Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [133]
Coyote had studied these katabatic winds for some time, and his calculations had led him to believe that when conditions were right— sharp temperature contrasts, a developed storm track east to west across the plateau— then very slight interventions in certain places would cause the downdrafts to turn into vertical typhoons, smashing down into Echus Chasma and blasting north and south with immense power. When Spencer had identified for them the nature and purpose of the new settlement in Kasei Vallis, Coyote had immediately decided to try to create the means to effect these interventions.
“Those idiots built their prison in a wind tunnel,” he muttered at one point, in answer to Maya’s inquisition. “So we built a fan. Or rather a switch to turn the fan on. We dug in some silver nitrate dispensers at the top of the cliff. Big monster jet hoses. Then some lasers to burn the air just over the flow zone. That creates an unfavorable pressure gradient, damming up the normal outflow so that it’s stronger when it finally breaks through. And explosives installed all down the cliff face, to push dust into the wind and make it heavier. See, wind heats up as it falls, and that would slow it down some if it weren’t so full of snow and dust. I climbed down that cliff five times to set it all up, you should have seen it. Set some fans as well. Of course the power of the whole apparatus is negligible compared to the total wind force, but sensitive dependence is the whole key to weather, you see, and our computer modeling located the spots to push the initial conditions the way we want. Or so we hope.”
“You haven’t tried it?” Maya asked.
Coyote stared at her. “We tried it in the computer. It works fine. If we get initial conditions of hundred-and-fifty kilometer cyclonic winds over Lunae, you’ll see.”
“They must know about these katabatic winds in Kasei,” Randolph pointed out.
“They do. But what they calculated as once-a-millennium winds, we think we can create any time the initial conditions are there on top.”
“Guerrilla climatology,” Randolph said, eyes bugged out. “What do you call that, climatage? Attack meteorology?”
Coyote pretended to ignore him, although Michel saw a brief grin through the dreadlocks.
But his system would only work with the proper initial conditions. There was nothing to do but sit and wait, and hope they developed.
During these long hours it seemed to Michel that Coyote was trying to project himself through his screen, out into the sky. “Come on,” the wiry little man urged under his breath, nose against glass. “Push, push, push. Come over that hill, you bastard wind. Tuck and turn, spiral tight. Come on!”
He wandered the darkened car when the rest of them were trying to sleep, muttering, “Look, yes, look,” and pointing at features of satellite photos that none of the rest of them could see. He sat brooding over scrolling meteorological data, chewing on bread and cursing, whistling like a wind. Michel lay on his narrow cot, head propped on his hand, watching in fascination as the wild man prowled through the dimness of the car, a small, shadowy, secretive, shamanesque figure. And the bearish lump of their prisoner, one eye agleam, was likewise awake to witness this nocturnal scene, rubbing his scruffy jaw with an audible rasping, glancing at Michel as the whispering continued. “Come on, damn you, come on. Shoooooooooo . . . Blow like an October hurricane . . .”
Finally, at sunset on their second day of waiting, Coyote stood and stretched like a cat. “The winds have come.”
During the long wait some Reds had driven from Mareotis to aid in the rescue, and Coyote had worked out a plan of attack with them, based on information Spencer had sent out. They were going to split up, and come on the town from several angles. Michel and Maya were to drive one car onto the cracked terrain of the