Last Gasp

if you want a serious debate--'

'Yes, of course I do,' said Claudia Kane, completely unruffled. She flicked back a stray lock of silver-tinted hair with a red-clawed hand. 'So what I'd like to ask you, Dr. Chase, is what you see as the prime motivation behind the Earth Foundation movement. Is it basically a plea to common sense?'

Chase smiled. 'We don't aim for the impossible. No, the idea originally was to unite those people who share a common belief, a common hope. Perhaps 'unite' is too forceful a word, because the movement doesn't exist in any formal or organized sense. It's more a commitment to a philosophy--to the feeling, the emotion if you like, of what it is to be just one form of life coexisting peacefully and in harmony with all the other forms of life that share this planet with us.'

Claudia Kane nodded, watching his mouth. 'That has almost the sound of a religious belief.'

Chase said lightly, 'If it is, it's pantheistic.'

'In the sense that you identify God with the universe, as one and the same thing,' said Claudia Kane, quick to demonstrate that she hadn't got the job on the strength of her pearly smile and chest measurement.

'Though we don't visit Stonehenge in robes and sandals at the summer solstice, predict the future from chicken entrails, or read fortunes in teacups.'

'Is it true that the movement has over two million followers throughout the world?'

'Not followers,' Chase corrected her. 'Two million people who subscribe to the beliefs I've just mentioned.'

'Over a hundred thousand of them in Japan,' said Hanamura. 'My country has sound historical reasons for wishing to foster those ideals.'

'So anyone and everyone is free to join,' Claudia Kane said, keeping the focus on Chase.

'Yes. If they share our beliefs.'

'I think a great many people do. And I'm sure many more will in the future.'

The recording lasted an hour. It would be edited down to twenty-three minutes for transmission. Chase had lost count of the TV and radio shows he'd taken part in. Sometimes it seemed like a mad, mindless merry-go-round; endless talk and very little action. Not that he undervalued the concern shown by people wherever he went--Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, South America, the United States--not at all. Yet more and more he was beginning to wonder what good it did for 'experts' like Lucas, Hanamura and himself to sit around endlessly discussing the environmental crisis. The form was always the same. They agreed that things were getting worse. They disagreed about what could, should, be done to put them right. They agreed that something ought to be done, because in five, ten, twenty, or fifty years from now it would be too late.

There were many times when he brooded about what, ultimately, his book had achieved. When it was published there had been extravagant claims that it had actually averted an all-out environmental war. Chase didn't think so, not for an instant. No, he'd merely blown the whistle when the game was already over. By the time the book appeared it was transparently clear to everyone--even the American and Russian military--that the atmosphere and oceans were already rapidly deteriorating, and that for the superpowers to continue with their environmental war plans was akin to putting a pillow over a sick man's face when he was gasping for breath and didn't have long to live anyway.

In the section of the book entitled 'The Suicide Pact,' Chase had revealed these secret war plans, based on the DEPARTMENT STORE dossier and the information supplied by Boris Stanovnik. It had been this revelation, rather than the broader (and, to Chase, the more important) theme of global decline that had assured One Minute to Midnight of its international best-seller status.

For the truth was that most people still had a naive and misplaced faith in mankind's immortality. They refused to accept that during the earth's 4.6-billion-year evolution something like 80 percent of the species had been wiped out, and that man had no God-given right to survive when so many other life-forms had failed. There was now a distinct possibility that man would become just one more failed biological experiment to add to the list.

This realization, and the despair that went with it, had led to the idea of the movement that became known as Earth Foundation.

Chase traveled everywhere, as founder and nominal head of the movement, giving what advice, support, and encouragement he could.

Because there were no guidelines laid down, each group had its own conception of its role and objectives. Some groups--like the one he had recently visited in Griffin, Georgia--had formed themselves into self-sufficient communes. Other groups worked at developing an alternative technology, using sun, sea, and wind power in place of fossil fuels. Groups had sprung up in universities and colleges--Stanford, Cal-Tech, Johns Hopkins, MIT among many others--with the aim of finding solutions to the difficult and complex problems confronting a highly developed technological society that was attempting to slow down rather than speed up its rate of growth.

There were even some groups with a religious, mystical tinge to them, which Chase saw no reason to discourage. They were free to choose, to aspire to the shared ideal in whatever way they thought appropriate.

During the last eight years that he and Cheryl had devoted themselves to Earth Foundation, the movement had grown, had become a respected voice in the ecological debate . . . and yet, what were its achievements? Or more to the point, its failings? Official Devastated Areas girdled the equator, widening, spreading outward like a poisonous belt choking the planet. Large areas of the ocean were crusted over or choked with weed. Starvation had wiped out millions in India, Africa, Asia, and South America. And perhaps more ominously, measurements with sensitive instruments were beginning to show a fall in the oxygen content of the atmosphere. Only fractionally, and in isolated instances, but a fall nonetheless.

Yes, Chase thought, a great record. Bravo! Give the man a Nobel Prize.

And while all this was going on, what was he doing? Sitting in an air-conditioned television studio in Washington, D.C. Talking. Talking. Talking.

Endlessly Talking.

Afterward, in the bar, Claudia Kane said, 'I think it went splendidly, don't you?'

Splendidly seemed such an odd choice of word that Chase wondered if she'd used it as a concession to his being English. He'd done the same thing himself with swell and sure when talking to Americans. What was it, a desire to merge with the local fauna, a wish to be accepted?

Lucas turned to him. 'I read your piece on Calcutta in the Herald-Tribune. Five hundred suicides a day. That's terrible.'

'The situation's even worse in Bangkok,' Chase said. 'Twenty-five million people, more than half of them living without water or adequate sanitation. It's one huge refugee camp.'

'No sealed enclosures?' Hanamura said.

'Government buildings and the business sector are sealed, but the streets are open to the air. People drop down on the pavement and literally choke to death.'

Claudia Kane shuddered and swirled the whiskey in her glass. 'That's my idea of hell on earth.'

'That's exactly what it is,' Chase said gravely. 'If you can imagine an updated version of Dante's Inferno, that's it all right.'

'Do you have any plans to visit Japan?' Hanamura asked.

'Not at the moment. I was there last year for six weeks on a lecture tour. Those new measures you've introduced seem to be having an effect. It's an encouraging sign.'

Hanamura nodded agreement. 'At long last our politicians are waking up. They've passed legislation to limit population and the decentralization policy is being implemented. The big stumbling block is industry. Trying to break down the tradition of paternalism is very difficult.'

'At least you've got sixty percent nuclear power, which is a real achievement in curbing atmospheric pollution,' Chase said. 'In Britain it's less than twenty percent.'

'Ah,' said Hanamura, nodding sagely. 'But Britain has reverted to cottage industry.'

Whether he regarded this as being to Japan's advantage or not, Chase couldn't tell. 'You mean souvenir rubbish suppliers to the world --cardboard Big Bens and plastic busts of the king and queen. It's turning into a bargain-basement historical joke shop.'

Lucas was interested to know what Frank Hanamura was working on, and the tall elegant Japanese gave an enigmatic smile. 'A pet project of mine. I've been trying to get it funded for the last five years, but I suspect they