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Thandie began to pack away her gear.
    “One more question,” Patrick said. “What are your own future plans, Dr. Jones?”
    She smiled. “To continue to observe. Events are unfolding which nobody has ever seen before, nor ever will again. I can’t have children. I have no stake in the future. But the present is rich enough for me.”

7
    O nce more Edward Kenzie stood up. “There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, as authoritative a picture as you’re going to get. Just like New York 2018 all over again, right? Now we get to the crux of the meeting. Since New York, thanks to the incompetence, denial and buck-passing of our governments, we’ve already wasted seven years. The resources the federal government has put into dealing with the worst case, a continued sea level rise, have been minimal compared to what’s been spent on the fanciful plans for recovery and recolonization to which Dr. Jones alluded. Well, I for one am not going to sit around dreaming while the rising sea obliterates my wealth and property and turns my family into drowned rats. Some of us are going to try and do something.”
    There was a rumbling of support for that.
    Kenzie held up his hands. “I, with the help of Nathan Lammockson and others, have brought here experts in a number of fields. Now’s your chance to talk to them, to start the seeds of your thinking about what you intend to do. What we need to consider is meaningful options for the worst case. I hope that out of this session will come a number of projects—a number of ark designs, if you will—that can proceed more or less independently of each other. That seems the way to maximize our chances of success. This is the inception of a program, not any one single project.
    “But we’re going to have to proceed with extreme caution. Think about it. The Earth is drowning. Tell the world you’re building an ark, and every hapless IDP and his brood will be fighting for a place aboard.” He glared around at them, his face pinched and calculating. “I’m hoping we’re going to support each other in years to come. But we must work discreetly. We must keep our secrets— even from each other. We should each know only what we need to know about what the other guy is doing, like terrorist cells. Maybe that doesn’t sound very American. But we suffered enough from those terrorist assholes with their pinprick attacks ever since 2001. We may as well learn a few lessons from the way they operate, right?”
    He’d clearly worked all this out. And yet Patrick could see the sense in what he was saying. He’d seen for himself how every attempt made by the federal government to alleviate the crisis was soon overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the unfolding disaster. While it was hardly democratic, secrecy might indeed be the only way forward, to deny the multitude to give a few a chance.
    As the session broke up, Patrick had to tap Holle on the shoulder to get her to turn off her Angel. She glanced around, looking for Thandie’s spinning Earth, and was disappointed it had been switched off.
     
     
     
    Outside the library, Jerzy Glemp approached Patrick and drew him away from the knots of conversation that were forming. “I saw you nod,” he said, his voice a conspiratorial whisper.
    “You did?”
    “When Dr. Jones was summarizing. When she said we should seek refuge off the Earth.” He looked up at the sky.
    “I guess it struck a chord.”
    “Is the logic not inevitable? This Earth is doomed; that much is obvious. In a hundred years it will be a world for fishes. Just as Poland is already gone. The only hope for mankind will be to find some new place to live, out among the planets and the stars.”
    “You’re talking about some kind of spaceship?”
    “Of course.” He glanced around.“Look at the others. Nathan Lammockson is talking of building mighty oceangoing ships, like Noah. Others dream of submarines and undersea colonies. You and I know, Mr. Groundwater, that space is the