Last Gasp

'This comsat doesn't have it.'

'Wonderful. What's the depth of the ocean hereabouts?'

'Pretty shallow, less than three thousand feet. It's the Melanesian area, bordered by the Coral Sea and the South Fiji Basin. Hell of a size, over four thousand square miles.'

'Any eye-sightings to confirm these?' Binch offered cigarettes, which the other refused, and lit one himself.

'No reports so far, but then all three are some distance from land. And whatever they are, they could be below the surface and therefore not visible at sea level.' The young man perched himself on the corner of the desk, his pleasant boyish face set in a perplexed frown. 'Any ideas, Binch?'

Binch stared at the prints scattered across the desk. Droughts. Floods. Fuzzy dark patches in the western Pacific. Were these the signs he was looking for? He was reluctant to think they might be--and even more reluctant to admit that DELFI wasn't mistaken.

What if the human race had sown the wind and was about to reap the whirlwind? A whirlwind devoid of oxygen?

Dear God, what if DELFI was right?

Elaine Krantz came drowsily awake in the hot pressing darkness. For one horrific moment she thought she was suffocating.

By her side in the double bunk her husband, Jay, slept soundly, his faint snoring oddly muffled in the small airless cabin of the thirty-eight-foot fiberglass sloop Seabird. After several weeks at sea she was accustomed to the sound and found it comforting.

Boy, it was stifling! The wind must have dropped altogether, she decided, moving her tanned legs from beneath the single sheet. There were times, even now, when she reckoned she must have been crazy to agree to the trip. Jay had called it their 'honeymoon adventure'--and adventure it was, all right. Tossed about in a plastic eggcup, drenched with spray, stung by wind, and baked crisp under a pitiless Pacific sun. Now that she'd endured her baptism at sea, though, she felt rather proud and just that bit superior. Starting out by detesting the little craft, she'd come to love every inch of it, and endeavored to keep the cabin and tiny galley as neat and shiny as if it were her first home.

From Fanning Island, almost on the equator, they had sailed to Pago Pago in the Samoan group, then Neiafu, Suva, and Vila, island-hopping through the Fijis and New Hebrides. They were now on the last lap, having left Honiara three days before, and with Malaita less than twenty-four hours away, given a good breeze.

Though there wasn't a whisper of air tonight, much less a decent breeze. And that was strange, Elaine thought, cocking her head--she couldn't even hear the familiar swish and gurgle of water against the hull.

Careful not to disturb her husband, she slipped down from the bunk and padded naked to the companionway, so sure of her bearings that she put her hand unerringly 011 the rope handrail in the pitch-blackness and hauled herself on deck.

The stench hit her in the stomach.

She caught her breath, gagged, and screwed up her face as she fought back the nausea in her chest. In the next instant even this discomfort was forgotten as she looked around at what should have been a boundless expanse of ocean glittering in the moonlight. There was no ocean. Only a dark reddish solid unmoving mass as far as the horizon, absolutely still and silent. Seabird was stuck in the middle of it like a fly in molasses.

Elaine yelled for her husband, filling her mouth and nostrils with the evil smell. As he tumbled onto the small square of afterdeck Jay stubbed his toe and cursed, but the word was smothered in silence as he took his first foul breath and saw the motionless quagmire surrounding them.

Under the purple dome of the night sky the silence and stillness were eerie.

'It's some kind of weed,' Jay grunted, leaning over the stern and scooping up a soggy handful. 'Jesus, what a smell!'

'But where's it from?' Elaine wanted to know. 'It must stretch for miles.'

Jay squatted on his haunches, sun-bleached hair silvery in the moonlight. 'Could be dead kelp,' he said thoughtfully, 'just drifting along with the current. The Sargasso Sea is supposed to be like this, though I've never seen it.'

'That's in the Atlantic, isn't it?'

Jay nodded. 'There's nothing marked on the charts, no banks of weed. I'd have noticed it,' he said. 'And they didn't warn us about anything like this back at Honiara. Must have just . . . appeared, I guess.' He shrugged.

'What are we going to do?' Elaine asked, a slight tremor in her voice. Her old fear of the mysterious, unknown sea came back, the fear she thought had been conquered and left far behind. They were in the middle of nowhere, helpless and alone. The realization made her shiver, in spite of the heat, and a spasm of dizziness swept over her.

'Elaine, what is it?' Jay was by her side, supporting her. He moved some equipment and helped her sit down.

'A bit faint, that's all.' She managed a weak smile. 'Phew! Thought I was going to pass out. There's no air. It's so oppressive.' Jay too, she noticed, was panting slightly, as if he couldn't quite catch his breath. What was happening to them? Her throat felt tight and small.

'It's probably the smell,' Jay said. 'Rotting vegetation.' His bare body was running with sweat. He gazed around at the solid carpet stretching away on every side. 'We daren't risk the engine, the propeller would be fouled in seconds. I guess there's nothing we can do except wait until daylight. Maybe it'll have drifted on by then.'

'But if we're drifting with it . . .' Elaine said.

'Yeah. Well, nothing for it, honey, but to wait and see.' He put his arm around her, but his skin felt clammy, like the physical manifestation of her own fear, and Elaine didn't feel comforted.

Jay found a grin to cheer her. 'Don't worry, it'll be okay.' But when he tried to laugh it came out a hoarse choking sound, like the gasp of a dying man.

2008

14

The man, woman, and boy strolled along the broad strip of dazzling white sand. They wore face masks and bright-orange compressed-air cylinders slung on their backs. The line of empty-eyed concrete towers on their left had once been busy tourist hotels, but they were now derelict and vandalized; had been for several years since Miami Beach was evacuated.

The 'sea' moved hardly at all. From its scummy cracked surface bubbles of methane and sulfur belched into the mix of gases that had become the unbreathable atmosphere at the tip of southern Florida.

Chase stepped over a heap of decaying seaweed that straggled along the beach as far as the eye could see and held out his hand to steady Cheryl. The slim sixteen-year-old boy, almost as tall as his father, leaped over it and bounded up the shallow slope of sand, not even breathing hard. 'You came here before, didn't you, when it was a holiday resort?' Dan asked.

'Yes, just once, the year before you were born. Your mother and I drove down from New York and stayed for three days.' Chase grinned at his son through the curved faceplate. 'Come to think of it, you were probably conceived here.'

'What?' Dan gazed around in disgust, wrinkling his nose. 'I hope not. Not here.'

Chase studied the row of concrete hulks and pointed one out. 'There, that one. Twelfth floor, Holiday Inn, Collins and Twenty-second Street.'

'Are you putting me on?'

'That's where we stayed right enough--though I can't vouch for the conception theory.' Chase winked at Cheryl as they walked arm in arm up the slope, their protective PVC coveralls crackling and rasping from the friction.

'Do you think anyone still lives here?' Dan asked curiously. His thick black hair sprouted in clumps through the masks nylon webbing.

'I don't see how they can, do you? This part of Florida and the states bordering the Gulf have been designated Official Devastated Areas. They say that pollution in the Gulf is even worse than on this coast.'

'I wanted to visit New Orleans,' Dan sighed. 'I suppose there's no chance of that, is there?'