Frozen Fire

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  “Dr. Collins—”

  “Let me finish,” Marty interrupted, looking directly at Victoria. “Lady, that methane bed you poked into is huge. And judging by what’s coming up, I’d guess that pipe you shoved into it isn’t small. I’ll tell you right now that if another underwater landslide happens in the right spot, it could rip open a fissure that could result in the release of one gigaton, maybe more, of methane all at once. That would be a thirty-three percent increase in the concentration of atmospheric methane over an incredibly short period of time. I’m talking days here, or weeks at the most. And, like Sam just said, atmospheric methane is bad news—” He stopped abruptly and shrugged, then sat back in his chair. “But I guess it really doesn’t matter much at this point, does it?”

  “Get back on point, Dr. Collins. You’ve just stopped making sense,” Lucy snapped.

  “Director Denton,” Sam said quickly, knowing Marty was about to blow. “Marty’s makin’ perfect sense. What he means is that none of it will matter because none of us would likely be around to care. As I was sayin’, the thing that made the Permian event so remarkable was the suddenness of the release. We’re not even sure how ‘sudden’ it was, but nearly all oxygen-dependent life on earth died because of it, and very quickly, long before the release itself ended. And there were no people around then.”

  He pointed toward the window and the Capitol dome visible through it. “There were no megacities huggin’ coastlines fifty miles from the release point, no populated islands, no boaters, no cruise ships, no fleets of submarines, no airplanes zippin’ around at thirty thousand feet. What’s happenin’ right now, this minute, is that, thanks to Dennis Cavendish and that crazy GAIA guy, the earth is pumpin’ methane through highly traveled waters and into the air supply of highly populated areas. When those crystals start to melt into gas, ma’am, their volume expands one hundred and sixty times. Do you have any idea what that means?” He stopped and shook his head. “But what’s really concernin’ me is that the gas comin’ up isn’t pure, and nobody—NASA, NOAA, nobody—knows what’s in it. Or if they do, they’re keepin’ it real quiet. So that mixture of methane-and-whatever comin’ out of President Cavendish’s big ol’, badass pipeline is huggin’ the surface.” He stopped and pushed a hand through his hair, then returned to his seat, his energy suddenly gone. “Don’t any of y’all get it?”

  “You’re saying this is the apocalypse.”

  Sam looked up at Tom’s impassive face. “Call it whatever the hell you want to, Mr. Taylor. Call it the Dance of the Methane Fairies and set it to music,” he snapped. “All that methane will kill off living things much faster than any models have ever predicted, even the doomsday ones. If that storm brewin’ off the Bahamas changes course and moves toward Taino, you could see a hurricane form that would make Katrina and Rita and Simone look as scary as a Beastie Boys reunion tour.”

  Finally, Victoria Clark seemed a little alarmed. “A hurricane? Wouldn’t the high winds disperse the methane?” she demanded.

  Sam shook his head. “Nope. It would get sucked into the spin and concentrated, and the temperature in the convection tower would shoot way up.”

  “Why is that bad?” she asked.

  Sam looked at her. “The methane will drive up the temperature inside the storm, which increases the speed and drives down the air pressure, which lets the circulation get bigger. And it keeps on goin’ that way. Like I said, it’s a feedback leap. Before you know it, that hurricane’s winds could be movin’ at five hundred miles an hour and spannin’ the Atlantic. Okay? That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

  Looking around, Sam was satisfied. The so-called intelligence experts were finally looking a bit green around the gills. He smiled coldly at Lucy Denton. “Of course, that’s a worst-case scenario. What’s more likely is that the methane gas will collect in some places, like urban areas, for instance. And if the concentration gets high enough in those places, and I wouldn’t rule that out, that gas could ignite. Then, literally, you’ll see fire in the sky and all Hell will have broken loose.”

  “Dr. Briscoe, let’s keep this in the realm of the believable.”

  Sam couldn’t help himself. He rolled his eyes against the condescension in Lucy Denton’s voice. “Unfortunately, Ms. Denton, I’m serious. Marty and me—we’re not makin’ this up. It’s a simple fact of basic chemistry that air containing less than about five and a half percent of methane won’t explode. If it gets higher than that and there’s a big spark, say a lightning strike or a fire nearby, exothermic combustion—that means an explosion—is a distinct possibility. And I’m talkin’ about one hell of a big bang, ma’am.”

  “If the methane replaces the oxygen and doesn’t ignite—”

  Sam turned to look directly into Victoria Clark’s exotic blue eyes. She stopped talking.

  “Okay, there’s a good set of choices: asphyxiation or combustion,” Sam said. “They’ll be either cold and blue or charred and smokin’, but either way, there will be a lot of dead people around, Ms. Clark.”

  “Dr. Briscoe—”

  Sam swiveled his head to look at Lucy. “With all due respect, Director Denton, we need to get this show on the road,” he said, getting to his feet again. “The gas is movin’ in a fairly compact plume but it will soon begin to disperse. Given the steady supply, it will blanket large areas of land, killin’ a lot of people and a lot of critters.”

  He dropped back into his chair as if he were one of his students, legs spread wide and hands folded over his waist, and looked from face to expressionless face. “I know I’ve been goin’ on like I’ve got a battleship mouth and a rowboat ass, so I’ll shut up, but just let me say one more time that it’s not like there’s any lead time involved. People are probably already dyin’, and that’s not goin’ to stop unless we do something about it.”

  You arrogant hillbilly.

  The acute nausea billowing through Lucy’s stomach was momentarily forgotten as she held Sam Briscoe’s gaze for a few heartbeats. Despite her annoyance at his condescension, she had to admit she respected him. He’d come storming to Washington, demanding to see her, and had shouted down an entire shift of armed military police at the entrance to the base. Then he’d sat in custody for half an hour while they debated whether to bother her with his story. And he’d just given her a semester’s worth of earth science lectures.

  He might be a loose cannon, but the man had balls.

  “Thanks for the overview, Dr. Briscoe. I don’t suppose you have any idea what we should do about it?” she asked conversationally, as she rose to her feet. As she’d known he would, he immediately stood. He was a Southern boy, after all.

  “I’m thinkin’ hard on that one, ma’am.”

  “Good. Let me know when you come up with something.” Lucy let her eyes sweep across every face in the room and settled her gaze on Marty Collins, who had gone silent and was looking alternately angry and scared as he sat there, unshaven and wearing a truly tasteless Hawaiian shirt. “Dr. Collins, do you have anything to add?”

  He nodded, then shrugged. “Everything Sam said is true, but I think it has to be noted that there are several moving parts to the situation and they’re independent of each other. First, there is the pipeline, which has to be sealed, and then there’s the problem of the released methane, which is now present in extraordinary volumes in both the water and the atmosphere. If we don’t get rid of it, we’re going to face a runaway greenhouse effect.”

  “First things first. How do we plug the pipeline?” she asked.

  Marty shrugged again. “Beats me. Call Red Adair back from the dead. This problem is just as nasty as plugging those oil well fires. Except we’re dealing with water currents instead of wind, not to mention depth and pressure, and the pressure differentials in the water column directly over the leak.”

  Not bad. Lucy pressed a button on the console of her desk phone. “I need some hydrogeologists, marine chemists, and some underwater demolition guys in here.” Moving her ha
nd away from the phone, she met Tom’s wary frown.

  “You want to use explosives to close a methane leak?” he asked, his incredulity poorly hidden.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “It’s just an idea. If the seafloor can be blown open, maybe it can be blown closed.”

  “Sending explosives into a column of methane would turn the Caribbean Sea into the Cuyahoga River circa 1969,” Tom pointed out, frowning at her. “Remember the headlines? RIVER ON FIRE. Only this would be a bit more spectacular.”

  “Hardly, Mr. Taylor,” she replied coolly. “The Cuyahoga River was never actually on fire. But as for the matter at hand, if small, uncontrolled explosions caused so much damage, perhaps controlled explosions could be used to repair some of it.”

  “That’s ludicrous.”

  “Perhaps,” she snapped, “but that pipeline has to be sealed before anything realistic can be done to counteract the atmospheric release. I’m willing to consider all options, and mine is only the first one to be brought up. All of you are welcome to add your thoughts at any time.”

  Tom shook his head and resumed his position leaning one shoulder against the wall.

  “Excuse me, Director Denton, but were you listening to anything I just said? The atmosphere. Can’t. Be. Repaired.” Sam Briscoe paused, staring at her as if she had sprouted a second head. “There’s nothing that will change the amount of methane already in the atmosphere until it oxidizes, and after that happens, there’s nothing viable that’s going to pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere in any significant quantity.”

  “Nothing viable? Would you care to define that?’

  “Oh, hell, Ms. Denton,” he exploded. “You’ve heard all the ideas about creatin’ artificial carbon sinks. Plantin’ more trees, seedin’ the ocean with iron pellets—any one of ’em might have worked up ’til yesterday, but this is a whole different scenario. We—”

  “Excuse me.”

  All heads turned to Marty, who sat in his chair looking a little surprised at the sudden attention.

  Lucy nodded at him before any of the others could speak. “Yes?”

  Marty looked at Sam. “What about that paper you wrote for that in de -pen dent study your first year in the doc program? The one on microbes.”

  Sam Briscoe blinked once, then shook his head. “Oh, hell, Marty. That was a controlled experiment in a lab. It’s not real-world. Besides, there’s no precedent, and there were no follow-up studies.”

  “But it worked,” Marty said flatly. “And there have been follow-up studies. I’ve read them.”

  Lucy flicked her eyes between them, not wanting to miss any clues. “What experiment?”

  “It was microbiology—” Sam began, shaking his head dismissively.

  “Sam cultured colonies of organisms that consumed four hundred times their weight in atmospheric methane,” Marty said over Sam’s voice as he rose to his feet.

  “You what?” Lucy demanded in unison with Tom. It was the first time they’d done anything simultaneously in more than a decade. Even Victoria Clark had straightened and was staring at Sam Briscoe.

  Sam let out a heavy breath. “I developed a mutation of a methanotrophic microbe and cultured a colony of them. It was no—”

  “Is this for real?” Lucy interrupted, pleased to see the cocky son of a bitch flinch from the question.

  “Well, yeah, but it was in a lab—”

  “You said that already. You’re the one who just finished giving us the doomsday version of things, Dr. Briscoe. How dare you hold back information that might present a solution?” she snapped. “Why wouldn’t it work outside of a lab?”

  Lucy watched Sam’s eyes widen. “You can’t release millions of unknown microbes into the atmosphere.”

  Her anger showing, Lucy dismissed his reply with an abrupt flick of her hand. “Of course we can. It’s been done for centuries. Mold spores, germs, cross-pollination, anthrax bombs—whether through biological warfare or burning leaves in the fall, microbes get released into the air all the time. And ‘unknown’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘deadly.’ Can you get me that paper, Dr. Briscoe?”

  “Oh, hell—” Sam began.

  “I can,” Marty said, deliberately not looking at Sam. “I can get it now, and the follow-up studies, if you have a computer with PC Anywhere on it.”

  “No need. The paper is on my laptop. Somewhere,” Sam said grudgingly, reaching into the computer bag at his feet.

  Lucy walked around her desk and half sat on the front of it. “Good. I want to see it. And the follow-ups, Dr. Collins. Dr. Briscoe, what quantities of microbes would be needed to get the process under way, and where would they be released?”

  “Lady, with all due respect, you are some kind of crazy,” Sam muttered.

  Lucy bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling at his words. “No. Quite the opposite. As you’ve pointed out, we are facing imminent and ugly changes to a planet I happen to like the way it is. I need a viable proposal to take to the president in—” She glanced at her watch. “About twenty minutes.”

  “You’re going to tell the president about this?” Sam sputtered while tapping furiously on his keyboard, which was now humming and propped open on his lap. “Ma’am, this isn’t a viable solution. It’s old research done by a grad student. I did it for a grade, not to advance science.”

  “Oh, shut the hell up, Sam. You were head-over-freaking-heels when it worked. And you were a grad student who already had a master’s in microbiology and another one in chemistry, and you were pursuing a doctorate in atmospheric science,” Marty pointed out.

  Sam shook his head in disgust and muttered something under his breath. A moment later he looked up at Lucy. “Can I get Wi-Fi here? What’s your e-mail address, Ms. Denton?”

  He typed it in as she recited it, then he sat back with an air of resignation. “Can I say one more time, Ms. Denton, that you can’t just release clouds of microbes into the air. It’s . . . it’s so far beyond irresponsible that I don’t even know the word for it.”

  “Bold?” she offered lightly.

  “With all due respect, ma’am, I was thinkin’ more along the lines of ‘stupid.’”

  Lucy didn’t so much as bat an eyelash at the word. After all, he could be right.

  Sam shoved a hand through his hair and shook his head, exhaling his frustration loudly. “It might be something to consider later—”

  “You’ve made it very clear that there is no ‘later,’ Dr. Briscoe,” Lucy pointed out.

  “—but right now we don’t have a firm read on the methane that’s coming up. We know it’s not pure and we don’t know why, but we know for damn sure that microbes can mutate very quickly and in unpredictable ways. A release could spawn a whole slew of problems, or runaway reactions. If the Rus sians or the Iraqis suggested doing this, you’d call it germ warfare.”

  “True, but if they did it on their own sovereign territory to save their own people, we wouldn’t be able to stop them.” Lucy raised an eyebrow. “Is the microbe you used considered a germ?”

  “No. I used a strain of a tiny single-celled organism called ‘archaea.’”

  “And this organism exists in nature?”

  “Well, yes, but so does anthrax—” Sam sputtered.

  “Tell me about it,” Lucy ordered calmly.

  Sam let out a heavy breath. “Archaea are all over the place. They were originally thought to live only in hostile environments, but they don’t. The type I worked with is anaerobic, which means it thrives in oxygen-deficient environments.”

  “How can releasing that into the atmosphere work? Won’t they die?” Tom Taylor interrupted.

  Sam looked at him. “I’ve been trying to make it clear that that methane plume is oxygen deficient. The organism I worked with absorbs the methane and almost completely oxidizes it, and doesn’t take eight years to do it.”

  “How fast?” Lucy asked crisply.

  “Oh, hell. Director Denton, don’t pursue this,” Sam pleaded. “It amounts t
o atmospheric engineering. It’s Frankenstein stuff. We don’t know the risks.”

  “But we do know the risks of not pursuing it, Dr. Briscoe. How fast?”

  “I don’t have any idea how fast the breakdown would happen in the atmosphere. I can only tell you what I observed in a setting controlled for temperature, humidity, and pressure. The mutation I worked with was what you’d now call a ‘designer bug.’ It doesn’t have a natural environment, unless you consider a petri dish a natural environment.” He spread his hands to indicate that he was finished. “It’s all detailed in my paper.”

  “What is it called?”

  “Methyljonesium.”

  Lucy nodded. “Excellent. I’ll need you to compile a list of every researcher in the country who might have colonies available.”

  Sam blinked at her. “I have no idea who’s working on it. This paper is nearly ten years old.”

  “Did you destroy the colony when you finished the paper?” Lucy demanded.

  “No, I handed it off to—”

  “Well, track down whoever has the original colony and get it back,” she said simply, and watched Sam’s face change from incredulity to outright disbelief.

  “You’re serious.”

  “Yes, I am,” she replied.

  Victoria Clark stood up and crossed the room, then turned to look at Sam. “How long would it take to culture enough of them to deploy?”

  “Deploy? Can we just hold on a God-damned minute here?” Sam burst out and flung himself to his feet, holding on to his laptop with one hand. “Ms. Clark, Director Denton, and whatever the hell your name is—” Sam gestured wildly toward Tom Taylor, and Lucy had to bite back an inappropriate laugh. “You just heard about this a few minutes ago and don’t know anything but what I’ve told you. You can’t ‘deploy’ these critters into the atmosphere—”