Crawford Kilian - Tsunami - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

Many government agencies were nominally open, but their employees did not turn up to work. A few, mostly in agriculture and transport, paid their employees in agency scrip which could be exchanged for some resource the agency possessed. So a day of work might earn a gallon of gasoline, which one could then trade on the black market for a case of canned tuna — perhaps, if one felt like speculating, for a couple of cartons of cigarettes.

The University of California was one of those agencies, sustaining its employees out of a dwindling stock of gasoline, tools, lumber and services. Kirstie had been promised some support until the end of her appointment in June, but did not expect it to last that long; she had, in any case, no students.

With Pacific Institute of Oceanography gone, Don now spent part of his days working for Berkeley relief organizations, and had already left for half a day’s work on a salvage crew. It was an early March morning, unusually clear and sunny. Kirstie wished she could stay inside and enjoy it; instead she put sunblock on her face and hands, tied a big straw coolie hat to her head, and left the house. The next-door neighbour waved from her living-room window, and Kirstie waved back.

That was something: the neighbours looked after one another now, protected one another. In the past month, the Kennards had gotten to know almost everyone for blocks around. First it had been simple self-defence: disarming the half-crazy teenager in the Tudor house who had been shooting at everyone. Then it had been a rapid growth of what Don called “housewives’ communism,” as people pooled their resources and lent one another a hand. Lately it had formalized into block committees and local councils — locals for short. They were made up of people in neighbourhoods who looked after each other and negotiated for help with other locals or the remaining government agencies.

Kirstie walked quickly down the hill to Telegraph and then on to the campus. In the Physics Building, four or five families were tidying up the first-floor lounge where they had lived since the waves. They recognized her, and waved as she passed; she waved back, and ran up to Sam Steinberg’s office on the third floor.

He was already there, hunched up in a shabby old wind-breaker with his feet on his desk. Einar, in a red-and-white striped soccer shirt, was scribbling on the chalkboard. It was cold in the office, and the only light came from the west-facing window.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” said Sam. He held up an opened envelope. Kirstie took it as she sat down and read the letter it held.

“That’s absurd,” she said. “Why should they postpone your renewal appeal indefinitely?”

“My sources tell me the university is about to close down. Indefinitely. Why fire me when we’ll all be on the street in a few days?”

“Close down Berkeley?” Kirstie shook her head slowly. “Just lock up one of the best universities in the world and walk away? I don’t believe it. Who told you?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s true, though. Thanks anyway for all the help you’ve been. I’m grateful for it.”

“If they close down, what are we going to do?” Kirstie murmured. “We’re barely scraping along as it is.”

“Go to work for the Berkeley local.”

“Oh sure, but how much longer will they last? Don brings home some pretty grim rumours.”

“All of them true.” Sam rubbed his hands together, trying to warm them. “But starving slowly beats starving fast.” He glanced at Einar’s chalkboard equations and seemed to lose interest in the university and the local. “Oho. Very pretty… very nice. Tidy rather than elegant — and equation six leads to—”

“A drop in energy output of about one per cent, for five thousand to fifty thousand years before reignition. But the flare activity should last only one or two hundred more years before it becomes normal again.”

“What is this you’re talking about?” Kirstie asked.

Einar smiled at her, his breath frosty in the cold room. “My solar model. What it shows is that the sun has gone out. Turned itself off.”

“Ah. And what’s that shining outside then?”

“The sun. It’s just starting to cool.”

“It looks from Einar’s model as if nuclear fusion isn’t a constant process in the sun,” Sam explained. “It runs for a while and then switches itself off. When that happens the sun begins to cool off and shrink, pulled in by its own gravity. Eventually the shrinkage gets fusion going again. So the sun puffs up and down.”

“And how long did you say we have until it puffs up again?” she asked Linar.

“Five thousand to fifty thousand years. Then fusion for at least fifty thousand years, maybe much more. And so it goes.”

“Don’t look so surprised, Kirstie,” said Sam. “It’s not exactly a bolt out of the blue. We’ve suspected something like this for years, ever since they tried catching solar neutrinos and there weren’t any. Einar figures the sun’s been turned off for several thousand years, and the effect has finally started working its way to the surface.”

“Are you saying that it might get really cold for a long, long time?”

“Yes,” said Einar. “Do you know the old Norse mythology? At the end of the world, the World Serpent under the sea comes up again and makes huge waves. Fenrir the wolf runs free, killing people. Then come three years without a summer, the Fimbulwinter, and then the ice giants come to fight the Aesir at Ragnarok. The giants win.”

The three of them walked down to the civic centre, staying out of the sunshine and happily talking shop. Kirstie told them about the new climatic regime that seemed to have settled over the northern hemisphere.

“I’ve done some rough calculations on the amount of snowfall this past winter. It’s rough because I don’t have anything like complete data, especially for this last month, but it doesn’t look as if the snow could begin to melt over the summer. Next winter we’ll see more snow on top of it, and still less melting the following summer. Between what Don’s told me about that Antarctic surge, Einar’s solar model and my snowfall calculations, I’d say we were well into a new ice age.”

Einar grunted. “Maybe Iceland will be a good place to be, then. We are used to it. And we have plenty of volcanic energy.”

“Any kind of energy would help just about now,” Sam grunted. “I am getting damn tired of freezing indoors and walking outdoors.”

Two portable generators, guarded by policemen with shotguns, hammered away behind City Hall. Inside, the offices looked almost normal: typewriters clattered and fluorescent lights glowed. But the people looked tired and dirty. Most of the men wore new beards; most of the women had cut their hair short to make it easier to care for. The place smelled like a locker room.

The receptionist was a big, burly man with a nightstick on his desk. He nodded as they approached him.

“Hi, Sam. Einar. Got a meeting?”

“Nope,” said Sam. “We’re looking for full-time jobs.”

“Full-time! What a compliment to our working conditions and wages and fringe benefits. Go see Bernie. I hear he’s looking for people.” He pointed with the nightstick to the far corner of the crowded office behind him.

Bernie turned out to be the young medical student who had been working in the school on Francisco Street after the waves. He looked thinner and older; his desk was piled high with paper.

“Sure, I remember you,” he said to Kirstie. “And you guys. I’ve seen you around since then. And now you need a full-time job, okay. Got any medical training?”

“No. I’m a climatologist. Not very useful, I’m afraid.”