"Then what?"

"We think they had to move to a more favorable setting."

"More favorable for what?" Evans said. "What's going on?"

"It may be significant," Sanjong said, "that at the time they purchased the rockets, they also purchased a hundred and fifty kilometers of microfilament wire."

He was nodding to Evans, as if that was supposed to explain everything.

"A hundred and fifty kilometers amp;"

Sanjong flicked his eyes toward the helicopter pilot, and shook his head. "We can go into it in greater detail later on, Peter."

And then he looked out the window.

Evans stared out the opposite window. He saw mile after mile of eroded desert landscape, cliffs brown with streaks of orange and red. The helicopter rumbled northward. He could see the helicopter's shadow racing over the sand. Distorted, twisted, then recognizable again.

Rockets, he thought. Sanjong had given him this information as if he were supposed to figure it out on his own. Five hundred rockets. Groups of fifty launchers, set widely apart. One hundred and fifty kilometers of microfilament wire.

Perhaps that was supposed to mean something, but Peter Evans didn't have the faintest idea what it could possibly be. Groups of small rockets, for what?

Microfilament, for what?

In his head, it was easy enough to calculate that if this microfilament was attached to the rockets, each rocket would have about a third of a kilometer of wire. And a third of a kilometer was amp;roughly a thousand feet.

Which was how high Sanjong said the rockets could go, anyway.

So these rockets were flying a thousand feet into the air, dragging a microfilament wire behind them? What was the point of that? Or was the wire intended to be used to retrieve them, later on? But no, he thought, that couldn't be. The rockets would fall back into the forest, and any microfilament would snap.

And why were the rockets spaced widely apart? If they were only a few inches in diameter, couldn't they be packed closer together?

He seemed to recall that the military had rocket launchers where the rockets were so close together the fins almost touched. So why should these rockets be far apart?

A rocket flies up amp;dragging a thin wire amp;and it gets to a thousand feet amp;and amp; And what?

Perhaps, he thought, there was some instrumentation in the nose of each rocket. The wire was a way to transmit information back to the ground. But what instrumentation?

What was the point of all this?

He glanced back at Sanjong, who was now hunched over another photograph.

"What're you doing?"

"Trying to figure out where they've gone."

Evans frowned as he saw the picture in Sanjong's hand. It was a satellite weather map.

Sanjong was holding a weather map.

Did all this have to do with weather?

Chapter 50

FLAGSTAFF

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10

8:31 P.M.

"Yes," Kenner said, leaning forward in the booth of the restaurant. They were in the back of a steakhouse in Flagstaff. The jukebox at the bar was playing old Elvis Presley: "Don't Be Cruel." Kenner and Sarah had showed up just a few minutes before. Sarah, Evans thought, looked drawn and worried. Not her usual cheerful self.

"We think this is all about the weather," Kenner was saying. "In fact, we're sure it is." He paused while a waitress brought salads, then continued. "There are two reasons to think so. First, ELF has bought a considerable amount of expensive technology that seems to have no use in common, except perhaps attempts to influence the weather. And second, the"

"Hold on, hold on," Evans said. "You said attempts to influence the weather?"

"Exactly."

"Influence how?"

"Control it," Sanjong said.

Evans leaned back in the booth. "This is crazy," he said. "I mean, you're telling me these guys think they can control the weather?"

"They can," Sarah said.

"But how?" Evans said. "How could they do it?"

"Most of the research is classified."

"Then how do they get it?"

"Good question," Kenner said. "And we'd like to know that answer. But the point is, we assume that these rocket arrays are designed to produce major storms, or to amplify the power of existing storms."

"By doing what?"

"They cause a change in the electric potentials of the infra-cumulus strata."

"I'm glad I asked," Evans said. "That's very clear."

"We don't really know the details," Kenner said, "although I'm sure we'll find out soon enough."

"The strongest evidence," Sanjong said, "comes from the pattern of park rentals. These guys have arranged for lots of picnics over a large areathree states, in point of fact. Which means they are probably going to decide at the last minute where to act, based on existing weather conditions."

"Decide what?" Evans said. "What are they going to do?"

Nobody spoke.

Evans looked from one to another.

"Well?"

"We know one thing," Kenner said. "They want it documented. Because if there's one thing you can count on at a school picnic or a company outing with families and kids, it's lots of cameras. Lots of video, lots of stills."

"And then of course the news crews will come," Sanjong said.

"They will? Why?"

"Blood draws cameras," Kenner said.

"You mean they're going to hurt people?"

"I think it's clear," Kenner said, "that they're going to try."

An hour later they all sat on lumpy motel beds while Sanjong hooked a portable DVD player to the television set in the room. They were in a crappy motel room in Shoshone, Arizona, twenty miles north of Flagstaff.

On the screen, Evans once again saw Henley talking to Drake.

"I've listened to you before," Drake said resentfully. "And it didn't work."

"Think structurally," Henley answered. He was leaning back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling, fingertips tented.

"What the hell does that mean?" Drake said.

"Think structurally, Nicholas. In terms of how information functions. What it holds up, what holds it up."

"This is just PR bullshit."

"Nicholas," Henley said, sharply. "I am trying to help you."

"Sorry." Drake looked chastened. He hung his head a little.

Watching the screen, Evans said, "Does it look like Henley is in charge here?"

"He's always been in charge," Kenner said. "Didn't you know that?"

On the screen, Henley was saying, "Let me explain how you are going to solve your problem, Nicholas. The solution is simple. You have already told me that global warming is unsatisfactory because whenever there is a cold snap, people forget about it."

"Yes, I told you"

"So what you need," Henley said, "is to structure the information so that whatever kind of weather occurs, it always confirms your message. That's the virtue of shifting the focus to abrupt climate change. It enables you to use everything that happens. There will always be floods, and freezing storms, and cyclones, and hurricanes. These events will always get headlines and airtime. And in every instance, you can claim it is an example of abrupt climate change caused by global warming. So the message gets reinforced. The urgency is increased."

"I don't know," Drake said doubtfully. "That's been tried, the last couple of years."

"Yes, on a scattered, individual basis. Isolated politicians, making claims about isolated storms or floods. Clinton did it, Gore did it, that blithering science minister in England did it. But we're not talking about isolated politicians, Nicholas. We are talking about an organized campaign throughout the world to make people understand that global warming is responsible for abrupt and extreme weather events."

Drake was shaking his head. "You know," he said, "how many studies show no increase in extreme weather events."

"Please." Henley snorted. "Disinformation from skeptics."

"That's hard to sell. There are too many studies amp;"

"What are you talking about, Nicholas? It's a snap to sell. The public already believes that industry is behind any contrary view." He sighed. "In any case, I promise you there will soon be more computer models showing that extreme weather is increasing. The scientists will get behind this and deliver what is needed. You know that."

Drake paced. He looked unhappy. "But it just doesn't make sense," he said. "It's not logical to say that freezing weather is caused by global warming."

"What's logic got to do with it?" Henley said. "All we need is for the media to report it. After all, most Americans believe that crime in their country is increasing, when it has actually been declining for twelve years. The US murder rate is as low as it was in the early 1970s, but Americans are more frightened than ever, because so much more airtime is devoted to crime, they naturally assume there is more in real life, too." Henley sat up in his chair. "Think about what I am saying to you, Nicholas. A twelve-year trend, and they still don't believe it. There is no greater proof that all reality is media reality."

"The Europeans are more sophisticated"

"Trust meit'll be even easier to sell abrupt climate change in Europe than in the US. You just do it out of Brussels. Because bureaucrats get it, Nicholas. They'll see the advantages of this shift in emphasis."

Drake did not reply. He walked back and forth, hands in his pockets, staring at the floor.

"Just think how far we have come!" Henley said. "Back in the 1970s, all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming. They thought the world was getting colder. But once the notion of global warming was raised, they immediately recognized the advantages. Global warming creates a crisis, a call to action. A crisis needs to be studied, it needs to be funded, it needs political and bureaucratic structures around the world. And in no time at all, a huge number of meteorologists, geologists, oceanographers suddenly became climate scientists' engaged in the management of this crisis. This will be the same, Nicholas."

"Abrupt climate change has been discussed before, and it hasn't caught on."

"That's why you are holding a conference," Henley said patiently. "You hold a well-publicized conference and it happens to coincide with some dramatic evidence for the dangers of abrupt climate. And by the end of the conference, you will have established abrupt climate change as a genuine problem."

"I don't know amp;"

"Stop whining. Don't you remember how long it took to establish the global threat of nuclear winter, Nicholas? It took five days. On one Saturday in 1983, nobody in the world had ever heard of nuclear winter. Then a big media conference was held and by the following Wednesday the entire world was worried about nuclear winter. It was established as a bona fide threat to the planet. Without a single published scientific paper."

Drake gave a long sigh.

"Five days, Nicholas," Henley said. "They did it. You'll do it. Your conference is going to change the ground rules for climate."

The screen went black.

"My God," Sarah said.

Evans said nothing. He just stared at the screen.

Sanjong had stopped listening some minutes before. He was working with his laptop.

Kenner turned to Evans. "When was that segment recorded?"

"I don't know." Evans slowly came out of his fog. He looked around the room in a daze. "I have no idea when it was recorded. Why?"

"You've got the remote in your hand," Kenner said.

"Oh, sorry." Evans pressed the buttons, brought the menu up, saw the date. "It was two weeks ago."

"So Morton's been bugging Drake's offices for two weeks," Kenner said.

"Looks like it."

Evans watched as the recording ran again, this time with the sound off. He stared at the two men, Drake pacing and worried, Henley just sitting there, sure of himself. Evans was struggling to assimilate what he had heard. The first recording had seemed reasonable enough to him. There, Drake was complaining about the problems of publicizing a genuine environmental threat, global warming, when everybody naturally ceased to care about the topic in the middle of a snowstorm. All that made sense to Evans.

But this conversation amp;He shook his head. This one worried him.

Sanjong clapped his hands together and said, "I got it! I have the location!" He turned his laptop so everyone could see the screen. "This is NEXRAD radar from Flagstaff-Pulliam. You can see the precipitation center forming northeast of Payson. There should be a storm there by midday tomorrow."

"How far is that from us?" Sarah said.

"About ninety miles."

Kenner said, "I think we better get in the helicopter."

"And do what?" Evans said. "It's ten o'clock at night, for God's sake."

"Dress warmly," Kenner said.

The world was green and black, the trees slightly fuzzy through the lenses. The night-vision goggles pressed heavily against his forehead. There was something wrong with the straps: they cut into his ears and were painful. But everybody was wearing them, looking out the windows of the helicopter at the miles of forest below.

They were looking for clearings, and had already passed a dozen or more. Some were inhabited, the houses dark rectangles with glowing windows. In a couple of clearings, the buildings were completely blackghost towns, abandoned mining communities.

But they hadn't yet found what they were looking for.

"There's one," Sanjong said, pointing.

Evans looked off to his left, and saw a large clearing. The familiar spiderweb pattern of launchers and cables was partially obscured in tall grass. To one side stood a large trailer truck of the size used to deliver groceries to supermarkets. And indeed, in black lettering, he saw "A amp;P" printed on the side panels.