After a couple of days, the work even started to get to be fun, as her mix of 3-D video clips, sound and prose scraps started to assemble itself into something resembling content.

But every time she called somebody, even internally, to discuss the project, she had to sign a non-disclosure form. After a week, Joely was seriously wondering how long she was going to survive here.

Still, she found herself a nice apartment in Bellevue, with a fine, if distant, view of the Sound, and she had the eighteen-wheeler unload the rest of her stuff.

After her first week, though, there was another quake, and a childhood memento — a snowscape of Disneyland that had survived three decades in LA — fell off a shelf and smashed, spilling plastic snowflakes all over the carpet.

It was irritating. If the big quake hit before she filed her feature, she would lose her angle, and probably her job…

She worked faster.

8

Henry called Jane.

The truncated family were still in the semi-private little nest they’d carved out for themselves in a corner of the theatre — three cots and a cupboard — and they were settling down to sleep.

Ted held his mobile phone out to Jane.

Jane answered it, and then held it away from her ear, as if it was hot.

“How did he get my number, Dad?”

Ted just grinned, of course, a look that had infuriated her since long before her fourteenth birthday, when the old fool had first started to meddle in her love life. He turned away on his cot, and picked up the dog-eared copy of The Day of the Triffids that was doing the rounds of the Rest Centre’s informal lending library.

Jack was already asleep.

She didn’t have much choice.

“What do you want?”

And how are you? I’m amazed you’re still there.

“Your pet the Moonseed hasn’t been doing too many of its tricks recently.”

It’s working subsurface.

“That’s it, look on the bright side.”

You’ve only gone six miles in three weeks. You’re crazy.

“But things have calmed down here, Henry. You ought to see it. The evacuation has become a lot more orderly. There are even classes for the kids. The Government seem to be thinking long term now.”

Long term?

“Where to locate the thousands — hundreds of thousands — who had to flee Edinburgh, how to feed and house them, how to find them new jobs. How to rebuild the businesses that were lost. We’ve been helping to run the Rest Centre.” She ruffled her sleeping son’s hair. “Even Jack.” Maybe especially Jack. “You learn things about yourself.” Like, I’ve learned I can stop a fist fight over a smuggled-in bottle of booze. “Ted doesn’t want to leave until he’s sure about Michael.”

You should have gotten further away.

She shifted, folding her legs on the bed and propping her chin on her knees. “You’re getting irritating, Henry.”

At least you’re not paying for the call.

Anyway, she hadn’t wanted to go further. She was comfortable here. If she was honest with herself, she knew that if she moved, she would have to face the bigger picture again, and she was reluctant to do that if she didn’t have to. Here, she was in control, at least of the small things in her life.

The psychology of disaster: denial, anger, withdrawal, acceptance. It dismayed her to look into her own heart and find herself working her way through the textbook.

“So where are you? The Moon?”

Might as well be. I’m heading for Washington. Trying to get them to take me seriously.

“Any success?”

I’m getting tired of meetings with people in suits. Decisions. Directives. None of it is real, Jane, compared to what’s happening out there. The physical reality of the Moonseed, in the rock. You can’t executive-order all that out of existence.

“I understand.”

…And people always want to believe it’s going away.

His voice was flat. Something had changed him.

“Henry, what are you trying to tell me?”

There was silence for long seconds, digitally perfect.

I’ve been working on the science out here. Options to stop the Moonseed. Short and long term. Teams of us, across the planet. And I’ve become convinced.

“What about?”

That we can’t stop it.

She tried to take that in. “There must be a way.”

No. No happy ending, Jane. No neat solution. It doesn’t work like that, it seems. The Moonseed is implacable.

“Is this why you called me?”

No. Yes. I suppose so. It’s difficult. Jane — do you believe me?

She massaged her forehead. “I don’t know.”

The trouble is, we have no one to surrender to.

“I’m not joking, Henry.”

Neither am I. I’m sorry.

“How long—”

The math is uncertain. Earth is big. Decades, probably.

“This wasn’t the future I expected when I was growing up.”

You, the great prophet of environmental doom?

“I think on some level I believed we would be able to do something. We were making a mess of the planet, fine, but it was within our capabilities to stop. All we needed was the will. And then there’s the movies. Science fiction. Disaster films. The world is ending, but the heroes can always do something.”

Yeah. But in real life the future was always finite, Moonseed or not.

“Not this finite. We used to talk about a billion years, Henry. Now you’re talking about decades…” Not even long enough for Jack to have kids of his own, and watch them grow, and grow old himself. Whatever years he does have, he’ll spend on the run. Fleeing from the bloody Moonseed.

Henry said, All any of us can do is our best, by each other, by whatever duty we perceive.

“Not much comfort.”

I’m sorry, he said.

“It’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s.”

No. Not even Mike’s.

“Are they going to send people back to the Moon?”

That’s what I’m campaigning for. I suppose it would be another one in the eye for astrology.

She laughed, softly. “Tell me your birthday.”

He told her.

She thought for a while. “Well, there you are. Your sign is Sagittarius, the sign of exploration. The sign that’s linked with spaceflight. And your dominant planet is Pluto. Planet of transformation. So the omens are good.”

Gee. How spooky.

“Of course I don’t believe in astrology. But then I’m a Scorpio, and Scorpios are always sceptical.”

A long pause, transatlantic crackles.

For a while I’m not sure if I cared if it ended or not. But now I’ve met you. And —

“What?”

His voice was hesitant. Do you think we could have had a future together?

“Hell, I don’t know.” She laughed. “I suppose it’s possible.” She thought it through more carefully. “Yes. It’s possible. We would have had some incandescent arguments.”

I’m sorry I walked out on you, the way I did.

She took a breath. “I understand.”

The truth of it was, she did understand. It was as he’d said. All any of us can do is our best, by each other, by whatever duty we perceive.

It tore me apart.

“But you can’t expect a mother to see it your way. Right then I’d have mobilized the resources of the planet to unite me with Jack if I could, for one more day, and to hell with the rest.”

I understand. Anyhow, that’s the reason.

“What?”

The reason I care. It’s you, Jane. You, and Jack, and even Ted and Mike, damn it. It’s you. It took me a while to figure it out… The world can end, but not if it takes you.

Henry’s voice, accent enhanced by the phone’s tiny speaker, was a dry whisper, from a million miles away. Dust blowing across the dry bottom of one of those lunar seas, she thought.

“For Christ’s sake, Henry,” she said, “you’re the nearest thing to a hero I’ve got. If you feel like that come up with a better option.”