Watson and Saddlethwaite retained their familiar stools, but made no secret of the fact that they were listening too. What was happening in Bill’s was more interesting and more entertaining than anywhere else. When it was time to buy a round of drinks the two men began to chip in, which entitled them to call out, “Say what?” if they missed something.
Conversation was the glue in the Wednesday Club.
One evening Shay said, “Thanks to the Change we know less and less about what’s happening abroad, it’s like the expanding universe after the Big Bang. Other countries are becoming distant galaxies.”
“But we know more about what’s going on in Sycamore River,” Gloria interjected. “The Seed is down to only two pages a week, but the paper has more subscribers than ever; I know because we deliver a lot of them. We’re taking more interest in our neighbors because they’ve become our world.”
“Which is no bad thing,” said Lila. “People were almost surgically attached to their electronic communicators. I’ll bet whole families went to bed without ever speaking to each other.”
“I liked it better when the wife didn’t speak to me,” Saddlethwaite volunteered. “Long as she was busy with her social network she wasn’t finding jobs around the house for me. Being retired is hell on a man. But tell me, Jack: What did you mean about an expanding universe? I never heard of that. Are we blowing up?”
On another evening Edgar Tilbury asked, “Has anyone considered the Change may be natural?”
“What do you mean by ‘natural’?” Bill inquired.
Tilbury cleared his throat. “The discoveries of Darwin, Mengel, and Watson and Crick have demonstrated that all life on Earth is connected and is subject to natural law. And natural law is determined by nature.”
“The Change can’t be natural, Edgar. Someone’s behind it, everybody knows that.”
The older man gave a lopsided smile. “Don’t believe anything everybody knows.”
Gloria, with her sleeping baby cradled in her lap, asked, “Don’t you think there’s something rather hesitant about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… when I’m introducing new things into my garden I try them out first to see if the site and the soil agree with them. If I’m doing a bedding arrangement I start seeds in several different places and watch how they grow before I commit to a mass planting. With expensive shrubs I put them in pots and move them around until I find a location where they thrive. The Change is like that. It’s as if somebody’s trying ideas out, not destroying everything at once.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “What have you been drinking? That’s like saying a tornado can choose what town to strike.”
“How do you know it can’t?” asked Hooper Watson. “When I was a kid we lived in the Midwest, that region they call Tornado Alley, and I can tell you there’s something fiendish about those storms. One can turn a man’s entire house into splinters but leave the front porch untouched with the swing still swinging and the cushions on it. I’ve seen it myself. It’s like the damned wind’s laughing at flesh-and-blood people.”
20
The article in The Sycamore Seed occupied the entire front page:
“Last week a team of microbiologists in Sweden announced a major discovery that could lead to a Nobel Prize. They claim that a hitherto unknown life-form, a bacteria so minute its existence has been undetected until now, could be the cause behind the Change. Its near relative, saprophytic bacteria, performs an ecologically indispensible role in the breakdown of organic wastes.”
The Wednesday Club had their topic for the evening.
Jack was elated. “I had a hunch the sun had something to do with the Change, and here’s proof. Bacteria use photosynthesis to generate energy.”
“Whoa there!” cautioned Gerry. “Only some bacteria do. They’re called phototrophs and they’re totally different from saprophytes. The bacteria kingdom’s divided into groups; any one of them’s a specialized field of study.”
“Why hasn’t this new bacteria been discovered before now?” Nell wanted to know.
“Maybe it’s like black holes,” said Evan, proud to have something to contribute. “We studied those in school last year. They were only detected when their effects were noticed.”
Gerry looked thoughtful. “By God, Jack, I know I laughed at the time, but maybe you weren’t far off the mark when you talked about an unknown factor dissolving the molecules in hydrocarbons.”
“An amateur’s guess,” Jack said. “But if the Swedes are right about this it means someone’s developed a chemical superweapon. The next question is, who’s behind it? Every country seems to be targeted. Are we talking about a mad scientist with a grudge against the whole human race?”
Nell laughed. “You’ve been reading too many comic books.”
“No, I’m serious. What do you think the atom bomb was to begin with? A mad scientist’s dream. We’ll need to find a poison that will kill the bacteria, then develop a way to administer it.”
“Like spraying antibiotics over the entire globe?”
“The cure would be worse than the disease,” Shay said grimly. “Remember DDT? It wiped out a whole slew of species.”
The Wednesday Club ordered another round of drinks. Strong ones for everybody but Evan. Who took a gulp of his father’s when no one was looking.
With people unimpressed by the Swedish discovery, wars large and small continued to expand or erupted afresh, among nations and allies and strangers. Anger was bubbling to the surface everywhere. The weapons employed were changing too, becoming less technical but no less lethal. Plastic-free equivalents of earlier weapons of mass destruction were being designed and rushed into production. So were the many weapons that had marked mankind’s climb up the evolutionary ladder.
Jack Reece was more disturbed by the Change than he wanted to admit, even to himself. Disturbed by the change in himself. From being a freewheeling risk-taker he had become cautious, like a man who had something valuable to protect. Yet in spite of the chaotic global situation nothing had changed in his own life, except…
After a determined search he located two simple pagers, one for himself and one for Nell, and asked her to keep hers with her at all times. Being much less complicated than AllComs, pagers were not failing as frequently. Yet.
Jack hated that word “yet.” The implications behind it were profound. Nothing was certain, nothing was permanent, the most felicitously arranged life would end.
His.
Nell Bennett’s.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
“Aunt Bea, do you believe in God?”
Bea Fontaine was barely inside the front door after yet another difficult day at the bank. The First Federal in the new shopping center had cut its staff to the bone and was only open on two mornings a week. She suspected O. M. Staunton was planning a similar arrangement. Thank God for the weekend; at least she’d have time to brace herself.
She paused long enough to take off her coat while she digested Jack’s unexpected question. “I suppose I do,” she told him. “I still go to church sometimes—and I took you to Sunday school when you were little, in case you’ve forgotten.” When she opened the closet door to put her coat away a tangle of wire hangers clattered to the floor. Jack always was careless about hanging up clothes.
Bea let them lie there.
“You go to church at Christmas and I don’t go at all,” Jack said. “That’s not what I’m asking. Do you believe in God? God, heaven, an afterlife…”