Heavy Weather

The stranger looked up from his console. "I'm not getting any video off my side, should I shut down my video feed?"

"Sorry," Jane said, leaning forward to speak into the laptop's little inset mike. "I'm getting this off a laptop, I've got no camera here."

"Sorry to hear that," the stranger said, adjusting his tie.

"Y'know, Juanita, I've never actually seen you. I was quite looking forward to it."

The stranger had Jerry's ears on the sides of his head. Jane could scarcely have been more surprised if he'd had Jerry's ears on a string around his neck. But then the bump of shock passed, and Jane felt a little cold thrill of recognition. She smiled shyly at the laptop, even though he couldn't see her. "This is Leo, isn't it?"

"Right," Leo Mulcahey said, with a gentle smile and a wink. "Can we talk?"

Jane glanced around the command yurt. Mickey and Rick were both in the bath line. They usually gave her a while to work alone before they'd show up to run diagnostics and start lugging machines to the trucks.

"Yeah," she said. "I guess so. For a little while." It was the first time she had seen Jerry's brother. Leo looked older than Jerry, his cheeks thi

"I understand you've been talking with Mom," Leo said.

Jane nodded silently, but Leo of course couldn't see her. "Yes I have," she blurted.

"I happen to be in the States again, at the moment. Mom's been filling me in on Jerry's activities."

"I didn't mean any harm by it," Jane said. "Jerry hardly ever calls your mother, but he doesn't mind if I do it... . Sorry if that seemed intrusive on my part."

"Oh, Mom thinks the world of you, Juanita," said Leo, smiling. "Y'know, Mom and I have never seen Jerry carry on in quite this way before. I'm convinced you must be someone very special."

"Well..." Jane said. "Leo, I just thought of something-I have some photos on disk here, let me see if I can pull them up and feed them to you."

"That would be good." Leo nodded. "Always feels a little odd to speak to a blank screen."

Jane punched up the digital scrapbook. "I wanted to thank you for helping me find my brother... Alejandro."

Leo shrugged. "De nada. I pulled a string for you. Okay, two strings. That's Mexico for you... walls within walls, wheels within wheels... . An interesting place, a fine culture." He looked down again. "Oh yes. That's coming across very well. Nice photo."

"I'm the one in the hat," Jane said. "The other woman's our camp cook."

"I could have guessed that," Leo said, sitting up intently. He seemed genuinely intrigued. "Oh, this one of you and Jerry is very good. I didn't know about the beard. The beard looks good, though."

"He's had the beard ever since I met him," Jane said. "I'm sorry that, um... well, that it's been so long. And that you and he don't get along better."

"A misunderstanding," Leo offered, weighing his words. "You know how Jerry can be... very singleminded, am I right? If you're addressing some issue, and it doesn't quite chime with Jerry's current train of thought.

He's a very bright man of course, but he's a mathematician, not very tolerant of ambiguity." Leo smiled sadly. He has his dignity, Jane thought. That magnetism Jerry has, and that ruthlessness too.

She found him extremely attractive. Alarmingly so. She could easily imagine fucking him. She could hotly imagine flicking both of them. At once.

And when they went for each other's throats she'd be smashed between them like a mouse between two bricks.

She cleared her throat. "Well... is there something I can do for you in particular, Leo?"

"Actually, yes," Leo said. "By the way, you don't mind if I hard-copy these photos, do you?"

"Oh, go ahead."

"It's about this strange business with the F-6," said Leo as his printer emitted a well-bred hum. "I wonder if you could explain that to me a little more thoroughly."

"Well," Jane said, "the F-6 is a theory Jerry has."

"It sounds a bit alarming, doesn't it? A tornado an order of magnitude larger than any seen before?"

"Well, strictly speaking it wouldn't be a tornado per se -more of a large-scale vortex. Something smaller than a hurricane, but with a different origin and different structure. Different behavior."

"Was I right in hearing that this thing is supposed to be a permanent feature of the atmosphere?"

"No," Jane said. "No. I mean, yes, there is some indication in the models-if you set the parameters just right, there are some, urn, indicators that an F-6 might become a stable configuration under certain circumstances. Look, Leo, we don't emphasize that aspect, okay? The woods are full of nutty amateurs ru

"Jerry does think, seriously, that an F-6 will actually occur, though."

"Well, yes. We do think that. The mesoscale convection is shaping up, the Bermuda High, the jet stream... Yeah, we think that if it's go

"A giant, unprecedently large, and violent atmospheric storm. Over the heartland of the United States."

"Yes, that's right. That's it exactly."

Leo was silent, and looked grave and thoughtful.

"Leo, you don't double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere without some odd things happening."

"I'm used to odd things," Leo said. "I don't believe I'm quite used to this, however."

"Jerry's not alone in this line of thought, you know. He's out on a limb, but he's not way out. There are pale oclimatologists in Europe who think that giant storms were real common during the Eemian Interglacial. There's physical evidence in the fossil record."

"Really."

"There was also a paper out this year saying that the so-called Akkadian volcanism wasn't volcanic at all, that the dust layers, and their three-hundred-year drought, were entirely atmospheric. That was the Akkadian culture in the Tigris and Euphrates."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Akkadians were the first civilization-2200 B.C., in Mesopotamia? They were the first culture ever, and also the first culture ever destroyed by a sudden climate change."

"Right," Leo said, "I'm certain these matters have been cover our ~fted and crusading popular press. Exhaustively. And to the full satisfaction of the scientific community." He shrugged, elegantly. "I understand that the weather is crazy now, and the weather will be crazy the rest of our lives. What I don't understand is why Jerry is taking you into this."

"Me?" Jane said. "Oh! Well, I hack interface. For the Troupe. And I kinds have to get back to work right now, actually."

"Juanita, you're not taking my point. Suppose this is a really big storm. Suppose that it is a permanent vortex in the atmosphere-as Jerry has said, something like Earth's own version of the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. A permanent planetary sinkhole for excess greenhouse heat, centered somewhere near North Texas. I know that seems like a bizarre supposition, but suppose it's really the truth."

"Yeah? Well, then I'll be there watching it."

"You'll be killed."

"Maybe. Probably. But I'll be there anyway. We'll document it.

"Why?"

"Why? Because we can! Because we know! It's what we do! We'll do it for the sake of the survivors, I suppose." Jane ran her hands through her hair, her face stiff. "Anyway, if the P.6 is really a worst-case F-6, then the survivors are go