Timescape

holes.

The forecasting methodologists had paled and turned away.

When he was a boy he had watched the National Geographic programs on TV and come to think of the almost mythic beasts in Africa as distant friends, playing on the horizon of the world. Lions, vast and lazy. Giraffes, their stiff-necked lope taking them teetering into the distance. He’d had a boy’s dreamy love of them. Now they were nearly gone. He had learned a lesson there, in Africa. Soon there would be nothing bigger than a man on the planet that was not already a client, a housepet. Without the giants mankind would be alone with the rats and the cockroaches. Worse, perhaps, he would be alone with himself. This fuzzy issue had not occupied the futurologists. They cluckclucked over butter mountains here versus starvation there, and supplied their own recipes. They loved their theories more than the world. Forrester, rattling his numerical fantasies like beads; Heilbroner, urging mankind into a jail so they all could be sure of eating; Tinbergen, who thought one good crisis would shape us up; Kosolapov, whose Marxist optimism sat waiting patiently for the hacksaw of history to cut away capitalism, as though poverty were civilization’s headcold, not a disease; his opposites, the followers of Kahn, with cocky assurance that a few wars and some starving wouldn’t get in the way of higher per capita income; Schumacher’s disciple, with his shy faith that the hydrocarbon cartels would decide cottage industries were best after all; and Remuloto, the Third Industrial Revolutionist, seeing salvation in our starry satellites.

Peterson remembered with a smile that the US Department of the Interior had made a thorough prediction of trends in 1937, and had missed atomic energy, computers, radar, antibiotics, and World War II. Yet they all kept on, with this simple-minded linear extrapolation that was, despite a bank of computers to refine the numbers, still merely a new way to be stupid in an expensive fashion. And they were filled with recipes. Order up more fellow- feeling, y’see, and we’ll do better. To survive now Man had to be more patient, preferring long-range rational solutions to global problems, while suspending his nasty old irrational demands for short-range local fixes. They all wished some Lockeian dream of the future, a natural law which set forth human rights and human obligations simultaneously. An unwritten law, but reachable by reason. A mythology of stoic endurance would do the job, get us through the pinch. But who had one for sale? The secular faith in the technological fix had trickled away into astrology and worse. Jefferson’s descendants were sucking up whatever liberties they could and leaving for posterity a used-up garbage dump. Au revoir, Etats-Unis! Check your beclouded vision at the door. Peterson glanced at the one item on his wall that was out of place, a century-old sampler:

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite
One truth is clear: whatever is, is right.

He laughed as the telephone rang. “Hello, Ian?” Kiefer’s voice was thin and reedy. “Happy to hear from you,” he said with artificial friendliness.

“I don’t think you’ll be so happy in a minute.”

“Oh?” Kiefer had not responded with the expected jovial banter that usually opened executive conversations.

“We’ve turned up the underlying process in that diatom bloom.”

“Good, then you can rectify it.”

“Eventually, yeah. Problem is, it’s a runaway. The process enters a phase where it can take the jacket of the plankton and change that material into the original pesticide-based molecules.”

Peterson sat very still and thought. “Like a religious movement,” he said to have something to say.

“Huh?”

“Turns heathen into apostles.”

“Well… yeah. Point is, that’s what makes it spread so fast. Never seen anything like it. It’s got a lot of the lab guys worried.”

“Can’t they find an… antidote?”

“In time, probably. Trouble is, we haven’t got much time. This is an exponential process.”

“How much time?”

“Months. Months to spread to the other oceans.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. Look, I don’t know how much pull you’ve, got there, but I’d like this result taken right to the top.”

“I’ll do that, certainly.”

“Good. I’ve got a technical report on LogEx right now. I’ll transmit it on key, okay?”

“Right. Here, I’m receiving.”

“Good. Here it comes.”

•  •  •

It was Sir Martin who saw the connection. There was very little transfer of vapor from the ocean’s surface into cloud formation. But suppose the impurity in the bloom could convert the cellular jackets of living microorganisms into itself. Then a trivial amount of the stuff, given time, could spread through a cloud. Transport through the air was quick. Certainly it was much faster than through contact at the biological interface, at the working surface between the bloom and the living sea.

•  •  •

Peterson made his way into the twilight that prevailed inside the restaurant. Or at least it called itself a restaurant; all he could see was people sitting on the floor. Incense curled into his nostrils, making him want to sneeze.

“Ian! Over here!”

Laura’s voice came from somewhere to the left. He felt his way along until he could make her out, sitting on pillows and sucking something milky through a straw. Oriental music drifted through the room. He’d known as soon as he set out that it was a mistake to meet some girl he’d had it off with, simply because she was going through some sort of crisis. The California news and the stir it was causing in the Council had kept him pinned to his desk throughout the night. The technical types were hysterical. Some senior people wrote off that fact, on the grounds that the technical people had been fairly alarmed before, and were proved wrong. This time Peterson was not so sure that that easy logic made sense.

“Hello. I really would have preferred to meet you at my club. I mean, this is quite all right, but—”

“Oh no, Ian, I wanted to see you in a place I knew. Not some stuffy men’s club.”

“It’s really very pleasant, not stuffy at all. We can go round and have a light supper—”

“I wanted to show you where I’m working, though.”

“You work here?” He looked round incredulously.

“It’s my day off, of course. But it’s a job, and a blow for independence!”

“Oh. Independence.”

“Yes, it’s exactly what you told me to do. Remember? I’ve moved out on my parents. Quit Bowes & Bowes, and come to London. And got a job. Next week, I’ll start acting classes.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s very good.”

A waiter materialized out of the gloom. “Would you like to order, sir?”

“Ah, yes. Whisky. And some food, I suppose.”

“They have great curries.”

“Beef, then.”

“I am sorry, sir, we have no meat dishes.”

“No bloody meat?”

“This is a vegetarian restaurant, Ian. Really tasty. It’s fresh, brought in every day. Do try it.”