Old Poison

by Joan Francis

  “Oh, just something Evelyn said to me finally clicked into place,” I lied. As I finished speaking, I happened to catch Gill looking at me intently. His face held a hint of a smile, but I couldn’t read his expression.

  James was not really interested in how I had done it. He was concentrating on the case we held between us. “OK, Diana, good work. I’ll take it from here.”

  He tried to take the case and my anger flared. I clung to the handle and grabbed the other side with my free hand.

  “So you really are with Woods after all.”

  He looked surprised. “How can you say that? My people are arresting Woods and his men as we speak.”

  “Your people? You mean the people that Woods said are no longer making the decisions about Hyacinth Red?”

  “Look, Woods may have his little military clique, but we have people who can go directly to the President of the United States.

  “Remember Duffy’s three P’s, James. Hyacinth Red is the ultimate ring of power. You take this back to them and they will bury us and anyone else who objects to using it.”

  He took a firmer hold on the case and prepared to yank it from me. “What do you think you can do with it? You going to chain yourself to the gate and wait for the press to plead your case? Evelyn tried that. You going to try to publish these papers? If you succeeded, and you would probably be killed before you did, but if you succeeded, all you would do is give away the formula. If this stuff will really destroy the atmosphere, it would be like publishing instructions on how to build a hydrogen bomb.”

  The distinctive clicking of semiautomatics chambering bullets came from three sides and effectively ended both our wrestling match for the case and our debate on the fate of its contents. We looked up to see Gill and two other men who had appeared from God knows where, all pointing guns at us.

  “Ms. Hunter, Mr. Nolan—kindly set the case down on the ground and back away from it.”

  With no real option to do otherwise, we did as we were ordered. Gill walked over and picked up the case.

  “Now, kindly place your hands on Mars.”

  As we leaned over the sphere, Gill instructed his friends to search us for weapons. I had slipped my little Walther into the cargo pocket of my pants. James was packing a nine millimeter, for what good weapons did either of us.

  “Thank you. Now, shall we go back to the car where we can get out of this rain?”

  As we started to walk toward the car, James asked, “You working with Woods?”

  “If you recall, I am the one who urged Interpol to bring Woods to your attention, Mr. Nolan.”

  “Who, then? Russians, Chinese, French, Israel? Who is trying to get control of this?”

  “I work for no foreign power. I am simply trying to reclaim something that Evelyn had taken from my friends.”

  “What? The Morpho files?”

  Gill did not answer and I didn’t need him to. I had finally figured him out, just a little late.

  * * * * *

  FORTY-EIGHT

  When we got back to the road we found a second car there. Obviously, when Gill made our travel arrangements he had also managed to have his companions follow us. In Spanish, Gill asked his friends to take James to the second car, then changing to English, he instructed me to get into the back seat of our Rover. He put his gun away in its holster and climbed in beside me.

  “Now shall we see what we have here?” He opened the watertight case and found several paper files and two compact discs. The first disc was labeled:

  15643-9-23

  (47th language translation-English)

  (Copy 2,783) (Caretaker-Nosha)

  This one he placed in his coat pocket and I asked the obvious question to which I already knew the answer.

  “You’re one of the Caretakers of the diary, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Evelyn know that?”

  “Not at first, but by her last visit, yes.”

  “So you didn’t just accidentally get acquainted with her, did you? You were keeping an eye on someone who might betray the cause.”

  He hesitated a moment, but made no answer. Then he handed me the second, unlabeled disc. “I believe that if you put this in your laptop and pull it up you will find it contains the data that Evelyn wanted to submit to world opinion. Am I correct in assuming that you have the transmission program she had created for this task?”

  I nodded.

  “Then I’ll set up the satellite phone, and you get ready to transmit.”

  He reached into the cargo space behind us, handed me my laptop case, and put the case with the satellite phone in his lap. I sat watching as he opened the case and began to set up. He looked at me, his expression curious.

  “You have another concern?” he asked.

  “What if James is right? What if it is like publishing instructions for a hydrogen bomb?”

  He shook his head. “The formula for Hyacinth Red is not in here. It never was. Todd didn’t give her that part. What is in this file is pure science, showing the electrical and chemical reactions of certain elements with the upper atmosphere and demonstrating why the release of these elements in quantity into the atmosphere would result in the depletion of the atmospheric envelope around our globe. This disc also lacks the copy of the Martian Diary, which Evelyn wanted to publish. We convinced her that the world was not yet ready for that revelation.”

  “I see.”

  I loaded the transmission program that would send data to every government, every university, every environmentalist, and every scientific institution, newspaper, and journal that Evelyn’s German programmer had been able to find. It would then raid their mailing lists and also send copies to all of their correspondents. Then I inserted the Hyacinth Red data into the transmission program, and Gill connected the laptop to the phone. The phone found the satellite, and we connected to the web. Hand on the send button, I hesitated.

  “Gill, you are a bright, trained investigator, experienced in looking empirically at evidence. Do you really believe the Martian Diary is a true history?”

  “Which part of that story do you find unbelievable, the fact that mankind could travel across space and colonize a nearby planet or the fact that mankind could be so stupid, greedy, and short sighted as to completely destroy the planetary environment?”

  Bewildered by the thoughts his question raised, I sat silently and he answered for me.

  “There are scientists, right now, in your country associated in an enterprise to colonize Mars. They believe they can make an inhabitable colony within one to two hundred years by a process that I believe they call terraforming. They believe they can create the water, air, plant life, shelter, and fuel necessary to survive on this now barren planet. Do you believe that?”

  He waited for my answer. I nodded. “I have read about it, and I even know one person who is working on it.”

  “Why is it so much harder to believe that mankind could have colonized a lush and abundant planet like Earth?”

  I found no answer.

  “As to environmental destruction, just look around you. Right now our Earth is experiencing the greatest rate of extinction since the death of the dinosaurs, and this time it cannot be blamed on a great cataclysm. It is due directly to human overpopulation, pollution, and wanton destruction.”

  “OK, I grant you that both ideas are possible, but if a society advanced enough for space flight had been on Earth at some time in the past, wouldn’t there be some evidence of it left around for us to discover?”

  He began to laugh.

  “My question wasn’t intended as a joke.”

  “I am sorry. But the real question is, would we recognize such evidence if we laid our hands upon it? About a half an hour ago you placed both of your hands on a sphere which none of the sciences of our great modern world can satisfactorily explain. They know of no people who could have made them, have found no tools to carve them, and have only recently begun to find clues as to their po
ssible astronomical significance. What has establishment science said of these mysteries? They have simply dismissed them as ‘out of context’ with known civilization. They have simply shrugged and ignored them.”

  The unpleasant sound of ridicule flavored my next question. “So you think the Martians made these spheres?”

  He studied me for a moment then answered quite seriously. “These stones are not all our science ignores. Man’s history is far older than our current beliefs allow for. You ask for evidence? The world is littered with marvelous mysteries and empirical evidence of a great, seafaring, scientifically advanced society, composed of many peoples and many races, a society that was wiped out about twelve to fifteen thousand years ago. There are megaliths and structures, each demonstrating a knowledge of global geography and heavenly astronomy that has not been duplicated by modern man until the last one hundred years. Ignorant Europeans inaccurately attributed these works to primitive civilizations that could not possibly have constructed them. Then these barbarian conquerors burned ancient Mayan libraries, thousands of books, that might have educated mankind not only in the sciences, but in their own prehistory.

  “Do I believe this ancient society, now lost and forgotten, owed some of its knowledge to Martian colonizers?”

  He smiled and paused for effect. “It doesn’t matter because that is not really what you are asking. What you are asking is, can the Martian Diary provide you with justification for sending the data that rests at your fingertip? The answer is no. You do not need the Martian Diary for that purpose. Just look around at what you know is happening to Earth’s environment, every day. That is all the justification you need. Do it.”

  I clicked Send, and in the twinkling of an eye, the world was given new scientific knowledge. The question was, what would they do with it?

  * * * * *

  EPILOGUE

  Gill and I had talked all the way back to San Jose, much of our conversation being about those stone mysteries that dot our globe. He refused to speak about the Martian Diary. When he dropped me off at the Gran Hotel, he reached back and grabbed my laptop.

  “You have been quite true to Evelyn in the face of many dangers and have been of great assistance to the Caretakers. I want to leave you with a small gift of thanks. It is our way of showing our appreciation. In the coming years of doubt, it may help you to feel justified in what you have done.”

  He then put the Martian Diary CD in my computer, pulled up a single file, copied it to my hard drive, and retrieved the CD.

  I held my curiosity in check until I was back home and safely out on Sam’s boat in the harbor. Then I opened it and read the final chapter of the Martian Diary.

  Paus Tak, Southern Laboratory

  For a moment the sound that drew me from slumber had made my heart leap for joy, but once fully awake I knew it to be just the wind. Then the stabbing sadness of loneliness overwhelmed me. I wished I could sleep or could die. Perhaps today I would have the courage to do it, to bring a final end.

  Then I heard it again, sounding so like a human voice. She often fools me like that, the wind. Sometimes she whistles from the sky and makes me believe that by some miracle a great Taner still lives and flies the skies. Sometimes I even look up, not because I really believe any of the great birds escaped extinction, but because, for a brief moment, I can pretend I will see one.

  Sometimes she scuttles along the ground sounding like a Mitmox following at my heels, waiting to be fed. On those occasions I do talk to her like she was a small pet. Of course, I am going mad. I actually did see a live Mitmox once when I was a child. One of the geneticists bred it, quite against the rules of course, but he was lonely for some companion critter. He made me promise never to tell.

  Then I heard the sound again, and this time I also heard footsteps in the outer cave. I began to hope that there really could be another human being alive and here at Paus Tak.

  It’s been two and a half years since I heard the last human voice. I preserved Klal Matak’s remains in the old science way, placing his stem cells, tissue, and all organs cells in the frozen zoology calesets along with the rest of the extinct flora and fauna of our sad, dead planet. This I had promised him, though for what purpose I cannot foresee, for I, Klal Tslak, am the last of the preservers at Paus Tak. When I die, there will be no one to perform this task for me; in fact, there will be no one at all, for I am the only living creature here. I could, of course, clone a new companion, but even if it were not forbidden by my vows, I would never be so cruel as to create another to sit in our solar-powered island and await the last morsel of food and final silence of our world.

  But the voice. Somehow there was a voice. At last I knew it was real. I tried to answer but it had been so long since I had spoken aloud my voice failed me. I ran toward the caller trying to yell out. When I met him I threw my arms about him and cried until the poor man passed out in my arms, for he had arrived more dead than alive.

  He is a Nomad called Choam who now eats and rests in my solar chamber after a harrowing journey from burrocity Zed. His mission was to bring news of the final rebellions and to request a written history and detailed scientific data regarding the purpose and product of the Preservers. He says the Hidden Ones wish to take this information with them on the last ship across the skies to Atland.

  I do not believe there is any purpose to this because to my knowledge there is no one capable of biological preservation, much less capable of the biological restoration of all the species we have preserved at the cellular level. It took only two generations of withholding biology from the burro curriculum to turn science into superstition. The only remnant left is some sort of religious ceremony in which the organs are removed from the body and the whole saved in impure mummification. Deprived of true knowledge, they believe this ritual will bring life after death somewhere out in the heavens. Men descend to barbarity far faster than they ascend to science.

  As to the rebellions, it is no more than I expected. The tunnels of the burrocities ran ankle deep in human blood, and all cities are by now airless, frigid, and lifeless. That leaves myself, Choam, perhaps a few isolated Nomads, and a small handful of scientists at the tiny outpost burrocity of Zed.We are the only living organisms on this planet that was once a lush garden of life.

  The only news that surprised me was the cause of the outbreak. It wasn’t the tragic, inhuman condition of life in the burrocities. It wasn’t even the knowledge that only a privileged few would secure transportation to the new planet. It was the dissemination of an old environmental visual recording of the once living planet, its lush flora and fauna, its oceans and free-running rivers of water. It was the knowledge of what had been lost.

  The extinction records Choam needs are ready; in fact, a list of extinct species was begun ages ago, even before the genetic preservation program was begun. The scientific methods of preservation are also well documented and detailed and have only awaited the call to be carried to the new world. It is the final thing he requested that I am helpless to supply. The Hidden Ones want a brief history of extinction. A brief history. How does one briefly recite the history of the destruction of an entire planetary ecosystem? If I could find the words, they would break my heart.

  Choam returns in the morning to Zed, where the final ship waits to carry the Hidden Ones, the Caretakers of our people’s history. He takes this note from Klal Tslak, the last of the Preservers, who lived a life of hope for a hopeless cause. I pray someone comes back to the ice caves of Paus Tak and restores these bits of genetic patterns of the living flora and fauna that once graced this land.

  If Choam can survive another round trip to Zed and back, he will join me here to await the final silence of all save the wind.

  THE END

  * * * * *

  Joan Francis is a licensed private investigator and owner of Francis Pacific Investigations. She has also worked as a newspaper reporter and is the author of a new Diana Hunter thriller, Silent Coup. She spent her childhood in small
mining towns and camps in the western United States and in South America with her family and mining engineer father. Moving from place to place as her father opened up new mine sites, she attended fifteen schools before graduating with a B.A. in history from the University of Washington in Seattle. Married with three grown children, she and her husband now live in a secluded valley of the Tehachapi Mountains. Her website is www.joanfrancis.net and her email is diana@joanfrancis.net.

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  Old Poison