Phytosphere

by Scott Mackay

  intelligent than he was. And compared to the human race’s scant few hundred years of technological culture, the Tarsalans had had a million years of it. The Tarsalans were superior to humans in every way.

  “He doesn’t get it,” he said, out of the blue, with no context.

  “Who?” said Louise.

  “Kafis. He doesn’t get that we’d sooner make our own history, and not become a part of Tarsala’s.”

  Louise looked away. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t end history.”

  PART THREE

  18

  Sunlight came to Wake County two days later. Glenda squinted as it streamed through her kitchen window. Hanna and Jake stood at the back door peering at the woods behind the house. Glenda left her spot by the kitchen sink and joined them.

  The world looked frightful. Everything was dead. Grass brown. Trees bare. Not like winter, because even in winter she could tell the trees were still alive. In this phytosphere season, the browns and grays of the dead things had a whiteness to them, the telltale sign of a plant’s inability to produce chlorophyll. The forest looked like a dirty rag. The sun lit it up like a spotlight. On some trees the leaves still hung as if glued in place, only they didn’t look like leaves anymore, but more like spent coffee filters or bits of yellowed newspaper. The pine trees reminded her of the Christmas trees people threw out after the holidays, dry and brittle, their needles fleeced. Her lawn was a damp morass of dead grass and mud.

  She saw Leigh’s shed.

  Yes, Leigh’s shed.

  One of those tin ones, bought in a long, flat box and erected one sheet at a time, white, with a green roof. Some dead ivy clawed its way up the side. Ivy. That was Leigh’s thing. Poor dead Leigh. If Sheriff Fulton had been good for nothing else, he had at least buried Leigh.

  Her stomach groaned. The sun shone through a hole in the shroud, and its bright intensity was hurtful to her eyes. The sky on the horizon was dark green. This horrible parody of a North Carolina woods looked preternaturally bright against the lugubrious backdrop of the thinning phytosphere.

  Her kids stunk. She stunk. There was no running water anymore. When they bathed at all it was in the nearby Taylor Creek, and that was full of dead things.

  She saw smoke in the hills. Something was burning.

  She opened the door and stepped outside.

  Far in the distance, she heard a bird singing. A cardinal. Singing by itself. The sound filled her with hope.

  “Come on, kids. Let’s go dig.”

  They got the shovel and spade out of the garden shed.

  And then she stopped. How could she have been so stupid? She let the shovel fall and hurried to the back door.

  “Mom?” said Hanna.

  “I’ve got to fone your father. I’ll be able to get through now.”

  She tried because, now that there was a hole in the shroud, surely communications would be restored.

  But she got the same heartless message.

  She resolved to periodically keep trying while the hole was there.

  She went back outside. “It’s still down. We might as well dig up Leigh’s stuff.”

  They walked to the back fence and went through the gate. Then they walked through Leigh’s gate into his yard.

  Jake went into the dead man’s shed, got one of his shovels, and came back out.

  All three started digging.

  The soil felt loose. She kept looking out to the highway, fearful that at any moment she might see a police cruiser. But all she saw were the neighboring houses stretching out along the highway, some traditional ranch styles, others conglomerations of geodesic domes, and still others molded in the fanciful shapes the more up-to-date residential architects employed. This whole end of town looked deserted. They were the only ones about.

  She dug, and was surprised by how weak she felt, how bony her wrists looked, and how easily she ran out of breath.

  Hanna started coughing.

  “Hanna, sit for a while.”

  Her daughter sat on the ground.

  Glenda was also alarmed by how hot it was, as if with this sudden burst of sunshine the world had ignited. No more snow. No more winter in summer. Instead it was summer with a vengeance. She stopped digging and checked the thermometer on the side of Leigh’s garden shed. Ninety-two Fahrenheit. Was that possible? Could the temperature rise so dramatically? Or was this but another phase in the shroud’s evolution?

  She went back to digging. After a while, her shovel hit something hard. She looked at her children. Jake stopped digging. His blue-and-red windbreaker hung from his bony shoulders.

  “You hit something,” he said.

  “I think so.”

  She cast another nervous glance toward the highway.

  Jake sank to his knees and shoved dirt out of the way with his hands. Hanna looked at her brother as if she didn’t fully understand what he was doing—she was all doped up on the asthma medication from Cedarvale. Glenda got down on her knees beside her son and helped.

  In a few moments they uncovered a crate—it looked like Leigh had made it himself out of sheets of four-by-three Duratex, the white sheen of the material smudged with dirt. Jake used his fingers to uncover the outlines of the crate, digging steadily, and at last found a rope handle. He yanked, then yanked again until some dirt shifted.

  “Jake, move,” said Hanna. “Let Mom get at it with the shovel.”

  Jake moved, and Glenda stuck the spade down the side and levered the crate. It still wouldn’t budge.

  So she dug some more. Then she helped Jake with the rope handles.

  At last, they yanked it loose. “It’s heavy,” she said.

  With a little more yanking they finally pulled it out of its hole onto the surrounding lip of ground. Glenda lifted the lid and saw several cans inside.

  Jake pulled one out. “Irish stew! And look at this. Chicken noodle soup. And chili. And this one…it’s mandarin oranges!”

  Glenda cast another nervous glance toward the highway. “Let’s get this stuff inside before someone comes. We can’t let anybody know we have it.”

  “And look, here’s some flashlight batteries,” said Jake. “And candles.”

  “Let’s just get it inside.”

  Over the next hour they dug up the surrounding area and found five more crates. They took them inside.

  They were filled with a variety of canned and dried goods, as well as, ominously, a handgun and three boxes of ammunition.

  Most puzzling of all were some keys.

  “What do you think they’re for?” asked Jake.

  “I don’t know,” said Glenda. “Maybe his cabin. He has a cabin on Jordan Lake.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “No. He wanted to take me up once…when your dad was in the hospital….”

  “He had the hots for you, Mom,” said Hanna.

  Glenda shook her head. “No… no, I don’t think he did. We were just good friends, that’s all.”

  “But you never went up, right?” said Jake.

  “No.”

  “Because you love Dad, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Jake motioned at the keys. “You think he might have food stashed in the cabin?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know where it is.”

  While they dug out the sixth and final crate, Buzz Fulton, the sheriff’s brother, drove by in his truck, the old junk heap bumping and rattling along the road. He slowed as he passed the house, and Glenda knew he could see what they were doing. He came to a brief stop as he passed in front of the house, but then continued into the hills, his vehicle looking lonely, as if it didn’t belong in the sunlit stillness of the dead woods.

  “Mom?” said Hanna.

  She watched Buzz go until he disappeared over the west hill. Then she looked down at the handgun.

  Then at her son. “You want to learn how to use this, Jake?”

  19

  As Gerry and Ian rode the train out to the
Alleyne-Parma Observatory to take their first look at the perforated phytosphere, Gerry held his fone tightly to his ear, even though he had just ended his call to Glenda. Miracle of miracles, they had at last gotten through to each other.

  He took the fone away and looked at it, then put it in his pocket.

  He went over his conversation with Glenda carefully, even as Ian gave him an apprehensive glance. That desperation in her voice. He had never heard her like that before. That bit about the stew, and how they were cooking it on a fire out back because Hanna wouldn’t eat it cold. And how Buzz Fulton had driven by a few times. Good old Buzz. He had shared more than a few drinks with Buzz. And the Cedarvale asthma medicine making Hanna high all the time. And Jake learning how to use a pistol. It was all so…unsettling.

  A snippet of the conversation came full-blown to his mind.

  “I’m working on a plan,” she had said.

  “What kind of plan?”

  “I’m going to disperse the food in the woods out back. And we’re going to run watches. Me and Jake.

  Hanna’s too stoned from the medicine. If anybody gets too close to the house, that’s it, Gerry, I’m not asking any questions.”

  In the shrillness of this last statement, Gerry had heard his wife’s true anxiety, her tone a revelation, her sentiment a measure of just how bad things had gotten. He stared at the bleak lunar landscape as they passed a spur line that led to an oxygen production facility—three great white spheres on the otherwise gray horizon. He understood—with chill finality—the jeopardy his wife and family faced. Armed men might come to the house and take their food away. Possibly kill them. And Glenda and Jake were going

  to fight them with a rifle and a pistol, no questions asked. He had to find a way to beat the phytosphere and beat it fast.

  He glanced at Ian.

  “So?” said Ian.

  “She’s not doing too good.” And he had to struggle to keep his emotions controlled.

  “But she’s keeping it together, right?”

  He thought of her plan. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Because I always knew she was a strong woman. Right from the moment I met her.”

  “The neighbor got murdered.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  “He had a food stash. Some guys came to his house, killed him, and took it. He had an extra stash buried out behind his shed. That’s what Glenda and my kids are living on right now.”

  Ian lifted his chin. “She’ll get through.”

  Gerry swallowed against the growing lump in his throat. If he talked too much about this, he might lose it.

  He decided to change the subject.

  “I was in the mayor’s office this morning for an update.” He bolstered his voice with a businesslike tone.

  “Neil’s toxin not only seems to be working, but the U.S. military and its allies have destroyed fully seventy-five percent of the Tarsalan killer satellites.”

  Ian raised his brow. “So maybe ships will start getting through again. Maybe you’ll go home soon, buddy.”

  Gerry felt himself getting shaky again because Ian was suggesting home. “They’re telling us to stay put. I think the military’s got something planned, Ian. Over and above the toxin thing. Something big.”

  Ian shook his head. “You mean something stupid.”

  They reached the observatory a short while later.

  For Ian, it was an occasion to take a nip from his flask and light up a joint.

  Gerry, on the other hand, went directly to Heaven’s Eye.

  Rather than look at Earth on the monitors, he studied it through the telescope’s actual lens.

  The terminator curved along the Earth’s meridian like a black fingernail, the planet in gibbous phase, looking like a partially closed green eye. At first he didn’t see any imperfections in the uniformly emerald pall, but soon, as the Earth rotated, he discerned an ill-defined black pupil. The muck of the phytosphere was a beryl pudding, and invisible fingers tore it apart. The ragged edges around the pupil had the whiteness of a plant that could no longer produce chlorophyll.

  “Do you want a hit off this?” asked Ian.

  “Take a look at this. See what you think.”

  Gerry moved out of the way.

  Holding the joint—a merry little smokable in pink paper—between his thumb and middle fingers, Ian leaned down and looked through the eyepiece. Gerry, meanwhile, considered what he had seen. He had to admit, it looked as if Neil was having some success.

  Ian lifted his head. “Looks like it’s doing something.”

  Gerry’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah.”

  “You think it will work?”

  “I hope so.”

  “But?”

  Gerry shrugged. “Maybe he’s got it.”

  “But?”

  It was indeed a piece of work that such a colossal structure could be dismantled this way, and he felt nothing but keen admiration for his brother.

  “We’ll just have to wait.”

  “Wait for what?” asked Ian.

  “Seems like a slow process.”

  “And?”

  “The Tarsalans could respond.”

  “Respond how?”

  “With a neutralizer, or antidote, or some such other molecular or nanogenic agent. If you’re going to fight the Tarsalans, you have to be smarter, stronger, and sooner than they are.”

  “Sooner?”

  “You have to hit them all at once, like Stephanie says.”

  Three technicians delivered infrared equipment to the Alleyne-Parma Observatory the following day.

  Gerry was surprised, and also relieved. He had thought for sure that he wouldn’t get any of this new equipment until Neil’s toxin attempt had unequivocally failed. That he should see the equipment so soon made him think his arguments had, after all, carried weight, and that even the rhetorically minded Ira Levinson had at last seen reason.

  The apparatus, in its entirety, was a boxy unit about the size of a refrigerator, and reminded Gerry of a giant multilens camera. One of the lenses stuck out further than the others, protruding from the white casing about six inches, while the other two lenses remained recessed into the instrument, covered with special optical filters made of blue glass.

  The technicians took the whole afternoon to install the unit, and to download software into the accompanying computer.

  When they were done, they gave Gerry a rundown, and by the time they left he was fairly adept at imaging, enhancing, and analyzing the infrared views of Earth.

  The mayor came a few hours later. “How’s it working?” asked Hulke.

  “You pulled some strings.”

  “It was more than strings, Ger.”

  “Malcolm… thanks.”

  “Just do something with it. Give Ira a bone or something.”

  “I’ve been studying the new images for the last few hours.”

  “And so, like, your brother’s thing…is it working?”

  Gerry shrugged. “As far as it goes, I guess. But the evidence is inconclusive yet.”

  “Even in the new images? Does this…does it help get a better look at what your brother’s toxin is doing? Because I had to use that…that line of reasoning with Ira, even though I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Otherwise you would have been waiting forever.”

  Gerry sighed. So. Here it was again. The hidden agenda. The new apparatus wasn’t meant to further his own research, but to confirm his brother’s. What else was new?

  He glumly told the mayor the truth. “I’m not sure.”

  The mayor gestured at the infrared views of Earth on the monitors. “How many blooms show deterioration?”

  Gerry glanced at the monitor. “I count…five. And it looks as if they’ve just seeded another, so that makes six. It’s just that, you know…” He motioned at the screen. “It seems the phytosphere is catching on, getting an idea of what’s happening…like I said it would.”

  “Gerry, please don’t
say that.”

  Gerry shook his head. “I’m just not sure yet. The hydrogen sulfide seems to be working in some blooms, and not in others. Omicron bloom, for instance. It’s hardly made a dent.”

  The mayor’s smooth face flushed. “That’s not, like, the best news I’ve heard all day. Any way I can put a positive spin on it for Ira?”

  He raised his brow, frustrated that the mayor should be looking at it this way. “I wouldn’t say it’s a complete bust, Malcolm. But the temperature relationships are complex.” The mayor’s face sank at this notion. “And I haven’t quite figured them out.” Hulke’s face sank further, as if Gerry’s inability to figure things out was just another breach in the confidence the mayor had placed in him.

  “So there are… temperature relationships.” The mayor didn’t seem to like this at all. “Okay. Not what I was expecting, but if you could explain without getting too technical…so I have something to take back to Ira.”

  Gerry collected his thoughts. “We should be getting an extremely cold infrared signature on the dead plant tissue, well into the darkest blues.”

  “But?” The mayor’s pale eyes had now gone wide.

  “Well…we have had a lot of blue, and all that tissue is disintegrating, but the disintegration in each bloom only reaches a certain point before it seizes up. It never gets beyond this green boundary here.”

  Gerry pointed. “The green indicates that the plant material has actually grown inert. Not dead, just inert.

  There’s no growth activity. It’s like an oak tree in winter. It’s still alive, but nothing’s happening.”

  “So does that mean your brother’s failed?”

  Gerry shrugged. “There’s been no regrowth in the affected areas. I wouldn’t call that failure, but I wouldn’t call it success either. Maybe what we’re going to get is a shroud with a lot of holes in it. Which is better than a shroud with no holes at all.”

  “But if the U.S. keeps peppering the phytosphere with this hydrogen sulfide, and keeps starving the xenophyta… surely we’ll get rid of it once and for all.”