Or maybe I should say "seemed", past tense, because these aren't just symptoms I'm talking about but the actual disease. In short, we're in it up to our necks! And finally people are beginning to sit up and pay attention to the ecologists and environmentalists, the guys who used to get tagged as sensationalists and doomsayers.
'Back around 1997—98 was when it became really noticeable. Now, hey, we're only talking a time-span of maybe twelve or thirteen years here, but the speed at which things have changed you really wouldn't know it. Like, a thousand years worth of climatic damage packed into just a decade and a half?
'So, let's go back to the years leading up to and including 1997 and '98.
'The Antarctic pack ice had already started breaking into icebergs bigger than large English counties. There were grasses and mosses and flowers where before there'd only ever been ice. Similarly, in the Arctic, the sea ice was getting thinner every year, the so-called "permanent" ice simply wasn't permanent any more, and the cap in general was shrinking. So, all that water had to go somewhere, right? My guess: into the air, the atmosphere, Jake. And as the old saying goes, what goes up must come down again — in precipitation. And brother, did we get rain!
'The Netherlands: flooded to hell… so badly that for a while it looked like all the major dams would go. Germany, and Poland: all the rivers breaking their banks. Greece: unseasonal hail, with hailstones as big as ping-pong balls that flattened the crops. The USA: Jesus, the Mississippi! All that water trying to get out of there, and God help anything that got in its way! And in '97, right here in Australia: first they had fires that scorched people out of their homes — destroying thousands of acres of prairie, woodlands, and national parks, and killing people, livestock, wildlife galore — and then monsoon rains to match anything the rest of the world had suffered. It was just crazy fucking weather!
'But the hell of it was, these were only warnings. The El Nirios are warnings; the melting ice is a warning, and likewise the ozone layer. Like planetwide alarms that have been sounding for a long, long time, all in vain because no one has been listening. Or rather, no one was listening to the ones who were listening…
'In the Far East, they wouldn't stop burning the rain forests. The Americans took the hump when people said their carbon dioxide emissions were off the scale… but they weren't half as snooty in the summer of '98 when Texas turned into a desert! Heat wave? They'd never seen anything like it! As for the Russians: well as usual they hid or disguised or denied any and all wrongdoings whatsoever. Huh! What else would you expect of the people who turned the Aral Sea into the Aral Pond… the folks with more toxic nuclear and chemical garbage per acre than most countries have per square mile! In E-Branch — during my three years with the Branch, anyway — we've been monitoring the hell out of the Russians. Ask Ben Trask about it some time.'
And Jake cut in, 'Well, at least I know something about all that: the way they dump their clapped-out subs, et cetera.'
'That's part of it,' Harvey agreed, 'but the rest of it is just as bad. Anyway, all that's away from the main subject, and in fact we were talking about—?'
'—The big fire,' Jake reminded him. 'Until you went a bit off track.'
Harvey nodded. 'Yeah, the Great Fire of Brisbane, 2007. It was around this time of year, and El Nino was up to its unusual tricks. The weather had been freakish everywhere, especially in the UK, England. For fifteen years the various water boards had been moaning about declining water tables. It could rain all it wanted during the winter, but given just three days of good old heartwarming sunshine in July and these jokers would start leaping up and down, and tearing their hair, and sticking in meters and standpipes, and demanding that people should save water by cutting down on their bathing and putting bricks in their water closet cisterns… and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum. What a load of crap, zfyou could afford to take one! It was Nature all those years, warning us that the Big One was coming.
'Well, in 2007 in England it came, and that year we didn't have a summer…'
'It was washed out?' Jake felt obliged to ask. 'It was drowned out!' Harvey told him.
'I seem to remember something about that,' Jake said. 'But I missed it. I was on the Continent.'
'But you must have read about it, seen it on TV?' 'I told you, I was doing my own thing. On the Continent.' 'Yeah,' Harvey agreed. 'About the only place in the world where the weather was moderately normal. You were lucky. But in England it rained, and rained, and rained! And as for declining water tables: forget it. There's been no shortage of water ever since. Anywhere below sea level turned into a swamp. The Thames Barrier failed, and high tides combined with a flooded river to drown the city six feet deep. Through July, August, and September — shit, there were gondolas in Oxford Street! Okay, so I'm exaggerating — maybe it wasn't quite as bad as all that, but it was bad enough. And I could go on and on. Except…' He paused again.
'Except that was the UK,' Jake helped him out. 'And the
people had plenty of warning, and there was little or no loss of life. Yes, I remember it now. But we were talking about Brisbane, not quite so close to home.'
'Not just Brisbane,' the other told him. 'In 2007 it was Australia as a whole. Now, you've got to remember that in Australia the climate works backwards to how we'd expect back home. It's way hotter in January than in July: the difference between summer and winter, right? Oh, really? Well, in 2007 everything went wrong. From February on the summer weather held, there was no winter and it didn't get any colder. Just like now, in fact exactly like now, they had the freakiest of freak weather.'