Larry felt his heart pound. “What is it, Anna? Something wrong with the tree?”
Anna’s normally laughing countenance had set in grim lines. “If it’s what I think it is … something’s wrong with, like, all our trees.”
Exclamations of surprise and consternation rang out.
“Come over and take a look,” Anna said and pointed to the blue-stained leaf that had drawn Elizabeth’s attention. To the others it didn’t look ominous at all. It was a rather pretty azure color, Jessica thought. Like the skies of the distant past.
“I dearly hope I’m wrong,” Anna continued, “but the blue stain might be Phytophthora nitrophilis.”
“Phyto what?” asked Larry.
“Phytophthora nitrophilis. It’s a fungus that thrives in polluted waters. It mostly affects aquatic plants, and causes a disease called marine blight.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s rare. Remember the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, caused by potato blight?” The others nodded. “P. nitrophilis is like a close cousin. Though it sends its oospores all over the planet, it rarely affects land plants. But when it does, it’s very serious.”
There were more exclamations of concern.
“That sounds a bit like strep or staph,” said Nicole. Seeing some puzzled looks, she explained: “Bacteria that hang around in our bodies innocuously, but sometimes run amok.”
“It’s something like that. Once this fungus manages to infect a plant, it spreads like wildfire to other plants in the vicinity.”
“Bloody hell!” said Larry, shaken out of his composure. “But if it’s so widespread and so deadly, why doesn’t it strike more often? Why have we never heard of it before?”
Anna shrugged and spread her palms. “Probably because the attacks die down almost as quickly as they start. Why that happens is still a mystery. One theory is that other organisms in the environment sense the threat to their food supply and produce counter-toxins.”
“Nature policing itself?” Jessica asked.
“Sort of.”
“So can we hope that it’ll happen here as well?”
Anna shook her head gloomily. “No, I don’t think so.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Our ecosystem is too small and constrained for the blue fungus to have natural enemies in sufficient number or diversity.”
Larry raised his hand. “Hold on, before we panic we should find out for sure if it’s really that. Couldn’t the blue stain be another organism? Something harmless?”
“I hope so, but frankly I’m not too hopeful.”
“When will we know for sure?”
“In a day or two. If it is marine blight the avocado tree will become all blue. Most of the other plants here will have blue leaves as well. After that …”
“After that?”
“After that they’ll have only weeks to live.”
There were gasps of shock followed by a long, anxious silence.
“Couldn’t we do something to protect the other trees?” Nicole said eventually. “Move them to Central, or cover them?”
Anna laughed grimly. “It’s too late for that. By now, the spores will have spread all over Eco and tagged along with us to the other domes as well.”
Jessica banged her spoon on the table. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing while plants die!”
“But what can we do, dear?” Elizabeth said, casting a worried look at her. “Anna has already explained that the blight would’ve spread everywhere.”
“Can’t we spray them? I know Anna hates pesticides, but surely now …?”
“Do we even have any here?” asked Nicole.
“No, this as a completely organic facility. Right, Larry?”
Larry avoided Anna’s eye. “Actually, we do have a few for emergency use,” he admitted. “Pesticides, and fungicides too. A range of them, in fact.”
Jessica uttered a sharp bark of laughter. “Thank heavens for pragmatism!” She turned to her sister. “Would you consider using them just this once?”
“I’m not the fanatic you take me for!” Anna snapped. “I’d rather have a live plant than a dead one, organic or not. We should try fungicides. In fact, try all of them.”
“But there’s a catch, right? I can tell.”
“Yes, there’s a catch, and a big one. No known fungicide kills P. nitrophilis.”
Larry cursed under his breath. “Shall we test them anyway?”
“Yes, let’s do it right now.”
Jessica sprang up. “Hey, wait a minute! What about the chlorella?”
Larry, Nicole, and Elizabeth grew pale, but Anna stayed calm. “The blight doesn’t infect algae. And the chemicals won’t hurt them either, if we use them just this once.”
Four simultaneous sighs of relief followed her words. Since the air purifier had breathed its last, the health of the chlorella bio-oxygen panels had become as important as their own.
“I hadn’t even thought of the chlorella,” said Larry. “We’re lucky to have the two of you to keep us older folks on our toes.”
Anna was quickly regaining her composure. “Come along, you fogy, and show me where you keep the toxic stuff,” she said to Larry.
They hurried from Eco and returned in minutes, each carrying two large, bright-orange canisters bearing the logo—Jessica noted with secret amusement—of a leading agribusiness firm that had been the bête noire of ecological activists worldwide. Meanwhile, the fungus-blighted avocado tree had been shifted to the part of the dome farthest from the kitchen. After donning face masks, Anna and Larry sprayed the tree liberally with all four compounds.
“How long before we know if this stuff works?”
“Let’s give it overnight. If we see more blue leaves we’re, like, out of luck.”
Back in Central, after dinner, they tried to engage in their customary diversions, but their thoughts kept straying back to the blue leaf.
“How do you think the fungus got in here?” Jessica called out to Anna, who had been glued to her computer since dinner.
Anna shut off the laptop and rejoined the family. “Not from the outside, at least, not recently,” she said slowly. “We have a closed ecosystem here. Besides, everything outside is dead anyway.”
“So it was here all the time?”
“Must’ve been.”
“Then why now, and not earlier?”
Anna sighed. “I’m not sure. According to our database, past outbreaks have happened in the vicinity of sewage treatment facilities. But not just any facilities. The ones affected were located on agricultural land that’d seen heavy nitrate fertilizer use. One theory is that the combination of phosphorus-rich sewage sludge and nitrogen-rich soil creates the ideal conditions for the fungus to grow—a high concentration of phosphorus and nitrogen in the soil. Something similar may’ve happened here.”
Jessica seemed unconvinced. “Okay, we use sewage as manure, so there’s your P. But we don’t use nitrate fertilizer. So where’s the N coming from?”
“Something to do with our diet?” said Nicole.
Anna nodded. “Yes, I think so. In the early days we ate mostly fresh stuff. But we ran out of that. Lately, we’ve been eating tinned stuff, especially fish, lentils, and spinach. They’re high in nitrogen. And what we eat ultimately passes into the plant food chain.”
Jessica digested her sister’s words for a moment and then asked: “So we’ve been dumping a ton of nitrogen into the soil?”
“Right. I did observe an increase in nitrogen when I checked the soil chemistry a few months ago, but I thought it was, you know, within safe limits. I was wrong. Perhaps we’ve just crossed a threshold that lets the fungus break out. In my defense, this type of infection is considered extremely rare.”
“How could you have known?” said Larry. “Besides, what option did we have? It was either fertilize the soil with manure, or let the plants die from lack of nutrition. No, Anna, you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. The fu
ngus, like the valve failure in the Air dome, is one of the unknowns that Jessica warned us about. There’s no way to anticipate them.”
“That’s right,” agreed Jessica, putting her arm around her sister and holding her tight for a few seconds. “The only thing to do is adapt. We’ve done it before, we can do it again.”
Years ago, such optimism from Jessica and kindness toward her sister would have been unthinkable. Now it seemed natural. Elizabeth mused at the irony of her family members growing emotionally closer as their living situation worsened. Too bad it took the Shroud to bring us all together, she thought.
That night, for the first time, Jessica opted to sleep in the middle between her sister and Larry. She felt that Anna, despite all their assurances, blamed herself for the blight; a little sisterly support might comfort her. Having Larry’s big, reassuring presence on her other side was an added bonus. So this is what I’ve been missing all these years! she thought.
In the morning, nobody was keen to go to the Eco dome. The moment of truth was at hand, and everyone feared it would be a bitter one.
And so it turned out. Not only did the avocado tree sport several blue leaves, so did the mango and the peach. Most of the other plants had blue-flecked leaves as well. Anna’s shoulders slumped in defeat. The others took turns to hug her and murmur soothing words in her ear. But her feelings overflowed into silent tears, and then into big, racking sobs. The family knew how much the plants meant to her. Her grief at their loss would be mingled with remorse for letting the team down. There was nothing to do but hold her close and wait for her to recover. It took several hours before they could coax a smile out of her. Failures and losses, however bitter, could never keep Anna down for long, and in a day or two she had recovered some of her cheerful spirits.
As if to rub it in—or as a parting gift—the Eco dome yielded its most bountiful harvest during the next few weeks. The leaves grew bluer and the branches withered, but the trees offered the most succulent fruit ever. Everyone agreed that their final batch of fruit was not only the best grown in the Shell, but the best they had ever consumed. The peaches were sweeter and juicier than they had ever remembered eating, the avocadoes richer and nuttier, and the mangoes simply ambrosial.
By July 6 the avocado tree was dead. The peach and the mango soon followed. The citrus bush was the last to go. It held out against the fungus as long as it could, but, on August 3 of Year Eight, the Shellmates ate their last orange.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Limericks
The death of their plants and trees left the family with only tinned and preserved foods to eat. Although both nutritionally and gastronomically these were a pathetic substitute for fresh produce, nobody uttered a murmur of complaint. Nicole compensated for the potential loss of vitamins and minerals by giving everyone a daily supplement, while Elizabeth and Jessica experimented with new cooking styles and spice combinations to render their daily fare more palatable. But the family bond was now so strong that the main concern was not the diet but Anna’s morale. Yes, she seemed to have recovered from her initial anguish, and seemed back to her old self—affectionate with her mother and grandmother, teasing with Larry, and feisty with her sister. But her companions watched her closely to make sure she carried no residue of sorrow or guilt over the loss of her beloved plants. Jessica was bursting with gibes about their new diet but refrained from voicing them. It was left to Anna, finally, to tire of the kid-gloves treatment and get her companions back to their normal selves.
With this goal in mind, she organized a competition for the funniest Shell-related limerick. Each round would last twenty minutes. At the end of the allotted time, the contestants would read out their poem, and Jessica would decide the winner. Her own poem would be judged by the others. Black humor would get extra points.
Larry went first:
There was once a place called Shell
Snug amidst a desert colder than hell
The five inside
Would stay till they died
Or got no more heat from their well.
“Nice,” said Jessica. “But more factual than funny. And the fourth line is clunky.”
Nicole went next:
There was a family that moved to a Shell
Where they continue to happily dwell
Will they live in this state
Until the end of Fate?
Hopefully not, but it’s too soon to tell.
“Lacks humor, but I like the ambiguity in the last line,” Jessica said. “The end could be from revival outside or collapse inside. Okay, Lizzie—Grandma, I mean—it’s your turn. Make me laugh, or be harshly judged.”
“Oh dear! This is my very first limerick ever, so don’t be too unkind,” Elizabeth said and then read aloud:
There was once a man who built a warm bubble
For his family, while the world turned to rubble
Inside, it was great
Except what they ate
Their diet! That was their real trouble.
“Not bad!” said Jessica. “Too laudatory toward Larry—you know how quickly flattery goes to his head. But the food reference made me smile. I’d say this is the best one so far. But I’m still waiting for humor. Anna, hit me.”
“Well, black humor isn’t my forte. But perhaps some of your flair may have rubbed off on me. So here goes.”
There was once a man called Larry
Who kidnapped all the girls he could carry
Once in his Shell
They fell under his spell
For who else could they expect to marry?
The women roared with laughter, and Larry had the grace to blush. Teasing him was a popular pastime with the girls, with the older ones often joining in. Larry, though sometimes bashful, was nevertheless pleased by their humor at his expense. Anything that kept their morale up was welcome. Besides, he found the girls delightful, a fact that he tried to hide from them—no sense in losing the tiny shred of authority he had left!
“Full points for humor!” said Jessica. “You’ve exposed him for the rake he is. The Shroud is obviously something he engineered just to get us into his clutches. Confess it, Larry!”
“If so, I don’t regret it,” said Larry, recovering quickly. “A dead planet is a small price to pay for your affections.”
“You bastard, when did you learn to make repartee?” said Jessica. “Coming back to your poem, Anna, it’s funny, but not dark enough. Here’s mine.”
The Shell was a place that lifted your mood
The air was fair and the food was good
Until the air went stale and the pond went dry
And the well went cold and the plants did die
But it was there that Larry chose to raise his brood!
“It’s nice and dark,” said Anna. “And the last line’s funny. But the meter is off, isn’t it?”
“True,” admitted her sister. “And the rhyme in the second line isn’t great either.”
“The first four lines remind me of a poem in Fall of the House of Usher,” remarked Larry, and quoted from it:
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace —
Radiant palace—reared its head.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
“Perhaps you could expand your poem into a longer piece, Jessica?” asked Elizabeth. “Not as a funny poem, but a serious one?”
“Yes, you could call it Fall of the House of Shell!” Anna said.
“I could give it a try,” she replied. “So I guess the winner today is Anna?”
“No question, said Elizabeth. “Here we were all worried about her morale, and the dear girl comes up with something like that.”
“You can’t keep her down,” Nicole agreed. “Not when she gets to indulge in our
favorite sport of Larry baiting.”
“I ought to be angry with her, I suppose,” Larry said.
As he said this, Anna was reclining with her legs on his lap, and Jessica was leaning against him. Though Larry treated them both as adults and rated their abilities above his own, a part of him continued to think of them as children who needed to be indulged and protected. They were often playful with him, like frisky little kittens, while he assumed a gently chiding, fatherly demeanor. He loved their attentions, but it made him only all the more conscious of the grim reality awaiting them outside and strengthened his determination to move heaven and earth to keep them safe. They were beyond precious to him.
“Good luck with that,” said Jessica, rolling her eyes. “I won’t hold my breath.”
The daily limerick competitions continued with great success. Anna, who displayed an unexpected flair for light verse, was often the winner, though once Elizabeth beat her with this effort:
In the desert built Larry his dome humongous
Into which he grabbed and boldly flung us
“You’re safe from the cold!”
“No more worry!” we were told
Until his plans were undone by a fungus.
Nicole and Larry managed to turn out decent rhymes, though they tended to be factual rather than funny. Jessica continued to work on her longer poem and finally came up with this:
Safe in their nest, on planet Earth
In the eternal cycle of death and birth
Warmed by the miracle of solar fire
The human race had all it could desire.
And one fine day came a distant cloud
That brought not rain, for its name was Shroud;
It was darker than dark, blacker than black
No more fine days would ever come back.
Starting at first as a greyish haze
The cloud got thicker at a deadly pace;
As it wrapped the Earth in its drear embrace
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