“Snowball—” Charlie felt himself blink. It was a vivid mental picture, and certainly it couldn't be what it sounded like. But Paul's slow, considered nod twisted a chilly knot in his gut nonetheless.
“Snowball Earth,” Paul said. “A complication of a global warming scenario. The short form is that a big glup of cold water — like a caving ice shelf, say — hits the ocean, and the water temperature plummets, precipitating a glaciation. Except if the glaciation gets severe enough, the planet's albedo rises to extreme levels—”
“Reflecting solar energy into space. Charming.” Charlie realized he'd wrapped his arms tight around himself, but didn't drop them. “Snowball Earth.”
“Quite the vivid poetic image, isn't it?”
“Quite.” Paul didn't say anything else as Charlie turned around and began fussing with instrument calibrations. Charlie knew going in he was going to lose his nerve first, and didn't bother putting up much of a fight, truth to tell. “Do you think it's likely?”
“I think we can fight it if it starts to happen. Carbon dust on the ice pack, anything to increase heat absorption. But it's one hell of an ugly long shot. If anything happened to spike atmospheric dust, say a volcano or two, we'd be in really rough shape.”
“What would it take, Paul?” Charlie's nails were bitten, but his hands were expert as he made his adjustments, and they didn't shake. “To trigger that?”
Paul came up beside him, leaning his elbows on the bench. “It's already triggered, in my opinion. We're also due — overdue — for a magnetic polar swap and a normal, everyday sort of a glaciation and a bunch of other ecological trauma. The short form is that things are going to get very, very ugly. Possibly in our lifetimes. Definitely within our grandchildren's. People are going to be hungry and they're going to be cold.” He sighed.
“And yet Riel wants to shut down the space program.”
“The prime minister thinks we're better off spending the money at home. Different priorities. And I have to say I agree with her.”
Charlie nodded. “You know what amazes me, Paul?”
“Human stupidity?” Dry tone, but a guess hazarded with a smile. The two men shared a long, tangled look, and Charlie blew air across his face and shrugged.
“No,” he said. “Our damned human conviction that there's going to be a way to weasel out of this one, too.”
0315 Hours
Friday 8 December, 2062
Bloor Street
Toronto, Ontario
I wake early, and for a moment — before Gabe's darkened apartment swims into focus — I can't remember where I am. The clock reads a little after 0300. I trained myself to go without sleep — besides catnaps — for so long that now that I can sleep through the night, I don't need it anymore. Boris came to dinner in the cat carrier; he purrs on my chest. The damn cat drools, and the quilt is wet. Gabe still snores quietly beside me, but I can tell I'm done sleeping.
Some light filters in from the street below, so I annoy the cat by turning on my side. I stretch out and lie there for a little while watching Gabe's breath flow slowly in and out. Richard?
“Up late, Jenny.”
News?
“Min-xue is developing a taste for Dylan Thomas and Edna St. Vincent Millay. I'm teaching him English. Poetry is a good motivator. He loves it.”
It's hard to think of the Chinese as enemies when Richard gives me regular progress reports on his new project, a seventeen-year-old half-Taiwanese pilot who composes traditional poetry on the stars. I wonder how they feel about that in St. Petersburg, now. Corrupting the innocents, son?
“Who you calling sonny, Grandma?” Richard chuckles. “How's everything going down there?”
Scared. Trying to keep body and soul together. The usual. Elspeth sends her love and wants a nanite load of her own so she can talk to you.
“I'm working on that. The problem is the damned control chips—”
What if we reprogrammed the nanites to act independently?
“There are horror movies about that. We still don't know what these things are for, Jenny.”
Have you hacked their O/S yet?
“It'd help to have Castaign for that.”
Oh, come on. You're saying Gabe can do things you can't?
“I'm smart, Jen, not omnipotent. And the command system that Charlie and Ramirez welded on over the nanites' original programs is sheer… well, it's strictly A-life stuff. Not so much a command program, per se, as training protocols. Although some of Ramirez's work is pretty bleeding edge.”
I don't understand a word you're saying, Dick.
“That's okay. By the way, your cocoa-tosser is Indigo Xu, and your guess was right. She's Bernard Xu's niece by his deceased brother. Age twenty-nine, college dropout. No steady employment or place of residence for two years. No outstanding debt.”
Oh.
“Yeah, she's probably following in Uncle Bernie's shoes, and I haven't traced her financing yet. Watch yourself, Jenny. She may have a grudge.”
May? I laugh silently so I won't wake Gabe. I already moved out of the hotel. And I won't stay here after tonight — too much risk to the girls. Gabe can take care of himself. Even if he looks soft and fluffy these days. I narrow my eyes, squinting into darkness green-lit by my prosthetic's night sight and scented warmly with the heavy aroma of sleeping bodies. Have you managed to figure out where the generation ships are yet?
“Less than a light-year out. It will be hundreds of years before they get there. And I don't think our friends the Chinese have any plans to go looking for them in the meantime.”
That's—
“Inhumane? You checked on that kid on the ventilator at NDMC recently?”
Ow.
“Jenny, he's conscious.”
I gag. I literally put my hand to my throat, and gag. Merci à Dieu. Trapped in a body like a pile of meat… no, I don't have any issues about that. Isn't there anything they can do for him? What went wrong?
“I'm talking to him whenever he's awake. I don't know what happened, but somehow the signals from his nervous system are not getting to his brain, and vice versa — or when they do, they're garbled. It may be a programming issue with the nanites. It may be something else.” I feel him shrug. “I'm making some progress with the programming, but I'd really like to talk to your boyfriend, there.”
If only he could catch a nanite load.
“Don't get stuck on the obvious solution.”
I know. I just keep thinking what these little guys could do for Genie.
Richard chuckled. “So keep her alive for three more years and get her into the pilot program.”
Shit.
It could work.
Richard, you're brilliant.
“That's long been established. Talk to you later, Jenny. Get some rest.”
Blow me. He winks as he leaves, and I'm alone in the dark, with my warm pillow and my warmer lover, but my feet itch too much for me to stay in bed. After checking on the girls — both asleep, Genie snoring — I curl idly on the sofa and pick up my hip, intending to read myself back to sleepiness or kill a few hours till morning.