Extinction

by Ray Hammond

  Roger Mantle, the form teacher, cleared his throat pointedly. Emilia glanced across at him and then turned to follow his gaze. A slim boy with a thick tangle of brown hair, seated at the back of the room, had his hand half raised, at head height.

  ‘Yes?’ prompted Emilia.

  ‘Ah, it’s kinda between five-point-eight and six-point-two billion years old,’ offered the boy. ‘But it, ah, seems like that date is being pushed back every year. Ten years ago they thought it was only four and a half billion years old.’

  ‘Absolutely right,’ Emilia told him. Then she wondered if it would be good teaching practice to push this knowledgeable student a little harder. She followed her instinct. ‘And do you know why the date has been changing?’

  ‘We keep discovering that the universe is older than we thought,’ said the boy, now slightly uncomfortable, glancing quickly to his right and left, trying to ascertain how his fellow students were reacting to his performance. ‘And we can’t rely on testing rocks on the earth – they seem to be younger than they are because of crustal recycling. They have to do isochron age tests on lead traces to measure uranium decay.’

  The visiting scientist glanced at the teacher and saw that he now wore a smile of pride.

  ‘Do we have a budding geophysicist here?’ asked Emilia, talking half to the boy who had answered, half to his teacher. There was no response from either and Emilia’s instinct now told her to move on. The boy had hung his head, biting at a hangnail, not wanting to make further eye contact.

  ‘Excellent. That’s quite right. We’re still in the process of learning how old both the Earth and the universe really are.’

  She turned and wrote quickly on the wall screen: THE EARTH IS BETWEEN FIVE AND SIX BILLION YEARS OLD.

  Then she told the class bluntly just how little scientists really knew about the interior of the planet – something she herself had been forcibly reminded of in recent weeks.

  Emilia explained that, in relative terms, the Earth’s crust is thinner than the shell of an egg, and inside this delicate casing vast blobs of molten viscous rock wallow and balloon slowly, like globules in a giant lava lamp.

  Projecting some of Geohazard’s stock computer graphics onto the screen, she showed the class that inside their planet was a solid inner core – about 500 miles in diameter, slightly smaller than the moon – which seemed to float at the centre of an outer core of molten metals.

  She described how there was also some evidence that the hard inner core was rotating around its own axis at a different speed and direction to the rest of the planet. It was the independent motion of this inner core that produced the powerful magnetic field that ballooned out around the planet, protecting it and its inhabitants from the sun’s fierce magnetic wind.

  ‘So, in fact, we know very little for certain about the inside of our own planet,’ Emilia concluded. ‘And none of us can really prove that Jules Verne wasn’t right all along.’

  The class laughed at this. A new movie version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth had recently been released, this time with full 3-D imagery and MegaSense effects.

  Roger Mantle stepped back in front of his class, and thanked Dr Knight of Geohazard Laboratories for providing her stimulating talk. Emilia acknowledged the small ripple of applause. Then a loud buzzing sounded from outside in the corridor.

  The students rose noisily from their desks and soon the only people left in the classroom were Emilia, Roger Mantle and the tousle-haired boy who had answered her question.

  ‘This is Matthew Fairfax,’ said the teacher.

  Emilia shook the tall teenager’s hand and gazed up into his green eyes.

  ‘So you’re really interested in geology?’ Emilia asked.

  ‘Matt’s our star pupil in the sciences,’ said Mantle proudly.

  There was an awkward silence and Emilia wondered if the lad had a question for her about one of the recent volcanic eruptions.

  ‘I live on Telegraph Hill, near the piers,’ said the boy. ‘Do you know the area?

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Emilia. ‘Great location – you’re a lucky guy.’

  ‘Have there been any earth tremors recorded in that area recently, Dr Knight?’

  Emilia stared up at the intense young questioner and smiled. ‘Maybe twenty or thirty every day. The ground beneath San Francisco is always moving. But you won’t notice anything, usually. Most tremors are very mild.’

  ‘But they’re strong enough to move Telegraph Hill?’

  Emilia laughed out loud. ‘Oh no, absolutely not. There’s been nothing under the city that humans could feel for over two years. And I don’t think Telegraph Hill itself would be shaken, even if there was. You only really get that reaction with soft earth – sedimentary soils, landfills, that sort of thing. Like down in Mission or in the Marina district.’

  ‘Well, the hill must be sinking then,’ said Matt. ‘My dad says it’s made of bedrock, but . . .’ He hesitated and then gazed directly at the pretty geologist. ‘I do computer-aided optical astronomy. I did a star declination last night, and found that the whole sky seemed to have moved south-east by eight MAS. I checked my alignments – the hill has to be moving.’

  Emilia shook her head doubtfully. Before her transfer to Geohazard she’d been the local Bay Area earthquake monitor. She knew every danger zone in and around the Bay Area cities; had walked most of them, sneakers in one hand, water bottle in the other.

  She always wondered why humans with sufficient money to live anywhere in the world would choose one of its most dangerous locations. But she knew it was the vigorous subterranean activity that made the region’s landscape so appealing; it was so beautiful that even she lived within the area, although she could at least claim some professional justification.

  ‘This must be your standard outfit,’ the earthquake monitor had regularly warned all those who lived or worked in such dangerous areas. ‘In this area, always wear comfortable shoes and carry water. You’re going to have to walk out one day.’ She knew all the local seismic hotspots.

  ‘Your father’s right,’ said Emilia. ‘It is bedrock – Massive Sandstone from the Cretaceous period. That’s why there’s an old quarry on Green Street. All the land around you may move, but the whole city would have to fall into the sea before Telegraph Hill itself shifted.’

  Matthew glanced at his teacher, then back at the guest lecturer. ‘That’s what I thought too, but I’ve checked it over and over again. I’m sure it’s moving.’

  Undoing the fasteners of his school bag – she sensed an air almost of desperation in his movements – the boy produced a sheaf of papers and gridded photographs. Emilia took them from him and rippled through the pages. They were star maps, and all of them were timed and dated; the apparent anomalous movement that he had mentioned was highlighted and measured to the astronomical ‘MAS’ or milliarcsecond, an angle equal to one thousandth of an astronomical arc second.

  ‘Could we stay on in here for a few minutes?’ Emilia asked the form teacher.

  ‘There’s about ten minutes left of this break,’ explained Mantle. ‘I’m off to get a coffee. It’s all yours.’

  Emilia smiled her thanks, walked to the front row of desks, and laid out the data sheets that the boy had given her.

  ‘Why don’t you take me through these chronologically?’ she suggested.

  It seemed as if no time at all had passed before Roger Mantle reappeared. ‘You’ve got to be in the music room in one minute,’ the teacher reminded Matthew.

  The boy hurriedly gathered his printouts together. Dr Knight had already admitted how it did seem from his data that the point of observation had moved by a minute amount, but she was also thinking of the many errors that could account for the aberrant readings. Measuring space and the relative motions of many stellar bodies thousands or millions of light years apart could be a very tricky business.

  ‘Would your parents let you come visit the Geohazard Observatory at Mount Tamalpais?’ Emilia asked him. ‘W
e don’t use it much these days. Maybe we could do a star declination there and also check out your equipment.’

  Chapter Ten

  On a clear Thursday evening in mid-June, Michael Fairfax left his office at seven p.m., collected his hydrogen-powered BMW sports saloon from the garage beneath the Embarcadero Space Needle, and drove out of the city across the lower deck of the Bay Bridge.

  Skirting Oakland, he passed through the satellite cities of Concord and Stockton and continued up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada on the old and almost deserted Highway 49, the original panhandlers’ trail into the mountains.

  It was shortly before ten p.m. when the car’s navigation system told him that he had completed 154 miles and should now slow down in preparation for arrival at his destination.

  He spotted the truck stop set back beside the westbound carriageway and, crossing over the oncoming lane, swung into its large parking space. The lot was filled with big 32-wheel truck rigs, pick-ups, motorbikes and off-road utilities, but at the end of one ragged row of vehicles he noticed a classic car that seemed totally out of place in this setting. It was a green turn-of-the-century sports Jaguar that appeared to be in immaculate condition.

  Michael removed his tie and opened the collar of his white shirt. He had intended to go home for a change of clothing before driving out of town for this unusual rendezvous, but he had been delayed by a monthly caseload meeting that had overrun. He was now being regularly assigned to handle his legal partners’ overspill litigation.

  Engaging maximum-security defences on his own vehicle, the attorney strode across the cinder-strewn car park towards the truck stop’s bar. From inside came a sound of heavy retro-rock that made the walls and windows vibrate. As Michael pushed open the swing door, he was hit by a wall of amplified sound. A rock group was playing at the far end of the low room, slamming out the sort of heavy beat that was still played by specialist radio stations up and down the length of California. Odours of tobacco smoke, beer, bourbon, cheap perfume and testosterone-laden sweat washed over him.

  Couples were dancing in a small area in front of the low stage – large, tattooed men in denims and leather-clad women with big hair – strutting and bobbing with stiff shoulders and straight backs.

  The elegantly suited lawyer felt more than a little out of place and, as he pushed through the crowd, he became aware that some of the redneck customers were casting him suspicious, even threatening glances; at least his contact shouldn’t have any difficulty in identifying him.

  As he mimed an order for a beer, a huge figure loomed out of the crowd to stand close beside him at the bar. Michael pointedly refrained from looking sideways at the stranger, but then he felt a large hand descend on his shoulder.

  The man had to be almost seven feet tall and he had long, greying hair swept back and bunched into a ponytail that fell to the middle of his broad shoulder blades. His weather-beaten face looked as hard as an anvil and his annealed cheeks were concave, like the bows of a warship.

  ‘I am Fivetrees,’ said the man, bending his head close to Michael’s ear. ‘Stay close.’

  Throwing some dollars onto the bar counter, Michael picked up his beer bottle and followed the large man towards an empty booth to one side of the stage. As he slid onto the ripped plastic of the banquette, he realized why this booth had remained unoccupied. It was positioned right in front of one of the group’s PA system loudspeakers. Michael could feel his chest bone vibrate with each beat. It would be impossible to talk.

  The huge man – of Native American extraction, Michael guessed – slid into the seat opposite and handed him a small white cordless earpiece, indicating for him to insert it in his ear. Then he reached forward and stuck a Velcro-backed miniature microphone onto Michael’s jacket lapel.

  ‘Now’ – the man’s voice sounded clearly in his inner ear – ‘can you hear me?’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘This is a privacy gizmo that one of my Berkeley colleagues developed. It’s a comms system that filters out all sound but the users’ own voices.’

  Ten minutes later, Michael and Professor Robert Fivetrees were deep in a wholly private discussion. They had swapped and checked each other’s digital identifications, and the professor had shown Michael how to train his system to recognize his own voice, even over the high-decibel din of the rock music.

  Robert Fivetrees had been one of Carole Gonzaga’s more recent lovers, Michael now learned.

  ‘She told me about you when we were still together,’ Fivetrees told him. ‘That was before she got mixed up with these Planet First people.’

  The professor started to explain what his work in planetary geophysics entailed, and as he ranged across subjects such as kinematic dynamo theory, magnetosphere anomalies, global paleointensities and solar pressures on the geomagnetic force field, Michael quickly recognized the immense intellect and depth of learning camouflaged beneath the long hair, red check shirt and cowboy boots. He also learned that Fivetrees was one of the few remaining descendants of a tribe of Yokuts Indians who had once lived in the San Joaquin Valley, in the Sierra Nevada. Eventually he steered the man around to their reason for meeting.

  ‘The government served me with an emergency secrecy order three months ago,’ complained Fivetrees, dropping his voice still further, despite their private communications system. ‘As soon as I submitted a paper to the US Geophysical Review, agents were all over me. They called it a matter of national security.’

  ‘What’s so threatening about your work?’ asked Michael.

  The professor held up one finger, thrust a hand into his jeans pocket and extracted a slim silver container that looked like an old-fashioned cigarette case. Then he plucked two folding menus from their holder at the end of the table and stood them upright, to form an enclosed and shielded area on the table top.

  Flipping open the lid of the silver case, Fivetrees placed the unit within the screened area. Suddenly a miniature holo-image of the Earth appeared in the makeshift mini-theatre.

  ‘Another prototype from the Berkeley consumer electronics department,’ explained the planetary geophysicist.

  As he watched, Michael saw bright purple rings crackling out from the small-scale planet in scores of different directions, like electricity radiating outwards from an electrostatic generator.

  ‘This is our planet’s normal magnetosphere – the magnetic field,’ said Fivetrees, glancing around to check if any of the gyrating dancers were paying undue attention.

  ‘But this is starting to happen . . .’

  Huge whorls in the magnetic force fields appeared near both poles, and then the electric rings swung laterally around the sphere, reversing themselves through 180 degrees before snapping upright again. The effect was quite beautiful.

  ‘I’ve detected a serious weakening in the Earth’s magnetic field,’ said Fivetrees. ‘It looks as if its polarity is getting ready to flip.’

  ‘Flip?’ queried the lawyer, astonished by such an idea.

  The scientist shrugged. ‘Over geological time it’s been natural for the magnetic poles to reverse – to flip – every quarter of a million years or so; it’s happened hundreds of times. But we’re now way overdue. It’s been half a million years since the last time the magnetic north pole swung down and became the south pole – and vice versa.’

  ‘But you think it’s started to happen now?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Well, the flip usually occurs when the Earth’s magnetic field loses intensity, when it weakens,’ explained the professor. ‘In the past we think this has been down to changes in the Earth’s dynamo speed – the rate at which the core and the mantle revolve relative to each other. But this time I think it’s due to something else.’

  Even though the band’s music was still pounding out so loudly that Michael could feel it through the floor, and despite having their own private form of electronic communication, the geophysicist leaned even closer across the table.

  ‘There has been no internal
change in the way the core and mantle are behaving. Something else is weakening the magnetosphere and causing this oscillation.’ Fivetrees glanced around again carefully. ‘I’m certain it is being caused by the new climate-management technologies. The orbiting reflectors are directing the solar wind back towards the Earth and weakening its polarity bias. This wind is filled with trillions of charged particles that all interact with the geomagnetic fields around the planet – in the ionosphere. In turn, their magnetic repulsion induces eddies of magnetic currents deep within the Earth. One result of this technology is that the climate changes, a second is that we screw up our planet’s main protective shield, and a third is that we mess with the magnetic forces deep in the Earth’s mantle and, perhaps, even in its core.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’ asked Michael, uncertainly.

  The professor turned and snapped the miniature holo-projector shut, then leaned back over the table towards him.

  ‘I’ve spent the last eleven years deciphering and digitizing hand-written observations of the weather and records of seismic events that were kept by Jesuit monks over the last four centuries. His intense dark-eyed gaze was focused fixedly on Michael’s face. ‘In three hundred different monasteries scattered over every region of the world, these monks recorded the daily weather, and any seismic activity, as part of their daily routine. My analysis proves that there is a direct link between electrical activity in the magnetosphere, the planet’s climate, and the degree of seismic unrest. Stronger magnetic fields in the ionosphere directly weaken the magnetic fields produced by the dynamo of the Earth’s molten core – the two are totally interdependent – and when you start artificially changing the climate around the planet, you weaken the magnetic fields being produced inside the Earth. The result is that the mantle flows are disrupted and you get a sudden increase of seismic events in the Earth’s crust.’

  The scientist sat back and gazed at his audience of one to judge how this information was being received. Michael wasn’t sure how to react, so he gave a single brief nod.