Last Gasp (16 page)

Chase said diffidently, “I don’t question the validity of your research, Dr. Detrick, but frankly I find your prognosis hard to take. I don’t know the actual figure, but the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is immense—”

“1,140,000,000,000,000 tons,” Theo said.

“Surely that’s more than enough to meet our needs for the foreseeable—indeed, the unforeseeable—future? I assume that phytoplankton growth won’t cease altogether, so presumably the oxygen level will continue to be ‘topped up.’ And there are the green plants on land that supply a sizable proportion of oxygen, at least thirty percent.”

Theo sipped his drink, sunk for a moment in thought. “I take your point, Dr. Chase,” he said finally. “You are absolutely right to make it. But in considering the oxygen yield of the biosphere and whether it is sufficient for our long-term needs, there are two sides to the equation. Let us call them ‘profit and loss’ and draw up a global balance sheet.

“On the profit side we have an abundance of green plants, in the oceans and on land, which daily perform the miracle of photosynthesis, absorbing the rays of the sun and through the chlorophyll in bacteria producing energy that is used to break down water molecules into their component parts. The hydrogen thus released is combined with carbon to supply sugar for the plant’s own needs, while the oxygen is given off as a waste product.” Theo held up his fist, which shook slightly. “This process, far more complex than that taking place in a petrochemical plant—and, what’s more, happening inside a group of cells less than one billionth of an inch in diameter—is the unique factor that allows animal life to exist on this planet. Without it”—the fist flicked open to become a knife blade that sliced the air—“nothing!”

“I think it’s safe to assume that Dr. Chase is familiar with the miracle of photosynthesis,” Cheryl said mildly.

“Yes, yes, please forgive me.” Theo spread his hands in apology. “You must understand that this and little else has occupied my thoughts for a long time.” He eased back in the chair, his profile etched against the lamplight. “That, as I say, is the profit side of the equation. On the loss side we have the consumption of oxygen: every form of life that respirates, including man, and every kind of combustion process—power plants, factory furnaces, automobiles, aircraft, domestic boilers—everything in fact that bums fossil fuels.

“Now, it has been estimated, based on the most reliable sources available, that every year we consume between ten and fifteen percent of the free oxygen in the atmosphere. Until today that annual deficit has, as you point out, been ‘topped up’ by the photosynthetic activity of green plants.

“However, we must now take into account several new factors. First, the increase in world population, which by the year 2000 will be approximately six and a half billion. If we progress as we have been doing, this will mean more of everything—power plants, factories, cars, aircraft—all of which will demand more and more oxygen. Each year that ten to fifteen percent deficit will grow larger. Maybe that wouldn’t matter too much if the production of oxygen continued at its present rate; but when we look closely at the balance sheet we find that the profit side is getting more and more into the red.

“As well as the declining phytoplankton we’re also losing the world’s major forests. Deciduous forests have an oxygen-producing capacity one thousand times greater than the average land surface, and in the United States alone we cover an area the size of Rhode Island— five thousand square miles—with new roads and buildings every year.

“We all know about the great forests in South America, Southeast Asia, Borneo, New Zealand. They’re being destroyed at an alarming rate, but even more disastrously they’re being burned—which at a stroke turns that item on our balance sheet from profit to loss. Instead of being net
producers
of oxygen, the forests have become net consumers.” Theo looked at Chase, a tired smile plucking at the corner of his mouth. “I could go on, but I think you see my point.”

“Which is,” Boris put in somberly, “less profit, more loss. The equation does not balance. We consume more of what isn’t there no longer.”

The Russian, with his quaint English, had come up with a clumsy yet telling description, thought Chase. We consume more
of what isn't there no longer.

“Must the earth revert to its primordial atmosphere?” he wanted to know. “Isn’t there another possibility, another direction it might take?” Theo was prepared to admit he might be wrong, but added a killing rider: “I’ve tried to make the equation balance and found it impossible; believe me, Dr. Chase, I have tried.”

For all that man had done to the environment, the planet’s complex web of self-regulating mechanisms had always in the past managed to compensate for his use and abuse of natural resources. But that, as Chase now realized, was begging the question. Detrick wasn’t talking about what had happened in the
past
but of the earth’s ability to cope in
the future
—with all the additional burdens man was imposing on it year by year.

Boris drank some beer and said, “You were perfectly correct, Dr. Chase, to speak of the hugeness of our planet.” He smothered a belch and Chase raised his hand to hide a smile. Boris stared accusingly at his glass and went on, “In one year the volume of water recycled by evaporation is three hundred and eighty thousand cubic kilometers. In one year over one hundred thousand million tons of carbon dioxide are absorbed in the oceans and nearly two hundred thousand million tons are converted into plant material by photosynthesis. To recycle a single molecule of water from the ocean, via the atmosphere, through photosynthesis, and return it to water by animal respiration, takes two million years. The resources are enormous, yes, the processes incredibly complex, yes, but I am always reminded of something Buckminster Fuller once said. You remember, Theo?”

After a moment Theo nodded and said, “The steel ball.”

The Russian smiled and swiveled his shorn head toward Chase. “Fuller said that to get a true picture of the depth of the oceans, think of a steel ball the height of a man. Breathe on the surface of the steel ball and your condensed breath represents the average depth of the oceans. You see? While it is true that man lives on a planet that is vast in comparison with himself, he actually survives thanks to a thin layer of biosphere no more than twelve miles deep.”

Cheryl took Chase’s empty glass and went to make him a fresh drink. He watched her clunk the ice in and pour the whiskey while questions skittered through his mind. As she brought the drink to him, one question zinged out at a tangent and found expression. “This is happening because of the decline in phytoplankton. So what’s causing that?”

Theo Detrick roused himself. “Not one specific thing, but a combination of factors, some perhaps operating independently of the others. In my opinion—and it’s no more than that—the cause is linked to the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This could lead to a global increase in temperature, bringing warmer oceans, and the warmer the ocean the less phytoplankton is able to thrive. Another factor might be that photosynthetic activity is inhibited by higher temperatures.” He shrugged. “In short, Dr. Chase, I don’t really know.”

Seawater and carbon dioxide: the reason he was here in the first place. Chase could hardly bring himself to ask the question.

“If this is the cause, Dr. Detrick, how would we know? What are the signs to look for?”

Theo nodded at Boris. “Let’s ask the expert,” he proposed. “Professor Stanovnik has spent many years studying such causes and their effects at the microbiological level.”

Chase felt a tightening of the stomach. It seemed that the circle was closing, each event leading inexorably to the next, forging unbreakable links. He waited for the circle to be completed.

Boris smoothed his knees, rocking slowly back and forth. “It so happens that a colleague of mine, Dr. Astakhov, was interested in this very problem and conducted many field experiments all over the world to discover where the excess carbon dioxide was going to. We’ve known for sixty years that the amount of C0
₂
is increasing but have been unable to account for more than half of it. Dr. Astakhov’s theory was that it was being absorbed in the oceans. However”—he raised and let fall his shoulders in a ponderous shrug—“Dr. Astakhov disappeared before his research was completed. We do not yet have the answer to the mystery of the missing carbon dioxide.”

Chase thought for a moment before he spoke, phrasing his question with care. “Is it correct to assume, Professor, that
if
the oceans had absorbed this extra carbon dioxide—reached saturation point, in fact— that this would confirm Dr. Detrick’s theory?”

“Yes,” Boris answered without hesitation. “Almost certainly. If it could be shown that the oceans had reached saturation point, then it would be a strong indication that the temperature of seawater is increasing. But as yet we do not have the research data to make such a claim. Had Dr. Astakhov returned—”

“From the Antarctic,” Chase said.

“Yes, he was based at Mirnyy Station, and the last report we have...” The Russian’s dark pouched eyes narrowed and remained fixed on Chase. “How do you know this?” His curiosity bordered on suspicion. “You knew him, Dr. Astakhov?”

“No. But I talked with him. After a fashion.”

“In the Antarctic?”

“Yes.”

“You speak Russian?”

“No.”

“That is most strange, Dr. Chase,” Boris said with dramatic softness, like a detective about to trap a suspect by revealing a vital clue. “Peter hardly knew one word of English.”

“He didn’t know any words,” Chase corrected him. “Under the circumstances I don’t think his lack of English mattered. I imagine even you would have had some difficulty in understanding him. He was half out of his head, on the verge of coma, with a broken back. In fact it’s bloody marvelous we managed any kind of communication at all, but we did.”

Boris was still watching him closely. “He told you of his research— what he had found?”

Chase shook his head. “He wrote down a chemical equation.”

“What equation?” Boris looked at Theo and back to Chase again.

Everyone was watching Chase intently as if he were about to produce a rabbit out of a hat.

“Okay, you’ve got it,” Cheryl said, with a faint touch of exasperation. “Our undivided attention. Tell us, for Christ’s sake, what the hell was it?”

Chase told them.

Afterward it was his turn to listen while Theo Detrick narrated a horror story.

Theo had lived with the knowledge of what a return to the Precambrian era would mean to the human race, had spent years brooding over it in his tiny island retreat, and now, without emotion, he gave them his scenario for the future.

The first victims would be the very young, the very old, and those already suffering from cardiac and respiratory conditions. Anoxia— the medical term for a deficiency of oxygen to the tissues—would initially affect these three groups. Mortality statistics would show a gradually steepening rise as they succumbed to the impoverished atmosphere.

This Theo classified as Stage One.

Stage Two would begin when the oxygen level had fallen by several percent. Conditions then would be similar to those on a fifteen-thousand-foot-high mountain. Dizziness, nausea, and blackouts would become commonplace. There would be a sharply increased incidence of infertility. By this time the decrease in oxygen would start to have serious and widespread effects on all animal life-forms.

Stage Three. By now the composition of the atmosphere would be radically altered as the planet reverted to its primordial state. The ozone layer would thin out and disperse, allowing cosmic rays and solar radiation to penetrate to the earth’s surface. This would cause severe burns, skin cancer, and leukemia.

Then would come the mutants: weird forms of life whose genetic structure had been warped in the womb. Whether such forms of life could continue to thrive and prosper on a planet going backward to its own past was doubtful; but for a time at least the earth would be inhabited by monsters. These, Theo believed, like the dinosaurs, would eventually die out.

Then what?

“And then,” Theo said, “we come to Stage Four. The final act. The earth will have returned to the Precambrian. Defunct of all animal life and denuded of all vegetation. Not even the bacteria will survive. This planet will be biologically dead.”

“But it isn’t inevitable,” Chase protested. “Surely the process can be halted or reversed? It must be possible.”

“Must it?” Theo said gently. “As I’ve made clear, Dr. Chase, we have no God-given right to survive. The biosphere doesn’t owe us a living.” He gazed around vaguely, not seeing them. “One thing is absolutely certain. It cannot be stopped, and won’t be stopped, if the world refuses to listen and take heed.”

“Amen to that,” Cheryl breathed.

Which struck Chase as a fitting epilogue.

The moon floated serenely in a magenta sky, touching the peaks of the Rockies with a soft ambience like ethereal snow.

Brad Zittel had hardly moved in the past hour, gazing out of his study window, unconscious of time, of it passing or standing still; aware only of the moon’s decaying arc across the night sky, looking down with a blandly smiling face on a dying planet.

The China tea had gone cold in the pot. But that was to be expected, Brad thought. The ineluctable law of the universe. Entropy. Everything creeping toward slow death: himself, family, earth, moon, sun, stars. The dying fall. Fall from grace.

As it was in
the
Beginning,
so it shall be in the End
...

He didn’t hear the door open and close, nor detect the presence in the darkened room until it laid warm fingers against his cheek. “Come to bed, darling. Please. You can’t go on like this night after night.” Why not? “Entropy,” Brad said. “Falling. Dying. End.”

His wife’s nightgown rustled as she settled herself on the arm of the chair. She cradled his head, holding him close, as one might comfort an ailing child.

“I want to understand you, Brad. Let me help you.”