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apparently losing their way, and a haunting image of whales beached on a North American shore.
    Toby Pitt brought her a phone, a clunky set trailing a cord. “I’m sorry it took so long,” he said.
    The phone must have been at least thirty years old, but, connected to the Society’s reliable fiber-optic backup lines, it worked, more or less. It took her a few tries to get through to Guy’s, and then to persuade a receptionist to find her mother.
    Maria sounded scared, but in control. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “The power outages have just been blinks; the emergency system is working well. But things are very strange here.”
    Siobhan nodded. “The hospitals must be overwhelmed. Heat victims—the accidents in traffic—”
    “Not just that,” Maria said. “People are coming in because their pacemakers are playing up, or their servo-muscles, or bowel control implants. And there’s a whole
flood
of heart attack victims, it seems to me. Even people with no implants at all.”
    Of course, Siobhan mused. The human body itself is a complex system controlled by bioelectricity, itself subject to electrical and magnetic fields. We are all tied to the sun, she thought, like the birds and the whales, tied by invisible lines of force nobody even suspected existed a couple of centuries ago. And we are so very vulnerable to the sun’s tantrums, even our very bodies.
    Toby Pitt said, “Siobhan, I’m sorry to interrupt. You’ve another call.”
    “Who is it?”
    “The Prime Minister.”
    “Good Lord.” She thought it over, and asked, “Which one—?”
    The phone came alive in her hand. As electricity jolted into her body the muscles of her right arm turned rigid. Then the phone shot from her grasp and slid over the table, showering blue sparks.

PART 2
    PRESAGINGS

    8: Recovery
    Somebody was hammering on the door of the flat.
    Bisesa had learned to mask her reactions in front of Myra. Fixing a smile on her face, ignoring the racing of her heart, she got up from the sofa slowly and folded away her magazine.
    Myra turned her head suspiciously. She was lying on her belly watching a softwall synth-soap. There was a lot of knowingness in those eight-year-old eyes, Bisesa thought, too much. Myra knew that something strange had happened to the world a few days ago, and it was odd that her mother was here in the first place. But there was a sort of understanding between the two of them, a conspiracy. They would
act
normal, and maybe at some point things would turn out to
be
normal after all: that was their unspoken hope.
    Bisesa could use a whispered command to Aristotle to turn a section of the door transparent. But as a British Army officer trained in combat technology, she had never quite trusted electronic senses, and she peered through the old-fashioned spy hole to double-check.
    It was only Linda. Bisesa opened the door.
    Linda was a short, stocky, competent-looking girl. Aged twenty-two, she was Bisesa’s cousin, a student at Imperial College studying biospheric ethics. For the last two years she had served as Myra’s nanny during Bisesa’s long postings abroad. Right now she held two bulging paper bags of groceries, with two more stacked by her feet, and she was sweating profusely. “Sorry for kicking the door down,” she said. “I thought these damn bags would give way.”
    “Well, you made it.” Bisesa let Linda in and carefully double-locked the door.
    They hauled the groceries to the flat’s small kitchen. Most of what Linda had bought were staples—milk, bread, quorn products, some limp-looking vegetables, and mottled apples. Linda apologized for the meagerness of her haul, but it could have been worse; Bisesa, who followed the news assiduously, knew that London had come close to a strict rationing system.
    For Bisesa, unpacking groceries was oddly nostalgic, something she used to do every Friday evening with her mother, who would do her “big shop” at the end of the family farm’s long week.