Last Gasp (14 page)

Thus the global dichotomy was displayed in front of his eyes: humanity’s two dominant and opposing impulses seen at their crudest—consumption versus conservation.

Nick sucked in a breath and crouched, his head seeming to retract into his shoulders. “Oh, Christ, no ...”

Through the bar-dwellers Chase glimpsed a narrow bald head and small close-set eyes. In his usual tweed jacket and baggy flannel trousers Ivor Banting was talking to a large bull-necked man with shorn graying hair.

“Has he spotted us?” Nick asked tremulously. “I had to put up with the bastard at Hailey Bay, I’ll be damned if I’m going to here.” Banting would have looked shifty at a children’s party, thought Chase. “I never expected to see him here,” he said, turning to face the other way. “Would you have said Banting the Terrible was all that interested in the future of the environment?”

Nick was scathing. “He bloodywell isn’t. A week in Geneva at somebody else’s expense. A fucking freeloader.”

Chase looked down on him with a flinty grin. “Like us, you mean?”

“He’s an arse-licker,” Nick insisted. “Why do you suppose he was so accommodating to the Yanks?”

“You tell me.”

“Because they’ve got the funds to underwrite big research projects, dummy, that’s why. Banting keeps in with the guys with the bucks. He couldn’t give a damn who they are and what the project is providing they’re willing to cough up—” He glanced furtively over his shoulder. “He hasn’t seen us, has he?”

“What makes you think he’s all that keen to meet us two?” Chase said. “You never know, he’s probably as anxious to avoid—” But he wasn’t and Chase was mistaken, for he saw Professor Banting excuse himself, pat the broad shoulder of the man he was talking to, and push his way toward them through the crowd.

Nick swore under his breath and threw back his drink in one quick gulp.

They shook hands, Nick with barely concealed bad grace, and Banting gestured around, nodding with a knowledgeable air. “Some excellent people here, best up to now. I’m looking forward to it, aren’t you? Have you seen the agenda?”

Chase said he had. “Anyone you’d recommend?”

“Straube and Ryman, and Colin Hewlett’s paper should be worth hearing—I was his tutor at Loughborough, you know. And Stanovnik and Professor Okita; all top-notch chaps. I’ve been to the last two conferences, in Iceland and Miami, and this looks like the best so far.”

“What’s that?” Nick said, peering intently at Banting’s lapel badge, which unlike the others was printed not typewritten and mounted in a thin silver frame. In the bottom left-hand corner was the tiny embossed emblem of a silver conch shell.

“I’m a sponsored delegate,” Banting explained. “The JEG Corporation. They’re very much concerned with environmental matters.”

“American?”

Banting nodded. “But their interests are worldwide. Electronics, chemicals, timber, aerospace. A very large organization with dozens of subsidiaries.”

Nick’s expression remained deadpan, which was eloquent enough in itself.

Chase compressed a smile. “So you think Stanovnik should be worth listening to?”

“It’s always worthwhile to find out what the Soviets are up to,” Banting said. He nodded toward the bar. “That’s the chap I was with a moment ago. Friendly type, not a bit tight-lipped like most of his colleagues.”

“That was Stanovnik?” Chase said, craning to see, but the big Russian had gone. Random factors accreting around a common center. He had the peculiar feeling that he was on the edge of something, as if hints and clues were buzzing all around and he couldn’t quite grasp them and shape them into a coherent whole.

One dead Russian scientist mouthing the name of another.

The leader of the British team, instrumental in killing the first before he could talk to the second.

The involvement of the U.S. military and a giant American corporation.

Carbon dioxide absorption in seawater and Stanovnik’s lecture on microorganisms and climate.

Did the pieces fit, and if so, how? Chase felt intrigued, and, why he didn’t know, strangely excited. He nodded abstractedly at something Banting was saying, and then heard Nick’s groan, undisguised and deeply felt.

Chase had just accepted Banting’s invitation that the three of them should dine together, a sort of British Antarctic Expedition reunion.

In common with the 1,752 other people in the hall, Chase hadn’t a clue what the rumpus was about.

Scheduled to start at three o’clock—it was now ten after—on the Sunday afternoon, this first session was billed in the program as' “Welcome to the Sixth International Conference, followed by a Symposium of Views.” A cozy get-together, he had imagined, to ease everyone as painlessly as possible into the rigors of the week ahead. Like everyone else he hadn’t been prepared for the commotion down there by the steps leading up to the platform.

What the hell was going on? A protest?

The protesters were an unlikely pair—a stocky, tanned, white-haired man and a young girl dressed like a student in a cheesecloth shirt and faded denims. It was the girl who was doing all the talking, while the man was standing there holding a dilapidated briefcase under his arm, his expression calm, resigned, a little weary, Chase thought.

Several officials had closed ranks while others were scurrying around gesticulating to one another. The girl, attractive and amply blessed, was by turns raging at and then pleading to a harassed-looking official whose stock mannerism seemed to be a little shrug of the left shoulder and a display of his palms as if warding off an invisible army. Above them the chairman, a Norwegian, waited unhappily at the microphone, uncertain whether to ignore the commotion and carry on regardless or hang on in the hope that it might, like a summer thunderstorm, quickly blow over.

“And I thought this was going to be dull,” Nick said, enjoying the spectacle, straining his curly head to get a better view. “Who is that guy?”

Chase shook his head. “No idea. But the girl sounds American.”

They watched as the officials escorted the man and the girl along the aisle and through a side door, the girl arguing as fiercely as ever. The auditorium, silent and rapt till now, droned with speculation like a beehive disturbed by an intruder.

Nick grinned delightedly. “I hope the next act is as good,” he said, but his face fell when the Norwegian began to speak in that unrhythmic swaying singsong that grates on some people and sends others to sleep.

It sent Nick to sleep.

The official held up his hands, palms outward, and twitched his left shoulder. “The governing committee is not required to give a reason, mademoiselle. It is their decision alone. You understand?” He gave a weak smile as if to say that while he personally might sympathize with them, he was powerless to -do anything.

Cheryl nodded slowly, now icily calm. “I see. The fact that my father has flown seven thousand miles to be here doesn’t matter a damn to your committee. They can decide, just like that, and we don’t have the right to ask why or to receive an apology or even a reply. That’s how you run things here, is it?”

“I am sorry, mademoiselle. The decision is not mine.”

“You won’t even give us a reason.” She looked toward her father, who so far had shown neither anger nor disappointment. No emotion at all, in fact.

“As I have said, it is not required. The rules of the conference state that all papers must receive prior approval—”

“But the paper was accepted!”

“No, not so in this instance, mademoiselle. It was provisionally agreed that Dr. Detrick would be allowed to address the conference, subject to his paper being cleared by the committee. The committee has now seen the paper and made its decision.” Again the half-shrug, the tepid smile.

Cheryl ground her teeth. It was her father’s passive attitude, his air of resignation, that angered her almost as much as this bland, round-shouldered nonentity in the dark suit with shiny elbows. Didn’t he care? Damn it, he was a scientist, like herself, and for that reason she felt keenly the injustice of years of effort wasted on the whim of a faceless committee. To be treated in such a despicable fashion and told that not only was his paper disbarred but he would not be permitted to take part in any discussion from the platform. Christ, it was galling!

“By all means Dr. Detrick and yourself are free to attend the conference as delegates,” the official informed her, speaking directly to Cheryl, having decided that she was the one to appease. “The conference is, after all, international, and we are pleased that you have decided to attend.”

The young girl swallowed her anger. “That’s most kind of you, Monsieur—”

“Carpentier.” He made a little bow.

“Monsieur Carpentier.” She breathed and said in a low voice, “But if you think that’s the end of it, you’re very sadly mistaken, Monsieur Carpentier.” His smile faded around the edges. “My father didn’t come all this way to sit around exchanging small talk. He came to deliver a paper and you haven’t given us one reason why you won’t let him. You say the decision isn’t yours; okay, I accept that. You also tell us that we can’t talk to the people whose decision it is. Right. But you can’t stop us talking to the press. Maybe what this shambles of a so-called conference needs is a rocket up its ass.”

“Monsieur, please ...” The official looked pained and appealed to Theo. “I can do no more. I am the spokesman, that is all. I have much to do. You will excuse me, please.” His shoulder twitched and he seemed to drift away and disappear.

Theo turned to leave, his face impassive.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Cheryl cried, enraged by his docility. “Just let these people walk right over you? My God, I thought your work
meant
something to you. I got the impression that nothing else did for the past twenty years,” she added bitterly.

There and then she could have cut her tongue out, but it was too late. It had been said.

“You were only saying what you felt,” Theo said to her later, at dinner, when she had fumbled her way toward an apology. Having listened, he brought his hand across the white tablecloth and covered hers. “I understand. You have every right to feel I have neglected you. But I would like to say thank you.”

Cheryl gazed at him with a slight frown. “What for?”

“For speaking up for me. I knew then that you did care, that we are, in spite of everything, father and daughter.”

She felt herself coloring. Shit, why wouldn’t her emotions stay still? One minute she hated him, the next she felt compassion—affection— even genuine love. One thing she did know, and this had never wavered: her respect for him as a scientist. And maybe, just maybe, she thought, he couldn’t have been both devoted father and dedicated scientist.

She tossed her sun-streaked head in mocking self-disdain. “I always insist on my rights. I’m good at that.”

“I’m glad that you are.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Because you insisted on mine, too,” Theo reminded her with a smile.

The waiter placed avocado salad in front of Cheryl. Another waiter poured lentil soup into Theo’s bowl.

“I must be dumb or something,” Cheryl said, “but I still don’t understand. I mean, why come all this way and then give in without a fight? Without even a protest?”

Theo picked up his spoon and paused, staring down at the steaming soup. He said, “When you’ve worked for a long time on something and devoted all your energy to it, you suddenly find that you’ve no energy left. It’s been used up. My work is important to me, of course it is, but after so long I find that I’m—” He broke off, searching for the word.

“Tired?”

“Yes.” Theo nodded slowly. “Disillusioned. People won’t listen, they don’t want to listen. I tried in Washington, but it was no good, so I came here, thinking that these people would be different, more open, more receptive. But it seems I was wrong.” He dipped into his soup.

“People don’t wish to face the truth. They’d rather not see, not listen.” He drank and dabbed his lips. “It’s so much easier and more comfortable that way.”

“The truth about what?”

“About our planet,” Theo said, raising his eyes to look at her.

“Is that what you came here to tell them?”

Her tone of bewildered skepticism made him realize the enormity of the task that faced him. If his own daughter thought him deranged, what chance did he have of persuading anyone else? Parris Winthrop must have harbored similar suspicions, Theo realized. The
old
man’s
lived alone too long; his mind’s become unhinged by solitude.

He told Cheryl of the conclusions he had been driven to, quoting whole passages from the paper he had been forbidden to deliver, and after coffee had been served she said, “If you have the data and can prove what you say is true, why won’t they listen? Surely they must listen.”

“It’s a matter of interpretation,” Theo explained. “It’s quite possible to accept the figures as genuine and yet to disagree with the predicted outcome. The worldwide decline in phytoplankton is not in dispute— but what that might mean in terms of oxygen depletion is open to debate.”

“Then you could be wrong?”

“It is always possible to be wrong,” Theo answered gravely.

“But the least they could do is listen. What have they to lose?” It was the question of a naive schoolgirl and Cheryl winced at the tone of righteous indignation in her voice. She was regressing into the role of Daddy’s little girl, as if eager to make up for lost time and have a belated stab at the part.

“My predictions will hardly be popular with the scientific community, you must know that,” Theo said. “Scientists by nature are conservative creatures. They don’t like change, and anyone who predicts change, especially of this magnitude, will not be welcomed with open arms.” He looked down at his powerful hands, the palms ridged with callouses; not the hands of a scientist. “I was stupid to expect otherwise. I’ve been away too long.”

“But what if you’re right? People must be told. They have to be forced to listen.”

“How?”

She shook her head, at a loss. “I don’t know—but there has to be a way.”

There was a hard core of determination there that secretly amazed him. He had never thought of Cheryl as being a person in her own right: She was his and Hannah’s daughter, not a separate individual at all. Now he saw her anew—or rather, for the first time—as an intelligent young woman of strength and character. Her energy, he saw, unlike his, hadn’t been drained, but was full to the brim. She had enough for both of them.