Phytosphere

by Scott Mackay

  “I’m down here.”

  “We found crates and crates of stuff up in his attic. Canned goods and everything.”

  “I’ll be right up.” He turned his attention back to Glenda. “Now you listen to me, Glenda. I’m in charge now. I’m running the town independent. You just remember that. Me and the boys, we’re more or less operating the whole show out of Old Hill right now. Ain’t going to be no more government help. So it’s about time you start being nice to me.” He gave the rifle back to her. “You come round and see me, you hear? Gerry won’t mind. Gerry’s all the way up on the Moon getting drunk. I’m the only one you got to look after you now.”

  16

  At the daily meeting the next morning, Gerry insisted that Stephanie, the showgirl, fill Luke Langstrom’s chair—and it was agreed by the others that a tourist worker should have representation on the committee.

  Gerry outlined his latest finding to the group, and was glad to see that at least Hulke showed some interest, his small gray eyes focusing with curiosity.

  “So, this… this band—a band is what you’re calling it?”

  “It’s more amorphous than a band,” said Gerry, “but I guess we could call it a band if you like.”

  “So, you can…like, see it? It’s there all the time?”

  “Yes. I’m hoping to get a second Smallmouth off the ground so we can fly in and take a closer look.

  This second Smallmouth will be specifically designed to follow the band, and I think the readings we’ll get from it will be markedly different from the ones we’ve obtained from the first Smallmouth. Plus I’ve got Mitch working on the infrared angle for me. It will be interesting to see if there’s any heat fluctuation.”

  Gerry glanced at Mitch. Mitch’s face was pinched, and the AviOrbit representative wouldn’t take his eyes off his waferscreen. The small, intense man spoke without looking up. “I was just thinking that maybe we can analyze the visual-light data more thoroughly… just so we can confirm for Ira that any resources he puts into an infrared array might in fact yield some usable results. Because, to tell you the truth, he really doesn’t see what you’ve done with the results from the first Smallmouth yet… so he asked me why we even bothered with the Smallmouth in the first place if you weren’t going to use… you know… the data in any constructive way.”

  Gerry’s frustration simmered. “I’m still analyzing it, Mitch. Believe me, I’m going as fast as I can. If anybody’s got anything at stake here, I do. My wife and kids are down there. But there’s a wealth of information the Smallmouth brought back with it, and I’m only one scientist, and I have hardly any lab staff, and no proper equipment. I’ve had to borrow equipment from the high school. I’m using high school stuff, for God’s sake.”

  “It’s just that Ira, he gets in these rhetorical moods. And he was in a really bad one this morning.”

  Gerry turned to the mayor. “Malcolm, I’m asking you to put pressure on Ira.”

  “Me?” The mayor seemed flustered by the notion. “Gerry…let me explain something to you. As mayor of Nectaris, I don’t have any say over what AviOrbit does.”

  “But surely you must have some clout. Talk to Ira. Tell him we need to find out what’s going on with this band. Tell him we have to get this infrared array up and running. Tell him we even need a second Smallmouth.”

  “Gerry, he’s not going to go for another Smallmouth,” said Mitch.

  Gerry felt himself losing heart. “But we might need it.”

  “You haven’t analyzed the data from the first one.”

  Gerry glanced at Ian, then at Stephanie, and while both looked at him in obvious alarm, neither of them seemed to know what to do.

  At last he turned back to the mayor. “I thought I was in charge here.”

  “You are. But can’t you see Ira’s point? Sending the first Smallmouth cost a fair nickel, and—not to sound like the city’s totally down on its luck…but Ira, he’s a bit of a bean counter, and he wants the council to fork over at least a sizable chunk for that particular mission, especially now that it’s starting to look like a bust.”

  “A bust?” said Gerry, wondering how the mission could be characterized that way. “It’s not a bust at all.

  And a second Smallmouth would follow the band, so it’s going to be different.”

  “He’s also a bit reluctant—and I also was on the phone to His Majesty this morning—but he’s also a bit, uh, hesitant, to open the coffers at this particular moment because there’s now the feeling…” He turned to Mitch. “I guess it’s more than a feeling, right, Mitch, because we’ve got some reasonable intelligence to back it up. So… there’s now the feeling that the Earth is on the verge of doing something in a… a grandissimo way about the shroud, and if Earth is going to go ahead and get rid of it for us, why waste money when we can save the funds for, like, a festival or something?”

  “And what are they going to do?” asked Gerry.

  “Something along the toxin line.” The mayor raised his palms, widened his eyes, and shook his head. “At this point, it’s probably more cost-effective to hold off a bit.”

  Stephanie leaned forward beside him. “That’s exactly the opposite of what we should be doing.”

  The mayor turned to the showgirl. “And why’s that?”

  “Because once Earth blows it—and I’m convinced Earth is going to blow it—we should move fast with whatever we have so we can still catch the Tarsalans off guard.”

  A paternal grin came to Hulke’s face. “Ah, yes… but hon, I don’t think Earth’s going to blow it. You’re just showing your Moon bias. They’ve got the fantabulous Dr. Thorndike as their ringmaster. He’s got the… the top eggheads in the country backing him up. He’s got the…” And here he mimicked the overblown diction of the official drops. “The entire resources of the United States of America at his disposal.” The mayor glanced at Gerry and, with a glibness that was slightly drawn, added, “Gerry, you’ve got only high school stuff.”

  The rawhide hat twitched menacingly beside Gerry. “Before you can kill something,” Ian said darkly,

  “you’ve got to understand it.”

  “Now, Ian, my man, I’m sorry, but you must have lifted that from a movie somewhere, and I don’t know how seriously I can really take you when you start talking like that. We can’t be thinking Hollywood. We’ve got to look at the fiscal side of things. That’s all I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to do what’s right for the city. If we knew the toxin wasn’t going to work, it would be a different story.

  We’d be throwing every last penny into our own effort. But because the toxin is in fact going to work…”

  “But it’s not,” said Stephanie. “Gerry already said so.”

  The mayor turned to Mitch. “Should I go into specifics, Mitch? Just so we can convince them?”

  “If you think it will help.”

  “So you got a drop?” said Gerry.

  “Correcto-mundo, my friend. As a matter of fact, we received it at 0500 hours this morning.” The famous self-immolating grin came to the mayor’s face. “Listen to me. I’m starting to talk like them.”

  “And what’s my brother got to say for himself this time?”

  “Ah…now Gerry, I’m not a technical guy.”

  “I thought you said you worked for AviOrbit.”

  “I did. In public relations.”

  “Then just give me…” The mayor’s phrase came back to haunt him. “The gist of things.”

  The mayor raised his eyebrows. “All I know is that they’re going to fool the phytosphere in some way.

  It’s the old ace up the sleeve. The old switcheroo. Something like that.” The mayor squinted as he concentrated harder. “Was it…hydrogen sulfide?” He shook his head. “Jeez, all that chemical stuff. I don’t know how you guys keep it straight. Anyway, they’re going to flimflam the phytosphere somehow.”

  He turned to his assistant. “Damian, didn’t we make a note of the specifics somewhere?”
>
  The mayor’s young assistant looked up from his waferscreen. “They’re going to starve the phytosphere of its carbon dioxide supply by fooling it with hydrogen sulfide.”

  Gerry thought it through and was able to put the rough idea together. Neil was going to use hydrogen sulfide as a carbon dioxide substitute—fool the phytosphere into thinking it was getting the right nutrient, and thereby starve it of the same. It was an ingenious idea. Of course it was ingenious—his brother was no slouch.

  Yet he still had doubts. “I hope it works. But I don’t think we should sit around and wait to see if it does. Mitch, if Ira won’t go for another Smallmouth, at least get him to go for the infrared array.

  Because as much as my brother’s idea sounds like a good one, the Tarsalans might find a way to neutralize it. We’d be fools to stop our own research and put our eggs into Neil’s basket.”

  He looked at the mayor, then at Mitch, and he saw that he had made at least some small impact.

  The mayor turned to Mitch. “Tell Ira that we’ll partially underwrite the infrared array if we can later incorporate it as part of the tourist attraction at the Alleyne-Parma Observatory.”

  Mitch nodded, the expression in his eyes like the flat line on a heart monitor. “I just hope he doesn’t go rhetorical on me again.”

  17

  Neil and his family sat huddled in the back of an armored limousine heading through the dark streets of Miami. They were leaving town. Many buildings were now gutted. Others continued to blaze. The fire department was nowhere in sight. He heard the rumble of their escorting Morrison fighting vehicles outside the car. A priority family. At least they were getting the hell out of here. At least the powers that be finally understood they couldn’t stay in Coral Gables anymore.

  Would it work? His mind circled back to the question of the hour. Would the omniphage munch through the carapace, and would the compound then mimic carbon dioxide appropriately? In the lab, yes. But in the phytosphere itself? The whole thing left him unsettled.

  They soon reached the highway and traveled south.

  Halfway to Homestead, he got a call. On his phone. The phone.

  Secretary of Defense Sidower sounded tired but satisfied, his voice rough, as if he were recovering from a cold. “We’ve launched, Neil. South Dakota went first. Then Texas. Then Guam. Florida should be

  next. You might see a few missiles from where you are. I can’t tell you how goddamned relieved we are.

  I’ve read your reports. So has the president. I know we’re going to beat this thing.” Then, after a pause, he added, “You’ve done it again, Neil.”

  Here it was, the basic integer of his life—people in power telling him he had done good. Yet he couldn’t help thinking of Kafis, the Tarsalans’ chief scientific envoy, his Tarsalan counterpart, and how Kafis, on his many visits to Marblehill, had always surprised him with peculiar ways of looking at things, and of thinking about things—as if the alien could rotate a problem in his mind, view it from all sides, and see every possible permutation and variation. The chess game. Was he going to win? Or was he going to lose?

  “I think the hydrogen sulfide thing is sly enough to beat them.”

  “I think so too.”

  “It’s just a question of understanding the way they think. I’m lucky in that I’ve had many one-on-one sessions with Kafis. I know how sly he can be. He’s always seven steps ahead of the obvious. But I think the hydrogen sulfide is eight steps ahead.”

  “If you’re going to beat a Roman, you have to think like a Roman.”

  “Yes. And I think I’ve come to a real understanding of the… the Tarsalan mind-set.”

  “I wish I could say the same, Neil. He’s a formidable adversary.”

  “As formidable as Kafis can sometimes be, I don’t think he necessarily views the phytosphere in an adversarial context.”

  “If the phytosphere isn’t adversarial, I don’t know what is.”

  “As I said to the president, it’s a teaching tool. Or at least that’s the way I think Kafis views it.”

  “Right,” said the secretary. “The cinerthax, or whatever you call it. The only thing it’s taught me is how to hate them more than I already did.”

  “Hating an enemy and understanding one are two different things.” Neil felt he had to expand. “Children on the Tarsalan homeworld don’t live with their parents. They live with their teachers.”

  The secretary of defense considered this. “I always hated school.”

  “Kafis tells me the quest for knowledge is like a religion on Tarsala. Whenever he came to Marblehill, he was always trying to teach me things. Particularly with a variety of Tarsalan games. He says that in harmless games, especially where strategy is involved, we can learn a great deal about ourselves. From a military standpoint, that’s something you should keep uppermost in your mind.”

  “And does Kafis think the phytosphere is a harmless game?”

  “All I’m saying is that he understands things best through teaching protocols. They all do.”

  “Then I guess we’re teaching them a lesson.” The secretary paused. “How soon can we expect to see some light?”

  “Our best estimate is forty-eight hours. Maybe sooner.”

  “And you’re sure it will start in alpha bloom first?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because it… it can’t come soon enough, Neil.” Sidower hesitated. Neil braced himself for yet more bad news. “Never mind the civilian side of things, I’m talking about the military.” It was like a personal admission of failure.

  “Is the president safe?”

  “He’s in lockdown.”

  “And the vice president?”

  “In a secure location in Key West.”

  “And the president pro tem?”

  “We’ve lost the president pro tem,” said Sidower. “He was assassinated in his home state. We think by Western Secessionists. It’s a tough thing, being a federal democrat in the West right now.”

  Neil took this as a personal blow because he had been good friends with the president pro tem. “And the speaker?”

  “Still safe.”

  “And what about military bases?”

  “We’ve had some problems.”

  “But Homestead is safe.”

  “Would I send you and your family there if it wasn’t?”

  “So no problems at Homestead at all.”

  “The rationing’s tight, Neil. There’s been some minor insubordination. But that’s it.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to Greg?”

  “Leanna spoke to him a couple of hours ago. He knows you’re on the way. He remembers you well.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “There’s nothing like the bond of the military. He’s got a nice place set up for you and your family in the Officers’ Compound. We’ve had laboratory units airlifted in, and bunks made ready for whatever personnel you think you might need for a second line.” The secretary put out a feeler. “The president wants to know if you’ve had any more thoughts about a second line yet.”

  Neil glanced at the dark sky outside the limousine window, and again thought of Kafis. “I’ve drawn up the main, broad principles. If the omniphage and toxin don’t work, we develop a virus. We’ve already tested a few, and we’ve had some initial success against what’s turning out to be a fairly strong immune response on the part of the Tarsalan component in the xenophyta. We hope to have something workable, at least on paper, by the middle of the month. Is it possible to get help with a second string of biological launches from our allies?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  The seriousness of the situation seemed to color everything the secretary said.

  “So they have no launch infrastructure intact?”

  “If you think the U.S. is bad, you should see other countries.”

  In the secretary’s terse utterances, he saw Armageddon’s remorseless agenda. “Are we talking horrific?”

&n
bsp; The secretary cast around for the proper words. “It’s been going on for a while now, Neil. The surgeon general has advised us that the population has reached a nutritional threshold.” The implication was clear.

  “As well, he’s reported outbreaks of cholera, diphtheria, and typhoid. Horrific would be understating the case.”

  Neil regarded the faces of his wife and daughters sitting in the seat opposite him. They stared at him, wondering what he was talking about. Their eyes prospected for hope, the strain apparent in the way they had all lost weight.

  “And what about the Tarsalans?”

  Sidower paused again. “We’re having great luck with their satellites. We’ve downed fully seventy-five percent of them. We’re planning a major offensive in the coming days. We’re going directly for the mothership.”

  “Anything on the diplomatic front?”

  “Neil… the diplomatic front’s been abandoned for the time being. We’re going to board the TMS and take control of the phytosphere’s control mechanism.” The secretary paused again. “Your toxin and virus… we’ll try those. But I wouldn’t be fulfilling my obligations and responsibilities as secretary of defense if I didn’t militarily try to get my hands on the damn thing’s control system. I guess you’d call it my own… cinerthax. If I’ve got to put them on the ropes to teach them a lesson, then that’s what I’ll do.

  It’s my little contribution to this whole hellish mess.”

  A short while later, after he had ended his call with the secretary, Neil saw several flashes to the west.

  These flashes resolved themselves into pinpoints of flame, and they rose steadily into the sky. He had thought he would feel a sense of accomplishment. But instead he thought of Kafis once more, and of the way he and Kafis would sometimes play chess together at Marblehill. He could see the pieces on the board, remembered the many occasions when he had been on the verge of winning only to have Kafis surprise him with an unforeseen counter-move. The faces of his wife and daughters flickered in the glow of the distant launch flames. Was it a question of his own mind-set? Of actually being able to put himself in a place where he could be the teacher, and Kafis the student? He knew that Kafis was infinitely more