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Have a tough problem to solve? Go to the ocean and look at it for an hour. But all he had now was this artificial lake, which was really the town’s main water recycler and Ossimax dispenser. He hoped Neil was making progress on Earth. He hoped that tomorrow he would wake up and look at Earth, and that the shroud would be gone. In the meantime, he had a lot to think about. He took a deep breath and focused his concentration.
He was just reaching Mobius Lake when Ian Hamilton came out of the nearby Nickel and Dime Cannabis Bar and Roti Shop; he could never go far in this city without running into Ian, it seemed.
“We were just talking about you,” said his old friend.
“Who?”
“Me and the girls. And Malcolm. And Luke.”
“I’m just out for a walk.”
“Why don’t you come inside?”
“As long as you know I don’t smoke anymore. I never really did.”
“Then have a coffee. It’s on me.”
He followed Ian into the Nickel and Dime.
Looking around, he saw that it was a cozy little place, all the furniture made of artificial wood, the Velcro trails decorated with designs of colorful thread, a lot of thick macrame tapestries on the walls, and aquariums filled with genetically enhanced Siamese fighting fish with fins and tails so long and so colorful he could easily understand why they were the chief objets d’art in this stoner bar. The fish bioluminesced, turning on and off like Christmas lights.
He and Ian went to a table at the back, really more a low platform surrounded by cushions, and there he found the mayor and Dr. Luke Langstrom, their eyes glazed, their mood placid, their bent philosophical.
The air was sweet with the smell of hashish, and he had a hard time getting used to it because it was still illegal in North Carolina. The girls. He had forgotten their names. Only that Ian had been dragging them around for a while. Twins? He wasn’t sure. They looked much alike. Pretty. Small. Fine-boned.
Showgirls, but showgirls of the Moon variety, born here, raised here, like elfin queens in their delicacy, as tranquil and as still as a day in the Mare Serenitatis.
“You remember Gwen and Stephanie?” asked Ian.
He waved. “Hi.”
“Here’s the man of the hour,” said the mayor. “Have a seat.”
He maneuvered awkwardly—still wasn’t used to Moon gravity—and sat on one of the large, embroidered pillows. He glanced at Luke Langstrom, who was grinning with ruby red eyes over a bowl of Moroccan. Ian took a seat beside him. The mayor had half his mind on some kind of 3-D game involving holographic leopards and parrots. So. Here it was. The perfect cross-section of the lunar effort to destroy the shroud. His committee on all things serious. Yes, why not? Neil had the president and the president’s closest advisors. It made perfect sense that he should have potheads and showgirls.
“So you’re him?” asked Stephanie.
And they would all speak cryptically, and answer cryptically, and no one would understand anybody else, but somehow, through a series of non sequiturs and red herrings, they would get the job done.
“Who?”
“The man who’s going to save the world.”
“I’m going to try, sweetie,” he said, the sweetie coming reflexively because he always called Hanna sweetie.
“We don’t talk to many Earthmen,” said Gwen. “You move funny.”
“I know.”
“I could teach you to walk right,” said Stephanie.
He looked at Stephanie closely. She had pink hair, and a makeup atomizer had misted her face blue.
She had plucked eyebrows, now lined with twinkling blue sequins. She had painted her lips a shade of plum.
Before he could accept Stephanie’s offer, Dr. Langstrom said, “I got the attachment you sent. The microscopic photographs were spectacular.” Langstrom glanced at Stephanie with marked disapproval, then turned back to Gerry. “They brought to mind some of the Martian fossils I’ve researched. I would like to look at the samples firsthand, if you don’t mind.”
Gerry studied Langstrom. “Be my guest. What do you make of the photographs?”
“Rather a stark comparison between the ones taken in the lab and the ones taken in the shroud itself, isn’t there? Microscopic section photographs right inside the foul thing. How did you arrive at such a technique?”
Gerry shrugged. “You’ve got to study things in their natural habitat, Luke. Studying it in the lab is only going to lead to a lot of miscues.”
Langstrom’s amused intolerance softened. He looked as if he had been given a fascinating new toy.
“Interesting organism.”
“You got my e-mail about the carapace?”
Langstrom’s eyes narrowed. “Reminds me of the carapace of Aresphyta C-4721. If only Nectaris had a DNA sequencer.” The Martian turned to the mayor, as if he were to blame.
“Anything like that is always done on Earth,” said the mayor.
“Because it would be interesting to see if the Tarsalans used Aresphyta genetic strands to construct this organism. C-4721 is of course a prehistoric organism, and I’ve only ever seen fossil specimens. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the Tarsalans could have recovered a live specimen. They’ve been coring the Martian ice cap for the last several years, and C-4721 mimics certain present-day Martian organisms, especially in the growth of its carapace. Grows like a tooth, you know. Impervious to ultraviolet radiation. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Tarsalans spliced C-4721 into their phytoplankton base.”
The mayor spoke up. “Gerry, no pressure, my man, but any ideas on how we might… like… do a pest-control number on the phytosphere?”
“Phytosphere? Where’d you come up with a name like that?”
“Just what the Earth guys are calling it.”
Gerry’s confusion, ambivalence, and puzzlement over the shroud—phytosphere—came back. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.” Phytosphere. That would be a Neil name. “Every time I think I have an answer, I run into a roadblock.” Everything was Greek to Neil. “I’m thinking herbicide—get AviOrbit to design and build some applicator satellites—but I’m not sure it would work because many kinds of phytoplankton can absorb huge amounts of herbicide with little, if any, detrimental effect.” He wondered if Neil was thinking herbicides. “Going the herbicide route might be counterproductive.”
“It would be more than counterproductive,” said Hulke. “It would be impossible.”
“Why?” said Gerry.
“Because we have no herbicide or large-scale chemical production facilities here on the Moon. We don’t even use herbicides here. We’re a… a hermetically sealed community. Everything that comes to our customs depot is meticulously screened. We don’t have any weeds in any of our gardens…or hydroponic acreages, because the seeds for such plants have never gotten past our teams in the first place.”
So even if they wanted to go the herbicide route, it was out of the question anyway? “What’s the latest drop from Earth say? Phytosphere. Who thought that name up?”
The mayor glanced away, as if he were embarrassed. “That would be your brother. He’s in the news, Gerry.” Hulke focused on him and folded his hands. “He’s made a number of announcements to the media.”
Gerry nodded stoically. “And what’s he got to say for himself? I mean, over and above calling the shroud the phytosphere.”
Langstrom piped in with an odd kind of glee. “He’s calling the individual organisms xenophyta.”
Gerry regarded the Martian evenly, then turned back to the mayor. “Anything else?”
Hulke’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing specific about their plans to destroy the… the phytosphere.” As if the mayor were reluctantly giving in to Neil’s nomenclaturural template. “Only that they’ve definitively confirmed that it is in fact derived from ocean plankton, just as we have, and a few other components that they wouldn’t disclose.” An expression of patient aggravation came to the mayor’s face. “They’ve devised a… how did they phrase it… a three- pronged approach to dismantling the phytosphere. These drops from Earth… God, they’re funny.” Yet the mayor
