Welcome to the Greenhouse

by Gordon Van Gelder

  Beauty. Pure and serene.

  The sea level rise had inundated many of the mudflats and islands, but a small rocky platform lay near shore, thick with trees. Driving by, she spotted a bald eagle perched at the top of a towering spruce tree. She had started birdwatching as a Girl Scout and they had time; she stopped.

  She left the men in the Ford and took out her long-range binocs. The eagle was grooming its feathers and eyeing the fish rippling the waters offshore. Gulls wheeled and squawked, and she could see sea lions knifing through fleeing shoals of herring, transient dark islands breaking the sheen of waves. Crows joined in onshore, hopping on the rocks and pecking at the predators’ leftovers.

  She inhaled the vibrant scent of ripe wet salty air, alive with what she had always loved more than any mere human. This might be the last time she would see such abundant, glowing life, and she sucked it in, trying to lodge it in her heart for times to come.

  She was something of an eagle herself, she saw now, as she stood looking at the elegant predator. She kept to herself, loved the vibrant natural world around her, and lived by making others pay the price of their own foolishness. An eagle caught hapless fish. She struck down those who would do evil to the important world, the natural one.

  Beyond politics and ideals, this was her reality.

  Then she remembered what else she had stopped for. She took out the comm and pinged the call number.

  A buzz, then a blurred woman’s voice. “Able Baker.”

  “Confirmed. Get a GPS fix on us now. We’ll be here, same spot, for pickup in two to three hours. Assume two hours.”

  Buzz buzz. “Got you fixed. Timing’s okay. Need a Zodiac?”

  “Yes, definite, and we’ll be moving fast.”

  “You bet. Out.”

  Back in the cab, Bruckner said, “What was that for?

  ” “Making the pickup contact. It’s solid.” “Good. But I meant, what took so long.”

  She eyed him levelly. “A moment spent with what we’re fighting for.”

  Bruckner snorted. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Elinor looked at Bruckner and wondered if he wanted to turn this into a spitting contest just before the shoot.

  “Great place,” Gene said diplomatically.

  That broke the tension and she started the Ford.

  They rose further up the hills northeast of Anchorage, and at a small clearing, she pulled off to look over the landscape. To the east, mountains towered in lofty gray majesty, flanks thick with snow. They all got out and surveyed the terrain and sight angles toward Anchorage. The lowlands were already thick with summer grasses, and the winds sighed southward through the tall evergreens.

  Gene said, “Boy, the warming’s brought a lot of growth.”

  Bruckner was fidgeting, but said, “Sure, ‘cause nobody’ll stop burning fossil fuels. Unless we force them to.”

  “Look there.” Elinor pointed, walking down to a pond.

  They stopped at the edge, where bubbles popped on the scummy surface. “Damn,” Gene said. “The land’s warming, so—”

  “Gas’s released,” Bruckner said. “Read about that. Coming out of the tundra and all.”

  Bruckner knelt and popped open a cigarette lighter. He flicked it and blue flames flared above the water, pale flickers in the sunlight. “Better it turns into carbon dioxide than staying methane,” he said. “Worse greenhouse gas there is, methane.”

  They watched the flames die out, and turned away.

  Elinor glanced at her watch and pointed. “The KCs will come from that direction, into the wind. Let’s set up on that hillside.”

  They worked around to a heavily wooded hillside with a commanding view toward Elmendorf Air Force Base. “This looks good,” Bruckner said, and Elinor agreed.

  “Damn—a bear!” Gene cried.

  They looked down into a narrow canyon with tall spruce. A large brown bear was wandering along a stream about a hundred meters away.

  Elinor saw Bruckner haul out a.45 automatic. He cocked it.

  When she looked back the bear was looking toward them. It turned and started up the hill with lumbering energy.

  “Back to the car,” she said.

  The bear broke into a lope.

  Bruckner said, “Hell, I could just shoot it. This is a good place to see the takeoff and—”

  “No. We move to the next hill.” Bruckner said, “I want—”

  “Go!”

  They ran.

  One hill farther south, Elinor braced herself against a tree for stability and scanned the Elmendorf landing strips. The image wobbled as the air warmed across hills and marshes.

  Lots of activity. Three KC-10 Extenders ready to go. One tanker was lined up on the center lane and the other two were moving into position.

  “Hurry!” she called to Gene, who was checking the final setup menu and settings on the Dart launcher.

  He carefully inserted the missile itself in the launcher. He checked, nodded and lifted it to Bruckner. They fitted the shoulder straps to Bruckner, secured it, and Gene turned on the full arming function. “Set!” he called.

  Elinor saw a slight stirring of the center Extender and it began to accelerate. She checked: right on time, oh-nine-hundred hours. Hard-core military like Bruckner, who had been a Marine in the Middle East, called Air Force the “saluting Civil Service,” but they did hit their markers. The Extenders were not military now, just surplus, but flying giant tanks of sloshing liquid around the stratosphere demands tight standards.

  “I make the range maybe twenty kilometers,” she said. “Let it pass over us, hit it close as it goes away.”

  Bruckner grunted, hefted the launcher. Gene helped him hold it steady, taking some of the weight. Loaded, it weighed nearly fifty pounds. The Extender lifted off, with a hollow, distant roar that reached them a few seconds later, and Elinor could see media coverage was high. Two choppers paralleled the takeoff for footage, then got left behind.

  The Extender was a full extension DC-10 airframe and it came nearly straight toward them, growling through the chilly air. She wondered if the chatty guy from the bar, Ted, was one of the pilots. Certainly, on a maiden flight the scientists who ran this experiment would be on board, monitoring performance. Very well.

  “Let it get past us,” she called to Bruckner.

  He took his head from the eyepiece to look at her.

  “Huh? Why—”

  “Do it. I’ll call the shot.” “

  But I’m—”

  “Do it.”

  The airplane was rising slowly and flew by them a few kilometers away.

  “Hold, hold…” she called. “Fire.”

  Bruckner squeezed the trigger and the missile popped out— whuff!— seemed to pause, then lit. It roared away, startling in its speed—straight for the exhausts of the engines, then correcting its vectors, turning, and rushing for the main body. Darting.

  It hit with a flash and the blast came rolling over them. A plume erupted from the airplane, dirty black.

  “Bruckner! Resight—the second plane is taking off.”

  She pointed. Gene had the second missile and he chunked it into the Dart tube. Bruckner swiveled with Gene’s help. The second Extender was moving much too fast, and far too heavy, to abort takeoff.

  The first airplane was coming apart, rupturing. A dark cloud belched across the sky.

  Elinor said clearly, calmly, “The Dart’s got a max range about right so… shoot”

  Bruckner let fly and the Dart rushed off into the sky, turned slightly as it sighted, accelerated so they could hardly follow it. The sky was full of noise.

  “Drop the launcher!” she cried.

  “What?” Bruckner said, eyes on the sky.

  She yanked it off him. He backed away and she opened the gas can as the men watched the Dart slashing toward the airplane. She did not watch the sky as she doused the launcher and splashed gas on the surrounding brush.

  “Got that lighter?” she asked Bruckne
r.

  He could not take his eyes off the sky. She reached into his right pocket and took out the lighter. Shooters had to watch, she knew, and Bruckner did not seem to notice her hands.

  She lit the gasoline and it went up with a whump.

  “Hey! Let’s go!” She dragged the men toward the car.

  They saw the second hit as they ran for the Ford. The sound got buried in the thunder that rolled over them as the first Extender hit the ground kilometers away, across the inlet. The hard clap shook the air, made Gene trip then stagger forward.

  She started the Ford and turned away from the thick column of smoke rising from the launcher. It might erase any fingerprints or DNA they’d left, but it had another purpose too.

  She took the run back toward the coast at top speed. The men were excited, already reliving the experience, full of words. She said nothing, focused on the road that led them down to the shore. To the north, a spreading dark pall showed where the first plane went down.

  One glance back at the hill told her the gasoline had served as a lure. A chopper was hammering toward the column of oily smoke, buying them some time.

  The men were hooting with joy, telling each other how great it had been. She said nothing.

  She was happy in a jangling way. Glad she’d gotten through without the friction with Bruckner coming to a point, too. Once she’d been dropped off, well up the inlet, she would hike around a bit, spend some time birdwatching with the binocs, exchange horrified words with anyone she met about that awful plane crash—No, I didn’t actually see it, did you?—and work her way back to the freighter after noon, slipping by Elmendorf in the chaos that would be at crescendo by then. Get some sleep, if she could.

  They stopped above the inlet, leaving the Ford parked under the thickest cover they could find. She looked for the eagle, but didn’t see it. Frightened skyward by the bewildering explosions and noises, no doubt. They ran down the incline. She thumbed on her comm, got a crackle of talk, handed it to Bruckner. He barked their code phrase, got confirmation.

  A Zodiac was cutting a V of white, homing in on the shore. The air rumbled with the distant beat and roar of choppers and jets, the search still concentrated around the airfield. She sniffed the rotten egg smell, already here from the first Extender. It would kill everything near the crash, but this far off should be safe, she thought, unless the wind shifted. The second Extender had gone down closer to Anchorage, so it would be worse there.

  Elinor and the men hurried down toward the shore to meet the Zodiac. Bruckner and Gene emerged ahead of her as they pushed through a stand of evergreens, running hard. If they got out to the pickup craft, suitably disguised among the fishing boats, they might well get away.

  But on the path down, a stocky Inuit man stood. Elinor stopped, dodged behind a tree.

  Ahead of her, Bruckner shouted, “Out of the way!”

  The man stepped forward, raised a shotgun. She saw something compressed and dark in his face.

  “You shot down the planes?” he demanded.

  A tall Inuk, racing in from the side, shouted, “I saw their car, coming from there!”

  Bruckner slammed to a stop, reached down for his.45 automatic—and the man shot Bruckner, pumped his shotgun. Gene yelled, and without pause, the man shot him, too. The two seemed to jump backward, then sprawled, lifeless. All in the time it took her to blink.

  Elinor stood rigid, staring. She felt the world collapsing around her. She shook her head, stepped quietly back. Her pulse came fast as she started working her way back to the Ford, slipping among the trees. The soft loam kept her footsteps silent.

  A third man, face congested with rage, tears pouring down his face, stepped out from a tree ahead of her. She recognized him as the young Inuit father from the diner, and he cradled a black hunting rifle. “Stop!”

  She stood still, lifted her binocs. “I’m birdwatching, what—”

  “I saw you drive up with them.”

  A deep, brooding voice behind her said, “Those planes were going to stop the warming, save our land, save our people.”

  She turned to the man pointing the shotgun, hands spread. “The only true way to do that is by stopping the oil companies, the corporations, the burning of fossil—”

  The shotgun man barked, “That will not save us. Not save the Arctic. Our beautiful home.” He had a knotted face and burning eyes beneath heavy brows.

  She talked fast, hands up, open palms toward him. “All that SkyShield nonsense won’t stop the oceans from turning acid. Only fossil—”

  “Do what you can, when you can. We learn that up here.” This came from the tall man. They all had their guns trained on her now. Faces twitched, fingers trembled, fury pumped through them, but the bores pointing at her stayed as steady and implacable as their eyes.

  “Okay, really, I’m on your side. And what are you doing? I was just—”

  “Not birdwatching. You dropped those airplanes on our village. Our homes. Our families! We were out here getting rid of a bear that mauled a fisherman yesterday.”

  “I didn’t mean, I, those guys you killed—they didn’t mean, they were just trying to stop the corporate—”

  “You killed our families!” the big man said. The young father stood frozen, staring at her, full growing realization striking him mute.

  She froze. What he said was true, but he could not see the big picture. What words could she use, what words could make them see why this had been necessary? “I, I—” and there she stalled, looking in the agonized eyes of the young father, windows upon a hell she could not imagine.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice a choked whisper. “I, I… need to know, for them…”

  “I, we, we had to… We had to stop them. People won’t give up fossil fuels… until, until it gets… worse, until it hurts them where they live… and SkyShield would’ve slowed that down, made things too, too… easy for them. I saw that—we saw that—and this was, was the only way to make the world see that. People don’t do what’s right unless… they… have to…” Her words ran out, facing a man whose world had already ended. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, her knees felt unsteady. She wondered if she might faint. What to say, what words, what words could get her out of this…?

  He finally spoke, hoarse, but clear.

  “Principles over people. That’s what you chose, wasn’t it? You’ve never seen people as anything but objects to be moved… I learned about that at college—the word was ‘sociopathy,’ or ‘megalomania’— when I studied history… And not one of your ‘principles’ is worth a hair on my little Pitka’s head…”

  He turned to the man with the shotgun, clearly their leader, an Elder, and said, “I know enough, now. A diseased mind, and a diseased heart. Her madness should not be allowed to spread, or to infect others.”

  He stopped, gathered himself, and almost whispered,

  “I speak for my family.”

  The man with the shotgun glanced at the tall man with the rifle. They exchanged nods, quick words in a complex, guttural language she could not understand. The rifleman seemed to dissolve into the brush, steps fast and flowing, as he headed at a crouching dead run down to the shoreline and the waiting Zodiac.

  She sucked in the clean sea air and thought about the eagle. She looked up for it in the sky but it was not there. Not there when she needed it.

  It was the last thing she thought, yet it was only a mild regret.

  COME AGAIN SOME OTHER DAY

  Michael Alexander

  I was watching a political news channel over coffee. The United Nations was debating in the General Assembly whether somebody should do something about restarting the Gulf Stream.

  Sorry about that.

  There were the usual paid ads denouncing Israel, the United States of America, Tsarstvo Russkoye, the Caliphate, and the North Pacific Gyre Republic. The last one bugged me; any country founded on the recovery of floating ocean garbage should get a chance, even if it feeds illegal immigrants to sharks.
I mean, they are warned.

  The representative from Eurocorp was arguing that people there were finally getting acclimated to the changes and that viewing the annual polar bear migration across the Baltic through Gdansk was becoming a significant part of the winter tourist trade. Then the representative from Brazil got up to complain that that was all well and good for Europe, but his country didn’t appreciate losing its rainforests in return. The Eurocorp rep bought rebuttal time to note that Brazil had done a fine job destroying the forests on its own. Brazil replied his government was considering formally calling the situation an Act of Aggression and Eurocorp called Brazil an Arse (he was English). Mutual threats of preemptive defensive aggression were tossed around freely. Sounded like 1914 all over again; just shoot the fat guy and get it over with.

  The representative from Oz noted that the floods in the Murray-Darling Basin were more than offset by increased rainfall in northwestern New South Wales, and he was perfectly happy to let things continue as they were. The Eurocorp and Brazil reps huddled for a minute and then bought time to mutually condemn the Aussie for showing indifference to the rest of the world’s problems, to which the ‘roo said how does it feel to be on the receiving end for a change (he actually said they were a couple of poofters and should shut their gobs)?

  The Central African Conglomeration formally joined Brazil in protest. The North African Conglomeration joined Australia, noting that the Sahara was shrinking with the increased rainfall and wondered idly if Europe still wanted to import grain from the Sahel? Europe objected to the veiled use of food as a weapon.

  Watching the U.N. is more fun than watching your dog after you give him a mouthful of peanut butter. Like the General Assembly he just stands there and smacks his lips a lot, then makes a mess on the floor a while later. Insane, but another datum.

  I turned off the box and ran up the periscope for a quick look around. Everything was calm, so I went back to the kitchen, put the tuna casserole in a stay-warm bag, and went upstairs. Pushed the door up and stepped out into a gorgeous summer Wyoming afternoon. The sky was clear and the breeze carried a scent of sagebrush and sulfur as I walked over to Gladys’ place.