'How could it?' Cheryl said impatiently, chewing on a piece of steak and swallowing it. 'They'd never have let it through. Besides, it would be far too dangerous.' She took a drink of water, ice cubes clinking in the tall glass. 'But I know Boris and I
'That was weeks ago, almost three months, and you haven't heard anything since.'
'That's what worries me. I wrote back at once--just acknowledging his letter, that's all--and haven't heard another word.' She dug into another piece of steak.
They were in the Scripps cafeteria eating a late lunch among tables that bore the debris of several hundred people, now departed. Cleaners moved methodically along the aisles pushing rubber-wheeled trolleys that reminded Chase of stainless-steel coffins.
The scrape and clatter made it difficult to concentrate, though Cheryl seemed not to notice. It was four years since their last meeting. At that time she was still suffering the loss of her father, grief that was churned up with anger because in bland police jargon 'Vehicle unknown, Driver unknown' had been responsible for the so-called accident.
Wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, Chase said, 'You could be right, but you'll admit it's pure conjecture until you hear anything more.'
'What if I don't hear?'
'Then you don't. Perhaps he
Cheryl pushed her plate away and toyed with a dessert spoon. 'It really gets to me. This damn world is full of closed doors. You bust through one and, boy, there's another--locked and barred and plastered with no entry signs.'
'We all suffer from that,' said Chase with some feeling.
Cheryl raised her eyes. 'You too?'
He told her about his meeting with Bill Inchcape at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and of the classified predictions that DELFI was supplying to ASP in Washington.
'What's ASP?' Cheryl asked.
'One of these cloak-and-dagger organizations at the Pentagon. Advanced Strategic Projects, which is a handy catchall title meaning almost anything. I got the impression that Bill Inchcape was reluctant even to mention it. It isn't supposed to exist.'
'It's a new one on me.'
They left the cafeteria and strolled in the sunshine down to the long concrete arm of the pier jutting out into the ocean.
'It's good to see you again, Gavin,' Cheryl said, taking his arm. 'How's Dan?'
'He's fine. At the moment he's exploring the difference between the sexes.'
'At six years old?'
'Well, he's a late developer.'
Cheryl laughed, squeezing his arm. He imagined her for a moment as a schoolgirl: blond pigtails, wide blue eyes, snub nose, and drenched with freckles. Maybe the American habit for braces was vindicated after all, he thought, in her bright perfect smile. But there were underlying changes he hadn't seen before, not so much in her physical appearance as in a hardening of her attitude, her old cynicism now edged with despair.
Cheryl's office was in the glass-walled annex of the marine biology division, set among lawns and shrubs and gravel paths. Much of her work these days was concerned with evaluation of data for the Marine Life Research Group, whose main function was to record low-frequency fluctuations in the ocean currents. Not only did these affect the growth and distribution of marine life, but their dynamics played an important role in determining the atmospheric climate, particularly in the Pacific Basin.
'Every little bit adds to our picture of the biosphere,' Cheryl said. 'I divide my time between the research I'm required to do for Scripps and compiling information on the oxygen deficit.'
She pointed and Chase swiveled in his chair to look at a chart, black-painted words on a glossy white board, which took up most of one wall. It was headed 'Oxygen Balance Sheet.' He studied it for several minutes.
He swung back to face her, shaking his head. 'It's going to need something cataclysmic, like the Tokyo Alert on a global scale, to convince people that it's really going to happen. The trouble is that on the human time scale the process is hardly discernible. It's just creeping up on us day by day, until one day we reach the point of no return.'
'The creeping pace could turn into a gallop,' Cheryl said. 'As our friend over there discovered.'
On the window ledge stood a two-foot-high model of
She was referring to the theory put forward by Drs. Luis and Walter Alvarez that the dinosaurs were wiped out in just a few short years, possibly less than twenty. It had always been assumed that the extinction of such a powerful and dominant species, which had existed for 150 million years, would take many thousands of years, but now it was believed that toward the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago, an asteroid several kilometers in diameter had hit the earth and the impact had thrown up a mantle of dust that completely shrouded the planet. Over five or six years the dust had filtered down and the atmosphere gradually became clear again. But during that short time sunlight was prevented from reaching the surface, with the result that photosynthesis was impeded. No photosynthesis, no plant life. So the animals that fed off the plants starved and died, and the animals that fed off those animals starved and died, and so on up the food chain. Within a very short space of time three quarters of the earth's species had been wiped out.
'But the dinosaurs died of starvation, not oxygen deficiency,' Chase pointed out.
'It isn't what they died of that's important,' Cheryl said, 'but how quickly it happened. One minute they were there, the next--' She snapped her fingers. 'It could happen just as quickly to us, in twenty years, ten, even five.'
'I wonder if that's how it's going to be. We go merrily on our way, ignoring the poisoned oceans, the polluted air, the acid rain, the disappearing wildlife, until we wake up one morning gasping for air.'
'We're balancing on a knife-edge right this minute. The net difference between the production and consumption of oxygen is only one part in ten thousand and we're burning up millions of tons of oxygen every year, as well as destroying the greenery and marine organisms that produce it. One part in ten thousand,' she repeated ominously. 'Precious little to be putting in the bank when we're already deep in the red.'
Chase mulled this over. 'It wouldn't need much to push us over the edge, would it? A marginal shift in any one of these factors on your balance sheet would be enough, by accident or design.'
'By design?' Cheryl frowned at him. 'What do you mean?'
'What do you know about dioxin?'
'By-product in the manufacture of 2,4,5-T, The Environmental Protection Agency banned it years ago.'
'It seems not everyone's obeying the ban. I met a doctor in Colorado last week, Dr. Ruth Patton, who's investigating several cases of cloracne. Only one thing causes cloracne as far as I know, and that's dioxin poisoning.'
'Has she found the source?' 'Dr. Patton thinks some of the local farmers are using up old stocks of 2,4,5-T, but I don't agree. It's the wrong type of herbicide for the grasslands in that area.'
Cheryl was leaning forward, elbows propped on the desk, watching him narrowly as a detective might watch a slippery customer. She said slowly, 'Maybe I'm dumb, but I'm not following this. What has dioxin poisoning got to do with somebody deliberately tampering with the biosphere? That's what you were suggesting, isn't it?'
Chase nodded.
'Sorry, I don't see the connection.'
'The connection is simple. If Dr. Patton's diagnosis is correct it means that someone is either manufacturing 2,4,5-T or using it in the area. Suppose the application is military? There are experimental missile installations near Denver, so that's a feasible assumption--'
'If somewhat unlikely.'
'Why? The military have used it before to defoliate jungles; why couldn't they be using it now for some other purpose?'
