Chapter 570: Dark clouds ahead
For an underwater volcano to release clouds of ash was already rare enough, but this was predicted. There were registered earthquakes in the area—perhaps right now, an entire new island was rising from the ocean.
But the Oracles have predicted that the ash won’t reach the Bee Empire, regardless of other circumstances!
I immediately returned to my body and opened my eyes.
When I had sent out my astral projection, I was lying on my meditation couch in my bedroom; during this time, Amby sat at the foot of it and was reading some documents.
I could immediately feel that she was too distracted to really focus on it; as soon as I opened my eyes, her gaze turned to me.
"Necty? I was messaged that the tsunami wave had just hit the shore. Did you see it? Did something happen outside of our expectations?"
I sat up, frowning.
When I just woke up, I wanted to immediately go to the Oracler to speak with Undecided and other Oracles, but now I realised that this was as pointless as half of Amby’s current questions.
Oracles spent half of their time in meditations that required a lack of distractions. And there could be fewer distractions as powerful as my presence for any bee...
In times when I needed their predictions to be as precise as possible, I had to leave them alone.
"Something... I saw a cloud of ash that shouldn’t have been there. I’m afraid that we might be hit with a threat we didn’t predict."
Ambrosia set her documents aside and stood up.
"Then I should be doing things other than reading these reports. Let’s see what’s going on."
We went to my (occasionally ours) office, and I asked an Attendant to call Undecided here. She arrived quickly and was already looking ten times as anxious as I felt.
"F-Father! We saw nothing!" she said from the entrance, looking ready to fall apart at any moment. To her credit, the next second, she pulled herself together to speak without stuttering. "I was told by scouts about the cloud of ash that is moving toward us. This event didn’t feature in our predictions... I told this to Adviser Workharder and Adviser Bloodhero a week ago—the cloud was supposed to disperse in place, not move toward the Bee Empire."
I frowned, remembering something like that. The ash cloud was mentioned, but since it was deemed safe, it was set aside so we could focus on the more immediate threat.
"Why is this event so improbable? Could we be under attack by some forces that can control the weather?" Amby asked suspiciously. "Your predictions work the worst when there are smart enemies involved."
Undecided shrugged.
"I don’t know. Was the weather itself improbable? I’m sorry, Mother, Father, but I can’t say anything more about the ash cloud right now. Since it wasn’t foreseen, we were looking into the futures where it didn’t exist. But now we can start exploring the other ones."
Seeing that we weren’t going to get any worthwhile information from Undecided, I thanked her for coming around and sent her to her sisters.
"How dangerous can a cloud of ash really be for us?" I asked both myself and my wife. "It won’t kill our crops, since most of our crops by now have been replaced with usnea plants. It moved too far away from the volcano to burn or poison anyone who is below it, either..."
"It would rain from the sky, wouldn’t it? Ash," Amby asked. When I nodded, she raised a finger and pointed out, "It will cover everything and might interfere with the flight of our daughters and the working of our machines."
My eyes widened.
"Damn, you are right. Our mechas and trains are protected from some grit and water from outside, but ash and other dust in these amounts will get just about anywhere. The mechas will have to stay in their garages until the entire ash cloud settles. The humans might have to stay indoors, too, if the amount of dust interferes with their breathing."
And what’s more, the ash cloud could theoretically move farther inland than a tsunami. If the weather was against us—like it has been so far—then it might even reach the mountains... No, this was unrealistic.
"Thank you," I said, kissing Amby on the cheek. "Let’s talk with Workharder. She has... a few hours, at least, to prepare measures against this."
Amby took my kiss with a warm smile. A moment later, when I wasn’t expecting it, she leaned in and kissed me back—on the lips.
"My only help was in voicing these ideas before you would’ve thought them up yourself. Now sit down, I will call for her."
I blushed a little—just because I was startled!—and followed her to the exit of our office.
"Oh, I can do it myself, Amby! Let me just call someone telepathically," I said without actually calling anyone.
In the end, although we spent a few minutes playfully bickering about who had to do the least work, we asked Helping-Hands to bring Workharder around.
My daughter already heard about the problem—at this moment, all Advisers were listening to what was going near the sea—and she was ready to speak about it.
Workharder immediately proposed some basic measurements against the ash, like putting all mechas under a roof, which would still allow some of them (the mining ones) to work. It was undeniable, though, that the ash was going to hurt us economically, but for how much or how long was yet unclear.
In the end, this was just a cloud of ash that travelled hundreds of thousands of kilometres to reach us. How large and dangerous could it still be, even after this massive distance? Just a day of waiting should be enough for it to settle down, or so I hoped.
As far as I knew, there were no gods who could affect natural disasters like these.
Or could there be?
While my girls prepared basic anti-ash measurements, I decided to ask this question to the Champion Usnea Tree.