Carpenter wondered whether there could be any truth to it. A stardrive? An expedition to some other solar system, a New Earth to be founded fifty light-years away? A fresh start, a second Eden. The notion momentarily dazzled him with its vastness.
But Isabelle was right, for once: there was no solution in that for Earth’s problems. The idea was too wild. It would take centuries to get to any of the other stars, even if another Earth-like planet could be found somewhere; and even if one were to be found, no significant fraction of Earth’s billions could be transported there. Forget about it, Carpenter told himself. It made no real sense.
Enron, recovering his poise, said, “That is very interesting, the hope of an effective stardrive. I must look into it at another time, Dr. Rhodes. But for now let us turn our attention to the final option that humanity has—the one that I have come here tonight to discuss with you. I mean, doctor, the use of gene-splicing techniques to adapt newborn children to the ever-more-poisonous atmosphere that the people of Earth will be facing.”
“Not only newborns,” said Rhodes. He appeared animated for the first time since they had reached the restaurant. “We’re looking also into ways of retrofitting adult humans to cope with the conditions that will lie ahead.”
“Ah,” said Enron. “Very interesting indeed.”
“We can all be monsters together,” Isabelle said. “ ‘O brave new world, that has such people in it!’ ”
Carpenter realized that he had been matching Rhodes drink for drink, and was very much less good than Rhodes was at dealing with that quantity of liquor.
“If I may, Ms. Martine,” Enron said smoothly. He turned again toward Rhodes. “What is your timetable, doctor, for Earth’s atmosphere to reach the point where the world becomes uninhabitable for human beings as they are presently constituted?”
Rhodes did not answer right away.
“Four or five generations,” he said, at last. “Six at the outside.”
Enron’s dark eyebrows rose. “You are saying, one hundred fifty years, perhaps two hundred?”
“More or less. I wouldn’t want to try to be too precise. But the figures are there. The encircling layer of greenhouse gases that surrounds us is still letting the ultraviolet come in and preventing the infrared from going out, so we bake and fry as the heat builds up. On top of that we continue to lose our ozone insulation. Strong sunlight is pouring through the hole, cooking the planet like a giant laser, accelerating all of the deleterious processes that have been under way the past couple of centuries. The seas are belching methane like a son of a bitch. The plant biota, which we used to count on to remove CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, is now actually providing us with a net annual gain of the stuff, from the rapid decay of dead vegetable matter in the humid new jungles all over the planet. Every year the substance we breathe gets further and further away in its chemical makeup from what we were evolved to deal with.”
“And there is no likelihood that we will continue to evolve to meet these changing conditions?” Enron asked.
Rhodes laughed, a harsh explosive burst of sound. It was the strongest sign of vitality he had shown all evening.
“Evolve? In five generations? Six? Evolution doesn’t work that fast. Not in nature, anyway.”
“But evolution can be artificially brought about,” said the Israeli. “In the laboratory.”
“Exactly.”
“Would you tell us, then, what the specific goals of your research are? Which aspects of the body you are attempting to modify, and what progress you have made thus far?”
“Don’t tell him a fucking thing, Nick,” Isabelle Martine said. “He’s a spy from Kyocera or maybe some company we don’t even know about, some operation working out of Cairo or Damascus, don’t you see?”
Rhodes reddened. “Please, Isabelle.”
“But it’s true!”
Enron, less bothered this time, glanced at her and said, almost jovially, “I have been cleared for this interview by Dr. Rhodes’ employer, Ms. Martine. If they are not afraid of me, is there any reason why you should be?”
“Well—”
Rhodes said, “She didn’t really mean to cast aspersions on your credentials, Mr. Enron. She just doesn’t like to hear me speak of any aspect of my research.”
Enron looked at Isabelle as though she were some strange life-form that had just emerged from the carpet.
“What is it, exactly, about Dr. Rhodes’ work that causes you such distress?” Enron asked her.
She hesitated. She seemed, Carpenter thought, a little abashed now by her own vociferousness.
Softly she said, “I don’t mean to be as critical of Nick as I may have sounded. He’s a genius and I admire him tremendously for what he’s accomplished. But I just don’t want to see the whole world turned into a zoo full of weird adaptos. There’s been enough genetic fooling around already, all the retrofitting and baby-splicing and everything. The sex-changing stuff, the cosmetic body-modeling. And now to have every fetus automatically altered into some grotesque kind of creature with gills and three hearts and I don’t know what—”
Isabelle shook her head. “For one thing, we can’t afford to do it. There are too many other problems that we need to solve for us to have the luxury to go into any project as far out as that. For another, I think it’s horrible. It would mean the end of humanity as we know it. You change the body, you change the mind. That’s a law of nature. It’ll be a new species coming forth, God only knows what. Not human any more. Some kind of hideous, evil, bizarre thing. We can’t do that to ourselves. We just can’t. I love Nick, sure, but I hate what he and his people want to do to the human race.”
“But if the human race is no longer able to survive on Earth as we are presently designed—?” Enron asked.
“Fix the world, then. Not the species.”
“I wonder, Isabelle,” said Jolanda Bermudez in the same dreamy lady-from-space voice as before. “It just may be too late for that, I sometimes think. You know, sweet, I don’t really care for Nick’s research any more than you do, and I agree with you that it ought to be stopped. But not because it’s evil, only because it’s a waste of time and money. There’s no reason for us to turn ourselves into things with gills, or whatever. Our real hope, I do believe, is in the habitat worlds.”
“Ms. Bermudez—” Enron said.
But she rolled right on. “Personally I’ve done everything I can think of to protect the Earth, through my work, my art, and I don’t intend to give up the effort now. But I’ve started to realize that possibly it’s no use, that we may have damaged it beyond repair. So we may have to leave, and that’s the honest truth. Like the expulsion from Eden, you know? I think I mentioned that I know people who are very deeply involved in the whole habitat culture that has evolved up there in orbit. L-5 is the coming place. I hope to emigrate there myself, before long.”
Isabelle said, “You never told me—”
“Oh, yes. Yes.”
“Ladies, please,” Enron said.
But it was all beyond the Israeli’s control. Jolanda, who seemed to be able to hold three or four contradictory beliefs at the same time without the least difficulty, had tossed a new ball into play. They went on and on, arguing with Enron, with each other, with the environment, with destiny. Carpenter, watching as though from a great height, had to fight back laughter. The women were beating their various political tom-toms and Rhodes, drinking steadily, had passed into a kind of impassive stupor, not actually drunk—did he ever really get drunk7 Carpenter wondered—but simply glazed, detached, absent; and Enron was looking on in horror, undoubtedly having come to realize by now that he was going to get nothing useful out of this evening.