There was dissension, all over the world. Aside from genuine differences of opinion about how to respond to this emergency, there were plenty of devout types who thought it was all a punishment by God, for one crime or another—and others who were angry at a God who had allowed this to happen. And some, the radical green types, said humankind should just accept its fate. This was a kind of karmic punishment for the way we had messed up the planet: let the Earth be wiped clean, and start again. Which might be a comforting idea, Siobhan thought grimly, if you could be sure there would be anything left after the sunstorm to start again with.

But even so there was still an unreal sheen to things. With the sun shining brightly over London, the Dome seemed as inappropriate as a Christmas tree in July. Most people just got on with their lives—even those who thought it was all a scam by the construction companies.

And in the middle of all this, here was Lieutenant Bisesa Dutt, and another mystery for Siobhan.

She reached Bisesa’s table and sat down, asking an attendant for coffee.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Bisesa began. “I know how busy you must be.”

“I doubt if you do,” Siobhan said ruefully.

“But,” Bisesa said calmly, “I think you’re the right person to hear what I have to say.”

As she sipped her coffee Siobhan tried to get a sense of Bisesa. As Astronomer Royal she had always been expected to deal with people—sometimes thousands of them at once, when she gave public lectures. But since being press-ganged by Miriam Grec into this position of extraordinary responsibility, as a sort of general manager of the shield project, she believed she was acquiring a protective skill in sizing people up: the quicker you understood what faced you, the better you could deal with it.

And so here was Bisesa Dutt, Army officer, out of uniform, far from her posting. She was of Indian extraction. Her face was symmetrical, her nose long, and her gaze was strong but troubled. She was above medium height, with the physical confidence of a soldier. But she was gaunt, Siobhan thought, as if she had been hungry in the past.

Siobhan said, “Tell me why I need to listen to you.”

“I know the date of the sunstorm. The exact date.”

Because the authorities, guided by teams of psychologists, were continuing to work to minimize panic, that was still a closely guarded secret. “Bisesa, if there has been a security leak, it’s your duty to tell me about it.”

Bisesa shook her head. “No leak. You can check.” She lifted one foot and tapped the sole with her fingernail. “I’m tagged. The Army has been monitoring me since I turned myself in.”

“You went AWOL?”

“No,” Bisesa said patiently. “They thought I had. Now I’m on compassionate leave, as they call it. But they are monitoring me anyhow.”

“And so the date—”

“April 20, 2042, you mean?”

Siobhan regarded her. “Okay, I’ll bite. How do you know that?”

“Because there is a solar eclipse on that day.”

Siobhan raised her eyebrows. She murmured, “Aristotle?”

“She’s correct, Siobhan,” Aristotle whispered in her ear.

“Okay. But so what? An eclipse is just a lining up of sun, Moon and Earth. It has nothing to do with the sunstorm.”

“But it does,” Bisesa said. “I was shown an eclipse, during my journey back home.”

“Your journey.” Siobhan had only glanced at Bisesa’s file. She’d come down to meet her on impulse, to get away from her teleconference for a while. Now she was beginning to regret it. “I know something of the story. You had some kind of vision—”

“Not a vision. I don’t want to use up our time discussing it. You have the files; if you believe me, you will check up on it later. Right now I need you to listen. I knew that something dreadful was going to happen to the Earth, the day I got back. And by showing me the eclipse they were telling me it had something to do with the sun.”

“They? …”

Bisesa’s face clouded, as if she didn’t quite believe it all herself—and she rather wished she didn’t have to. But she plowed on.”Professor McGorran, I believe that the sunstorm is no accident. I believe it is the result of intentional harm being done to us by an alien power.”

Siobhan pointedly glanced at her watch. “What alien power?”

“The Firstborn. That’s what we called them.”

“We? … Never mind. I don’t suppose you have any proof.”

“No—and I know what you’re thinking. People like me never do.”

Siobhan allowed herself a smile, for she had been thinking exactly that.

“But the Army did find some anomalies in my physical condition they couldn’t explain. That’s why they gave me leave. That’s proof of a sort. And then there’s the principle of mediocrity.”

That threw Siobhan. “Mediocrity?”

“I’m no scientist, but isn’t that what you call it? Copernicus’s principle. There should be nothing special about any given location in space or time. And if you have a chain of logic that indicates there is something special about a given moment—”

“Never trust coincidences,” Siobhan said.

Bisesa leaned forward intently. “Doesn’t it strike you that the sunstorm, occurring now, is the mightiest coincidence of all time? Think about it. Humanity is a mere hundred thousand years old. The Earth, and the sun, are forty thousand times as old as that. If it were purely natural, surely the sunstorm could have occurred at any time in Earth’s history. Why should the sun blow its top now, just in this brief moment when there happens to be an intelligence running around on the planet?”

For the first time in the course of the conversation Siobhan felt faintly disturbed. After all, she’d had, independently, vague thoughts along these lines. “You’re saying this is no accident.”

“I’m saying the sunstorm is intentional. I’m saying we are the target.” Bisesa left the word hanging in the air.

Siobhan turned away from the intensity of her gaze. “But this is all just philosophy. You have no actual proof.”

Bisesa said firmly, “But I believe that if you look for proof you will find it. That’s what I’m asking you to do. You’re close to the scientists who are studying the sunstorm. You could make it happen. It could be vital.”

“Vital?”

“For the future of humankind. Because if we don’t understand what we’re dealing with, how can we beat it?”

Siobhan studied this intent woman. There was something odd about her—something of another world, perhaps, another place. But she had an intelligent soldier’s clarity and conviction. She could be wrong in what she says, Siobhan thought. But I don’t think she’s mad.

On a whim she dug into her jacket pocket and dug out a scrap of material. “Let me show you what we’re actually working on right now, the problems I’m wrestling with. Have you ever heard of smartskin? …”

This was a prototype sample of the material that would some day, if all went well, be stretched over the gaunt lunar-glass framework of the shield. It was a glass-fiber spiderweb, complex and full of components, detailed on scales as small as the eye could see. “It contains superconducting wires to transmit power and to serve as comms links. Diamond fibers, too small to see, for structural strength. Sensors, force multipliers, computer chips, even a couple of tiny rocket motors. There, can you see?” The scrap, the size of a pocket handkerchief, weighed almost nothing; the little rocket motors were like pinheads.

“Wow,” Bisesa said. “I thought it was just a big dumb mirror.”

Siobhan shook her head ruefully. “That would be too easy, wouldn’t it? The whole shield won’t have to be smart fabric, but maybe one percent of it will. It’s like a huge cooperative organism.”

Bisesa touched the material reverently. “So what’s the problem?”