Nature's Shift (5 page)

What could I say to that? What could I have said, even if it hadn't been true?

“Yes,” I said, “but….”

“But you don't feel that you can take my word for it that he needs you,” she said, effortlessly usurping the nascent statement and turning it to her own advantage. She removed her gentle hand from my wrist. “You'd rather hear it from him, I suppose, but you won't…and that's the most important reason why he needs you. I'm not asking you to be my ambassador, to try to patch things up between us, and I'm certainly not asking you to be my spy, to report back to me on exactly what he's doing out there in that glorified termite-mound of his. I'm just asking you to be his friend, because I have reason to believe that he needs a friend just now. He needs someone to be with him, to talk to him, to provide some balance in his life, at least for a while. I don't know how long that will take—I leave you to judge for yourself. Just be reassured that, no matter how long it takes, you won't be the loser by it. If you're still as determined now as you were ten years ago not to enter my employ, that's fine—but know that the job you have is absolutely safe, and that if you want to move on, nothing will stand in the way of your ending up exactly where you want and need to be—put please, please, do as I ask and go to Venezuela.”

It wasn't the thought of going to South America that made me hesitate. I'd come all the way to Exeter and beyond in the hope of seeing Rowland, and a plane journey to Trinidad wasn't that much longer than a twice-interrupted train-journey across most of the length to England, although the subsequent boat-trip to the mouth of the Orinoco would doubtless add an extra day. I did want to see Rowland, and I was prepared to go to South America to do it, even if I had to pay my own plane fare—and I certainly wasn't going to let Rosalind pay for it—but that wasn't the point. The point was, did Rowland want to see me? Even if he had no idea that Rosalind had asked me to do it, as a favor to her, would he want to see me? Would he answer the door, if I were rude enough and foolish enough to turn up unannounced? And if I managed to get a message through to him asking for permission, wouldn't he simply say no, even if he bothered to reply?

I should never have come
, I thought.
And having come, I should simply have gone. That security guard wouldn't have—couldn't have—stopped me
.

But I had come, and I hadn't gone when I'd had half a chance. I had stayed, in answer to Rosalind's plea…and now, she was making another, much more demanding plea. I should have expected it—but I hadn't. I couldn't refuse, of course—that was unthinkable—but I could hesitate, at least for a few minutes. I could even prevaricate, in a tokenistic fashion.

“Why do you think he needs me?” I said, feebly—and even corrected that, hurriedly, to: “Why do you think he needs anybody?”

“Don't you think he needs someone, right now?” she countered. “After all, you're his friend. You know him as well as I do.” A low blow, that last one. There was no polite reply to that.

“I don't know,” I said, truthfully. “He's always been an independent character, and he's always been a trifle uncommunicative, so I don't like to read too much into his recent silence.”

“But you were expecting to see him here today, weren't you?” she said, playing yet another trump card. “You must feel that his absence is so unusual as to be cause for alarm.”

“I don't know why he wouldn't come,” I had to admit.

“It was Magdalen's funeral,” Rosalind said, emphatically, ramming home her irresistible advantage. “Can you imagine Rowland—the Rowland you knew, ten years ago—refusing to come to Magdalen's funeral?”

I couldn't answer that, so I lowered my head and took another sip of water. That was a mistake too. I should have said something to keep the exchange focused on Rowland.

“I'm sorry, Peter,” she said, suddenly changing tack. “That was insensitive of me, wasn't it? You were in love with Magdalen once, weren't you?”

I kept my head down and said nothing. She didn't reach out to touch me again, though—she'd already fired that shot, and didn't see any need to repeat it.

“I'm sorry that didn't work out, in retrospect,” she said. “It wasn't something I encouraged or discouraged, at the time…but if it had worked out, Rowland might not be in South America…and Magdalen might not be dead.”

That was an even lower blow, and I couldn't help reacting. “What's that supposed to mean?” I asked, too sharply.

“Oh, my God!” she said, suddenly seeming confused—or putting on a convincing show. “I didn't mean to imply that you were in any way responsible…please, Peter, you can't suspect me of that. If anyone's to blame for this…for all of this…it's me. I can't deny that, and I'm not at all sure that I can make amends for it. I'm not even sure that you can help—but I do want you to try, if you're willing, because if anyone
can
help, it's you. The last thing I want is for Rowland to go the same way as Magdalen, if….”

She stopped there, ever the master tactician. She wasn't going to be the one to voice the suggestion that Rowland might already be dead, and that the only reason he hadn't come to Magdalen's funeral might be that he couldn't, or the corollary suspicion that, even if he were still alive at present, he might be in imminent danger of going “the same way as Magdalen.”

I wasn't going to voice any suspicion of that kind either. “I'll call him,” I said, knowing that I had to promise her something. “If he gives me permission to visit, I'll go to Venezuela—as soon as I can.”

She wanted more than that. “I think you should insist,” she said. “And if he doesn't answer, I really do think you need to go, in order to find out why. Not for my sake—I know you don't owe me anything—but for Rowland's. It's too late, alas, to do anything for Magdalen's sake, but if she were still alive, I think she'd be here instead of me, begging you to go.”

Laying her lovely hand on my arm
, I thought.
Looking me in the eyes, as brazenly as she could
. If Magdalen had still been alive, of course, I wouldn't have been there to be begged…but that was a mere quibble.

“I'll do what I can,” I promised, knowing as I did it that I was promising too much—but knowing, too, that I had absolutely no alternative.

She might, after all, have been right. Rowland might need me, whether he could admit it or not. I had to go. Rosalind knew that. She had only commanded me do it because she knew that I couldn't command myself.

CHAPTER FIVE

I could have called Rowland from the train, but I didn't want to do that. Putting it off until I got back to Lancaster didn't make the homeward journey any easier, because I felt like an aristocrat in a tumbrel, on the way to the guillotine, every inch of the way, but it seemed more appropriate to call from home, from my own tiny republic, rather than from anyone else's turf.

Fortunately, I had a good reason for calling, a justification for opening communication.

He didn't answer his phone, of course—who does, nowadays?—and his answerphone wasn't equipped with the customary simulation of his face, fitted to an AI capable of holding an elementary conversation. All I got was a blank screen and a taped message inviting me to say my piece. There wasn't even a promise to get back to me. Rowland was no hypocrite.

“It's Peter,” I said, although that datum would have been automatically recorded. “I've just got back from Magdalen's funeral. I expected to see you there. I hoped to see you there. The fact that I didn't see you there is worrying me intensely. We've been out of touch for far too long, and I'd really like to see you again. I'm more than willing to make the trip to Venezuela—I'm desperately in need of doing some tropical fieldwork, as it happens—but I'd be just as happy to see you here, if you're in the mood for a sight and taste of England. At any rate, I really would like some proof that you're still alive…and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Call me, please.”

I literally watched the clock, knowing that if he didn't come back to me within five minutes, the ploy had probably failed—leaving me in something of a quandary. Four minutes elapsed before the bell chimed. I answered the phone myself—thus I suppose, answering my own question as to who ever bothered, in this day and age.
Anxious people
is the answer.

Images on phone screens aren't always reliable, but I didn't think that Rowland was the kind of person to employ electronic cosmetics. I assumed that I was looking at a live camera-feed, seeing him as he was. All things considered, he didn't look too bad. He'd always been handsome. In fact, the family resemblance between him and Rosalind was quite striking; the features looked almost as good on a man as on a woman, although no one would have thought of describing Rowland as “beautiful.” Magadalen, perhaps fortunately in some ways, had favored her anonymous father.

“Peter,” Rowland said, warmly. “I'm sorry it's been so long. I'm glad you went to the funeral. Magdalen would have wanted you to be there.”

“She'd have wanted you to be there too,” I couldn't help saying.

“I know,” he said, with a sigh that sounded perfectly sincere. “It's just that it's so very difficult to leave my work. It's reached a very delicate stage. It's not the sort of operation that can be put on hold for days on end. Magdalen would have understood, I think—in fact, I'm sure of it. I wish with all my heart that she'd stayed here, you know. I knew that it wouldn't do her any good to go back to the Hive. That's what really killed her, you know, in spite of what Rosalind might have told you. You did see Rosalind, I assume?”

“Briefly,” I admitted.

“And did she tell you that it was all my fault?”

“No,” I said. “She even apologized, profusely, for accidentally hinting that it might have been mine.”

“Yours?” Rowland seemed genuinely astonished. “How could it possibly have been yours? You haven't seen her in…it must be at least ten years.”

I wondered how he knew that I hadn't. He must, I supposed, have maintained some sort of sporadic contact with Magdalen, even if he hadn't kept in touch with anyone else. Had that made things better or worse for her? Given that she was dead, it obviously hadn't done her much good.

“That was probably the point that Rosalind was making, if it wasn't really an accident,” I said, mildly. “She might have been suggesting that if I'd maintained my relationship with Magdalen, on a
just friends
sort of basis, Magdalen might have been a little happier…and that maybe
a little
would have been enough to tip the balance. As I said, she took it back immediately, acknowledging the fact that it wasn't my failure, without seeking to lay the blame elsewhere.”

“Typical,” said Rowland. “She never did understand.”

That was probably a trifle harsh. Rosalind had never been short of understanding; what she lacked was the empathy to calculate the consequences of her understanding. She was probably the world's foremost expert in olfactory psychotropics, but her knowledge of the art was purely scientific. I had no doubt at all that she had tried to “cure” the malaise of Magdalen's heart by that means, and had probably attributed her failure to incorrect dosage, or insufficient progress in chemical refinement. I could almost imagine her urging Magdalen to wake up and smell the roses, then watching and wondering as Magdalen's metaphorical stigmata continued to bleed from the thrust of imaginary thorns.

Rowland's thinking might or might not have been running along similar lines. At any rate, he changed the subject, very abruptly. “What sort of tropical fieldwork are you planning to do?” he asked. “You haven't gone into the oil business, I hope?”

I had, of course, included the remark about needing to do some tropical fieldwork merely to leave no stone unturned in my plea for an invitation to the Orinoco delta, but my ability to improvise was equal to the challenge.

“Coastlines went in and out everywhere in the course of the last century,” I said. “New salt marshes sprang up by the thousand. I've been tracking natural genetic shifts in a number of different algal species, and I've found some interesting and peculiar phenomena—as you'd expect, given that algal cells are inherently simpler and more easily mutable than those of terrestrial plants. All the world's a cauldron, but the only place the soup really came to the boil is in the tropics. I need to figure out what kinds of change were precipitated in places where the pot was seriously stirred—where the rise in sea-level, limited as it was, disrupted vast areas and complex ecosystems. The river deltas in Africa and the Indian subcontinent suffered too much damage; I need to study an area that proved more resilient: the Amazon delta or the Orinoco delta. Of the two, the latter looks more promising—and you've gantzed a refuge smack in the middle of it. If you can supply me with a base for a few months, it might bring my work forward by an order of magnitude, and could well reveal some genuinely interesting genetic adaptation mechanisms.”

What true scientist could possibly refuse a request couched in those terms? He was, after all, my friend.

Still, he hesitated.

“I'm not really equipped to receive visitors,” he told me. “This isn't a research station, as such. I have a couple of people to help around the house, but no lab assistants, as such. I couldn't offer you anything remotely resembling adequate facilities for your kind of research.”

“I can improvise,” I assured him. “Even if there were an available alternative—which there isn't—I wouldn't want to take it, if there were a possibility of staying with you. We're friends, Rowland…aren't we?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, automatically. “We'll always be friends…and we're fellow engineers, too, fighting the good fight against Nature's backlash, shoulder to shoulder. We don't have to be members of a Hive to pull together, to help one another out. If you need to be here, then of course you must come, but….”

I knew there'd be a
but
. I waited for him to spell it out. When he saw that I wasn't going to prompt him, he did—after a fashion.

“Look, Peter,” he said, “I'm involved in some very difficult and delicate work here. I'd always intended to show it to you and explain it to you, when it had reached an appropriate stage of maturity. I'd always intended to invite you here, eventually, because I knew that you were the one person in the world guaranteed to understand it—but it hasn't reached that stage yet. On the other hand….”

He paused again. I wasn't sure why, this time. Something about his voice made me stare harder at the image on the screen, looking for signs of electronic enhancement. I was no longer sure that I was looking through the kind of camera that isn't supposed to lie.

“What's wrong?” he asked. My image was being transmitted directly. He had seen my expression change and my attention become more focused.

“Are you ill, Rowland?”

Enhanced or not, the image took on an expression that seemed slightly guilty. “No,” he said, unconvincingly. “I'm perfectly okay, health-wise. I have been working very hard, though. I get a little tired, sometimes.”

“Have you had a check-up recently?” I persisted. “I know that you're hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor, but you must have monitors and scanners there that can feed information to any med center in the world.”

“I have all the equipment I could possibly need,” he assured me. “The only reason I haven't had a check-up is that I don't need one. Did Rosalind tell you to ask these questions?”

“No,” I replied. “She is worried about you, though. Maybe she can't believe that you wouldn't come to the funeral unless you were too ill to travel. You didn't even tell her that you weren't coming, did you?—let alone why.”

“I'm busy,” he repeated. “I'm not doing the kind of experiments that are over in a matter of hours or days. There are processes in hand, which set their own timetable. As I said, I always intended to let you in on it when it's ready, but it's not there yet…and it won't be finished in a matter of months, or even years. If you come here now, I'll help you fit out your own facilities to the best of my ability…but you might have to be patient with regard to an explanation of my work.”

“That's not an issue,” I assured him. “I do need reassurance that you're okay, though. I'll have work of my own to do, and you can take all the time you like explaining what you've been doing these last ten years, and why you haven't published anything.”

“It's not finished,” he repeated. “Not even the first phase.”

“You haven't reached the end of the beginning,” I said, trying to lighten the mood a little, “let alone the beginning of the end.”

He smiled wryly. “I'd almost forgotten how glib you can be,” he said. “Maybe I do need a little of that, as well as some meaty discussion. We used to have a good time, once, playing with words and ideas. I should have kept in touch…but it's never quite the same over the phone is it?”

“That's why we need to get together,” I said. “Am I invited, then?”

“Of course,” he said. “I'm just trying to warn you…But I suppose I do have facilities adequate for collecting and cataloguing the local algae. I have three boats, and if they don't suit your requirements, I can get one that is. I can make lab room for you easily enough, and if you want to bring an assistant, that's fine…provided that he or she is capable of discretion. I can't have information being leaked, Peter. I know that I can trust you—but I need to make that clear. I have to maintain secrecy, until I've perfected my procedures. You do understand, don't you?”

I didn't, yet—how could I, when he hadn't explained anything? What he was saying did help, slightly, to explain why he hadn't published anything in years, but only in a superficial sense. Science isn't supposed to have secrets. It's an innately collaborative endeavor, whose purpose is to bring knowledge into the light, to add to the sum of human understanding. The legendary wizards of old hoarded the wisdom they were supposed to have, deliberately hiding it away in order to maintain a monopoly—or, more likely, to conceal its idiocy and impotence—but real science is intrinsically opposed to that philosophy. Even in matters where money is at stake, because some discoverer or inventor wants to profit from his endeavor—and who doesn't?—there's an elaborate system of patents to protect financial interests while permitting and facilitating publication. That has been true for centuries, and in a time of ecological crisis, the pressure on scientists to reveal anything and everything that might be relevant to combating the crisis is more than a duty; it's a necessity. Rowland and I were living in interesting times; the survival of the species had been at risk for at least four generations, and would still be at risk for at least another four. Anyone who discovered anything that might help was morally obliged to make it known.

For the moment, however, all I could say was: “Okay. Whatever conditions you impose, I'll abide by them.”

“Good,” he said. “In that case, it will be very pleasant to see you again. You have no idea how starved I am of real conversation.
This
isn't the same.” He waved his arm to indicate the telephonic apparatus that was connecting us. He was right about conversation not being the same over the phone, even if the cameras weren't rigged to lie. Electronic communication gives us sight and sound, but not presence. Real presence involves touch, and all kinds of olfactory stimuli of which we're not even consciously aware. A person can sit in front of a screen all day, talking to a hundred other people in turn, and still be “starved of real conversation,” for lack of the authentic nourishment of presence.

Rowland had to be lonely. He had to be grateful for the fact that I wanted to visit, even if he hadn't been able to admit it to himself before, because of his passion for maintaining the secrecy of whatever it was that he was so determined to keep secret. In all likelihood, he really did need to see a friendly face, and to keep company with a friend for a while. I really would be doing him a favor.

“I'll call again as soon as I've got a timetable worked out,” I said. “There are some formalities to clear up with the university, but there won't be any hitches. I hope to be on my way by the end of the week, if that's not too soon.”