The War of Immensities (35 page)

“How
wonderfully idealistic. Do you think you can control this, Mr
Wagner?”

“I can’t and I
don’t. The circumstances control it. These people will be
participating in the pilgrimage anyway. My plan is simply to train
them up so they can protect themselves and the others for the
duration of the pilgrimage, and presumably those that follow later.
Beyond that, they will have no particular responsibility to us
whatsoever.”

The Don walked
his patio, shaking his head, a huge grin on his face. “It is the
most extraordinary proposition.”

“We find
ourselves in very extraordinary circumstances.”

“That we do, Mr
Wagner. So tell me, should I be able to do whatever it is you
imagine I can do to assist you to achieve your objectives. What
then?”

“You mean,
what’s in it for you?”

“If you must
resort to your American colloquialisms, yes.”

“A large sum of
money.”

“Presumably,
appropriate financial exchanges will be worked out by our
accountants. That is not what I mean. My personal involvement will
be in the form of a favour to Project Earthshaker. Perhaps then, at
some mutually convenient time, a return favour might be
possible.”

“If it’s
possible, I’ll do all I can.”

“Then tell me,
Mr Wagner. How well do you know Miss Lorna Simmons?”

The convent
formed the top of a hill as they are wont to do in Italy, with the
attending village a tiered clutter of rooftops gathered about its
skirts. Down a series of narrow lanes with steps worn concave by
centuries of the tread of monks and the devoted was a small square
in the middle of the village, both horizontally and vertically
centred. There was a cafe with a nice local vintage and a good
sense of coffee and an array of tables that afforded a wide view of
the valley. You could sit there, as they did in the evenings, and
contemplate the scene below. This Brian Carrick was doing now,
alone and contemplative as he waited for the others to arrive. In
his rough hands he held some documents that he seemed to be making
a point of not reading.

Out there, you
could clearly define a full quarter of the circumference of the
circle of destruction that had descended upon the valley a week
earlier. Outside the circle, the farmers continued their timeless
toil in orange grove, vineyard and corn field, and vehicles and
pedestrians did commerce along the roads from settlement to farm.
There was an order and sense to that world that had been going on
unabated since the time of the Trojan War and still did despite the
proximity of the disaster. But within the circle, all was chaos.
The whole area was charred, with only yellow blobs of rubble here
and there. The trees that still stood were stark and leafless, and
everywhere lights flashed to direct the unwary away from the
fissures that had opened in the earth. Smoke still rose everywhere
even though all fires had been extinguished. The smoke was coming
out of the ground itself.

At the edge of
the blackened zone, you could see the cleared areas where the
bivouac tents had been erected and the casualties and homeless
originally gathered. Now the victims had all been moved off to
regional hospitals, the homeless temporarily housed and the tents
destructed. But you could still see the rough road they had forged
that circumnavigated the charred region.

Thirty or forty
times, Brian must have bounced over that road in those first
desperate days. A tank came in and ran the route, flattening
everything in its path—later they got a grader but the continual
black rain that had been falling at the time turned it into a
quagmire. Gravel had been hastily laid but that only made it
bone-shatteringly corrugated. At night it had been illuminated only
by the stroboscopic lightning forking the volcanic clouds above,
until slowly the NATO troops floodlit the whole area.

Now the lights
were gone and natural darkness was allowed to return. Now the rain
had stopped and this smoggy humid weather had hardened the ring
road into permanence—it might have been the roughest road built
since before Roman times, but it had served them well nevertheless.
The sleepers had wakened and returned to their homes, and the job
was all but done. This would probably be the last night that they
would meet in this pleasant little cafe. The lingering ash in the
atmosphere ensured that, once again, the sunset would be
stunning.

Felicity was
next to arrive, looking exhausted as she always did these days, but
that didn’t mean she didn’t spot the papers that Brian attempted to
slip into the large envelope before she got there. Brian poured her
a glass of wine and ordered more coffee.

“The special is
lasagne.”

“Sounds great,”
Felicity said as she flopped in the chair. “Who’s suing us this
time?”

There was no
point denying it. Felicity had long since figured out his
trouble.

“Not us. Me.
Judy’s lawyers. I’m sending it straight on to Joe to take care
of.”

“Oh, Brian. I’m
so sorry.”

“Strangely, I’m
not. She likes to keep life plain and simple. Larry can do that for
her.”

“Simple as
that? Fix this for me, Joe. End of story?”

“No time to do
it any other way.”

“She could try
being a little patient.”

“Nar,” Brian
heard himself laugh slightly. “I’m not the man she married. Whereas
Larry is me one step further up the line. It makes too much sense
to argue with.”

“And the
kids?”

“Work something
out when I’m in a position to do it, I guess.”

“Brian, you
can’t just dismiss fifteen years of marriage with a shrug.”

“As things
stand, that’s about all it’s worth.”

“And you?” the
doctor in her had to ask. “How are you coping?”

“Me. I’m all
right.” It was said so emphatically it had to be a lie.

“Yes, and you
look it too. Fit and calm and steady as a rock, that’s good old
Brian. But sooner or later, it’s going to hit you, mate. And
hard.”

“I know,” Brian
smiled, appreciating her generosity of spirit. “And no doubt I’ll
fold like a house of cards. We’ll just have to hope it’s later
rather than sooner, that’s all.”

“And if it’s
sooner?”

“Well, a nice
restful breakdown with you around to pick up the pieces, Fee.
That’s almost worth looking forward too.”

“Yes. I know
what you mean.”

Kevin Wagner
arrived with a squeal of tyres as he drove his shining land cruiser
to a sudden parking spot and jumped out. He wore a para-military
outfit these days, with a heavy assortment of equipment attached to
his belt, including holstered pistol and emergency flares, and even
a peaked cap which he discarded in the front seat of the vehicle to
show it was an informal occasion. He marched over and took a chair.
His paraphernalia rattled as he sat.

“God these
people are a shambles,” he exclaimed.

“Earthquakes
are prone to make people so,” Felicity pointed out coolly.

“Oh, I don’t
mean them. I’ve got used to babbling panic-stricken Italians. It’s
those bloody NATO bigwigs. Full co-operation, they call it. Total
obstruction is more like it.”

“I’ve found
them pretty helpful,” Brian said lightly.

“Very helpful
indeed,” Felicity concurred.

“You would.
They respect what you’re doing. But security, they reckon, is their
concern. Territorial bastards. They keep giving me the run-around
and bogging me down with paperwork.”

“The situation
does seem secure,” Brian ventured. Such grumbles were a nightly
event.

“Sure it was.
They brought a bloody army with them, didn’t they? Now the troops
are pulling out and there’ll be nothing left to secure.”

“Must be very
frustrating for you,” Felicity mused.

Fortunately,
Chrissie was approaching. She seemed to positively glow with
divinity these days and walked as if she was not actually touching
the ground. She smiled upon them all serenely. Brian signalled to
the waiter to supply mineral water.

“And you,”
Wagner said before Chrissie had the chance to sit. “Do you really
believe that you can just go marching off on your pilgrimage to God
knows where and expect all these people to wander out of their
houses and follow you?”

Chrissie
received the words with pious calm. “Well, they will, won’t
they.”

“They won’t be
following you. They’ll be being drawn to the focal point.”

“So will I. And
I’ll be in front of them all, so they’ll be following me. All you
have to do is direct them after me.”

“It’s a
charade.”

Chrissie
nodded. “Of course it is. But it will help to explain what’s
happening and keep it all organised. Where’s the problem?”

“What happens
when you cross Italy and reach the sea?”

“I’m organising
some boats,” Brian could not resist saying.

“For which we
are all very appreciative,” Chrissie said with a radiant smile.

Wagner held his
head in his hands, and Brian had to continue. “You’d better be.
Finding boats to carry 647 people to an unknown destination is no
small task.”

“Is that the
final number?” Felicity asked.

“Final known
number, according to Red Cross numbers. There’s still 188 people
classed as missing,” Brian pointed out.

“Harley
promised me Jerusalem,” Chrissie added, to increase Wagner’s
dismay.

“Harley would,”
Felicity sighed.

Brian had been
thinking about it. “I suppose if he places us and the control group
accurately, he can make the focal point anywhere he wants. Why not
Jerusalem?”

“Why not
indeed,” Jami Shastri said, for she had arrived in her smart hired
Celica and flopped herself down at the table while they were
talking. “The Great God Harley can do anything he wants.”

The bad
climatic conditions had worsened the blotches on her face and she
was wearing dirty jeans and a dirtier singlet. The Italian sun had
burned her skin darker than they remembered.

Brian indicated
the post-pak before him. “Anything else for Joe before I send
this?” he thought to ask.

“I sent all the
bills to him last night,” Chrissie said.

Jami chuckled.
“Old Joe has a permanently suspicious mind. He wanted a copy of all
the data we have on you sleepers. I think that’ll cover it.”

“Not
completely,” Brian said sadly. “He also wanted to know what Harley
was up to in Russia.”

“Everyone who
goes to Moscow is a spy, huh?” Jami mused.

“Joe is very
old school,” Chrissie pointed out.

“But we know
why,” Felicity said. “He had to be sure that the Mongolian sleepers
would stay where they were.”

“Yes,” Brian
added. “Otherwise he would not have been able to land us all so
neatly in the lobby of the Hong Kong Sheraton.”

“There was
another reason,” Jami said sublimely. “He was also investigating
the Tunguska event.”

At this word,
Brian almost jolted out of his chair. It was as if he, rather than
Chrissie, was the one having a revelation.

“I know about
this,” he said excitedly. “Collision between the earth and a comet
in Siberia at the turn of the century.”

“Right on,
Brian. 30th of June, 1908,” Jami elaborated. “Bright lights in the
sky, biggest bang ever recorded, massive shockwave, forest
flattened for miles around, but no impact crater at the
middle.”

“They thought
it a comet entirely made of ice that melted in the atmosphere,
causing a huge explosion but no crater,” Brian explained, hardly
able to control his enthusiasm.

“There are
other theories,” Jami said with amusement.

“All of which,
I understood, were discredited,” Brian said with a frown.

“More or less,”
Jami replied blithely. “But consider a singularity, or mini-black
hole as they are sometimes called, for instance.”

“If they
exist,” Brian persisted.

“Exactly,” Jami
nodded. “This thing would be about the size of a pinhead but weigh
as much as Manhattan Island. It would cause such an explosion but
leave no crater.”

“It might, if
it existed,” Brian stonewalled.

“Try having an
open mind, Brian,” Jami sighed. “Black holes are dead matter with
the atoms compressed so tightly that if all the matter in the earth
was so compressed, it would be reduced to the size of a basketball.
An object of such weight would hit the earth and pass straight
through.”

“And then there
would have to be a similar explosion when it came out the other
side of the world,” Brian was sure. “Which didn’t happen.”

“Precisely,”
Jami said with a triumphant smile. “That was why the idea was
generally rejected. But suppose it never got out the other side.
What if it was captured by the earth’s gravity and pulled into
orbit while still inside the crust. It would then orbit the earth’s
core, eating up all the matter in its path, growing larger and
heavier. Devouring the inside of the planet like a worm in an
apple.”

“What a
horrifying thought,” Felicity gasped.

“If it was
getting heavier,” Brian considered, “wouldn’t that mean its orbit
would grow smaller?”

“We would have
to suppose so,” Jami agreed. “Eventually, it would be the size of
an orange and settle at the centre of the earth, still dragging
matter from all around it. And then finally, the rest of the earth
would collapse into the vacuum at the centre, and that would be the
end of everything.”

“And you think
that’s happening?” Chrissie gasped in horror.

“Maybe. It was
when Glen, our computer modeller at MIT, started his models off
from the 30th of June, 1908, that we then got a fixed longitude for
this event. So it fits.”

“Jesus,” Wagner
said. “So that’s it. We’re all doomed.”

“If the theory
is right,” Jami said.

“And it
probably isn’t,” Brian told them determinedly. “Mini-black holes
are only theoretical. They exist only as a mathematical
construct.”