to save ourselves.” He held up the fingers of his right hand and ticked items off with the index finger of his left. “Firstly, we have tried to limit our emission of the so-called greenhouse gases. Too late. They continue to emerge from their storage places in the oceans and the land surface, and nothing can hold that process back. Our air grows steadily less breathable. We are faced with the possibility that before very long we will have to evacuate Earth entirely.”
“No!” Isabelle Martine cried. “What a cowardly solution that would be! The thing we need to do is to stay here and regain control of our own environment!”
“But there are those,” said Enron with merciless restraint, “who are convinced that evacuation is our only recourse. And so—secondly, if I may continue, Ms. Martine—we have filled the nearby zones of outer space with dozens, hundreds, of artificial satellite worlds with agreeable artificial climates, and built a few domed encampments on Mars and the moons of Jupiter.”
“I do sometimes think the habitats are really the only answer,” Jolanda Bermudez said, dreamily cutting in once again. “I’ve often considered moving up there myself, if all else fails. Some friends of mine in Los Angeles are very interested in L-5 resettlement.” She seemed to be speaking entirely to herself.
Enron, caught up in the momentum of his own monologue, ignored her. “The orbital settlements are a notable achievement; but each one has extremely limited capacity, and they are very costly to construct. Obviously we could never afford to transport the entire population of Earth to those small refuges in space. There is still another evacuation option, however, one which at the moment seems even less feasible: the proposal to discover and colonize a New Earth of planetary size in some other solar system, where human life can get a second chance.”
Isabella snorted. “That’s just foolishness. A dumb crazy fantasy.”
“Indeed, so it appears,” said Enron reasonably. “As I understand it, we have no workable stardrive, nor have we yet been able to discover any extrasolar planets, let alone one that would be suitable for human life.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Rhodes said, just barely at the threshold of audibility.
Everyone turned to look at him. Rhodes, obviously disconcerted by the attention he had drawn to himself, hastily gulped the dregs of his most recent drink and signaled for yet another.
“We have found a planet, you say?” Enron asked.
“We have a stardrive,” Rhodes said. “
“This stardrive—you say ‘we.’ It is a project of Samurai Industries, then?” Enron asked. He was perspiring, suddenly. His eyes revealed a greater degree of interest, perhaps, than he might have wanted to display.
Rhodes said, “No, actually, I was using ‘we’ collectively, to mean the human race in general. In fact the rumor going around is that it’s Kyocera-Merck that is well along on some sort of a starship project. Not us.”
“But surely Samurai would want to be involved in a similar project too,” said Enron, “if only to remain competitive.”
“As a matter of fact, you’re probably right,” Rhodes said. And winced, as though someone had kicked him under the table. Carpenter saw him glower briefly at Isabelle. “I mean, there’s a rumor to that effect going around as well,” he said, after a moment, sounding newly evasive. “I wouldn’t really know whether there’s any substance to it. We hear things like that all the time. —Of course you understand that any kind of Samurai stardrive research would involve a completely different division of the company from mine.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” said Enron. He was silent for a while, poking purposelessly at the food on his plate, obviously considering the thing that Rhodes had allowed to slip out.
Carpenter wondered whether there could be any truth to it. A stardrive? An expedition to some other solar system, a New Earth to be founded fifty light-years away? A fresh start, a second Eden. The notion momentarily dazzled him with its vastness.
But Isabelle was right, for once: there was no solution in that for Earth’s problems. The idea was too wild. It would take centuries to get to any of the other stars, even if another Earth-like planet could be found somewhere; and even if one were to be found, no significant fraction of Earth’s billions could be transported there. Forget about it, Carpenter told himself. It made no real sense.
Enron, recovering his poise, said, “That is very interesting, the hope of an effective stardrive. I must look into it at another time, Dr. Rhodes. But for now let us turn our attention to the final option that humanity has—the one that I have come here tonight to discuss with you. I mean, doctor, the use of gene-splicing techniques to adapt newborn children to the ever-more-poisonous atmosphere that the people of Earth will be facing.”
“Not only newborns,” said Rhodes. He appeared animated for the first time since they had reached the restaurant. “We’re looking also into ways of retrofitting adult humans to cope with the conditions that will lie ahead.”
“Ah,” said Enron. “Very interesting indeed.”
“We can all be monsters together,” Isabelle said. “ ‘O brave new world, that has such people in it!’ ”
Carpenter realized that he had been matching Rhodes drink for drink, and was very much less good than Rhodes was at dealing with that quantity of liquor.
“If I may, Ms. Martine,” Enron said smoothly. He turned again toward Rhodes. “What is your timetable, doctor, for Earth’s atmosphere to reach the point where the world becomes uninhabitable for human beings as they are presently constituted?”
Rhodes did not answer right away.
“Four or five generations,” he said, at last. “Six at the outside.”
Enron’s dark eyebrows rose. “You are saying, one hundred fifty years, perhaps two hundred?”
“More or less. I wouldn’t want to try to be too precise. But the figures are there. The encircling layer of greenhouse gases that surrounds us is still letting the ultraviolet come in and preventing the infrared from going out, so we bake and fry as the heat builds up. On top of that we continue to lose our ozone insulation. Strong sunlight is pouring through the hole, cooking the planet like a giant laser, accelerating all of the deleterious processes that have been under way the past couple of centuries. The seas are belching methane like a son of a bitch. The plant biota, which we used to count on to
“And there is no likelihood that we will continue to evolve to meet these changing conditions?” Enron asked.
Rhodes laughed, a harsh explosive burst of sound. It was the strongest sign of vitality he had shown all evening.
“Evolve? In five generations? Six? Evolution doesn’t work that fast. Not in nature, anyway.”
“But evolution can be artificially brought about,” said the Israeli. “In the laboratory.”
“Exactly.”
“Would you tell us, then, what the specific goals of your research are? Which aspects of the body you are attempting to modify, and what progress you have made thus far?”
“Don’t tell him a fucking thing, Nick,” Isabelle Martine said. “He’s a spy from Kyocera or maybe some company we don’t even know about, some operation working out of Cairo or Damascus, don’t you see?”
Rhodes reddened. “Please, Isabelle.”
“But it’s true!”
Enron, less bothered this time, glanced at her and said, almost jovially, “I have been cleared for this interview by Dr. Rhodes’ employer, Ms. Martine. If they are not afraid of me, is there any reason why you should be?”
“Well—”
Rhodes said, “She didn’t really mean to cast aspersions on your credentials, Mr. Enron. She just doesn’t like to hear me speak of any aspect of my research.”
Enron looked at Isabelle as though she were some strange life-form that had just emerged from the carpet.
“What is it, exactly, about Dr. Rhodes’ work that causes you such distress?” Enron asked her.
She hesitated. She seemed, Carpenter thought, a little abashed now by her own vociferousness.
Softly she said, “I don’t mean to be as critical of Nick as I may have sounded. He’s a genius and I admire
