Carbon Run (Tales From A Warming Planet Book 2)

by J. G. Follansbee

  “I hope I’m not bothering you, Anne.”

  What is that in his face? Longing? Desperation? “No, you’re not. I mean, do you live around here?”

  Raleigh grinned. “I’m not looking to replace my dying ficus, if that’s what you mean.” He glanced at the saplings.

  Anne’s heart quickened. “Is something wrong? Did something happen to my father?”

  The colonel fingered a sapling’s label. “No, Anne. Not to my knowledge anyway. He’s somewhere in the Arctic on a ship, probably off the coast of Russia.”

  Anne’s mind jumped to the magpie chicks in the coop. Does he know? “The refuge biologists still haven’t contacted me about—”

  “That’s a problem, but that’s not why I’m here.”

  Anne shifted her weight to one foot. “I don’t understand—”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  An unintelligible announcement blared over a nursery loudspeaker. “Now’s not a good time.” Uncertain, Anne resumed her watering, hoping her uncle might get the message that he was unwelcome. He’s a bessie, always up to no good.

  “I know this is awkward, but I would like to talk to you. Please.”

  Raleigh’s tone confused Anne. A request, not an order. Everything about his presence unsettled her. I don’t trust him. “I’m sorry. I’ve given all my information to Kilel. If you need something, talk to her.”

  Her uncle’s shoulders had a bent, almost broken air. “I see. I’ve made a mistake. I’m sorry, Anne. Excuse me.” He slipped past Anne in the narrow aisle. He had a vaguely medicated smell.

  Despite her mistrust, she sensed a wound. Maybe cooperation will help Dad. “Wait, um, Colonel. I’m due for my break.” I’m going to regret this. “There’s a picnic table behind the main building. It’s supposed to be for mist users. I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Anne found Raleigh waiting for her at the table. He was alone.

  “I thought you had forgotten about me,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I had a customer to deal with.” She did not like lying, even a minor fib, but she needed time. She debated whether to run home or text Mike that the colonel had come looking for her, but she hesitated. If he were angry or wanted to arrest me, it wouldn’t happen this way. “What’s this about, Colonel?”

  “You’re welcome to call me Raleigh, if you like.” He pushed an unopened fruit drink toward her. “It’s hot out here, even in the shade.” He’d already emptied his drink box.

  A peace offering? “I suppose you’ll want me to call you ‘uncle’ too?”

  “Don’t you believe I’m Bill’s brother?”

  Anne cocked her head skeptically. “I believe you. I just don’t think you’re deserving of a word like ‘uncle.’ That’s someone I would love. I don’t like you.”

  “What do you know about me?”

  The question took Anne unawares. Until she met him at the detention center, his existence was like a fable. The main thing Bill imparted to her about Raleigh was a hostility. “All I know is that you work for the BES and you did something awful to my grandparents.”

  “Whom you’ve never met.”

  “Are you calling my father a liar?”

  His face took on a quality of contrition. “What actually happened is more complicated than you think.”

  “I’m not interested.” Anne folded her arms. “You still haven’t told me what you want.”

  Raleigh brought his fingers together. He was having a hard time finding the words to say whatever was on his mind. The little blood in his face drained away.

  “You’re sick, aren’t you, Colonel?” Anne resisted an impulse to touch his arm in reassurance.

  “I’m dying unless I can conjure up a miracle.” He related the story of his glioblastoma, the failed conventional treatments, and the uncertain experimental treatment.

  Anne felt sorry for him in the way one feels about a victim in a news reports. She thought his story was incomplete. “At the detention center, you asked me about my mother.”

  “You told me you had no idea where she was. I believe you, of course.”

  “You didn’t explain why you wanted to find her. Does it have something to do with her AI work?”

  “Yes, indeed.” Raleigh regarded Anne thoughtfully. “Well done. A fine insight on your part.”

  Anne shrugged. “It’s not hard. You told me the experimental treatment depended on nano-bots. Everyone knows the only way to control hundreds or thousands of them is complex machine learning. That’s AI.”

  “I’m still impressed, Anne.”

  “If you’re trying to make me like you, it’s not working. I still can’t help you find my mother.” Anne rose to leave. “I have to get back to work.”

  “Wait, Anne.” Raleigh lifted his hand, and Anne feared he might touch her. She stared at his hand as if it were a poisonous snake. He pulled it away. “That’s not the main reason I came. You barely remember your mother, just like you barely know me. I’d hoped...” His voice trailed off.

  Anne sat down, despite a quiet voice that told her to run. “What did you hope?”

  He interlaced his fingers. “Anne, you and I share many things, ‘values’ you might call them. We both care about saving nature, preserving it against stupid behavior by ignorant human beings, restoring it to a purer state.” As he spoke, the jacket of his suit opened a few centimeters, and Anne glimpsed the grip of his service automatic.

  “I don’t agree.” He still wants something from me, and it’s making me cringe. “I don’t believe in harassing people for things that aren’t their fault.”

  Unbidden, a fantasy flashed in Anne’s imagination. She snatched the pistol from the colonel, and he ran. She leveled the weapon, aiming in the way her shooting coach instructed. She squeezed the trigger and dropped her uncle. Where did that come from? She blinked in an effort to concentrate on the real Raleigh Penn in front of her.

  A flash of impatience crossed Raleigh’s face. “Anne, I’m asking you to listen to me. You probably want to know why your father hates me so much.”

  “He doesn’t hate you.” Yes, he does.

  “I accept his feelings about what happened between my parents and I, and how it affected him. I regret it sometimes, more these days than in the past, I have to say. I was very young, younger than you, and young people don’t always foresee the consequences of their actions.”

  Anne felt her blood pressure rising. “You did something to your parents.”

  “I didn’t do anything to them. I merely turned them in.”

  Anne was incredulous. “For doing what?”

  The colonel stretched out his hands in supplication. It was an odd thing to see from a man of power. “Dad—your grandfather—was a brilliant software engineer. He didn’t follow the rules. He made them. Your grandmother was his equal, a poet with a vision that, well, very few people appreciated, apart from her husband.” Raleigh’s face wrenched at the memory. “They had a son that didn’t measure up to their standards and expectations. I wasn’t particularly creative or iconoclastic. I preferred structure and predictability.”

  “But I found something I believed in.” Raleigh’s visage turned firm, and his eyes lit up. “Saving the earth, ridding it of the exploitation and abuse that had brought on the Warming. People had to change, everything had to change, and I wanted to be part of the solution.” The colonel’s hands balled into fists, as if readying himself for a brawl.

  Anne wasn’t afraid. “I don’t understand. They lived on a dairy farm.”

  “Many people responded to the Warming by returning to the land, thinking they could heal it. Jack and Eunice Penn thought working close to the earth was a way of redeeming bad behavior, but it was just arrogance and naiveté.” Raleigh relaxed his fists, and he sighed. “I understood the value of the new rules. I wanted to help enforce them. I told my parents I planned to join the new military units with environmental protection missions. They told me rules were for the
dull-witted. They said a new kind of fascism was rising. They wouldn’t sign the documents allowing me to join the Army cadets. They blocked access to com tribes I wanted to join. They thought I’d lost my mind.” Raleigh was scornful.

  “They did something you couldn’t accept.”

  The fire returned to his mien. “The Warming was getting worse. The government, with the blessing of the people, decided to attack methane emissions, and one target was cattle. Dairy farmers and cattle producers were told to cut down. Jack Penn did all he could to reduce methane—feed, additives, new strains—but it wasn’t enough.”

  Anne was struck by her uncle’s reference to his father by his full name, as if Jack Penn was a suspect in an investigation.

  Raleigh continued, “Jack wasn’t meeting the methane quotas and the inspectors issued warnings. He was desperate to keep the farm and his dream. He hacked the monitoring system to show the cows producing less methane than their actual output.”

  “You found out, didn’t you, Colonel?”

  “Why did he do that, Anne? Why did he lie? He betrayed everyone, me, his family, every human being.”

  Anne thought she saw tears in his eyes, but it might have been age or his illness.

  “An inspector questioned Jack’s reports. I went to the inspector and told him what I saw.”

  “You went behind your father’s back and reported him.”

  “What else was I supposed to do? He was a part of the problem, not the solution. He was doing everything I hated.” Raleigh cupped his face with hands and exhaled. “The government levied huge fines. One thing I didn’t understand was how close to the edge we were, financially. The fines destroyed the business. That’s probably what the government wanted. It broke his spirit. Two years later, he sold out, and I joined the military when I turned eighteen. Dad died a few months later.”

  “Where was my father during all this?”

  “He was only four when the government prosecuted Dad. The last time I spoke to Bill was the day I left for the Army.”

  “Dad told me that you disappeared. You didn’t even come to your mother’s funeral.”

  “I guess I couldn’t face her. Maybe the same was true with Bill. I was in the midst of the life I’d chosen. I put aside the values I was raised with. I had my own values. I hardly heard anything from my mother or Bill, except when he sent me word about your birth.” The tension on Raleigh’s brow relaxed. “I remember that day like it was yesterday.”

  My dad tried to reach out, but it was lukewarm. Anne thought of the video in her private com folder. Is my uncle trying to make amends? The revelation that her uncle, her only living relative apart from her father and mother, had destroyed his own family in the name of saving the biosphere, struck her as twisted and hateful, like the fanatics that had burned heretics in the name of the “true faith.” She could not imagine doing the same thing to her father, even if he were to blame for the refuge fire and the near extinction of the magpies. I would defend him until my last breath. At the same time, Anne knew of families in the valley with their own tensions. Mike and his father did not always get along. Gary Schmidt expected Mike to be near to help care for his terminally ill mother. Though he loved his mother, Mike wanted to pursue his own dreams.

  Would I defend my mother, if I could, even though she abandoned us?

  “Colonel Penn, I still don’t understand why you’re telling me all this. It happened before I was born.”

  “I’m telling you because I have no else to tell, Anne. I still believe I did the right thing, but I regret it all the same, and I wish I didn’t hurt my parents, or Bill. I couldn’t see it then, but I see it now. When death is staring you in the face, it’s hard to ignore your mistakes.”

  “I would never have done such a thing.”

  “That’s why I had to talk to you. You have something which I don’t understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Compassion for the sinner.”

  A part of Anne despised a man who took revenge on his father and mother by turning them into the government. On the other hand, she knew the history of humanity’s careless disregard for its home, and how it still faced its ultimate destruction, even with the Carbon Laws and everything people were doing to save their future. He was trying to do good.

  He has no one. Anne remembered Kilel at the detention center, how she deferred to him and how he was a little afraid of her. Kilel was not his friend, at least not in a way he needed, that every person needed. He’s afraid of dying alone. Anne was his last chance at connecting with anyone who didn’t see him as a heartless government functionary or a traitor to his family. The truth is, he’s both to me.

  “If you want my forgiveness, Colonel, you won’t get it from me.”

  “I understand. But I have another request.”

  Anne’s wariness reasserted itself. “I don’t—“

  The colonel hesitated again. “If I survive this illness... If I find your mother and everything... Will you let me come and visit you?”

  He’s afraid I’ll say No. “Colonel, I don’t know. I’m not... My father wouldn’t...” What would I ever say to him?

  “I promise not to intrude. Just once or twice a year, maybe? A text or email now and then?”

  It would be easy, Anne grasped, to reject the colonel and inflict the same kind of pain the bessies had inflicted on her. However, she couldn’t say the words that would hurt her uncle. Like it or not, he and I share blood. Anne licked her lips, torn between a habit of aversion for this man who had wrecked her father’s family, and pity for a man utterly alone who craved human contact. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “That’s good,” he grinned. “That’s very good.”

  For the first time in the conversation, Anne saw happiness, even joy, in the colonel’s face. She half-expected him to ask for a handshake, or even a kiss, and the thought of touching him repelled her. He asked for neither, and behind him, the black sedan was guided by its AI to a spot a few meters from the table. He rose from his seat and the door of the car opened for him. The gun disappeared from view.

  “Thank you, Anne. I hope to see you again soon.”

  Anne said nothing more. As she watched the car pull away, she couldn’t escape the impression of it as a hearse, bearing a corpse to the grave. What surprised her was a sharp pain in her chest, which could only be a feeling of loss.

  CHAPTER 28

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  MOLLY BAIN ACCEPTED KRISTIAN NORDLAND’S invitation to join him on the bridge of the Aurora Borealis as the liner turned on the final leg of its trans-Arctic voyage. The ship reached for the mouth of the Yenisei River at the southern edge of the Kara Sea, but it hesitated, slowing as the wind died to a whisper.

  Molly was impatient to reach her destination. “The electric motors would be useful right now.”

  “I want to enter Dudinka in grand fashion, and it wouldn’t do for us to arrive behind a tug because our batteries were depleted.” The white-haired Nordland glanced at the pair of uniformed men standing by the ship’s mahogany wheel. A helmsman held the ship on course. The master, taller of the two, wore a close-cropped beard and cap festooned with gold braid.

  “I understand your need to make an impression, Kristian, but I have business to attend to.”

  “Don’t worry, my dear friend.” Nordland brushed a bit of dandruff off his suit coat. “The current is in our favor, and a freshening wind is forecast. Our sails will soon be full again.”

  Molly examined the horizon and the sky, and old instincts reawakened that led her to trust her eyes, the motion of the deck, and the fragrance of the air. High clouds and riffles to the east suggested the forecast was correct, once Aurora cleared Vize Island to port.

  Something about the birds bothered her. The gulls and terns that ranged over the water flicked about as if nervous, hovering for a few seconds over the waveless face of the sea, and veering away. They were confused, as if discovering an error at the last second before alig
hting on the water. For an instant, Molly saw shapes moving under the long swell. It was a shoal of herring, or a pod of whales, or her imagination.

  One of the navigation consoles chirped. A dry-voiced AI intoned, as if announcing the evening’s dinner menu. “Attention, please. An unidentified sonar contact.” The AI gave a bearing, depth, course, and speed.

  Molly frowned. “What could that be?”

  Nordland wasn’t worried. “Submerged log. Transient temperature inversion. The sea is full of mysteries.”

  The captain gave the AI a number of orders. Though she almost saw the code running, Molly missed much of the meaning. I’ve spent too much time away. The mariner’s world has moved on. Aurora continued her slow glide southward.

  “Attention, please.” The AI’s voice was insistent this time, as though the computer had rising anxiety. Molly projected its nervousness on the executing code. “A second unidentified sonar contact.” This time the captain ordered the two contacts plotted on a screen. They moved in courses parallel to Aurora, but they were equally distant from her.

  “Those aren’t sunken logs, Kristian,” Molly warned.

  Taking more notice, Nordland edged closer to the captain. “Security Condition One?”

  The words were not an order, but the captain responded. “Agreed. Navcom, Security Condition One. Deploy defense drones.”

  A light shudder shook Aurora’s hull. Lights and readouts changed on the consoles, showing more detail and parameters Molly didn’t recognize. The helmsman tensed.

  “Molly, I think it would be a good idea if you returned to your cabin. If this turns out to be something unpleasant, you’ll be safest there.”

  Her experience at sea kept her from arguing. She pushed the down button on the elevator. As she waited, a tremendous spout of water lifted itself in front of Aurora, like a pillar blocking her path. The helmsman turned Aurora’s head to port to avoid the obstacle.