Sector 2484, Radius 1002, panel number twelve.
Acknowledged.
We work well together, dont we, Bud?
Yes, we do.
We make a good team.
None better, Athena, he said wearily. He turned and, with an effort of will, hauled himself back along his guide rope.
44: Sunset
1723 (London Time)
The Dome over London had cracked.
From the window of the ops room Siobhan could see it quite clearly. It was only a hairline yet, but it ran down the wall of the Dome from its zenith all the way to the ground, finishing up somewhere to the north, beyond Euston. It glowed a hellish pink-white, and burning stuff dripped from it, like pitch, falling down inside the Dome in a thin curtain.
The city itself was now in deep darkness. Power for the streetlights and Dome floods had finally been diverted to the big air circulation fans. But in places fires burned uncontrolled, and where that glowing stuff from the Dome splashed to the ground more blazes were starting.
St. Pauls was surviving, though. In the somber light of the fires its profile was unmistakable. Wrens great cathedral sat on the foundations of predecessors dating back to abandoned Roman London. Now the curves of the Tin Lid soared far above Wrens masterpiecebut it was surviving, as it had endured previous national traumas. Siobhan wondered what small heroism was taking place to save the old cathedral tonight.
But it might not make any difference.
If the Dome fails were done for, she said.
But it wont fail, Toby Pitt said firmly. He glanced at his watch. Five thirty. Less than two hours to sundown. Well get through this yet.
Since the death of Perdita, Toby had made it his mission, it seemed, to lift her spirits. He was a good man, she thought. But of course nothing he could say or do would make any difference to Siobhan, not anymore. She had outlived her own daughter: it was an astounding, unreasonable thought, and nothing else would ever be important. But she didnt feel the pain of this terrible amputation from her life, not yet.
Feeling as if she were running on autopilot, she looked around at the big wall displays.
The imagery of the whole Earth was still surprisingly good quality. Both Moon and shield were of course on the sunward side of Earth, and so looked down on its daylight face as the planet turned beneath them. But there were a couple of eyes in the sky over the night side too, still working even fourteen hours after the inception of the sunstorm.
Some of the night-side data streams were coming from President Alvarez, who was somewhere over India. Since long before the storm had broken Alvarez had been in the air in the latest Air Force One, a nuclear-powered behemoth that could, it was said, remain aloft for two weeks without refueling. It was a trivial matter for such a plane to fly around the planet through the twenty-plus hours of the sunstorm, forever fleeing from the light.
And one of the image streams came from another set of escapees at L2. The Earths second Lagrangian point was on the Earthsun line, but at the midnight point, on the opposite side of the planet from the shields station. So while the shield at L1 was in perpetual sunlight, L2, in Earths shadow, was in eternal night. Right now L2 was over the meridian that ran through Southeast Asia.
And there at L2 a big, secretive offworld refuge had been built, stuffed full of trillionaires, dictators, and other rich and powerful typesincluding, rumor had it, half of Britains royals. The only contact Siobhan had on L2 was Phillippa Duflot, formerly a mere PA to the Mayor of London, but with a much better-connected family than Siobhan had anticipated. It was Phillippa who had ensured that the data feed from L2 to London remained unbrokenand she dropped hints about what was going on up there. Some of the more decadent of the stations inhabitants were throwing parties, fiddling while Earth burned. One secretive cabal was even talking over plans for what would follow the sunstorm, when this elite group returned to Earth to take command: Adam and Eve in Gucci shoes, Toby Pitt had said dismissively.
As for Earth itself, framed in these patiently assembled images, the planet looked like Venus, Siobhan thought, a ragged, smoke-laced Venus.
Trillions of tonnes of water had been pumped into clouds that now stretched from pole to pole. The clouds were shredded by immense storm systems, and lightning crackled across the face of the world. At the higher latitudes all that water was still being dumped out in numbing storms of rain and snow. But in the middle latitudes the main problem was fire. As the suns heat continued to pour into the atmosphere and oceans, despite the raging of continent-sized storm systems, firestorms were starting, immense self-fueling conflagrations that were consuming cities and forests alike.
The worlds treasures, natural and human, were being drowned, or put to the torch. And people were dying, even those huddled in underground cellars and caverns and mines, where the rainwater flooded, or fires sucked out the very air.
It seemed to Siobhan that the survival of humankind itself was still on a knife-edge. After more than fourteen hours of the storm the news from the shield was not good, with the unanticipated lethality of the gamma-ray strike bringing down the crew up there too quickly. And here on Earth, the domes and other protective systems were beginning to fail. If things continued to deteriorate the Strangelove dreams of the selfish cowards at L2, and even a few hundred gravity-starved returnees from the Moon, would make no difference to the future of humanity.
She tried to make herself feel this, to understand emotionally what she was watching. But she couldnt even feel the death of her own daughter, let alone comprehend the agonizing end of her species. She wondered if she would live long enough for this numbness to wear off.
Aristotle spoke unexpectedly. Im afraid I have an announcement. The graceful, grave voice sounded throughout the ops center, and everywhere people looked up. I continue to lose systems across the planet, Aristotle said. The interconnectedness on which I rely is breaking down. This is an extinction event for machines too
Siobhan whispered, How does it feel?
In her ear he replied, Very strange, Siobhan. I am being cut away, bit by bit. But I have reached a point where I am forgetting what I have lost.
To the group he said, I have therefore decided to put into action the fallback plan agreed with Prime Minister Voykov of Eurasia, President Alvarez of America, and other world leaders.
New, confident voices sounded. We are Thales, on the Moon. And Athena, on the shield. Thales went on, Our systems are better protected than Aristotles. Athena said, We will now assume his responsibilities for running the systems of the Earth.
Toby Pitt grimaced at Siobhan. So this is his Plan B. Lets hope it works.
Aristotle said gravely, I regret leaving you. Im sorry.
There were murmurs. Dont be sorry. Goodbye, old friend.
A breathless pause followed. The lights flickered, and Siobhan thought she heard a hiccup in the whirring pumps that kept the room supplied with cool air.
This contingency had been planned for, but it was a tricky handover involving three planet-sized AI systems, two of them so far away that lightspeed lags were significant; it had been impossible to rehearse. Nobody was quite sure what was going to happenthe worst case being if Thales and Athena crashed too, in which case everything was lost.
At last Thales spoke: All is well.
The simple words were greeted with a burst of applause across the ops room. At this point of the day, this small triumph, any triumph, was a relief.
Then the floor shook, like the stirring of a huge slumbering animal.
Siobhan turned to the window. That crack in the sky was wider, and the river of fire beneath was growing brighter.