“Winter just started,” I said.
Ranev took on an admonishing tone. “Asha… come on. It’s not a symbol. Winter always starts about this time of the year at your centre.”
I turned back and smiled, and put on a small chuckle for his benefit. “Yeah. I know.”
But the flakes were coming thick now, and burying the grounds in snow.
PART THIRTEEN — DIAGNOSES
1. Committee
The word spread through the Refugee Service as quickly as the snow piled up around the centre: a world was dying, and we would soon be called on to save as many as we could. The pictures from Ardëe were terrifying. The sun bristled in the sky, coronal mass ejections bursting out every few minutes and spitting more plasma into the solar system. The storm of charged particles smashed into Ardëe’s magnetic field, making auroras flare up from pole to equator, so bright they turned night into day. The frail magnetic protection that had kept the sun’s electromagnetic gales away from the planet for billions of years was being battered into submission, allowing the solar hurricane to strip away the upper layers of atmosphere. Views from space showed a churning stream of air blasting away from the planet for millions of kilometres, as though Ardëe had been turned to a streaking comet. The ozone layer was already gone, and standing outside in the daytime could result in first degree burns just from the ultraviolet. The shower of deadly light did even worse: it fused nitrogen and oxygen together to make nitrogen dioxide, a dirty brown gas you could see polluting the clouds of Ardëe. The slight protection it gave from the UV was no consolation for the acid rain, or the freezing cold that would settle on the world as it blocked out the rest of the sun’s light. The turbulence stirred up by the fleeing atmosphere set off shrieking winds and storms, overwhelming the weather control systems and making it even worse. If the sun continued these outbursts, then eventually there wouldn’t be any air left to breathe; but it seemed hardly likely anyone would be left by then. The death toll was already more than a million only days after the sun went into this new phase, on a planet of nine billion closely packed people.
“Nine billion…” said the ambassador from Ardëe, beneath the vast screen in the IU Assembly Hall that showed the pictures of apocalypse. Handheld footage now, of people streaming from vast, sky-arcologies into the undercities, crowds looking up at cavern roofs, fearing collapse as the cityscrapers above groaned under the typhoon’s assault. “Nine billion people… who have less than a year to live.” There were already tears tracking down his face. “My own cityscraper… Erbesoon… fell last night. I…” And the grief choked him, but he waved away an assistant. Hundreds of representatives watched him in the assembly hall, many more observing remotely.
I watched from my office: I’d seen many apocalypses before, but it never prepares you for the raw grief of someone who has just seen his planet begin to die.
“My world is ancient, and proud, and famous, and doomed,” said the ambassador. “And perhaps we built too high. Perhaps there are too many of us. Perhaps only a few need to survive… but there are nine billion who will die if the Interversal Union cannot act…”
A chime came from my office wall and dampened the sound. It was the call I had been expecting: a conference, assembled on screens because none of us had time to get to a remote meeting room. They popped up on my wall one by one: Mykl Teoth in his office; Baheera om-challha Isnia on the Lift, making what looked like an ascent, though it was hard to tell; Koggan BanOrishel somewhere outdoors in Hub Metro, blue lights reflecting on a metre-thick crystal wall behind him; Eremis Ai walking through the new ICT headquarters; Henni Ardassian using a pad, sitting in the back of the IU Assembly Hall itself; no one else. Quorate enough for decisions.
“I’m addressing the assembly as soon as the ambassador from Ardëe is finished,” said Henni. “So let’s make this quick. We’ve gone from thinking a worst case scenario was a ten year evacuation to having only eight or nine months. No matter what the ambassador says, we’re probably only going to be able to get a billion out.” She shook her head. “Only!”
“How the hell did it happen…?” asked Koggan.
“We don’t know and I’m not discussing it now. I only want opinions about what happens to the group, given that resources are going to be very thin for the foreseeable future. We’re going to need the centre back, for a start. We’ll be flooded with refugees and we won’t have enough room for them as it is.”
“I think, for our purposes, I’d like the group to continue with Dr Singh,” said Eremis. “I’m not too worried where. Hub Metro would actually be more convenient.”
“I don’t want them outside a secure environment,” said Koggan. “There’s only two places we can keep them: the Psychiatric Centre or the Correctional Facility. I suppose you don’t want the latter.”
“The Psychiatric Centre isn’t the best place for them either,” said Mykl.
“We can provide something,” said Baheera, making Henni frown for a moment. “I think I can loan you a high security negotiation facility, at least in the short term.”
“Well,” said Henni. “That’s a solution for now…” she looked up at a sound in the Assembly Hall; the ambassador choking back tears.
I drew a breath. It was time to own up to my own frailties, much as I didn’t want to. “There’s another problem,” I said.
“Yes,” agreed Henni without letting me finish. “We might need to reassign you to the evacuation. You have no idea how big this is going to be. I’m about to ask for half the IU budget for the next five years to cover it.” She pushed on, overriding what she assumed would be my objections. “I know what you’re going to say, I know you’ve got your moral obligation, but there’s going to be at least a billion people coming out of Ardëe and we’ve never handled those kinds of numbers before.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said.
“Well? What did you mean?” demanded Henni, eyes flicking up at the events in the IU Assembly Hall.
“You might need to find someone else anyway.”
“I’m sorry…?”
“I might have to spend some time away from the group. And… I might be joining my species, on the colony world.”
“You’re what?”
Mykl didn’t share Henni’s outrage. He’d been the one to arrange the therapy with Ranev. “Medical reasons?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“At a time like this?” demanded Henni.
“I might not be much help,” I said.
“We’ll be sorry to lose you,” said Eremis. “But I think we would understand if you had to go.”
Henni shook her head in exasperation, then looked up at another sound in the hall. “I’m on. We’ll talk about this another time.”
She switched off her pad, and her screen was replaced with a feed disconnected icon. The others made haste to turn to the news channel, just as I did.
An assistant led the ambassador from Ardëe away, still weeping as images from his world played on the screen behind him. A view from space, lit up with the blue glow of cities spraying out across a continent. The lights flickered and died from electrical overload as electronics all over the world failed in the teeth of the solar storm. Someone had the decency to fade out the image as the ambassador was taken outside, and it was replaced with a simple caption: Henni Ardassian, Director, Refugee Service.