Galactic Milieu - Diamond Mask Part 37

"At least I've got one to call my own," Marc snapped, and he went stomping off, coattails and hackles both flying high.

Jack's mind said: [Freakish obscene image] + [utter dejection].

I tried to force some hearty optimism. "Cheer up, Ti-Jean. Maybe there won't be any rumble on Caledonia. Maybe those half-a.s.sed Krondak surveyors got it right after all."

"And maybe bears will build latrines in the woods."

I couldn't resist asking, "Are you really in love with her?"

The inhuman blue eyes had a sardonic glitter. "What a ludicrous idea. Me, in love? Why, that's positively sickening. Right?"

"Oh, Ti-Jean ..." I whispered, and my vision began to blur.

"I really can't stand people who cry at weddings," Jack said. "See you later, Uncle Rogi."

I stayed there alone for a good long time, then snuck away to the Sap Bucket Tavern and got paralytic.

A little over a year after Dorothee returned to her home world, Graeme Hamilton died peacefully. She was immediately appointed Planetary Dirigent of Caledonia by the Lylmik Supervisors.

Late in 2077, the team of human geophysical surveyors confirmed the presence of an enormous high-pressure magmatic reservoir beneath the continent of Clyde. In their report to the Dirigent, the scientists estimated that the thing would blow off catastrophically within two to three years unless something drastic was done to modify its development.

Dorothee thanked the surveyors and promised to take the matter under advis.e.m.e.nt. Then she called me.

And I called Jack.

23.

SECTOR 12: STAR 12-337-010 [GRIAN].

PLANET 4 [CALEDONIA].

13-14 AN GIBLEAN [24-25 NOVEMBER] 2077.

By the time Rogi revived from the state of enforced hibernation he'd endured throughout the tight-leash trip from Earth, Scurra II was dropping through the aurora-streaked ionosphere toward the cloudy Scottish planet.

Scratching himself and yawning, the old man made his way to the flight deck. His great-grandnephew was no longer in the brainboarded fishbowl that was his resting place of choice while disembodied, but sat instead in a command chair like a decent human being, dressed in a blue jumpsuit and a pair of Sauvage Hikers. The blinking light on the terrain display before him indicated that their landing site was nowhere near either of Clyde's metro areas.

"What's happening?" Rogi inquired. "You're not putting down at the Wester Killiecrankie Starport?"

"We've got emergency clearance to land at the geophysical operations site," Jack said. "Callie Traffic Control decided Scurra II is small enough to be designated an honorary egg-bus. We won't have to transs.h.i.+p the equipment to a rhocraft for atmospheric flight."

"Some bus!" the bookseller snorted. "d.a.m.n thing'd leave a Krondak clipper in the dust. I can't believe we hopped over five hundred lights in two days."

"Actually, I held back a little to be sure you'd survive. You're the first pa.s.senger I've taken in the new s.h.i.+p."

The old man flexed his arms again and groaned a little. "I'm glad you didn't tell me that before we started out. I might have thought twice about wanting to come along."

The bus driver showed immediate concern. "Are you in pain, Uncle Rogi?"

"Just creaky from being zonked out for two days. You redacted me just fine. Didn't feel a thing. All I need is a square meal. You get any word from Dorothee while I was out for the count?"

Jack turned back to the display. They were swiftly approaching their destination, a plateau situated between two sizable rivers that was labeled WINDLESTROW MUIR. It lay about 700 kilometers south of Caledonia's capital, New Glasgow, below Clyde's Lothian Range. There were dozens of small cities and villages in the valleys near the sea, but the moorland itself seemed almost devoid of settlement.

"I farspoke the Dirigent when we emerged from the first sub-s.p.a.ce vector," the young man finally said. "I wanted to find out if she'd had any luck recruiting additional CE operators from other worlds. She only got three from Satsuma and one from Yakutia ... and now she wants to call off the operation."

"Merde." Rogi heaved a disappointed sigh. "But what else can she do? You told her before we ever left Earth that fifteen trained geozappers would be the minimum to fit the E18 metaconcert for a big operation like this."

"I want to check out the situation myself. Confer with the chief surveyor of the planet. Maybe I can think of something- design a new config for the seven operators or find some different way to tackle the problem."

The s.h.i.+p said: "Entering planetary tropopause. Opening viewport shutters. ETA Windlestrow Auxiliary Landing Area five minutes. Do you wish a summary of surface conditions?"

Jack gave a sad little laugh. "Why not?"

"Scattered c.u.mulonimbus cells with heavy precipitation and limited visibility at surface. Wind three-six gusting to five-five. Air temp plus-oh-four. Local time 1732 hours. Windlestrow NAVCOM clears us for immediate landing. Shall I proceed?"

"Go," said Jack. And to Rogi, "Break out a couple of rain jackets, would you, please? And one E18 unit for show-and-tell."

They touched down in a thundering deluge and near-total darkness. The portable buildings of the geophysical operations camp stood on high ground above a hollow containing a lake about a kilometer in width. Down at the water's edge, high-intensity floodlights on tall standards illuminated four huge machines and a similar smaller model, sigma-s.h.i.+elded deep-drillers capable of penetrating far beneath the planetary crust.

Scurra II shuddered slightly as it came into gravity's grip, touched down, tilted, then modified the landing-struts' extension to compensate for the soggy, unstable ground. The pad was nothing but roughly graded earth, scored with shallow erosion channels full of running water. A single big-wheel Bronco, headlights dim in the rain, came lurching and bouncing toward them from the cl.u.s.ter of buildings.

The stars.h.i.+p said, "This area is experiencing microseismic activity as well as soil instability due to water saturation. I advise you to leave my systems activated at level two rather than commanding full shutdown. In the event of an emergency, I will a.s.sume a holding pattern in the planetary ionosphere and await your mental summons."

"Go," Jack agreed. He stared through the s.h.i.+p's forward port for a moment, checking out the approaching truck with his farsight. The Dirigent was driving and Intendant General Calum Sorley sat in the backseat. Her face was without expression but her eyes had dark smudges beneath them, betraying anxiety and lack of sleep. She looked years older. Poor little Diamond Mask! She had pleaded with the Supervisors not to appoint her to the dirigents.h.i.+p, but they had been adamant. And now her beloved home world was on the brink of ruin, and she would have to preside over its demise.

Jack joined Rogi and donned a jacket. When the big Ford four-wheeler pulled up he opened the stars.h.i.+p's air lock. The waiting vehicle had cleated tires nearly a meter in diameter and stood in mud up to the hubs. Jack propelled Rogi and the carrier with the CE equipment into the front seat with unceremonious PK, levitated himself into the backseat, and slammed the truck doors after them.

"Welcome to bonnie Caledonia," said Dorothea Macdonald, lifting her hand in the open-palmed operant greeting. "Sorry about the wee sprinkle. It'll pa.s.s by in half an hour or so." She introduced IG Sorley, a well-built man in his late thirties. Both of them wore Day-Glo orange environmental suits without headpieces. Their hair was soaked and their faces beaded with raindrops.

The Bronco began to wallow toward the lighted buildings. "Thank you for coming, Jack," the Dirigent said, rather coolly.

"Uncle Rogi should never have pressured you to involve yourself, but-"

"He didn't. I'm glad to be here and I'll do anything in my power to help. I can't understand why you didn't ask me yourself."

She was staring straight ahead, clutching the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip. "I wouldn't have presumed. You have so many other demands on your valuable time. I asked Rogi to approach your brother Marc about lending us the new CE equipment from CEREM, but I never dreamed he'd ask you to come here."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake," Jack muttered. "Would you really put Caledonia at risk just because you can't stand me?"

"I have the greatest respect for you. I simply didn't feel it was proper to involve you in a hopeless situation."

"How do you know it's hopeless?" he challenged her.

"You can see for yourself in just a few minutes. Our chief surveyor is ready to give you an overview. I told you in our subs.p.a.ce conversation yesterday that you were only wasting your time-"

"Dammit, let me be the judge of that!"

"I'm responsible for this world, not you, Jack!" she snapped. "And the final judgment on this project will be mine!"

"Then be sure that judgment is based on reason and not on your stubborn pride!"

"Will you two cut it out?" Rogi pleaded.

"One piece of good news," Calum Sorley put in hastily. "Another geozap recruit signed on. From Okanagon. She'll be here by suppertime."

"That's eight qualified CE operators all told, then," Jack muttered. "Better, but still not enough for the fifteen-head metaconcert the job probably needs."

"The Yakutia operator made a suggestion this morning," Sorley went on. "She said that we might abandon the metaconcert approach and attack the subcratonic reservoir with multiple individual creative impulses instead. It seems they've had some success with the technique on their world, coping with smaller magma chambers. The beastie under Clyde is much larger and deeper, of course, but with the added power of your E18s ..."

"I'll need a better picture of the reservoir," Jack said.

"We'll give you a full Tri-D model with all the bells and whistles right now-unless you'd rather freshen up first."

"Not at all. Let's go for it."

Sorley nodded. "Narendra has it all set up."

They were approaching a large portable building crowned with antenna arrays. The Dirigent skidded to a stop in front of it, flinging a sheet of muddy spray. The four of them climbed out and raced through the rain to the entrance, where they were met by a dark-complected man with a dazzling smile. The Dirigent introduced Caledonia's chief surveyor, Narendra Shah MacNabb. He greeted Jack and Rogi with effusive enthusiasm and led the way to a holographic display chamber.

"Are you familiar with the latest geophysical graphic models?" the scientist inquired. "No? Well, you should find this interesting. I'll just start the simulation." He glanced at a little monitor just outside the chamber, took a portable keypad from its holder, and tapped away for a few moments. Then he opened the door.

To a three-dimensional vision of h.e.l.l.

"Christ de tabernacle!" Rogi gasped, backpedaling in dismay.

But the surveyor only laughed, beckoned for them to follow him inside, and shut the door. The holographic representation of the tectonic environment beneath Caledonia's crust filled the entire room, so that an observer seemed at first to be immersed in flaming chaos. Only gradually did the scene take on a sense of order and even stark beauty, with semitransparent streams of fiery scarlet, vermilion, and yellow forming dynamic three-dimensional patterns that one could examine at close range, from any angle.

At the other end of the room a platform with shallow steps running along its entire length was barely visible through the simulation. Narendra Shah MacNabb led his guests through the midst of the conflagration and up onto the platform, where it seemed as though their heads broke through the illusion's surface and into open air. They became giants, looking at the southern sh.o.r.e of Clyde landma.s.s and the adjacent sea. Then, as they moved down one shallow step at a time, they effectively descended beneath the lithospheric crust and into the depths of the planet. Clyde grew a ma.s.sive root, solid in the top 30 kilometers or so and stiffly molten to a depth of about 160 kilometers. The entire continental lithosphere was embedded in the much thinner oceanic lithosphere that formed the floor of the sea.

"The fiery, moving portion of the model below the lithosphere," MacNabb said, "represents an upper part of the planetary mantle called the asthenosphere. It behaves more like a liquid than the more rigid lithospheric mantle that generally stays coupled to the continent. The swirling areas in our model asthenosphere are convection currents-greatly accelerated in the simulation, of course. Note that they're very complex. The individual convection cells change shape and also exhibit changing velocity in response to heating and cooling and alterations in the density of the circulating material. Now let's move down the rest of the steps and inspect the asthenosphere immediately underneath Clyde. Very soon now, the simulation is going to demonstrate the catastrophe scenario."

They took up a position just "south" of the continent, where they were able to look up through the semitransparent root.

"The umber-colored area with the deep crimson lower portion represents the Clyde craton and its a.s.sociated lithospheric mantle. We're right on top of it here at Windlestrow Muir. The craton is the southerly, most ancient part of the continent, which was presumably formed when Caledonia first solidified some three billion years ago. The lighter-colored continental regions around the edges and to the north are younger rocks that accreted to the craton throughout the aeons as the landma.s.s slowly grew."

"Largish craton," Jack observed.

"Callie's continents have grown much more slowly than those of more Earthlike worlds," said MacNabb. "But never mind the reasons for that. Look lower now, into the asthenosphere right in front of us. Notice how that very large convection cell beneath Clyde is losing stability-actually fissioning while we watch! (Of course the event actually took place over a period of several million orbits.) Now look down here. Ascending amidst the turbulent area is an elongated thermal anomaly that looks a bit like an inverted fiery raindrop. It's less dense and much hotter than the surrounding area of mantle."

"A plume!" Rogi exclaimed.

"No, a diapir," Dorothea Macdonald said. "A rising blob, not a persistent upwelling stream."

"Exactly," the surveyor agreed. "We've speculated that the diapir resulted from the remobilization of very ancient, so-called 'fertile' mantle material that never previously surfaced and outga.s.sed. Whatever its origin, it contains a high percentage of volatile material-mainly carbon dioxide and water. Now watch what happens when it reaches the lower boundary of the lithospheric mantle at the hundred-sixty-klom depth."

The rising portion of magma, colored a brilliant golden-yellow in the simulation, reached the stiff mantle of the cratonic root and halted, spreading out and partially penetrating the crimson. After a moment the ascending diapir pinched off from below and its matter formed a reservoir at the deepest part of Clyde's lithospheric mantle.

"At this point," Narendra Shah MacNabb said, tapping his portable keypad, "I'll speed up the simulation. In actuality, the high-pressure reservoir of volatile magma remained lurking in place for an unknown length of time."

"Just peacefully cooking up diamonds," the Dirigent said, "as carbon-laden diapirs are accustomed to do."

The surveyor nodded. "It stayed relatively dormant until natural changes in the ordinarily stiff and resistant lithospheric mantle allowed it to resume its ascent."

In the simulation, a tiny thread of magma began to travel upward from the reservoir's top.

"That ascending queue seems to have begun to move only about ten years ago. What we are about to see now is an extrapolation that will be valid if no CE modification is accomplished ... That is, if human intervention proves impossible."

The crimson part of the cratonic root swirled in minute turbulence. Instantly the thin filament of golden magma enlarged and pushed upward at an accelerating velocity. It smote the underside of the umber cratonic crust, broke it, and burst forth at the surface. In moments, the reservoir contents were drained. The observers stood silent for a moment, and then the Tri-D simulation winked out, leaving them standing in a featureless empty room.

Rogi spoke hesitantly. "What happens on top when the thing blows? Aside from a shower of diamonds, that is."

"Imagine," MacNabb said gently, "the eruption of fifty Krakatau volcanoes-but because of the adiabatic decompression of volatiles in the magma, the eruption would be cold, not hot. What we call a diatreme."

"There would be stupendous earth tremors," Dorothea Macdonald said. "Clyde itself would be devastated, of course, but that's not the worst of it. Airborne ash, carbon dioxide, and vapor would pollute Caledonia's atmosphere and render it nearly opaque to sunlight for an indefinite period. A Great Die-Off would very likely ensue. The planet would have to be abandoned."

The surveyor opened the holographic chamber door and held it politely. "I hope the brief simulation has been of use to you, Director Remillard," he said to Jack. "Detailed information on the volatile-magma reservoir is available in the survey data bank, and of course I myself will be entirely at your disposal if you should decide to attempt a modification."

Jack hesitated, reluctant to ask the obvious question. He had no doubt that Dorothea Macdonald already knew the answer. "I wonder if I might I ask you for a snap opinion, Dr. MacNabb- quick and dirty."

The chief surveyor gave a small shrug.

Jack took the E18 carrier from Rogi and hefted it casually. "I know you're familiar with the conventional type of CE geozap modification. We now have eight grandmaster operators available, and I've brought experimental CE equipment that will boost their metapsychic output by a factor of three hundred-as opposed to the older-style helmets that augmented a hundred times. You know the volume of the reservoir and its const.i.tuents. In your opinion, will we have enough creative energy available from unconcerted joint output to bleed off the volatiles and sink the magmatic residue back into the asthenosphere?"

Narendra Shah MacNabb knit his brow in a courteous imitation of earnest thought. Finally he looked Jack straight in the eye and said, "Not a prayer."

The Dirigent of Caledonia, looking very small in a bulky white sweater and a pair of tartan trews, was a little late for supper. She and the newly arrived CE operator from Okanagon, a slender black woman named Tisha Abaka, came to the table in the scientists' mess where two chairs had been saved for them. They plumped down after minimal vocal greetings to Jack, Rogi, and the CE operators and fell like wolves upon the roast lamb with rosemary-anchovy sauce, bashed neeps, and b.u.t.ter-drenched baked potatoes. Everyone else seemed equally hungry and the conversation was entirely telepathic.

DOROTHEA MACDONALD: If Director Remillard can check out the crew on the new E18s tomorrow, we may be able to initiate Neelya Demidova's attack scheme the next day.

JON REMILLARD: This is the plan predicated upon the deployment of individual operators exconcert?

DOROTHEA MACDONALD: Yes. Neelya, would you please show us the finalized version?