"I've thought about it."
"But you're not convinced."
Brad kneaded his palms, his eyes downcast. "Do you remember the preface you wrote to the last summary?" he said quietly. "I can't get one line out of my head. 'Reports of long-standing records being broken were received almost daily from all seven continents.' Those are your words, Binch, not mine."
australia:
antarctica:
arctic ocean:
The corpulent physicist squirmed a little in his chair. "Yeah, all right," he conceded, "so the weather isn't behaving normally just now. But what in hell is normal? You've got to see it over the long term, Brad. What we consider 'average weather' for the first half of this century needn't necessarily be 'average' for the latter half. Most of the records we use for comparison stretch from 1900 to 1970--but maybe that period was abnormal and the climatic pattern today is the normal one." He stubbed out his cigarette and shrugged elaborately. "Plain fact is, we simply don't know."
"And what about DELFI? What does she have to say?"
"DELFI's like most females. Keeps changing her mind. Anyway, she can only come up with a prediction based on existing data; it's merely an extrapolation of present trends." It sounded like an evasive reply, which it was. If the computer's forecasts weren't worth a row of beans, why bother with it in the first place? The truth was that Binch didn't want to admit that the computer was a washout (he needed those Washington dollars), while at the same time he was unhappy with its pronouncements.
In the manner of such beasts it was named after the rather forced acronym for Determining Environmental Logistics for Future Interpretation. In plain English its function was to analyze and correlate changes in global weather and to predict climatic patterns in the future. To this end it was directly linked with NORPAX (North Pacific Experiment) and CLIMAP (Climate Long-Range Investigation Mapping and Prediction). Taken together, these three should have provided the most accurate forecasts of what would happen to the global climate over the next fifty years. So far, however, the conclusions had been contradictory, which was what upset Binch. The computer was his brainchild, but it was showing itself a somewhat recalcitrant offspring.
He turned back to the keyboard and punched keys. The terminal chattered and jerked out more paper. Binch scanned it in silence, wiped his moist fingertips on the front of his shirt, and pressed more keys.
Against his will, Brad felt his attention wrenched to what DELFI was spewing out.
united states: In northern and central areas the mean temperature anomaly was HdegC., making it the coldest winter this century. Many stations recorded new temperature minima. Los Angeles had its lowest temperature since 1882.
He began to hum a tune, repeating the same fragment of melody over and over again. Something about "a marbled bowling ball."
Binch stopped typing and glanced up uneasily. Brad was staring into space, oblivious, humming his tune.
One of Maj. Bradley T. Zittel's keenest pleasures was to stand at the wide window of his third-floor office and lose himself in contemplation of the picture-postcard scenery. The view warmed his soul and calmed his mind: the icy backbone of the Rockies thrusting sharply against the translucent blue of a cloudless sky; sunlight, so pure and clean, reflecting from the snowy peaks with an intensity that hurt the eyes.
For 80 million years the mountains had stood thus, aloof and daunting, indifferent to what went on around them. They didn't seek to be admired. Their grandeur and awesome beauty were sufficient unto themselves. His eye beheld them and they didn't give a damn whether he looked or not, but remained uncompromising, a savage act of nature arrested in time and space.
His first sight of the earth from the region of the moon had evoked the same response in him.
It had also changed his life.
Born in San Antonio, Texas, a graduate of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he had enlisted in the navy and continued his studies at MIT, emerging with a degree in aeronautics and astronautics. Then came four years with NASA during which he took part in three missions, the longest being an eighty-one-day stint in Skylab. It was to have a profound effect on his whole philosophy.
Up to that point, aged twenty-nine, he had thought no more or less about the environment and matters of ecology than it was fashionable to do. In fact he was rather weary of hearing people refer to the earth as "a spaceship with finite resources." Like a danger signal too often repeated, it was dismissed as alarmist propaganda. Of course the planet had to be protected, its resources conserved. He understood that. But why keep harping on about it and rehashing the same old stale arguments? Anyway, you couldn't walk more than a couple of yards without stumbling over a conservationist; there were ecology nuts everywhere. Surely the government was taking the necessary steps, acting on all this free advice.
Then he went into space. As he looked down upon the earth, he thought it was so damned beautiful. He'd been expecting that, of course, having seen with every other person living the color shots of the swirling blue-white planet set against the velvety blackness of space. Still, it was beautiful, no denying it--and vulnerable. That's what threw him. This incredibly beautiful, peaceful-looking planet floating all alone in the infinite reaches of the cosmos. And although he'd always known this to be true intellectually, now he actually felt the truth of it. He remembered thinking, My God, this is it--and it's all we've got!
In that moment, 130 miles in space, he ceased to be an American citizen and became a citizen of the planet. Every astronaut he knew felt the same. From out there it was all so painfully, horribly obvious that mankind, squabbling and falling out like a pack of ignorant loutish children, was in danger of fouling its own nest. They were mindlessly overpopulating the planet, squandering its resources, filling it with deadly pollution. And all the while demanding more, grabbing more, pushing one another out of the way in a stupid, selfish, greedy scramble.
That experience, that revelation, five years ago, still had the power to make him tremble. It had fueled his determination to do something about it. But what could he do? Wage a one-man crusade against the despoilment of the planet? That was naive and, worse, futile.
A solution of sorts presented itself when, on leaving NASA for the big cruel world outside, he'd been invited by an old friend and classmate from MIT, Bill Inchcape, to join him at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Bill said they needed somebody with his kind of experience to take charge of satellite photography and evaluation. So for the past three years Brad had been head of the department, working in collaboration with the center's meterologists and atmospheric physicists, people with their heart in the right place, he felt. Yet still it wasn't enough. In a way he couldn't explain--even to Binch, who possessed far more technical knowledge and expertise than he did--
Brad was gripped by a steadily mounting sense of panic. Time, he was convinced, was rapidly running out.
Years ago he had read somewhere that "we shall be unable to detect any adverse trend on a global scale until it has gone some way in its development." That's what really scared him, haunted him--the obsessive fear that the process had already begun, and that by the time it became evident to skeptical scientists and bull-headed politicians, it would be too late.
By then the world would be sliding headlong toward an inescapable ecological doomsday, with nothing for mankind to do but slide helplessly with it.
Brad turned away from the window with its magnificent mountain panorama and sat down at his desk, a small dapper man with a gentle, worried face. He was thirty-four but looked older, and he certainly felt it. He wasn't eating or sleeping properly, and it upset his wife that he never played with the kids anymore. Gary was seven and Little Pete nearly four and they couldn't understand why Daddy didn't respond to their questions and joyful enthusiasms. Joyce blamed him for being forever preoccupied with his work--but it wasn't that.