The Smog (8 page)

“Yes, of course,” said Palfrey.

“Thank you. Now I have to be away from here in twenty-five minutes,” Clitheroe went on, contriving to create the impression that his going would be on urgent matters of state, rather than for dinner before a Cabinet meeting. “I would like to be briefed as quickly as possible.”

Now, Professor Smith opened his eyes and opened his mouth and waited with obvious impatience.

 

 

“Yes, of course.” Palfrey answered Clitheroe, mildly. “I would like Professor Erasmus Smith of the Oxford Foundation for Air Purity to talk to us. Will twenty-five minutes be long enough, Dr. Smith?”

Smith, his eyes flashing with sincerity, rose from the back of the group.

“
Ten minutes
will suffice to scare the hair off the back of your neck. Since the Air Pollution Conference in Los Angeles—”

“Will you be good enough to come up here and use the microphone?” Palfrey asked.

“It will lose a minute, and there are so few left before the Home Secretary has to go—” Smith beamed at Clitheroe as he passed him, joined Palfrey, and stood in front of the table microphone. “Never did like these damned things …” boomed out, and the microphone squealed faintly. Palfrey adjusted it as Smith began to wave his arms as if he were conducting an orchestra. “As I was saying last year, there was an international convention—conference to you, gentlemen—on board the late lamented
Queen Mary—
on the matter of air pollution. That was
before
the dramatic increases in concentration which Palfrey has outlined to us from figures submitted by the International Conference Secretariat—
we
take it very seriously, you see—”

“Dr.—ah—Dr. Smith,” interrupted Clitheroe, “time
is
of the essence.”

“And don't I know it!” retorted Smith, beaming. “Shall we or shan't we have enough time and air to
breathe
in the future? Do I need to remind you, gentlemen, that man—in fact all life, including plant life—depends on the supply of oxygen in the air. Too little oxygen and there would come a time when the air could be (a) so rarefied and (b) so polluted that human life became virtually impossible. Our lungs would burst within us, so to speak—”

“This is surely not a conference on science fiction—” interrupted Clitheroe again.

“
Science fiction!
”
roared Smith. “Don't be a bloody fool! My God, you politicians—”

“Dr. Palfrey, I really must protest,” said Clitheroe, half-rising.

“Why don't you keep quiet until Dr. Smith's finished?” demanded Endicott. “You imposed the time limit.”

“All right, all right, I apologise,” said Erasmus Smith, grandly. “Politicians and I never seem to see eye to eye and I've been trying to make them understand for years that we scientists are not inhabitants of the lunatic fringe. I can supply facts and figures in alarming quantities to substantiate what I am about to say. We have been carrying out experiments throughout the world to discover the effect of contamination of the atmosphere by carbon mon – and carbon dioxide. Results: shattering. Concentrations of over 10% are, we know, lethal. Lock yourself in your own garage with the engine of your car running and you won't live to announce the result. Put plants such as tomatoes, all soft fruits, and green vegetables in an atmosphere polluted by 10% and they (a) absorb enough to make them nearly as effective as arsenic in the human stomach and (b) die. And topsoil, no matter how well fertilised, loses its body and the roots of all these things begin to wither. Given a sufficient concentration not lethal in itself, and man won't be able to grow enough food to live on—and think of
this,
gentlemen.” He almost glared at Clitheroe, who was still bridling. “Think of this in conjunction with the world population; the (a) increase in live births, (b) increase in survival age of human beings, (c) decrease according to consumption ratio of food supplies. More people, more cars, more petrol or gasoline, more air pollution, less food, more chest, lung and bronchial ailments, more patients, fewer doctors in proportion, fewer nurses, fewer hospital beds—we are going the right way to wipe out the human race.
Slide!
”

While everyone, including Clitheroe, stared almost breathlessly at the man from whom the words were flooding, the lights were dimmed and a coloured slide appeared on the screen – of a dozen rows of tomatoes, red and sunripened, ready to pick. “Slide!” barked Smith, and another slide showed leaves wilting and tomatoes becoming yellow and wrinkled. “Result of 10% pollution in greenhouse atmosphere after twenty-four hours, absolutely authenticated, a dozen experiments being carried out under strictest conditions of scientific control.
Slide.
”
A picture appeared of half the tomatoes off the branches, all of them withered to wrinkled skin, the green of the leaves dead and brown, a mush of yellow at the foot of each plant. “Forty-eight hours,” Smith declared. “You see, gentlemen, the result of growing the food humans need in a heavily polluted atmosphere—potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, celery, pumpkins, beans, peas, soft fruits, wheat, corn, rye—you name the food and I've a picture of it.
Human slides.
Now I will show you some photographs of the human respiratory system after breathing air of a certain density of pollution. Take 5% … After one week … two weeks … three weeks … four … Hospital cases with post-operational photographs show the destructive effect of the pollution on the human tissues, one month of living in this concentration will probably so rot the tissues or cause such an advanced degree of cancer …”

Slide after slide appeared, each worse than the one before.

Smith talked for another ten minutes, conveying five times more than many men could have done in the same period, with a curiously compelling vividness. And all the time the slides
click-click-clicked
into position on the screen, showing pictures of human beings, mice, rabbits, monkeys and dogs, then of plant and tree life, all of it rotting, all of it dying.

At last, Smith stopped with the peremptory command: “Lights.” As the lights came on, he barked: “Any questions?”

“Yes,” said the Police Commissioner very slowly. “How can one stop it?”

“Three things would help,” answered Smith, and his words came like pistol shots. “
One:
abolish cars with the internal combustion engine and don't say that's nonsense, nuclear powered vehicles are within sight, electrically propelled vehicles already available.
Two:
abolish all discharge of industrial power waste into the atmosphere and into rivers.
Three,
and most immediately practical, find a gas which will cancel out the poison content, and leave the oxygen content free for humans and plant life to breathe. Can't say much progress has yet been made. The car manufacturers of Detroit and elsewhere have been working on car exhaust systems, but—”

“Dr. Smith,” Clitheroe interrupted, rather creakily.

“Sir.”

“Can all of this be thoroughly documented?”

“Thoroughly.”

“Then why hasn't it been brought to the notice of the proper authorities?”

“My God, I've been screeching about it for years!”

“I can hardly believe it.”

“You see what I mean by political obstinacy.”

“
My
department—”

“Your department receives a monthly review of the statistics and the official government department prognostications. So does the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. So does the Meteorological Office. So—oh, everyone gets them and they either go in the file or in the waste paper basket. No one ever replies—no one ever asks for elaboration of statements made.”

“I really can't believe it,” Clitheroe said, hoarsely. He looked very tired, as if the session had exhausted him.

“That's right, call me a liar,” said Smith, without any umbrage. “The only man who has ever really shown interest, outside the different Foundations, Research Institutes and Universities, has been Dr. Palfrey—Z5. Didn't you tell me that
you
have advised the various governments from time to time, Palfrey?”

“Yes,” Palfrey said. “I—”

“And the response?”

“In most cases very prompt,” Palfrey said. “I have had the whole resources of Z5 working to find out the cause of the increased pollution, and most governments have cooperated. But the investigation has so far been carried out secretly. We—”

“
Why,
in God's name?” cried Smith.

“Because we saw no point in causing the public to panic,” Palfrey said. “We have everything at the ready, all governments alerted. A tape-recorded report of this conference will be received by every government within forty-eight hours. The conference was necessary to make sure that every department concerned took the brakes off. This needs absolute priority.”

Erasmus Smith squeaked. “It should have had it long ago! I warned them. My experiments showed conclusively how deadly—”

“No doubt the authorities did not believe that the degree of concentration of the gases in the atmosphere could ever reach the proportions which you created in your experiments,” Palfrey said.

“Dr. Palfrey,” said the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, “supposing there was a concentration of the smog in a densely populated area, what could be done as of this moment?”

Palfrey was toying with his hair.

“As far as I know, very little.”

“
And
you're right,” breathed Smith.

“Would there be time for an evacuation?” asked the Army and Civil Defence representatives almost simultaneously.

“None,” said Endicott, without hesitation. “A high concentration would not necessarily kill immediately but it would incapacitate.”

“I don't altogether agree,” objected one man. “Unless the concentration was built up during the night when everyone was asleep.”

“In any case the roads would become so jammed, nobody could get away in time,” Smith argued. “With the cars at a standstill, engines running, the situation would quickly get out of hand. There would be no time for an evacuation. A few might escape, but very few. A whole community could be wiped out in an hour, Mr. Home Secretary—”

“I shall do everything in my power to improve your opinion of politicians,” stated Clitheroe heavily. “I really think I should go. If you will excuse me, Dr. Palfrey.”

“We'll have a break for half an hour,” Palfrey said, and Joyce, who had been at the back of the room, signalled to two men who came in with trays and trolleys laden with food and drink. Palfrey went along to the lift with Clitheroe, who was very subdued but who turned to face Palfrey as the lift door opened.

“You will have my absolute cooperation, Palfrey. I shall dedicate myself to this.”

Palfrey, looking into pale grey eyes, read not only the signs of shock but grim determination.

Five minutes later, the Home Secretary's car started off from the Elite Hotel, a police escort car following.

 

At the very moment that the Home Secretary's car began to move, the Deputy Governor of the State of Wyoming, in America, was moving away in his car from a fund-raising luncheon party. He was sober, replete and happy, noting with pleasure the brightness of the sun blazing down on the roofs of the hundreds of automobiles moving along the two lane highway towards the city centre.

The Governor sniffed.

“Don't often notice smog like this,” he remarked to his wife.

“I noticed it in Estes Park last Sunday,” his wife remarked. “We were driving along that road where all the muskrats and the chipmunks were.”

“Road cut through a valley,” her husband said, and sniffed again, then rubbed his eyes. “It stings, too.”

“Just like it did when we were in Los Angeles in the summer,” agreed his wife.

The Deputy Governor gazed at the mountains which stretched across Yellowstone Park and the Grand Tetons, and sniffed again.

“Perhaps it's some pep they're putting in the gas,” his wife remarked casually. “They—” She broke off, catching her breath, and tears began to sting her eyes. “Joe, do you want to shut the windows and put on the air-conditioning?”

“Good idea,” her husband agreed.

Then, a passing car swerved and almost smacked broadside on. The driver, with a scared expression, was wiping his eyes. The lights ahead turned red and the Deputy Governor slowed down. On the sidewalk, people were coughing. Suddenly there was a crunch of sound, the rending of metal on metal, and two cars were locked together; both drivers had their hands at their faces. Another car stopped alongside the Deputy Governor's, and tears were pouring down his face.

“Joe!” his wife gasped. “It's hurting my throat. It's going right down into my lungs!
Joe!
”
she repeated with sudden, rasping hoarseness. “
Joe
—”

Police sirens blared.

Two more cars crashed.

The lights turned green but dozens of vehicles were now stationary, the drivers getting out handkerchiefs to wipe their eyes. A scarlet Thunderbird, coming fast, ignored the lights and raced between the stationary cars, weaving from lane to lane – and others followed, all of them heading towards the mountains.

All the time there was the dull throb, throb, throb, of auto-engines turning slowly.

“We've got to stop the engines,” the Deputy Governor gasped. “They're burning up the air. They—” He pushed open the door of the car and staggered onto the road. Almost at once he began to cough, then to choke. Tears streamed down his cheeks and yet the saliva in his mouth had dried up.

The door of a car opposite him was open, the driver half-in, half-out of the car, obviously unconscious, one hand caught against the door handle, supporting him. The radio of this car was blaring a song; then suddenly there was a man's voice.

“This is WYIG, your friendly station Mountview-Wyoming.” The voice was hoarse and rasping. “There is an emergency in the City of Mountview … A poisonous gas so far unidentified is spreading from Yellowstone Road north towards the downtown area … My God, I'm looking out of my window and right now I can see people collapsing on the sidewalk … They're dying on their feet … Don! Don! Close all the doors, keep the air-conditioning on … Get me the Police Department … Police, I told you, the cops … What's that? … No answer? … Don, you can dial direct to Cheyenne … Do that, I want to talk to the Police Department in Cheyenne … Hallo? Hallo, who's calling? … Sure, this is WYIG Wyoming … What's that? … Panic? … Which highways are clear? Yellowstone south … okay, sure, I'm broadcasting, hallo folks, this is WYIG, your friendly station … Highways Yellowstone south, that's 14 and 16, are clear of the gas … They're blocked to the north … Highway 287 north and south are clear … What's that? … My God, there's gas concentrating in Middle Valley Road, that's on 789 north and south … Hallo. Hallo! I—God, this office is filling up with gas … Yellow gas … my
God! It's coming in through the air-conditioner.
I can see it rolling in.”