Last Gasp

been writing science stuff for the past four or five years.'

'What made you switch?' asked Frank Kollar.

Chase had been asked this before and it was tempting to evangelize. Instead he gave them the standard routine that as an individual scientist he had felt his influence was minimal, whereas as a science writer (he didn't use the word journalist) he might conceivably arouse public opinion and get things changed. It was his way of making a positive contribution to the environmental debate.

'You really believe we're heading for the final showdown?' said Frank Kollar with a faint smile. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses, which were out of keeping with his compact, powerful build, but otherwise suited his air of laid-back cynicism, which Chase thought rather patronizing.

Chase wouldn't be lured. 'I'd have thought that you, Binch, and DELFI could answer that better than I,' he said easily.

'DELFI predicts that conditions will change and the probable extent of those changes; it doesn't foretell the end of the world. I don't see any need to get steamed up about it.'

'Let's hope you're right and I'm wrong,' Chase said. 'I'd hate to say good-bye 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 a guy who used to work at the center,' Binch said, lighting a cigarette. 'Had the same feeling as you, Gavin. An exastronaut called Brad Zittel. That was a very strange thing; he just took off--disappeared--leaving his wife, family, home, everything.' He shook his head reflectively, wreathed in gray smoke. 'Never heard a word to this day. Weird.'

'His kind usually are,' Frank Kollar said, not looking at Chase, though the faint smile was back.

Stella Inchcape frowned, remembering. 'That was really awful. Joyce--Brad's wife--did everything she could to trace him. Called in the police, the FBI, the State Department, but they never found him.'

'Perhaps he had some kind of nervous breakdown,' Ruth said.

'I think he did,' Binch agreed. 'Brad used to get all wrought up over the weather anomalies. He'd sit reading the print-out like it was the Doomsday Book, gray in the face, hands shaking. You couldn't shake him out of it. He kept insisting we had to do something before it was too late.'

'Isn't it just possible that he was right?' Chase said, and from the corner of his eye noticed that Binch was staring moodily into his glass, lower lip jutting out. It was bloody infuriating not to know what DELFI was predicting. If a hardened skeptic like Bill Inchcape was starting to have doubts, then the data must be pretty hair-raising. He'd have given a lot for just one peek at the DELFI files.

'Who else are you seeing?' Ruth asked, 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 toward environmental issues up there, I believe.'

'Do you have a contact at Scripps?' Binch asked.

'Dr. Cheryl Detrick, Theo Detrick's daughter.'

'Right,' Binch nodded. 'Read some of her stuff in, what was it,

Science Review, I think. Very outspoken. Keeps making waves in Washington and getting up the noses of the administration.' He craned his head around. 'Did you know her when you were there, Frank?'

Frank Kollar 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 and other things.' He cocked an eyebrow in Chase's direction. 'Cheryl's another environmental freak.'

Ruth glanced at him disapprovingly, and as if in apology, said to Chase, 'Frank thinks all environmentalists are antiscience, that they want to turn the clock back and return civilization to the Stone Age, and he doesn't believe that's possible or practicable.'

'Frank is right,' Chase said. 'But 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 a boy scout too,' Frank Kollar said, grinning.

Chase didn't respond. He'd argued and discussed the subject with better exponents than Frank Kollar, and he wasn't going to lay himself on the line merely to provide entertainment value.

Binch examined the glowing tip of his cigarette. 'I honestly don't think scientists should get involved in that area. 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? Not for me, no thanks.' Binch stubbed out his cigarette and helped himself to more brandy.

Some remark or other had sent Ruth off on a private line of thought, and now she voiced it. 'My fear is that while we're disposing of many of the old diseases we might be creating a stack of new ones. We've got a case at the hospital at the moment that's very disturbing from a clinical point of view. It could be environmentally related, though we can't figure out how.'

'What's that?' Chase asked.

'A case of cloracne.'

Chase stared at her. He couldn't believe he'd heard correctly. 'You mean dioxin poisoning?'

Ruth nodded. The light from the patio doors cast spiky shadows from her eyelashes across her cheekbones. Her lower lip was underlined with sensuous shadow. 'In actual fact,' she went on reluctantly, 'we've had three cases. Nobody suspected dioxin poisoning at first, naturally, and it wasn't until we'd eliminated everything else that we hit on it. But the tests confirm it. There's no mistake.'

Chase was sitting up in the lounge. 'To the best of my knowledge there hasn't been a single case of dioxin poisoning for the last seven years. Have you been able to trace the source?'

'No. The general consensus is that it's most likely agricultural. All three cases come from southeast of here, beyond Denver, which is mainly--in fact exclusively--farmland.'

The others had been listening intently to this, and Binch said, 'How serious is this, Ruth? Is it likely to spread, become an epidemic?'

'We're not sure yet. It depends how many other cases turn up over the next two to three weeks.'

Chase begged to differ. 'Ruth, that's one hell of an understatement,' he protested. 'Dioxin is the most toxic substance known. One tablet the size of an aspirin can kill 350 people. If there's even the most minute leakage of a dioxin compound the risk is serious for everybody within a hundred miles.'

'You mean we could all be poisoned by this stuff?' Stella said, aghast. 'Why make something that's so highly dangerous? What on earth is it used for?'

'It isn't used for anything, that's the irony,' Chase said. 'Dioxin is simply a by-product in the manufacture of the herbicide 2,4,5-T. Its proper chemical name is tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin, or TCDD. There are seventy different dioxins but TCDD is the deadliest. One of the first symptoms of dioxin poisoning is cloracne, which is a particularly nasty skin complaint.' He looked at Ruth, his eyes clouding. 'What I can't understand is how you come to have three cases of cloracne when there's been a worldwide ban on the manufacture of 2,4,5-T since 1989. They can't still be using it on farmland around here.'

'The big combines aren't, because we've checked up on them.' Ruth told him. 'But there are hundreds of smaller farms and thousands of people with plots of land, and it's going to take months to carry out a complete investigation and pinpoint the source.'

There was something that didn't quite fit, an inconsistency that Chase couldn't put his finger on. Cloracne was a symptom of dioxin poisoning, which in turn pointed to 2,4,5-T. That part made sense. What didn't?

'Could be a leak from a chemical plant,' Frank Kollar suggested.

'No, we thought of that,' Ruth said. 'The nearest chemical plant is two hundred and fifty miles away, and 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 guys 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 abruptly, realizing what Binch had just said. Of course! 2,4,5-T was used as a defoliant in Vietnam because it checked the growth of broad-leaved plants in jungles and forests; it had little effect on the narrow-leaved grasses