by Greg Cox
“With pleasure!” Noon announced, crossing the wooden floor of the laboratory with astonishing speed. He slammed the painted red door shut, cutting off the howling antarctic wind, and hurriedly wriggled out of his parka, which he let fall carelessly to the floor. He lowered his goggles as well, counting on the black grease to obscure his less than celebrated features. “That's better! I was suffocating in that monstrous jacket.”
His triumphant tussle with the guard had definitely elevated Noon's spirits. Something to watch out for, Seven thought with concern. We wouldn't want him to develop a taste for physical violence. He frowned at the ceremonial silver dagger tucked into Noon's belt, visible now that the young man had shucked his outdoor gear. Seven disapproved of the weapon's presence on this mission, but knew that male Sikhs were required by their faith to carry such blades at all times. Granted, Noon didn't strike Seven as overly religious, yet he could hardly ask the young man to disregard the centuries-old traditions of his people—at least not without good reason.
“I'm glad you're more comfortable,” he stated, removing his own goggles. “Now cover the doctor while I dispose of my own excess layers.”
Evergreen sipped thoughtfully from his coffee while Seven efficiently discarded his parka. Overheated limbs gratefully welcomed their sudden lack of confinement. “I assume you appreciate the significance of the hole?” Evergreen challenged him, fiddling with his calculator as he did so.
Seven knew exactly what the hole meant. “It's alarming proof that humanity's widespread use of chlorofluorocarbons is having a serious effect on Earth's upper atmosphere. Furthermore—”
A moan from the tranquilized guard interrupted Seven, who glanced quickly at the prone figure to make certain that the guard was not reviving prematurely. Noon's servo, he recalled, was locked at a very low setting; still, the pacified soldier should have remained insensate for another half hour or so. Probably a false alarm, Seven guessed, even as Noon turned toward the guard as well.
Evergreen took advantage of the distraction to hurl the contents of his coffee cup at Seven's face, while simultaneously pointing his handheld calculator at Noon. Bizarrely, a dart fired explosively from the top of the calculator, trailing a thin metal wire behind it. The missile struck the surprised teenager in the shoulder, causing him to jerk suddenly, as though receiving a powerful electric shock. His servo flew from his twitching fingers, landing on the floor several yards away. A wordless cry of pain and anger erupted from Noon's lips.
At the same time, Seven staggered backward, caught off guard by the splash of hot coffee in his face. The greasy ointment on his face protected him from any serious burns, but the shock left him momentarily vulnerable to further attacks. Seizing his opportunity, Evergreen tossed aside his exotically equipped calculator and closed the distance between them, cracking Seven on the side of the head with the empty coffee mug, then grabbing on to Seven's wrist with unexpected strength. Blinking and sputtering, Seven struggled to hang on to his servo even as Evergreen shoved Seven's trigger arm up and away from his own body. “I don't know who you are,” the scientist boasted, his face only inches away from Seven's, “but you'd be surprised how many spies and assassins have tried to get the better of me!” With his free hand, he slugged Seven viciously in the kidneys. “I've outlasted them all.”
Wincing in pain at Evergreen's repeated blows, Seven grappled with the renowned researcher, who was clearly no stranger to hand-to-hand combat. Blast it! he thought, cursing himself for his carelessness. The whole mission is falling apart. But how was he supposed to have known that a respected scientist, stationed thousands of miles from any possible threat, would be carrying a concealed taser weapon?
Ironically, it now appeared that the nameless guard, whose ill-timed utterance had distracted Seven in the first place, had merely been talking in his sleep. Peering over Evergreen's shoulder, the last of the coffee trickling away from his eyes, Seven saw the tranquilized soldier contentedly roll over and slip back to dreamland. And thank the Aegis for small favors, he thought, blocking one of Evergreen's left-handed punches to his midsection. I'm having enough trouble with the man the soldier was supposed to be guarding!
Evergreen was proving to be a formidable opponent, but Seven's superior strength, produced by generations of selective breeding on an alien world, gradually began to prevail. Recovering from the older man's earlier attacks, Seven succeeded in grabbing on to the scientist's free hand, even as they continued to wrestle for control of the servo. Seven's weapon arm slowly lowered, pushing back against Evergreen's strenuous resistance, while the combative older man stumbled backward involuntarily, losing ground. Seven did not want to have to render Evergreen unconscious with the servo—he still needed to confront the man regarding his potentially destabilizing experiment— but realized that might be the only way to subdue the resourceful scientist. His thumb hovered above the servo's touch-sensitive controls. “We don't need to battle like this, Doctor,” he tried to convince his opponent. “I just want to—”
His urgent appeal to reason was drowned out by a vengeful war cry from Noon. “Villainous cur!” Rotating both himself and his foe clockwise, so that he saw the quaking teenager over Evergreen's shoulder, Seven watched as Noon violently yanked the electrified dart from his shoulder, then reached for his knife, his face contorted by murderous rage. “You'll pay for that, old man!”
“Noon! No!” Seven shouted, horrified at the disaster he saw unfolding before his eyes. “Don't!”
But he was too late. The furious youth hurled the unsheathed blade with all his superhuman strength and accuracy. Seven felt the impact of the dagger as it struck Evergreen squarely in the back. The stabbed researcher stiffened abruptly and fell against Seven, who hastily grabbed on to the man's body to keep him from falling. Bright arterial blood trickled from Evergreen's lips while his eyes widened in shock. He tried to speak, but only a faint gurgle emerged from his throat. Seven watched in agony and dismay as the brilliant scientist took his last, dying breaths. This can't be happening! he thought.
As gently as he could, he lowered Evergreen's body to the floor, laying him carefully on his side. The gleaming silver handle of Noon's dagger, buried in the man's back all the way up to its hilt, was the center of a spreading crimson stain soaking through Evergreen's thick woolen sweater. A hasty inspection of the injury confirmed Seven's worst fears—the wound was clearly mortal. Although Noon had missed, barely, his target's spine, the dagger had instantly pierced Evergreen's heart from behind. He was beyond saving.
Sickened and appalled, Seven put away his servo and plucked the bloodstained knife from between Evergreen's shoulder blades. He mournfully contemplated the fatal weapon, then rose from the murdered man's side to face the young warrior he had so foolishly brought to the South Pole. “What have you done?”
To his credit, Noon himself looked a bit shaken by what had just occurred. Now that his deadly fury had claimed its victim, he stared at Evergreen's lifeless body with the aghast expression of someone who had obviously never killed a man before. “Is he . . . ?” he asked Seven hesitantly.
“Yes.” Seven massaged his forehead, smearing the oily grease above his brow. Now what do I do? he pondered hopelessly. An icy chill even more numbing than Antarctica's glacial deep-freeze radiated outward from his heart. About the mission and Noon? “He's dead.”
Panic flickered briefly in the young Sikh's brown eyes, only to be quickly replaced by a look of cold defiance. His expression hardened, along with the rest of his body language, as Noon's adolescent pride overcame whatever guilt he might have felt. “He struck the first blow,” the youth asserted boldly, crossing his arms atop his broad chest.
Spotting the discarded taser-calculator on the floor, he strode toward the offending weapon, then crushed it beneath the heel of his boot. “He chose his fate.” He shrugged his shoulders with as much worldly indifference as a fourteen-year-old could muster. “Such are the fortunes of war.”
“This wasn't a war!”
Seven said sharply. “Our mission is to prevent wars, not create still more needless bloodshed.” Despite his stern tone, he blamed himself more than Noon. I should have never brought him on such a precarious mission. He is too young, too violent. Evergreen's blood dripped down the length of the silver blade, turning the hilt wet and sticky within Seven's grasp, and staining his own fingers scarlet. This is an unmitigated catastrophe. For all of us.
Noon stubbornly refused to admit any error or regret. “You were under attack. I removed the threat.” Leaving behind the smashed remains of Evergreen's well-armed calculator, he crossed the floor to retrieve his fallen servo. “You should be grateful, not indignant.”
I could have handled Evergreen myself, Seven thought bitterly, and without killing him! “There were other ways,” he began, hoping that, at the very least, he could still somehow force Noon to confront the magnitude of what had transpired. “There are always alternatives to murd er. . . .”
A harsh, choking cough from the floor startled Seven, cutting him off abruptly. He looked down in amazement to see Evergreen stirring restlessly upon the wooden timbers. The stricken man was pale and gasping, his face grimacing in pain, but he was clearly, impossibly alive. Moreover, he appeared to be recovering from what should have been a fatal injury at an incredibly accelerated rate. Even the flow of blood had evidently halted from the gash in his back, judging from the way the crimson stain had stopped spreading. The sound of his laboring lungs echoed within the confines of the arctic lab, defying probability with every sharp intake of breath.
“You said he was dead!” Noon accused, his rebellious pose collapsing in the face of Evergreen's astounding resurrection. The teenager stared at the quaking target of his wrath, his blackened face torn between astonishment and relief.
He should be relieved, Seven thought, grateful that at least some part of Noon was glad to see his victim return to life. That wound would have killed even Noon or myself instantly; there was no way an ordinary human being could have survived. Unless. . . .
When Evergreen, still trembling and gasping, attempted to lift his body from the floor, Seven was so taken aback by the sheer unlikeliness of this event that he almost forget to offer the injured man any assistance. At the last minute, he remembered to lend Evergreen a hand, carefully helping the man back onto his feet. The scientist groaned loudly, taking a second to regain his balance, then reached back over his shoulder, groping for the site of his injury. “Where?” he mumbled, looking genuinely surprised to find the knife missing.
Spotting the blood-smeared weapon in Seven's hand, he cautiously backed away from his recent opponent, then cast a wary glance at Noon, who stood several years away, himself more than a little confused. “Damn,” Evergreen muttered gloomily. He acted more like a criminal caught in the act than a man who had just escaped death by the thinnest of margins.
“You needn't fear us,” Seven insisted. “No one is going to attack you again.” He dropped the dagger onto the floor, then gave it a kick in Noon's direction. He raised his hands slowly to show that he was no longer armed. “What happened was a mistake.”
“One hell of a mistake,” Evergreen grunted, scowling at Seven while rubbing his palms together to restore his circulation. Already the color was coming back into his face, rendering him remarkably hale and hearty for a man who had just been stabbed in the heart. “I suppose you're wondering why I'm still alive.”
Seven had his suspicions. “You're an immortal, aren't you?” Now it was Evergreen's turn to look surprised. His head jerked backwards as he stared at Seven with startled eyes. “How the devil do you know that?”
“It's the only logical explanation,” Seven replied. Although it was incalculably rare, he had encountered this unique human mutation before. “I assume your injured flesh has already regenerated?”
“Something like that,” admitted Evergreen, whose name, Seven now presumed, was something of a private joke. “If there's a way to kill me for good, I haven't found it yet.”
“No!” Noon blurted. He held his dagger at his side, unwilling to sheathe his knife despite its failure to inflict any lasting harm on Evergreen. “This is a trick! It's not possible.”
“Yes, it is,” Seven corrected him brusquely, “and put away that barbaric weapon right now.” He returned his attention to Evergreen, who now regarded Seven with open curiosity and respect. “If I may ask, Doctor, exactly how old are you?”
Evergreen shrugged, apparently seeing no point in further pretense. “I was born in Mesopotamia over six thousand years ago,” he divulged, “and have survived much more than your young accomplice's knack for knife-throwing. I've lived many lives, as Solomon, Alexander, Methuselah, and others. Believe me, the unmoving sun above us would be setting before I finished listing all my past identities and accomplishments.” He chuckled dryly. “Consider yourselves privileged, gentlemen. You're in the presence of living history.”
So it seems, Seven reflected. The only other possible explanation, that Evergreen was some manner of extraterrestrial entity, was even less probable; Seven tried hard to keep track of any alien visitations to this era ( although the Q had occasionally been known to slip beneath his radar). The shattered remnants of the ageless scientist's highly unusual pocket calculator caught Seven's eye and he nudged the broken bits of plastic with the toe of his boot. “For a man immune to mortal injury, you come surprisingly well armed.”
Evergreen snorted acerbically. “One does not live through six millennia of human history, much of it bloody, without learning to be prepared to defend oneself at all times. Paranoia, I fear, is a natural consequence of long acquaintance with mankind.” He sighed at the mess Noon had made of his ingeniously concealed taser weapon. “ Besides, I'm an inveterate tinkerer. Well, at least since the Renaissance.”
Seven wondered what else the man now known as Evergreen might have invented over the last sixty centuries. “I wish I had more time to inquire as to your personal history, Dr. Evergreen. As one deeply concerned with the future of humanity, I would value your perspective on the past.” Despite his and Roberta's occasional forays into time travel, there was still much of Earth's tumultuous history that defied reason and comprehension. “Nevertheless, I must return to the matter at hand.” Stern gray eyes surveyed the computers and control panels lining the walls around them. “I confess that I am puzzled to find you, with all your accumulated experience, engaged in such a reckless endeavor. If nothing else, surely you are aware that military activities in Antarctica are expressly forbidden by international treaty?”
“Military?” Offended by the very suggestion, Evergreen turned away from Seven to contemplate a control panel composed of numerous switches, buttons, and gauges. “To the contrary, sir, my work here is expressly designed to rescue mankind from its own foolhardiness. Rampant abuse of CFCs, in aerosol sprays and such, is literally eating away at Earth's protective ozone layer; in fact, close to three percent of the world's ozone has disappeared in the last five years alone. If nothing is done, the increased ultraviolet radiation will drastically increase skin-cancer rates, kill the vital phytoplanktons at the base of the marine food chain, and even accelerate global warming.”
Seven appreciated the scientist's foresight and concern, but had little time to listen to lectures on rudimentary atmospheric maintenance. “I am fully aware of the ‘greenhouse effect’ and its implications, Doctor. I am concerned that your cure may be just as dangerous as the crisis you hope to avert.”
“Nonsense,” Evergreen asserted testily. “My solution is elegance itself.” He gestured at the generous array of computers and apparatus surrounding them. “By manipulating Earth's own magnetic field, via a geostationary satellite secretly launched into orbit by the space shuttle Discovery, I hope to use the Van Allen radiation belt surrounding the planet to convert free oxygen into ozone, thus repairing the damage done to our atmosphere.” He glanced upward, beyond the ceiling. “If I can close the hole directly above us, as I have every reason to believe I
can, then humanity will have the means to undo the hurt done by our chemical carelessness.”
“All very well and good, Doctor,” Seven conceded, “but let me ask you this: Couldn't the same technology be used to create holes in the ozone layer, say above an enemy nation?”
Evergreen scratched his chin, looking disturbed by the suggestion. “It's possible, I suppose, but surely no one in their right mind would. . . .” His voice trailed off as the dire implications of such a scenario sank in.
“Would what, Dr. Evergreen?” Seven asked, pressing his point home. “Want to inflict an ecological catastrophe—including pandemic cancer, blindness, famine, et cetera—upon another country? Or, at the very least, desire the ability to threaten as much?” He subjected the immortal scientist to a penetrating stare. “After six thousand years, you must be aware of the human capacity for warfare—through every means possible.”
“But that's not what this experiment is all about!” Evergreen protested, more than a little defensively. “Why, our funding comes straight from the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Science. We have nothing to do with the Pentagon.” He glanced over at the slumbering soldier. “Well, aside from a reasonable need for security, that is.”
Seven could tell that, despite the scientist's very vocal objections, he was getting through to Evergreen. Too bad I can't tell him what ozonedepleting weapons did to the Vyyoxi homeworld, he reflected somberly, or how the Zakpro managed to completely wreck their environment. Stratospheric warfare had proved disastrous on every planet where it had been pursued, so Seven had no intention of letting humanity head down that road, not if it could possibly be avoided.
“I'm afraid I have to disillusion you further, Doctor.” Seven retrieved a floppy disk from one of the inner pockets of his insulated nylon vest and handed it to Evergreen. “As you can see, not only does the majority of your funding come, albeit indirectly, from the United States Defense Department, but military applications of your technology are already being developed and analyzed by top Pentagon strategists.”
