Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

“Do you have any ideas about the carapace?” asked the president.

Neil squared his shoulders, forcing his confidence. “We’ve tried acids and other corrosive agents, but so far nothing has worked. We have to devise something that can compete against the carapace, in the Darwinian sense, and come up the winner every time. We need something that’s adaptable and can shift strategies, depending on the situation. I believe the best answer is to develop some kind of omniphage, an organism that can eat through the carapace, and won’t stop eating. If we develop an omniphage capable of penetrating the carapace, we can then use the same macrogen as a delivery module to carry a lethal dose of whatever toxic agent we finally develop to kill the xenophyta—that’s what I’m calling the individual organisms.”

“And is it possible to develop such a… hell, what do you call it? An omniphage?” asked the secretary.

“I have a team of geneticists working on the problem right now.”

“So when you say it should be designed to carry a lethal dose…” The president trailed off, trying to figure it all out.

“It would essentially be a workhorse macrogen engineered to penetrate the carapace and administer the necessary fatal agent. As for the fatal agent itself, my team is working on a hydrogen sulfide compound that’s going to fool the xenophyta into thinking it’s getting its usual supply of carbon dioxide when in actual fact—”

“But first we have to get this…this omniphage going, right?” said Sidower.

“Yes.”

“And do we have all the best experts on board to help us build this omniphage?”

“In the case of the Aresphyta, all the best experts would be Martian.”

“Wonderful. Let’s send a drop to Mars right away.”

Neil nodded, even as his confidence once again ebbed. “I’ve been having some of my people track these experts down. And they tell me that the top expert of all, Dr. Luke Langstrom, is currently on the Moon. As a matter of fact, he’s part of my brother’s team.”

Neil couldn’t help being galled by this. After advising strongly against his brother’s involvement, and getting Gerry’s flat refusal in a recent drop, his brother now held a trump. He glanced around at the other three, and knew they understood the implications. He had alienated all those working on the Moon effort, and now it was going to play against them. Neil couldn’t help feeling like an idiot. And he didn’t like feeling like an idiot. Especially in front of the president.

The president turned to the national security advisor. “Send a priority drop to the Moon. Do whatever it takes, but get this Luke Langstrom on board.”

Gerry left the Nectaris Buena Vista after supper and strolled down Sagittarius Way, still trying to come to grips with all the wild and conflicting information the Smallmouth had brought back from the shroud.

He looked at the vaulting underground dome of Nectaris, ten miles across and two miles high, most of it laminated rock, but with huge polycarbonate windows here and there. He headed downtown.

At this time of the day, the lighting technicians, probably zonked out on premium-grade bud, were having fun with their spots, floods, and lasers, choosing, for the most part, a mood indigo. The sky was a preternatural violet, intense in its dark luminosity, the epitome of dusk, peppered here and there with red stars. Food vendors were conspicuously absent, and as he reached Pisces Road, he realized that even the prostitutes weren’t around, that all the curtains to the brothels were closed, and that despite the carnival indigo of the evening sky, there weren’t many people about at all, as if the somber situation on Earth had cast its pall over the gay old Moon.

Yet a few cafés were open, and he saw couples sitting at tables drinking espresso and eating pastries.

He remembered the old days, when he and Glenda had lived in the center of Raleigh, before the kids had been born; how they would go to cafés, just like these young people, and believe for a while that life had all the magic of an indigo sky with red stars.

He strolled down Pisces Road toward Möbius Lake. Would he ever make sense of all the bizarre information from the Smallmouth ?

Have a tough problem to solve? Go to the ocean and look at it for an hour. But all he had now was this artificial lake, which was really the town’s main water recycler and Ossimax dispenser. He hoped Neil was making progress on Earth. He hoped that tomorrow he would wake up and look at Earth, and that the shroud would be gone. In the meantime, he had a lot to think about. He took a deep breath and focused his concentration.

He was just reaching Möbius Lake when Ian Hamilton came out of the nearby Nickel and Dime Cannabis Bar and Roti Shop; he could never go far in this city without running into Ian, it seemed.

“We were just talking about you,” said his old friend.

“Who?”

“Me and the girls. And Malcolm. And Luke.”

“I’m just out for a walk.”

“Why don’t you come inside?”

“As long as you know I don’t smoke anymore. I never really did.”

“Then have a coffee. It’s on me.”

He followed Ian into the Nickel and Dime.

Looking around, he saw that it was a cozy little place, all the furniture made of artificial wood, the Velcro trails decorated with designs of colorful thread, a lot of thick macramé tapestries on the walls, and aquariums filled with genetically enhanced Siamese fighting fish with fins and tails so long and so colorful he could easily understand why they were the chief objets d’art in this stoner bar. The fish bioluminesced, turning on and off like Christmas lights.

He and Ian went to a table at the back, really more a low platform surrounded by cushions, and there he found the mayor and Dr. Luke Langstrom, their eyes glazed, their mood placid, their bent philosophical.

The air was sweet with the smell of hashish, and he had a hard time getting used to it because it was still illegal in North Carolina. The girls. He had forgotten their names. Only that Ian had been dragging them around for a while. Twins? He wasn’t sure. They looked much alike. Pretty. Small. Fine-boned.

Showgirls, but showgirls of the Moon variety, born here, raised here, like elfin queens in their delicacy, as tranquil and as still as a day in the Mare Serenitatis.

“You remember Gwen and Stephanie?” asked Ian.

He waved. “Hi.”

“Here’s the man of the hour,” said the mayor. “Have a seat.”

He maneuvered awkwardly—still wasn’t used to Moon gravity—and sat on one of the large, embroidered pillows. He glanced at Luke Langstrom, who was grinning with ruby red eyes over a bowl of Moroccan. Ian took a seat beside him. The mayor had half his mind on some kind of 3-D game involving holographic leopards and parrots. So. Here it was. The perfect cross-section of the lunar effort to destroy the shroud. His committee on all things serious. Yes, why not? Neil had the president and the president’s closest advisors. It made perfect sense that he should have potheads and showgirls.

“So you’re him?” asked Stephanie.

And they would all speak cryptically, and answer cryptically, and no one would understand anybody else, but somehow, through a series of non sequiturs and red herrings, they would get the job done.

“Who?”

“The man who’s going to save the world.”

“I’m going to try, sweetie,” he said, the sweetie coming reflexively because he always called Hanna sweetie.

“We don’t talk to many Earthmen,” said Gwen. “You move funny.”

“I know.”

“I could teach you to walk right,” said Stephanie.

He looked at Stephanie closely. She had pink hair, and a makeup atomizer had misted her face blue.