Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

“Is that what’s happening now?”

“No. Nothing’s really close to the area.”

“Then what is it?”

“We’re still working on it, Judy.”

I was on my way to the university after the show when Tom called. “ Can you come by my office? ”

“Sure,” I said. “When?”

“ When can you get here? ”

“I have a class in forty minutes. I can come in after that.”

“ Artie Thompson will cover for you. Come here now. As soon as you get back to the campus .”

When I arrived, he was at his desk talking with a thin white-haired man who was seated in one of the two armchairs. Tom said hello and gave me a pained smile. “Maryam,” he said, “this is Paul Crenshaw. He’s the director—”

“—of the Kitt Peak Observatory. Yes, of course! Hello, Professor Crenshaw. It’s an honor to meet you.”

“Call me ‘Paul,’” he said. His eyes were tired behind thick bifocals, and he nodded without any show of welcome. “You’re the young lady who discovered the first comet, I take it?”

I nodded. And managed maybe a flicker of a smile. “Yes, that’s correct, Profes—Paul. But what was so urgent?”

Tom pointed to the other chair, waited for me to sit, and took a deep breath. “First off, Maryam, if you get into any more conversations with reporters, we’d like you not to mention that there’s a problem.”

“I didn’t say anything about a problem.”

“Just don’t go into details about why we have three comets, okay?”

Crenshaw was nodding.

“All right,” I said. “Sure.”

Tom and Crenshaw exchanged glances without speaking. I was getting scared. Had I done something seriously stupid?

Tom pushed back in his chair. “Paul flew in this morning,” he said. “Kitt Peak has been looking into this.”

“ Kitt Peak has? Why? ”

“Along with a lot of other people.” His eyes locked on mine. “This conversation does not leave this room.”

“Okay.”

Crenshaw took over: “We know why there were three comets.”

“What do you mean were ?”

“The trajectories are changing. If that continues, and we’re pretty sure it will, they won’t make it into the inner solar system.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“There’s a brown dwarf nearby.” Brown dwarfs are failed stars. They lack the mass to power a fusion reaction in their cores. They’re big, they’re heavy, and you don’t want to get too close to one of them.

“Where is it?”

“About thirty million miles from the comets. Unfortunately, it’s coming in our direction.”

“My God.”

“We’re pretty sure it won’t hit us.”

“I’m relieved to hear that. But—?”

Tom picked up the thread: “It’s going to disrupt some orbits. Including ours.”

No way that could be good. We could expect either to get pitched into the sun, or dragged away from it altogether.

His framed dictum caught my eye. Enjoy the moment . “How bad’s it going to be?” My voice shook.

“We’re working on the details.”

Right. The details.

Brown dwarfs can be almost invisible. They put out very little heat, often not much more than you’d have in your kitchen. This one was about the size of Jupiter, but had about sixty times its mass.

“So how’d your day go?” asked Warren.

I’d given my word. “Okay,” I said. “How about yours?”

It wasn’t the first time I’d lied to him. I hadn’t told him the truth about his cooking, about whether I’d loved anyone before he came along, about how good looking I thought he was. But that was all minor league stuff. This was the first time I’d deceived him about anything important.

But he told me about a deal he was closing over on Shepperton Avenue. And I began recalibrating what mattered in life.

The following day I did another TV interview, in which I tried to brush aside the issue of the trajectory change. “Nothing of any significance,” I said.

Liar, liar.

Tom promised he’d let me know any further data that came in, so you can understand that every time the phone rang over the next few days, I stopped breathing.

And finally, while I was on my way to a morning class, it came. “ When you’re finished with your lecture, Maryam, come down to my office .”

“Good news or bad?” I said.

“ Just come when you’re free .”

I kept walking, trying to keep cool. I went into my classroom. The class was Principles of Physics II: Electromagnetism and Radiation.

That I got through it at all remains one of my proudest achievements.

Tom was talking with a couple of visitors when I walked in. He excused himself immediately and explained we had important business. They left and I sat down. He closed the door and remained standing by it, his hand on the knob.

“What?” I said.

“It’s going to drag us out of orbit. Same as it did to the comet.”

I sat, not moving, not surprised, but with my life draining. “Do we have any chance at all?”

“I don’t see how.”

I sat staring at him. “When?”

“Well, that’s the good news, I guess. The thing’s moving slowly. The process won’t begin for nineteen years.”

I just sat there trying to breathe. Trying to take it all in.

“The embargo is still on, Maryam. Say nothing.”

That shocked me. “You can’t really keep something like this to yourself. People have a right to know.”

“Sure they do. And they have almost two decades left to live normal lives. Let them know what’s happening and you’ll take that from them.”

“It’s not your call.”

“You’re right. It’s not. They’re telling the president as we speak.”

I broke my promise three minutes after I got home. There was no way I could keep that kind of secret. Liz was up in her room, so I sat down and told Warren everything. As well as extracting his word that he would say nothing to anyone. And hoping he was better at it than I had been.

“End of the world?” he said.

“The data aren’t complete yet, but it doesn’t look as if there’s any way out.”

We were on the sofa. He leaned over and we embraced. “You okay?” he asked.

“What do you think?”

He shook his head. “Real estate values along the river are gonna crash.” I don’t know if I ever loved him more than I did at that moment. “Nineteen years is a long time,” he added. “But it’ll be hard on Liz.” He sat for a minute, eyes focused on a distance place. “I’m not sure where we go from here.”

“Tom’s worried about what will happen if the news gets out. He thinks there’ll be panic in the streets.”

“He’s probably right. But I won’t say anything.”

“Good.”

“How long before it’s visible to the naked eye?”

“It’s very dull. It’ll probably be ten years, at least.”

We collected Liz and went out for pizza that night. I got pepperoni on mine. Liz, as usual, ordered black olives. And Warren got his plain. I don’t ever recall an evening during which the details stood out so sharply. I can close my eyes now, and recall exactly what everyone was wearing, what we talked about, which server we had, and what the weather was like. Oddly, the brown dwarf had retreated into the darkness of my mind, and I was aware mostly of how fortunate I’d been over my lifetime, and how I appreciated having that night with my family.

I remember thinking how easy it was to forget that we live day to day under a shadow. A car accident. A crazy guy with a gun. A brain tumor. You never know. Enjoy the moment. And I did. If there’s an evening in my entire life that I could go back to and relive, that would be it. We were getting ready to leave the restaurant when we noticed that it had grown quiet around us. The Italian music which routinely played had been turned off. People at the other tables were whispering, shaking their heads, and looking anxiously at each other. We asked our server what was happening. “News report,” she said in a low voice. “They’re saying the end of the world is coming.”