Phytosphere

by Scott Mackay

  The implication of this overwhelmed Neil. “Why would they need some up at Marblehill?”

  “Because it’s happened, Neil. Last night at about two in the morning.”

  Neil felt his forehead growing moist. He took the two cans and stuffed them into his bag. “And the… the TMS?”

  “A write-off.”

  The implications deepened like water in a well from which he couldn’t escape. “And the phytosphere control device?”

  “They haven’t told me one way or the other.”

  “And the Tarsalans?”

  “A lot are coming down. Lenny says they’ve had at least three confirmed landings in Chattahoochee.

  That’s why they’re going to need some of this spray stuff. Though he thinks a few macrogens might have already penetrated Marblehill.”

  Neil shook his head. “I…don’t know what to say.”

  “Lenny’s on his way.”

  Neil’s heart thumped in sudden overdrive. “Really? Right now?”

  Greg gave his head a little nod, looking bewildered by the situation. “It’s high noon in Dodge, Neil.” He put his hand on Neil’s shoulder. “The helipad is just behind the swimming pool. There’s an emergency exit back there.”

  “And we should be okay in the pool area, waiting for him?”

  “It’s the safest place in the club. We’re done with the second line, aren’t we? We gave it our best shot.”

  “Is he going to get here before—”

  “Like I said, I don’t know where they got that tank.”

  “What about calling in an air strike?”

  “The risk of collateral casualties would be too high.”

  He nodded, deferring to Greg’s experience. “I guess we’ll see you when the helicopter gets here.”

  “I hope so.”

  Greg went his way, and Neil and his family went theirs.

  They turned left down another corridor, and in the middle of this corridor, doors led out into a courtyard where Neil saw crates and crates of ready-to-eat rations stacked on skids—this was where they were keeping the food. He continued along past a gymnasium, sweating in the wild heat, slowly coming to the realization that he had indeed played his endgame, and that it had failed.

  They pushed through some double doors, and now the corridor smelled of chlorine. He understood what Greg meant, that the pool had to be the safest place in the whole complex because it was right in the middle of it all. They went in through the men’s changing room, where the air was damp, and heavy with the scents of B.O., deodorant, and cleanser.

  “Careful, it’s slippery here,” he said.

  “I can hardly see,” said Louise.

  “Let me open this door.”

  He opened the door to the pool area.

  The windows—high, narrow ones—let in a ghostly brown light, probably the last natural light they would see for a long time. Louise and the girls filed through.

  The pool was large. At the far end he saw a diving board, as well as a series of diving platforms. He saw some orange life rings with the word “Homestead” stenciled in black on each. It was just an ordinary institutional swimming pool, but for some reason it had a profound effect on Neil. In this age of the phytosphere, he saw it with new perspective, and the pool struck him as a museum exhibit from a time gone by. Swimming for pleasure. Swimming for recreation. Even swimming for exercise. Those were things of the past. He remembered his father’s swimming pool in suburban Illinois. Remembered himself, Gerry, Ian, and Greg horsing around in it, playing Marco Polo.

  “Let’s set up by the diving board,” he said.

  “Can we go swimming?” asked Morgan.

  “We have to listen for the helicopter, sweetie. And we should be…ready. For anything.”

  Yes, ready. They were stuck here. Until—and if—Lenny came in the helicopter. And once they got in the helicopter, then what? How long could they last at Marblehill? And could he trust Lenny and the rest of the airmen not to mutiny against them? What if the airmen turned against his family?

  He looked up at the windows, hearing gunfire far to the west of the Officers’ Club.

  How long before the goddamn dark came back?

  He was just thinking he might take out his book again, try to lose himself in Monet’s water lilies, when his phone rang. The phone. He reached in his bag, pulled it out, engaged it, and pressed it to his ear.

  “Not too good,” he said, when Fonblanque asked him how things were going at Homestead.

  And then he told her they were abandoning the base, and how he had devised his own 937 at Marblehill—rubbing it in because he didn’t need them, the whole Oval Office crowd—he could survive on his own.

  When she asked him about the virus, he had to tell her the truth.

  “It looks as if the carapace responded. I’ve theorized that carapace material has jailed or quarantined the lytic-phase virus. There’s no way the virions can spread.”

  “Is there anything else you can do?”

  He didn’t like the desperation he heard in her voice, as it allowed him to guess what had happened to the phytosphere control device. And he didn’t like how she naturally assumed they were still all part of the same team. It galled him. She obviously wanted him to work miracles. But the infrastructure was

  gone. The resources were practically nonexistent. His shoulders settled and a great bitterness overcame him.

  “Given what I have to work with, I don’t think so.”

  “And you’ve had a look at your brother’s stuff?”

  “It’s all garbage, Leanna. There’s something about a stress band, but it’s…useless observation.”

  “So you have nothing encouraging I can pass on to the secretary or the president? Because the TMS offensive didn’t go exactly as planned.”

  A thin layer of perspiration came to his forehead. Outside, the gunfire was getting closer. “So I heard.”

  “From who?”

  He hesitated, then decided it didn’t matter. “Colonel Bard.”

  “We were hoping to secure the Tarsalan phytosphere control mechanism.”

  “And?” But he already knew what she was going to say.

  “Our orbiting mines were effective beyond our expectations. The control mechanism has been damaged and is no longer operational. We now have no effective means of turning off the phytosphere from their end.”

  Neil’s shoulders sagged further. The absolute idiots. “If there’s no way to shut it off, it’s just going to grow and grow. You know that, don’t you? To be honest with you, Leanna, it could turn into a real…doomsday scenario. I mean, if it’s gone—have your troops confirmed that the control system has in fact been destroyed?”

  “Damage reports are still coming in. Our technicians are looking at it. The growing consensus is that it’s beyond repair.”

  He cast around for possible solutions. “What about Tarsalan survivors? Maybe they can help us develop a new one.”

  “There haven’t been many survivors.”

  He exhaled, and for the longest time he left his lungs empty, as if there were no point in breathing anymore. But at last he took a deep breath and sighed. “How many Tarsalans killed?”

  “Confirmed or expected?”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Over twenty thousand. But it could rise as high as thirty. As for our own troops, only seven hundred.”

  He took another deep breath, fighting to get his anxiety under control. “Did they think we were bluffing?”

  “I don’t know what they thought. I’m surprised we destroyed the TMS as easily as we did. I don’t think

  they were expecting such a strong military response. The alien mind-set…it’s a hard thing to second-guess.”

  “What about refugees?”

  “Our Maxwell fighters have orders to escort as many to Earth as they can. But some of our pilots have been engaged.”

  “Are any Tarsalans getting through to the reserve areas listed in the U.N.’s last count
erproposal?”

  “We believe so.”

  “What about Chattahoochee National Forest?”

  “We have three civilian reports of alien landings in and around Chattahoochee, and dozens of reports of landings throughout the southeastern United States. It seems the Tarsalans have already engaged several units, and my analysts tell me the fighting is expected to worsen in the coming days.”

  Darkness came an hour later. The fighting drew closer. His daughters looked up at the narrow windows, their faces apprehensive. He heard men yelling outside. And then he felt vibrations through the tile floor.

  A second later he heard the squeaking of tank treads, then a wild cracking from the squash courts. Dust floated down from the windowsills as it was shaken loose. The water in the pool vibrated. And at last the wall that separated the pool from the squash courts bent toward them, the bricks coming apart as if they were made of marshmallows, then collapsing; first just a hole ten feet up as the tank’s main cannon came through, then a wide area below as the front part of the tank shouldered its way in.

  The roar echoed through the pool area. The girls cried out and, instinctively, Neil grabbed Louise and shoved her to the floor. The tank came forward and ground its way right into the shallow end of the pool, the hot metal of its engine compartment hissing and steaming, its turret swiveling away from them toward the dressing rooms.

  Several enemy airmen came in behind the tank.

  The tank pivoted on its right track, turned toward the dressing rooms, then proceeded forward, its treads catching the far lip of the shallow end and pulling the armored vehicle out of the water. The tank then plowed right into the wall and continued on through the dressing rooms, eating through the Officers’

  Club the way a termite eats through wood. Gunfire erupted from the direction of the dressing rooms, and bullets rocketed into the pool area. The enemy airmen took up positions on either side of the pool. The airmen saw them but seemed to realize they were noncombatants, and left them alone.

  Neil gathered his family and got them on their stomachs behind the diving tower. He glanced at Morgan.

  The corners of the young girl’s lips were drawn so that he could see her bottom teeth, and she looked determined to bolt regardless of the danger. Ashley was breathing fast and looking as white as paper.

  Louise stared at her own clenched fists as if she didn’t want to see what was going on.

  Melissa was looking at the windows high on the wall behind them. He saw in her eyes some of his own bold confidence. “Dad, I think I hear the helicopter.”

  A moment later, he heard it himself, the blup-blup-blup-blup of the rotor chopping the air, Lenny getting closer and closer, even as things broke down at Homestead. He saw the emergency exit at the back.

  And while he knew it was a risk to get up from their cover behind the diving platform, he realized the situation was getting worse as the opposing sides fought for control of the food supply in the courtyard.

  “All right, listen to me!” He pointed. “On my count, we run for the door!”

  “Dad, what if it’s locked?” asked Melissa.

  She had a point.

  “I’m going to check it. When I wave you over, run like hell.”

  He crawled on his stomach across the tiles to the door. He reached up, pressed the panic bar, and the door opened. He heard the helicopter even louder now. Florida smelled like rotten hay. More bullets rocketed into the pool area. He waved his family over.

  Louise and the girls ran in his direction. But then Morgan slipped on the tiles. She went down, clutching her ankle, and started crying.

  “Go on, go on!” he told the others.

  “Get her!” cried Louise.

  “Just go!”

  They went out, and he returned to rescue Morgan.

  He gripped her by her shirt and dragged her across the tiles like a hundred-pound sack of potatoes.

  As he reached the door, a deafening boom resounded throughout the pool area—the tank firing its cannon somewhere beyond the ruins of the dressing rooms.

  The air was now choked with dust. He pulled Morgan out the door, and the heat of the Florida night, super-charged because of the phytosphere’s heat-trapping ability, settled over him like an electric blanket on high.

  The helicopter came two minutes later, its landing lights bright in the darkness. He squinted in the dust the rotor kicked up. The helicopter’s side door slid back and he saw a fully armed airman kneeling there, ready to help him. But where was Greg? The airman waved them over.

  “Let’s go!” Neil shouted to his family.

  They ran to the helicopter.

  The airman said, “Dr. Thorndike?”

  “Are you Lenny?”

  “Get in.”

  “What about Colonel Bard?”

  “He’s not with you?”

  “No.”

  “Then we’re going to have to leave without him. This area’s too hot. Get in.”

  So. That’s how it would be.

  He lifted Morgan into the helicopter, and helped Louise in as well. Lenny gave both Melissa and Ashley a hand up.

  Neil stood there with his hands against the helicopter. And now it really did feel like failure. Because not only had he failed the whole world, he had failed his friend. He climbed into the helicopter. His wife was staring at him. Louise knew exactly what he was feeling. She reached out and touched him. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it simply wasn’t in him.

  Lenny lifted his finger into the air and twirled it a few times. The pilot worked the manuals and the helicopter rose.

  As it climbed higher and higher, Neil got a better view of the Officers’ Club. An intense firefight raged in the courtyard. He saw muzzle flashes and tracer bullets. Someone had set the food on fire, and in the light of this fire he saw the tank. One man stood off to the side. This man X-ed his arms toward the helicopter, and Neil thought he must be Greg Bard. But before he could get a better look, Lenny slid the door shut and the helicopter banked, then nosed north toward Marblehill.

  29

  Kafis came once more to the Moon, this time with dire news.

  The alien phrased it to the gathered members of the committee the way he phrased everything, as if he were a Buddhist monk talking to his disciples. Gerry stared at Kafis in growing alarm. The Tarsalan spoke of the loss of the phytosphere control device in terms of games theory, and said that they had used a Tarsalan mathematical method of decision-making when choosing the phytosphere as one of their teaching tools. Unfortunately they had never factored into the computational framework the notion that humans might inadvertently destroy the device with a surfeit of firepower.

  “So it’s gone?” asked Gerry, speaking out of turn because technically he was just an observer now.

  “It’s degraded to the point where it can’t be used in either augmenting or dissipating the phytosphere.

  Left on its own, the phytosphere will continue to grow.”

  Malcolm Hulke rephrased. “So you have no way of turning it off?”

  “Your people have robbed us of this option, yes. As a teaching tool, it has failed. We take our failure with humility. And we express our deepest apologies to the people of Earth.”

  Gerry stared at Kafis in wonderment. “You destroy a whole world and the only thing you have to offer is an apology?”

  “It is you who have chosen to destroy yourselves. We could have lived in peace. These principles of property you hold so dear…so that you think you can say who owns what, and who can come to your world and who must stay away…this is an erroneous path you have followed.”

  “Fathead is speaking bullshit,” said Ian Hamilton. Kafis’s pupils opened a notch as he regarded the test pilot. “It’s our planet. We get to say who’s welcome.”

  “Yes, but is Earth rightfully yours? Is it rightfully anybody’s? There are thousands of species on your planet. How can you say it belongs to just humans?”

  “There are over twelve billion peopl
e on Earth,” said Gerry. He couldn’t help thinking of his wife and children. “And now they’re all going to die.”

  “Gerald, you are understandably angry. But you must accept it. The bright blue jewel you call your home is lost. The control mechanism for the phytosphere is gone. There is nothing we can do for you.”

  “You can help us build a new control device, Kafis. Here on the Moon.”

  “We’ve made a complete inventory of the Moon’s technological resources. Even if I were to reveal to you the methods involved, you wouldn’t have the materials.”

  “It’s gravity, isn’t it?” said Gerry.

  This stopped Kafis. “Human, you always surprise me.”

  “Am I right?”

  “You must claw your own way to wisdom, my son. The Earth is not my concern anymore. I’m here to negotiate with the Moon.”

  “Gravity?” said Ira.

  “You want to negotiate with the Moon?” said Hulke.

  Kafis turned to the mayor. His pupils widened to their fullest. Gerry wasn’t sure what this was supposed to mean, but guessed that Kafis was now going to try to manipulate Hulke.

  “What’s this about gravity?” said Ira. “This is the first I’ve heard about gravity.”

  He glanced at Ira. Did the man actually care about the Earth after all?

  “Because of the actions of a few misguided men on Earth,” said Kafis, “the Moon now finds itself in a precarious position. So does the mothership.”

  “The phytosphere is reactive to gravity,” Gerry told Ira. “I sent the report to your office this morning.

  You haven’t read it?”

  Ira frowned. “Everything is reactive to gravity. Jesus, Gerry, tell us something we don’t know.”

  The rebuke stung Gerry. And maybe Ira was right. Everything was reactive to gravity. What was he going to do about it? Especially in relation to the phytosphere?