“I can.” Charlie could taste salt on her lips. “I can tell you whatever I want.” And make him believe it. “But you’re right, it’s more complicated than that.”

“Complicated enough to save the world?”

“I don’t know.” Heart pounding, she thought about it. About a Dragon Queen in Calgary and an old god across the province from where she sat with a bouzouki player who had a friend who’d mathematically discovered the end of the world. The end of the world by falling rock. She’d Sung the seabed. How different was that from a falling rock? She could skip the research, financing, engineering, and construction, so how hard could it be? This was what it was about. Auntie Catherine hadn’t needed to talk to her because she needed contact with family. Gary hadn’t needed her blessing for the road.

This.

It was about stopping a falling rock from ending the world in twenty-two months.

Twenty-two.

Seven years had turned out to be forever. Twenty-two months might as well be tomorrow.

She needed to know the details.

“Charlie?”

“It’s just a falling rock, right?”

Gary’s mouth opened. Closed again. Finally, he offered a tentative, “Essentially.”

“All right, then.” She could do this. “Did your friend tell you where the rock was coming in from?”

“The angle of approach? No. Does it matter?” Resignation had been replaced by hope.

“It might.” If it was heading straight for one of the family’s anchors, for David or for Uncle Arthur, they could probably stop it. Possibly stop it. Maybe. “Does she know where it’s going to hit?”

“There’ll be multiple points of impact; that part the movies get right. As soon as it gets close enough, gravitational stresses will begin breaking pieces off. How many and what size they are will depend on the composition of the asteroid.”

“So if it breaks into a billion little tiny pieces?”

Gary waved that off. “Small enough pieces will burn up in the atmosphere, but that’s unlikely to happen, not when it’s held together this long—although they can’t get a good read on its composition until it clears the metal heavy asteroid in front of it. And remember, the damage from multiple impacts could be as bad as from one big one. Which is why once it’s close enough to use nukes with the delivery systems already available, nukes are a bad idea.”

Nukes are a bad idea had to be one of the most redundant things Charlie’d ever heard. “What’s a good idea, then?”