Hawk asked, “What’s an ice age?”
“It’s what follows a greenhouse warming. This greenhouse was an anomaly, caused by anthropogenic factors. Now the CO2’s being leached out of the atmosphere and the global climate will bounce back to a Pleistocene condition.”
He might as well have been talking Cherokee or some other redskin language, Tim thought. Hawk looked just as baffled.
Seeing the confusion on the boys’ faces, the Prof went to great pains to try to explain. Tim got the idea that he was saying the weather was going to turn colder, a lot colder, and stay that way for a really long time.
“Glaciers a mile thick!” the Prof said, nearly raving in his earnestness. “Minnesota, Michigan, the whole Great Lakes region was covered with ice a mile thick!”
“It was?”
“When?”
Shaking his head impatiently, the Prof said, “It doesn’t matter when. The important thing is that it’s going to happen all over again!”
“Here?” Tim asked. “Where our folks live?”
“Yes!”
“How soon?” asked Hawk.
The Prof hesitated. He drummed his fingers on the desktop for a minute, looking lost in thought.
“By the time you’re a grandfather,” he said at last. “Maybe sooner, maybe later. But it’s going to happen.”
Hawk let a giggle out of him. “That’s a long time from now.”
“But you’ve got to get ready for it,” the Prof said, frowning. “It will take a long time to prepare, to learn how to make warm clothing, to grow different crops or migrate south.”
Hawk shook his head.
“You ought to at least warn your people, let them know it’s going to happen,” the Prof insisted.
“But we’re headin’ for Colorado,” Tim confessed. “We’re not goin’ back home.”
The Prof’s bushy brows knit together. “This climate shift could be just as abrupt as the greenhouse cliff was. People who aren’t prepared for it will die—starve to death or freeze.”
“How do you know it’s gonna happen like that?” Hawk demanded.
“You saw the satellite imagery of Canada, didn’t you?”
“We saw some picture of something, I don’t know what it really was,” Hawk said. “How do you know what it is? How do you know it’s gonna get so cold?”
The Prof thought a moment, then admitted, “I don’t know. But all the evidence points that way. I’m sure of it, but I don’t have conclusive proof.”
“You don’t really know,” Hawk said.
For a long moment the old man glared at Hawk angrily. Then he took another deep breath and his anger seemed to fade away.
“Listen, son. Many years ago people like me tried to warn the rest of the world that the greenhouse warming was going to drastically change the global climate. All the available evidence pointed to it, but the evidence was not conclusive. We couldn’t convince the political leaders of the world that they were facing a disaster.”
“What happened?” Tim asked.
Spreading his arms out wide, the Prof shouted, “This happened! The world’s breadbaskets flooded! Electrical power distribution systems totally wiped out. The global nets, the information and knowledge of centuries—all drowned. Food distribution gone. Cities abandoned. Billions died! Billions! Civilization sank back to subsistence agriculture.”
Tim looked at Hawk and Hawk looked back at Tim. Maybe the old man isn’t a witch, Tim thought. Maybe he’s just crazy.
The Prof sighed. “It doesn’t mean a thing to you, does it? You just don’t have the understanding, the education or . . .”
Muttering to himself, the old man turned back to his magic box and pecked at the buttons again. The picture went back to the first one the boys had seen.
Abruptly the Prof jabbed a button and the picture winked off. Pushing himself up from his chair, he said, “Come on, we’ve got to get your boat farther up out of the water and tied down good and strong.”
“What for?” Hawk demanded, suddenly suspicious.
With a frown, the Prof said, “This area used to be called Tornado Alley. Just because it’s covered by water doesn’t change that. In fact, it makes the twisters even worse.”
The boys had heard of twisters. One had levelled a village not more than a day’s travel from their own, only a couple of springtimes ago.
When it came, the twister was a monster.
The boys spent most of the day hauling their boat up close to the trees and then tying it down as firmly as they could. The Prof provided ropes and plenty of advice and even some muscle power. All the time they worked the clouds got thicker and darker and lower. Tim expected a thunderstorm any minute as they headed back for the Prof’s house, bone tired.
They were halfway back when the trees began tossing back and forth and rain started spattering down. Leaves went flying through the air, torn off the trees. A whole bough whipped by, nearly smacking Hawk on the head. Tim heard a weird sound, a low dull roaring, like the distant howl of some giant beast.
“Run!” the Prof shouted over the howling wind. “You don’t want to get caught here amidst the trees!”
Despite their aching muscles they ran. Tim glanced over his shoulder and through the bending, swaying trees he saw a mammoth pillar of pure terror marching across the open water, heading right for him, sucking up water and twigs and anything in its path, weaving slowly back and forth, high as the sky, bearing down on them, coming to get him.
