Authors: David Seltzer
He felt the touch of a cold hand against his cheek and looked up to see that her eyes were open. They stared at each other in silence, he taking her hand and pressing it to his lips.
“I’ll be all right,” she whispered.
“I … know.”
Their eyes held and they listened to the rain upon the windows.
“I lost it … didn’t I?” she asked weakly. “The … pregnancy.”
“Yes.”
“It feels so empty.”
“It couldn’t be helped.”
“Was it … ?” She didn’t finish the question, but he understood.
243
“I didn’t see it.?’
“Did someone?”
He nodded.
“Was it?”
“It was damaged.”
She closed her eyes and moisture squeezed out at the edges. Rob wiped her tears away, feeling a swelling in his throat that made it difficult to speak.
“Maggie?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have a baby.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have a baby.”
“Yes,” she whimpered.
“It’s going to be different, Maggie.”
“I know.”
She clutched his hand and he gripped hers tightly.
“I’ve missed you, Robert,” she whispered.
“I’m back.”
Her hand gradually relaxed and she drifted into slumber.
In his lofty perch that towered high above the tree line, the forest ranger sat in a rocking chair, his bloodshot eyes watching dawn break over Manatee Forest. The lake beneath him was calm as glass, reflecting the orange tint of the sun’s first rays; everything was still, not a breath of wind blowing.
But somewhere within his blurred field of vision he detected movement, and reached for a pair of binoculars. Surveying the vast panorama of green, he focused in on a gray mound of earth tinged with brownish coloration. It seemed to be rolling, as though awakening from slumber.
As he watched, it slowly took shape, rising on its hind legs and assuming its full stance among the trees. It was a vision like one he had seen before. Only this one was larger. More powerful in every way. And there were smaller ones with it. Five of them. They
244
scampered from beneath it and followed the mighty creature as it lumbered toward the lake.
The forest ranger put down the binoculars and closed his eyes, trying to shake the image away. He knew if he reported it, they would say he was drunk.
And he feared they would be wrong.
245
245
In retrospect, all things seem inevitable. It is a comfortable perspective when things have gone wrong.
One can trace a fatal car collision back to the moment the victim bought the car. Or back further, perhaps, to when he first dreamed of owning a car. In this way, the last-minute details of stop signs ignored, speed limits violated, brake systems unserviced can be passed over as being immaterial to the final outcome.
The history of the earth’s environment can be seen in this perspective, too; fatalistically, as a matter of unseen but inevitable obsolescence. Or it can be studied in terms of its detail, taking into account the myriad signals, any one of which could have been heeded to avoid the final failure.
The biological environment within a simple home aquarium will fail in a sequence of increasingly evident steps: a decay of the foliation, a fouling of the water, a browning of the glass, and finally the sight of the entire community of fish gathered at the water’s surface, listlessly sucking for oxygen. Even to the untrained eye, the unraveling of the life force becomes plain. If we can singlehandedly reverse it, we usually do. If it requires the co-operation of two or more individuals, it will likely be ignored. In fact, the col-246
lapse of an environment requires a conspiracy of negligence.
Anthropologist Richard Leakey, in his probing into the earth around the shores of Lake Rudolf in Kenya, Africa, found evidence of human co-operating dating from a time before man could even be called Man. And we must ask ourselves at what stage of human development “co-operation” became repugnant to the human personality. Mystically and psychologically, man seems to follow the dictate of an inner dynamic which has been labeled the “ego”; a mechanism that makes each within the species feel special, like a species unto himself. It is this mechanism that turned the course of evolution into a drive for “upward mobility,” an individual striving for comfort and luxury at the expense of the safety of the community.
Lest one think this is a product of intelligence, it must be pointed out that there is another animal species which, by the yardstick of language, has a measureable intelligence equal to and, some say, beyond our own. Within the community of porpoises, whose communication and problem-solving capabilities have been developed to the highest order, the concept of “me” does not, to any detrimental extent, exist. Even if we discard this example, we must wonder in what perverse equation “intelligence” leads to self-destruction. If we have the intelligence to create warning systems, why, then, do we so blatantly ignore them?
The story you have read is based, in its ecological substance, on actual events. It has been widely reported in journals throughout Canada that lumber mills there, have for several years been using methyl-mercury-the same substance that caused the disaster in Minamata, Japan-and spilling it into the inland watersheds. The failing health, both mental and physical, of the local Indian populations has been labeled
247
247
drunkenness. The Indians protest that they do not use alcohol.
In environmental drama the term science fiction will soon be obsolete. Our imaginations have limits. And our realities are catching up with them.
248
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Bob Rosen, John Franken-heimer, Michael Eisner, Robert Lescher, George Walsh, Gloria Hammond, Mary Ellen Ernest, Barbara Jacoby and Sylvia Lundgren for their support.
Also my special thanks to Nguyen Van Trung, Thuy Thi Phuong, Timothy Ethan and Emily Ann.