His head still throbbed. He couldn't shake it.
He took a plastic vial from a side drawer, shook a red-and-white capsule into his hand, and washed it down with water. Phenoperidine was a narcotic analgesic with side effects similar to those of morphine, and the doctor had warned him not to take more than three in any twelve-hour period. It was an effective pain-killer, although it tended to make him light-headed and euphoric. Hardly the right frame of mind for dealing with sober matters of state, Lebasse thought wryly.
The light from the window was hurting his eyes. He got up--too quickly, it seemed, because all of a sudden he felt giddy--and had to steady himself against the corner of the desk before going across to close the Venetian blind.
He held the cord in his hand. It had the feel and texture of thick rope. He tugged at it and the large office was plunged into restful twilight. Turning away, Lebasse was mesmerized by the pattern the filtered sunlight made on the pastel green carpet . . . thin gold rods arranged in perfect symmetry.
Hell, that was so pretty!
A lump of emotion rose up in his throat. That's what he'd miss the most. Vibrant golden light. It was light from heaven--God's light. He'd never been a religious man, but he supposed that the prospect of death heightened one's awareness of the Infinite. He'd soon know. Nothing surer.
It was restful in this aquarium. Everything was cool limpid green, peaceful and green and golden (the gold bars like golden steps reaching all the way to the Infinite) and for the first time in his life he had absolutely no fear of death. "Death, where is thy sting?" Death was pure golden light all the way to infinity, beckoning him. He welcomed it, in fact. To be at one with the Infinite, shimmering in green and gold light . . .
What more could any man want?
Woman.
Damn right, a woman!
Miracle of miracles, there she was, golden-haired, arms outstretched, drifting toward him. She was holding something, an offering, and he, in turn, opened his arms to her. But now she was turning away. Oh, no. He needed this woman to share eternity with him. Sure he did. Damn sure. Nothing surer.
Then. Something beautiful took place. The woman began to sing. Her mouth opened wide and a high note pierced his brain with such exquisite intensity that he wanted to weep. Siren song. He was uplifted, his spirits soaring, floating, flying toward the Infinite.
Why had he never flown before? It was so ridiculously easy!
Everyone ought to try this, he told himself, flying toward the bars of light, which parted before hirn in glittering splendor as he crashed through the window headfirst taking the tangled Venetian blind with him and soared ecstatically all the way down to the multicolored concrete paving four floors below.
When his blond secretary came back with his senior aide they found an empty office filled with a humid breeze. One complete window had disappeared from its aluminum frame and sunlight streamed like a golden searchlight onto the pastel green carpet. The senior aide approached the window. The blond secretary hung back, white except for her garish lips.
Thomas Lebasse, ex-secretary of defense, lay mangled and twisted on the concrete paving. The images invoked by having chosen the one capsule containing a large dose of LSD-25 were wiped clean from his brain.
Nothing surer.
10
The research laboratories of Advanced Strategic Projects were situated some thirty miles southeast of Washington, D.C., along highway 301, down an unmarked road leading nowhere.
A few fishermen did use the road to get to Patuxent Creek, which meandered northward until it lost itself in young plantations of spruce and firs, though none could have been aware of the square gray single-story building with smoke-blue windows that blended in with the picturesque Maryland landscape.
Unobtrusive as it was to the casual eye, the installation kept its real secret even more closely guarded. Belowground it extended to five sub-levels containing offices, recreation and living quarters, laboratories and test chambers, the latter being the size of football fields.
The 230 acres of grounds were patrolled by guards dressed as hunters in check shirts and Windbreakers. They patrolled with Alsatian dogs, double-barreled shotguns, and shortwave transceivers attached to throat mikes. Infrared scanners planted in the trunks of trees detected every form of life down to the size of a dormouse. A web of lasers crisscrossed the approach to the building, trapping the unwary in a deadly electronic maze.
Inside the building, security was equally as strict. Two elevators, monitored by closed-circuit TV, were the only means of access below. Every visitor had to present an electrosensitized identification disk whose microchip circuitry held a record of the holder's unique physiological profile: fingerprints, voiceprint, biorhythms, and ECG trace. Should anyone attempt the subterfuge of presenting another's disk, the system would automatically seal the elevator doors, locking the intruder inside a titanium-steel vault.
So far no one had tried.
The deepest and most extensive sublevels housed the laboratories and test chambers, equivalent in size and facilities to a medium-size university. Here in the main test chamber a series of rubber-lined stainless-steel tanks contained a profusion of marine animal and plant life. Temperature and salinity varied from tank to tank, ranging from subzero to equatorial with all the graduations in between. Ultraviolet panels mimicked the action of sunlight and sprinklers supplied calibrated amounts of rainfall. Oceanic and climatic conditions were replicated as faithfully as science knew how and technology could achieve.
From the observation booth behind the yellow gantry rail, Dr. Jeremiah Rolsom, scientific director of ASP, watched three masked and rubber-suited operatives manhandling a drum along the gantry to the feeder chute of tank 9. The drum was painted bright pink with a large black N on its side.
"Is this the last of the batch?" Rolsom asked a technician seated at the instrument console.
"Yes, sir."
"What concentration?"
"Thirty-four percent."
Rolsom nodded and nibbled his lower lip, his round black face bearing the reflection of the arc lights high up in the vaulted ceiling of the chamber. He said over his white-coated shoulder, "We're trying inorganic nitrogen in varying concentrations. It's pretty much the same as the fertilizer used by farmers, except the proportion is what a lake might receive in runoff over five years." He turned to face Major Madden, who was standing with his arms behind his back, pointed chin slightly raised. "Essentially it's the same process, only speeded up by a factor of several thousand."
"How soon before you get results?"
"Three to four weeks. We're trying to duplicate the Lake Erie experience." Rolsom used his large strong hands to illustrate his explanation. "Rainwater draining from the farmlands of the Middle West"-- the hands swept down, the pink pads of his fingers outspread--"took with it the nitrogen from the soil equivalent to the sewage of about twenty million people, which was double the population of the Lake Erie hinterland at that time. What happened? The nitrogen balance of the lake was disturbed. You got these huge algae blooms, which grew unchecked. As the blooms decayed the bacterial action consumed most of the lake's free oxygen, killing off fish and plants. Result? The classic case of eutrophication--and one dead lake."
Madden looked past him into the chamber. "It might work with a lake, but will it work with an ocean?"
"Sure, given time, plus vast amounts of nitrogen-rich fertilizer." Rolsom stuffed tobacco into an old briar pipe and pointed the stem at the rows of tanks through the window. "But don't forget--that's only one option open to us. Out there you've got just about every conceivable combination of herbicidal overkill. It all depends what you want to happen and how quickly."