The Offset

by Calder Szewczak

  Loath as she is to admit it, Jac knows he has a point. The Archivist is far more familiar with the workings of the annexe than she is. “Fine,” she says at last. “We’ve been seeing elevated levels of oxidised lipids in the test cores from the trees. That’s what I’m here to investigate.”

  The Archivist’s brow furrows. “Is that all? From the look on your face, I thought it was something serious.”

  “This is serious.”

  “I don’t see how. It’s not like oxidation affects the total carbohydrate storage capacity of the tree tissue. And I thought that was the only metric that mattered.”

  Jac blinks. Much as she’d like to dismiss his words as merely obstreperous, they have the ring of genuine curiosity. And given what he knows, the Archivist’s point is not unreasonable – even if it is one she has already discounted in the course of her personal investigation. “Oxidation can affect the overall lipid readouts in the test cores,” she says. “That’s why I’m concerned. Not to mention that it will mask variations in extra-xylemic gains as well. We were expecting to see a twenty-three percent increase in total aliphatic biomass by this point, but we’re only at twenty-one percent.”

  The Archivist considers this. “That’s negligible. A meaningless fluctuation. That small difference must be well within the predicted variance for the model,” he says, referring to the bioclimatic simulation run by the Borlaug’s supercomputer that assimilates various factors – biological data from the trees, atmospheric readouts, and so on – to more accurately forecast future results. It takes into account the numerous variations inherent in any biological system, and Jac can see why the Archivist would assume this difference in levels of oxidised lipids is one such variation.

  “The thing is, it wasn’t the only fluctuation,” Jac continues, counting off the rest on the gloved fingers of one hand. “The phytosterol content is lower than predicted. The cumulative wet biomass is higher, lipid or otherwise. And before you ask,” she adds, “yes, the model does account for these kinds of fluctuations. But I’ve checked the biochemical output from the sample cores against that for the trees in the control group in the London greenhouse. It’s not good. The control trees produce more long-chain lignin than the Greenland trees.”

  “How much more?”

  “Not a great deal,” she admits. “But consistently more.”

  “It’s probably just a seasonal variation.”

  “Yes, perhaps. Or perhaps the sample cores are being oxidated.”

  “But how exactly? There’s still a major gap in this theory of yours.”

  “There’s only one explanation I can think of,” she says quietly.

  It’s a moment before he catches her meaning. When he does, their brief détente dissolves into bad will. She sees the muscles of his jaw spasm angrily beneath his visor. “So that’s why you want a walkthrough of the handling procedure. You think we aren’t adequately flushing the capsules with neutral gases and they’re getting exposed to oxygen. You’re accusing us of incompetence.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  Unconvinced, he splutters into the mic. “You didn’t need to. Well, damn your walkthrough and your ridiculous theories! Everything is done by the book here.”

  “Tell that to your colleague with the severe radiation burns.”

  “That was different,” he says with a frown. “And anyway, he’s a Borders man by blood. What do you expect?”

  Finally, Jac snaps. “Just do it, will you? It’s a working theory and I need to rule it out. Prove me wrong, by all means. But we need to get to the bottom of it. If oxidation isn’t to blame for the difference in long-chain lignin, then there could be some other problem. And if that’s the case, the repercussions are serious. The trees might be strong enough now, but in the next five to ten years that difference will mean weaker timber and trees that don’t withstand the weather. The entire project could fail.”

  The Archivist throws up his hands. “Fine. But you’re wasting my time. And yours.”

  She can see his lips moving through the visor, but his muttering is so low that the mic doesn’t pick it up, which is probably just as well. She watches as he takes a capsule from one of the containers and carries it to a glove box, a transparent cabinet with two heavy mitts attached to the front that allow a technician to reach inside without disturbing the carefully controlled environment within. It reminds Jac irresistibly of the closed incubators Alix once showed her in the neonatal unit at Great Ormond Street; each infant a fragile specimen. Focus, she thinks. This is no time to get distracted.

  Unlike the incubators at the hospital, the glove box is completely sealed, an airlock on one side the only point of access. It replicates in miniature the airlocks that protect the nuclear annexe, and the Archivist performs a variant of the same halting ritual: open the first hatch, place the capsule in the airlock, close the hatch. He slips his already protected hands into the heavy mitts and opens the second hatch, the one that can only be accessed from within the glove box. He retrieves the capsule, pulls it into the main handling chamber and closes the second hatch once more. Only then is he ready to begin.

  Contained within the glove box is a purpose-made tool that resembles a stout, two-pronged fork. The Archivist takes it up and fits it into a pair of barely noticeable notches on the side of the otherwise high-sheen capsule. With a gentle but firm push of the tool, the capsule splits into perfectly symmetrical halves, revealing its cargo – a test core from a Project Salix tree – ready for sample-taking.

  The procedure is a difficult one: the mitts allow little room for hand movement, and the closure of the capsule for transfer and storage requires another degree of patience and dexterity. Jac moves closer, crouching awkwardly in her hazmat suit to get a better look. The Archivist works quickly and deftly. Once the test core is slotted back in, he balances the two halves of the capsule on an outstretched hand, with just the thumb and slight curvature of the mitt preventing the capsule and its contents from tumbling down onto the work surface of the box. At the same time, he uses his free hand to operate a small pistol-like implement with a trigger button on the top and a narrow, brass nozzle connected to a line that feeds in high-purity nitrogen from a gas cylinder outside the glove box.

  As soon as the capsule halves fill with gas they have to be quickly closed, an action that requires a swift motion to rotate the halves from the upright position towards each other and bring them together. The halves connect with a dull click and Jac lets go of a breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding. The Archivist has performed the elaborate routine flawlessly. He has done everything just as he was supposed to.

  “There,” he says hotly. “Happy now?”

  Jac straightens up, back cracking in protest, and gives a noncommittal grunt into the mic. Just because the Archivist can perform the procedure adeptly, doesn’t mean his colleagues can. But certainly the theory of systematic worker error seems far less likely than before. Her relief is limited: she is no closer to explaining the elevated levels. In an automatic gesture, she goes to pinch the bridge of her nose as she thinks, only realising the futility of this when her gloved hand knocks against the visor of her hood.

  “Let me inspect the cores.”

  “You won’t see anything,” says the Archivist. All the same, he deposits a few sample cores in the glove box airlock and then stands back as she dons the heavy mitts herself to have a look at the samples.

  He’s right, there are no visible signs of oxidation: the tree tissue is not discoloured and the pattern of the xylem and cambium is still clearly discernible. Of course, that kind of damage is unlikely to be visible to the naked eye. What she really needs is to examine the samples on a chemical level. “I want to test these in the mass spectrometer.”

  “To what end?”

  “If the samples are being oxidated by some other means, the mass spec will prove it beyond doubt.”

  “I can tell you right now what the mass spec will show: nothing. The cores are fine.�
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  Jac ignores this. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “If it will get rid of you faster, gladly.”

  To be analysed in the mass spectrometer, samples from the cores have to first be dissolved in organic solvents. Jac instructs the Archivist to prepare a dozen test tubes and slide them into the glove box through the airlock. Then she uses a scalpel to scrape a small piece of plant tissue from the surface of each core and drops a clutch of shavings into each test tube. It is fiddly work, made no easier by the watchful presence of the Archivist. Doing her best to ignore his resentful glare, she finishes preparing the samples and removes them from the side port of the glove box. Then she falters. The Archivist spots her problem at once and laughs.

  “Don’t know where you’re going, do you?” he says. “Jesus Christ. It’s this way.”

  He leads her across the hall to the mass-spectrometry room, where three large, grey cabinet units sit in see-through cases designed to protect them from any overspill radiation. Jac opens up the side portal of the nearest mass-spectrometer and places the twelve test tubes into the standardised holder. A robotic arm slides the tubes from the airlock into the main chamber, where the contents are vapourised for analysis. Jac stares hard at the machine while it runs, her hopes torn between the two possible outcomes. If the results prove the cores are somehow being oxidated, then they definitely have a problem but at least she’ll be one step closer to solving it. If, on the other hand, the results show nothing untoward, then she’ll know for sure that oxidation is not to blame for the read-out difference in long-chain lignin. The thought offers little comfort: if oxidation isn’t the reason for the discrepancy, then it can only mean the trees aren’t gaining enough biomass. And that wouldn’t make sense at all – carbon levels are down, global ppm just what it should be. In that regard, the trees are performing exactly as expected.

  The results, when they finally come, are displayed as a spectrum on a small computer screen to the left of the window; the tall, sharp peaks corresponding with varying atomic masses. Each specific chemical molecule produces its own unique pattern. It’s like a fingerprint; an image of the exact chemical makeup of each tree sample.

  “Well?” asks the Archivist as Jac checks the spectra against that of a pure oxidised phospholipid. But the fingerprint pattern that would be the proof of oxidation Jac is looking for is not there. She clicks her tongue in disappointment.

  “See,” says the Archivist, gleeful in his vindication. “None of the cores have been oxidated. There’s no sign of it at all. You’re losing your touch, Boltanski.”

  Jac ignores his taunt, lost in her own concerns. She knows she should be glad that the sample cores show no sign of having been oxidated, that their chemical makeup is just as it should be. There’s no evidence at all, in fact, to confirm her concerns about the health of the Greenland trees. But worry sits heavily as ever in her heart.

  14

  Alix trails behind Miri down the length of Euston Road. She’s struggling in the midday heat, constantly pulling at the neck of her linen blouse and stopping every so often to mop the sweat from her brow with a white handkerchief she keeps in her sleeve. At least they don’t have far to go – the Borlaug is in the heart of the St Pancras complex. Miri is carrying the white rat in its plastic tub, holding it loosely against her hip. She has a vague idea that she’ll be able to ask someone in the Borlaug to take the rat, but the truth is she’s reluctant to leave it behind at the Warren.

  One of the benefits of coming outside at such an hour is that the streets are practically deserted. Everyone else is safely inside, either at home or at work, no doubt laid out beneath their fans – assuming that the pigsuits haven’t stripped out all the motors.

  Later, Euston Road will become a lively thoroughfare as the Borlaug employees and the staff from the surrounding complex of laboratories walk or cycle home in the relative cool of the evening. For now, though, the road is all but silent. Miri and Alix keep to the shade of the pavement. The road stretches out ahead of them, the white tarmac scuffed and dirty with the marks of a thousand tyres belonging to bicycles and tricycles, hand cycles, recumbents and all manner of custom tandems. The surface glistens in places where, despite the protection of its reflective covering, the tarmac is beginning to melt in the heat.

  After a few minutes they come to the Guildhall of Illuminators, an imposing structure of marble and granite. It is raised above a sunken courtyard on four monolithic piers so that, at the right angle, it appears to be floating. Having grown up so close to it, Miri knows the story of the building well. It once housed the sprawling Copyright Library – the largest of its kind, it was claimed, anywhere within the city or the Federated Counties. Although no expense was spared to equip it with the latest environmental defences – pumps and flood barriers along with foam hydrants and flame-retardant cladding – it didn’t survive for long. The Activists broke in during the riots that raged in the weeks that followed the signing of the Bogotá Accord. The treaty introduced a raft of punitive, global restrictions. It was meant to save the planet from burning. Some felt it asked the top too little and the bottom too much; others said what was the point when the horse had already bolted. The discourse grew muddied and irate. In the end, nobody really knew what to think anymore, and the only thing left was violence.

  In the midst of one of the many brutal clashes that followed, the library was breached and a fire started. Some say the Activists overpowered one of the pigsuits and, in the course of destroying it, accidentally set off a stray spark that quickly turned into a roaring blaze. Others say that a pigsuit shot a taser at a man whose clothes had been smeared with gasoline and he spontaneously burst into flame. Either way, everything was destroyed. The wildfire defences, geared towards combatting the threat of external flame, proved useless against the blaze. No one knows exactly how many books were lost in the conflagration, but the figure was certainly in the millions. When the fire finally died down, all that was left within the charred bones of the building was ash and blackened fragments of paper.

  Were it not for the resurrection of the Guilds following London’s descent into ruin, it may have remained as a dark scar on the landscape for evermore. But when the trade routes in and out of London – both virtual and physical – became treacherous and the automasons started to fail, there was a sudden and urgent need to, amongst other things, recover the lost art of making paper and books by hand. Accordingly, the Guild of Illuminators was founded, and its Guildhall constructed on the very site where so many books were once read and enjoyed. Part of the old edifice, soot-black and brittle, has been cased in sheet glass and incorporated into the Guildhall’s reading room, preserved as a cautionary tale on the fragility of recorded knowledge for all those who toil within.

  Pausing to catch her breath, Alix glances across at the Guildhall, her gaze wistful. “I always thought you’d be an illuminator, you know.”

  “What?” asks Miri, taken aback. “Why?”

  “You loved to draw when you were little.”

  Miri frowns. “I don’t remember–”

  “And you were good, too,” insists Alix. “That thing you painted on your wall. I can’t say I care for what it represents, of course, but it was well done. You clearly have an eye. You would have been a fantastic illuminator, I know it.”

  Miri doesn’t know what to say. Alix seems so certain, so confident in her understanding of who her daughter is, and the difference between that and what Miri knows to be true is jarring. What bothers her is not so much Alix’s insistence upon her supposed artistic talents as her belief that Miri would ever join a Guild. Miri thought she had made her aversion to that path quite clear when she was still at home. Despite there being a hundred or more Guilds in London, Miri cannot bring herself to be interested in any. They are all of a kind, based on routine or manual services that were once automated but are now increasingly conducted by human operatives using more primitive technologies. At the Guild of Agrarians, they till the parched
soil with a wooden plough, rear livestock and milk cattle by hand. At the Guild of Weavers, they spin wool and turn it into long bolts of coarse fabric with looms and shuttles. There are many more guild crafts besides: lens grinders, coopers, blacksmiths, and cooks, as well as lawyers, accountants, engineers and teachers.

  “I don’t think it would have been for me, Mum,” she says at last.

  “Shame. It would have been the making of you. But there’s still time if you change your mind. Nothing can compete with the Guilds for career stability. They’re the future.”

  Miri turns away. She’s heard this argument before, about how important the Guilds are. Their purpose, she knows, is to relieve the burden on the city’s stuttering automated systems. The target is to have over half of all processes in London made fully manual within the next ten years – a target that is wildly optimistic and unlikely to be met. As far as Miri is concerned, there isn’t much point retraining the human populace to take over the automated tasks. All that industry – it’s what choked the Earth in the first place. And it’s easy enough for anyone to see that the land is still suffocating.

  “I don’t think I’m going to change my mind,” she says quietly.

  “You never know,” says Alix, undefeated. “Perhaps you haven’t found the right thing to catch your interest yet.” Then, a little uncertainly: “There was something, as I recall…”

  Miri prickles uncomfortably, suddenly realising what Alix is grasping for. “I wanted to go out to the Kernowyon mires,” she says.

  “That’s it. It was just after you found out about the Drownings.”

  “Yes,” says Miri, a vivid image flashing into her mind of the perfectly preserved infant bodies that had been unearthed in the peat, the skin hardened into shining leather.

  “You were far too young. When your mother found out you’d been shown the news footage at school, she was furious. You had nightmares for weeks after that.”

  Miri nods, though what she remembers more is pleading with her mothers to be allowed to go and help, to join the aid groups that were setting out to help the desperate, isolated communities of Kernow, only to be told she was too young, that she would get upset, that there was nothing she could do. “This is for the adults to take care of,” Jac had said, her refusal final.