“Bare branches, clear blue sky.”

“Were the branches moving?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Well, were they?”

“Of course not!” he said. “There wasn’t a breath of wind.”

“Bingo!” I said. “There was a clear blue sky. There wasn’t a breath of wind.”

“I don’t get it.”

Nor did anyone else, by the looks I was getting.

“The machine moved straight up,” I said. “And we’re all fairly sure it was some fake, right? An arrangement of balsa and mylar, hydrogen and magnesium.”

I took out my Zippo, and flicked the lid and the wheel. “That’s all it would have taken. Whoof!”

“Yeah,” said Jack, looking interested. “So?”

“The ascent was announced a month and a half ago,” I said. “New Year’s Eve. Announced to the day, to the hour, the minute! Noon, Saturday fifteenth Feb.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Imagine what today’s little demonstration would have been like,” I said, “if there had been … a breath of wind. Or low cloud. The fake would have been blatant.” I held out my hand, fingers spread, and waggled it as I gestured drifting. “Like that.”

Jack guffawed, and Bob joined in. Everyone else just frowned.

“You’re saying the French have weather control?”

“No,” I said. “I’m saying they have weather prediction. That’s what they demonstrated today, not anti-gravity—and that’s what is going to scare the shit out of the Americans and the Brits. Probably has already.”

“It’s impossible to predict the weather forty days in advance,” said Catherine. “Chaos theory, butterfly effect, all that, you know?”

“Apparently not,” I said. “A lot of mathematics research going on at the Sorbonne, you know.” I turned to Bob. “Take that back to your revolution.”

He stared at me for a long moment.

“Fuck you,” he said. “And the horse you rode in on.”

He stood up and stormed out.

None of us heard from him again. Editions Jules Verne, the publishing company, never heard from him either. They honoured the contracts, but nothing came of the anthology.