NH3

by Stanley Salmons

  Walmesley shook his head. “Out of the question.”

  “Why?” said Terry.

  “For one thing the President would never allow it. Look, the American public sees unseasonal hurricanes as an Act of God: devastating – certainly; unusual – certainly; but no more sinister than that. You put together a high-powered group like that and it’d be as good as announcing on national television that we’re facing the end of the world. At best it would cause unease; at worst, panic and disorder – and maybe all for nothing.”

  “So you don’t think there is a global threat?” asked Maggie, her voice rising with exasperation.

  “Right now? – no, I don’t. A long-term threat, maybe, from global warming, but not an immediate one.”

  “What about an organism that produces ammonia? Is that a threat or isn’t it?”

  “That I can’t say. But I’d regard it as an epiphenomenon, unconnected with the hurricanes.”

  “And the white smog?”

  “An unreported industrial accident. Or a one-off, a local accumulation of ammonia driven to low altitude by freak atmospheric conditions.”

  Maggie sat back and threw up her arms. “Well it’s going to happen a hell of a lot more if the ammonia levels continue to rise.”

  “That too is a long ways from being certain. Ammonia’s a light gas; it could escape from Earth’s gravity or be driven out by the solar wind. Atmospheric chemistry’s complex: it could react with free radicals in the upper atmosphere. The storms may wash the ammonia out. It doesn’t have to rise. The levels could plateau; they may even drop again.”

  Terry could feel his own frustration growing as Maggie continued. “So what are we supposed to do? Go back to the UK and tell the government that the Americans aren’t interested?”

  “Now don’t mistake me. I am interested. I think what you’ve found is worth investigating further, but I can’t authorize funding just like that. You’d have to go through the normal channels, a grant proposal, peer review – ”

  “That’ll take far too long,” said Terry.

  “Dr. McKinley, you have to see it from where I’m sitting. My Directorates consider more than forty thousand research proposals a year. Some get funded; most are rejected. We don’t have an inexhaustible supply of cash here. There’s only so much we can do. I understand the President wants this looked at but you haven’t convinced me it deserves immediate prioritisation.”

  Maggie sighed loudly and lowered her voice to a gentler tone:

  “Dr. Walmesley, may I ask you something? What would cause you to change your mind?”

  “What would change my mind? Evidence that it wasn’t a purely local issue. Something that showed ammonia levels were rising globally, unchecked.”

  Terry raised his eyebrows. “Well surely you have that information already – from your atmospheric analysis. It would include ammonia levels, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ye-es, it would, but ammonia’s only present at trace levels in the atmosphere so I guess no one’s looked at it.”

  “It’s not at trace levels any more. Could I extract that data and process it?”

  “That’s a complex task.”

  “I’m a planetary physicist; I think I can handle it.”

  Something new entered Walmesley’s eyes. “A planetary physicist? That’s interesting. They told me you were couple of biologists.”

  “Maggie is, I’m not.”

  “I see. I did wonder when you started to talk about atmospheric movements. Seems we speak the same language, then. I was in Geophysics. I headed up the Geosciences Directorate for some years before I took overall charge of the Foundation.”

  Terry detected a slight softening of the Director’s attitude.

  “So you’ll let me have the data?”

  He grimaced. “No, I can’t do that. The Foundation supports the project but we don’t have our own research staff or labs; the monitoring is done by a consortium of universities. It’s a lot of work to collect material like that and the data is theirs to interpret.”

  Maggie drew a breath. “Couldn’t you be more helpful than that? I mean, you did say you were instructed to assist us.”

  Walmesley sat back slowly. “You’re twisting my arm now, are you?” He smothered a smile. “Well, as the funding body it would be legitimate for us to request a copy of the data collected so far. I could get someone to extract what we need and pass me the raw data…” He placed a hand on the desk. “Okay, look, I’ll do that. And bearing in mind the security aspect I’ll analyse it myself. It’ll make a welcome change to pushing all this Goddamned paper around.”

  “Great. Thanks very much.”

  “I’ll try to deal with it over the weekend.” He pressed a button on an intercom. A voice said “Yes, Chris?”

  “Trish, do I have a slot on Monday or Tuesday to get together with Drs. McKinley and Ferris again?”

  There was a slight pause. “Not Tuesday. But on Monday if you leave the Advisory Committee before the end you could see them between three-thirty and four-thirty.”

  “Perfect, put it in the diary, would you?” He turned to them. “Monday afternoon, three-thirty. With a bit of luck we should have something by then.”

  He pushed his chair back and got up. They followed suit.

  “This your first time in Washington?”

  Terry answered, “Yes, actually – for both of us.”

  “You should use the weekend to take a look around the city. There’s plenty on offer: the White House, the Monument, the Memorials, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian… A lot of it’s within walking distance of your hotel. Should keep you busy.” They shook hands. “We’ll meet again on Monday. One way or another we’re going to see if there’s anything in this theory of yours.”

  CHAPTER 16

  They spent the Saturday trying to take Walmesley’s advice, but soon discovered it was impossible to concentrate on sight-seeing with so much going on inside their heads. They gave up in the early afternoon and returned to the hotel to go over once more what they knew so far. Maggie got Terry to go over the climate changes again and how much of it could be explained by global warming, as Walmesley seemed to believe. Terry asked her how the ammonia mutation could have arisen, and she spent some time drawing out DNA base sequences and describing the various mechanisms.

  Terry’s phone rang just as they were considering where to go for dinner and he answered it. He sat forward in his seat, listening intently before saying: “Ok, we’ll be right over.”

  “That was Walmesley,” he said excitedly. “He wants to meet us in his office right away. Sounds like he’s onto something.”

  As it was Saturday the NSF building was largely deserted. Security staff showed them up to Walmesley’s office and they waited for him outside the door by his assistant’s desk. Walmesley came in a few minutes later, a little breathless.

  “Sorry about this.” He dumped a thick folder on his PA’s desk. “Come through, come through.”

  He hung his jacket over the office chair and sat down. “Okay. I got the data on the composition of atmospheric samples late on Friday. I analysed most of it straight away.”

  He paused, eyeing them.

  “And…?” Terry asked.

  “Levels grossly elevated everywhere I looked. They’re not just up: they’re rising more rapidly.” He placed his hands on the desk. “You know, at first I couldn’t believe it – I thought I’d made a mistake. So I analyzed the data again, checked the calibration, everything. Same result. What you gave me on Friday was interesting, but your evidence was circumstantial. Not anymore it’s not. This is hard data. Usually I don’t mind being proved wrong, but I gotta be honest, in this particular case I wish I had been right.”

  Terry gave him a grim smile. “Me too. So where do we go from here?”

  “Well, I tried to speak to the President, but he’s in Texas, touring the areas damaged by the hurricane. He left word for me to liaise with Herbert Kramer.”

  “Herbert Kr
amer?”

  “Dr. Kramer is Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. When it comes to science policy the President depends heavily on his counsel.”

  Something about the way he said it, the merest hint of sarcasm, suggested to Terry that the arrangement was not one that had Walmesley’s wholehearted approval.

  “And what did Dr. Kramer say?”

  Walmesley’s lips tightened. “Herbert Kramer is a stickler for protocol. To be frank, we’ve never seen eye to eye and now he’s pissed because the President bypassed him and sent the two of you to me. I explained that the President had seen it as a geosciences problem and dropped it in my lap.” He shrugged. “He seemed to find that hard to accept. It was uphill from then on in.”

  “You gave him the data on ammonia levels?”

  “Of course. He asked whether I had incontrovertible proof that this was the cause of the unseasonal hurricanes. I said of course I didn’t, but the issue was clearly more far-reaching than just changes in weather patterns. I asked him to advise the President to set up a task force immediately to investigate it fully. He wouldn’t do that. He said the President was far too occupied with an actual disaster to concern himself with some hypothetical future threat. As for my concerns, since it was ‘a geosciences problem’ I should identify funding through the usual NSF channels. I think he enjoyed saying that.”

  “But we’ve been over that ground before. It would take months!”

  “I know. Look, I’m prepared to take this to the President myself but first we need more evidence. Kramer has a point: Hurricane Ailsa was one of the most violent storms in recent years, and the damage was very severe. The President’s been heavily criticized for not responding quickly enough to the situation down there. I think that was unfair, but it hasn’t stopped his political opponents – they’ve had a field day. Now the President’s fighting back and the reconstruction effort is his top priority. If we’re to convince him that this issue is even more important we’ve got to be on very solid ground. We’ll have to strengthen the case.”

  “Strengthen it how?” said Maggie.

  “I’d like to have some more independent verification. And it would be good to make a stronger link between this organism of yours and the rise in ammonia levels.”

  “I don’t see how we can do that without knowing exactly when the mutation occurred.”

  “True, but if it arose in Bermuda, as you said, the distribution of ammonia may reflect that. There could be more data in the system, some of it going back several years. Terry, if I gave you access to other governmental bodies, like the US Geological Survey and NOAA – that’s the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – do you think you could take a look at it?”

  “Yes, I could do that. But the trouble with atmospheric sampling is it only gives us data at discrete sites. It would be more useful to have an overall picture of ammonia distribution, the sort of thing you get from Earth surveillance satellites. I’d have thought NASA has that data for Earth’s atmosphere but I’m damned if I can find it. Would you have access to information like that?”

  “Sure, that’s not a problem; we work closely with NASA. If they have data on ammonia I can get it put on a DVD for you. There’s probably specialized software for displaying the images. I’ll have them download that as well. Look, this is what we’ll do. I’ll set you up with an office in this building with access to the internal network. You can work on whatever atmospheric data is available while I’m getting those disks from NASA.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  “Dr. Walmesley?” Maggie said. “What about the organism? Couldn’t we make some progress on that, too? We have samples.”

  The grey eyes narrowed. “You have?”

  “Yes. Terry took freshwater samples from a river that was affected, and we collected ocean samples in the Sargasso Sea, close to an algal mat that was producing a lot of ammonia.”

  “And they’re here?”

  “Not here, no, in Liverpool. A colleague is looking after them for us. But he can send some over. I could have them here on Monday.”

  Walmesley nodded slowly.

  “We have no lab facilities here and we can’t let this get into the public domain. But if you can keep it to yourself I may be able to get you some lab space at the National Institutes of Health. I can speak to Elaine Zanuck – she’s the Director.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The NIH is at Bethesda. It’s only six or seven miles from here so you could keep your room in the hotel and commute by cab.” He sat back. “Now, is that everything?”

  Terry looked at Maggie and, sensing agreement, said, “Yes, I believe it is.”

  “Good.” He scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it over. “If you need to reach me, this is my cell phone. I’ll try to contact you before the end of the day.”

  Terry glanced at it, then put it in his pocket. They all got up and Walmesley saw them to the door.

  “By the way,” he said. “Just a basic security precaution: first names only on the phone. In any case, since we’re colleagues now I think it would be appropriate, don’t you?”

  Terry extended his hand. “Chris.”

  “Terry, Maggie,” said Chris shaking his hand and then Maggie’s.

  CHAPTER 17

  Maggie was allotted space in one corner of a large, fourth-floor lab in the National Institutes of Health building on Monday morning, with access to the microscope room down the corridor. One of the technicians seemed happy enough to help her find the equipment and materials she needed without being too curious about what she was up to.

  In the early afternoon she took a cab to the air freight terminal, armed with the print-out of an Air Waybill that Jake Brewer had emailed to her. She asked the driver to wait for her. Twenty minutes later she re-emerged and he drove her back to Bethesda. She paid the fare, added a generous tip, then hurried into the building with her precious package.

  Back in her corner of the lab she found a scalpel and cut through the wide tape securing the lid of the carton. Jake had done a good job. Under a heap of expanded polystyrene pellets and inside several layers of bubble plastic she found two flasks in close company with a couple of cold gel packs. As she’d requested, he’d sent one of Terry’s river samples and one of the Bermuda samples. She picked up some slides, cover slips and a micropipette from a drawer, and took them along to the microscope room.

  She and Terry had dinner that evening in the hotel’s Avenue Grill, choosing a table at some distance from the other diners.

  “So,” he said as she sat down. “Did the samples arrive?”

  “Yes, they look fine, one from the river and one from the ocean.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Well, we already know the Bermuda samples contain a lot of different organisms. The crucial issue is whether only one type of organism produces ammonia. If they’re all producing ammonia, that’s strong evidence for plasmid transfer.”

  He nodded so she continued.

  “I thought of a couple of ways it might be done. One would be to separate the different types and grow them up individually. I spent several hours today sucking single organisms into a micropipette and putting each one in its own culture dish.”

  “Sounds tricky.”

  “It was. I managed to isolate a few but I don’t know whether they’ll survive. So I’m trying something else. I’ve plated out a sample on a nutrient gel. Not an ordinary gel; I put a pH indicator in it. Normally it’s yellow but if alkali is present it’ll go red. Ammonia is alkaline, so any organisms producing it should have a red halo around them. That’s the theory, anyway.”

  “Genius. Seriously, it’s a great idea, Maggie.”

  She smiled and Terry though he detected a slight colouring of her cheeks. “See if it works before you say that. What about you? How are you getting on with the atmospheric sampling?”

  Terry pushed his plate aside. “Okay so far. Chris has me accredited with all th
e important organizations now. NOAA definitely has useful data. Trouble is, I’m surrounded by office bods in that building. When it comes to accessing databases I’m on my own and it’s taking longer than I’d like. Do you want coffee?”

  “No, I’m fine.” She hesitated, then leaned a little closer and dropped to a whisper. “Terry, weren’t we supposed to report back to the Home Secretary, tell him what’s happening?”

  “Oops, I’d forgotten about that.” He sighed. “Suppose I’d better. He gave me a number to call.”

  “Is it wise to use the phone?”

  “He said it’d be safe enough from a cell phone but I shouldn’t say ‘organism’, ‘cyanobacteria’, or ‘ammonia’. I’ll do it in the morning.”

  “What time?”

  “Seven-ish probably.”

  “Mind if I listen in.”

  “If you like.” He glanced at his watch, then pushed his chair back. “Early start, then. Let’s get back.”

  At a few minutes past seven Terry tapped on the communicating door between the rooms.

  “You ready?”

  The door opened and Maggie came in. She looked like she had just showered. Her hair was still damp and Terry caught the fruity scent of her shampoo.

  “Put it on loudspeaker,” she said. “So I can listen.”

  He punched in the number and waited.

  “Home Office.”

  “This is Dr. McKinley. Could I speak to the Home Secretary?”

  “Dr. McKinley. We’ve were wondering when you’d update us. Why haven’t you called before now?”

  Terry’s mouth set. “We’ve been busy. Who is this?”

  “This is Adrian Spencer-Talbot.”

  “I was told to contact the Home Secretary.”

  “Mr. Spalding’s very busy. You can talk to me.”

  “Sorry, I’ve been told to treat this matter as confidential. You’re expecting me to talk to someone I don’t know and I’ve never seen.”