Terry felt as if there were an enormous weight pressing on his chest. It was a problem he’d visualized only in global terms. He knew the numbers already but this was the reality – here, confronting him in these television pictures. Watching them he felt like a general who’d estimated the likely casualties, sent his troops into battle, and was now obliged to write to the bereaved relatives and tour wards crowded with the injured. He stared at the screen, numb and motionless.
In the studio, a sombre presenter announced that the estimated death toll in the Snake River Plain alone was upwards of half a million. Further reports, she said, would be broadcast in the days to come on the situation in towns to the east of Yellowstone.
The lounge had gone very quiet. Maggie turned and Terry saw that her eyes were full of tears. She left without a word and he followed her.
She walked quickly out of the building and towards the residence. He hurried behind her, calling her name, but she just shook her head impatiently and marched on. When they reached her room she wiped angrily at her eyes with the heel of her hand and whirled on him.
“Five hundred thousand deaths, Terry! And it’s not over yet. I hope you’re satisfied.”
“What are you – ?”
“All those people. They didn’t know what was coming. But you did, didn’t you?”
“We couldn’t have predicted those early surges or which way they would run!”
“You brushed it aside, that’s all – the loss of life wasn’t that important.”
“For God’s sake, of course it was important! We had no choice.”
“You ‘had no choice’. You turned this into a planetary disaster because it’s your field; you can handle that. When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail!”
The shaft hit home. It was the same accusation he’d been levelling at himself ever since he’d put the plan forward. He gritted his teeth.
“All right, but at least I put a plan on the table. I didn’t notice you or anyone else come up with an alternative. What did you expect? If we hadn’t done something the whole world would have died! We knew there’d be a heavy price to pay so why are you behaving like it’s all a huge surprise?”
The tears hadn’t stopped flowing. Her body quivered with the force of her sobbing.
“Because I’m guilty, that’s why! I failed to find a solution in time, and because of that I had to be a party to this decision...” She held her shaking palms out to him. “Did you see those pictures? Men, women, children, old and young, whole families – all wiped out! Hundreds of them, thousands of them! How do you think that makes me feel?”
“It wasn’t your suggestion, it was mine. If anyone should feel guilty it’s me.”
“Well? Do you feel guilty?”
He turned his head away in exasperation.
“It’s too late for that.” He took a deep breath, and spoke with deliberation. “Maggie, the casualties are horrendous – I know that and the President surely knows that – but that doesn’t mean we did the wrong thing. It was unavoidable. That was the scale of the problem.”
She shook her head.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it? At one point we thought we were dealing with saboteurs or terrorists. And what do we do? We kill maybe a million people. So who are the terrorists, Terry? I’ve lost track, you see.”
“We were in an impossible situation. It was a rational, scientific decision.”
“So was Hitler’s Final Solution!”
“Maggie…!”
Even through his anger he was moved by her tears. He hated to see her like this. He felt a strong urge to take her in his arms, comfort her, but he was rooted to the spot. In her present state of mind she’d recoil from any such gesture, and he couldn’t face the hurt of rejection. He tried to control his voice.
“Maggie, you’ve got to see this through. We’ve unleashed terrible forces. But don’t forget: all it’s gained us is a little time. It isn’t a long term solution – only you and your people can provide that.”
She heaved an unsteady sigh and her voice descended to a growl.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll see it through. Whatever you may think of me, I am a professional.”
She was gathering up her things even as she was speaking. A few moments later she left the room and slammed the door.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, staring into the carpet.
A gulf had opened up between them and he knew no way of bridging it.
CHAPTER 62
Over the weeks that followed, the temperature dropped progressively. By October a mantle of snow had settled on the Canadian provinces and the northern United States. This was followed by freezing fog. A thick layer of ice coated every surface, bringing down power cables and telephone lines. One after another, television channels went off the air. Even the major channels, like NBC, CBS, and CNN, were having problems. In the Institute the staff relied increasingly on their plenary meetings for news from the frozen regions further north but there was a limit to what Terry could tell them.
The reports were taking longer now that Maggie’s teams were getting results. Alain Laroche was working with Silvia Mussini’s group, designing their own plasmid. At the same time the Russian group, under Sergei Kolesnikov, was making faster progress now that he was sharing the phage work with Rajiv Gupta.
Maggie and Terry kept their personal feelings in a separate compartment. Both knew how important it was to maintain morale and they were consistently upbeat about the way the work was going. As a result, despite the dismal news from the north and north-west, the scientists tended to leave each meeting with enthusiasm and even some cautious optimism. Privately, Terry was beginning to worry that the optimism was misplaced.
Terry looked at his watch, then went to the window of his office and eyed the weather. It was time to give the President his weekly briefing on their progress. He took the umbrella that was propped up in the corner by his desk.
As he emerged from the building he paused to put the umbrella up, then started to jog across the campus. The air was chill and white with rain. The large droplets thundered on the thin silk of the umbrella and bounced in thousands of miniature upward explosions from the paths. To cross the streets he had to jump across the rivers that were flowing down the gutters. The lawns were largely submerged and his shoes splashed through the puddles that spread from side to side of the footpaths. Florida was famed for its heavy afternoon thunderstorms but it was a long time since rain had fallen incessantly like this. At least it had washed the ash off the buildings and the trees.
He turned up the path to the administration building. In the shelter of the foyer he closed and half-opened the umbrella a couple of times to jerk off the rain, then went through the door. There was barely time to flick the water from his trousers before he was accosted by the marines. They inspected his pass carefully and waved him in. They never seemed to recognize him, but then he didn’t recognize them either. He rode the lift up to the outer office, watching the display flicking rapidly through the floors, regaining his breath. Close to his feet a small puddle spread from the tip of his folded umbrella. His face was flushed from the exertion but he could feel the cold damp seeping through his trousers and socks. The lift doors opened and he walked down the corridor.
Sarah Bethany was just coming out of the President’s office. She gave Terry a smile and indicated that he should go in.
The President looked a little brighter. Perhaps his doctor had persuaded him to get some rest.
“Come on in, Terry,” he said, as he caught sight of him. “Damned rain. Are you wet through?”
“Not too bad. It’ll dry off.”
They sat down. He noticed that the President was wearing a thick wool cardigan. It wasn’t that warm in the building; presumably they were trying to cut down on energy consumption.
“Sir, do you mind if I ask you something before we start?”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, we agreed that these briefings
are between the two of us, and that’s the way I’ve kept it. But the people back in the Institute are hungry for news, more news than they can get now on the evening bulletins. The television channels seem to be running short of first-hand accounts and we suspect they’re either fabricating stories or blowing them out of proportion.”
“Neither one would surprise me. In fact nothing about the media would surprise me.”
“Well, you’ve been good enough to share some of the items that cross your desk. As we’re going along I wondered if we could identify a few that I could pass on to them. It would make the meetings over at the Institute even more useful.”
“Okay, we can do that. The arrangement is that everything’s classified unless I specifically say so.”
“Of course.”
“Good. Well you can start by telling them that it’s getting mighty cold. Heavy snowfalls in Chicago, Cleveland, and Boston, they tell me. And the Canadians have got it even worse. The St. Lawrence seaway is starting to freeze.”
“That’s going to last for a while, I’m afraid. It’s the volcanic winter we talked about. We’re monitoring its progress.”
“Some doom-mongers are predicting a twelve degree Celsius drop in the Northern hemisphere, and more still in the south. That happens, the whole goddamned planet will be iced over.”
“No, it won’t be as bad as that.”
“How so?”
“Well, those people are making predictions based on estimates of the release of sulphuric acid from the volcano. That’s a perfectly valid approach with the information that’s available to them. Unfortunately their information is incomplete: they don’t know about the huge amount of ammonia that was already in the atmosphere. We released the sulphuric acid to capture the ammonia but it works the other way round, too. A lot of the sulphuric acid as well as the ammonia has come out of the atmosphere. What’s left behind is mainly fine ash.”
“Well if there’s still ash up there, how come the FAA is allowing commercial flights again?”
“The density at cruising altitude isn’t a problem now. There’s enough material above that level to shield the sun, but it’ll gradually get redistributed and settle out. Things will be bad, but not as bad as they say.”
“That’s comforting. What about the rain?”
“Well, it’ll ease off once the temperature falls because there’ll be less evaporation from the oceans. But there’s an upside to the rain too.”
“Oh, what’s that?”
“You know it’s been falling in parts of the country normally classed as deserts: Arizona and New Mexico, for example. And the rain is loaded with nitrogen-rich compounds – ammonium salts are your classic fertilizers. I think you’ll find that’ll create conditions suitable for grassland and wheat-growing. You could replace the harvests we’ll be losing in the mid-West, at least until world temperatures start to rise again.”
“Now that is interesting. I was beginning to wonder how we’d cope with food shortages. Trouble is, most farmers aren’t going to believe you can grow crops on any useful scale so far to the south-west.”
“You could offer them subsidies, couldn’t you? It would cost less than having to import the stuff.”
“That’s true. I’ll look into it.” He added a note to the pad on his desk. “And presumably this isn’t just happening here.”
“That’s right. My information is sketchy at the moment but there’s been rain in the northern Sahara and the Arabian desert – I know that much. The same may be true elsewhere, even in places like the Kalahari and the Australian deserts. Areas that have been too hot and dry in the past could well support crops now. And the paddy fields and terraces in the Far East should be able to yield two crops a year. It’s ironic in a way. It was just the sort of goal Zak Gould had in mind when he developed the organism.”
The President shook his head and grunted. “We’ve certainly come to it by a strange route. Well, I hope you’re right. Some of those African countries seem to have a famine every year. We ship a hell of a lot of grain to them. We won’t be able to do that if our own breadbasket’s running low. It’d be a relief if they could look after themselves until things get back to normal. That’s assuming they ever get back to normal. I take it ammonia’s still down?”
Terry’s lips tightened. In the first weeks after the volcano erupted the levels had plunged. But now the picture was changing.
“It’s still down, sir, but it’s levelled off. And in some places the levels have started to rise. I’m afraid the race is on again.”
Their eyes met. “I take it the biologists know that.”
“Yes, sir. They’re working as fast as they can.”
“Good, because that’s our last chance.” He sighed and gestured towards the window. “Out there, of course, they still haven’t got a clue what’s really happening. In fact some of our citizens seem to regard the eruption as an opportunity created by God specifically for them to acquire worldly goods.”
“You’re referring to the looting, sir?”
“You know about that?”
“It was on the TV news last night. It looked to me like it was affecting towns on the fringe of the ashfall, where homes and shops aren’t actually buried but emergency services are paralysed.”
“Yup, dead on. Damned parasites. Well, we’ve got the measure of them – Terry, this is not for general consumption, right? I’ve imposed a form of martial law in those areas – sent the army in. We’re not shooting them, though – I had a better idea. They get arrested, sentenced quickly and then put to work shovelling ash, helping to get things running again. The army’s supervising the whole operation.”
“Another lousy job for the army.”
“Not so bad. It sure as hell beats doing the shovelling themselves.”
“Did Congress give you any trouble with that?”
“Hah, now I’ll tell you something, Terry,” he chuckled. “You talk about upside. I’ve never known Congress be so accommodating. Normally they’d have given me a hell of a rough ride on a bill like that. But I guess it’s what you Limeys used to call the ‘Spirit of the Blitz’. People are learning to pull together, and the ones who won’t are getting short shrift. All the stuff that used to clog up the system – negligence claims, libel, defamation, patent infringements, people suing for billions of dollars, that kind of thing – well, with everyone struggling just to survive, the courts are throwing it out. The old ambulance-chasers are finished. The law’s becoming respectable again. Should have happened a long time ago. Now tell me, how’s Maggie getting on...?”
Maggie decided she couldn’t postpone the moment any longer. They were approaching the point when a field trial would be essential and that called for forward planning. Kramer had seemed studiously determined to remain inaccessible but she was going to see him anyway. For a change he was at the Friday meeting, sitting at the back and leaving quickly without taking part. She knocked on his door after he’d returned to his office.
He raised his eyebrows as she entered but indicated the chair placed, in token fashion, on the other side of his desk. There were no papers on the desk and no books on the shelves. There was a computer but the screen was blank. Maggie sat down, feeling as if she’d entered the stage set of a play that had long been cancelled. Before she had a chance to say what she wanted he opened the conversation.
“I’m glad you’ve come to see me at last, Dr. Ferris. I must say I’m not at all happy with the way things have been going.”
She looked at him in astonishment. “You heard the reports at the meeting, Dr. Kramer. I would have thought you’d be delighted at the progress.”
He waved a hand. “All this should have happened months ago.” He exhaled in something approaching a sigh. “I was brought into this business far too late, I’m afraid, when decisions had already been taken. Otherwise I should have advised a totally different strategy.”
She’d been tense enough in his presence; now her skin began to prickle with irritation
.
“Oh? May I ask what strategy that would have been?”
He leaned back as if to study her. “Expression. That’s what you people are missing. You should have been concentrating on what proteins these organisms are expressing. Where are your micro-array experts, your protein chemists? There aren’t any! Instead you have Oakley with his sequencing, Mussini and her gene silencing – ” his lip curled and Maggie opened her mouth to protest “ – no, hear me out. This is an organism that is making an unusual protein. All you had to do was compare it with a similar organism that was unaffected and you would have identified the culprit.”
She shook her head. “It’s not as easy as that, Dr. Kramer. There is no one organism responsible, not any more; our samples contain a variety of species and even the ones that look similar are probably genetically distinct. A comparison such as you’re suggesting would come up with hundreds – maybe thousands – of different proteins, and you’d have to sieve through the lot to find the one you’re looking for.”
He flicked his fingers, as if physically brushing the objection aside. “That could have been coped with if you’d brought in the right people. You’ve wasted valuable time. Had the President given the task to…” he treated her to a razor smile, “shall we say, more mature scientists, we might have avoided this senseless slaughter in the north-west.”
She felt the blood rushing to her face. Why was he being so rude, so aggressive, so wise-after-the-event? His nose was badly out of joint because the President hadn’t sought his advice at the outset. Now he was no doubt telling the President how much better he would have handled things. As for his so-called “strategy” it just showed how ill-informed he was and how poorly he’d thought it through. At the same time it brought to the surface the self-doubts she had every time they hit another snag, another delay. Could a different approach have been quicker, more successful? The thought that an error of judgement on her part could have been responsible for the carnage of Yellowstone was outrageous, and yet her heart thumped even at this misdirected hint of it. She swallowed and tried to collect her thoughts.
NH3 Page 34