Siobhan nodded. �My daughter has signed up for the Animal Ethics movement.� This was a grouping determined to extend the concept of human rights to other intelligent mammals, birds, and reptiles. Its case had been reinforced by the taxonomists reclassifying the two chimp species as part of the genus Homo, along with humans�immediately making them Legal Persons (Nonhuman) with equivalent rights to humans, and indeed equivalent to Aristotle, the planet�s other fully sentient inhabitant. �It might be too little too late but��
Miriam said, �I had hopes that if we could just get through this mess of a century, we could be on the verge of greatness. And now, when the future shows such promise, this.�
Siobhan was looking absent. �I had similar conversations on the Moon. Bud Tooke said it was �ironic� this should happen just now. You know, scientists are suspicious of coincidences. A conspiracy theorist certainly might wonder if the fact that our capabilities are growing, and the arrival of this incoming disaster, at the same time, really is just bad luck.�
Nicolaus frowned. �What do you mean by that?�
�I�m not sure,� Siobhan said. �A loose thread of thought ��
Miriam said firmly, �Let�s stay focused. Siobhan, tell us what we need to do.�
�Do?�
�What options do we have?�
Siobhan shook her head. �I�ve been asked that before. It�s not as if this is an asteroid we might push away. This is the sun, Miriam.�
Nicolaus asked, �What about Mars? Isn�t Mars farther from the sun?�
�Yes�but not so far it will make a difference to anything alive on its surface.�
Miriam said, �You mentioned something about the deep life on Earth surviving.�
�The deep hot biosphere, yes. It�s thought that that�s the wellspring from which life started on Earth in the first place. I suppose that could happen again. Like a reboot. But it would take millions of years just for single-celled life-forms to recolonize the land.� She smiled wistfully. �I doubt if any future intelligence would even know we had ever existed.�
Nicolaus said, �Could we survive down there? Could we eat those bugs?�
Siobhan looked dubious. �Maybe a deep enough bunker � How could it be self-sufficient? And the surface would be ruined; there would be no possibility of reemergence. Ever.�
Miriam stood up, anger fueling her energy. �And is that what we�re to tell people? That they should dig a hole in the ground and wait to die? I need something better than that, Siobhan.�
The Astronomer Royal stood. �Yes, ma�am.�
�We�ll speak again.� Restless, Miriam began pacing. She said to Nicolaus, �We�ll have to clear my schedule for the rest of the day.�
�Already done.�
�And set up some calls.�
�America first?�
�Of course ��
She led the way from the room, energetic, bristling, planning. This wasn�t over yet. In fact this was just the beginning.
For Miriam Grec, the end of the world had become a personal challenge.
16: Debrief
Bisesa had to go through it all once again.
�And then you came home,� Corporal Batson said with exaggerated emphasis. �From this�other place.�
Bisesa suppressed a sigh. �From Mir. Yes, I came home. And that�s the hardest to explain.�
The two of them sat in George Batson�s small office, here in Aldershot. The room was painted in reassuring pastel colors, and there was a seascape hanging on the wall. It was an environment designed to reassure nutcases, she thought wryly.
Batson was watching her carefully. �Just tell me what happened.�
�I saw an eclipse ��
She had somehow been drawn into an Eye, a great Eye in ancient Babylon. And through the Eye she had been brought home, to her flat in London, to the early morning of that fateful day, June 9.
But she hadn�t come straight home. There had been one other place she had visited: she and Josh, though he had been allowed to go no farther. It had been a blasted plain of crimson rock and dirt. Thinking about it now, it reminded her of the barren wastes patiently photographed by the crew of the Aurora 1, explorers on Mars. But she could breathe the air; surely this was the Earth.
And then there was the eclipse. The sun had been high in the sky. The Moon�s shadow had drawn over the sun�but had not covered it; a ring of light had been left hanging.
Batson�s pencil made soft, careful scratching sounds, recording this fantastic tale.
The Army was trying to be fair.
After she had reported to her commanding officer in Afghanistan, she had been ordered to report to a Ministry of Defense office in London, and then sent for medical and psychological tests here in Aldershot. For the time being they allowed her to go back home to Myra each evening. They had given her a tag, though, a smart tattoo on the sole of her foot.
And now, as she waited for the results of her physical tests, she was being �debriefed,� as he had put it, by this facile young psychologist.
She had decided to tell the Army everything. She couldn�t see how it would help her to lie. And her story�if it was true�was after all of shattering, transcendent importance. She was a soldier, and she believed she had a duty: the authorities, beginning with her own chain of command, had to know what she knew, and she had to try to make them believe it.
And as for herself��Well,� as cousin Linda said cheerfully, �they can only section you once!�
The process was difficult to tolerate, though. Technically she outranked this corporal, but here in his study he was the psychologist, she the one with a screw loose; there was no question about who was in control. It didn�t help that he was so much younger than she was.
And it didn�t help that back on Mir she had known another Batson in the British Army, another corporal. She longed to ask Batson about his family background, and if he knew of a grandfather six or seven generations back who might have served on the North�West Frontier. But she knew she�d better not.
�Since our last session I looked up eclipses,� Batson said, referring to his notes. �The Moon�s distance from Earth varies a bit, it says here. So a �total� eclipse may not be total. You can have the sun and Moon centered on the same spot of sky, but with a little bit of the sun�s disk peeking out because the Moon�s apparent size isn�t great enough. It�s called an annular eclipse.�
�I know about annular eclipses,� she said. �I checked it out too. The ring I saw was much fatter than in any annular eclipse.�
�So let�s think about the geometry,� Batson said. �What are the possibilities that could produce what you saw? Maybe the sun was bigger. Or the Moon smaller. Or the Earth was closer to the sun. Or the Moon farther away from Earth.�
She was surprised. �I hadn�t expected you to analyze my vision like this.�
He raised his eyebrows. �But you keep saying it wasn�t just a vision. I showed your sketches to an astronomer friend. She told me that actually the Moon is moving away from the Earth, over time. Did you know that? Something to do with the tides�can�t say I understand it. But there it is; you can prove it with laser beams. It�s a slow drift, though. We won�t get an eclipse like yours until at least 150 million years from now.� He eyed her. �Does that number mean anything to you?�
She tried to keep herself calm, through long habit, as she processed this new and startling bit of information. �What could it mean?�
�You�re supposed to be telling me, remember. You say you�ve been shown all this�indeed you�ve been brought home�for some purpose. A conscious purpose of those whom you believe have engineered all this. The ones you call�� He checked his notes.
�The Firstborn,� she said.
�Yes. Do you have any idea why you should be selected, manipulated in this way?�
�I challenged them,� she said. Then: �I�ve really no idea. I feel I�m being told something, but I can�t figure out the meaning.� She looked at him miserably. �Does that make me sound crazy?�