Crimsy continued her clumpy cell division routine without any marked change despite our edging up the nitrogen levels little by little every twenty four hours. I captured images, emailed them to the team, got feedback.
“Maybe we need bigger nitrogen increases,” Shonstein emailed.
“Dial down the carbon dioxide?” Brando replied.
“What’s methane measuring?” Shonstein asked. “Maybe increase oxygen.”
Then, nothing. No decisions, just a repetitious limbo as our two key decision-makers sat it out in their respective corners. I wanted to scream some days, demand they return, fully engaged; turn their backs on hurt egos and other distractions that had nothing to do with logic or science. But in retrospect, it was remarkable we’d been together this long. Even the unflappable Dr. Marcum hit some bumps, showing us a congratulatory letter from the White House in one hand, a warning letter from ICE (about overstaying his worker visa) in the other.
“Bloody prats,” he said. “I’ve spent a good six months trying to get this fixed.” It still wasn’t fixed when I asked him about an upcoming Presidential honor.
“Any decision on the gas balance?” I emailed Shonstein and Brando.
No response.
“One percent nitrogen increase?” I suggested. “You suggested dropping the carbon dioxide, too. Maybe increasing oxygen.”
“If Brandy’s okay with it, just do the first two,” Dr. Shonstein finally emailed. “We wanna see if Crimsy produces oxygen, so my bad on number three.”
“Good plan,” Dr. Brando got back about ten minutes later. “Thx!”
“Livin’ large now, baby,” Hightower told the Crimsy colony in the hyperbaric chamber, as Dr. Levitt and I watched Captain Gillory make the adjustments.
“Carbon dioxide to ninety five percent. Nitrogen to three percent. Be back in twenty four hours,” Gillory told me. “Sooner if something Earth-shattering happens.”
But nothing unusual happened the day after, or the day after that. Crimsy seemed to get a little greener, but not much else. Mom and I, meanwhile, took a day trip on the ferry to Bainbridge Island. Our appointment with Parada was tomorrow.
“You nervous?” I asked.
“She’s Dr. Levitt’s fiancee,” mom said. “She must be wonderful.”
I finally had questions about the stack of contracts Nathaniel Hawthorn delivered, and we agreed to meet at Grounded after work.
“So what’s the ‘Consortium’?” I asked.
“Off hand—”
I turned a few of the pages I’d highlighted around to him. He picked them up, then slipped a pair of reading glasses out of his vest pocket.
“Funny what happens to your eyes when you never read paper,” he said. He started reading, mouthing some of the words. “How’s your mother?”
“Great. Best time we’ve ever had together.”
“This city is magic, I tell ya.” He kept reading. “Okay, so the Consortium refers to the various private entities that financed the mission. Businesses, individuals—anyone who put in money.”
“Like Alexander Sparks.”
“Yes.”
“And this Consortium owns all the rights to whatever we find,” I asserted.
“I haven’t read everything verbatim, but that sounds about right. There are some caveats, however. They cannot interfere, for instance, with our right—if you can call it that—to study what’s been found.”
“So who’s keeping Crimsy in space?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Thought it might have been the CDC over pandemic concerns. But now my odds are on the Department of Science. Back when they were the Department of Energy, they had control over all the national lab stuff.”
“I still don’t understand the logic behind the media blackout, lying to the public, you know.”
“It’s known as withholding material information.”
“Whatever.”
“You found stromatolites, right?”
“The Odysseus mission found stromatolites. Other than Dr. Levitt, we had nothing to do with that.”
“Did you ever read, anywhere, that Odysseus brought stromatolites back from Mars?”
“Of course!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I absolutely did.”
“You didn’t because you couldn’t. It was classified. Go back and look. Search the Cloud. Check every scientific journal known to the academy. Forget the clogs. You won’t find one official word about the return of Martian stromatolites. Oh sure—you’ll find predictions. You’ll find pontifications. You’ll watch TED talks about what finding stromatolites might mean about finding life. But the only thing you’ll actually learn that we brought back were rocks and sand.”
He had a point. I couldn’t recall reading any academic papers about this second-most stupendous discovery in the history of science. I knew about the stromatolite recovery because I’d been working with Dr. Levitt for so long. And I had done something very unscientific: I took that knowledge for granted, including that everyone else knew, too. The only thing that was widely reported about Odysseus—the return of rocks and dust—now seemed like an elegantly-choreographed distraction.
“Are you suggesting this is the fate that awaits Crimsy?” I asked. “She gets buried as deeply as her fossils?”
“I don’t know what the plan is,” Hawthorn said. “I do know no one wants a custody battle.”
I took David’s call in the Mallory lobby after mom and I got back from dinner.
“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “You actually got her to see someone.”
“You have to promise that when she gets home, you’ll make sure she follows up.”
“Think it’ll be serious?”
“She’s had a couple episodes.”
“There? With you?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Nothing you can do. Except tell Ron.”
Parada practiced endocrinology from a well-appointed office overlooking downtown Seattle. She was as warm and gracious as she seemed from a distance, taking mom’s hand in both of hers, explaining what she could and could not do, then asking if it was okay with mom if I explained what prompted me to request her intercession. I detailed only what had happened at Parrington Lawn and Roslyn. I didn’t want mom to think David and I were spying on her and commiserating behind her back. I squeezed mom’s hand.
“I want to spend some time with your mom,” Parada said. “Then offer some suggestions about who she might see and what questions she might ask back home.”
I sat in the waiting room. Mom emerged an hour later, trying to smile through red, moist eyes. Parada was behind her.
“You will let me know how everything turns out?” Parada asked. Mom nodded and said “yes” almost breathlessly.