Scott Mackay
PHYTOSPHERE
To Katie
PART ONE
1
From his eighth-floor room in the Nectaris Buena Vista Hotel and Gambling Casino, Gerry Thorndike watched the shroud form over Earth. It moved with the slowness of a minute hand sweeping around a clock. He tried to view it as a scientist might, struggled to bring to bear his scientific education, training, and experience, but was hard-pressed to make any substantive observations about the Tarsalan-created phenomenon, knowing he was up here on the Moon, and his wife and children were still down there, on Earth.
He turned from the unsightly thing, angry that the aliens should resort to such an insidious measure, wondering why after nine years in orbit they should now suddenly decide to change their political approach to the immigration question. He checked his waferscreen notes. If the shroud’s current growth rate remained the same, it would reach North Carolina in less than a day. He thought of Glenda in their house on the outskirts of Raleigh; of his two children, Jake and Hanna; and of how he had been a fool to jeopardize everything he had ever valued with this questionable trip to Nectaris.
He walked to the pressurized observation deck and looked at the wasteland of gray regolith below, much of it churned with rover tracks and footprints, looking like a beach after a busy Saturday afternoon.
He pulled out his fone and tried once more—as if coming out onto the observation deck might make a difference—but the computerized voice from AT&T Interlunar told him for the seventh time that service between Earth and the Moon was currently unavailable, that they had technicians working on the problem, and that they hoped to have service restored shortly. Yet how could AT&T Interlunar work on the problem when the communications disruption was yet another pressure tactic on the part of the Tarsalans? In a fit of frustration, he threw his fone against the polycarbonate pressure glass. But fones were hard to break, and after a defeated sigh he picked it up, inspected it, and put it back in his pocket.
He glanced once more at Earth—and at the green thing that grew over it like a fungus. The unnerving scene came to him slightly warped, the result of the man-made magnetic field around Nectaris that protected its citizens from solar wind and electron-stripped galactic radiation. What could he do? The shroud slithered across the western hemisphere like a garden slug, rippling at the edges, pitted with brown specks, mottled with even darker spots that looked like mildew. He glanced at North Carolina and saw clouds—a June storm whirling up from the Gulf. Was Glenda being smart about it? Was she driving to Raleigh and stocking up on canned goods? Was she purchasing candles, matches, and batteries? Was she maxing out their credit cards, buying time, hunkering down, preparing for the worst?
Or was she talking over the back fence with Leigh Phelps? He cringed as he thought of Leigh, wondering how his suspicions could have blunted his judgment so badly. Just because the rest of his life was falling apart didn’t necessarily mean his wife was sleeping with the neighbor.
He placed his hand against the pressure glass, sadly realizing that his blowup about Leigh was just a symptom of a larger problem, a growing malaise in their marriage that seemed to be creeping into his and Glenda’s life the way the Tarsalans were making this bizarre shroud creep around the Earth. He flexed his fingers against the polycarbonate. He wanted to touch Earth, embrace it, save it, stop this sickening green pall from enveloping it. But the shroud persisted, and as he glanced toward the East Coast he saw, for the first time, an opposite edge, and understood that east would meet west, south would meet north; all the various blooms would join up, and darkness would entomb the Earth.
For several seconds he fought to control his panic. He had failed his family so often in the past, and he didn’t want to fail them now. But no flights in and no flights out—not with this Tarsalan shroud.
His panic ebbed and he went back to his room. He switched on the TV and watched the news, the Nectaris local broadcast. The news team had some breaking information. Three fresh blooms had formed: one over the Indian Ocean, another over South Africa, and a third above Bermuda.
Before he could get the details, someone knocked on his door. He walked over and answered, knowing who it was, full of mixed emotions, and not sure how he would react.
Ian Hamilton stood there. “I don’t know about you, but I’m bar-bound. I’ve been watching the news all morning. It’s depressing the hell out of me.”
“You know I don’t drink anymore, Ian.”
“Gerry, drinking is the chief reason people come to the Moon.”
“I’ll have a cranberry juice.”
“With vodka.”
“With ice.”
Ian shook his head. “You sure have changed.”
“I can’t go carousing like I used to.”
“So you’re going to pull a Neil on me?”
“Actually, I’m going to pull a Gerry.”
The hotel lounge, Tranquility Base, served drinks to a large, mixed crowd. Gerry and Ian found stools at the bar with a good view of the TV. People negotiated the weak Moon gravity with varying degrees of success, the native Moon workers managing with ease, but the visitors from Earth overstepping themselves, crashing into tables and chairs. Most of the furniture was padded and bolted to the floor.
Many Earthlings restricted themselves to Velcro paths.
On TV, the Lunar Broadcasting Corporation played live pictures of Earth taken from the Lunette Surveyor Satellite. The image of the shroud, like a diseased piece of flesh, reminded Gerry of the rot he sometimes found in the deepest corners of his refrigerator. What in God’s name was he going to do? It was real. It was happening. And he was stuck on the Moon, as powerless as could be.
It left him in a piss-poor mood, and questioning the motive behind Ian’s knock and subsequent invitation to Tranquility Base. Ian ordered drinks, a Jack for himself and a cranberry juice for Gerry. To make matters worse, his old friend ordered a shot of Smirnoff on the side for Gerry, as if he wanted to tempt Gerry any way he could. Conversation between them froze. After a minute Gerry did the repetition-gets-the-message-across thing one more time.
“I’m not drinking, Ian. These aren’t the good old days anymore.”
“Is it going to kill you?”
“It just might.”
“I know you’re worried, but maybe if you had a drink—”
“Ian, no. I’ve been sober for two years. I’m not going to blow it now. Especially not with that thing around the Earth.”
“Then why the hell did you come to the Moon in the first place? Without your wife.” He laughed in the old boisterous way. “Come on. Let’s party.”
“I don’t need alcohol to party.”
“Yes, but this is the first time we’ve seen each other in seven years.”
“I had no idea you were here.”
“But surely to God it calls for a drink. After all the great drinking times we had?”
“Ian, as I much as I like you, I regret all those times we got drunk together. Thanks for the vodka, but I don’t think so.”
Ian shook his head in a hard-done-by way. “I wish I was rich enough to say no to free booze. I may have to take her off your hands, if you really don’t want her.”
“Be my guest.”
Ian considered. “We’ll leave it by your glass for the time being. You might change your mind. If you’re not going to drink…if you want to celebrate our reunion with just a crummy old cranberry juice, and not remember all those good times…”
“Ian, I want to remember all those good times. But there were some bad times too. Times that hurt Glenda. Times that hurt my kids. It’s going to take me a long time to face up to that, but it starts without drinking an ounce.”