lips were rough, sun-cracked. He was ruinously tall, thin as a snake, bald as a coot. He was wearing a blue NASA-type jump-suit and heavy black boots. As usual, he looked somehow larger than those around him, as if too big for the landscape. She could smell desert dust on him, hot and dry as a sauna. He said, ‘What kept you?’
She hissed, ‘You’ve a hell of a nerve, Malenfant. What are you up to now?’
‘Later,’ he whispered. The woman with him was climbing out of the car with caution, but she seemed limber enough. Malenfant said to Emma, ‘Do you know Maura Della?’
‘Representative Della? By reputation.’
Maura Della stepped forward, a thin smile on her lips. ‘Ms Stoney. He’s told me all about you.’
‘I bet he has.’ Emma shook her hand; Delia’s grip was surprisingly strong, stronger than Cornelius Taine’s, in fact.
Malenfant said, ‘I’m trying to win the Representative’s support for the project here. But I suspect I’ve a little way to go yet.’
Della said, ‘Damn right. Frankly it seems incredible to me that you can attempt to build an eco-friendly project around rocket engines …’
Malenfant pulled a face at Emma. ‘You can tell we’re in the middle of an argument here.’
‘We sure are,’ said Della.
Malenfant fetched plastic water bottles from the car and handed them out while Maura Della kept on talking.
‘… Look, the Space Shuttle actually dumps more exhaust products into the atmosphere than any other current launcher. Water, hydrogen, hydrogen chloride and nitrogen oxides. The chloride can damage the ozone layer –’
‘If it got into the stratosphere,’ Malenfant said amiably, ‘which it doesn’t, because it rains out first.’
‘65% of it does. The rest escapes. Anyhow there are other effects. Ozone depletion because of the deposition of frozen water and aluminium oxide. Global warming contributions from carbon dioxide and particulates. Acid rain from the hydrogen chloride and the NOX products –’
‘Limited to a half-mile around the launch site.’
‘But there. Anyhow there are also the toxins associated with rocket launches, which only need to be present in small amounts. Nitrogen tet can cause acute pulmonary oedemas, hydrazine is carcinogenic – and there are old studies linking aluminium with Alzheimer’s.’
Malenfant barked laughter. ‘The aluminium in rocket motors is one hundredth of one per cent of the total US annual production. We’d have to be launching like Buck Rogers to do any real damage.’
‘Tell that to the mothers of the Florida yellow babies,’ Della said grimly.
It had been a massive scandal. Medical studies had revealed a series of birth abnormalities showing up in Daytona, Orlando and other communities close to Cape Canaveral, in Florida. Abnormal livers, faulty hearts, some external defects; a plague of jaundice, sometimes associated with serious neurological diseases. Yellow babies.
Naturally Malenfant was prepared for this. ‘First of all,’ he said evenly, ‘the medicos are split over whether the cluster exists at all. And even if it does, who the hell knows what the cause is?’
Della shook her head. ‘Heptyl has been detected in soil and plants. Along the east coast of Florida it reaches as much as point three milligrams per kilogram –’
Emma asked, ‘Heptyl?’
‘Dimethyl hydrazine. Unburned rocket fuel. Highly toxic; hydrazine compounds are notorious liver and central nervous system poisons. Furthermore we know it can linger for years in bodies of water, rivers and marshes …’ Della smiled thinly. ‘I’m sorry. I guess we got a little worked up, driving around out here. As you probably know, Malenfant has been kibitzing Congress for some time. Me specifically. I thought I should come see if this rocket shop of his is just another hobby-club tax write-off, or something serious.’
Emma nodded. Right now she didn’t see why she should make life easy for Malenfant. ‘He calls you Bill Proxmire in a skirt.’ Proxmire had been a notorious NASA-opposing Senator of the late twentieth century.
Maura Della smiled. ‘Well, I don’t wear skirts much. But I’ll take it as a compliment.’
‘Damn right,’ said Malenfant easily, utterly unfazed. ‘Proxmire was an unthinking opponent of progress –’
‘While I,’ said Della dryly to Emma, ‘am a thinking opponent of progress. And therefore, Malenfant is calculating, amenable to persuasion.’
‘I told you it was a compliment,’ Malenfant said.
As the two of them fenced, Cornelius Taine had been all but invisible, standing in the shadows of the Portakabin’s doorway. Now he stepped forward, as if materializing, and smiled at Malenfant. Cornelius didn’t blink in the harsh sunlight, Emma noticed. Maybe he was wearing image-processing cornea implants.
Malenfant frowned at him, startled. ‘And who the hell are you?’
Cornelius introduced himself and his company.
Malenfant growled. ‘Eschatology. I thought I told the guards to keep you kooks out of the compound.’
Emma tugged his sleeve. ‘I brought him in.’ She murmured about the shareholding Cornelius represented. ‘Take him seriously, Malenfant.’
Cornelius said, ‘I’m here to support you, Colonel Malenfant. Really. I don’t represent any threat to you.’
‘Malenfant. Just call me Malenfant.’ He turned to Della. ‘I apologize for this. I get these bullshit artists all the time.’
Della murmured, ‘I suspect you only have yourself to blame for that.’
Cornelius Taine was holding up manicured hands. ‘You have me wrong, Malenfant. We’re not psychics. We are scientists, engineers, economists, statisticians. Thinkers, not dreamers. I myself was formerly a mathematician, for instance.
‘Eschatology has built on the pioneering work of thinkers like Freeman Dyson who, in the 1970s, began to consider the future scientifically. Since then we, and others, have worked hard to compile, umm, a road map of the future. In fact, Colonel Malenfant, we already have proof that our studies of the future are generally successful.’
‘What proof?’
‘We’ve become rich out of them. Rich enough to invest in you.’ He smiled.
‘Why have you come here today?’
‘To emphasize we support you. That is, we support your true objectives. We know about Key Largo,’ said Cornelius.
Della looked confused. ‘Key Largo? In Florida?’
The name meant nothing to Emma. But she saw it had caught Malenfant off balance.
‘This is too complicated for me,’ Malenfant said at last.
