The Dying of the Light: Interval (8 page)

“Reuben, I dinnae speak Italian.”

“Sorry, of course. It’s an aria from
The Marriage of Figaro
.’ Sung by two masters—or, in this case, mistresses—of their craft: Edith Mathis and Gundula Janowitz.”

Marcie sighed. “It’s beautiful.”

“Very. Would you like to hear the whole thing?” he said, moving to his desk, where he began scrambling through drawers.

“Yes, please.”

“Now where did I put… ah, there it is!”

Hacker pulled out his iPod’s dock, plugged it into the wall outlet, and, in turn, the iPod into the dock. A moment later, the lilting voices of the two divas filled the air, causing them both to smile as they turned back to their work.

A few moments later, the room suddenly went quiet, and they looked up to see Major Bill Shaw politely waiting to be noticed.

“Ah, Major,” said Hacker, moving over to shake the pilot’s hand and nodding towards the iPod. “Sorry about that. It’s just that Marcie had never heard it before. What can I do for you today?”

“It’s not a problem, Dr. Hacker. Actually, it was quite beautiful.”

“I’ve found it’s important to remember, in this new world of ours, that at least down here, beauty such as that still exists.”

“Very important indeed, Doctor.” Shaw began walking along the hydroponics trays, looking at the different plants soaking in their nutrient baths. “How’s it coming?”

“Well, this wasn’t what I expected to be doing when I came to McMurdo, but I think it’s turned out good.” The shakeup in the command of the base the year before had been much easier than expected when Hacker had refused to resume his previous position as area director. His counter-offer to take over the leader-less hydroponics lab had been quickly accepted.

Shaw smiled. “A lot has changed, hasn’t it?”

“It certainly has, Mr.
Michaelson
.” Hacker chuckled at Shaw, who realized he’d been turning his new wedding ring on his finger while walking. “How long has it been now?”

“Just under four months.”

“Ah, still in the honeymoon period, then.”

“I suppose so,” said Shaw, smiling. “I never thought I’d get married again, you know. Funny how the end of the world changes your plans.”

“That it does, that it does, indeed,” Hacker said, waving his hand at the rows of hydroponic trays around him as if in demonstration. “Never pictured myself as a horticulturist.”

Shaw nodded, and took a gentle hold on Hacker’s arm, directing him to the corner of the lab, out of earshot of his assistant.

Hacker, for his part, got the hint. “Let me show you the new radishes that are just coming in, Bill,” he said as they moved away. When they were safely out of range, he looked over at the tall pilot. “So, what’s up?”

“Jennifer asked me to come talk to you about the new trays. When do you think they’ll be ready?”

Hacker sighed. “I told you, the material you managed to salvage from the buildings you destroyed isn’t the right sort of stuff. It won’t work as well as these, and I can’t guarantee…”

Shaw put a hand on the rotund scientist’s shoulder. “Reuben, we don’t need a guarantee. And they don’t have to work perfectly. They just have to
work
.”

“I know that. It’s just… I may have a better idea.”

Shaw leaned back against a workbench. “Oh?”

“Have you ever heard of aeroponics?”

Shaw raised an eyebrow but otherwise remained silent.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” continued Hacker, motioning for Shaw to follow him as he approached a padlocked side-door. He opened the door with a key hanging from a chain around his neck and stepped through. Hacker swept his arm around what was clearly a converted storage closet as Shaw peeked inside. “Some people call it a subset of hydroponics, because it uses a nutrient liquid, but that’s really irrelevant. Come in, come in.”

Shaw stepped fully into the room, wide-eyed. Racks stretched from floor to ceiling, and there was a constant noise of sputtering, spurting air, like a hose with a leak. He looked at the plants held in rows above the bubbling concoctions in the trays. “These… these look even better than the ones in the other room, Reuben!” He reached for a bright red tomato growing suspended in air, then pulled back, as if reluctant to disturb anything.

“Go ahead,” said Hacker. “Those are almost ready, anyway. And there’s no finer advocate than someone who’s tasted the product.”

Shaw glanced at him, but he took the tomato out of the rack and held it close under a light for inspection. “This looks… well, perfect!”

Hacker beamed. “It is! Well, as perfect as we’re likely to get down here anyway, with the equipment I have.” Leaning closer, he nudged Shaw’s arm. “Go ahead, Major. Take a bite.”

Needing no further urging, the pilot took a large bite of the ripe tomato, juice dribbling down his chin. “Oh, my God. That is…” Shaw chewed and swallowed, then continued, “That’s delicious.”

“And it’s cheaper, resource-wise, than hydroponics. No big trays, no huge runs of nutrient solution that has to be recycled and maintained, etc. etc. ad nauseum.”

Shaw looked around, noticing the ‘cobbled together’ feel of the equipment. “Where did you get all this stuff?”

“Oh, you know, a hose here, a valve there, a little time in the machine shop with an air compressor.”

“Reuben, we’ve got to tell Jen about this.”

Hacker blanched. “I don’t know…”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Reuben, this could be
huge
!”

“It’s just that… some of this… well…”

“Oh, I get it. Are we talking ‘midnight requisitions’ for most of this stuff?”

Hacker looked down and shuffled his feet, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I… I didn’t wanna say, but…”

“Shit, Reuben, you can stop worrying about that right now.” Shaw looked around at the trays and racks upon racks of vegetables and fruit. “Wait, how much can you grow with this stuff?”

Hacker looked up, pride suffusing his features. “A lot. It works better than hydroponics and takes up half the space.”

“OK, now the big question:
what
can you grow?”

“Just about any vegetable. All kinds of fruits, oranges, bananas, strawberries, watermelons…”

Shaw’s jaw dropped. “
Watermelons
?”

Hacker nodded. “Yep! Just need more support for those, but with the right stuff I could probably do those quite well.”

“I came here to talk about expanding the hydroponics bay, and you give me
this
. Holy shit, Reuben!”

“Well, we’ll need a lot of water to make either the expansion or the aeroponics work. Not sure if we have enough left for that.”

“How pure does it need to be? Are we talking distilled water here?”

“No, nothing like that. But we wouldn’t be able to use just tap water, either. It’ll need to be clean, potable water, and we’re running somewhat low on that, which I was going to come talk to your wife about… Why are you laughing?”

Shaw took a breath and stood straight, tears running down his face from his laughter, and chuckled some more. Crooking a finger, he walked back out into the main lab and pointed out the only window.

“I think we’ve got it covered, Reuben.”

“What? There’s no… Oh, dear lord,” he said, finally figuring it out, and began laughing along with Shaw.

Marcie walked over, curious. “All right, then, what’s with all the hush-hush? And what’s so funny outside?”

Shaw looked over at her, then glanced back at Hacker. “It’s ice, Marcie. Some of the cleanest, purest ice in the world.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So,” he said, wiping a tear from his cheek. “Ice
melts
.”

A couple minutes later, they’d gotten their breath back, and were leaning against one of the tables. Shaw sobered first and turned to Hacker. “You know this doesn’t solve
everything
, right?”

Hacker nodded. “I know. It’s not a magic pill, by any means. We’ve still got the whole protein issue to work out, even with our increased production. But this is a little victory, Major, and that’s all we have down here anymore. Little victories.”

“Agreed, Dr. Hacker. We just need a lot more of them.”

“So, how much time does this aeroponics solution buy us?” Jennifer was pacing back and forth behind her desk, her usual routine when mulling over a decision. She looked across at Hacker and Shaw in the guest chairs.

“A year, maybe a year and a half,” said Hacker. “If I get all the equipment I need, I can keep us in fruits and veggies indefinitely. We’ve got the seeds from that deep freeze experiment the Argentines were running, and we can make up the nutrient solution the old-fashioned way, from recycling what we need from the waste plants.” He sighed, shifting in his chair. His ample girth clearly exceeded the chair’s tolerances, but he was used to that. “And there’s plenty of vitamins and minerals in fruits and veggies. But even though this is good news—and it really is—there’s another problem.”

“What’s that, Reuben?”

“The problem is protein. Or rather, the lack thereof. We’ve been going through our stores of meat pretty quickly. We need to cut
way
back on that and supplement it with the aeroponics products.”

“Because we can’t grow meat. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

“Exactly. We’ve been rationing all along, but as I’ve been saying for a while, we’ve been too generous with the portions. We have to get more aggressive.”

Shaw and Jennifer winced. It was a topic that had come up before in council meetings, but no one wanted to reduce their already meager portions.

Hacker went on, “If we cut it down to seventeen hundred calories a day for the men and fourteen hundred for the women, most of that being from aeroponics, we’ve got maybe a year, possibly eighteen months left. Then we’re out of meat, which means our available calories will end up being half that, and in another two to three months we’ll all be too weak to move. Of course, by that time, people will likely have started finding other sources for meat.”

Jennifer stopped pacing. “What do you mean? What other sources?”

Shaw spoke up when Hacker wouldn’t meet her gaze. “He means the ‘long pig,’ Jen. He means other people.”

Jen folded into her chair, her face taking on a greenish tint. “Oh.”

Hacker went on, “Doc can tell you more about the medical consequences. I’m just a biologist.”

“No, no, you’ve done great, Reuben.” Jennifer sat back and closed her eyes.

Hacker glanced at Shaw, who shook his head. He’d seen this before. It was just another way she processed information.

“OK, here’s what we’ll do,” she said, opening her eyes again and leaning forward, arms on the desk. “Reuben, consider your request for whatever equipment you need for the aeroponics bay approved.”

Hacker nodded. “I’ll have the list to you first thing in the morning.”

“Great. Bill, I want you to talk to the doc and see just how low we can make those calorie counts go before we start seeing ill effects. I want you two to work up a couple of rationing plans: one that takes us down to minimal levels but lasts as long as possible, and another that has Doc’s minimum recommended levels. We’ll present both to the council at the meeting tomorrow and see where we stand.”

She stood up, moving around her desk. “Thanks, Reuben,” she said, holding out a hand to him as he stood. “Great work today.”

He shook her hand firmly, smiling. “We’ll make it through, Director. No question.”

All of the delegates from the various stations sat in the station’s movie theatre—the only space large enough to hold all of them. Jennifer waited for the murmurs and a few raised voices to subside, but when they didn’t, and only seemed to get louder, she knew she had to do something. Fortunately for a few of the more obstinate of the council’s delegates, she’d left her pistol in her desk this time. Still, she’d learned a few things growing up in Brooklyn. The piercing whistle reverberated throughout the room, bouncing off the walls and echoing. Most put their hands over their ears, but
all
of them stopped talking.

Jennifer took her fingers out of her mouth and looked at the faces arrayed in front of her one at a time. Twenty-four people sat in the rows of chairs facing the screen behind her. With each of them representing their countries, they were heads of state now, whether they—or she—liked it or not.

“That’s enough. You’re all smart people, or you wouldn’t be here. We’ve all known this decision was coming for a long damn time, and we’ve hidden our heads in the sand—in the ice—for too damn long.” They grew uncomfortable, shifting in their seats and glancing around, as if to find a target for the blame. “We’re done with that, now. We have a problem, and we need to find solutions, not continue blaming each other for things none of us can change.”

When no one refuted her charge, she continued. “Hacker said we have maybe eighteen months, if we stretch it. Doc Stirling says we won’t last even that long. So we need to come up with something else. We need food, people. Give me some ideas.” The group was quiet, intent on coming up with a way out of the mess, but no one came up with any insights right away. Several looked more scared than thoughtful, and Jennifer wasn’t at all surprised.

Nigel Mackey, delegate from the UK, raised his hand. “I’m a vegetarian. And I’m not the only one here. None of us are sick, so why should we worry? Clearly, there’s enough protein for us to survive, so I don’t see the problem.”

Jennifer leaned back on the folding table and looked at the delegate. “Sure, there’s enough for you and the others. Lemme guess, you eat extra beans or veggies, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“Now imagine every one of the 1,132 people we’ve got on this base eating that way. Better yet, let’s ask the expert.” She turned to Hacker, sitting off to one side. “Can you grow that much food, Reuben? If we turned everyone on the base into vegetarians?”

The question didn’t even faze the portly biologist; he’d known this was coming. “Simple answer? No.” There was another round of murmurs, but he just spoke up, his voice cutting through the noise. “There’s not enough equipment. Hydroponics or aeroponics is the only way to grow anything out here, and aeroponics requires specialized equipment—high-pressure pumps, reservoirs, injection manifolds… Given an unlimited supply of equipment, I could grow an unlimited supply of fruits and beans and vegetables, enough to satisfy even the hungriest of us. We just don’t have the materials.”