On the BBC, you got the idea things were bad now and were getting worse. Maybe that was a British attitude. Maybe it was just an adult one. Either way, Bryce preferred it to the usual American bullshit optimism.
“It appears clear that the massive power failures in the American Northeast and upper Midwest show we have reached the other side of an historical watershed,” a BBC commentator said. American news didn’t talk about history; American news had forgotten there was such a thing. Had an American newsman by chance remembered, he would have said a historical watershed. Two countries separated by the same language, sure enough.
“As the new Russia emerged from the collapse of the old Soviet Union as a strong state, a state to be reckoned with, but no longer a global superpower, the United States now finds itself in a like position,” the Brit went on. “Its problems were not caused by an inadequate political system, but by a natural catastrophe that beggars the word Biblical. Regardless of cause, however, the effect is similar. When the most populous sector of the nation is at risk of death by cold or hunger, no American government can possibly contemplate military adventure beyond its borders. Whether any other country will seek the role of global arbiter, or whether a balance of power amongst the stronger states will prevail as it did before the First World War, remains to be seen.”
Bryce turned to Susan. “If you’re going to have your obituary read, nice to have it read with such a classy accent.”
“Hush!” she said. “He’s not done yet.”
And he wasn’t. “One would have thought that the mere fact of the supervolcano eruption should have cast the United States down at once from its perch atop the hierarchy of nations. That this has in fact taken most of a decade to transpire is a tribute to the USA’s resilience and former abundance. By now, though, the surplus of times past is largely exhausted. The United States must attempt to make do with what it can produce for itself at this moment. In spite of everything, that remains considerable. But the nation’s wounds and problems are enormous. The USA can scarcely be expected to look anywhere but inward for some years to come.”
“‘The United States is washed up. Anybody got a cigarette?’” Bryce quoted.
“How about a beer instead? We have some of those,” Susan said.
“Sounds like a plan.” Bryce got off the couch and went to the refrigerator. The beer was homebrew, turned out by a History Department colleague from local barley. Bryce had got it by translating some Greek for him. As far as he was concerned, he’d won the exchange. Any microbrewery would have been proud of this IPA. Stuart didn’t care about that. He made enough for himself and his friends. He enjoyed brewing and he enjoyed drinking. Bryce and Susan enjoyed drinking what he brewed, too.
By the time Bryce came back with the bottles, the BBC newsreader was talking about Chechen nationalists and their long, ugly guerrilla war against the Russian government. The TV showed lean, black-bearded men in anoraks and skis with Kalashnikovs slung across their backs. Whether they had right on their side or not, they were terribly in earnest.
One of them—a leader—gave forth with a stream of impassioned gutturals. It wasn’t Russian; Bryce could speak a few words and knew the sound of the language. It had to be Chechen instead. Over his words, a few seconds later, came the suave voice of a British translator: “No matter how bad the weather becomes, no matter how hungry we grow in the mountains, we will fight on until we are free at last. Allah is great, and He is on our side. He punishes Russia with this evil weather more harshly than He lays His hand on us.”
The screen cut back to the anchorman, snug in his warm London studio. The studio might be warm. London wasn’t. Pundits worried about the failure of the Gulf Stream. If that happened, northwestern Europe would start looking like Labrador. They were on about the same latitude. As bad as things were, it was always interesting to contemplate how they could get worse.
“Mr. Kerashev may well have a point,” the BBC man said gravely. “Russia has declined to release agricultural statistics of any sort the past two years. The ones that did come from the Ministry of Agriculture before that are widely regarded as suspect even by Russian standards. Suspect though they may be, they show a sharp decline in the harvest when measured against pre-eruption benchmarks. Russia is known to be an active buyer of grain on the international market, paying for its purchases with revenue from sales of natural gas and oil.”
For the first time in its history, the United States was also a buyer of grain, not a seller. Bryce didn’t know what America was selling to finance its purchases. Selling gas and oil might mean more people would freeze. Not selling gas and oil might mean they would starve. That was what you called a bad bargain.
Now the BBC showed people in long white robes milling around and waving their arms in despair. Behind them were houses that looked like sand castles slumping into the sea. And that turned out to be pretty much what they were.
“Climate change from the supervolcano is global in its impact,” the newsreader declared. “What you see here is an Egyptian village about seventy-five kilometers south of Cairo. It could be any number of villages up and down the Nile. Since weather patterns altered in the wake of the great eruption, Egypt has got far more rain than at any time since measurements have been recorded, and very likely since the dawn of civilization five thousand years ago.”
One of the robed men shouted in Arabic. This translator spoke elegant British English with a faint Middle Eastern accent: “My house fell down! All the houses are falling down! We have lived here for generations, my family, always in this house. What are we going to do now?”
“Most buildings in Egyptian villages are made from sun-dried mud brick,” the BBC man in London noted. “This material is cheap, easily available, and adequately strong—as long as it stays dry. When rain hits it, though, it returns to the mud from which it was born.”
He paused to adjust his glasses. They sat almost as far down his nose as Bryce liked to wear his specs. “As I say, rain has come to Egypt. By European or American standards, it is a modest rain. In a country used to none, however, even a modest rain seems a monsoon. And it does more damage than a monsoon. Like a plague loose amongst people without immunity to it, Egypt has no defense against the rain.”
The screen went to more pictures of collapsed houses. Wailing women were dragging a child out of one of them. Another cut brought up a crowded urban scene. Cairo—the word appeared in glowing red letters. Some buildings there were made of stone or baked brick. But others—the ones poor people used, mostly—were falling apart.
An imam at a crumbling mosque and a priest with a bushy white beard and a large crucifix around his neck both implored their God. “In most places, people pray for rain,” the BBC man said. “Here, Muslim and Christian alike pray for drought. Egypt gets its water from the Nile. Any additions seem excessive to the populace.”
The next story was about Manchester United’s shocking defeat in Bulgaria. Bryce didn’t care enough about soccer to be shocked. He thought some more about rain in Egypt instead.
His Hellenistic poets had moved to Alexandria and worked there. The Ptolemies, in their day, were the richest patrons a poet could have. But Alexandria lay right on the Mediterranean. It had always got rain every once in a while—not very often, but enough so builders made sure what they ran up didn’t fall to bits the first time it got wet.