Charon's Landing (4 page)

The woman stood, strands of her hair escaping from under a red bandanna. Despite the oppressive heat in the hall, she wore a shapeless bush jacket over a dark T-shirt. Mercer couldn’t really make out any details of her face as she continued her desultory applause, but there was something compelling about her posture, an undercurrent of poise and confidence that her shabby clothes couldn’t hide.

“These stories are all very interesting, Dr. Mercer, quite entertaining actually, but you brag about your accomplishments with the evil candor of some Nazi scientist discussing the results of his genocidal experiments. I wonder how you sleep at night?”

Her comment surprised Mercer, but it wasn’t the words that made him pause, it was the voice. He knew immediately she wasn’t a student; she possessed a mature woman’s voice. It had a certain music to it, a timbre and catch on certain letters that made it one of the most captivating he’d ever heard, despite the accusatory tone. It took him several heartbeats to respond, “I’m sorry, but what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your lack of concern for what you’ve done to our planet. I’m talking about your defilement of something that you do not possess. I’m talking about your rape of the earth.”

Here we go again, he thought.

“You’ve stood up there for the past hour and told us about how wonderful and beneficial mining is to mankind without once addressing the toll that has been paid by the earth. The damage that you and others like you have caused is irreparable. Our world is permanently scarred by what you’ve done, and you don’t seem the slightest bit guilty. In fact, you’re proud of your achievements. Mankind was not put on this planet to exploit its natural resources, but to live in harmony with them. The wanton destruction you freely admit to has to stop, now.

“You’ve talked about the benefits of technological advances that have made strip mining and other activities so simple, but you don’t talk about the other advances at all. Why don’t you tell us about cyanide filtration used in modern gold mining. Tell us about the 129 million dollars needed to clean up the Summitville disaster. Tell us about the seventy billion dollars needed to clean up the other ecological disasters left by greedy mining corporations. Go ahead, tell us.”

Mercer let her challenge hang in the air. He had no defense, for what she’d said was correct. Summitville was currently costing the federal government thirty thousand dollars a day, and even that money was only a temporary cure for the worst mining disaster ever on U.S. soil. Galactic Mining, a firm in southern Colorado, had been using cyanide to pick out microscopic particles of gold from ore spread on huge plastic sheets. Hasty construction of the extraction pads led to a leak that leached raw cyanide into the groundwater. No deaths had resulted from the accident, but the surrounding land was effectively dead for years to come. He didn’t want to mention that her estimate for cleaning the other mining sites on the Super-fund list was much too low.

“You seem better informed than most undergrads,” Mercer said.

“I’m not a student. I’m a member of the Planetary Environment Action League. I came here today because I knew that you would only present your side of the issue and I felt it necessary to let these students know of the destruction you’ve caused.”

“What’s your name?” Mercer asked.

“That is none of your concern,” she responded sharply.

“You sit there in anonymity and hold me personally responsible for an act that I had nothing to do with.” Mercer laughed, a quick bark that defused the tension that had swelled in the room. “By mentioning Summitville, you’re trying to lump every mining company in with one that was grossly negligent. I’m sorry, but that kind of emotional plea doesn’t wash. Nor does your call for us to live in harmony with nature. Is nature harmonious with us when she sends hurricanes into the Caribbean that wipe out whole villages or chokes thousands of people under walls of mud when the heavy rains come to Central America? The answer is no.”

Normally Mercer wouldn’t allow himself to be drawn into this type of confrontation, but today he couldn’t stop himself. With the debate over Alaska’s Wildlife Refuge raging all over the country and with so much emotionalism spent on the issue, he felt he had to present a voice of reason, if only to this audience.

“We fight nature as surely as she fights us. For every foot of ground we gain, she takes back two. Ask the survivors of the Kobe earthquake about it sometime. I’m sorry if you still don’t realize that all life is a struggle. From the time of our crushing births until our last gasping breaths, we fight for what we want. Some of it may come easy and some may come hard or not at all, but we continue to fight. The nature you are so willing to defend has forced us to evolve that way.

“Your way of thinking is so self-indulgent and self-centered that it’s laughable. It must be nice to be so comfortable that you can afford to be guilty about that comfort. Ask a miner in Africa if he cares that what he’s doing might affect the world for his children and he’ll tell you that if he didn’t do it, he wouldn’t have any children.

“Every animal extracts a price from nature for its existence, but it’s only humans who have an inbred sense of guilt for it. To disconnect man from the nature that created him is egotistical to the point of hubris. Evolution is the most awesome force ever to exist. Right now we are at the top of its chain, but like the dinosaurs, we aren’t meant to stay there forever. When nature no longer believes that the big brain of
Homo sapiens
is the key to survival on the planet, she’ll do away with us. It’s been tried before. Cholera, tuberculosis, and the plague nearly wiped us out, but we adapted, changed our behavior, stopped living in the filth that bred such diseases. Today, what is AIDS teaching us? In what evolutionary direction will this modern killer push us? Nature is producing viruses faster than we’re able to cure them. This is a direct competition between our brains and natural selection. By denying us our right to use our minds and to use the resources we are able to exploit, you’re trying to stop the natural progression of our species. And you accuse me of going against nature’s wishes. I advise you to take a good look at evolution and tell me who is more in concert with nature, a person who is working with natural evolution or someone who is denying that its forces continue today. Do you think a locust swarm is concerned with the destruction it leaves behind? Why do humans, the most intelligent species ever to exist, try to deny what is natural to every other creature on the planet?”

“Are you saying we are nothing more than an insect infestation?”

“To the earth and on the geologic scale in which it exists, yes, that is exactly what I’m saying. I deal with a time line that stretches billions of years while you limit yourself to your own insignificant life span. To the planet, we are one in a long line of dominant creatures and we will be usurped.” Mercer paused and shifted tack.

“I don’t deny that man has the responsibility to husband nature’s resources, to protect them for our future, but that does not mean that we must stop using them altogether, which I suppose is the goal of your organization. PEAL and other environmental groups see every issue as a double-sided coin, black or white, right or wrong, exploit or protect. But there’s a third side of the coin, its thin edge that we call compromise. I may not like it and you may not like it, but that’s the way it is.

“As we speak, the most controversial compromise in environmental history is being played out in northern Alaska. For the sake of a few thousand square acres of land, the United States may free itself from the smog that has choked our cities for generations and end our dependence on fossil fuels forever. Is the price high? Absolutely. I’ve seen the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. It’s one of the most spectacular places on the planet. But if its use means that future generations won’t have to live with acid rain or high levels of carbon monoxide or gaping holes in the ozone layer, then I believe it’s justified.

“I’m sorry if you don’t like it. I would just as soon see it left alone too, but that’s the nature of compromise. At some point in your life, when you’re not so sure that you’re right all the time, you’ll understand what I mean.”

Mercer broke eye contact with the woman and surveyed the attentive looks of the students. They were rapt by the exchange. He smiled self-consciously, embarrassed at his long-winded soliloquy. “Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your time and attention. Dr. Snyder has some amendments to your syllabi before class is dismissed.”

The applause was genuine and enthusiastic as Mercer gathered the notes he never needed. Just before he turned from the lectern, he caught the eye of the young woman again. She threw him a saucy smile, as if to say round one to you, but the fight will continue.

H
oward Small stepped off the Boeing with an expectancy he hadn’t felt since college. He’d spent four more days in Alaska with his cousin before returning home, and he was expected back up at the test site in a week. This short stay in Los Angeles was due to a prior commitment he could not avoid. While he was physically unimposing, just over five foot six with a slight frame and a prematurely hairless skull, the crowds at LAX seemed to open before his eager charge. Within the briefcase swinging carelessly from his hand were the final test data from the mini-mole. The information, while signifying a technological breakthrough, also represented a great deal of money. Once the patents were filed, Howard and his UCLA team were going to be wealthy. He smiled to himself as he walked along the crowded corridor.

His buoyant mood carried him through the hassle of collecting his suitcases from the carousel, allowing him to ignore being jostled by countless others who believed that rushing the process would somehow give them an advantage getting out of the airport.

With his valise under one arm, a case in the other, and his larger piece of luggage rolling behind him like a disobedient dog, Howard turned to the terminal’s exits and the Southern California night beyond. Had the uniformed limousine driver not chosen that moment to cough, Howard would have missed the man holding a signboard with his name on it. He approached the dark-complected chauffeur warily.

“I’m Professor Small,” he said.

“Ah, very good, sir,” the driver responded. “Let me assist you with your baggage.”

“But wait.” Howard refused to give up his grip on the luggage. “I wasn’t expecting a car. Are you sure you are waiting for me?”

“I was told to pick up a Dr. Howard Small arriving from Anchorage, Alaska.” The driver sounded like he hadn’t been in the country long.

“Any idea who hired you?”

“No, sir.”

Howard laughed to himself and spoke more for his own benefit than that of the taciturn driver. His confusion had turned to delight. “Must be the guys at the lab already spending their share of our profits.”

He turned over his two large cases and followed the driver into the night. In the glare of the airport’s loading ramp, a black limo glistened like a panther amid the battered taxis. The driver used a keyless entry system to unlock the doors, opening a rear one for Howard before securing the luggage in the trunk. The luxury vehicle glided smoothly from the curb before Howard could get himself comfortably settled in the plush interior. The inside of the car smelled of carpet cleaner and Armor All.

“You have my address in Glendora?” Howard asked through the intercom system. The dividing screen between the two compartments of the vehicle was up and Howard could not seem to lower it.

“Yes, sir,” came the quick response, and the intercom went dead.

Since conversation with the Arab driver was out of the question, Howard contemplated helping himself to a drink from the minibar but realized he’d done more drinking in the past week with Mercer than in his entire life. He thought it wise to give his body a rest for a while. Howard chuckled again. He’d had six hangovers in seven days, and not once had Mercer shown any ill effects from the alcohol they’d consumed. The man’s guts were harder than the rocks he mined.

It took more than an hour to reach the quiet development north of Los Angeles where Howard owned a modest bungalow. Between the drone of the limo’s tires, the mesmerizing lights of other vehicles, and the occasional mutterings of the driver to his dispatcher, Howard was lulled to sleep, waking only as the car pulled into his development.

Howard’s home was third from the end of a cul-de-sac butting against one of Los Angeles’ increasingly rare patches of woodland. It was a little past ten, yet the street was quiet and dark, the only light coming from street lamps and the occasional porch fixture. The limo pulled unerringly up to Howard Small’s yellow and red one-story house. The driver’s familiarity with the neighborhood should have alerted Howard, but he failed to notice it.

He stepped out of the car and looked up the street, hoping a neighbor would see him with the stretch limo, but even Mrs. Potter, who seemed to always be walking her dachshund, was tucked in for the night. The driver too scanned the street, his eyes sweeping the area with military efficiency. He recovered the bags from the trunk and followed Howard up the driveway, past the scientist’s decade-old Honda. At the door, Howard fumbled with his keys while pulling a ten-dollar bill from his pants as a tip. He turned the key in the lock and was just about to relieve the driver of the bags, when the man powered a shoulder into him, shoving him bodily into the house.

Howard fell to the carpeted floor, the wind knocked out of him. He lay wheezing as the driver dumped the suitcases in the entrance and banged the door closed with his hip. A silenced automatic was already in his hand, the weapon nearly lost in the man’s large fist. Before Howard could react, a living room light snapped on, revealing three other men, two more Arabs and a Caucasian with a silver crew cut and washed-out blue eyes. The two Arabs were standing, while the other man lolled in a soft overstuffed chair, a nearly empty glass in his hand. Even in this frozen tableau, Howard knew that the seated man was in charge and the most dangerous person he had ever seen.