Nomad (10 page)

The carefree smile on Celeste’s face slid away into concern, her brows furrowing together. “What happened? Something with Giovanni?”

“No.” Jess shook her head. “He was lovely, a perfect gentleman.”

“Then what? Jess, you can’t always be running—”

“I talked to dad last night. He’s in Rome.”

“In Rome?” The furrow between Celeste’s eyes deepened, and she leaned toward Jess. “Why is he in Rome?”

“He’s at the Astronomical Union meeting.”

“The Astronomical Union…” Celeste whispered. Her frown dissipated, and she cocked her head to one side and grinned. “What are you up to, missy?”

Jess pressed her lips together. “Look, I wasn’t being entirely honest. I wanted some one-on-one time with you, but when you got that Facebook message from the long lost Italian relative—”

“Who we haven’t heard from since,” Celeste reminded her.

“I know, look, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to get you and dad back together, you know, here in Italy, where you spent your honeymoon. I thought, I don’t know, maybe…”

The edges of Celeste’s smile trembled, her eyes tearing as she stared at her daughter. “Oh, baby, that’s what all this was about?”

“It was, but something’s happened.”

Celeste dropped her gaze, laughing. “Something is always just happening with you, isn’t it?”

“This is serious.”

“Is it something else to do with Ricardo? I’m sure that Giovanni could help—”

“Mom! STOP!”

Celeste blinked twice, letting go of Jess’s hand. “What?”

Jess took a deep breath. “Dad’s at this meeting, and they discovered something coming from deep space. It’s heading toward the Earth. He needs us to leave with him, get back to the States and go to the cabin in the Catskills—”

“From space?” Celeste shook her head, and then pursed her lips. “The cabin, but I thought he sold that years ago?”

“So did I.”

“What’s coming from space?”

“They don’t know, but it’s not good.”

Jess knew her mother, knew she wasn’t one to panic. She didn’t have to sugarcoat. Her mother had spent most of her life in the field as a geologist, exploring remote backcountry. Leaning across the table, Jess explained what her father told her the night before, and the look of disbelief on her mother’s face slowly turned to one of shock.

“Are they
sure
?” Celeste asked as Jess finished. “Shouldn’t we tell people?”

“Dad said not to, that they don’t know all the details yet.” As she said this, a soccer ball bounced off her right leg. Hector came running over, and Jess leaned down to retrieve the ball and give it to him.

“
Prego
, Miss Jessica,” Hector said as he took the ball, smiling at her before turning to run back to Raffael and Lucca and Enzo.

“Nobody?” Celeste stared at Jess, then looked in the direction of Hector.

Jess followed her eyes. “You’re right.” Enzo caught her eye and waved. She smiled, tight lipped, and waved back. Something about that guy was creepy. Nico was just coming out of the reception building behind them, leading another tour group. He waved, and she waved back.

“Nico,” Jess called out. “Do you know where Baron Ruspoli is?”

“Just out for five minutes,” Nico replied. “Down to the town.”

“Can you get him to meet me up in the observatory when he gets back?”

The view from the observatory tower was even more amazing during the day than it had been at night. Jess had an unobstructed 360-degree view of the surrounding countryside. Giovanni had left a note under her door in the morning, giving her access. She’d just finished rolling back the observatory’s roof covering when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Jessica?” echoed Giovanni’s voice through the half-open doorway. “Jess?” He appeared and stood on the landing, concern worrying his eyes. “Enzo said you wanted to see me? Are you all right? Is your father good?”

“He’s fine. Everyone’s fine.” At least for now. She let out a long sigh and looked at the plains again, imagining them flooding, the oceans rushing over them.

“Are…we okay?” Giovanni asked. He took a tentative step forward. “I told your mother we could go horseback riding.”

Men.
Jess shook her head. They always think that it’s something they did, that it’s something to do with them. And then they try and fix it without even understanding. This wasn’t something someone could fix. Nobody could fix this. She looked toward the horizon.

Giovanni took another step toward her. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

How could she bring this up without sounding ridiculous? “My father, he’s an astronomer.”

“Yes?”

“They found something, in space, that’s heading toward the Earth.”

“What?” Giovanni took a second to process. “An asteroid? Is there danger?”

“Not an asteroid, something else. They don’t know what yet.” Jess looked away, up at the sky. Not a cloud. Perfect. “Nowhere will be safe.”

“Do they think it might hit us?”

“I doubt it. At least, that would be one in a million, whatever it is.”

“Then there’s really little danger?” He cocked his head to one side.

“You don’t understand.” Squinting, she shielded her eyes and looked at the sun. “This thing has fifty, maybe a hundred times the mass of our Sun, and is coming from right behind it. It seems to be heading straight into the solar system.”

“A hundred times the size of…” Giovanni’s jaw dropped open. “Will it destroy the sun?”

“A hundred times the mass, not the size. Nomad is probably very compact, not more than thirty kilometers across if it’s compressed matter, but it’s traveling at more than a thousand kilometers a second. Even if it hits the sun, it’ll be like a bullet going through a ball of foam. It wouldn’t damage it, not much, but its gravity will drag the sun away from us, eject all of the planets into deep space. Including Earth.”

“My God.” Giovanni sat down on a bench beside the telescope. “I didn’t hear anything on the news, the radio…”

“Nobody knows yet. And I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

Giovanni stared at her. A gust of wind blew through the treetops, washing over the observatory turret. Jess shivered.

“So, this is true?” he asked finally. “This is not some game…?”

“No game.” Jess shook her head. “I’d stay away from the big cities, move everything you can here. Get all your family and loved ones together.”

“Can’t they stop this thing? I don’t know, fire nuclear weapons at it? Push it away?”

“It’d be like a mote of dust in the path of a charging elephant.”

Giovanni rocked back and forth. “I see.”

“My dad says he has evidence of seeing this thing, decades ago.”

“So they can see it?” Giovanni stopped rocking and steepled his hands together, elbows on his knees, and rested his chin on them. “What is it?”

“That’s the thing.” Jess pursed her lips. “They can’t see anything there. So far they haven’t been able to detect anything directly, but something of this mass, coming undetected, there’re only a few options—or its some strange form of dark matter, something we don’t understand. It seems like it appeared from nowhere.”

“Dark matter?”

“Ninety percent of the universe’s matter is invisible, what they call dark matter.”

“How do they know it’s there if they can’t see it?”

“Same way they know this thing is there. Gravitational influence. Like an invisible bowling ball thrown onto the plastic sheet of space-time.” Jess dragged a hand through her hair.

“I see.”

But Jess could see he didn’t, and that he didn’t entirely believe her. Not everyone had a father who was an astrophysicist. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to give a physics lesson right now. I need to get to the airport. All I can tell you is—this thing is coming. Trust me.”

Giovanni stared at Jess. She saw something behind his eyes. Distrust? A calculation? Something hidden. Something he wasn’t telling her, but she didn’t have the patience. Or the time.

“And how long do we have?” he asked finally.

“If it’s heading into the solar system, which we don’t know for certain yet”—she wagged one finger back and forth to make the point—“it will be a few months. My dad said they’ll make an announcement in three days when they know. Celeste and I are going to meet him at a hotel next to the airport this afternoon, to take a flight back to the States tomorrow.”

Giovanni rolled forward onto his feet. “I will have Nico drive you—”

Jess opened her mouth to object, but Giovanni held up one hand. “—I insist. And please, stay in touch with an email or text. Update me if you hear anything more.”

“Of course.” She stared at Giovanni, then looked away, her shoulders slumping. “I need to go.”

“Of course.”

Jess smiled weakly and turned for the staircase. Getting to the top of it, she found Enzo staring up at her, his pork pie hat cocked back at an angle.

“Your mother wants to see you,” Enzo said, hovering.

This guy
really
creeped her out. “Thank you.” She jumped down the stairs, pushing past him. At least it would be the last time she’d have to see him.
 

NOMAD

Survivor testimony #GR4;

Event +47hrs;

Survivor name: Daly James;

Reported location: Alice Springs, Australia

What the hell happened, mate? Christ, you’re the first person I’ve spoken to in weeks.

Okay, okay, I’ll start. I was on my walkabout, mate, spring every year I piss off into the outback. A month by myself, you know, keeps the head straight. Anyway, two weeks out of Alice Springs and I’m taking a nap when a stampede of wallabies going like batshit tears into my tent. Never seen anything like it. Maybe ten in the morning, and when I’ve finished yelling at the bastards I look up. Blue skies, but these snakes of white light are coiling around the sun, all around it. Had to rub my eyes, thought I was losing it, too much grog the night before, yeah? I decide that’s enough and pack up, start heading back.

About mid-afternoon, these rivers of light in the sky are almost touching the ground, the fear of God rising up in me, and it shakes. The ground I mean. Knocked me clear off my feet, had to be ten minutes before I could stand, it shook that long. When it stopped, I damn near started running. But big cracks opened in the ground, everywhere, like chopped up with a mountain-sized meat cleaver, the ground shaking again. So I got back into Alice Springs, and the place is a ghost town. Nobody here. And the skies, they’re getting dark. Not clouds, mind you, but just dark, like God pulling the shades. Temperature’s dropped twenty degrees in a day. Found this shortwave in the postal station, so I turned it on, and there you are, mate. Now can you tell me what the hell is going on?
(laughs nervously)
Is this it, mate? Armageddon? Where is everyone? What happened?

pgs 112-114 for complete transcript. Freq. 7652 kHz./LSB/USB