Portent (40 page)

    as far as most scientists are concerned. To be honest, I'm not very happy with it myself.'

    'Then now's the time you've got to believe it, because that's what's happening at this very moment. The world is changing itself because of the terrible damage we've inflicted upon it, particularly over the latter half of this century. You might say we finally broke the camel's back and now we're being given a harsh lesson.'

    Sheridan was already shaking his head in disbelief, but Rivers pressed on, unperturbed.

    'The worst part is that there's nothing we can do now to stop it. We've fucked up our planet and we're paying the price.'

    'You said the Earth exists to sustain us. Why isn't it doing just that?'

    'You've missed the point. It is. There was a report in this morning's newspaper about plankton rising to the surface of the world's oceans.'

    'Yes, yes,' Sheridan said impatiently. 'It's mostly in the northern and southern regions. We're quite mystified.'

    'Don't you see? Think of the change it will make to the atmosphere. The planet has increased its own method of controlling the poisons in the air. And maybe it's even showing us a way of helping ourselves. If we could actively encourage the growth of plankton in the seas-mass introduction of fertilizers and iron filings are two ways-then we'd be improving the balance by our own efforts.'

    'We'd still have to bum fuels for the energy every country needs. We can never escape that vicious circle.'

    'No, we're almost within reach of the answer to that problem. Right at this moment we're being given time to develop a limitless source of pollution-free power without using up diminishing natural resources.'

    'I take it you're referring to nuclear fusion.'

    'That's it.'

    'The anti-nuclear lobby wouldn't agree with you.'

    'They're misguided. Nothing can prevent our scientific progress and the real truth is that only a small part of it has been harmful.'

    'But we're years away from solving the problems of nuclear fusion.'

    'And we're being given a breathing space until we do. Just another example of the changes taking place is happening not a couple of miles away from this office. You must be aware of the hot water geysers that are breaking through in places we would have thought impossible before today.'

    'Yes, we've had reports of them coming in from all over the world for the past twenty-four hours. It's even happening in desert areas.'

    'Then don't you understand? They're a purer source of energy for us, something we can harness and use. We'll no longer be so dependent on fossil fuels. And there'll be other ways of channelling natural energy, I'm sure of that.'

    A sharp knock on the door startled them all. The door opened and Marley's head peered round. 'You're going to be awfully late, Charles. I've finished your notes and your car's ready and waiting.'

    'Thank God for small mercies,' Sheridan snapped as he quickly rose from the desk. He strode briskly to the door and snatched the clipboard and other papers from Marley. His tone was severe when he turned back to Rivers. 'I'm sorry. I made a big mistake in assigning you to Hugo-as debilitated as you were, you'd have been more use here at the centre. Hugo's a good man, with a fine brain, but he sent you off on a wild-goose chase.' He held up a hand to stop not Rivers', but Diane's protest. 'I don't know where you got these ideas from, Jim, and frankly, I don't want to know. All I can tell you is that they're beyond all natural comprehension.'

    'Charles, listen to me…'

    'Enough! How do you think I could explain what you've told me to the PM? For God's sake, he'd not only think I've gone off my rocker and dismiss me instantly, but he'd shut down the whole department also. No, I made a mistake-you've been working too long and too hard and you still haven't got over the trauma of your accident. Now not another word! We'll talk again when things have settled-if they ever settle again.'

    With that he left the room and they listened to two sets of footsteps receding down the corridor, Marley obviously accompanying the Research Director right to his waiting car. Rivers could imagine the smirk on Marley's face.

    He turned to Diane and breathed a resigned sigh. 'And I didn't even tell him all of it,' he said.

    

    

    'You don't seem angry.'

    They had reached the research centre's porticoed entrance and Diane and Josh were hurrying to keep up with Rivers.

    He stopped before going through the glass doors. 'I spent most of last night thinking over everything the old man had told me, and all this morning worrying about it. But now I've warned Sheridan and given him the opportunity to pass on the information to higher authorities it's as if a weight's been lifted from my shoulders. I didn't expect him to believe it anyway-it sounded crazy even to me. Yet somehow I feel free. Whatever's going to happen will happen and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. All we can do is look after ourselves.'

    Diane felt Josh tugging at her skirt. 'Mama, Eva's frightened,' the boy said, his sad eyes piercing into hers.

    'I still couldn't get through to Hazelrod,' she said to Rivers. 'Either there's a fault, or the phone's been left off the hook. I know something's wrong, Jim, and so does Josh.'

    Rivers crouched so that his face was level with the boy's. 'Okay, Josh. We're going home now. Everything's going to be okay, you'll see.'

    He straightened and pushed the door open. The wind hit them immediately and Diane had to grip Josh's hand tightly to help him along.

    'I'll drive,' Rivers said when they reached the car. Diane handed him the key and helped Josh into the back seat. She belted him in and hugged him.

    'Let's hurry, Jim,' she said as she climbed into the passenger seat. 'I've got a bad feeling about Eva.'

    Rivers switched on the engine. 'Josh is spooking you.'

    'The Dream Man said the children have to be protected.'

    It was pointless to try and comfort her with assurances he hardly felt himself; the main thing now was to get back to Hazelrod as quickly as possible. Rivers checked the petrol gauge and swore under his breath. 'We should have filled up at the airport. Look, there's no service station on the motorway so I'll have to find a garage before we get on to the best route. It'll only take us ten minutes out of our way.'

    'Just hurry, Jim.'

    Ignoring the grounds' speed restriction, he put his foot down and the car roared along the tarmac drive. He pulled out into the main road with barely a glance to the right and took the road leading down towards the great metropolis. There was a garage he often used not far away and it was this he was headed for.

    Less than a minute later it was Diane who was telling him to stop the car and as he slowed down and pulled over he realized why.

    They had reached a rare vantage point on the ridgeway that offered a limited view of the sprawling city in the distance. Rivers wondered if there were any more shocks in store for him and the answer was in front of him.

    'Oh Jesus Christ…' he said, closing his eyes momentarily against the sight.

    A great black cloudbank filled the northern sky, its approach steady and plainly discernible. Within it there was shadowy movement as huge vapours tumbled over each other, their turmoil lit by occasional lightning flashes. But as awesomely threatening as was this tenebrous, nocturnal backcloth, it was what it highlighted that sent a chill through Rivers and Diane.

    Hanging in the air above the city were seven tiny portents of light.

    As Rivers opened his door and stood beside the vehicle, one arm leaning against its roof, he remembered the light he had imagined just before the earth tremor struck and he wondered now if this had been some kind of precognition.

    Lightning flashed again inside the disordered clouds, brightening their underbellies, and he heard the thunder rumble among them. Birds in the trees around him took to the air, their cries shrill and piercing as they scattered here and there, swooping and soaring in disarray, some of them plummeting to the ground where they dashed themselves against the road.

    The thunder, barely audible under the shrieking of the birds, faded. But a new kind of thunder had roused itself. And this was from the earth itself.

    The city below began to quiver.

    Lightning flashed again and this time it escaped the confines of the cloudbank to capture the small lights below in its glare. For a brief moment the seven lights disappeared, absorbed into the mass, becoming one with it; but when the lightning's force had been spent, they were left with tiny flickering lines of electricity emanating from them, jagged lines which grew bolder and stronger so that they stretched through the sky to join with each other, linking the shining orbs and forming a thin web of light over the city.

    The low rumbling swelled and sky thunder joined its roar once more.

    To Rivers' eyes it was as if the whole city had become unfocused, the buildings and towers shivering in a paroxysm that failed to ebb.

    The first tall building began to topple.

    A cloud of dust hung over the shattered city as rescuers dug into the rubble with bare, bleeding hands, occasionally stopping to listen for the faint cries of survivors buried below. They used crowbars to raise the steel girders and pickaxes to smash through collapsed woodwork and debris. From the northern city of Kirovakan to the Turkish border near Kars, towns, villages and the land itself had been devastated by the earthquake's savage force. The deeply religious Armenian people had thought that the tiny star that had appeared just before the tremor began was a sign that God would end the persecutions and misfortunes that had blighted their and their forebears' lives for the past century, and the earthquake that followed told them they were wrong.

    Yet still they prayed as they tore and scratched at the ruins; and screamed in terror when the first aftershock struck.

    Nobody could remember a longer drought in the history of America's Midwest and for months small and, at least, containable fires had plagued the pine forests along Green Bay near the borders of Wisconsin and Michigan. But on this day, when star-like lights had appeared over the treetops, high winds had united the scattered blazes into one huge conflagration that advanced on the lumber town of Peshtigo as a massive wall of searing heat. As the townfolk fled, their houses crumpled like paper and rooftops flew into the air to become fireballs themselves. Many of the people tried to escape in cars and trucks, but the fierce heat melted tyres and cracked windscreens; others took to the Peshtigo River, submerging themselves but perishing the moment they surfaced and inhaled air that had, itself, become incendiary. The driven fire created an enormous updraught and hurricane-force winds whirled through the region, destroying everything in their paths. Onwards they sped, vortexes of wind and fire, hungry for nourishment, bent on total destruction.

    Above it all a vast cloud of smoke darkened the morning sun, changing its brightness to a dark red hue, the colour of running blood.

    

    

    The city had once been an important oasis on the Silk Road trade route to central Asia, but was now the economic centre of Xinjiang. Before it sprawled the great Taklimakan Desert, 130,000 square miles of shifting sands, and reports had arrived with desert-travellers of a strange light that glowed above the dunes. It shone, they said, with the pureness of a star and the glitter of a rare jewel. The more curious citizens set out to discover this wondrous thing for themselves, unconcerned that the way would be dark;

    those too idle, or too sceptical, to embark on such a mission bade the wanderers to bring back proof of the phenomenon-photographs or even the object itself, if that were possible.

    Many watched the great desert from balconies or high windows, waiting for the bold ones to return with tales and evidence of this marvel, and as they watched they became aware of an immense yellowish wall that loomed out of the darkness to advance on the city like some colossal tidal wave. But this was not from the distant ocean; this was from the desert itself. This was the desert itself.

    It was as if the strong winds from the east had coaxed the sand to rise up as a whole and transport itself through the night to smother every town and village in its path in an avalanche of grit and dust. Even the hills around the city could not contain its force and when the sandstorm, a mile high and many more across, struck Kashi, frail buildings collapsed and people and vehicles still on the streets were tossed into the air to be buried by sand within seconds wherever they came to rest. Soon only the top lights of the hardiest buildings could be seen and these too were extinguished when the spinning sand clogged the city's power stations.

    

    

    They thought the sun had found a playmate. The smaller sun -much too high for its size to be determined-spiralled around its larger counterpart and the workers in the olive groves shielded their eyes from its glory. Only when clouds scudded across the natural sun's face did they understand that the smaller one was within the Earth's own confines and that it was not some faraway playful planet. A spaceship, they murmured. Others disagreed. A fire devil, they opined. An Angel of Death, muttered an old woman whose hands were gnarled and disfigured from more than seventy years working the fields and orchards, and whose face was leathered and wrinkled from those same years under the burning sun. The peasants (and peasants they were, for Calabria's three provinces, Cosenza, Catanzaro and Reggio di Calabria, had never caught up with modem industry and even the mountainous terrain sought to hinder their mainstay olive trade) looked on as the mysterious light suddenly dropped to a point just above the treetops.