Last Gasp (11 page)

Chase grinned weakly. “Actually, sir, it was Guinness.”

“Was it? I never knew that. There you are, none of us can be right all the time.” He began stuffing black twist tobacco into a meerschaum pipe. “What is it, career problem? Advice you want?”

Chase went over it briefly, mentioning the Russian found on the ice, the scrawled chemical equation, his death at the McMurdo Station, all the while conscious that he was wasting Sir Fred’s time. Here and now, in this comfortable lounge with its easy chairs and potted shrubbery, the whole thing seemed preposterous. He cursed himself for being so stupid. Then nearly forgot to add the bit about the Russian scientist who was to be one of the speakers at the conference in Geneva.

Sir Fred didn’t see the connection, and Chase went on to explain: “The Russian—that is, the man we found on the ice—kept repeating something that sounded like Stanovnik. We thought it was a word, or words, but it could have been a name. Maybe of the man who’s going to be in Geneva. Have you heard of him?”

“I’ve met him, two or three times. Boris Stanovnik. He’s a microbiologist with the Hydro-Meteorological Service in Moscow. Good chap.” Sir Fred sucked on his pipe and observed Chase through the billowing smoke. “Have you still got the paper with the equation on it?”

Chase took the slip of paper from his diary and handed it over. After a minute’s scrutiny Sir Fred raised his eyes and gave Chase a skeptical stare.

“Is this another leg-pull?” he asked bluntly.

“No—no, sir, really. This time it’s genuine.”

“This is the formula for the dissolution of C0
₂
in seawater.” Chase nodded. “Why go to the trouble of writing it down? A perfectly ordinary chemical interaction? He couldn’t speak a word of English, either, and yet he was able to use our chemical symbols.”

Sir Fred wafted smoke away. “That’s not unusual. Many foreign scientists use them. No, the odd thing, as you say, is why bother in the first place? He must have been trying to tell you something.” Sir Fred thoughtfully folded the paper and gave it back. “You didn’t get to find out his name then?”

“No. Perhaps the Americans did.”

“Didn’t you ask them?”

“It didn’t occur to me,” Chase confessed. “But he should never have been moved. They could have flown a medical team in—or even waited till he was stronger. I got the impression that Professor Banting was afraid of offending the Americans by refusing.”

“Professor Banting is afraid of offending his own shadow,” Sir Fred commented dryly.

Chase wondered whether Ivor Banting and Sir Fred Cole had ever crossed swords. It would have made for an interesting contest. Banting, an establishment drone down to his black woolen socks, versus Firebrand Fred, maverick of the British scientific cabal. It must have really peeved Banting when Fred Cole got his knighthood. All that toadying and nothing to show for it!

“Can you make anything of it?” Chase said.

Sir Fred rubbed the side of his nose with a stubby forefinger. “The last time I met Stanovnik—when would it be?—about two years ago— he was working on a climatic project. He wouldn’t say what exactly, but that’s the Russians for you.”

“I thought you said he was a microbiologist?” Chase frowned.

“He was investigating the effects of pollutants and chemical runoff on the microorganisms in seawater. You’re familiar with eutrophication, I take it?”

Chase nodded. When a river or lake received an overabundance of nutrients—usually caused by the runoff of farm fertilizers with a high nitrogen content—it encouraged the growth of algae blooms, which as they decayed and died consumed all the oxygen in the water. Deprived of oxygen, other plants and animals also died, with the result that the water became biologically dead. That was the process of eutrophication; quite simply, overfertilization. It had the effect of speeding up the natural evolutionary cycle. Lake Erie in the United States and the land-locked Mediterranean were often-cited examples, where the natural organic processes had been accelerated by some two hundred years.

“We had a long chat about it. His main interest was how eutrophication on a large scale might affect the climate. When a lake dies and becomes stagnant and eventually turns into swampland, it alters the local weather in the same way that clearing a forest can either increase or decrease rainfall. The Russians are keen to find out everything they can about what affects the climate because of their grandiose geoengineering schemes. They imagine they can move mountains in more than just the metaphorical sense.”

“That doesn’t seem to have much connection with carbon dioxide and seawater,” Chase pointed out.

“No, not directly. Though it might have something to do with the climate. Indirectly.”

“You mean the greenhouse effect?” Chase said. “I’d already thought about that myself, but I don’t see how.”

“If you like I’ll mention this to Banting next time I see him,” said Sir Fred, getting up. He seemed to inhabit the blue suit rather than wear it. “The Americans could have confided in him.”

“Are you likely to see Professor Banting?”

“We serve on half-a-dozen committees together.” Sir Fred gave Chase a long-suffering look over his meerschaum. “Professor Banting and the committee might have been made for each other.”

Chase went ahead and held the door open.

“If you’re all that curious you could find out yourself,” Sir Fred told him. “See Boris Stanovnik and ask him. He’ll be in Geneva and he speaks good English.” He chuckled, started to cough, and spat something into his handkerchief. “Better accent than mine,” he wheezed.

“Thank you for taking the time to see me, sir. I’ll watch for your program. I’m glad we met again.”

They shook hands and Sir Fred wandered off down the maze of corridors, apparently knowing where he was bound. The thought in Chase’s mind was not Boris Stanovnik or Geneva, but Angie. But after all, he reasoned, it was connected with his work. In a sort of roundabout way. And it would only be for a few days ... Christ, and they’d been getting along so well.

He had the car radio on, but wasn’t really listening. It was a meaningless babble.

Fragments caught and snagged at this mind.

... you won’t find a better deal this side of the Rockies ... buy three and get the fourth free! ... we’re offering discounts on the discounts at J. C. Broughton’s ... looking for the little gift to please her? ... ten-ninety-five and you get a chrome set for the price of ...

Instead he tuned in to the thoughts inside his head. People everywhere were dying of cancer, others were suffering from nerve and respiratory defects, from liver and kidney disorders, women were miscarrying, children being born with genetic damage. It was a never-ending catalog of the dead and dying, victims of toxic waste and industrial pollution.

The world was manifestly mad; to Brad Zittel it was perfectly clear. In fact it was screaming for attention, for action. The world was mad not only because these things were happening but because nothing was being done to prevent them from happening. Nobody cared. The planet was drowning in its own excrement and nobody gave a damn....

Take that car in front. He’d been unseeingly watching it pumping out poisonous fumes for the last ten minutes. What the hell did the driver care? The air was still clear and breathable, wasn’t it? Nobody had actually dropped dead on the highway. Not yet.

Without a moment’s further consideration Brad pulled over and ran the small red Datsun onto the sloping grass shoulder. The traffic behind honked and swerved. Somebody shook a fist. Brad switched off the engine and slumped back in the seat, all the strength leaking from his fingertips.

His head felt curiously tight and his temples throbbed.

... at the Temple of Divine Worship this coming Sunday ...

It was too big a mess for one man to sort out. And why should he bother? Let them sink in their own sewage. His stomach tightened in a spasm of virulent rage. It seemed to swell inside him like a growth until he felt that he must burst.

Still the endless stream of cars and trucks blurred past, filling the air with a soft-blue haze.

Brad got out and faced the oncoming surge. Oxygen-breathing monsters spewing out poison. Movable instruments of death, like the Nazi gas ovens on wheels. He stumbled onto the concrete lip of the highway and began to walk toward them. This, it seemed to him, was the only logical thing to do. He felt very calm.

Traffic streamed past on either side, incredulous faces and gaping mouths. He walked diagonally across the highway, angry and yet calm, impotent and yet defiant.

A huge truck bore down, silver exhaust pipe burnished by the sun, the driver wrenching at the wheel and cutting across the path of a car, which braked sharply, setting up a cacophony of horns.

Miraculously the traffic continued to flow all around him, a river of hurtling murderous metal, the warm breeze and pungent fumes wafting against his face and filling his nostrils. A long-haired motorcyclist went by, shouting something that was snatched away, and then a car with a trailer rocking crazily as the driver tried to avoid him.

Brad walked on.

The cars and trucks had malevolent eyes and snarling mouths. He could smell their stinking breath. Another sound insinuated itself above the steady roar, a thin high-pitched braying. He didn’t see the patrol car, lights flashing, slue to a stop on swaying springs. Something yanked him and he was being carried and thrust facedown onto dimpled plastic that smelled strongly of stale sweat.

A hand held the back of his neck in a choking grip and a long-suffering voice said, “Why the fuck can’t you take an overdose like the rest of them and get it over with quietly?”

Winthrop had expected skepticism from the other members of the subcommittee whose brief was to vet the agenda for the next monthly session of PSAC, when the president himself would be in attendance. He had expected incredulity from some of them, even scornful laughter—but not the open hostility he now faced.

The attack had been led by Gen. George N. Wolfe of the Department of Defense, who wasted no time and little breath in calling the proposal alarmist and unscientific. Winthrop had actually flushed and only just stopped himself blurting out that the general should stick to military matters and leave others better qualified to decide what was “unscientific” and what wasn’t. But this would have opened an old wound, he knew—the presence of a Defense Department spokesman on the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee—and would have served no useful purpose. It wouldn’t help his career any either. If word got back to the Pentagon that the deputy director of the World Oceanographic Data Center was an awkward son of a bitch ... well, anyway, better to ease off a little and not get excited. He wanted to see his name on the director’s door, not on a list of has-beens circulating Washington for the post of washroom attendant.

“It amazes me, Winthrop, that you even considered putting this  crackpot notion forward in the first place.” General Wolfe hunched forward over the polished circular table, his tanned face a maze of cracks and lines that was the legacy of Southeast Asia. His eyes were like fissures in sandstone. “Jesus Christ, man, this is a government-appointed body, not a goddamn college debating society. We’re supposed to deal in hard scientific fact. Instead you come up with some ludicrous concoction dreamed up by a lunatic living on—” He turned his craggy head abruptly to his aide, a lieutenant with sharp features who murmured in his ear. General Wolfe swiveled back to bark at Winthrop, “Canton Island. Wherever the hell that is.”

Winthrop smoothed his silvery hair with long slender fingers. “General, I feel I ought to point out that Dr. Detrick is an eminently respected scientist with an international reputation. His book
Diatom Growth and Development
is accepted as the standard work on the subject. Anyone acquainted with marine biology knows of his contribution to—”

General Wolfe snorted rudely. “Just because the guy’s written some book or other doesn’t make him a divine oracle.”

Esther Steinbekker, the chairwoman, cropped gray hair framing a sexless face, and with a slight squint behind black-frame spectacles, said crisply, “Many of us are familiar with Dr. Detrick’s work, Parris. We know of his important contributions to the field. But really, on the basis of unsupported and unverified data you can’t seriously expect us to include this item on the PSAC agenda.”

Everyone looked toward Winthrop, who was at pains to define his position. The last thing he wanted was to be lumped with Theo in the cranks and screwballs category.

“Of course I must agree that the research is, as yet, unsupported by others in the field—and I don’t for one second accept all the conclusions that Detrick draws. But I do think we should at least consider what is after all the fruit of twenty years effort. If Detrick is conceivably right—”

“Then I’m a Dutchman,” General Wolf grated, getting a few chuckles and hidden smiles.

Winthrop eyed him stonily. This bastard was out to make him a laughingstock. He could feel perspiration prickling the back of his neck.

Two seats along to his left, Professor Gene Lucas spoke up in his mild southern voice. Lucas, a small, slim man with a clipped gray moustache, was with the Geophysical Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton and was one of the country’s leading experts in the study of the biosphere.

“You say in your summary, Dr. Winthrop”—peering through bifocals at the stapled typewritten sheets before him—“that Detrick expects the decline in phytoplankton production to have an effect, quote appreciable effect unquote, on the oxygen level within twenty years.” He looked up, mouth tight and prim. “If that were the case, shouldn’t we be able to register the start of such a trend right now? Those things don’t happen overnight.”

Before Winthrop could respond, one of the other scientists, a particle physicist, directed a question at Lucas. “As we’re not as well-acquainted with atmospheric dynamics as yourself, Professor Lucas, perhaps you could tell us how such a change would be detected and if in fact there has been any change?”