The Last Gasp, page 16
The purpose of the Global Weather Experiment had been to collect data as a basis for computer modelling studies; it was then realised that the existing computer power was hopelessly inadequate – swamped by such a cornucopia of information. What was needed was a new, state-of-the-art computer facility, one that could handle the fiendishly complex global climate system. In addition, it would require the capacity to simulate natural and man-made changes in the atmosphere and oceans, and from this data come up with accurate long-term predictions.
Thus, in 2002, DELFI came into being. Acknowledged from the start as the most powerful and sophisticated facility of its kind, DELFI had been upgraded to process microwave signals direct from ATOP 7 (Astronomical and Terrestrial Observation Platform), the latest US orbiting station, completed only two years before.
‘How far ahead are you forecasting?’ Chase asked.
‘Currently we’re running three predictive programmes – ten, fifteen, and twenty years.’ Binch was about to say something else, and hesitated.
‘Restricted?’ Chase said astutely.
Binch nodded, meeting Chase’s eye with a sour smile. ‘As you might know, the military have a hand in this, as in everything else. I guess they think the Russians should have to sweat for their own climatic predictions instead of getting ours for peanuts.’
‘I can see that. But I don’t see the military application.’
‘Me neither. If CO2 is going to be a problem twenty years from now, it’ll be the same for everybody. There’s no military value in that so far as I can figure out.’
‘Unless you happen to be the first country to know about it and plan accordingly,’ Chase said, testing a speculation. Yet even supposing DELFI predicted a sharp rise in carbon dioxide over the next twenty years, so what? Such an increase had been recognised and plotted for decades. Did Bill Inchcape know something else that he couldn’t reveal?
Binch returned to the desk and eased himself down. ‘Can’t say more, Gavin. Sorry. If ASP got to hear I’d even been talking to you they’d ball me out and cancel my pension.’
‘ASP?’
‘Advanced Strategic Projects. They’re a scientific offshoot of the army based at the Pentagon. I don’t know a lot about them except they rank pretty high in the Defense Department.’
‘How often do you submit reports to them?’
‘Hey now,’ Binch protested mildly. ‘Don’t dig too deep. Off the record, we give them an update when there’s been any significant change. There’s no set schedule. Maybe every three months or so.’
Chase stared at him. ‘Every three months? You mean things change that rapidly?’
‘Let’s just say that as we feed in additional data our predictions become more accurate,’ Binch amended. ‘Right now, in fact, we’re working on new software that will sharpen up our accuracy by at least fifty per cent. We’ve got a new computer specialist, an ex-Scripps guy, who’s absolutely brilliant.’
‘What does ASP do with the information?’
‘I don’t know,’ Binch replied, giving him a level stare. ‘And if I did I wouldn’t tell you.’ His expression softened. ‘Hey, how’d you like to come to dinner this evening . . . if you’ve no other plans? My wife Stella, she’s a terrific cook – as you can see.’ He patted his lavish paunch.
2
Chase had met with this kind of hospitality throughout his trip, and he was delighted to accept. Americans on their home ground, he had found, were the warmest and most generous of people.
To his relief the occasion was quite informal. As Binch had promised the food was delicious, and Bill and Stella Inchcape the perfect hosts. Nothing was too much trouble, yet they didn’t fuss over him, treating him rather as an old friend of the family. There were two other guests, Jeff Henshaw – the ‘ex-Scripps guy who’s absolutely brilliant’ – and his companion for the evening, Ruth Brosnan, a doctor specialising in diagnostic research at a hospital in Denver.
After the meal they went out on to the deck and sprawled in comfortable loungers, drinking coffee and brandy under the stars. The night was warm and the air fragrant with the scent of pines. There was a sharper, almost bitter smell too that Chase couldn’t identify.
‘Cactus flower,’ Stella Inchcape informed him. ‘They don’t usually grow so far north, but this is the third or fourth year we’ve had them. They’re all over the place. I’ve asked Binch to cut them back but he’s too lazy to get off his derrière.’
‘What I hate about gardening is that it’s a waste of time,’ Binch said. ‘Once it’s been cut, why can’t grass stay cut!’
‘We’d be in trouble if it did,’ Chase said.
Ruth Brosnan asked him about his assignment and he explained about the series of articles he’d been commissioned to write for Sentinel.
‘You don’t somehow sound like a journalist to me,’ she said, appraising him with dark eyes. She was a slender, rather elegant woman with dark curly hair that framed a sensitive, intelligent face.
He gave her a lazy smile. ‘That’s probably because I’m a marine biologist by training and inclination. I’ve been writing science articles for round about four years.’
‘What made you switch?’ asked Jeff Henshaw.
Chase had been asked this before and it was tempting to evangelise. As an individual, a lone scientist, he had felt his influence was limited, whereas as a science writer (he didn’t use the word journalist) he might conceivably make a real difference. It was his way of focusing attention on the environment debate.
‘You don’t actually believe we’re heading for the final showdown,’ said Jeff Henshaw, his face creasing in a pained smile. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses which were somehow out of keeping with his compact, powerful build; his air of mocking cynicism was rather patronising.
Chase wouldn’t be lured. ‘I’d have thought that you, Jeff – along with Binch and DELFI – could answer that better than I could,’ he said easily.
‘No, you’ve got it wrong, my friend.’ Henshaw was almost scoffing. ‘What you gotta understand is that DELFI predicts how conditions might change and the probable extent of those changes; it cannot and does not, believe you me, foretell the end of the world.’
‘Well,’ Chase said, ‘let’s hope I am wrong and you’re right. I’d hate to say goodbye to all this.’ With his glass he indicated the five of them, the lawn and flowering bushes fading away into darkness. Above them the sky was an ocean of stars.
‘We had this guy who used to work here,’ Binch spoke up, ‘had the same feeling as you, Gavin. An ex-astronaut called Brad Zittel. That was indeed a very strange thing: he just took off – disappeared – leaving his wife, family, home, everything.’ He shook his head reflectively. ‘Never heard a word to this day. Weird.’
‘His kind usually are,’ Henshaw said, not looking at Chase, though the faint smile of condescension was back.
Stella Inchcape frowned, remembering. ‘Joyce – Brad’s wife – did everything she could to locate him. She called in the police, the FBI, the State Department . . . but they never found him, not a trace.’
‘Perhaps he had some kind of nervous breakdown,’ Ruth said.
Binch agreed. ‘I guess could be. What happened – he’d get all wrought up over the weather anomalies, sat there slumped in his chair looking at the screens, staring at the print-out like it was the Doomsday Book, grey in the face. Couldn’t shake him out of it; he just kept insisting we had to do something before it was too late.’
‘Isn’t it just possible that he was right?’ Chase mused. From the corner of his eye he noticed that Binch was staring moodily into his glass, his lower lip jutting out. It was bloody infuriating not to know what DELFI was predicting. If a hardened sceptic like Bill Inchcape was starting to have doubts, then the data must be pretty hair-raising.
‘Who else are you seeing?’ Ruth asked him, as if trying to steer the conversation into less choppy waters.
‘Some people on the West Coast at UCLA and Scripps. And if there’s time I’d like to go up to Oregon. They have an enlightened attitude towards environment issues up there, I believe.’
‘Do you have a contact at Scripps?’ Binch asked.
‘Dr Cheryl Detrick. She’s the daughter of Theo Detrick.’
Binch nodded. ‘Right, yes, heard of her. Read some of her stuff in fact. Science Review, I think. Very contentious, pretty outspoken.’ He craned his head around. ‘Did you know her when you were at Scripps, Jeff?’
Jeff Henshaw nursed his drink, shoulders hunched forward. He laughed suddenly, for no apparent reason. ‘Yeah, knew her pretty well, as a matter of fact. We did some work together . . . amongst other things.’ He cocked an eyebrow in Chase’s direction. ‘Cheryl’s another environmental nut-job.’
Ruth glanced at him disapprovingly. As if in apology, she said to Chase, ‘Jeff thinks all environmentalists are anti-science, that their mission is to turn the clock back and return civilisation to the Stone Age. He doesn’t believe that’s possible or practicable.’
‘Jeff is right,’ Chase said. ‘On the contrary I want to use science to solve our problems. The way I see it, science is ethically neutral; it’s scientists who have ethics – or lack them. Science should be used for the benefit of mankind, not its detriment.’
‘I bet you were an Eagle Scout too,’ Henshaw said, grinning.
Chase didn’t bother responding. He’d debated the subject with better opponents than Jeff Henshaw; no way he was going to be a decoy duck for cheap entertainment value.
‘For my ten cents’ worth,’ Binch said, ‘I don’t think we scientists should get involved. I do my job and let somebody else worry about the ethical rights and wrongs.’
‘Maybe you should worry about it,’ his wife put in quietly.
‘And wind up like Brad Zittel? No thanks.’ Binch waved the suggestion away and helped himself to more cognac.
Ruth Brosnan said, ‘We’ve got a patient at the hospital with a condition that’s possibly environmentally related. Very disturbing from a clinical point of view: a case of chloracne.’
Chase stared at her. He couldn’t believe he’d heard correctly. ‘You mean dioxin poisoning?’
Ruth nodded. The light from the patio lanterns cast spiky shadows from her eyelashes across her cheekbones. ‘In actual fact,’ she went on reluctantly, ‘more than one. Three cases, as of yesterday. Nobody suspected dioxin poisoning at first – why would we? It wasn’t until we’d eliminated everything else . . . but the tests confirm it.’
Chase was sitting up in the lounger. ‘To the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been a case of dioxin poisoning for the last ten years. Have you been able to trace the source?’
‘Not definitely, but it’s most likely agricultural. All three cases come from southeast of here, beyond Denver, which is mainly – in fact, exclusively – farmland.’
Binch asked, ‘How serious is this, Ruth? I mean, is it likely to spread, become an epidemic?’
‘All depends how many other cases turn up over the next two to three weeks.’
Chase begged to differ. ‘Forgive me, that’s one hell of an understatement. This isn’t chicken pox or measles.’
‘What is the lake?’ Stella asked. ‘Is it dangerous?’
‘Dioxin is a lethal compound – highly toxic. Even a minute leakage is a serious risk for everybody within a forty–fifty-mile radius.’
Stella was aghast. ‘Why produce something so highly dangerous? What on earth is it used for?’
‘It isn’t used for anything,’ Chase said. ‘Dioxin is a by-product in the manufacture of the herbicide 2,4,5-T, which is more commonly known by the acronym TCDD. One of the first symptoms of dioxin poisoning is chloracne, a very nasty skin complaint. I’ll spare you the details.’ He looked at Ruth, his eyes clouding. ‘How is it possible to have three cases of chloracne when there’s been a worldwide ban on the manufacture of 2,4,5-T for at least thirty years? They can’t still be using it on farmland around here.’
‘No, they’re not,’ Ruth confirmed. ‘At least, the big combines aren’t, because we’ve checked up on them. But there are hundreds of smaller farms and thousands of smallholdings with just a few acres of land.’ She sighed. ‘We just don’t have the resources. It’ll take months for a complete investigation to try and pinpoint the source.’
There was something that didn’t quite fit, that Chase couldn’t put his finger on. Chloracne was caused by dioxin poisoning, which implicated herbicides. So what didn’t?
‘Could it be a leak from a chemical plant?’ Jeff Henshaw suggested.
‘The nearest chemical plant is two hundred and fifty miles away,’ Ruth said. ‘We checked it, but it processes oil-based products, not herbicides.’
‘Isn’t that the stuff they used in Vietnam to defoliate the jungle?’ Binch asked Chase. ‘A lot of the military personnel who served out there developed symptoms of dioxin poisoning.’
‘That’s what led to the ban. There was a whole range of genetic disorders caused by—’
Chase stopped, realising what Binch had just said. Of course! 2,4,5-T was used in Vietnam because it checked the growth of broad-leaved plants in jungles and forests; it had little effect on the narrow-leaved grasses of the sort found in croplands. So farmers in this part of the US wouldn’t use 2,4,5-T anyway; it would be ineffective.
‘Are there any military bases in the area?’
Binch had to think for a moment, scratching his chin. ‘I guess the nearest is NORAD.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The North American Air Defense Command. It’s based at Colorado Springs, inside Cheyenne Mountain. But it’s a command and control centre, deep underground; it’s non-operational in terms of aircraft and missiles.’
‘Don’t forget the space centre near Cheyenne,’ Ruth put in. ‘That controls all the spy satellites and military shuttles launched from the Vandenberg Spaceport in California.’
Chase recalled that for thirty years the United States had been spending billions of dollars developing space platforms for beam weapons and killer-satellite launch pads. The Vandenberg Spaceport on the Californian coast was a miniature city, with its own schools, shopping malls, housing projects, hospitals. But Vandenberg was nearly half a continent away. He said, ‘Do they launch anything in this vicinity – say within fifty or sixty miles?’
Ruth glanced uncertainly at Binch. ‘Don’t they carry out test-firings of experimental prototypes from the Martin Marietta Space Center?’
‘Where’s that?’ Chase asked.
‘Near Denver. Sorry, Gavin, I don’t follow your drift,’ Ruth said perplexedly. ‘What’s any of this got to do with TCDD and dioxin poisoning?’
‘You know what?’ Chase said. ‘Nothing that I know of. I’m just praying that it’s so.’ Which he hoped was the truth and nothing but the truth.
3
Even though Boris lay quite still, from the sound of his breathing, shallow and irregular, Nina knew her husband was awake. She moved her hand beneath the covers, found and gripped his.
‘There’s nothing else you can do,’ she murmured in the darkness. ‘You tried your best, my love. Stop blaming yourself. It isn’t up to you any more.’
‘Then who?’
‘Somebody else. Somebody younger.’
Boris laughed, a rumble deep in his chest. ‘The younger people are committed to greed and the pursuit of pleasure just as we were to the party and socialist progress. Most of them live for today, and let the future go hang. Let it take care of itself, the fools!’
‘They’re not all like that,’ Nina said. ‘There are some who still care.’
‘Perhaps so. But they’re powerless or afraid.’
‘Aren’t you afraid?’
His hand returned the pressure. ‘Nina, dearest, I’ve worked as a scientist in this country for getting on forty years. I have always tried to do my best, to work with integrity, for the benefit of mankind. If I’m unable to publish my research any longer, what has been the point of it all? Being afraid to speak the truth defeats the object of my calling . . .’
Boris had to break off because there was a husky tremor in his voice. He felt his wife’s grip tighten.
‘There are scientists in the West engaged in the same work,’ Nina pointed out. ‘Your old friend Theo Detrick, until he passed away—’
‘“Passed away” is the kind of deceitful phrase our leaders use,’ Boris said. ‘An evasion of the truth. Theo was murdered. Let’s speak of things as they are, not use weasel words.’
He was angry, his voice harsh, and he was immediately contrite. ‘I’m sorry, dearest, that was uncalled for. It’s wrong to take my frustration out on you. Forgive me.’ He turned his head towards her on the pillow. ‘I should have spoken out when I discovered what happened to Peter Astakhov in the Antarctic. The signs were there for us all to see – the oceans reaching saturation point, unable to absorb another cubic centimetre of carbon dioxide. The level of oxygen production was bound to be affected. It was inevitable.’
‘You did what you did in good faith.’
‘No,’ Boris said bitterly, ‘in blind ignorance.’
‘It isn’t your fault!’ Nina insisted. ‘You’ve written articles and done all you possibly can to have them accepted by the science journals. What more can you do?’
