people here have gone home to their families… others of us have decided to stay, ride it out the best we can. There is a chance we’re wrong. But I don’t bloody think so.”
She felt as if she were choking. She couldn’t breathe, and she struggled to speak in response to his news. “Have you told anyone? What about the press, the government?”
“Oh, yes, the big mucky-mucks called Washington. I think they got to the Secretary of Energy or some such. But it’s too late, you understand. Even if we did tell everybody, there’s absolutely nothing any of us can do. We’re toast, as the kids say—or mine used to say, twenty years ago.”
What a decent, smart, agreeable colleague Geoff Baird was. Yet at this moment nothing he said made any sense to Jane Warner, except the first statement about there being an accident or miscalculation. Even though the chances were infinitesimally small, still, there was always a possibility that the so-called fail-safe system would not work. But how could they have missed by such a margin? With all the backup systems and contingency planning? The first time they had tried it, they had done it without seeming to break a sweat. Why now? What in the world…?
“Geoff, you’re going to have to walk me through this. Please stay on the line.” She dropped the telephone receiver on the bed, grabbed a writing pad from the desk, and picked up the phone again. “Okay, start at the beginning and tell me what
Geoff Baird heard her unspoken words. “Sorry to say, Jane, we didn’t miss anything. We’ve run the calculations at least a dozen times already. But, for what it’s worth—here goes.”
MANILA, THE PHILIPPINES, EARLY MORNING, DECEMBER 26
A little boy with a big name, Juan-Carlos Francisco Jaime Triunfo, sat at his mother’s kitchen table organizing his precious collection of Pokemon holograph cards. J. C. was almost nine, a bit small for his age, and he was the youngest of ten children. The day after Christmas was his favorite day. There was, of course, no school. After mass, the family would spend the day together just as they had the day before, and his cousins would come over and there would be kids galore in the Triunfo house—and he would show off his fine collection to all. At midday the family planned a trip to Rizal Park, the greensward in the center of the old Spanish city that looked out onto Manila Bay. There were war monuments and playing fields and picnic nooks, and usually many people throughout the park. The boy loved it, looked forward to it. It was going to be a fine day, indeed!
The old Delco radio with the clock that had stopped working long ago sat on the kitchen table where J. C.’s cards were piled. Only his mother was awake, starting her preparations for breakfast and for the family’s planned picnic lunch, her back turned to the boy. He paid her scant attention; he took her for granted. After all, that’s what mothers did—prepare meals. Nor did he really listen to the music on the radio, or the occasional news broadcast. All was well in the world of J. C. Triunfo.
The Triunfo family was wealthy compared to so many others they knew. The vast majority of people who lived in Manila existed in utter, paralyzing poverty. Foreign visitors who drove the few miles from Ninoy Aquino International Airport into the business center of the city passed the world-class waterfront resort hotels on their left and a high blank wall on their right, which shielded them from the depressing sight of shanty towns and slums. The wall—and the squalor it masked—was a legacy from the Marcos regime. Subsequent democratically elected governments had not improved the lot of these people very much, in part because Muslim rebels in the outer islands drained military and economic resources and political attention.
The table shook slightly, causing the Pokemon cards to move. “Mama…”
Senora Triunfo was paying no attention to her youngest child. She prayed silently as she worked, her lips moving to form the familiar words. It was as natural to her as breathing, as slicing the vegetables into the soup pot or wringing the neck of a chicken destined to be the main dish. The routine of life was a comfort to her, albeit hard, unending labor. Her husband went to work at his factory job at eight A.M. every day except Sunday. He worked only half days on Saturday, Jesus be praised. But he was of little or no help around the house when he was home: he drank liquor and slept, sometimes played cards with friends. He did not beat her or abuse the children in any way. He was a decent man…
“Mama, the table is shaking,” little J. C. said.
Juanita Triunfo, who had survived hurricanes and earth tremors and revolutions, said, “Say a little prayer,
The boy bent down to retrieve his precious possession. He could smell the mingled odors of vegetables and fruits and cooking oil. He was getting hungry and heard his belly rumbling, felt it vibrate. He sat back in the chair. Then he realized that it was not his belly that he heard and felt. The table, the floor, indeed the entire house was rumbling, vibrating slightly, and it blurred his vision and scared him. Then he heard a noise, not loud, not close—he could not tell what it was or where it came from. He had never heard a train, but he knew the sound of cars and motorcycles, of jet airplanes overhead taking off and landing at the nearby airport. What was it?
“Mama!” Now he was really frightened.
The entire household was awake, and everyone, J. C.’s brothers and sisters and father, streamed into the kitchen, their eyes wide open and questioning. What could be happening?
Throughout the city of Manila and the islands of the Philippines, indeed, across the western Pacific region as far south as Australia and as far north as Vietnam and China, the atmospheric phenomenon released by the impact of the comet was spreading its swift and inexorable destruction.
As the Triunfo clan huddled together in the kitchen, they all heard the approaching roar that had first captured the youngest boy’s attention. Suddenly, an emergency message came over the radio, interrupting the music that, for several minutes, had been an inane background noise to the family’s increasing sense of dread. The mother and father pressed all their children, from the eldest daughter, age twenty-two, to little J. C, between them—the protective, parental instinct at work, but to what end?
Over the past few days they had heard news about the approaching comet and the mission to deflect it; but this news had barely registered with them. They were vaguely aware that this sort of thing had happened before and that there was no imminent danger. At least that was what the news broadcasts had said…
“Emergency, emergency, emergency,” the voice on the radio repeated. “The government requires that all persons should seek shelter immediately—”
The family listened, but within seconds the radio was dead and the increasing roar was deafening, causing the young ones to cry out in pain and fear. The older children and adults looked at each other incredulously, expressions of panic now impossible to conceal.
The room—the entire house—heated up to an incredible degree: rising quickly to one hundred, then one hundred twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Within thirty seconds it was nearly two hundred degrees! A smell, an acrid, foul odor of burning plastic and rubber and other unidentifiable substances, wafted in with the hot wind. The temperature continued to rise at a rapid rate and mercifully the family lost consciousness.
Within minutes their home burst into flame, consumed by the firestorm that sucked oxygen and flesh and every material substance into its wake. The Triunfo family and all they had ever known ceased to exist.
WASHINGTON, D.C., LATE AFTERNOON, CHRISTMAS DAY
Senator Christopher P. Hartwyck of Delaware sat in his office in the Hart Building on Capitol Hill staring at the paperwork that littered his desk. He’d had very little sleep the night before and had dragged himself in to the nearly deserted building several hours ago. As a single man, never married, with no children, he was devoted to his job and wanted to keep it for as long as he could; so he spent every waking hour in his office studying briefing papers and reading correspondence from his constitutents—or out campaigning perpetually among the people of his state. The problem was, even though he had what he wanted, he was not a happy or contented man. Sometimes
