The Spell of Rosette - Kim Falconer [154]
‘But not all?’ Zero frowned.
‘No, not all. Then along came ASSIST.’ She collected the mugs from the table and took them to the sink. ‘They had a great idea.’
‘The solar shield?’ Zero asked, watching Kreshkali pace back and forth.
‘ASSIST thought if they launched a thousand orbital satellites that unfurled into a lattice of solar panels they would not only reduce infiltration of UV light, but also provide a constant power source—under their control.’
‘I take it things went bad?’ An’ Lawrence said.
Kreshkali stopped pacing and returned to the table. ‘Very bad.’ She sat back down, slumping in her chair. ‘The seas were in big trouble with the death of so much plankton. It caused a particular organism to flourish, blue-green algae. It’s virtually immune to high levels of UV. It reproduced unchecked, choking out much of the biomass, so ASSIST launched their solar shields protocol and the sea-devils were released.’
‘Sea-devils?’ An’ Lawrence rubbed his temples.
‘Tiny marine flagella engineered to feed on the algae. Unfortunately, those devouring devils went to work on everything aquatic, not just the target species, and the balance between the cyanobacteria…’
‘The what?’ An’ Lawrence pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘Blue-green algae.’ She sat up straight. ‘The balance tipped. The oceans became cesspools, and the solar shields—designed to filter UV—soaked up far too much light. It enhanced the greenhouse effect instead of lessening it…’
‘Greenhouse?’
‘Global warming,’ Kreshkali said, before An’ Lawrence could ask more. ‘Effectively, a sudden rise in temperature and a melting of the polar icecaps. The seas rose, tropical reefs expired, and the weather altered more radically than the natural course of events would have seen. Jarrod predicted it for them. They didn’t listen.’ She put the kettle on.
‘Jarrod?’ An’ Lawrence and Zero asked at the same time.
Before the kettle boiled she’d explained as best she could what a quantum sentient was. An’ Lawrence closed his eyes and rubbed his face. Zero sat very still, staring at the wall.
‘That’s why we have a perpetually brown sky, acid rain, virtually no pure water, and a planet losing hundreds of species to extinction daily. Oh, yes,’ she said, almost as an afterthought, ‘the tectonic plates shifted, submerging and rearranging the continents. Millions of people gone…’
No-one spoke for some time.
‘I don’t begin to understand half of this,’ Zero said. ‘But why don’t they take the solar shields down, if they know they’re the cause?’
‘They don’t want to lose the power.’
‘Power?’
‘As long as the shields remain in place, ASSIST has the only viable energy source left. They don’t want to give that up.’
‘Better to reign in hell…?’ An’ Lawrence said the words slowly.
‘You’ve been reading Milton? Good.’
‘Your writers are interesting.’
She looked past him to the bookshelves. ‘They were,’ she said. ‘Now, back to logistics. We have to bring the solar shields down and we can’t do that without Jarrod.’
‘And he can’t come back until the worm is destroyed?’ Zero asked. ‘Right?’
‘You’re catching on, lad.’ She returned to the table with three new mugs of tea, the scent of cinnamon, clove and orange peel wafting behind her.
‘Kali,’ An’ Lawrence asked, ‘how long would he have from when he crossed over to that worm device getting to him? Days? Hours? Minutes?’
‘Good question. A day or two, three at the most, provided there are no witch-trackers about.’
‘And what’s the square surface of the ASSIST fortress?’
She wrote a set of equations and pushed them across the table to An’ Lawrence. He did some calculating of his own and pushed the paper back.
‘That’s a lot of explosives, Sunshine,’ she said.
‘But can you get it?’
She looked at the sparkling bottles of water stacked high against the wall. ‘I can get us anything we want,’ she smiled. ‘Are we going to blow something up?’
‘Seems that would solve the problem clean and simple,