Thus the global dichotomy was displayed in front of his eyes: humanity's two dominant and opposing impulses seen at their crudest-- consumption versus conservation.
Nick sucked in a breath and crouched, his head seeming to retract into his shoulders. "Oh, Christ, no . . ."
Through the bar-dwellers Chase glimpsed a narrow bald head and small close-set eyes. In his usual tweed jacket and baggy flannel trousers Ivor Banting was talking to a large bull-necked man with shorn graying hair.
"Has he spotted us?" Nick asked tremulously. "I had to put up with the bastard at Halley Bay, I'll be damned if I'm going to here."
Banting would have looked shifty at a children's party, thought Chase. "I never expected to see him here," he said, turning to face the other way. "Would you have said Banting the Terrible was all that interested in the future of the environment?"
Nick was scathing. "He bloodywell isn't. A week in Geneva at somebody else's expense. A fucking freeloader."
Chase looked down on him with a flinty grin. "Like us, you mean?"
"He's an arse-licker," Nick insisted. "Why do you suppose he was so accommodating to the Yanks?"
"You tell me."
"Because they've got the funds to underwrite big research projects, dummy, that's why. Banting keeps in with the guys with the bucks. He couldn't give a damn who they are and what the project is providing they're willing to cough up--" He glanced furtively over his shoulder. "He hasn't seen us, has he?"
"What makes you think he's all that keen to meet us two?" Chase said. "You never know, he's probably as anxious to avoid--" But he wasn't and Chase was mistaken, for he saw Professor Banting excuse himself, pat the broad shoulder of the man he was talking to, and push his way toward them through the crowd.
Nick swore under his breath and threw back his drink in one quick gulp.
They shook hands, Nick with barely concealed bad grace, and Banting gestured around, nodding with a knowledgeable air. "Some excellent people here, best up to now. I'm looking forward to it, aren't you? Have you seen the agenda?"
Chase said he had. "Anyone you'd recommend?"
"Straube and Ryman, and Colin Hewlett's paper should be worth hearing--I was his tutor at Loughborough, you know. And Stanovnik and Professor Okita; all top-notch chaps. I've been to the last two conferences, in Iceland and Miami, and this looks like the best so far."
"What's that?" Nick said, peering intently at Banting's lapel badge, which unlike the others was printed not typewritten and mounted in a thin silver frame. In the bottom left-hand corner was the tiny embossed emblem of a silver conch shell.
"I'm a sponsored delegate," Banting explained. "The JEG Corporation. They're very much concerned with environmental matters."
"American?"
Banting nodded. "But their interests are worldwide. Electronics, chemicals, timber, aerospace. A very large organization with dozens of subsidiaries."
Nick's expression remained deadpan, which was eloquent enough in itself.
Chase compressed a smile. "So you think Stanovnik should be worth listening to?"
"It's always worthwhile to find out what the Soviets are up to," Banting said. He nodded toward the bar. "That's the chap I was with a moment ago. Friendly type, not a bit tight-lipped like most of his colleagues."
"That was Stanovnik?" Chase said, craning to see, but the big Russian had gone. Random factors accreting around a common center. He had the peculiar feeling that he was on the edge of something, as if hints and clues were buzzing all around and he couldn't quite grasp them and shape them into a coherent whole.
One dead Russian scientist mouthing the name of another.
The leader of the British team, instrumental in killing the first before he could talk to the second.
The involvement of the U.S. military and a giant American corporation.
Carbon dioxide absorption in seawater and Stanovnik's lecture on microorganisms and climate.
Did the pieces fit, and if so, how? Chase felt intrigued, and, why he didn't know, strangely excited. He nodded abstractedly at something Banting was saying, and then heard Nick's groan, undisguised and deeply felt.
Chase had just accepted Banting's invitation that the three of them should dine together, a sort of British Antarctic Expedition reunion.
In common with the 1,752 other people in the hall, Chase hadn't a clue what the rumpus was about.
Scheduled to start at three o'clock--it was now ten after--on the Sunday afternoon, this first session was billed in the program as "Welcome to the Sixth International Conference, followed by a Symposium of Views." A cozy get-together, he had imagined, to ease everyone as painlessly as possible into the rigors of the week ahead. Like everyone else he hadn't been prepared for the commotion down there by the steps leading up to the platform.
What the hell was going on? A protest?
The protesters were an unlikely pair--a stocky, tanned, white-haired man and a young girl dressed like a student in a cheesecloth shirt and faded denims. It was the girl who was doing all the talking, while the man was standing there holding a dilapidated briefcase under his arm, his expression calm, resigned, a little weary, Chase thought.
Several officials had closed ranks while others were scurrying around gesticulating to one another. The girl, attractive and amply blessed, was by turns raging at and then pleading to a harassed-looking official whose stock mannerism seemed to be a little shrug of the left shoulder and a display of his palms as if warding off an invisible army. Above them the chairman, a Norwegian, waited unhappily at the microphone, uncertain whether to ignore the commotion and carry on regardless or hang on in the hope that it might, like a summer thunderstorm, quickly blow over.
"And I thought this was going to be dull," Nick said, enjoying the spectacle, straining his curly head to get a better view. "Who is that guy?
Chase shook his head. "No idea. But the girl sounds American."
They watched as the officials escorted the man and the girl along the aisle and through a side door, the girl arguing as fiercely as ever. The auditorium, silent and rapt till now, droned with speculation like a beehive disturbed by an intruder.
Nick grinned delightedly. "I hope the next act is as good," he said, but his face fell when the Norwegian began to speak in that unrhythmic swaying singsong that grates on some people and sends others to sleep.
It sent Nick to sleep.
The official held up his hands, palms outward, and twitched his left shoulder. "The governing committee is not required to give a reason, mademoiselle. It is their decision alone. You understand?" He gave a weak smile as if to say that while he personally might sympathize with them, he was powerless to do anything.
Cheryl nodded slowly, now icily calm. "I see. The fact that my father has flown seven thousand miles to be here doesn't matter a damn to your committee. They can decide, just like that, and we don't have the right to ask why or to receive an apology or even a reply. That's how you run things here, is it?"
"I am sorry, mademoiselle. The decision is not mine."
"You won't even give us a reason." She looked toward her father, who so far had shown neither anger nor disappointment. No emotion at all, in fact.
"As I have said, it is not required. The rules of the conference state that all papers must receive prior approval--"
"But the paper was accepted!"