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taken to using public transport. Rivers drove by-the hell with it, let him walk, there were too many other things to mull over this morning.
        The breeze through the open windows soon cleared the last dregs of the insect-spray; he closed them and let the air-conditioning take over.
        The main conference at Bracknell was expected to take up most of the morning and then, after lunch, would break up into smaller meetings in various parts of the massive Meteorological Office building and the nearby Hadley Centre. No doubt these would go on well into the evening, perhaps even into the night. His own briefing wouldn't take long-all the scientists and representatives present would be only too aware of the planet's chaotic weather patterns and their adverse effects on the environment. He and his colleagues, however, would be expected to come forward with calculated predictions on how the current irregular patterns would evolve and settle into an 'established constancy' (he grinned at the latter term, one that the US National Center for Atmospheric Research had recently come up with). Accurate paradigms devised from extensive scientific research and computer models were necessary if world governments were to prepare their countries for unnatural disasters and Rivers was unsure if his organization could deliver. Such predictions required evidence and information that had some kind of form, some kind of rule, no matter how complex; unfortunately, no such consistency or principle seemed to exist as far as the weather was concerned. The flutter of a butterfly's wings in Massachusetts might cause a tornado in India. Who would even know that butterfly had taken wing? All that the various working groups could offer was possibilities; and since the climate changes had become so erratic-and often, so violent-over the past few years, even possibilities were based mainly on calculated guesses. The truth was, the world had fucked itself up and nobody-scientists, climatologists, meteorologists, and little old men with seaweed, nobody-was able to say just what lay in store for the human race during the next few decades. Nor even the next few weeks.
        A sharp crack jolted him from his thoughts. Something had struck the car.
        He kept driving, aware of the probable cause. Blame the government, he mentally advised the stone-thrower: the present motoring restrictions were the politicians' idea, not his. At least it made the route through the city a little clearer, although a wary eye had to be kept out for the legions of cyclists and the taxi-tandem operators, many of whom seemed reckless beyond sanity. And the air itself was just a bit more acceptable to breathe, which was something to be grateful for.
        Rivers headed for the M4 out of London.
        

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        The number of worldwide organizations attending the conference hosted by the UK Meteorological Office was considerable, ranging from the Scientific Committee on the Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) of the International Council of Scientific Unions to the Royal and Linnean Society (Evolution and Extinction); from the Intergovernmental Committee of the UN Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organization to the Norwegian Institute of Scientific Research and Enlightenment (NIVFO); from the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization, to the Institute of Terrestrial Economy. Just reading through the attendance list had made Rivers' head pound.
        Part of his address to the delegates-no more than five minutes, the whole report-dealt with the merits of the new Cray X-MP Mk IV, inarguably the world's most impressive weather forecasting computer, a twenty per cent improvement on its predecessor. The machine would soon be linked to other compatible computers around the globe, sharing knowledge instantaneously with every member nation of the 1993 World Environment Pact (WEP), and might even persuade those countries who, for