Glass Sky (2 page)

His face trembled, as if he might crack, but instead Tengri composed himself, picking up his pace. The bodyguard followed, just out of earshot. Tengri weaved through the walkways, past a 20-foot-high spire of bowling balls defying gravity on the point of a small metal pyramid, into a more secluded corner of the gardens.
I guess he’ll talk about the job when he’s ready.

Tengri paused at a lawn where an eight-foot metal sculpture of the earth floated in the grip of three magnetic arms. “We’re here.” He steered towards it, through a break in the hedge.

“Wow!” said Tania. “Wow.” What had looked like a single sparkling globe was, on closer inspection, a conglomeration of tiny animal statuettes. The materials varied from creature to creature, glassy blue ocean-dwellers, copper green forest animals, coloring the whole planet as it would look from space.

“There are 2000 unique species in this sculpture,” said Tengri. “Each indigenous to the part of the globe where it appears.”

Tania slid her right hand over the polished surface. “Extinct in the wild,” she said. “All extinct.” Her left hand drifted into her pocket, fingering the coin she’d kept there for 15 years. The one from Rwanda, with the gorilla on it.
Never forget.

A worn metal face in the center of Africa matched the one on her coin. So close to human. Tania closed her eyes, surprised by the strength of her emotion. Time had dulled the memories, but one moment had seared too deeply. The female gorilla, watching from the bushes, so scared. Tania had been the one who shot the dart, ending the gorilla’s life as a wild creature forever. She had cried when they’d loaded her into the shipping container.

Tania ran her hands over the globe. At least somebody had wanted the gorillas. Most of the species she’d bio-harvested were in freezers now. Or hard drives. Just seeds, tissues, and digitally encoded DNA, stored in the vain hope that some future generation might one day resurrect the vanished forests. There were only so many zoos, and Snail World just didn’t have the same draw as Florida Gorilla Safari.

Tengri’s deep voice found her through 15 years of memories. “I had this sculpture commissioned in 2038, for the tenth anniversary of the UNBio preserves,” he said. “See, it still has the original Florida coastline. That was just six months before the ice sheet collapsed. I used to think that if we worked together, we could restore Earth to some of its splendor. Now I’m the Secretary General, and it’s all I can do to keep another blood fountain from being added next to Philadelphia.”

“And what do you think I can contribute?” asked Tania. “Do you want me to bio-harvest our remaining wildlife? Because I don’t have the emotional strength…” She let the coin drop back into her pocket. “If I’m just pulling paintings out of a burning museum…”

Tengri shook his head. “Trust me Tania. You won’t have to barbecue pandas on the Witty Show.” Tengri’s grey eyes held hers. “Earth needs a voice. Somebody ethical. Not a corrupt corporate pawn like James Wong.” The name came off his tongue like something bitter.

“So little respect for my dead predecessor,” said Tania. “Why didn’t you fire the bastard years ago?”

“He made powerful friends on the Climate Council,” said Tengri. “Their tame environmental poodle instead of my vicious guard dog. I couldn’t touch him.”

“Isn’t the UNBio Director elected by the Climate Council? What makes you think his friends on the Council will accept me in his place? I’m a political outsider. And certainly no compromiser.”

“You’re definitely not their first choice,” said Tengri. “But there’s a loophole. A clause in the UN constitution that lets me appoint an interim UNBio Director in an emergency. And with your track record in bio-reconstruction projects, you’ll be popular with the public. Hard to remove.”

He put his hands on the globe and leaned into it, pushing forward. “Help me.”

Even their combined strength wasn’t enough to budge it. Tengri was undeterred, however. He waved over two passing tourists, and with four people cooperating the globe started to move, spinning faster and faster. And as it spun, all the extinct species blurred together and a blue and green world emerged once more. They stood back, admiring.

Tengri waited until the tourists moved out of range. “This is a critical time, Tania. We’re on the edge, but there’s still a chance.” Pride flashed in his dark eyes. “Most of the UNBio preserves are still intact. There’s still something to save.”

“Yes. But…” Tania shook her head. “I don’t see how I can make a difference, Khan. With CO2 levels at 490… we’ve lost control. Sulfuring had too many side-effects. The toolbox is empty. It’s only a matter of time now.”

Tengri allowed the barest hint of a smile. He touched the sculpture, almost a caress. “We have other options besides sulfuring.”

Tania gasped. “You’ve got a new geoengineering technology? But… how… what?” She sat down at the wooden bench, facing the sculpture, stunned. “Some new form of CO2 scrubbers? No, there’s too much inertia in the system… We have to force temperatures down directly…”

“I can’t tell you the details until you get security clearance,” said Tengri. “But I need you for this Tania. There’s nobody else. We don’t get another shot at this. And it’s already going to hell. Making the most of this opportunity is going to require strong leadership, from somebody who knows the science.”

Sunlight gleamed off the Secretariat building. Life budded on the trees. A gray-haired man walked past, towing a child’s wagon with two dogs inside it. The dogs wore matching red sweaters, and had flat, goblin faces, as if they’d been pressed into a wall. A perfect spring day in New York. Except it was February.

“But I have no political experience,” said Tania. “Don’t get me wrong. I want to make a difference. But I go where I’m invited. Here, in the UN, I’ll be an unwelcome outsider. And I don’t know where the levers are to make things happen. It’s overwhelming. It’s… too important.”

Tengri joined her on the bench. “Mandela
made
himself a leader. Gates
made
himself a philanthropist. Musk
made
himself the king of the solar revolution.” Tengri put a hand on Tania’s shoulder, locking her gaze. “I’ve seen what you did in Chengdu, and Guatemala. I know what you are capable of.” He leaned towards her, lowering his voice even though they were alone. “There’s nobody else, Tania. This is our last chance. I’ve taken huge risks to open up this job.”

Cold bumps rose on Tania’s neck, though the air was still as death. “Taken risks? What do you mean?” She pushed away from him. “Wong’s accident? You did it.”

“Me?” Tengri looked around nervously. “Don’t be absurd,” he hissed. “I hired somebody.”

“You had him killed? With a car?” Tania stood up. “Jesus, Khan. Could you have been any more obvious?”

“I’m not the President, Tania. I can’t just order somebody lasered from space. I chose a sloppy contractor.”

“You chose a sloppy contractor? You had somebody murdered!” Tania backed away, feet crunching gravel. “What has this job done to you?”

Tengri looked down at his shoes, his voice soft. “I went to his funeral. I talked to his widow.” A note of defiance returned to his voice. “One hundred fifty million people died in the Asian famine last year. A famine that was a direct result of our failure to contain CO2 levels. A failure that Wong contributed to.”

“Everyone who voted for our current leaders contributed,” said Tania.

“Don’t stoop to trite arguments,” said Tengri. “A broken system doesn’t excuse the blood on Wong’s hands. We can’t hide behind the rules of the game anymore, Tania. Wong had a duty.”

They passed a minute in uncomfortable silence.

“I need your decision Tania. Are you part of this fight? Or should we let the Climate Council find someone tame, and watch the earth burn?”

A sparrow flitted onto the top of the now motionless sculpture, then into the bushes behind. Monsoon failures. Sea level rises. Droughts. Each generation’s disasters just harbingers of an ever steeper descent into chaos. And here she was, at an inflection point she hadn’t dared dream of. She thought of Percy, back in Seattle. The life she’d started to build; morning coffees in his apartment; the smell of his shaving cream. Memories. Just memories now. Like the Bluefin Tuna, and the Asian Tiger.

“Ok,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

A BLAST BARRIER surrounded the UN complex like an ancient fortress wall, punctured only by gated security tunnels. Grim-faced guards watched with disinterest as Tania stepped into the narrow corridor. Her mind spooled through possible geoengineering technologies.
Deep sea heat pumps? Ocean misting?
The steel door thudded shut, locking her into the scanning booth. She pressed her thumb onto her omni’s verification pad and waited as distant servers exchanged credentials. Hidden sensors peered through her clothing.

Reflective oils on the ocean?
Thirty minutes before her first technical briefing. And she still had no idea what the game-changing technology might be.

“Please empty your upper left jacket pocket,” crackled a voice. The exit light went from yellow to red.

My upper left pocket?
Her fingers found the sunglasses that Ruth had given her at the protest.
Oh. Shit.
She willed her hand to steadiness as she dropped them into the tray.

“These are chameleon glasses.” The voice became menacing. “Possession of counter-surveillance equipment is illegal. Where did you get these?”

“I… I found them. On the grass, near the protesters. They just looked like a nice pair of sunglasses.”

Blue scanner beams worked back and forth, back and forth, across the sunglasses.
Relax. Breathe.
If the guards felt her behavior was suspicious they could detain her without charges for up to a week.

An eternity. Then the tray snapped into the wall, taking the glasses with it. “Your story checks out, Doctor Black. The scanner shows the fingerprints of a known activist underneath yours. In the future, be careful what you pick up.” A green light blinked on, and the door unlocked with a click. Tania wasted no time getting outside.

She emerged almost underneath the Secretariat Building. A sculpture of a knotted gun reflected in the pool outside the entrance, and off to one side, twin tunnels provided vehicle access into the chaotic transportation underworld pulsing beneath the city. Tania followed the map on her omni. Secretariat, Room 317. She took the stairs to the third floor two at a time, emerging into a long hall, the doorways identical but for the numbers, the tiled floor so generic that it bordered on invisibility.

Door 317 was ajar. With a tremor of excitement she stepped into a windowless room lit by vertical strips of softly glowing Illuminex. Centered on each wall, an enormous display shifted through forest scenes. A large black man with a shaved head sat at the table, talking on his omni. He waved at Tania to sit, ended his call and offered a fist over the table in greeting. “Dr. Tania Black, I presume.” His voice had deep resonances, like an actor’s. “I’m Tetabo Molari.”

“Tania Black.”
I recognize him
. His square, strong face was hidden under years of inactivity, like a boxer embedded in dough. The face snapped to a memory.
Of course. Molari Industries.
One of the world companies. They produced everything from solar panels to satellites.
Interesting.

“Do you need a coffee? Or a snack?”

“Need? Yes. That’s the right word. I’d love a coffee please.”

“Coffee and snacks for two,” Molari told his omni. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions, Doctor Black.”

“Tania. Please.”

Molari unrolled his scroll and snapped it to full width, exposing a grid of image thumbnails. “Normally my audience is less technical. I hope you’ll bear with my presentation, Tania. I’ll start with a question I’m sure you know the answer to already. What would happen to temperatures if we stopped all CO2 emissions today? Assuming no sulfuring.”

“We’d still have a disaster,” said Tania. “CO2 acts like an insulating blanket. But we’ve added so much insulation, so quickly, that temperatures haven’t reached the new equilibrium point yet. They’ll keep rising for decades. And for everything to finish melting could take centuries, triggering more feedback loops.” She shook her head. “Methane will melt out of the permafrost. The thermohaline circulation will be disrupted. Sea levels will eventually rise between 50 and 150 meters.”

“Hence our need for geoengineering,” said Molari. “We have to force down the temperature until Earth absorbs our extra CO2. Possibly for hundreds of years.” Molari flicked an image to a wall display. It showed one of the sulfur rockets that had painted the skies silver for nearly a decade. “Sulfuring was our first attempt. Brighten the planet and reflect more sunlight into space. But as we’ve seen, it’s too blunt a tool.”

The door opened and a four-wheeled servo the size of a kitchen recycler rolled into the room. Molari lifted the lid and removed two coffee cups, filling them under the servo’s spigot. He passed one to Tania, dipped a ginger biscuit into his, and continued.

“We need a long-term solution. One that’s more refined than sulfuring.” He paused for a bite. “My company,” – another pause – “has that solution.”

Tania leaned forward.
Tell me! Tell me!

Molari picked up his coffee cup and took a long sip, savoring it. He seemed to contemplate another, suspense-prolonging sip. Then he continued, slow and emphatic.

“Instead of
reflecting
sunlight by brightening the atmosphere with sulfur, we can
redirect
sunlight in space. Stop it from ever reaching Earth. Molari enterprises can place an array of 3000 disks at L1, the point where the earth and sun’s gravities balance. Each disk will cover thousands of square miles. Collectively, the disks will cool Earth by reducing incoming sunlight, while limiting the side-effects that have made the sulfur releases so problematic.”

Tania sagged into her seat.
Is this what I got my hopes up for?
Molari raised an eyebrow. “A comment, Tania?”

“This idea is older than I am,” said Tania, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “It doesn’t matter whether you block sunlight or reflect it. The physics are similar. We get massive weather disruptions.”

Molari grinned. “What causes these disruptions?” he prompted.

She straightened.
He’s obviously thought of this. OK. I’ll bite.

“The sun is most intense in the tropics,” she began. “So blocking sunlight has the biggest effect there. CO2 on the other hand, traps heat evenly over the planet. The result is a geographical imbalance between cooling and heating. It’s like putting on warm clothing and then cooling yourself by rubbing ice on your stomach. Your average temperature may stay the same, but it’s not very pleasant.”

“This is so much easier than explaining it to politicians,” said Molari. He leaned across the table, his face twitching with excitement. “What if we could control the disks?  Not just block the sunlight, but aim it!”

Tania blinked at him in astonishment.

Aim sunlight?

A rush of possibilities. Like she’d found a room in her house that she’d never noticed before. The earth spun in her head, the atmospheric physics so familiar from her PhD. Sunlight baked the tropics, raising steaming thermals which arced towards the poles, pushed by the column rising behind. Then, as the air left the equator, it cooled, losing moisture over Brazil, Congo, Borneo, nourishing what was left of the once great rainforests. Eventually the air fell, dry now, warming as it lost altitude, creating the vast rings of desert that banded the earth from the Sahara to the Colorado Plateau, the Great Victorian Desert to the Namib. Hadley circulation. Just one of a hundred exquisite weather patterns. All powered by sunlight dancing on an earth-sized canvas.

And now Molari was saying this sunlight was controllable.

“You’ve run this through simulations?”

Molari beamed, a father showing off his new baby. “Beijing Climate University did the work. Ten years ago. We were hoping to do the same thing with targeted sulfur releases, but the upper atmosphere disperses the particles too quickly so it didn’t work in practice.” Another bite of his biscuit. “But the atmospheric physics works. We can control the weather, Tania. We can bring back the monsoons.”

“And tame tropical storms,” said Tania. She pictured a hurricane, a malevolent maelstrom of stunning white beauty. And then a shadow fell over its center sucking away the thermal energy. The edges became ragged, the eye unstable, and it evaporated into the ocean.

She chose her words carefully, balancing Molari's enthusiasm with an appropriate note of caution. “This sounds amazing. But it’s not full weather control, obviously. Sunlight is just one driver. There’s geography. And Coriolis forces. And ocean currents. And the poles are dark half the year so we’d have no sunlight to play with there.”

Molari sat back, adjusting the silk leg of his trouser. “There are limits of course. And we’re only working with theoretical models at this stage.” He eyed the two remaining biscuits.

Tania pushed the plate across the table toward him. “And what about side effects?” she asked. “Rain that falls on China can’t also fall on Mongolia. The disk array is going to require a degree of international cooperation that we’ve never seen. And the cost? How do you get the Council to pay for it?”

“It’s already approved,” said Molari. “It’s been in the works for weeks. Your predecessor, James Wong, worked out the funding.”

“Wong?” Tania asked, feeling a sudden unease. “I’m surprised. I thought he twisted everything he put his hands on.”

“Your worries are probably justified,” said Molari, his face sagging into a frown. “That’s why Tengri brought you here. This hasn’t quite gone the way we had hoped.”

***

Tania sat in a warm pool of sunlight atop the stone steps leading into the General Assembly Building, savoring the fresh New York air. During James Wong’s disastrous tenure, she’d had nothing but contempt for the UNBio Director. But now it was she who would be running UNBio. Her staff would be monitoring the state of the planet. She would be providing scientific advice for UN climate policies. Her teams would be coordinating the hundreds of interventions, from invasive species removal, to species balancing, to artificial watering holes, which protected Earth’s crown jewels. The UNBio preserves.

She skimmed through the folders full of dense documents that Tengri had just made available, running filters and automated summarizers, using the fully stretched size of her scroll to try to organize it into a coherent picture.
Damn, this is a mess.
As far as she could tell, there hadn’t been independent UNBio audits in years.

Not surprising, given the stories of corruption.

A reminder flitted across the display: climate summit starts in 15 minutes. She rolled up the scroll, tucking it into her chest quiver. Men and women strode by, the men’s gray suits a uniform that varied only in the cut and the pattern of the red tie, the women in occasional splashes of color. As she got up, a young man she didn’t recognize spotted her and hurried against the crowd.

“Doctor Tania Black? I’m glad I found you. The Secretary General wants to meet with you.”

And now I find out what’s really going on.
She followed the man into the hallway, up a flight of stairs. Another hallway.

“In here.” Two burly men stepped away from a wooden doorway.

Tania entered an opulent room, paneled wooden walls, original paintings, like a private study in a historic mansion. Khan Tengri was chatting with Tetabo Molari at the head of the heavy wood conference table. Circling the table, a dozen people sat in leather chairs. They all turned to look at Tania as she took the remaining seat.

“You must be Doctor Black, the new UNBio Director.” A short Latino woman with her hair in a French twist extended her hand across the table. “I’m Valerie Juarez.”

Tania gasped.

Opposite Tania, to either side of US President Valarie Juarez, sat Maxine van Buren, the blonde-haired President of the European Union, and Rusov Malikov, the Russian Federation President. On Tania’s left sat Lui Xing Tao, the Chinese President, and to her right Lucas Olivera, the Brazilian President. Tania wasn’t as sure about the others, but it wasn’t hard to guess.

The UN Climate Council. A group of eleven nations and regional alliances that had been created a decade ago, just before the sulfuring started.

“Madam President?” stammered Tania. “I thought you’d all be in the General Assembly Hall for the summit.”

“Nothing useful is decided in a meeting that large,” laughed the President, her brown eyes gleaming. “That’s why the Climate Council was created in the first place. History is made in back rooms.”