NH3

by Stanley Salmons

  Max shouted to them over his shoulder, “Weed up ahead,” and dropped the engines to an idle.

  Terry was back in the wheelhouse in a few strides. He pulled out the box with the respirator masks. “Let’s get these on.”

  He helped Maggie fit one first, adjusting the straps carefully. She gave him a thumbs-up and pointed vigorously at him.

  “Max and Josiah first,” he said.

  Max accepted the procedure with some reluctance, but Josiah waved it away. “Don’ need that stoff.”

  “I think you do, Josiah.”

  Max intervened, and while they were arguing Terry put his own mask on. Then Max looked up.

  “We gettin’ too close,” he called, and began to turn the boat.

  With the change of direction a breeze crossed the deck, carrying with it a pungent smell of urine. Josiah doubled over, coughing violently.

  Terry shouted, “Quick, get a respirator on him.”

  There was a flurry of activity as they put on the mask. Terry tightened the straps, ignoring Josiah’s hands clawing at it. The man’s chest was rising and falling in great jerks. After several minutes the spasms became less frequent and he settled into a bout of violent coughing. Terry lowered him so that he could sit propped against a bulwark. He turned to Max, his voice muffled by the mask.

  “Sorry about that, Max.”

  He shook his head dismissively. “Get your samples quick as you can.”

  As they opened the box to take out the sampling equipment Maggie murmured through her mask, “Well one thing’s settled already. It’s producing ammonia all right.”

  She’d brought a dozen culture flasks to take the samples and Terry had rigged up a wire contraption on a length of fishing line so they could throw them out and tow them back through the water. The motors puttered and the side of the boat swung up and down as they pulled the first bottle in. Maggie capped it tightly, held it up to the light and pointed. The water was greenish and there were strands floating inside. She tucked it into a cool box with some gel packs they’d left overnight in Bessie’s freezer. They repeated the process several times, working as quickly as they could.

  “We’ve got six,” Terry said. “That’s enough.”

  He looked round. Josiah was coughing less violently now but his chest still made paroxysmal heaves from time to time.

  “Josiah, we’ll take your mask off as soon as we get clear. All right?” The man rolled his eyes and nodded.

  “Okay, Max. We can go.”

  Max reached for the twin throttles and the engine note rose as they set course for the harbour.

  “I’d like to go out again.”

  Terry looked up from his seafood platter. They’d found this place in a narrow alley that curved through the town of St. George, and decided to eat before going back.

  “Why? We’ve got what we came for.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. All the evidence points to the problem starting here and moving north-east, either on ocean currents or carried by eels, right?”

  “Right…”

  “Well, then the water to the south-west should be all right. If we sample it there I can get some normal organisms to compare the mutant ones with.”

  He put his knife and fork together on the empty plate. “Okay. We’ll see Max about it tomorrow, but I’m not sure he’ll be too keen to take us anywhere.”

  “I’m sure we can talk him round,” she said with a winning smile.

  “Well maybe you can.”

  “Ha. Only not so damn early this time. I barely got any sleep last night.”

  “The tree frogs?”

  “Yes! I couldn’t think what it was to start with. Sounded like a steel band starting up outside my window.”

  “I found it quite soothing after a while.”

  She pushed her plate away, yawned and covered her mouth. “Oh dear, look at me. And I’ve done nothing but stare at the ocean all day long.”

  “It’s all that healthy sea air,” he said with a smile.

  Max shook his head from side to side, and this time he was adamant.

  “There’s no risk. It’s in the opposite direction,” Terry explained. “Just an hour out should be enough.”

  “It ain’t that, mon. Hurricane comin’ through tomorrow.”

  Terry looked at him in astonishment. “A hurricane? Bit early in the year for that, isn’t it?”

  “Very, leastways for one this big.”

  “Will it do a lot of damage?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Be stronger by the time it hits the Gulf. But there’ll be high winds, for sure. Wouldn’t be safe.”

  Maggie closed her eyes. Max seemed to register her disappointment.

  “Should have passed through by Friday. I could take you then.”

  “No good. We’re flying back on Friday.”

  “Jus’ as well it ain’t tomorrow. My guess is they’ll ground all flights.”

  Terry sighed. “What about half an hour, Max? We could be out and back before the hurricane hits.”

  Again the man shook his head firmly.

  “No way. Wouldn’t go out on my own, let alone with tourists.”

  Maggie shrugged and touched Terry’s arm.

  “Okay, thanks anyway, Max. Some other time perhaps.”

  “Sure.”

  Max shook hands with each of them.

  “You take care, now.”

  “You too.”

  They walked away from the harbour.

  “An unseasonal hurricane,” Maggie said morosely.

  Terry glanced at her.

  Was it really bad luck? Or was this the beginning?

  CHAPTER 12

  Apparently the rain had started in the UK soon after they left for Bermuda. Since then it hadn’t stopped. The streets were running with water; in some places it was bubbling out of the drains. Unwary pedestrians were drenched twice: once by what was coming from the darkened skies overhead, and again by the spray and bow waves set up by passing cars. Apparently it was the same up and down the country, and worse the nearer you got to the Atlantic coast.

  At mid-morning on Tuesday Terry stood watching the rain stream down the windows of his office, then decided he couldn’t wait any longer. He put on his raincoat, turned up the collar, and hurried over to the Biological Sciences Building.

  Maggie laughed when she saw the state of him. She hung up his coat, then tore some sheets of tissue off a roll in the lab so that he could rub his hair dry. They went into her office.

  “I thought you might have got something from the samples,” he said.

  She nodded. “I got Jake to look at them with me. There’s certainly more than one type of organism present. Some form filaments, others are free-living. Some are similar to the one in your river samples, but even they could be different strains or even different species.”

  “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”

  “Not quite. We don’t know yet which ones are producing ammonia. Is it a single species, or several, or all of them? If it’s a single species it’s unlikely the mutation is spreading by plasmid transfer and maybe we can breathe again.”

  “I see what you mean. So what’s next?”

  “I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it.” She registered his disappointment. “I’m sorry; I wish I had more answers for you.”

  He shrugged and grinned. “I guess I’ll just have to be patient while you figure out if the world’s going to end sometime next week.”

  Terry tried to focus on his other work. He cleared the immediate backlog and put the final touches to the manuscript he was preparing with Maria, which they submitted to the International Journal of Planetary Physics. He even made a tentative start on his long overdue review paper.

  Every few minutes he found himself surfing the web for any sign that his predictions might be coming true. Initially most of the news was dominated by the aftermath of Hurricane Ailsa. They had witnessed its noisy passage close to Bermuda, which was impressive bu
t left behind it little more than blown litter and some broken palm fronds. The system then tracked down through the Gulf of Mexico, gathering energy all the time, and it had caused billions of dollars worth of damage to oil rigs in the Gulf, and to houses and infrastructure in the cities of Port Arthur and Galveston. The authorities had been caught on the hop and there were political, as well as economic, repercussions. The clean-up had just begun when a second hurricane began to form over the Atlantic. It was watched anxiously but this one petered out over Mississippi. Both had occurred unusually early in the year.

  It was hard to believe that the unusual weather events were linked to the organism: those were long-term effects, something that could only be the result of a really substantial build-up of ammonia in the atmosphere. It was probably a coincidence; there’d been early hurricanes before, and it wasn’t exactly the first time it had rained long and hard in the UK. Experienced scientists were familiar with observational bias: if you were looking for something hard enough there was a tendency to find it.

  Towards the end of the week he spotted a short article on the inside pages of the Daily Telegraph. A Westland Sea King returning from a search and rescue mission had reported a silvery patch of ocean about one hundred and fifty nautical miles southwest of Land’s End. On closer inspection it turned out to be a huge floating raft of dead fish, which the prevailing winds were likely to drive onshore somewhere on the western coast of France or the northern coast of Spain. He looked at the article for some time. Was this a coincidence, too?

  Maggie phoned on Sunday and he invited her over to dinner. As he waited for her to arrive he read a newspaper he’d bought that morning on the way to work.

  On page 2, below a picture of a car crushed under the weight of a fallen tree, he was reading:

  ...had a lucky escape. Fierce gales caused chaos at ferry ports, and many flights from Birmingham, Stansted and Heathrow were cancelled. Power lines were down across the north east of England, leaving more than 30,000 homes without electricity. After more than a week of unprecedented storms, heavy rain and high winds, flood warnings are now in place in North Yorkshire, Cumbria and a number of towns along the River Severn. The Met Office has been tracking another weather system across the Atlantic and this will be moving into the southern part of the country during the…

  His head jerked up as another squall shook the windows, the rain rattling against the glass like a fistful of gravel. Then he heard the door bell and hurried to let Maggie in. She greeted him breathlessly.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi, come on in.”

  He had to lean against the front door to close it. She shook the rain off her coat and he hung it up for her. Then she stripped off her woolly hat and stepped out of her wet shoes. She held up the sopping hat in her fingertips. He took it from her.

  “I’ll put this on a radiator.”

  “It’s really wild out there.” She scooped back a wet curl from her forehead as they moved into the sitting room.

  “Did you read about Hurricane Ailsa?”

  “Yes, we were lucky Max refused to take us out. I’ll know to trust his judgment next time.” Her lips tightened and for an instant their eyes met. He knew exactly what she was thinking. Unseasonal hurricanes? Severe storms? Yet neither of them could bring themselves to say it.

  Maggie broke the silence. “Hey, guess what.”

  “What?”

  She perched on an armchair. “I’ve been allocated a departmental technician.”

  “Wow, lucky you.” Terry was grateful for the change of subject.“Though some people are going to be jealous.”

  “I don’t care. Let them work as hard as I do and maybe they can have technicians.”

  He grinned.

  “Her name’s Michelle, Michelle Taylor. I think she’s quite bright. She doesn’t have much experience in my area but I can teach her.” She clapped her hands together. “I can do so much more now.”

  “You hungry? I thought I’d do a Thai-style fish curry.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Okay, make yourself comfortable and I’ll get cooking.”

  He went into the kitchen. He wasn’t a very skilled cook and he liked meals that didn’t call for too much coordination – a main dish and rice was about as much as he could manage. After a short while Maggie came in. “Mmm, that smells delicious. Can I do anything?”

  “You can lay the table if you like.”

  She found a clean tablecloth, cutlery and glasses. From the kitchen he could see her looking at the table for a few moments, head tilted to one side. Then she walked away and came back with two candles.

  He uncorked the wine, sniffed it with approval, and placed it on the table as she was lighting the candles. Then he prepared the starters, slicing and stoning an avocado, setting the unpeeled halves out on plates, and tipping a little vinaigrette into each of the creamy cavities.

  Twenty minutes later they sat down to eat.

  During dinner they both continued to avoid the conversation hanging in the room. They cleared away the dishes and settled down in the lounge with the coffee. Maggie was still talking about all the time she would have for extra research. He sank comfortably low in his armchair, his legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed, offering the occasional comment but mainly enjoying her animation. He was savouring the contrast with the weeks and months and years that had gone before. Sharing things with Maggie had transformed his life. A wave of tenderness coursed through him.

  She stopped talking and there was a sudden stillness in the room. Something had passed between them. He could feel as well as see her looking at him and there was such warmth in her eyes that he rose slowly from his chair…”

  The phone rang in the kitchen. He lifted his eyebrows.

  “I’d better get it.”

  As he returned to the sitting-room Maggie looked at him.

  “What is it?”

  He stood motionless in the doorway, his tall frame slightly stooped.

  “I’d better drive you back, Maggie. We have to leave for London first thing tomorrow morning.”

  CHAPTER 13

  They said little on the train journey to London but stared out of the window, each of them alone with their own thoughts.

  At least the Minister had had the good grace to phone in person. He had told Terry he’d set up a crisis meeting. The Department of Health and the Home Office would be represented. Could they be there?

  Terry couldn’t help feeling a little resentful. When he and Maggie had made a case for immediate action Monteith had set it aside. Now events had overtaken him and he expected both him and Maggie to jump at his command. After a pointed silence Terry had said, “All right.”

  “Good,” Monteith had replied. “Twelve midday, in my office. Don’t worry about the logistics; my PA will handle all that. Oh, one other thing. I should bring a supply of smog masks. Surgical masks will do, but the doggie muzzle type is better. Only they’re in very short supply down here at the moment.”

  Minutes later the phone had rung again. It was Monteith’s PA.

  “Dr. McKinley, I haven’t booked your rail journey. Could you and Dr. Ferris come down on the first train? We’ll reimburse your First Class fares, of course. I’ll book your hotel for you. Do you want to stay at Flemings again?”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Very good. A car will pick you up there at eleven-thirty sharp. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No, I think you’ve covered it.”

  “Very good. Thank you, doctor. We’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

  He’d paused after replacing the phone. There was a clear change in attitude but something about the conversation bothered him. He shook his head. He couldn’t put his finger on it.

  The first of the fog appeared when the train was several miles north of Watford Junction. It hovered in long white drifts over the fields. It didn’t seem to be going anywhere. At Watford Junction the people waiting on the plat
form were holding scarves or handkerchiefs to their faces. As they settled into their seats there was a good deal of coughing. The station itself had a colourless, wintry look, more as if emerging from an overnight frost than the bright May morning it should be.

  Ten minutes later they arrived at Euston. They crossed the concourse and went straight downstairs to the taxi rank. It was chilly at the lower level, and the air was stale and irritating. Maggie immediately began to cough and hastily got out a mask for each of them, avoiding the envious glances of others in the queue. Then a line of taxis came in, each one ghostly in a coating of white dust broken only by two black fans where the windscreen had been cleared by the wipers.

  The queue in front of them cleared quickly. Terry opened the door of the next cab and Maggie climbed in.

  “Flemings Hotel, please.”

  “Where?”

  “Flemings? Half Moon Street.”

  “Half Moon Street? Oh yeah, I know it, just opposite Green Park. Hop in.”

  As they emerged from the ramp the driver took up his monologue.

  “Cleaned the cab this morning, would you believe?” he said. “Look at it now. Wouldn’t normally take it out in this state – matter of pride, know what I mean? They say a freak wind picked this lot up from a soda lake in Africa or something. Never seen anything like it in all my days. I seen brown dust brought from the Sahara, though. Ever seen that? Makes a mess of the cab too, but it’s once in a blue moon. And it doesn’t get in your throat like this stuff. A lot of drivers off today. Can’t take it, you see? I don’t smoke, that’s probably why my lungs are stronger. That’s why I come out. Look at Piccadilly today. Along here as a rule you don’t want to know.”

  They were only half listening; they were peering through the dusty windows at the bleak urban landscape beyond. It should have been broad daylight but it was gloomy enough to have triggered the street lamps. The thin mist seemed to be drawn to the lights, making each one bloom in a haze of orange. The same thing happened at street level, where it created a chromatic soup from the tail lights and headlights of the cars, the neon signs and illuminated shop windows. Green Park was drained of colour: the leaves and branches draped over the railings were chalk-white; more distant trees were little more than vague grey ghosts.