Someone was whispering in the seat behind me. It was a passionate whisper, "Don't you see? It's the only possible explanation."

The whisper went on, "You have to believe me. I swear it's true. I saw the satellite photos of the cloud formation. The Weather Bureau would never admit it, but it's impossible to get those kinds of clouds around here at this time of year. It's too cold for them to form naturally. So it had to be an enhanced storm--nukes in the upper atmosphere. That's the only way we could have gotten the blizzard that we did. They had to make it."

It was madness.

I cautiously glanced over my shoulder to see who was behind me. I expected that it would probably be one of the loons that you grow accustomed to seeing around Harvard Square, one of those hypersensitive geniuses who, instead of becoming Einsteins, had slipped the other way, taking one too many acid trips back in 1965, and wandering around the Square ever since, babbling stray mathematical formulae on the street corners. Maybe it would even be Dryer Man, the guy with the electric hair who likes to sit on those big industrial dryers in the laundromat and get off on the vibes.

I halfway hoped that it would be him. Then madness would explain madness, and my own fragile world would still be intact.

But the two guys behind me did not seem to be loons. They were no more eccentric than it is fashionable to be in Cambridge. And they were very serious about their discussion.

It was indeed a topic to be serious about. They were talking about the Great Blizzard that had overwhelmed New England a few weeks before, and one guy believed he now understood where all the snow had come from.

"And what about the radiation? Did you hear about that? No, of course not. They covered that up, too. But I took snow samples. I have the data.

"Did you notice how the snow glowed? Late that first night when it was still falling I went outside to watch. And I saw it: the whole sky was filled with green light.

"And then there were the epidemics. The flu and the viruses started to hit people right after the blizzard. The radiation weakened their resistance."

An enhanced storm created by the carefully planned detonation of nuclear devices in the upper atmosphere. It was a wild idea, but the guy certainly believed it.

It was all part of a global conspiracy involving the power centers of the industrialized world. Both the CIA and the KGB were in on it. And so were many of the multinationals. And the Trilateral Commission, too.

The plan was to conduct a comprehensive program of weather warfare to alter world climate patterns. They were going to deprive the underdeveloped world of climates suitable for agriculture. Starve them out. Make them grateful to trade their raw materials with the industrialized nations. Make the third world willing to give anything for a little grain.

And the powers could do it, too. The intelligence agencies had the covert capabilities, and the corporations had the technology and the necessary finance capital. They both had the global organizational structures to implement the plan.

This was the biggest operation they had ever attempted. In the past they had made the mistake of not acting boldly enough. But not any more. No more sloppy, half-assed affairs like Chile. This time the game was for all the marbles.