Welcome to the Greenhouse

by Gordon Van Gelder

  Transporting the parts in via autoracked cars was her idea. Bringing them in by small plane was the original plan, but Homeland might nab them at the airport. She was proud of this slick work-around.

  “Did railroad inspectors get any of you?” Elinor asked.

  Gene said, “Nope. Our two extras dropped off south of here. They’ll fly back out.”

  With the auto freights, the railroad police looked for tramps sleeping in the seats. No one searched in the trunks. So they had put a man on each autorack, and if some got caught, they could distract from the gear. The men would get a fine, be hauled off for a night in jail, and the shipment would go on.

  “Luck is with us,” Elinor said. Bruckner looked at her, looked more closely, opened his mouth, but said nothing.

  They both seemed jumpy by the helmet light. “How’d you guys live this way?” she asked, to get them relaxed.

  “Pretty poorly,” Gene said. “We had to shit in bags.”

  She could faintly smell the stench. “And those are … ?”

  “In the trunk of another gas guzzler,” Gene said, chuckling. “Nice surprise for the eco-fuckin’, money-hungry bastards who sell these.”

  She said nothing, just nodded. Everybody had their point of view.

  Using Bruckner’s helmet light they hauled the assemblies out, neatly secured in backpacks. Bruckner moved with strong, graceless efficiency. Gene too. She hoisted hers on, grunting.

  The freight started up, lurching forward. “Damn!” Gene said.

  They hurried. When they opened the steel flap, she hesitated, jumped, stumbled on the gravel, but caught herself. Nobody within view in the velvet cloaking dusk.

  They walked quietly, keeping steady through the shadows. It got cold fast, even in late May. At the Ford they put the gear in the back and got in. She drove them to the old school bus. Nobody talked.

  She stopped them at the steps to the bus. “Here, put these gloves on.”

  They grumbled but they did it. Inside, heater turned to high, Bruckner asked if she had anything to drink. She offered bottles of vitamin water but he waved it away. “Any booze?”

  Gene said, “Cut that out.”

  The two men eyed each other and Elinor thought about how they’d been days in those cars and decided to let it go. Not that she had any liquor, anyway.

  Bruckner was lean, rawboned and self-contained, with minimal movements and a constant, steady gaze in his expressionless face. “I called the pickup boat. They’ll be waiting offshore near Eagle Bay by eight.”

  Elinor nodded. “First flight is 9:00 AM. It’ll head due north so we’ll see it from the hills above Eagle Bay.”

  Gene said, “So we get into position… when?”

  “Tonight, just after dawn.”

  Bruckner said, “I do the shoot.”

  “And we handle perimeter and setup, yes.

  “How much trouble will we have with the Indians?”

  Elinor blinked. “The Inuit settlement is down by the seashore.

  They shouldn’t know what’s up.”

  Bruckner frowned. “You sure?”

  “That’s what it looks like. Can’t exactly go there and ask, can we?”

  Bruckner sniffed, scowled, looked around the bus. “That’s the trouble with this nickel-and-dime operation. No real security.”

  Elinor said, “You want security, buy a bond.”

  Bruckner’s head jerked around. “Whassat mean?”

  She sat back, took her time. “We can’t be sure the DARPA people haven’t done some serious public relations work with the Natives. They’re probably all in favor of SkyShield—their entire way of life is melting away with the sea ice, along with any chance of holding on to their traditions for the next generation. And by the way, they’re not “Indians”, they’re “Inuit”. Used to be called Eskimos, but the Inupiat and Yup’ik councils finally agreed to one name that didn’t offend the Canadian peoples.”

  “You seem pretty damn sure of yourself.”

  “People say it’s one of my best features.”

  Bruckner squinted and said, “You’re—”

  “A maritime engineering officer. That’s how I got here and that’s how I’m going out.”

  “You’re not going with us?”

  “Nope, I go back out on my ship. I have first engineering watch tomorrow, oh-one-hundred hours.” She gave him a hard flat look. “We go up the inlet, past Birchwood Airport. I get dropped off, steal a car, head south to Anchorage, while you get on the fishing boat, they work you out to the headlands. The bigger ship comes in, picks you up. You’re clear and away.”

  Bruckner shook his head. “I thought we’d—”

  “Look, there’s a budget and—”

  “We’ve been holed up in those damn cars for—”

  “A week, I know. Plans change.”

  “I don’t like changes.”

  “Things change,” Elinor said, trying to make it mild.

  But Bruckner bristled. “I don’t like you cutting out, leaving us—”

  “I’m in charge, remember.” She thought, He travels the fastest who travels alone.

  “I thought we were all in this together.”

  She nodded. “We are. But Command made me responsible, since this was my idea.”

  His mouth twisted. “I’m the shooter, I—”

  “Because I got you into the Ecuador training. Me and Gene, we depend on you.” Calm, level voice. No need to provoke guys like this; they did it enough on their own.

  Silence. She could see him take out his pride, look at it, and decide to wait a while to even the score.

  Bruckner said, “I gotta stretch my legs,” and clumped down the steps and out of the bus.

  Elinor didn’t like the team splitting and thought of going after him. But she knew why Bruckner was antsy-too much energy with no outlet. She decided just to let him go.

  To Gene she said, “You’ve known him longer. He’s been in charge of operations like this before?”

  Gene thought. “There’ve been no operations like this.”

  “Smaller jobs than this?”

  “Plenty.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Surprising.”

  “Why?”

  “He walks around using that mouth, while he’s working?”

  Gene chuckled. “ ‘Fraid so. He gets the work done though.”

  “Still surprising.”

  “That he’s the shooter, or—”

  “That he still has all his teeth.”

  While Gene showered, she considered. Elinor figured Bruckner for an injustice collector, the passive-aggressive loser type. But he had risen quickly in The Life Workers, as they called themselves, brought into the inner cadre that had formulated this plan. Probably because he was willing to cross the line, use violence in the cause of justice. Logically, she should sympathize with him, because he was a lot like her.

  But sympathy and liking didn’t work that way.

  There were people who soon would surely yearn to read her obituary, and Bruckner’s too, no doubt. He and she were the cutting edge of environmental activism, and these were desperate times indeed. Sometimes you had to cross the line, and be sure about it.

  Most of the blithely unaware Life Workers had plenty of complaints about the state of the world, loved hikes in the open, belonged to the Sierra Club, recycled, turned vegetarian, owned a Prius. Many were as neurotic as a cadre of waltzing mice. But in her experience, they also thought life had dealt them a bad hand, and reality was hard to locate. So they sought big causes to wash away those conflicted feelings. Serenity now! seemed their cry. And the way we want it. Without having to make hard choices, of course.

  Elinor had made a lot of hard choices. She knew she wouldn’t last long on the scalpel’s edge of active environmental justice, and that was fine by her. Her role would soon be to speak for the true cause. Her looks, her brains, her photogenic presence and charm—she knew she’d been chosen for this mission, and the public one afte
rwards, for these attributes, as much as for the plan she had devised. A fortunate confluence of genetics and nurture. People listen, even to ugly messages, when the face of the messenger is pretty. And once they finished here, she would have to be heard.

  She and Gene carefully unpacked the gear and started to assemble the Dart. The parts connected with a minimum of wiring and socket clasps, as foolproof as possible. They worked steadily, assembling the tube, the small recoil-less charge, snapping and clicking the connections. She admired the recoil-less ejection motor that hurled the projectile out of the barrel and to a distance where they wouldn’t get hurt by the next stage’s back blast. On the training range in Ecuador she had been impressed with how the solid fuel sustainer rocket ignited at a safe distance, accelerating away like a mad hornet.

  Gene said, “The targeting antenna has a rechargeable battery, they tend to drain. I’ll top it up.”

  She nodded, distracted by the intricacies of a process she had trained for a month ago. She set the guidance, the smart-proportional navigation that controlled the missile’s sequential sensor modes. Tracking would first be Infrared only, zeroing in on the target’s exhaust, but once in the air and nearing its goal, it would use multiple targeting modes—laser, IR, advanced visual recognition—to get maximal impact on the main body of the aircraft.

  They got it assembled and stood back to regard the linear elegance of the Dart. It had a deadly, snakelike beauty, its shiny white skin tapered to a snub point.

  “Pretty, yeah,” Gene said. “And way better than any Stinger. Next generation, smarter, near four times the range.”

  She knew guys liked anything that could shoot, but to her it was just a tool. She nodded.

  “Y’know, Stingers—the first really good surface to air missiles, shoulder launched like the Dart—went into use against the Soviets in the late eighties. Even then, with less than five K of effective punch, they made it hell for gunship choppers, supply planes. Inside two years, the Russians were pushed out of Afghanistan and the Berlin Wall came down and then the whole damn Soviet Union fell, too.”

  “Not just because of Stingers,” Elinor couldn’t resist saying.

  Gene sniffed, caressed the lean body of the Dart, and smiled.

  Bruckner came clumping up the bus stairs with a fixed smile on his face that looked like it had been delivered to the wrong address. He waved a lit cigarette. Elinor got up, forced herself to smile. “Glad you’re back, we—”

  “Got some ‘freshments,” he said, dangling some beers in their six-pack plastic cradle, and she realized he was drunk.

  The smile fell from her face like a picture off a wall.

  She had to get along with these two but this was too much. She stepped forward, snatched the beer bottles and tossed them onto the Victorian love seat. “No more.”

  Bruckner tensed and Gene sucked in a breath. Bruckner made a move to grab the beers and Elinor snatched his hand, twisted the thumb back, turned hard to ward off a blow from his other hand—and they froze, looking into each other’s eyes from a few centimeters away.

  Silence.

  Gene said, “She’s right, y’know.” More silence.

  Bruckner sniffed, backed away. “You don’t have to be rough.” “I wasn’t.”

  They looked at each other, let it go.

  She figured each of them harbored a dim fantasy of coming to her in the brief hours of darkness. She slept in the lumpy bed and they made do with the furniture. Bruckner got the love seat—ironic victory—and Gene sprawled on a threadbare comforter.

  Bruckner talked some but dozed off fast under booze, so she didn’t have to endure his testosterone-fueled eine kleine crocked-musik. But he snored, which was worse.

  The men napped and tossed and worried. No one came to her, just as she wanted it. She kept a small knife in her hand, in case. For her, though, sleep came easily.

  After eating a cold breakfast, they set out before dawn, 2:30 AM, Elinor driving. She had decided to wait till then because they could mingle with early morning Air Force workers driving toward the base. This far north, it started brightening by 3:30, and they’d be in full light before 5:00. Best not to stand out as they did their last reconnaissance. It was so cold she had to run the heater for five minutes to clear the windshield of ice. Scraping with her gloved hands did nothing.

  The men had grumbled about leaving absolutely nothing behind. “No traces,” she said. She wiped down every surface, even though they’d worn medical gloves the whole time in the bus.

  Gene didn’t ask why she stopped and got a gas can filled with gasoline, and she didn’t say. Tech guys loved their gadgets as mothers did their children.

  She noticed the wind was fairly strong and from the north, and smiled. “Good weather. Prediction’s holding up.”

  Bruckner said sullenly, “Goddamn cold.”

  “The KC Extenders will take off into the wind, head north.” Elinor judged the nearly cloud-free sky. “Just where we want them to be.”

  They drove up a side street in Mountain View, and parked overlooking the fish hatchery and golf course, so she could observe the big tank refuelers lined up at the loading site. She counted five KC-10 Extenders, freshly surplussed by the Air Force. Their big bellies reminded her of pregnant whales.

  From their vantage point, they could see down to the temporarily expanded checkpoint, set up just outside the base. As foreseen, security was stringently tight this near the airfield—all drivers and passengers had to get out, be scanned, IDs checked by portable comp against global records, briefcases and purses searched. K-9 units inspected car interiors and trunks. Explosives-detecting robots rolled under the vehicles.

  She fished out binoculars and focused on the people waiting to be cleared. Some carried laptops and backpacks and she guessed they were the scientists flying with the dispersal teams. Their body language was clear. Even this early, they were jazzed, eager to go, excited as kids on a field trip. One of the pilots had mentioned there would be some sort of pre-flight ceremony, honoring the teams that had put all this together. The flight crews were studiedly nonchalant—this was an important, high-profile job, sure, but they couldn’t let their cool down in front of so many science nerds. She couldn’t see well enough to pick out Ted, or the friendly woman from the bar.

  In a special treaty deal with the Arctic Council, they would fly from Elmendorf and arc over the North Pole, spreading hydrogen sulfide in their wakes. The tiny molecules of it would mate with water vapor in the stratospheric air, making sulfurics. Those larger, wobbly molecules reflected sunlight well—a fact learned from volcano eruptions back in the TwenCen. Spray megatons of hydrogen sulfide into the stratosphere, let water turn it into a sunlight-bouncing sheet— SkyShield—and they could cool the entire Arctic.

  Or so the theory went. The Arctic Council had agreed to this series of large-scale experiments, run by the USA since they had the in-flight refuelers that could spread the tiny molecules to form the SkyShield. Small-scale experiments—opposed, of course, by many enviros—had seemed to work. Now came the big push, trying to reverse the retreat of sea ice and warming of the tundra.

  Anchorage lay slightly farther north than Oslo, Helsinki, and Stockholm, but not as far north as Reykjavik or Murmansk. Flights from Anchorage to Murmansk would let them refuel and reload hydrogen sulfide at each end, then follow their paths back over the pole. Deploying hydrogen sulfide along their flight paths at 45,000 feet, they would spread a protective layer to reflect summer sunlight. In a few months, the sulfuric droplets would ease down into the lower atmosphere, mix with moist clouds, and come down as rain or snow, a minute, undetectable addition to the acidity already added by industrial pollutants. Experiment over.

  The total mass delivered was far less than that from volcanoes like Pinatubo, which had cooled the whole planet in 1991-92. But volcanoes do messy work, belching most of their vomit into the lower atmosphere. This was to be a designer volcano, a thin skin of aerosols skating high across the stratospher
e.

  It might stop the loss of the remaining sea ice, the habitat of the polar bear. Only ten percent of the vast original cooling sheets remained. Temperature increases were now so high that crops were failing in tropical regions and billions of people were threatened with starvation.

  But many felt such geoengineered tinkerings would also slow cutbacks in carbon dioxide emissions. People loved convenience, their air-conditioning and winter heating and big lumbering cars. So fossil fuel reductions were still barely getting started. Humanity had already driven the air’s CO2 content to twice that before 1800, and with every developing country burning fossil fuels—oil and coal—as fast as they could extract them, only immediate, dire emergency could drive them to abstain. To do what was right.

  The greatest threat to humanity arose not from terror, but error. Time to take the gloves off.

  She put the binocs away and headed north. The city’s seacoast was mostly rimmed by treacherous mudflats, even after the sea kept rising. Still, there were coves and sandbars of great beauty. Elinor drove off Glenn Highway to the west, onto progressively smaller, rougher roads, working their way backcountry by Bureau of Land Management roads to a sagging, long-unused access gate for loggers. Bolt cutters made quick work of the lock securing its rusty chain closure. After she pulled through, Gene carefully replaced the chain and linked it with an equally rusty padlock, brought for this purpose. Not even a thorough check would show it had been opened, till the next time BLM tried to unlock it. They were now on Elmendorf, miles north of the airfield, far from the main base’s bustle and security precautions. Thousands of acres of mudflats, woods, lakes, and inlet shoreline lay almost untouched, used for military exercises and not much else. Nobody came here except for infrequent hardy bands of off-duty soldiers or pilots, hiking with maps red-marked UXO for “Unexploded Ordnance.” Lost live explosives, remnant of past field maneuvers, tended to discourage casual sightseers and trespassers, and the Inuit villagers wouldn’t be berry-picking till July and August. She consulted her satellite map, then took them on a side road, running up the coast. They passed above a cove of dark blue waters.