Sinking into Summer's Arms

Sinking Into Summer’s Arms

Tom Slattery

Writers Club Press

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

Sinking Into Summer’s Arms

All Rights Reserved © 2000 by Matthew Thomas Slattery III

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

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ISBN: 0-595-09673-5

ISBN: 978-1-4697-5396-6 (ebook)

Contents

PROLOGUE

1

2

3

4

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Here we are, what we are. Also what we are not, but might have been. Open is what we might yet be. Our present tense is that fleeting moment between were and might yet be.

If there were a beginning event, it would have been the Big Bang. Distantly back in time, it led to stars. Around at least one of these, stellar debris coalesced into a solar system. And on at least one fiery primordial planetary surface of these, amid rains and electrical storms, chemicals rearranged themselves into molecules, some of which joined to create at least one replicating DNA molecule, a proto-cell, perhaps the single parent of all that planet’s life forms.

Cells divided, mutated, struggled with their environment and with one another to survive. Space debris caused catastrophes causing extinctions. An impact brought an end to the age trilo-bites. A catastrophe caused fish-like amphibians to migrate to land surface. A meteor catastrophe caused extinction of dinosaurs, availing the ecology to new mammalian forms. If the universe was not kind to life forms on this small planet, it almost seems to have been purposeful.

Our tiny blue Spaceship Earth zooms through the fathomless dark void with a convenient tilt to spread life-support climates to most of the globe. Most of the thin atmosphere is a non-reactive form of nitrogen, virtually allowing oxygen-breathing in support of life but preventing sudden atmospheric combustion that would destroy the thin and delicate biosphere.

Might there have been interventions by mysterious forces? Or might we expect to find entirely natural causes? And intervention or not, if other species have become extinct from catastrophic breakdowns in the ecosystem, but always with a bias toward survival of more adaptable and intelligent life forms, might this happen to us and lead to a species with adaptabilities and levels of intelligence we can only imagine?

For a brief time in the eons of our Spaceship Earth, another intelligent life form existed contemporaneously with our ancestors, the Neanderthals. What became of them remains a mystery. But they shared our planet with our ancestors, lived lives, had hopes, expected futures, invented and used tools, and philosophized about death of their friends and relatives enough to ceremonially bury them, thus making a statement, even to us different ones more than thirty-seven thousand years later, that there should be purpose to life beyond surviving until death.

We who superseded them have now advanced to look back at our small blue planet from the void of space. We have survived to wonder if the last Neanderthals might have dared to see purpose in their own extinction as a life form, the end of all lines of their futures. We might face that some day, too.

So let us look at our human-threatened planet not many years into our future, at what we might have been and might yet be. Look at our Spaceship Earth from a vantage in outer space. Zoom in on Europe, on the Alps, on Austria’s tallest peak, Gross Glockner, and then on large patch of ice glistening in sunlight

reaching it from ninety-three million miles away, Pasterze Glacier. And if we listen we may hear the staccato pneumatic percussion of helicopter blades chopping through the Alpine air.

1

CAN YOU TELL WHETHER it’s a he or she? Any idea how it got there? Are you sure it’s Mousterian? Adler asked. But O’Reidy’s interest was intent on the scenery.

The ancient gasoline-powered helicopter from the last decade of the late unlamented twentieth century chopped its way through the early April Alpine air above Highway 165, heading east in the direction of Gross Glockner, the highest mountain in the Austrian Alps. Of the two biochemical anthropology postgraduates in it, Sigle O’Reidy and Wolfgang Adler, only Adler was intimate with these mountains and this land. He was Austrian, born in Vienna before it had become the capital of Neutral Central Europe, and raised in the Tyrol. O’Reidy came from that distant odd arm of United Central Europe—Ireland—and the Alpine scenery thrilled her as much for its newness to her experience as for its intrinsic grandeur.

They had both, years ago, won scholarships to Leiden University in Holland, and this in itself was remarkable because Dutch universities rarely gave scholarships to citizens of United Europe. But more remarkable was the fact that they had been included in a very select group that was given state-of-the-art research facilities in the new and secrecy-plagued Instituut Leeuwenhoek in nearby Delft. If they sometimes wondered about this, they also felt it incumbent upon themselves not to look this marvelous gift horse too closely in its proverbial mouth, either as a group or individually, and they suppressed questions that sometimes came to mind for the greater good of the group and for science in general. And there was one even more remarkable thing about O’Reidy and Adler. In all the years of their long relationship, they had never been known to fight or have an emotional argument.

The helicopter hacked its way eastward, and Adler’s flowing brown curls and O’Reidy’s long red hair blew in wild waves as the thin Alpine air sprayed through cracks and fissures of the ancient helicopter cabin. Dawn had just become day, and the awesome majesty of the mountains had momentarily captured both of their interests. Neither spoke for a while as they gazed with that kind of rare rapture that one may experience only a few moments in a lifetime. After a while, though, O’Reidy returned to the conversation and answered Adler’s last question.

We’re sure it’s Mousterian, she said. We have radiocarbon spectrometry dates from some already exposed material: thirty-seven thousand, nine hundred fifty-two, plus or minus three hundred thirty-four years.

Adler smiled as he turned from the scenery to look at her, and there was a twinkling in his gray-blue eyes. She looked at him knowing, almost before he said it, what he was going to say, the result of a relationship that had been ongoing almost as many years as they had been at Leiden.

The media’s going to call it Neanderthal no matter what you call it, he said. She bit her lip and replied as much to herself as to him.

I hope we can keep it from the media just a bit longer.

Adler had been in Leiden when O’Reidy and her crew had come upon it. He had grabbed the first flight from Amsterdam to Vienna, a KLM hydrogen-powered turboprop that arrived in the wee hours of the morning, and had gone immediately to use his persuasive powers and a bribe of Common Market brandy to liberate the gasoline-powered rescue helicopter from a cousin in the Austrian Red Cross. They needed it because the new hydrogen-powered and electric helicopters could not fly at altitudes necessary to reach the shrunken glaciers on Gross Glockner.

Can you tell whether it’s a he or she? Adler asked again.

He banked the chopper in toward the mountain, and they both stared at Pasterze Glacier as it seemed to come at them.

No. It’s too far back in the ice, O’Reidy said. And it’s in a crude fur coat.

The glacier had shrunk back, but not as much as some. The earth had been warming for decades due to a rise in percentage of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide and methane, in the atmosphere. As Adler set the helicopter on a course toward the center of the glacier, he turned to look back at some of the equipment stacked behind the seats.

Pasterze Glacier’s a cold place, even these days, he said. I hope this winter gear is enough. Sigle sighed.

It’s all I could find. There’s not much of a market for this stuff anymore. But it seems to be keeping our three grad students warm up there.

Adler chuckled at this. O’Reidy caught his infectious mirth and smiled back at him.

I hope you don’t have bootleg Libyan gasoline in this old crate, she said.

No. It’s good stuff. This is a rescue helicopter—even if we’re ‘rescuing’ a Neanderthal. Adler glanced at the mountain meadows far below. Edelweiss is in full bloom. he said reflectively. When I was a boy, it didn’t look like this until July.

That was another age, O’Reidy replied quietly, wistfully. She paused as the copter blades chopped a few more slices of air. Literally, almost another geological age.

Her wandering reflections were abruptly brought back to the realities of the present as Adler jerked the joystick and banked the helicopter.

Hang on! he shouted. We’re going in.

The ancient flying machine headed for a spot near the edge of the glacier.

IN A PLUSH EXECUTIVE office in the United Nations Building in New York, two middle-aged men from widely different backgrounds and with widely different interests in the world talked to each other in quiet respectful tones. One, a nearly bald and tough-looking Indian from New Delhi, sat behind a large impressive oval-topped and highly polished executive desk. The other, a silver-haired and less than athletic-looking New Yorker, sat uncomfortable in an overly accommodating soft fabric easy chair beside the desk. A United Nations flag was draped down the wall behind the desk, and windows on the adjacent wall overlooked the East River, now up to street level in many places.

On the virtually empty desk was a felt-bottomed nameplate of cast silver. It read: V. BHATTACHARYA. The room was otherwise furnished with a variety of early twenty-first century plastic chairs and tables and sculptured glow-panels for floor and desk lighting.

Arthur Durex, the man in the easy chair, had come to talk to V. Bhattacharya, the United Nations Carbon Dioxide Emergency Secretary, on a level less than an interview but more than just a private chat. Durex worked for Worldview Magazine, an intellectual news weekly. The two had known each other for years. Bhattacharya had worked his way up through layers of United Nations bureaucracy and Durex had worked his way up through editorial rooms of several publications, most or which had gone under in the new severe economies. In the past, Bhattacharya had been more a source than a personality to interview, but this had changed suddenly with the Carbon Dioxide Emergency.

In a single year the planet had experienced a catastrophic alteration in normal weather patterns with resulting massive floods, widespread droughts, and extensive damage to food crops. After months of wrangling in the General Assembly and Security Council, Bhattacharya suddenly had been appointed to virtually the first position of effective worldwide power the planet had ever known.

Though the two men were about the same age, Bhattacharya showed his, and then maybe some, from the strain of a long series of crucially responsible positions, not the least of them his present one. Durex had always been an easygoing personality, a reporter and observer of serious concerns but not a person seriously affected by worrying over them.

Durex, in a worn but sentimentally comfortable summer tweed sportscoat, listened for a second while Bhattacharya, in a mod-styled blue Nehru jacket, carefully answered his question.

Yes, it seems to be leveling off, Bhattacharya said, absent-mindedly tapping a styled stainless steel ballpen on the polished desk top. He seemed to notice the pen for the first time and set it down while looking over at Durex. "But that’s just it; it seems! It could be just a temporary glitch in the weather patterns."

The say it might be an early warning, Durex said as he scribbled a note on his pad. Bhattacharya both shifted uncomfortably in his swivel chair and shook his head. Durex noted this but continued. They say it could be the first sign of very rapid cooling that could bring on a new ice age. Bhattacharya picked up his pen and waved it at Durex.

"They say! They say! These are all very hypothetical projections! Bhattacharya paused, looked away, then looked back at Durex. And some of them