her eyes and looked around the forest. Where is Jason, anyway? She consoled herself with the knowledge that the woods were teeming with detectives and forensics experts, even if she couldn’t see them. Then she and Sang-mi kneeled and began to pray silently. But Forensia couldn’t stop thinking about the killer.
This is no way to honor GreenSpirit, she chided herself.
* * *
“Mr. Vice President, what did you just say?” A female scientist spoke with no attempt to hide her disgust.
Three more members of the task force jumped in, asking Vice President Andrew Percy to repeat himself. Others were groaning in open protest. Jenna cupped her earphone to try to block out any external noise, scarcely believing what she had just heard. A bombshell indeed.
“President Reynolds and I are simply asking you to consider, just consider, getting on board with USEI’s iron oxide pilot project in the Indian Ocean.”
“I thought we were supposed to review geoengineering options, not become a rubber stamp for the energy industry’s unilateral actions,” Jenna said.
The vice president paused before he replied: “We are, in fact, supposed to review those options, but USEI has taken the initiative to launch a very limited experiment in the Indian Ocean in conjunction with the government of the Maldives. What is so wrong with that?”
“Andrew, you’ve got to be kidding,” said Ben Norris, the balding, freckled, irascible NASA meteorologist. “What’s ‘wrong with that’ is that all kinds of things can go haywire with even a ‘very limited experiment’ that is targeting the Earth’s incredibly sensitive thermostat. The best scientific minds we have should review the protocols—that’s science 101. We don’t even know if the energy industry conducted any review before shipping half a million tons of iron oxide halfway around the world. Talk about putting random elements into play! Furthermore, Senator Higgens sat here with us just last week and never said word one about this ‘pilot project.’ Did you know about it then?”
“No, I did not.”
Vice President Percy spoke so directly that Jenna suspected that he’d been ill at ease with everything else he’d said up till now.
Norris asked, “When you called us together, did you intend us to rubber-stamp this sort of irresponsible energy industry nonsense?”
“You may not have known what the energy lobby was up to,” said Dr. Susan Ornstein, a marine microbiologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “but I’ll bet your boss knew. This lets him look decisive on a key issue right before the election. Talk about an October surprise.”
“I don’t think you’re being fair to the president,” Percy said.
“And I think that you have no choice but to say that,” Norris fired back.
“Five hundred thousand tons of iron oxide doesn’t spell ‘pilot project’ to me,” Ornstein interjected irritably.
“No, it certainly does not,” Jenna agreed. “It suggests they’ve already decided what results they’re going to get from their ‘test.’”
“You watch,” Norris said, “a measured cooling of the atmosphere will be announced in a massive ad campaign that’s going to tell the world that climate change has been solved. Thanks to the intrepid energy industry, everyone can turn down their air-conditioning and drive all they want. No worries.” Norris’s voice was venomous. “They’re using that supertanker to save the enormous costs of shipping when they start seeding the ocean on a large scale. And to show gullible consumers how ‘serious’ they are.”
“And if we don’t ‘get on board,’ as you put it, Mr. Vice President, we’ll look like namby-pamby scientists who are too nervous and scared to ever make such a bold move,” said the woman whom Jenna still couldn’t identify, but whose contempt she shared.
“But they don’t know that this is going to work,” the environmentalist with the white goatee remonstrated.
“No, they don’t. And we don’t, either,” the vice president said. “But they’re being very careful, I think we have to grant them that, and I think we have to take them at their word.”
“Them? Their word?” Norris snorted. Jenna felt that Norris’s thoughts probably mirrored her own memories of the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters. “You do know, Andrew,” Norris went on, “that there’s not one law on the books, here or abroad, that can stop them.”
Percy did not respond, but Ornstein plunged back in: “That’s absolutely correct. There’s nothing to stop them from doing this. This is beyond outrageous.”
“I can only relay the president’s request that you offer support to this unique—”
“My apologies for interrupting, Andrew,” Norris said, “but I can’t believe those are your words.”
“Well, you’re wrong, Ben,” the vice president said