Last Gasp (55 page)

Chase shook his head, smiling sweetly. “None whatsoever.”

Cheryl coughed up more of the evil-smelling black stuff and wiped her streaming eyes. She raised her head and caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. Her face was deathly pale and covered in beads of sweat, a faint bluish tinge to her lips. She knew the signs and symptoms, had seen them in others, so there was no point in fooling herself.

Dan hadn’t noticed anything, she was certain; he would have come straight out and said something. A lump came into her throat, whether at the thought of Dan or out of self-pity she didn’t know. But this wouldn’t do, she told herself sternly. He’d know in an instant something was wrong if he saw her like this. She doused her face in cold water and pinched her cheeks to bring the color back.

Outside the cabin in the fresh air she felt better. The grandeur of the Oregon landscape with its thickly wooded slopes rising steeply to bare granite peaks had a healing effect, and the sky, a brilliant translucent blue, was unsullied by any trace of industrial fouling.

This was a good place to have built a settlement. She had been right to bring Dan here, to start anew. They had been warmly welcomed by the Earth Foundation settlers, who had made them part of the small community in what had been the Willow Valley Reservation a few miles from the California border on the northern shore of Goose Lake. Yet in the last two years there had been changes, disturbing changes, mainly caused by the exodus from the south. First it had been a trickle of refugees, increasing to a steady stream, seeping northward like an insidious stain. Now this part of Oregon was dotted with tiny isolated communities, and what had once been the little townships of Beatty, Bly, Adel, Plush, and Valley Falls were in danger of being swamped.

There had been other changes too, even more disturbing to Cheryl. She found it hard to define, to be precise about, but it was as if the attitude, the temper of the people was undergoing some kind of transformation. A kind of nervous brooding suspicion where previously there had been tolerance and a feeling of fellowship. The change was more psychological than anything else, she felt, convinced that it wasn’t her imagination playing tricks. She likened it to a kind of subversive paranoia, slowly infiltrating the community and corrupting people’s minds.

And why, for God’s sake, was she sick? Surely this beautiful place, with its mountains and lakes and thousands of square miles of forests, was as healthy an environment as you could wish for—if you couldn’t survive here, then nowhere on the planet was safe.

Dan was with some of the other young people over at the community center, discussing an extension to the school. By the time he returned Cheryl felt much better, had regained her color and composure, and to her relief Dan gave her a casual wave over the heads of the others, apparently noticing nothing out of the ordinary.

Watching him, she felt the stab of a familiar poignancy. He was perhaps a fraction taller than his father and not quite as broad, but it might have been the young Gavin Chase, the same shock of black hair hanging over his forehead, the same intelligent blue-gray eyes and the firm, rather stubborn mouth. It had taken a long time to absolve herself of the guilt for separating father and son. Even though Dan had never once reproached her for leaving Gavin—even though he had made the choice freely to come with her to the settlement—the knowledge that her decision had brought about the estrangement had been a heavy burden to bear. She hadn’t entirely come to terms with it and knew in her heart of hearts she never would.

“What are you doing this afternoon?” Cheryl asked him. “Like to row across the lake?”

Dan looked at her oddly, then shook his head. “Sorry, Cheryl, I’ve already promised to go riding with Jo over by Drews Gap. We’re going to have a picnic and collect some herbs.”

“Just the two of you, you mean?”

“Sure,” Dan said, flashing her a wide grin. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“It isn’t up to me to mind. I take it her parents know?”

“Yeah, they said okay.” He’d lost the crisp correctness of his English accent and now spoke without the reserve that many Americans took to be standoffishness in the British character. “Anyway, I thought you had things to do this afternoon—didn’t you say Tom Brannigan had called a council confab?”

“That’s not until four. Never mind, you go off and enjoy yourself.” Cheryl patted his shoulder and went ahead of him onto the porch. It had been a mistake to suggest a change in the routine, she realized that now. But she was afraid that time was slipping by too fast and she needed his company to reassure her that all was well. All wasn’t well though. She felt queasy again at the thought and had to make a willful effort to control her panic.

They stood together looking across the little square around which were grouped the rough timber buildings of the community center, the surgery and dispensary, and the three cooperative stores that served the needs of the three-hundred-strong settlement. Outwardly primitive, the sturdy pine-clad buildings were fitted out with all modern amenities, including electricity and nonfreeze plumbing. It was a tenet of Earth Foundation philosophy that technology was the friend and not the enemy. There was no reason not to take full advantage of man’s inventiveness and enterprise if used sensibly and with due consideration for the environment. No one here subscribed to the back-to-nature fallacy: That was simply a stupid and short-sighted return to the Stone Age. They were far from the masochists and martyrs who felt conscience-stricken at the thought of killing a rabbit or burning a log. The important thing was to live in harmony with their surroundings and not to plunder or despoil out of sheer greed, indifference, or asinine thoughtlessness.

Above all, to inculcate those same beliefs in the rising generation. Theirs was the earth to inherit, providing their forebears hadn’t already squandered the inheritance.

“Are you serious about Jo?” Cheryl asked, surprising herself with the question. She didn’t want to pry.

“Do I have to be?”

“I just wondered.”

“What’s up, afraid she’ll get pregnant?”

“Dan!” Cheryl said, disapproving more of his directness than scandalized by the sentiment itself. “I didn’t think that for a moment. She’s only seventeen and I wondered how you felt about her.”

“She’s okay. We have fun together.” Dan folded his arms, his brown work-hardened biceps bunching and stretching the short sleeves of his T-shirt. He was full of the confidence of the healthy good-looking twenty-one-year-old male, delighting in his own masculine appeal. And why not? Cheryl thought. If you didn’t feel good at twenty-one there wasn’t much hope for you.

She said, “I guess you’re old enough to know what you’re doing.”

“I guess so,” he agreed, the same grin lurking at the corners of his mouth.

Was he making fun of her? Maybe she was losing her sense of humor, which was hardly surprising under the circumstances. Resolutely she pushed the shadow away, kept it at arm’s length. It occurred to her that perhaps the rest of the community was perfectly normal and it was she who was behaving strangely. After all, that’s what paranoia was: to suspect others of having weird thoughts when they resided in your own skull.

The trail was steep and rocky leading up to Drews Gap, elevation 5,306 feet, and the horses were sweating and jittery. They sensed the danger of a slip or a stumble, their eyes white and rolling as they shied away from the drop. Thick vegetation and the spiky tops of pine trees dropped away steeply below.

Jo led the way, neat and trim in a check shirt and jodhpurs, the set and balance of her slim body just right on the broad flecked back of the gray. Dan derived a lot of pleasure from just watching her. Her long blond hair, pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck, gleamed like a silver scarf in the clear sunlight. When she arrived at Goose Lake with her parents two years ago she’d been an awkward gangling kid with long skinny legs, pretty much as he remembered her from their last meeting. He’d teased her and unkindly nicknamed her “Stilts.” The teasing had lasted about a year, until shortly after her sixteenth birthday when (almost overnight it seemed to Dan) the proverbial swan had appeared. From then on he’d started to take notice in an entirely different way.

The trail leveled out and Jo coaxed the gray toward a small clearing guarded by a circle of slender pines, standing to attention like sentinels, the breeze whispering in their branches. Somewhere in the undergrowth a stream chuckled to itself as it leaped and gurgled over rocks. Jo slid down and the horse immediately began cropping the luxuriant tufts of grass. Steam rose from its flanks and hung in the sunlight, which lanced like pencil beams through the overhead cover.

“What was all that with Cheryl?” Jo asked, unfastening the straps on her saddlebag and pulling out a small bundle swathed in white cloth.

“She was worried that we might be sneaking away for a spot of afternoon delight. You know how they are.”

Jo looked at him sideways from under long fair lashes, her expression mildly scathing rather than coquettish.

“Naturally I told her the thought had never entered our heads,” Dan said with a perfectly sincere face that still managed to seem devilish.

“I’m glad about that,” Jo said. “Because it never entered mine. From what I hear there’s no shortage of that on Saturday nights with Baz Brannigan and his cronies, among whom you number yourself, so I believe.”

Dan actually blushed under his tan. Jo didn’t miss much, though he hadn’t realized it was common knowledge what Baz—Tom Brannigan’s son—and the rest of them got up to; and not only on Saturday nights. He felt hot and cold at what Cheryl would say if she found out. In truth he didn’t know how to take Baz—whether he liked him or even secretly despised him. Baz was assertive, cocky, a natural leader (or bully), and the focal point for the other young men at the settlement with high spirits to vent and wild oats to sow.

No, Dan decided, turning his feelings around to examine them, he didn’t really like Baz at all. Yet there was something about him, an intense and almost mesmerizing quality, that was hard to resist. Sometimes Dan actually thought that Baz was mad—the way he’d suddenly switch from being passive to hyperactive for no apparent reason. Almost as if his brain had blown a circuit. Maybe the pill-popping did that.

“What’s the matter?” Jo asked him as he jerked the straps on his saddlebag with unnecessary force.

He answered with a shrug, willing his hands to move slowly and methodically as he pulled out the food wrapped in silver foil, the plastic mugs, and the Thermos of chilled white wine and laid them on the sun-dappled cloth Jo had spread on the ground.

What was it, this irritation flaring suddenly into anger? Why did he feel this way? Was it the hot blood of youth, something he’d grow out of? He just felt that he wanted to reach out and seize hold of life, and that somehow the impulse was being stifled and thwarted. No, no, no, his mind kept insisting, he wasn’t like Baz; the feeling was different, not the same at all. Baz really was peculiar, whereas he ... he was undergoing some form of temporary stress. Perfectly natural at his age. Normal.

And then he thought, stress from
what,
for Christ’s sake?

He had to admit the stupidity of it, even while he was doing it, but there and then without thinking, while Jo’s back was turned, he slipped the white pill into his mouth and washed it down with a quick swig of wine.

Propped on one elbow, tearing off strips from a chicken leg, Jo gazed around at the dense proliferation of vegetation. Even in her two years at the settlement she’d noticed a change in the local flora. She was under the impression that greenery was decaying and dying in the new atmosphere, not flourishing like mad. She asked Dan about it.

“Cheryl says it’s to do with the abundance of carbon dioxide, which plants breathe in. They’re being hyperventilated or something and it’s speeding up their metabolic rate. There’s a friend of Cheryl’s who lives north of here, Boris Stanovnik, who’s been studying the problem, and he says it’s going to accelerate the growth as the carbon dioxide builds up.”

Jo tossed the chicken leg aside and licked her fingers. She looked puzzled. “Then how come the oxygen isn’t increasing? If the plants are growing faster and becoming lusher, they ought to be giving off more oxygen. It’s a two-way process.”

“Hereabouts that’s true, though it’s not happening uniformly throughout the world. We wiped out most of the equatorial forests in the last century, which drastically reduced the oxygen supply. Only the stuff that’s left”—he waved his hand at the encroaching greenery— “is flourishing. And there isn’t enough of it to make much difference. What we’ve got now are huge tracts of desert and small areas with superabundant growth. The balance has been upset, so the whole thing’s out of kilter.”

He reached for his mug of wine and clumsily spilled most of it down his T-shirt. The seeping wetness reminded him of a woman in heat, a potent sexual image.

“So what’s going to happen, do you think?” Jo asked, nibbling a slice of cucumber. The shape of her bite made a serrated half-moon in the pale fleshy translucence.

“Do you mean globally?” Dan said, watching her mouth. “Or just here, to us?”

“Isn’t it the same thing? If the global situation gets worse I don’t see how we’re going to survive in our little Garden of Eden. Or are we somehow immune from what’s happening to the rest of the planet?”

“You know something,” Dan said, his eyes fixed intently on her. “You’re a precocious little brat for a seventeen-year-old.”

“Well, you can’t be old
and
precocious,” said Jo sensibly. “Only the young are precocious. It’s one of our more endearing traits.”

“What do you think I am, middle-aged?” His eyes lingered on the jut of her young breasts under the check shirt. Above the third button there was a vee of smooth tanned skin. He picked up the Thermos, fumbled and nearly dropped it, and sloshed more wine into his mug.

“You’re way over the hill,” Jo informed him, shaking her head. “You can’t even take your liquor.”