Welcome to the Greenhouse

by Gordon Van Gelder

  Stephanie made hasty introductions. “Sasha and Tamburu, my husband Amos. What’s the activity level?”

  “Point eight on our scale,” said Tamburu, a short, sturdy, round-faced young woman with close-cropped black hair and very dark skin. Sasha was tall and thin, with lank blonde hair hanging to his shoulders. Florida Tech enjoyed a high percentage of foreign students working for engineering degrees. “They should be out in thirty minutes.”

  Amos poured coffee into plastic cups and handed them to the students. Stephanie opened the hamper and gave them sandwiches. As the two ate, Stephanie led Amos to the nest, near the top of the gently rising slope of the dune. Voice very low, she said, “We moved the eggs from the original lower site to this elevation. The experts pretty much agree the ocean level will rise no more than seven feet over the next twenty years, and that will leave this nest still well above the waves. This is one of the few areas where we didn’t have to transport the eggs to a new beach.”

  “I know the adult female always returns to her hatching beach to build a new nest, but I didn’t think the elevation mattered,” said Amos.

  Stephanie hesitated, then said, “There’s still a lot we don’t know. The exact chemical markers that separate one beach from another, for example. But the adult female can find her birthplace, unerringly. We think it’s safest to have these babies born in a nest where that sand will still be above water when she returns.”

  Sasha and Tamburu had spread a wide blanket on the flatter sand, about thirty feet below and north of the nest. It became a little crowded with four people, but they managed to sit without rubbing shoulders. Stephanie suggested they wait in silence. Some of her research indicated the baby turtles, somehow aware of the external environment through the thin layer of sand that hid them, would not emerge on the first possible day if it was noisy above them.

  Now it was past midnight. Amos could hear the gentle sound of waves washing up on the sand and retreating, the engine of an occasional hybrid passing on the road a hundred yards to the west. There were no lights in the park, and the communities north and south of them had passed laws restricting the use of lights along the beaches during turtle hatching season. The tiny crawlers were easily disoriented, heading toward the brightest lights when they emerged instead of moonlight reflecting off the water.

  Tamburu wore the earphones monitoring the sound sensors adjacent to the nest. She took off the phones and gestured. Amos heard the sound without amplification, a low, hissing susurration, as almost a hundred small bodies simultaneously struggled up through the thin layer of sand. All four got to their feet and hurried to the nest, staying well away from the slope leading to the flat beach. They were in time to see a mass of small black bodies, struggling and clutching for support in the heaving sand, push themselves up and out, onto the firmer surface below the round nest.

  “They’re beautiful,” said Sasha softly. Noise no longer mattered to the tiny travelers, now that they had begun their long and dangerous journey.

  Tamburu wore thin plastic gloves. She dropped to her knees and assisted a last few stragglers out of the soft sand, then swept both hands slowly through the nest area, searching for any still buried. She found none.

  “Hey! Raccoon!” Sasha suddenly yelled. Amos turned, to see a small dark animal darting toward the stream of babies struggling across the sand to the water. “Hey!” Sasha yelled again, and took off at a run toward the animal. Startled, the raccoon stopped. In the moonlight Amos saw it turn to face this intruder, unexpectedly interfering with the easy dinner this predator and its kin had long enjoyed on these beaches. But the human rushing toward him, yelling and waving his arms, seemed about to attack. The raccoon turned and fled.

  Tamburu, satisfied the nest was clear of babies, joined the other three as they stood a couple of yards away from the direct path to the water. She suddenly darted forward, picking up a large crab that had emerged from nowhere and was scuttling toward the last few babies. She held it carefully in her gloved hand as it tried in vain to reach back with its single large pincer. Still carrying the crab, she paced along with the other three as they followed the last of the hatchlings toward the water. It took several minutes for the newborns to cross the forty feet of flat beach, but eventually the last slow one made it, and disappeared into the water. Tamburu gently lowered the crab to the sand and watched it scurry away in frustration.

  “We counted ninety-eight eggs,” said Stephanie. “I think they all made it into the water. Every single one!”

  “One of our best,” said Sasha. “I wish we could be at every nest breaking this season.”

  “We know we can’t save them all,” said Stephanie. “But this was a darn good start.”

  They returned to the blanket, where Stephanie handed the coffee jug to Amos and picked up the hamper. When they turned to leave, Stephanie saw that Sasha and Tamburu had made no move to go. She took out the remaining sandwiches, handed them to Sasha, and said goodnight. The use the two young adults would make of the blanket, for the remainder of this lovely, moonlit night, was not a concern of their teacher.

  Stephanie led the way back up the beach, across the wooden walkway over the dunes, and into the small parking area. As they neared their car, walking side by side, a dark figure suddenly stepped out from concealment behind it. The moonlight provided enough illumination for Amos to see what appeared to be a pistol in his hand. And then Amos saw that in their absence, a third car had parked near the end of the lot.

  “Hold it!” said a man’s voice. Amos and Stephanie came to an abrupt halt. The man, dressed dramatically all in black and wearing a ski mask over his face, stepped closer, the pistol pointed at Amos. “I warned you. Three times I told you to stop doing the devil’s work. And now God says you must pay.”

  Stephanie turned toward Amos, fear and shock on her face; and the dawning realization that Amos had been threatened, and not told her. Then she took a short step toward the man with the pistol pointed at her husband’s stomach. “Greg? Is that you? Have you gone completely batty?”

  Stephanie had recognized the voice. Gregory Hentson. And now Amos understood the threats, and why he had been singled out. They had never been friends, but he had known Greg since they were teenagers; attended the same high school in Orlando, and UCF in overlapping years. Stephanie had dated Greg for two months, breaking it off when she learned he was an avid hunter; she would not be involved with someone who got a thrill from killing wild animals. Greg had taken it badly, blaming Amos, though in fact he hadn’t even met Stephanie until weeks later. She had told Amos back then that she thought Greg Hentson a little offbeat; extremely religious, but handsome, polite, and less pushy for sex than most. And no, their relationship hadn’t gotten that far in two months.

  Amos knew that Greg Hentson had been taught hunting and fishing by his father. In one of their few conversations in high school, Greg had earnestly explained that God placed man in dominion over the animals, and they were expressly put here to serve his needs. For his part, Amos had tried fishing but found it too slow a sport, and never gone hunting at all. He had heard from mutual friends that Greg, still single, worked for a local charity in Orlando. And apparently Stephanie’s rejection, and the supposed theft of her affections by Amos, had festered like an infected boil, growing steadily over the years and turning into blind, unreasoning hate.

  “Greg?” Stephanie’s voice was tremulous. “You’ve been threatening Amos?” Her voice steadied, became firm. “But it isn’t really him you hate. No, it’s me, because I tossed you, twenty years ago. All this time… And you’re getting back at me now, by killing the man I love? While claiming you’re doing God’s work?”

  “No! Amos is evil! These are the end times, and he’s trying to thwart the expressed will of God!”

  Greg had let the pistol barrel fall, but raised it again and aimed at Amos. Stephanie screamed and jumped in front of her husband, arms waving wildly. The gun fired, a bright streak of red fire in the night. Stephanie’s
momentum kept her moving past Amos, before she lost her balance and fell to the sandy ground.

  Greg stared at Stephanie, uncertain of what he had done. Amos still held the empty coffee jug. He hurled the large container at Greg, then charged after it. The jug hit the gun in Greg’s extended hand and he involuntarily pulled the trigger, a second bright flash, directed toward the ground. Then Amos reached him, grabbing for the gun with his left hand and pushing it back as he hit Greg with a hard right to the nose. He hadn’t been in a fight since junior high, but had the satisfaction of feeling the nose flatten under his fist. The pistol went off a third time. Greg fell backward, dropping the weapon and clutching his stomach as he lay on the ground, moaning in pain. Blood from his nose soaked the black ski mask.

  Amos grabbed the weapon first, then turned to Stephanie. She was scrambling to her feet, unhurt. “He pointed it away from me,” she said breathlessly. Stephanie hurried to kneel by Greg. She forced his hands away from his abdomen and examined him. “Through the left side and out again. Maybe got a kidney. Call 911! He should be okay if they get here fast enough.”

  Amos pulled out his communicator and pressed 9.

  Amos awoke late on Sunday morning, to find Stephanie already up and dressed. “About time, sleepyhead. Grab some cereal, and then we have to finish packing.”

  The success with the baby turtles seemed to have lifted Stephanie out of her depression. She had shaken off the trauma of having Gregory Hentson appear like a ghost from the past and threaten their lives.

  “I just called the hospital. They had to repair two holes in his intestines, but Greg is out of danger. He’s under arrest, of course, with a sheriff’s deputy at the door.”

  “I wish I could feel sorry for him,” said Amos, “but I don’t.”

  “Thank you all for coming.” Interior Admin Judge Sebastian Carver rose from a chair near the front of the meeting room in the Merritt Island Park recreation building and walked to the podium. About ten people were seated in the closest chairs. He spoke without using a microphone, the deep, soft voice easily heard. “First, every one of you is someone for whom I had the sad duty of deciding your home couldn’t be saved. I invited you here in the hope of possibly relieving some of the emotional pain you’ve suffered. Second, this is an informal meeting. I’m a member of an unofficial association of admin judges that tries to help people making difficult career moves. Interior cooperates by giving us early word on upcoming projects. I want to show you one of those tonight.”

  Carver lifted a remote control off the podium and pointed it at the screen on the wall behind him. It flickered to life, the Interior logo large on the bottom right. The camera hovered far above a snow-covered mountain peak, wooded slopes spread around it on all sides. A narrator came on and explained that they were seeing the Mt. Hood Wilderness area, a federal park over sixty thousand acres in size, with several small rivers supplied by the glaciers on Mt. Hood. The camera view moved down and focused on one large wooded valley. And the narrator briefly detailed one of the largest, most ambitious plans in the Save America program.

  Amos listened and watched, fascinated, for thirty minutes. This high-level valley in Oregon was to be diked at its three lowest points, creating a new lake fed by several of Mt. Hood’s rivers. When full it would exceed 200 square miles in surface area. But in effect it was nothing more than a huge reservoir. Giant pumps would be installed a few miles to the north at the Columbia River; fourth largest in volume in the United States. They would feed two large concrete pipes climbing up to the new lake. The dam that would protect the Columbia River gorge from the rising water of the Pacific was to be located near Astoria, saving the much larger city of Portland to the southeast. In addition, as much as possible of the 150 inches of rainfall a year, for which the area was famous, would be diverted to the new reservoir.

  That much water would overflow even this huge high-level lake in just a few years. But two wide new covered aqueducts were to be built south and east of Mt. Hood, carrying two rivers’ worth of water south. The eventual users were the drier parts of Oregon east of the Cascades, and the states of California, Nevada, and Arizona. According to the narrator this huge and dependable new supply of water would turn the dry areas of those states into gardens, providing vast new areas of farmland. As a side benefit, the Colorado River would be much less used, and should once again provide a supply of freshwater to Mexico.

  When the program ended, Carver returned to the podium. “This project is going to be one of the biggest of Save America. It was proposed decades ago, but the country wasn’t willing then to spend the money. Now we are, because we must be. The first thousand or so jobs are about to be posted, and each of you here have some of the required skill needs.” He picked up a printed list off the podium. “First, Amos Byers. How would you like to work on the pumps that will lift Columbia River water all the way to the new reservoir? And Stephanie Byers; there are jobs for biologists at the Pacific Coast Wildlife Rescue Center in Portland. You’ll be working to save the Pacific sea lions, finding higher level breeding beaches for them. Now Arturo and Juanita Delgado…” but Amos stopped listening when Stephanie rose, grabbed his hand, and led him to the door.

  The area outside was brightly lit. Amos stared at Stephanie when she stopped and turned to face him, still holding his hand. “Amos—I want to go. I don’t want to move into that dreadful apartment, I want a whole new life! Becoming a part of something that will change our country for the better, not just save overpriced real estate… I want this, Amos.”

  He stared at her, unable to believe the change in Stephanie. Her eyes were almost sparkling, her face more animated than he had seen in months. He had the awful feeling that if he refused to move and said no, she would leave him and go anyway.

  “But the girls! Their senior year…”

  “Amos, I talked to Judge Carver when he called and invited us to this meeting. I’ve had time to think about it, and talk with the girls. They say Florida with a dike around it won’t be the same, and they love the idea of moving to a cooler climate.”

  “It was the turtles,” Amos said softly, his gaze still on Stephanie’s face. “You and your students saved all of them…”

  Stephanie turned to look at him, surprised. “Yes, we did. But I’ve worked with turtles for decades. I’m ready for something new, and saving the Pacific sea lions will be fascinating work. They aren’t like turtles; they can be taught to change their habits.”

  “And so can we,” said Amos. He pulled Stephanie into his arms and kissed her, thoroughly and warmly. Neither had ever lived outside Florida; it was time for a change.

  But twenty years from now, he planned to bring Stephanie back here for a vacation. The first of the adult female loggerheads from the nest Stephanie and her students had saved should be coming ashore to lay their eggs. He wanted to watch the awkward, lumbering, indomitable females struggling to perpetuate their species, no matter the odds against the survival of their offspring. Someone would be waiting there, to move those eggs to higher ground.

  THE CALIFORNIA QUEEN COMES A-CALLING

  Pat MacEwen

  The first sign of trouble was nothing more than a shadowy glint, and Taiesha missed it, being too busy arguing with the judge. The California Queen’s paddlewheel threshed the dark water at half speed as they edged their way past another half-drowned town full of skeletal trees and rotted rooftops. It should have been safe enough, this far offshore. There was no source of fresh water out here, so no people either.

  A used-to-be someplace, Taiesha thought, without even a name nowadays.

  No, that wasn’t entirely true. A hundred yards starboard, she caught a glimpse of an old water tower, its rusted remains still graced by dark lettering. Hilmar-something. Irving? Irwin? She couldn’t tell. The rest of it had been stolen by time, water, weather, and weariness. Some little farm town, then, swallowed up by the Inland Sea the same as so many larger cities—Sacramento, Stockton, Tracy… Half of California was gone, seemed l
ike.

  “Why me?” she demanded.

  “Look, you’re a public defender,” Judge Hebert insisted. “It’s your job.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No,” he replied, with no hint of a smile. On his long pale deep-graven face, it would look out of place anyway, she thought, like a grim reaper’s grin.

  Taiesha snorted at that notion, which cut a little too close to the bone. She turned away from her boss, but as the deck yawed underfoot, she veered to the right and the morning sunlight cutting across the Texas deck caught her full in the face. It blinded her for a critical moment, so bright that tears soon threatened to slide down her cheeks.

  Oh, Lord. She couldn’t let Hebert see that. She grabbed hold of the railing in front of her and tried to get a grip of another kind. The blistered paint bit at the scars across her palms, but she ignored the lesser pain. She stared instead at the skeins of silvery water flying off the great paddlewheel as it churned away at the Queen ‘s stern, two decks below.

  “Well, Chavez is sick, and there’s nobody else aboard anywhere near as qualified,” Judge Hebert said.

  “It’s a child murder,” Taiesha ground out, unable to keep her voice totally level.

  “Yes. A capital crime,” the judge agreed. “And I know how much you hate kid cases. Even so, there’s no help for it. Somebody has to defend this man. He’s a pre-Rise landowner. His case is getting a lot of attention.”