Profit Motive td-48

by Warren Murphy

  "What did it do to your car?" the doctor asked.

  "One day there was gasoline in my car, and the next there was this waxy burning substance."

  "In the gas tank?" asked the doctor.

  "It burns the skin," Peter John said. 83

  "Yes, but did it do permanent damage to the engine?"

  "I don't know."

  "I will tell you why I ask. I have long admired that Ford station wagon of yours. Yes, I must confess. She has attracted me for years. What do you want for her?"

  "I came to have my skin healed."

  "All right. Take two aspirin and phone me if it doesn't get better."

  "Why two aspirin?" asked Peter John.

  "Why not two aspirin?"

  "What good will they do me?"

  "What harm will they do you?"

  "They will not cure my skin trouble."

  "If you know that, why did you come here?" said the doctor. He thought for a while, looking at Peter John's skin, and suddenly horror seized his face. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

  "No," he gasped.

  "What is wrong? What have you discovered about me?"

  "Maybe if your car was attacked by this, others might be also."

  "Some were," Peter John said. "I saw them."

  "I hope we're not too late," the doctor said. He ran out of the office, with Peter John following him. He ran down a garbage-strewn alley. He hopped over a fence. His knees were cut as he fell but he kept on running.

  Finally, crying for air, the doctor reached a small building and threw open the doors. A sleek gray Peu-got sat on the immaculate white concrete, its tires gleaming black, its chrome polished perfect.

  The doctor rushed to the front seat and put a key into the ignition. He saw that Peter John had followed him.

  "It's in God's hands now," said the doctor. "We can only hope and pray it has not spread this far."

  He closed his eyes, prayed, and turned the ignition. 84

  There was a cough and a sputter and the Peugot kicked over and the doctor laughed, tears of gratitude coming to his eyes.

  "I am happy for you," said Peter John.

  "Would you like a ride?"

  "I would like my skin cured."

  "Let's try washing it," said the doctor. "I have some absolutely pure water that I keep for my car. You may use it on your skin, but not too much."

  John saw the doctor pointing to the back of the garage. He saw the water in plastic jars. He saw that it came from springs in France. The label read: "This water exclusive for use with Peugot and not to be wasted on eyewashes, etc., etc."

  Peter John poured the water over his arms. A soothing relief came to the burning little white spots. They even darkened a bit.

  "It works," said Peter John. "May I keep this pure water?"

  "For your skin?"

  "Yes."

  "That's awfully expensive stuff to use just for one's body," said the doctor. "But all right. Come ride with me. I will take you home. I want to see your station wagon for myself. Maybe I will not want to buy it anymore if it is badly damaged."

  The doctor took the long route home to show Peter John how well a decent car ran. The route cut through the port of Peterburg, with the giant oil tanks. Everything on the island of St. Maarten's ran by oil, even the electric generators.

  But as they approached the giant oil tanks, a strange thing happened. With a gigantic crunching gurgle, the tank tops began to rise, and Peter John and the doctor could see that the tops were rising on a foam of the white waxy substance. Tons of it, pushing up the top, looking like frosting on a giant birthday cake.

  Slowly the lights of Peterburg dimmed. Windows opened as air conditioning stopped. People ran out into

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  the streets, looking for someone to blame about the electricity going off.

  "Hurry," said Peter John. He was frightened, for it was evening, and darkness was coming soon to the little island, and there would be only candlelight, as there had been a century before when Peter John's ancestors came to the island as slaves, purchased by the doctor's ancestors.

  And then the doctor's car stopped.

  The doctor put aside the pain in his heart and opened the hood of his dead car. He examined the gas tank. The gas cap almost popped off. Whatever this white stuff was, it attacked the gasoline and changed it. That was why Peter John's car had stopped. And his too.

  Before his eyes, the doctor saw what was happening. The grease and lubrication of his car were moving. The doctor blinked. It was writhing as if it were alive, and then all the grease and oil turned white and waxy and still. A chemical process was happening before his eyes—possibly a bacteriological process. Whatever this bacterium was, it seemed to travel through the air and attacked all petroleum very quickly. And then it was still.

  Around them, Peter John and the doctor saw other cars rolling to a stop. Radios and television stopped. Suddenly the island was still. A cricket chirped in the rich green growth that had been drinking the bright Caribbean sun all day. Somewhere off on a dark hillside, a cow mooed.

  "This is terrible," the doctor said.

  "It's rather beautiful," said Peter John.

  In Peterburg, an American official was at the community long-distance telephone station called Landsra-dio. He had purchased his time for a telephone call to the United States, and he was describing what had happened.

  "You have gas or oil anywhere, and it turns to wax. Something happens to it. No, it's not chemical, I don't

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  think. Maybe some kind of bacteria they manufacture here or something. I don't know. The ships in the harbor still have their lights on. Yeah. We can get you all you want, but how do we get it off the island? Half the planes are grounded. Their fuel tanks are wax. I don't know what the shit is, for Christ's sake."

  He waited by the telephone for the return call from the States. He noticed that the receiver was becoming somewhat soft in his hand. His thumbprint was on the white plastic of the receiver. Then he remembered that plastic was made from a petroleum base. His shirt felt clammy, and he remembered that the synthetics of the shirt were made from a petroleum base.

  He pulled at his shirt. Instead of feeling like cloth, it felt like warm caramel.

  His callback was almost immediate. Yes, his superiors in the Department of Commerce were interested in the substance, and they wanted five tons of it.

  "Five tons?" he asked incredulously. "Why do you need so much for testing?"

  "Well, everybody wants to test it. Defense. Agriculture. CIA."

  "No way. How can I get you five tons?"

  "What can you get?"

  "An oil can ML"

  "Good. We'll fly in a píane."

  The first plane that came for the substance couldn't take off again. The second one immediately covered its engines with a fine gauze screen to protect anything in the air from getting to its fuel. It made the mistake, however, of taking off into an inland breeze. It got to 7,000 feet before the engines stopped and the controls became mush. Guests at the Mullet Bay Hotel stood on their verandas watching. Another plane took off and made it out seven miles before it dropped into the sea.

  Finally, the government employee wrapped a whole mess of the white waxy substance in a big tightly woven canvas bag so that it would not be carried by the wind, and went around to hangars at the airport looking for planes that might not have been affected. Two

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  hangars in the lee of a hill, their windows shut tight, had such planes. The employee waited until there was a breeze coming in off the ocean and then had the pilot fly right out into it.

  The canvas bag of the substance reached Washington that day, and by nightfall, the president of the United States was being told that civilization as they knew it might well be endangered.

  "Well," he said with a charming twinkle, "that certainly is a problem. But then again, we've faced problems like these before and won. What it took was spunk, a willingness to work and,
well, just plain faith, I guess."

  His words brought a few gentle tears to the members of his cabinet. Lumps came up in throats. They thought about the hard times and how people got through those sorts of times by hard work and faith. Most of them had gotten to where they were by hard work and faith. They were from California, and they were familiar with deep, meaningful traditions. That was because all theirs were fresh. None of them went beyond a year ago June. There was nothing like California for a fresh tradition.

  "Excuse me, Mr. President," said the reporting scientist. "You have not faced the extinction of civilization like this."

  "Oh, gosh, yes, we have. That's where you're wrong, mister. We've faced it before and won."

  There was applause in the cabinet room. The secretary of defense said he had never seen a better performance. The secretary of the interior said he hadn't been so inspired since he saw the beautiful neat cartons of a new paper company built where a forest had once Uttered the landscape.

  The president of the United States thanked everyone.

  But the scientist was adamant.

  "I don't think I have quite made myself clear. This is not a battle to try men's wills. It is a disaster. It is an avalanche that is coming down on all of us."

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  "I played in an avalanche movie," said the president. "I remember we bid in a log cabin. It was with Vera Hruba Ralston. We fell in love in the cabin and then when I got out, I hunted down the man who caused the avalanche. Gave him a good punch in the nose and that was it."

  The secretary of defense nodded. He was glad the president had everything under control because his system couldn't stand another shock. He was still trying to recover from what had happened to him the previous week at an Army base.

  He was being shown a weapon by some soldiers. He liked weapons. They reminded him of accounting offices, neat and tidy.

  "Go ahead and try your weapon," the secretary of defense had said. And then there was this awful deafening bang of a noise.

  "What in bleet hawzus name was that?"

  "That was a gun, sir," explained the colonel assigned to escort him.

  "A what?"

  "A gun, sir."

  "Well, I know what that is, but what the hell are people doing hunting on an Army base?"

  "No, no. Not for hunting. Infantrymen use guns too, sir. Rifles. Pistols. Cannons. Guns, sir."

  "Oh. Well, what does the noise do?" the secretary of defense had asked.

  "Do? It doesn't do anything."

  "Then why do you have it?"

  "It comes when you shoot a projectile. It is the gunpowder exploding."

  "Yes?"

  "Well, that's it. The noise is a byproduct of shooting a projectile."

  "Okay," said the secretary of defense, his logical mind moving in for the kill. "Why do you want to shoot projectiles anyway? What's the purpose in that?"

  "Well, sir, it's to kill the enemy."

  "How do you know it's going to kill the enemy?" 89

  "You don't, sir," said the colonel. "Sometimes you miss."

  "Then what you have is a waste of a projectile, correct?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I see. Well, we'll have to cut that out. We're not going to just waste the taxpayers' money hurling expensive projectiles around, not even knowing if they're going to miss or not. That's why radio carbon laser computer ray systems are so much better."

  "Can an infantryman carry one?"

  "Oh, no. It's the size of a house and won't be off the drawing boards until the year 2038 at the earliest. But it is better. And it doesn't make noise. A gun, you say?"

  The secretary of defense had shaken his head to get the ringing noises out, but he hadn't been the same since. He was glad everything was under control. He just wished that noisy scientist would leave the cabinet room.

  The scientist was talking. "I am saying that we are in danger of losing the world's petroleum supply."

  "Impossible," said the secretary of defense. "It's aH underground."

  The scientist sighed. He had a IMe bottle with the waxy substance and another bottle that appeared empty. A third tightly sealed bottle was filled with black oil.

  "These are anaerobic bacteria," he said holding up the apparently empty bottle. "Anaerobic means they can function without air. That is why once they are introduced into any oil system, they can go completely through it because they don't need air to reproduce or survive. So they can consume the contents of the oil under the ground, once they're introduced there."

  "But who would introduce them?" asked the secretary of defense.

  "The air itself, if they don't have to travel far," the scientist said. "Fortunately, they seem able to be blown about for only short distances. The ships off the shore

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  of St. Maarten's still appear to be working all right, so that means the bacteria were not blown that far out."

  "Punch him in the nose," said the president.

  "What, sir?"

  "I punched him in the nose and then we all lived happily ever after."

  "These are bacteria, sir. You can't punch them in the nose."

  "If we could, we'd be a lot better off, I tell you."

  "Yes. That would be true," said the scientist "But we can't."

  "No. I guess we can't. Those days are gone," said the president.

  "Never go near a gun when it is being used," said the secretary of defense, shaking his head. "Wheew, those things make noises just like giant firecrackers."

  The scientist said desperately, "There is going to be no oil left on the planet. No oil. No gasoline. No plastics made from oil. None."

  "Maybe it just means the end of the oil glut," said the president.

  "No, sir," said the scientist. "It means the end of the internal combution engine, which just about means the end of industry. There will be no more cars running on gasoline unless some substitute is found, which will be a lot more expensive than we're paying now. Can you imagine ten-dollar-a-gallon gasoline? That is if this bacterium doesn't attack the synthetic fuels also."

  "Oh," said the president. "The end of the industrial age."

  "Back to the horse and plow," said the scientist. "Maybe back to the caves."

  "Unless," said the president. He was used to people warning him about things. When someone came to you with a warning, he was invariably trying to sell you something, some idea or weapon or program. Nothing ever seemed to reach his desk without a warning attached. But this thing in the little bottle seemed real. It was not the same as the warning he'd gotten that morning that if America did not spend three times its

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  gross national product on beautifying the prison system, someone was going to be unhappy in Harlem and therefore America would end. The person who was going to be unhappy in Harlem, of course, was the person who wanted to run the $20 trillion prison system, with every second-story man getting his own personal psychiatrist and live-in mistress.

  That was nonsense, but this looked real. No matter how pretty the movies made ancient times look, history was, in truth, a bunch of people dying in their thirties from upset stomachs and cold weather and no food.

  This was a real crisis. He watched the scientist take the tops off the apparently empty bottle and the small vial of oil. He held the open ends of the bottles together. The oil suddenly became cloudy, then bubbled and turned to wax.

  "You have just witnessed the rapid-breeding bacterium," the scientist said. "This bacterium consumes petroleum. A bottle dumped into an oil well, in minutes would be reproducing itself over and over, so rapidly that it might be only hours before it consumed the entire underground pool of oil. And it can do this because it needs no air. It is anaerobic."

  "What's the white stuff? Maybe we can sell the white stuff," said the secretary of defense. He had come from a large industrial company and had taken over the nation's defense.

  "The white stuff is dead bacteria. Like human pus, sir," said the scientist. "You must understand th
at if I am a little vague, it is because this is not my particular field. I was called in as a last resort."

  "Well, let's get someone in this particular field," said the president. "And let's do it now."

  "That is part of the disaster, Mr. President. There is no one in this particular field who can be reached. I wouldn't be here if there was. But I can't impress on you too much the importance of this. With enough oil to breed on, this bacterium could grow until it's as large as the Rockies. It's horrifying."

  "We can handle the Rockies. Turn them into a 92

  parking lot for Los Angeles," said the secretary of the interior. "L.A. needs parking."

  "Why can't we get any scientists in that field?" asked the president. He ignored the secretary of the interior. He liked to ignore his secretary of the interior. He only wished the press would also.

  "I found, to my horror, when I tried to get some assistance that they have all gone. First, every expert in the field was attracted to MUT, and then they were either killed or hired off somewhere. Where, I don't know. In essence, sir, we are facing an epidemic—a petroleum epidemic—with all the doctors gone."

  "You mean the entire oil supply of the world is in danger."

  "Exactly."

  "I think someone has planned this thing," said the president. "I think whoever removed the experts in this field made that invisible stuff there that becomes the white stuff. That's what I think."

  "I think you may be right, sir," said the scientist.

  So did the other cabinet members.

  "Well," said the secretary of defense. "Now that we've got that settled, let's move on to the next item on the agenda."

  "Let's stay with this one for a while," said the president wearily. Maybe his secretary of defense would really be happier back in private industry.

  "Where did these bacteria come from in the first place?" the president asked. "Why were they created?"

  "To clean up oil spills," said the scientist.

  "Why would anyone want to clean up oil spills?" asked the secretary of the interior.

  "To protect the oceans and the sea creatures who live in the ocean," the president said.