The resentment, the hurt, so long buried, still had a raw edge to it. Especially when dredged up by a casual or thoughtless remark; and Gordon Mudie was an expert in that department.
The bass throb of the engines faltered, missed a beat, and then resumed its pounding rhythm. Cheryl felt the vibrations through her rope-soled sandals. The ship seemed to be laboring. She leaned right over, holding the binoculars aside on their leather strap, and peered down into the churning water.
Normally it was a cream froth. Now it was red, the color of blood.
"Gordon, look at that!"
"feez-uz!"
"What have we hit?"
"Must be a seal. Or a shark, maybe."
It was neither. Cheryl looked around and discovered that the Melville was afloat on a red ocean. She looked again over the stern and realized that the vessel was struggling to make headway through a thick spongy mass of minute planktonic organisms, which was giving the sea its reddish hue.
There'd been several outbreaks in recent years: vast blooms of the microcellular organism Gymodinium breve had appeared without warning off the coasts of America, India, and Africa. Nobody knew what caused the growth, nor why it suddenly came and went. But the "red tide" was deadly poisonous, to both fish and man. Millions of dead and decaying fish and other sea creatures had been found off Florida's eastern coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.
She clamped the headset back on and spoke into the mike. "Monitoring room? We'd better wind in the RMT. We're in the middle of an algae bloom--red stuff, acres of it. 1 think it's the poisonous variety."
The headset squawked a reply and Cheryl said, "We're to close the release gear and bring the trawl in." When Gordon didn't immediately respond, she snapped, "What are you waiting for? If we pick up any of this crap it'll take days to clean out."
Gordon backed away from the rail, his high forehead creased in a perplexed frown. "Where's it come from? There must be tons and tons of the stuff." Still frowning, he went over to the winch and began winding.
The girl gazed down at the water, mesmerized a little, lost in the illusion that she was on a bridge with a river flowing underneath. Her snub nose with its sprinkle of freckles (the one that Gordon thought was real cute) wrinkled as she caught a whiff of something rotten, and in the churning red wake she saw the white upturned bellies of hundreds of fish. A shoal of poisoned sea bass.
In spite of the warmth of the sun she felt a shiver ripple down her spine. What had caused it? What had gone wrong? A natural ecological foul-up or man-made thermal pollution?
And just imagine, she thought, shuddering, if the bloom kept right on multiplying and spreading and poisoning all the fish. It would eventually take over, filling all the oceans of the world with a stinking red poisonous mess. Every sea creature would die, and the bloom might not stop there--when it had conquered the oceans it would infiltrate the river systems and lakes and streams. It might even gain a roothold on the land. . . .
Cheryl shook herself out of the nightmare. Thank God it was only imagination.
Bill Inchcape--Binch as everyone called him--in short-sleeved shirt and check trousers was seated at the keyboard of the computer terminal in the cavernous air-conditioned basement where DELFI was housed behind hermetically sealed three-inch steel doors. This precaution was less for security reasons than to protect the germanium circuitry and memory disks against changes in temperature and humidity. The predominantly male staff had decided that DELFI was female, and thus any temperamental outbursts or fits of electronic pique were put down to premenstrual tension.
Data from all parts of the world were received at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, and fed into the computer, and it was the physicist's job to extract the climatic anomalies and prepare a summary, which was circulated to various government agencies. What purpose this information served nobody knew-- it was Binch's hunch, as he confided to Brad Zittel, that it merely served to justify Washington's funding of the center, made them feel they were getting sufficient "drudge for their dollar."
At the moment he was up to his ears in print-out, his stubby, hairy arms paddling through it like a swimmer breasting a wave. Down here it was quite cool, though Binch still sweated--with his girth he could afford to--the garish strip-lighting reflecting on his damp scalp through baby-fine rapidly thinning hair.
"You wouldn't think it could get any worse, but it always seems to," Binch complained in his reedy voice. "Just look at all this stuff!"
Brad Zittel settled himself on a gray metal console. Reels spun in the shadowy background; relays chattered discreetly. He wasn't at his best this morning. Dark circles ringed his eyes. For two months or more he'd been waking at 4:00 a.m., making a pot of China tea, and watching the sky slowly brighten from his study window. Sometimes he didn't expect the sun to perform its daily miracle.
"Worse in what sense?" he asked dully. "The anomalies are getting worse or there are more of them?"
"Quality and quantity both up. This is supposed to be a two-day job and it's going to take a week. Listen to this." Binch snatched a printout at random and read: " 'Sweden: Rainfall increased by two hundred percent with some areas recording average monthly amounts in one day.' And this: 'Finland: Coldest December on record in Helsinki since measurements began in 1829.' "
He lifted a thick sheaf of print-out and thrust it toward Brad. "Here, look for yourself," he mumbled, sitting back in the swivel chair and lighting a cigarette.
Brad took a breath, trying to quell the too-familiar panic rising in his chest, trying to tell himself not to be such a prick. He breathed out and fixed his eyes on the neat blocks of electric type.
libya:
belgium: braziclass="underline"
Highest maximum December temperature since 1924 . Precipitation during December and January exceptionally low.
Coldest winter since 1962-1963. Fifth coldest this century.
Northeast state of Caera experienced worst drought in living memory. Frost reported on 6-7 days in the south and snow fell in Rio Grande do Sul (extremely rare event).
Czechoslovakia: Severe cold temperatures during early January accompanied by heavy snowfall. Record maximum temperatures in Western Australia. Town of Cocklebiddy reported a new max of 51.7degC.
McMurdo and South Pole stations measured record max temperatures during late December.
Both Canadian and Russian sources report temperatures 14degC. below normal, making it the coldest February on record.
Brad discovered that his hands were shaking. He couldn't read any more. He attempted to fold the print-out, made a hash of it, and dropped it on the pile.
"What's the matter?" asked Binch alertly. "Are you okay?"
Brad Zittel smiled diffidently and smoothed back his brown wavy hair. A NASA pin flared in the lapel of his cotton jacket. "I haven't been sleeping too well, I guess. Joyce keeps telling me I need a vacation. Could be she's right."
"You do look kinda beat." Binch exhaled smoke through his broad nostrils, which had hairs growing out of them. He eyed Brad shrewdly. "Have you still got that pollution bee in your bonnet? Is that it? Come on, Brad, buddy, you're taking it far too seriously. This old ball of mud isn't gonna peg out just yet."
Brad gestured. "These anomalies . . . every month more of them
yy
"We've always had them, for Christ's sake, ever since records were kept. In fact we're probably finding more freak conditions today precisely because every Tom, Dick, and Harry is monitoring the climate more closely. Ever think of that?"