The forcing, p.1
The Forcing, page 1
PRAISE FOR THE FORCING
‘A compelling, moving story of survival in a dying world … a novel that might have actually predicted our future’ Ewan Morrison
‘Fierce, thoughtful, deeply humane and always compelling. Tightly plotted, the tension builds from page one and never relents’ David Whish-Wilson
‘Smart, gripping, and all too plausible, The Forcing asks the big questions that we’re running out of time to answer, and announces Paul E. Hardisty as the true heir to John Christopher’ Tim Glister
‘The book I’ve been waiting and hoping for’ Paul Waters
‘With the biting intensity of a thriller and the majestic world-building of a classic dystopian tale, this story is perfectly paced with peaks and valleys, never spending too much time in one place and blending the moments together like some strange dream … This is a cataclysmic call to arms – a powerful warning about a world that could be’ B. S. Casey
‘An emotional, all-too prescient climate thriller, it kept me riveted to the very end. Beautifully written, in turns moving and terrifying, this is a book of our time’ Eve Smith
‘A riveting and suspenseful dystopian thriller/drama … both a reality check and completely absorbing fiction, speaking of cold, harsh facts but also of love, endurance and hope. Paul E. Hardisty has a way with words that never fails to blow me away, spot-on and occasionally rather poetic, yet never even remotely close to purple prose’ From Belgium with Booklove
‘Not just a novel about a world that is changed by climate breakdown … but one written by someone who knows what he’s talking about’ Live Many Lives
‘A stark, gripping, often poignant, but undeniably thought-provoking read and another absolute winner. Loved it’ Jen Med’s Book Reviews
PRAISE FOR PAUL E. HARDISTY
‘Beautifully written’ Tim Marshall
‘Vividly written, utterly tropical, totally gripping’ Peter James
‘This is a remarkably well-written, sophisticated novel in which the people and places … all come alive on the page’ Literary Review
‘Laces the thrills and spills with enough moral indignation to give the book heft … excellent’ Telegraph
‘Topical and fiercely intelligent. And it’s not often you can say the latter of a thriller!’ The Times
‘The quality of Hardisty’s writing and the underlying truth of his plots sets this above many other thrillers’ West Australian
‘Searing … at times achieves the level of genuine poetry’ Publishers Weekly
‘A trenchant and engaging thriller that unravels this mysterious land in cool, precise sentences’ Catholic Herald
‘What spoke to me more strongly than anything was the courage, integrity and passion with which this novel is written’ Cheltenham Standard
‘A gripping, page-turning thriller that is overflowing with substance to go along with Hardisty’s atmospheric prose and strong narrative style’ Mystery Magazine
‘The sense of place, and the way that the climate, the landscape and the people all combine within a location very foreign to that which many of us live in is evocative’ Australian Crime
‘A solid, meaty thriller – Hardisty is a fine writer and Straker is a great lead character’ Lee Child
‘A page-turning adventure that grabs you from the first page and won’t let go’ Edward Wilson The Forcing.qxp_The Forcing 24/01/2023 16:04 Page iii
‘An exceptional and innovative novel. And an important one. Hardisty appears to know his territory intimately … I can’t praise it highly enough’ Susan Moody
‘Beautifully written, blisteringly authentic, heart-stoppingly tense and unusually moving’ Paul Johnston
‘Smart, gripping, superbly crafted’ Helen Giltrow Crime Review
‘A big, bold character-driven story so emotionally literate that it doesn’t ring with authenticity, it clamours. Superb and highly recommended’ Eve Seymour
‘Wow. Just wow. The sense of place is conjured beautifully … think John Le Carré’s A Constant Gardener … A thriller with heart and a conscience’ Michael J. Malone
The Forcing
PAUL E HARDISTY
To my dad
Murray Edward Hardisty 1932–2020
Forcing
Radiative forcing (RF) is the difference between the planet’s incoming and outgoing radiation, measured in Watts per metre squared (W/m2). If RF is positive, all other factors remaining equal, the planet will warm. Compared to 1750, RF had increased 0.57 W/m2 by 1950, 1.25 W/m2 by 1980, 2.29 W/m2 by 2011, and 2.72 W/m2 by 2019. Sometimes referred to simply as climate forcing, or just forcing, it continues to increase. Natural climate forcings include changes in the sun’s energy output, regular variations in the Earth’s orbital cycle, and large volcanic eruptions that throw light-reflecting particles into the atmosphere. Human induced forcings, which now dominate the Earth-atmosphere system and are responsible for the large increases over the last several decades, include emissions of heat-trapping gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, and changes to land use which make the Earth’s surface reflect more or less sunlight.
[From Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 6, Working Group 1]
‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the Earth.’
Genesis 6:5
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
PART I: Angels
A Journey into the Past
1
Each Windblown Mile
2
That Territory of Madness
3
That Divine Welcoming
4
A Deep Sense of Wonder
5
6
Across Miles and Decades
7
8
What Matters
9
10
This Little Time-Bound Corner We Call Home
11
12
PART II: Fighters
The Destruction of Order
13
a = dv/dt
14
A Note Held
15
Time for Such a World
16
17
Strain Comes On
18
Changed
19
20
Knowledge of the Future
21
22
Do Not Worry
23
Our Very Best
24
PART III: Horsemen
Lost Territories
25
Silent Thanks
26
A Good Omen
27
A Moment of Reflection
28
29
Knowledge of Sin
30
Walk Right
31
A Desert River
32
33
PART IV: Killers
My Few Remaining Days of Immortality
34
35
Another Chance
36
37
38
Storm Coming
39
PART V: Prophets
Home
40
We Can’t Stop It, But We Can Use It
41
42
Spin, Earth, Spin
43
The Aegean of My Youth
44
PART VI: Supplicants
Patterns
45
Everything Was Possible
46
47
48
For You
49
Holding On
50
51
52
When You Get There
PART VII: Sinners
53
54
The Cloud-Shadowed Sea
55
An Old Man’s Tears
56
Without Us
57
I Have Given Them Names
It Would All Have Been for Nothing
58
59
Get It Right This Time
60
61
62
Tomorrow and All the Days Before
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
PART I
Angels
A Journey into the Past
In the beginning, God created man.
And it was pretty much downhill from there.
Of course, the descent took time, and there were many points along the way at which it could have been slowed or reversed. We all watched, fascinated, unable to look away, as day by day an unwanted future became an unchangeable past.
I am not an historian. The bigger picture I will leave to others. This is the story of how I came to be here, so far from what I used to call home, and of those who shared my journey. I have tried to record it faithfully, as truly as memory allows. Some moments remain as indelible scars, despite my best attempts to forget. Others are fading even now. And parts of the story, I fear, will never be revealed.
I have attempted to see some of what happened through the eyes of my companions, out of respect for some, and in an attempt to understand others. I hope I have done them justice and apologise if I have not.
I admit to having started this tale several times over the years and having given up every attempt. Each failure has its own story, too. B ut now it is time. Perhaps it was watching my own children grow up in this new and changed world, that has finally brought me to the task, ending years of procrastination. Maybe it was the birth of my first grandson.
At first, and for a long time, I simply needed to heal, to forget. Years passed, a decade and another again. Slowly, with the turn of seasons, the pain began to recede. I lost myself in the task of remaking our lives, bending to the work of feeding my family, building this stone and jarrah-plank house by the sea. Now I know that I will only ever find peace in the places I least want to go.
For it is no exaggeration to say that I have crawled to the very edge of the abyss and gazed down into the depths of Hell. I do not offer this lightly. I am a scientist, a teacher. Even now, in my old age, I remain a rationalist, a determinist. But I know now that human reality lies not in the physical, the solid stuff of the world, the bones and tumours of our mortal bodies, but in the warped fabric of time where our hopes and tortured dreams live.
In truth, I am running out of time. What once obeyed without complaint now rebels. Joints ache, and old wounds throb with the coming of the rains. Fatigue, once a stranger, is now a constant and unwanted companion. Even simple tasks have become difficult, and in my two grown sons I can see glimpses of the man I was, the same man who carried and lifted and placed each of the stones in these walls, whose hands cut and shaped the sturdy beams above me, cleared the ground and planted the crops that feed us.
And so I must make this journey into the past, now, while I still can. I hope this record will help my children understand the truth of what happened and why things are the way they are, and why we decided to bring them into such a world in the first place. Because it was truth, or to be more precise a deficit of truth, that set us on this path. A truth that remained hidden for far too long, ignored by some, avoided by many, and actively concealed by a powerful few.
I will start back when we had finally begun to try to fix the problem, after it was too late, and before we really knew what was wrong.
I still remember the letter that started it all.
1
I rose early, an old habit, crept downstairs to make coffee, correct the exam papers I hadn’t got to the night before. It was back when people still got up and made coffee and went to work, led what they tried to imagine were normal lives. I guess we were all doing our best to maintain the illusion of a past we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to let go of.
By the time I left the house, dawn was hinting pale against the autumn trees. My wife Maybelline – May – was still in bed. I’d gone upstairs to kiss her goodbye, but when I whispered her name, she hadn’t moved. The morning was cold. Dark clouds massed in the west, obscuring the mountains. Out of the gate and left towards the river, my usual route, past ragged picket-fence gardens and modest wooden houses, lights coming on in kitchen windows. It was that kind of neighbourhood. The last vestiges of the middle class, still hanging on to that dream, still pretending.
I taught my morning class, chemistry 11, and had begun physics 12 – just another Thursday among fifteen years of Thursdays. I was standing at the blackboard describing the radiative forcing effect of carbon dioxide and methane on Earth’s climate when the letters arrived, placed ceremoniously on my desk by Radley, the breathless deputy principal, a short, recently-appointed administrator whose sole joy in life seemed to be the delivery of bad news. No calamity was too small to send him into paroxysms of excitement: whispered news of a recent divorce, the latest teen pregnancy, the now-ritual distribution of draft cards at the senior assembly. The kids, predictably, called him Ratley.
I knew what my letter would say, had anticipated it for months. I finished the class, left the letters unopened on my desk, acted as if nothing had changed. At lunch I sat with a few colleagues, talked about the usual stuff – the war, the shortages, the chronic lack of mobile-phone and internet service.
Later that afternoon, after the kids had settled into the physics 12 exam, I opened my letter. It was no surprise. Except the date. What I had initially thought must be a mistake, a typo of some sort, right there in ragged black ink: the last digit of the year exactly one lower than it was supposed to be, than had been repeatedly communicated by the government over the radio and the TV for the last six months.
It made no difference to me. I had always been well within the cut-off. I was clearly one of the responsibles, as they were being called – the old ones, those the viruses hadn’t managed to kill off. I’d accepted it long ago. But for May, it made all the difference in the world.
I looked up at the kids, heads bent to their exam papers. Kazinsky with his newly razed skull of stubble, Smith with the tip of one of her long braids in her mouth, concentrating. Good kids. No, not kids anymore. Young men and women, now. Women and men, young, with a future even more uncertain than mine.
I looked at my watch, gave them all a few extra minutes. Then I stood and cleared my throat. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, time is up.’
Groans from the usual suspects, eyes looking up at me, refocusing, the afternoon sunlight in each of those uniquely patterned, uniquely troubled pairs. A few smiles – Smith, inevitably, beaming at me with that beautiful mouth, those unnaturally enhanced eyes, the Cantor dust of freckles across the bridge of her nose, that haunting intermittency. I scanned the rest of the faces, raised the letter in my right hand. ‘I have some good news, for some of you at least.’
Quiet, now. Thirty-two faces directed toward me.
‘This will be the last class we will have together,’ I said.
Even the new kids in the back row were paying attention now.
‘I am being relocated.’
A guffaw from the back, Hernandez and Richards high-fiving.
‘South.’
Then silence, blank stares, information being processed. All the new kids, the ones who themselves had just been relocated, knew immediately. You’re going where we just came from.
I considered saying more, offering some sort of defence perhaps. Instead, I said: ‘I hope you’ve learned something during our time together. Even you, Richards, Hernandez…’
Nervous laughter from a few.
‘Remember, wherever your lives take you, that science and rational thought have always been a beacon for humanity. In reason and truth lie hope.’ As I said it, I realised how old-fashioned it sounded. I hoped one day they would understand.
More sniggering from the back.
‘Now, if you will please turn in your exam papers. I wish you all good luck.’
Students began shuffling to the front, placing papers on the corner of my desk. Krusch, Robertson, Ravindran. DeVilliers silent, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder; a grunt from Rouse that could have been goodbye; a clear ‘good luck, Teach’ from the intelligent Blewett; a tended hand and a good, firm shake from Glass, captain of the school football team. A few thankyous. Most walked out without a word.
Soon it was only Smith and Kazinsky, the two who’d been with me the longest. Smith in her trademark short skirt and black Doc Martens, fiddling with a braid, Kazinsky hovering near the back window. Smith put her paper on the pile, looked at me. She was crying.
‘I don’t think I did very well,’ she sniffled. ‘I…’ She stalled, stood looking down at her feet.
‘You always say that, Maddy. And you always do well. Don’t worry.’
She looked up at me. The tears in her eyes refracted the low-angle light from the windows, prismed out through the yellow part of the spectrum from those cat’s-eye contacts she had been wearing for a few months now, 4.7x1014 cycles per second, that beguiling, prescient frequency.
‘Yes, but…’ She stopped herself, let the end of her braid fall to her side. ‘What if our new teacher is, like, a troll?’
‘Don’t worry, Maddy. Miss Fenyman will take over for the rest of the term. She’s a lot younger than I am. I’m sure she’ll be fine.’
She stood there a moment, head bowed. ‘But I want you, Teach,’ she said, fiddling with her braid again. ‘I want to do physics at MIT. You know that. I need you.’
That’s what everyone calls me. Teacher. Everyone who knows me. The kids just call me Teach.
I picked Maddy’s paper from the pile, scanned the first answer, her invariably neat script moving across the page, building from first principles, the unit analysis helpfully displayed and balanced, the answer perfect. ‘You’re ready, Maddy. You’ll get in. Believe me. You don’t need me anymore.’
