“No, I got it. She's just jealous.” Georges got the bird redirected to preening the gray fringe of hair that was all that remained to him, sitting forward so he wouldn't pin her tail against the couch. “How long do you think it's going to be?”
“Georges, I don't know.” Valens closed the cabinet, losing his interest in a drink. “Time's getting short, and Riel is getting awfully close to figuring out what's going on. And if she does, I honestly don't know which way she'll jump. And Holmes… she's a piece of work.”
“She is. You're not going to save the world all by yourself.”
“The hell you say.” He bit back on the rest of the sentence, shook his head, and pressed one hand flat to the soft cream-patterned wool of the rug as he stood. “Okay, you're right. I'm not going to save the world. But I am going to save Patty, at least.”
“And Casey.”
“What?”
Georges was standing when Valens turned back around, standing and smiling in that tolerant, amused, slightly condescending way that made Valens wonder why he had put up with long absences and an all-consuming career for thirty years. And made him infinitely grateful that Georges had. “I know how you feel about her, Fred.”
“Are you insinuating that I'm inappropriately attached to one of my patients?” Arch amusement. “A woman, at that?”
“No, I'm saying it's like you to look out for one of your kids, even when they don't understand what you're doing for them.” The bird shifted on Georges's shoulder, spread wings he never remembered to keep clipped, and sailed across the room to Valens. Valens reflexively put a hand up and let her land on his fist. Just a few ounces of feathers and bone, but he felt the impact solidly.
“She hates me.”
“You trust her.”
“I do.” Valens shook his head, and Dexter squawked her disapproval of the sudden movement. “Hush, birdy-bird. I'll use her any way I have to, Georges. Especially if it comes down to her or Patty. But I think she turned out okay. She's a patriot, in one of the better senses of the word.” He might have said more, but he didn't think he needed to.
“It's that bad?”
“Well.” The bird nibbled his finger, clucking. “Go to Papa Georges, birdy-bird.”
She clucked again, as if to her eggs, or a mate, and regarded him out of eyes like black gemstones set in fragile lids with the texture of crumpled rice paper. “Pretty!” she said — her all-purpose term of approval — and bit his nose.
He shook his hand gently. “Papa Georges.”
The bird clucked in annoyance and took wing again, landing on her towel on the sofa.
“Well?”
“Latest reports indicate that there are massive algae
die-offs in the Atlantic, spreading to the Indian Ocean. Nobody knows why, but there's some theorization that it's linked to the failure of the Gulf Stream and deep-ocean water turnover. An El Niño event is under way in the Pacific, and coral reef survivability is down to 35 percent. We're looking at an ecosystem collapse in 150 years, tops. That's all proprietary Unitek information, of course. Holmes hasn't informed Riel yet, although we presume her own scientific adviser, Paul Perry, must be aware of the issues. Charlie tells me that Paul has been in touch.”
“It sounds like a doomsday scenario. Hysteria.”
Valens rolled his head back and looked up at the ceiling. Suddenly, he decided he wanted that drink after all. “It does, doesn't it? It doesn't mean the planet will be uninhabitable, of course. Just that it will take greater and greater interventions to sustain human life. We're looking at a lot of hunger, misery, and sickness. A lot of poverty.”
“A lot more war.”
“A whole hell of a lot more war.”
1830 Hours
Thursday 7 December, 2062
Clarke Orbital Platform
Charlie had intended to meet Paul Perry when he disembarked from the beanstalk on Clarke, but somehow one thing led to another, and Charlie was still hunched over one of his microenvironments when his contact flashed a message. He blinked for a time display and cursed under his breath, standing up from his stool the same instant a knock sounded on the hatch. “Paul, I'm sorry—”
Perry stood framed in the doorway a moment: a small-boned man, slightly built and of average height, dark hair still tousled from his trip in the space elevator. “It's nothing,” he said, his quick sideways glance an unassuming request to come in out of the corridor. Charlie stepped back and let him. “I assume something good kept you?”
Charlie shrugged, and tapped the door-panel shut behind Paul. “Something interesting,” he said. “I'm up to my neck in nanites—”
“Literally?” Pale eyes flashed slyly. Charlie made a little show of dusting off his shirt front, and then led Paul over to the benches while the science adviser kept talking. “You know I'm not here as a colleague, Charles—”
“You're here as Riel's investigator. I know she's not pleased with Unitek, but—”
“Yes? What are these, Charlie? Terrariums?”
“Microenvironments. But we've discovered some remarkable secondary abilities in our nanotech that I wanted to share with you anyway.”
“These all look extremely healthy. Are they closed systems?”
Charlie nodded, picking up one of the sealed glass spheres and handing it to Paul. Paul took it, cupped it in both his narrow hands. “Completely. Water, shrimp, snails, some algae — one of the classic model ecosystems.”
Paul coughed. It was a laugh hidden behind a hand, and Charlie grinned. “Which, as an ecologist, you were no doubt aware.”
“Indubitably. Nothing remarkable there, then?”
Charlie shook his head. “On the contrary. They're all quite remarkable. The one you're holding is a control. There are five natural controls, five controls that are infected with a nanotech population—”
“Not sure I like that word infected.” Paul turned toward the light, and held the sphere carefully up to it. His motions disturbed the crystalline water, and a pale smear of sediment rose from the base of the globe, describing a spiral.
“Got a better one?”
Paul answered him only with silence. Charlie propped one hip on a steel lab bench and waited until Paul finally caved and jerked his chin at the racks of labeled spheres under grow-lights. “And the others?”
“Contaminated.”
“With nanites? What, various”—he sought a word and failed—“cultivars?”
“Ooo,” Charlie answered. “Cultivars. Consider that terminology stolen, Paul. No, all one — cultivar. Differing concentrations of industrial chemicals, heavy metals, bleach—”
“Bleach?” Paul set the sphere in his hands down carefully on its rack, affixed the clips, and strode to the wall to look at the others. He bobbed up and down a little when he walked, his hands fisted and shoved into his jacket pockets. “They all look very healthy. That's… very exciting.”
“That,” Charlie answered, “is the remarkable thing—” and grinned when Paul turned back over his own shoulder and made a wry mouth. “We're on the same side of this fight, Paul.”
“The prime minister isn't so sure about that, Charlie.”
“I am.” Charlie shrugged. “Fred Valens is. Holmes, she's a different matter. But that's not what I need to talk to you about. How much do you know — really know—about what's going on planet-side?”
“Politically?” Paul turned to face Charlie, his back to the racks of microenvironments.
“Climatologically.”
Paul laughed bitterly and drew his hands out of his pockets. Charlie was surprised to find himself twisting his own fingers together and forced himself to stand up straight and stop. “Do you need a more definite answer than, we're fucked?” He said it mildly, calm as a request for coffee. “I know. Riel knows. I'm postulating that we're on the verge of a snowball Earth scenario, actually.”