Last Gasp

by Trevor Hoyle

  “Why was he threatening you?”

  “No idea. I should have gone for his privates. That’s if he’s got any.”

  “Hadn’t you better call the police?”

  “And tell them I was attacked by a tall American in a white suit?”

  “There can’t be that many in Geneva.”

  “He can easily change his suit.”

  “But not his height.”

  Cheryl nodded swiftly. “I guess you’re right, I ought to report it. But I want to see my father first. Will you—would you mind coming down with me to the hotel restaurant? I don’t like to impose, Mr.—”

  “Chase. No, I don’t mind,” Chase said. Then it would be her father’s problem and not his.

  On the way to the elevator she said, “My name is Cheryl Detrick. Thanks for coming in, Mr. Chase. I nearly ruined my traveling clock.” There was a moment’s delayed reaction before he said, “Detrick? Is your father Theo Detrick, the marine biologist?”

  “You know of him?” It seemed to please her.

  “He wrote the bible,” Chase said sincerely.

  “Are you a delegate?”

  “Yes. Sort of. That’s my field too.”

  “And mine. Postgraduate at Scripps.”

  “We marine biologists should stick together,” Chase said, smiling down at her.

  “My sentiments precisely,” Cheryl said with feeling.

  The doors opened and Cheryl moved ahead of him into the elevator. Chase wouldn’t have credited himself with such lightning reactions. Mindful of her sore wrist, he took her by the scruff of the neck and pulled her out again as the man in white lunged forward, hands outspread like brown claws. Chase kicked instinctively, aiming for the crotch, and missed, landing just below the second button of the immaculate white suit.

  The man grunted and snarled a curse and fell backward, sprawling, as the elevator doors mercifully closed.

  Perhaps coincidence ran deeper than anyone suspected. Conceivably there was an ordered pattern, a system, to which everyone was blind, perceiving it only as a series of random events conglomerating at a particular point in time and space, which for the sake of convenience and for want of anything better they called “coincidence.”

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  Chase started, broke from his contemplation.

  “The refrigerator is full of stuff,” Cheryl said, smiling warmly at him. “What would you like?”

  “Er—whiskey, with ice. Thanks.”

  Cheryl gave a cute little bunny dip. “Coming right up, sir.”

  Boris Stanovnik shook his head in a perplexed fashion, though he was half-smiling. “I like your daughter very much, Theo, but I do not understand her. She dictates to life, not life to her.”

  Yet another coincidence, Chase was thinking. That he should be sitting in Theo Detrick’s hotel room with Boris Stanovnik, the man he had come all this way to meet. It gave him a prickly feeling on the back of his neck and he was conscious of a vague sense of unreality. But the glass of Scotch in his hand was real enough, and the taste reassuringly familiar.

  The big Russian leaned forward, elbows on knees, a glass of beer looking tiny in his clasped hands. “You think what happened is to do with what we were discussing?” he asked Theo.

  “Of course it is.” Sitting in the bright halo of light from the corner lamp Theo Detrick’s face seemed darker and craggier than ever. “They warned me officially, through the proper channels, and then thought it necessary to make the warning more direct. More personal.”

  “They?” Boris said in amazement. “The conference committee?”

  “No, the people acting through the committee.”

  “But who are ‘they’?”

  “The State Department. The CIA. Some political lobby or other. I don’t know, Boris. Somebody with something to lose.”

  Boris was still frowning. “It’s possible that the man who attacked Cheryl was with your State Department?”

  Theo nodded.

  “He would make the threat so openly?”

  “Sure, that’s nothing,” Cheryl said, making herself comfortable on the foot of the bed nearest the window. “I’m surprised he didn’t shoot me in the back and leave a note pinned to my panties. Threats, coercion, blackmail, frame-ups, these people are experts.” She gave a sardonic smile. “America is a democracy, don’t forget. You’re free to threaten anybody you want to.”

  Chase was mystified by all this. He said, “That paper of yours must be pure dynamite, Dr. Detrick. What were you intending to speak about?”

  “Its title is ‘Back to the Precambrian,’ Dr. Chase,” and when he saw Chase’s blank expression, went on, “ ‘Precambrian’ is the term I have given to describe the reversion of the earth’s atmosphere to what it was two billion years ago when the constituents were principally a highly corrosive mixture of hydrogen, ammonia, and methane. But no oxygen,” he added significantly.

  “You believe the earth is reverting to that state?”

  “Unfortunately, I do,” Theo said gravely. “I wish I could draw other conclusions from the work I’ve done, but...” He shook his head sadly. “Your work on diatoms, you mean?”

  “On the phytoplankton species in general. In the equatorial Pacific, which is normally one of the most productive regions of the ocean, all classes of phytoplankton are in drastic decline. As the oceans provide most of the oxygen requirement there must inevitably come a time when the level of oxygen produced is reduced. Possibly within the next twenty to fifty years. Within a hundred years all the free oxygen at present circulating in the atmosphere will either have been consumed or will be locked up in various oxidation compounds, such as rocks, decaying matter, and so on. When that happens we shall be left with an atmosphere similar in composition to what it was in the Precambrian period, two billion years ago.” He gave a wan smile. “Man is a most arrogant species, Dr. Chase. He forgets that for millions of years this was a sterile planet with a poisonous atmosphere. It was only with the liberation of oxygen into the air that our form of organic life was able to evolve—but the biosphere doesn’t owe us a living. We take it as a God-given right that oxygen is there for us to breathe, when in fact it is an accident, a biological quirk, so to speak, of nature.”

  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 C02 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 verg
e 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.