Still, Lac G-1's great age meant that the two supernovae which had left the neutron stars behind predated the solar system. Supernovae sent shockwaves rippling through surrounding clouds of gas and dust, triggering star formation. So it was not inconceivable that G-1a or G-1b had created the sun, and the Earth, and the planets. Yatima wished ve'd thought of this when Inoshiro was talking to the statics; renaming the neutron stars 'Brahma' and 'Shiva' might have carried the right kind of mythic resonance to penetrate their mythic stupor. The vacuous metaphor might have saved a few lives. Other than that, whether Lacerta giver-of-life was about to show the hand that takes, or whether it was preparing to rain gamma rays on the accidental children of another dead star altogether, the scars inflicted would be equally painful, and equally meaningless.
The signal from Bullialdus climbed, peaked at ten thousand times the old level, then dived. In the orbit scape, the two arms of the inward spiral twisted into perfect radial alignment, and the narrow cones of uncertainty flaring out from each branch of the orbit shrank and merged into a single translucent tunnel. Each neutron star made a microscopic target for the other, so a succession of near misses granting five or ten minutes' reprieve would not have been unthinkable, but the verdict was that all sideways motion had vanished to the limits of measurement. The neutron stars would merge at the first approach.
In twenty-one seconds.
Yatima heard a voice wailing with anguish. Ve looked away from the scapes and swept vis robot gaze across the playground, for a moment convinced that the flesher child had escaped vis parents and returned, that search parties were out beneath the threatening sky. But the voice was distant and muffled, and there was no one in sight.
Ten seconds.
Five.
Let all the models be wrong: let an event horizon swallow the blast. Let the gleisners be lying, faking the data: let the most paranoid flesher be right.
An auroral glow filled the sky, an elaborate dazzling curtain of pink and blue electrical discharges. For a moment Yatima wondered if the clouds had been seared away, but as vis eyes desaturated and adjusted their response ve could see that the light was shining right through. The clouds made a faint grubby overlay, like smudges of dirt on a window pane, while ethereal patterns edged in luminous white and green swirled behind them, delicate wisps and vortices of ionized gas tracing the flows of billion-ampere currents.
The sky dimmed then began to flicker, strobing at about a kilohertz. Yatima instinctively reached for the polis library, but the connection had been severed; the ionized stratosphere was radio-opaque. Why the oscillation? Was there a shell of neutrons outside the black hole, ringing like a bell as it slipped into oblivion, Doppler-shifting the last of the gamma rays back and forth?
The flicker persisted, far too long for the burst itself to be the cause. If the remnants of Lac G-1 weren't vibrating, what was? The gamma rays had deposited all their energy high above the ground, blasting nitrogen and oxygen molecules apart into a super-heated plasma, and the electrons and positive ions in this plasma had a billion terajoules to dispose of before they could recombine. Most of this energy would be going into chemical changes, and some was clearly reaching the ground as light, but powerful currents surging through the plasma would also be generating low frequency radio waves, which would bounce back and forth between the Earth and the now- ionized stratosphere. That was the source of the flicker. Yatima recalled the C-Z analysis stating that these waves could do real damage under certain conditions, though any effects would he highly localized, and insignificant compared to the problems of UV and global cooling.
As the auroral light behind the clouds faded, a blue white spike flashed across the sky. Yatima had barely registered this when a second discharge forked between the Earth and the clouds. The thunder was too loud to be heard; the gleisner's acoustic sensors shut down in self-defense.
The sky darkened suddenly, as if the hidden sun had been eclipsed; the plasma must have cooled enough to start forming nitric oxides. Yatima checked the tags from vis skin; the temperature had just dropped from 41 to 39, and it was still falling. Lightning struck again, close by, and in the flash ve saw a layer of dark, wind-streaked cloud moving overhead.
Ripples appeared in the grass, at first just flattening the blades, but then Yatima saw dust rising up between them. The air came in powerful gusts, and when the pressure rose so did the temperature. Yatima raised vis hand into the hot wind, and tried to feel it flowing past vis fingers, tried to grasp what it would mean to be touched by this strange storm.
Lightning hit a building on the far side of the playground; it exploded, showering glowing embers. Yatima hesitated, then moved quickly toward the burst shell. Patches of grass were burning nearby. Ve could see no one moving inside, but between the lightning flashes it was like a starless night, and as the embers and the grass fires sputtered out there was a moment when everything seemed blanketed, smothered by darkness. Yatima stretched the gleisner's vision into infrared; there were patches of body-temperature thermal radiation among the wreckage, but the shapes were ambiguous.
People were shouting frantically, somewhere, but it didn't seem to be coming from the building. The wind masked and distorted the sound, scrambling all cues for distance and direction, and with the streets deserted it was like being in a scape with a soundtrack of disembodied voices.
As Yatima approached the building, buffeted by the wind, ve saw that it was empty; the body-temperature regions were just charred wood. Then vis hearing cut out again and the interface lost balance. Ve hit the ground face down, an image lingering on vis retinas: vis shadow stretched out across the grass, black and sharp against a sea of blue light. When ve scrambled to vis feet and turned around, there were three more buildings charred and smoking, walls split open, ceilings collapsed. Ve ran back across the playground.
There were people stumbling out of the ruins, ragged and bleeding. Others were searching frantically through the debris. Yatima spotted a man half-buried in rubble, eyes open but expressionless, a black splintered length of wood lying across his body from thigh to shoulder. Ve reached down and grabbed one end of the beam, and managed to lift it and swing it away.
As ve squatted beside the man, someone started punching and slapping the back of vis head and shoulders. Ve turned to see what was happening, and the flesher began yelling incoherently and striking vis face. Still squatting, ve backed off from the injured man awkwardly, as someone else tried to pull vis assailant away. Yatima stood and retreated. The flesher screamed after ver, 'Vulture! Leave us in peace!'
Confused and disheartened, Yatima fled.
As the storm intensified, the bridgers' hasty modifications were falling apart; crumpled tarpaulins were blowing down the street, and the ceilings of some of the walkways had come loose and crashed to the ground. Yatima looked up at the dark sky and switched to UV. Ve could just make out the disk of the sun, penetrating the stratospheric NOx easily at these wavelengths, but still veiled by the heavy clouds.
Inoshiro had been right, there was nothing ve could do; the bridgers would bury their dead, treat the injured, repair their damaged city. Even in a world where the darkness at noon could blind them, they'd find their own ways to survive. Ve had nothing to offer them.
The link to Konishi was still down, but ve wasn't prepared to wait any longer. Yatima stood motionless in the street, listening to the cries of pain and mourning, preparing verself for extinction. To forget this would be nothing but a sweet relief; vis Konishi self would be free to remember the bridgers in happier times.
Then the sky roared, and the lightning descended like rain.
The street became a sequence of dazzling staccato images bathed in blue and white, shadows jumping wildly with each new jagged arc of light. Buildings began exploding one after another, a relentless cascade of sudden orange flashes spraying sparks and fist-sized lumps of burning wood. People appeared, ducking and screaming, panicked out of their vulnerable shelters. Yatima watched, helpless but transfixed. The dying stratospheric plasma had found a way to reach down to Earth, its radio frequency pulses pumping vast quantities of ions through the lower atmosphere, inducing a massive voltage difference between the stormclouds and the ground. But now the voltage had crossed the breakdown threshold of the dust-filled air below, and the whole system was short-circuiting, rapidly and violently. Atlanta just happened to be in the way. Local damage, insignificant on a global scale.
Yatima moved slowly through the actinic blaze, half hoping for a lightning strike and the mercy of amnesia, but unable to abandon the bridgers now by choice. Driven from their homes, people were cowering beneath the onslaught, many of them burnt, torn, bloodied. A woman strode past with her arms stretched wide and her face to the sky, shouting defiantly: 'So what? So what?'
