NH3

by Stanley Salmons

  Pieter and Ulrich conferred briefly in Dutch. Pieter turned to Maggie. “We think about a week.”

  Silvia said, “What I have in my mind is, there are other sequences we can use and other vectors. We could be working on those while the preparations and the field test are in progress. This way we are not wasting time.”

  Alain nodded. “I think this is an excellent idea. If the field test is not a success, we are ready with the next organism. We field test again, and we continue like this until we succeed. It is the most practical way.”

  Maggie looked around the room. “Do you all agree with that?”

  There was a chorus of assent.

  “All right,” she said slowly. “In that case we have a problem. When it looked like we were getting close to the point of doing a field trial I saw Dr. Kramer about it. He is absolutely opposed to our carrying one out. He says it’s too risky.”

  When the buzz of consternation had died down, Matt asked: “Then how in hell are we supposed to test it?”

  “He wants to give it to the US Navy.”

  “Oh, fucking marvellous. I can just see it now: a bunch of fucking Navy SEALs careering over the ocean with our equipment in tow, taking samples at sixty knots. That’s all we need.”

  “There is much you can learn just by being there,” Ulrich said. “You cannot tell this to the Navy.”

  Pieter was frowning deeply. “Also who takes the samples must know how to store them properly, otherwise they are no use to us.”

  Maggie sighed. “Exactly what I said. He wouldn’t shift. And he wouldn’t even approve a Naval expedition unless we had a convincing demonstration of success in the lab.”

  “This is not sensible,” Silvia said. “We would waste a lot of time.”

  They all nodded.

  “The guy’s an idiot,” Matt said. “Can’t we get round this some way?”

  They all looked at Maggie.

  “I think we can,” she said quietly. “Say nothing at the meeting tomorrow. Nobody must know.”

  A couple of weeks ago he’d have strolled right into Maggie’s office to have a chat, but things were more delicate now. He hesitated at the threshold.

  “Got a minute, Maggie?”

  She looked up. “Come in, Terry.”

  He entered the office and leaned against a bookshelf, his hands in his pockets.

  “It’s Friday. I was wondering if you had anything new you wanted to report at the meeting.”

  “Well, we can tell them we’ve completed the preliminary tests. We put our cyanobacteria and the phage up against an excess of the ammonia organism. It seems to work.”

  “But that’s tremendous news!”

  “Don’t get too excited; we’re not sure about its capacity to grow and how efficiently it will exchange the plasmid into the ammonia organisms. We can’t test it reliably in the lab – there’s a whole bunch of variables we couldn’t account for. We’ve decided the only way to do it is in the field.”

  He frowned. “It’s early days for that, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so. If it works we’ve saved valuable time.”

  She turned to the map pinned to her notice board. “We’ll use the hot spot north-east of Bermuda – the one you and I sampled; we know there’s a good concentration in that area so it should give us a definitive result. We’ll have to grow up more organism and phage for the trial, of course. Pieter and Ulrich think it’ll take another week for them to put enough together. Then we’ll empty a canister full about here,” she tapped the map, “and collect samples along the direction of the ocean current.”

  “How will you take the samples?”

  “Oh, from a surface vessel, of course.”

  “I see. Who’s going?”

  “Postgraduates and postdocs, mostly – the heads of teams will have to stay here. Rob Guillemain’s very keen; he’s a postdoc in Matt Oakley’s team. Sara Tennant – she works with Silvia Mussini. Jos Wentink from the Dutch group; they’re the cyanobacteria experts and he’s had a lot of experience of ocean sampling. And Sonia Yudin from Sergei’s group. And me, of course.”

  He straightened up, launching his weight off the bookshelf.

  “You?”

  “Yes, I’m going too.”

  “You can’t...”

  “Oh, and why not?”

  He licked his lips. It was hard not to be too obvious. “We... your teams. They depend on your leadership. You can’t leave them just like that.”

  “Of course I can! They know perfectly well what to do. They’ll be making other plasmids and putting them in other cyanobacteria species in case this combination doesn’t work. They don’t need me for that.”

  “But what about the algal mats? They’re absolutely loaded with ammonia organisms; they’ve been there longer than anywhere else in the world!”

  “We’ll be taking respirator masks.”

  He looked at her and for the moment he was lost for words. Then:

  “What did Kramer say about this?”

  “Kramer is a fool. He wants us to waste time doing lab tests that will almost certainly be totally invalid. And if it does come to field testing he thinks the Navy should do it. He was extremely unpleasant about it.”

  His mouth set as he balanced Kramer’s position with his own dislike of the man.

  “Look, Maggie, I’ve got little enough time for Kramer, but have you considered the possibility that he may be right in this instance?”

  Her voice acquired a tone of exasperated patience. “No, he is not right and on no account are you to tell him what we’re doing. And this is not for the meeting, either. Look, Terry, I’ve discussed this with all my group leaders and we’re of one mind. Ammonia levels are high again – I don’t have to tell you that. We need to get to the solution by the shortest possible route and this is it. I’m not asking for your permission; I’m just letting you know what’s going to happen, that’s all.”

  He turned away from her and raised a hand to his head. Then he whirled round.

  “You’re talking as if this was a… a tourist excursion! Can’t you see the risks involved? You know you’re essential to this whole operation. How can you contemplate putting your own life on the line at this crucial stage?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Terry. For a start, I don’t think it is dangerous. But if it is, then that’s all the more reason for me to go. First quality of a leader, isn’t it – never ask your people to do what you’re not prepared to do yourself? That team needs to have someone senior in charge and I’m the one person the researchers here can most easily do without. In any case,” she continued, her voice dropping to a more conversational level, “I want to be there. It’s the culmination of a lot of hard work. I have to see the result myself. And if it’s not successful I want to know first-hand what went wrong. Then when I get back we can discuss how to put things right.”

  She fixed him with her dark eyes and her manner softened ever so slightly.

  “It’s kind of you to show concern, Terry, but you may as well give up. You won’t dissuade me. I’m going and that’s final.”

  His mouth tightened. He turned and left the office without another word.

  For a climatologist John Gilchrist was curiously resistant to the dictates of the weather. He had long, floppy hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and he wore a tweed jacket, Fair Isle pullover, and corduroy trousers all year round. As it happened, his outfit was not altogether inappropriate at this moment. The air was cooler than ever, but the incessant drumming of rain on the windows had ceased, and although the paving stones still shone black in the feeble daylight, the gutters were no longer turbulent rivers, and even the puddles on the lawns had begun to drain away. Nevertheless if, by some miracle, the skies had cleared, and the warm Florida sun once again sent its healing rays into this blighted landscape, John Gilchrist would still have turned up wearing the same familiarly odd attire. Aside from the absence of a pipe, he was a caricature of a British boffin from a 1950s science fiction mo
vie.

  There was, however, nothing 1950s about Gilchrist’s work. His team spent a good deal of their time downloading visual and infra-red images from meteorological satellites, using them to track the distribution of ash and to monitor weather systems. Gilchrist could read these images like no other.

  “Hello, Terry.”

  “How are things, John?”

  “Depends where you’re living, chap. You know what we’re finding? Things are definitely cooling down faster in northern latitudes – it’s only October but up there it’s like the depths of winter. It’s starting to cause problems.” He pointed to the computer screen. “See all this? We’ve got cool air masses moving south-eastward across Canada and the northern US and these are mixing with warmer moisture-laden air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. In the St. Lawrence valley the warm air’s ridden up over the cool air as usual. So Montreal’s got an ice storm.”

  “Have you talked to anyone up there?” Terry asked.

  “Yes, we’ve had radio contact.”

  “So how bad is it this time?

  “It’s lasted two days so far, but the precipitation’s very heavy and the ice is building up fast. It’s already reached a thickness of seventy millimetres in places. The power lines are holding at the moment but they’re watching them carefully.”

  “Is it going to sit there much longer?”

  “I don’t think so. You see, Terry, there’s such a lot happening out in the Atlantic it’s got to shift within the next few days. The interesting thing is the way it’s spreading. It’s already more extensive than anything we’ve seen before. It started in Montreal but I think it’ll affect a much bigger area than that before it finally moves off.”

  Terry nodded thoughtfully. He knew to his cost the consequences of thinking in global terms. It was easy to be detached when you were looking at satellite views. You had to force yourself to think about conditions on the ground. Montreal would be like a ghost town right now: ice on the roads, ice on the railways, ice on the runways – nothing would be able to move in or out. Temperatures would be sub-zero. The hospitals would be filling with the homeless and people suffering from broken bones and hypothermia. Trees and telephone poles would be collapsing under the unaccustomed weight. And always, in the background, there was that sinister accumulation on the power lines, the eight big arteries supplying the teeming city with hydroelectricity from the north. If the system moved on soon the ice would melt and things would return to normal. But if it were stable for too long the steel transmission towers would eventually crumple, pulling each other down in a shower of dying sparks, and the city could lose all power.

  “Of course,” John added. “When it does move off, that’s when things start to get really lively.”

  Terry looked at him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, those cold air masses are being driven to the south-east. Right now the pattern that’s causing the inversion over the St. Lawrence is holding them back. But when it moves out of the way there’ll be nothing to stop them. They’ll push the mixing zone further south and out into the Atlantic. Heavy precipitation, rain, hail, thunderstorms. And these systems tend to intensify as they move out from the coast.”

  “John, do you have some up-to-date satellite pictures of that area?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll get them up.”

  Terry watched the screen as the views loaded. Ash and ammonia crystals in the atmosphere obscured the view to some extent, but there were no major circulations.

  “No hurricanes in prospect,” he murmured.

  “No,” John replied. “As I said, the problems will be coming from the west.”

  “Where are we talking about?”

  “Over the Gulf Stream, along here.”

  His finger moved from left to right, tracing a line across the screen. Terry stiffened.

  “And when?”

  He relaxed. “Hard to say for sure. But on previous form, probably towards the end of the coming week.”

  “Okay, thanks, John.”

  He went back to his office and sat down behind his desk.

  Maggie had said they needed another week to grow up the new organism so there was no way they could carry out the field testing in the coming week.

  It was just as well.

  The line traced by John Gilchrist’s finger had gone directly through their sampling route.

  An hour after Terry left Maggie’s office she looked up to see Pieter van der Rijt standing in the doorway.

  “Hello, Pieter, come in.” She waved him to a chair. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, not a problem. I just thought I would tell you what Ulrich and I have been doing.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “Well, we have borrowed some culture equipment from Sergei so now we have four times more capacity for growing up the organism. And we have made some improvements in the growth conditions. It grows now much faster. We do not need so long any more. I think by Sunday we should have enough organism and phage to carry out the field trial.”

  “Sunday? That’s wonderful! That means we can do the field test during the coming week. Thank you, Pieter. I’ll make the arrangements right away and tell the others. We’ll fly out on Monday.”

  CHAPTER 65

  The young woman who knocked on the open door to Terry’s office on Monday afternoon was wearing a quilted jacket, wool hat, scarf, and gloves, and her cheeks were flushed.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Dr. McKinley?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Gemma Sullivan, Mr. Milner’s secretary. He wonders if you could drop by.”

  “Sam Milner? What – now?”

  “Yes, he has an important phone message for you.”

  “I’ll come back with you,” he said.

  On the way out he grabbed his overcoat, which he’d hung on the back of the door, putting it on as he followed her down the corridor. As they emerged from the building Gemma tucked her nose and mouth into her scarf. By British standards it wasn’t that cold but he turned up the collar of his coat just the same. They walked over to the campus building that was evidently being used by the FBI.

  Gemma took him to Milner’s office.

  “Hi, Terry.” Sam got to his feet to shake hands, throwing a playful pat at Terry’s shoulder at the same time. “Good to see you, man. Kind of chilly out there, isn’t it?”

  Terry grinned at him. “It is a bit.” He folded down the collar and took off the overcoat. “What’s up, Sam?”

  “Eddie Dominguez wanted to talk to you. It has to do with the Zak Gould murder trial.”

  For the moment Terry was nonplussed. With everything that had been happening, he had completely forgotten that normal life would be trying to continue outside of the Institute. It seemed utterly bizarre. Well over a million people had died, and if the teams didn’t come up with a working solution there’d soon be millions more. But two people had committed murder so they had to go on trial.

  “I suppose I should call him back. Can I do it here?”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  Milner punched in the number, spoke briefly, then passed the handset to Terry.

  The familiar voice said, “Terry?”

  “Hi, Eddie. How’s the weather up there?”

  “Oh, we got about four feet of very dirty snow but we’re coping. Listen, Terry, the State’s prosecuting those two upstanding citizens we brought in. The trial court suddenly had a slot come available so we grabbed it. We’re good and ready: we got the evidence but you’re a key witness. Sorry about the short notice, but we need you in court.”

  “Well, I’d like to help you out, Eddie, but we’re doing some important work here. I’m afraid I can’t get away right now.”

  “Terry… I’m sorry, buddy, you don’t have a choice. The court’s issued you with a subpoena. While they were working out a way of getting it to you I just thought I’d make the invitation a bit more friendly.”

  Terry heaved an exa
sperated sigh. “When?”

  “Do you think you could get up here in time for tomorrow? Counsel would like to present your evidence then.”

  Terry hesitated. “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

  “See, we got a real watertight case against Charles Edward Morrissey – he was the big guy who killed Zak and the young cop. Of course, Morrissey’s mouthpiece will try to say that he shot the cop in self-defence and he only shot Zak by accident because he was struggling with you – ”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry – we’ll nail him. But that’s why we need you on the stand.”

  “What about the other one, the prizefighter?”

  “David Ramsay. Yeah – we need you for that too. So, you wanna make your flight arrangements? Let me know your ETA and I’ll see someone meets you at Logan. And we’ll book you into a hotel.”

  He sighed. “Okay, Eddie. See you soon.”

  “Sure thing. ’Bye.”

  He clicked off the phone, then looked at Milner.

  “Sam, I’ve been served with a damned subpoena for the trial of those two thugs in Boston.”

  “Yeah, me too. It’s the defense attorney. Eddie tells me he’s a royal pain in the ass.”

  “Jesus, Sam, how small-minded can he get? Here we are, doing work of international importance, and all this guy wants to do is put a couple of murderers back on the street.”

  “That’s his job, Terry. He has to defend his clients to the best of his ability.”

  “Isn’t there some way I can get round it?”

  “It would tie you up more than actually going there. Look, it may not be so bad as you think. It’s an open and shut case; not even a crack lawyer could do much about it. We fly up, we fly back, is all. Because of the fuel situation they’re only running three return flights a week now: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.” He looked at his watch. “I think we can still get on that Monday evening flight. I’ll check the departure time with Gemma.”

  Milner went to the door and Terry heard a muffled conversation. He came back.