The sun was still up, visible above the clustering rooftops. It was surrounded by a fat opalescent corona, sprawling and misshapen. What volcanologists called a Bishop’s Ring.

Charing Cross Road was lined with bookstores, though they were mostly small and cramped compared to the big mall and out-of-town stores he used back in the States.

He reached Trafalgar Square: Nelson’s Column, the triumphalist stone lions growling at his feet, odd echoes of what the British thought of as their great days, the mock-classical front of the National Gallery looming over everything. The Square was crowded with tourists and hucksters — not an Anglo-Saxon face in sight — and fat, waddling pigeons for which you could buy feed from the hucksters, should you so choose.

There were shoppers and browsers and people hurrying to and from work, wrapped up in their own concerns, not even seeing Henry unless he all but collided with them. Homeless guys, curled up in the doorways in their sleeping bags, repeating their endless mantras, “Spare some change please…” More of that than he’d expected. He had to step over them sometimes, so crowded were the pavements. It seemed unreal.

Except for lurid headlines on the stands of the local paper, the Evening Standard, and the shimmering rad-ponchos everywhere, there was no sign of what was coming down in the north of the country. As if the Earth was flat and infinite, the stars just lights in the sky, the future endless and unthreatened. As if some kind of alien nano-bug wasn’t eating up the country.

It struck him that Britain was an alien country — he was a true foreigner here, common language or not. Britain was geologically placid, hadn’t been seriously invaded since 1066, hadn’t suffered a civil war since the seventeenth century, and had been at peace since 1945. It was hard for him to empathize with what that calm history must do to shape the psyche of the people here.

For sure, they weren’t going to start panicking just because of a little geological excitement in Scotland.

He cut down the Strand and found the place he was looking for, a cyber cafe in a side street off the main road. It was a small place but clean and bright and crammed with terminals, but only full to half of its capacity. Maybe all the cybernauts had their own equipment now.

He bought a coffee and credits and sat down. As he drank the coffee, he realized he couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten.

He got right back up and went to the counter, and came back with a plateful of sandwiches in plastic boxes, a bag of the potato chips the Brits called crisps, a slab of cake laced with chocolate. As he logged in, he crammed the food in his mouth, chewing mechanically.

He tried Geena’s e-mail, but she’d evidently changed it again. So that left the chat room.