wasn’t easy. This briefing room was on the fortieth floor of the Livingstone Tower—or the “Euro-needle” as every Londoner called it, including Miriam when off camera. The windows were broad sheets of toughened glass, and the October sky was a shade of blue that reminded her of childhood visits to Provence with her French-born father. What color would Papa have called that sky? Cerulean? Powder blue?
On such a day, under such a sky, with London spread out like a shining tapestry before her, it was hard for Miriam to remember that she was no longer a small child but Prime Minister of all Eurasia, with grave responsibilities. And it was hard to accept such bad news as Siobhan’s.
Siobhan sat calmly, waiting for her words to sink in.
Nicolaus Korombel, Miriam’s press secretary, was the only other person in the room for this sensitive meeting. Polish-born, he had a habit of wearing shirts a couple of sizes too small for his spreading desk-job girth, and Miriam could actually see belly hair curl past its straining buttons. But he was the inner-circle advisor on whom she relied most heavily, and his assessment of Siobhan would be important in her final judgment of what she had to say.
Now Nicolaus sat back, locked his fingers behind his head, and blew out his cheeks. “So we’re looking at the mother of all solar storms.”
“You could put it that way,” Siobhan said dryly.
“But we survived June 9, and everybody said
that
was the worst storm in recorded history. What can we expect this time? To lose the satellites, the ozone layer . . .”
Siobhan said, “We’re talking about an energy injection many orders of magnitude greater than June 9.”
Miriam held her hands up. “Professor McGorran, I was a lawyer in the days when I had a real job. I’m afraid such phrases mean little to me.”
Siobhan allowed herself a smile. “I apologize. Prime Minister—”
“Oh, call me Miriam. I have a feeling we’re going to be working together rather closely.”
“Miriam, then. I do understand. Astronomer Royal I may be, but this isn’t my specialty. I’m struggling with it too.” Siobhan brought up a summary slide, a table of numbers that filled the big wall softscreen. “Let me go through the bottom line again. In April 2042, just four and a half years from now, we anticipate a major solar event. There will be an equatorial brightening of the sun, essentially, an outflux of energy that will bathe the orbital plane of Earth, and the other planets. We anticipate that Earth will intercept some ten to power twenty-four joules of energy. That’s a central figure; we have a ninety-nine percent confidence limit of an order of magnitude up or down.”
There was that term again.
“Order of magnitude?”
“A power of ten.”
Nicolaus rubbed his face. “I hate to admit my ignorance. I know a joule is a measure of energy, but I have no idea how large it is. And all those exponents—I understand that ten to power twenty-four means, umm, a trillion
trillion,
but—”
Siobhan said patiently, “The detonation of a one-megaton nuclear weapon releases around ten to power fifteen joules—that’s a thousand trillion. The world’s nuclear arsenal at its Cold War peak was around ten thousand megatons; we’re probably down to some ten percent of that today.”
Nicolaus was doing arithmetic in his head. “So your injection of ten to power twenty-four joules from the sun—”
“It amounts to a billion megatons, pouring over Earth. Or a hundred
thousand
times the energy that would have been released in a worst-case nuclear conflagration.” She said the words coolly, meeting their eyes. She was trying to make them understand, step by step, Miriam saw; she was trying to make them believe.
Nicolaus said grimly, “Why did nobody alert us to this before? Why did it take
you
to dig this out? What’s going on up there on the Moon?”
But it wasn’t the Moon that was the problem, it seemed; it was
On such a day, under such a sky, with London spread out like a shining tapestry before her, it was hard for Miriam to remember that she was no longer a small child but Prime Minister of all Eurasia, with grave responsibilities. And it was hard to accept such bad news as Siobhan’s.
Siobhan sat calmly, waiting for her words to sink in.
Nicolaus Korombel, Miriam’s press secretary, was the only other person in the room for this sensitive meeting. Polish-born, he had a habit of wearing shirts a couple of sizes too small for his spreading desk-job girth, and Miriam could actually see belly hair curl past its straining buttons. But he was the inner-circle advisor on whom she relied most heavily, and his assessment of Siobhan would be important in her final judgment of what she had to say.
Now Nicolaus sat back, locked his fingers behind his head, and blew out his cheeks. “So we’re looking at the mother of all solar storms.”
“You could put it that way,” Siobhan said dryly.
“But we survived June 9, and everybody said
that
was the worst storm in recorded history. What can we expect this time? To lose the satellites, the ozone layer . . .”
Siobhan said, “We’re talking about an energy injection many orders of magnitude greater than June 9.”
Miriam held her hands up. “Professor McGorran, I was a lawyer in the days when I had a real job. I’m afraid such phrases mean little to me.”
Siobhan allowed herself a smile. “I apologize. Prime Minister—”
“Oh, call me Miriam. I have a feeling we’re going to be working together rather closely.”
“Miriam, then. I do understand. Astronomer Royal I may be, but this isn’t my specialty. I’m struggling with it too.” Siobhan brought up a summary slide, a table of numbers that filled the big wall softscreen. “Let me go through the bottom line again. In April 2042, just four and a half years from now, we anticipate a major solar event. There will be an equatorial brightening of the sun, essentially, an outflux of energy that will bathe the orbital plane of Earth, and the other planets. We anticipate that Earth will intercept some ten to power twenty-four joules of energy. That’s a central figure; we have a ninety-nine percent confidence limit of an order of magnitude up or down.”
There was that term again.
“Order of magnitude?”
“A power of ten.”
Nicolaus rubbed his face. “I hate to admit my ignorance. I know a joule is a measure of energy, but I have no idea how large it is. And all those exponents—I understand that ten to power twenty-four means, umm, a trillion
trillion,
but—”
Siobhan said patiently, “The detonation of a one-megaton nuclear weapon releases around ten to power fifteen joules—that’s a thousand trillion. The world’s nuclear arsenal at its Cold War peak was around ten thousand megatons; we’re probably down to some ten percent of that today.”
Nicolaus was doing arithmetic in his head. “So your injection of ten to power twenty-four joules from the sun—”
“It amounts to a billion megatons, pouring over Earth. Or a hundred
thousand
times the energy that would have been released in a worst-case nuclear conflagration.” She said the words coolly, meeting their eyes. She was trying to make them understand, step by step, Miriam saw; she was trying to make them believe.
Nicolaus said grimly, “Why did nobody alert us to this before? Why did it take
you
to dig this out? What’s going on up there on the Moon?”
But it wasn’t the Moon that was the problem, it seemed; it was
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