of the Himalayas, the albedo of the land, jet streams, Coriolis effect, ocean currents, and so on. El Ni?o even enters into it. Lately, it has been drier than the historical norm, even while the rest of the planet has been much wetter. When the monsoon rains are heavy, they cause regional flooding that can lead to more death and destruction than a dry spell. So this is not a simple matter.”
The queen had pulled the handout from Charlotte’s grasp and begun nervously shuffling through it. “Page 23 is probably what you’re looking for,” Alastair said, putting the graphic up on the room’s big screen. It was a flat rectangular map of the world, with continents and countries outlined in black. Covering that was an overlay of color ranging from blue to red. Much of the world was tinted by a wash of pastel pink or baby blue, indicating relatively small predicted change in annual rainfall, but there were localized areas of more saturated color. Many of these were in places like the Sahara, the Himalayas, or Greenland that were relatively unpopulated. The Indian subcontinent, taken as a whole, didn’t look terrible. But there was a worrisome red blotch in the northwest, between the Himalayas to the east and Pakistan to the west. “The Punjab,” Alastair said, highlighting it with a red laser pointer. “The Breadbasket. Generally the last place the monsoon reaches as it spreads up from Sri Lanka in the late spring and early summer. And the first place from which it recedes, a few months later.”
“So, more vulnerable to changes in the monsoon than other areas,” said Willem, filling in the blanks.
“Yes. And it borders on some areas that are geopolitically complicated.” In this company Alastair didn’t need to go into much detail about India’s endless border disputes with Pakistan and with China, or to belabor the fact that all three of those countries were nuclear powers.
The queen looked for a few moments at Charlotte, perhaps having second thoughts about having invited her. Oblivious, the princess was spawning Punjab-related browser tabs and slamming away at “subscribe” buttons.
“What can you say about the actual probability of drought or famine? The possible toll?” Saskia asked.
“Very little really,” Alastair said. “But what I can say with some confidence is that maps similar to this one are probably being looked at by people in Delhi right now. As well as Beijing and other places.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Willem said. “I’m sorry to be so cynical, but once people have seen a map like this one, the scientific, on-the-ground reality no longer actually matters.”
Saskia nodded. “We discussed this on the train. It’s about how everything is perceived.”
“Yes. People already believed that the weather was being manipulated even when it wasn’t. Now that T.R. actually is doing something, any perceived change whatsoever will be credited to, or blamed on, him.”
“Or anyone seen as supporting him,” Saskia added, nodding. She nudged Lotte. No point in inviting her to these things if she wasn’t going to learn anything. “How about it, darling? Now that you are an instant expert on the Punjab, what’s the mood there? Are people furious at T.R. McHooligan?”
“A few of them,” Lotte said, “but no, mostly they are too excited about Big Fish to pay any attention to geoengineering.”
“Who or what is that?”
By way of an answer, Lotte clicked on a browser tab and rotated the screen toward her. Bracketed between luridly colored headlines in what Saskia assumed to be Punjabi script was a photo of a magnificently ripped young man posing on a peak of some impossibly high mountain brandishing a stick. “Behold,” Lotte said.
Saskia gave him a good long look. The picture seemed to have been taken someplace cold. Atop Big Fish’s massive pecs, brown nipples jutted out like Himalayan pinnacles.
“What does he do other than look like that?”
“Beats the hell out of Chinese bastards with a stick.”
Despite being a reasonably mature woman with serious responsibilities, Saskia found it difficult to get her mind back on track, and the way Lotte was speed-scanning through Big Fish Pinterest boards didn’t help. What had they been talking about a minute ago? How it was all perceived.
“We didn’t hire Alastair to set official government policy,” Willem said. “That’s Ruud’s problem. The only thing we need to concern ourselves with is what if any stance the royal house needs to adopt about these matters.”
He lapsed into Dutch at some point during all that. Alastair tuned out. But his body language said he had something to add: “Earlier I mentioned that there was a cause side as well as an effect side, when it comes to how these things are situated around the planet. There are plenty of studies showing that where a volcano erupts—or a geoengineering project is sited—has a very significant impact on how these effects play out around the world. It has been known for a while, for example, that volcanic eruptions in the Southern Hemisphere lead to wetter monsoons, whereas Northern Hemisphere volcanoes produce the opposite effect.”