Read Online Rifters 2 - Maelstrom by Peter Watts - Free Book Online

Rowan said softly; she sounded tired. "I'm sorry to drag you back here on your down time. Unfortunately, I'm only in town for a few hours." She tapped commands into a control pad on the table in front of her. Tiny lights scrolled across her eyes. "So. The famous Achilles Desjardins. Savior of the Med."
    "I just did the stats," he said. "And they only—postponed the inevitable for a few months."
    "Don't sell yourself short," the corpse said. "Mean event resolution thirty-six point eight minutes. That's excellent."
    Desjardins acknowledged with a nod.
    "The metabase," Rowan continued. "Plagues. Brushfires. Traffic flow. And even setting the Mediterranean aside for the moment, I'm told your projections helped a lot in keeping the Gulf Stream going. A few people have you beat in Maelstrom, certainly, but you've got the edge in biocontainment, economics, industrial ecology—"
    Desjardins smiled to himself. Typical old-school: she actually thought she was ticking off a list of different subjects.
    "At any rate," the corpse continued, "You seem to be the best local candidate for what we have in mind. We're taking you off your normal rotation and putting you onto a special project, with Dr. Lertzman's approval of course."
    "I think we could probably spare him," Lertzman said, embracing the pretense that his opinion mattered. "In fact, after today I imagine Achilles would probably want to leave Maelstrom behind for a while."
    Enculé . The sentiment was almost a reflex where Lertzman was concerned.
    Rowan again: "There's a biological event we'd like you to keep an eye on. New soil microbe, from the looks of it. So far it's had a relatively minor impact—almost negligible, in fact, but the potential, is, well…" She inclined her head toward the blonde on her right; on cue, that woman tapped her wristwatch. "If you'd open for download…"
    Desjardins tapped the requisite shorthand onto his wrist; transfer protocols flickered briefly across his field of view.
    "You can study the stats afterward," the blonde told him. "Briefly, though, you're looking for small-scale substrate acidification, reductions in chlorophyll a , maybe some changes in xanthophylls—"
    Science. No wonder nobody'd bothered to introduce her.
    "—there might be a reduction in soil moisture levels too, but we don't know yet. Probable decline in Bt and associated microflora. Also we suspect the spread will be temperature-limited. Your job is to develop a diagnostic profile, something we can use to tag this bug from a distance."
    "That sounds a bit long-term for my skillset," Desjardins remarked. Not to mention boring as hell . "I'm really more optimized for acute crisis work."
    Rowan ignored the hint. "That's not a problem. We selected you for your pattern-recognition skills, not your brushfire reflexes."
    "Okay, then." He sighed to himself. "What about an actual signature?"
    "Excuse me?"
    "If you're talking about depressed chlorophylls, I'm assuming conventional photosynthesizers are being replaced. By what? Any new pigments I should be looking for?"
    "We don't have a signature yet," the woman told him. "If you can work one up that'd be great, but we're not hopeful."
    "Come on. Everything's got a signature."
    "That's true. But this thing's direct sig may not show up at a distance until it's already at outbreak concentrations. We want to catch it before then. Indirect telltales are probably your best bet."
    "I'd still like the lab stats. An actual culture too, of course." He decided to float a trial balloon. "Alice Jovellanos could be helpful in this. Her background's in biochem."
    "Alice hasn't had her shots yet—" Lertzman began.
    Rowan smoothly cut him off: "By all means, Dr. Desjardins. Anyone you think could be helpful. Keep in mind though, the security classifications are subject to change. Depending at least partly on your own results, of course."
    "Thanks. And the culture?"
    "We'll do what we can. There may be concerns about releasing a live sample, for