Jack McDevitt - The Devil's Eye

"In addition, we will evacuate many of our citizens, and we are working to find other solutions. "Now, I must be honest with you. When the burst has passed, we will not be able simply to return to the land. It will probably not be possible, for many years, to do any farming. To compensate, we will be expanding our synthetic food capabilities. We are taking other steps as well to protect ourselves. But our greatest need at the moment is for everyone to remain calm. If we see this through together, if we unite in the cause of our common safety, we have nothing to fear."

Kilgore continued another three or four minutes in that vein. He announced the formation of a global executive committee to oversee what he called global security strategy. (That sounded as if the Thunderbolt were merely something to be gotten through. A severe storm, perhaps, or an incursion by foreign spies.) He promised to report regularly on what the committee was doing, and told us that while it wasn't going to be easy, he knew that the people of the world would rise to the occasion. "Let us then go forward together. Let our response in the trying days ahead become our legacy to our sons and daughters. And if Salud Afar endures for a million years, they will say this was her finest hour."

Then he was gone. "You know," said Alex, "the guy read the book after all." "Which book?" He looked at me and shook his head. "Let it go, Chase."

I was due at Global to do my interview with Peifer. When I went up to the roof to get a taxi, a small crowd had gathered, and they were talking in hushed voices about the end of the world. "The Administrator said it's going to happen." "That can't be right. What the hell's he know?" "-Never got it straight before-" "-All going to die-" "-Crazy-" "-We're going to my cousin's. Voka's. He's in a safe place away from here-" Down in the street it sounded as if people were yelling at one another. Twenty minutes later I arrived at Global. It's a ground-level pad, and the same thing was happening. Everybody was scared, and nobody was talking about anything else. Peifer was waiting for me in the executive offices. Staff members were running around, peering into displays, talking into their links. "Looks busy," I said. "You kidding? This is the biggest story ever. Why the hell didn't you and Alex tell me what you were onto?" "We didn't know. I didn't know until I looked up and saw that empty sky." "Empty sky? What empty sky? "From the asteroid." He escorted me to his office. Somebody came in and took pictures. Lots of pictures. Most of them had me standing, looking up at the Lantner monument and the sky beyond. "You know," he said, "when the critical information comes from looking up and seeing nothing , it really doesn't work well for pictures." "I'll try to do better next time, Rob." "You should have brought Alex along," he said. "You didn't ask." "I didn't know we were looking at anything like this. I thought it was about corruption. I thought the bastards knew a major downturn was coming, and they were in collusion with-" He stopped and stared at me. "Never mind. I've got a few questions for you." "What kind of reaction is the Administrator getting?" "Right now," he said, "they want to hang him." "I'm sorry to hear it." "He deserves what he gets. He stood by and let his friends run things. As long as you were loyal to the bastard, you couldn't do anything wrong. Anyhow, I wouldn't be surprised if he was privy to it from the

beginning." Somebody knocked on the door. He said, "Come in." A middle-aged woman, looking frazzled. "Rob," she said, "check the stream." Peifer turned on the HV. It was tuned to Global. We got pictures of a riot in a time zone on the far side of the planet. "-And several hundred arrested." The voice was a baritone. "It started in midafternoon, more than an hour before the Administrator spoke. So far, there are seventeen known dead, and forty or fifty known injured, John."

Peifer brought up the location. It was Baranda, a place I'd never heard of before. "No big deal," he said. "People there are always rioting about something." They went back and showed a recorded clip of a man throwing a child from a rooftop ten or eleven stories high. Then jumping himself. And there was a report that the Coalition Data Collection Agency was overwhelmed with protests. Around the world, action committees were already forming, prayer meetings were being scheduled, and politicians in the Administrator's opposition party began to argue that either Kilgore had been negligent or we were overreacting. "Well," Peifer said, "it looks as if you and your partner have had an impact."

When it was over, I headed for the spaceport, where Alex had said he would wait. I'd expected an angry crowd, but the place was, if anything, deserted. Alex was waiting in the departure area. The shuttle, though, was full. A woman on the flight told me she and her family were leaving the next day for Toxicon. "We got our tickets weeks ago. It was going to be a vacation. I think we were lucky." Two families were leaving on one of the tour ships. For Rimway. "Thank God we have Belle ," I told Alex. "I wouldn't want to be trying to go anywhere on public transportation." Alex was looking out as we passed through the cloud cover. "I guess bad news is always good for somebody. Your buddy Ivan will make a fortune." "Starlight Tours will." We watched the newscasts during the ascent. They were filled with reports of people talking about leaving Salud Afar, of scientists disputing the government's claims, and of political commentators demanding that Kilgore be removed from office. Others maintained it was a conspiracy to drive prices down and allow some wealthy individuals to expand their holdings. Or to allow Kilgore to establish dictatorial powers. Some people said they didn't give a damn what was coming, nobody was going to chase them out of their homes. Angry editorials were showing up: The explosion happened 1200 years ago, and we're just finding out about it now? And: Kilgore may have known. And: Time to build space arks. Only Star in the Sky, and Nobody Noticed. Time for New Leadership.

Celebrities and politicians were pleading for unity. This was a time to put aside our differences and work together to achieve the best outcome, whatever that might be. There were calls for worldwide prayer, and the various religions that, Peifer had told me, had always been at one another's throats, suddenly found themselves with a common cause. Somebody was starting a Kids Off-world Campaign. They were arguing that all available space on departing vehicles be made available to children. They are the future. Anyone with the means to leave Salud Afar on his own was urged to volunteer help. Take some children with you. Save the kids.

Number 17 Parkway announced that the Administrator would speak again that night and would outline a plan of action. There was a sense of unreality about it all. Despite the frenzied activity, I doubted if the reality of the situation had taken hold. People seemed to be reacting as if a bad storm were coming. The question became how best to get through it. We were not yet on the Korinbladt , the crippled liner that had, only

the year before, gotten dragged into a sun along with its more than seven hundred well-done passengers. I looked down through drifting white clouds at a lush green landscape, filled with trees and bushes and rolling hills. And I could not believe this entire world was going to be irradiated in three years. That it would become uninhabitable for decades or more. I couldn't help sympathizing with Kilgore, who had to face the reality that his lack of curiosity was going to cost a world full of lives. But I wondered how he could have been paying so little attention that he'd missed what was going on? But at least he seemed now to be engaged. Tonight, he'd announce a strategy. "Good luck on that one," said Alex. Physicists were being interviewed. Evan Carbacci of the Nakamura Institute commented that they'd always known that Callistra was unstable, and plans had been made just last month for a mission to check its status. "If it seems a bit late," he said, "you have to remember that these things tend to happen on scales of millions of years. I don't think it occurred to any of us that an explosion was imminent. In human terms. Let alone that it had already happened." When pressed, he got angry: "Look, let's be honest here. The truth is that we've simply been terribly unlucky. We knew that even if the damned thing blew, the chances of our getting in the way were remote. Who'd have thought-?"