Bloodmaster II The Tribulation

By Mary Quijano

Forty two months earlier, Satan's plot to rule the Vatican was thwarted by the courage of three unlikely allies, who killed the demon-possessed Pope before he could do more harm. The world was safe: Or was it? No one was aware that the new Pope had turned the Holy Eucharist into a chalice of evil during his coronation mass, and that every Cardinal that partook of it that day had become a servant of the powers of darkness. Now that the groundwork for it had been laid, the evil spread like a dark stain across the entire Catholic world, Armageddon could begin.

At the same time, halfway across the globe from Rome, a group of scientists - convinced that the earth was at a tipping point, the balance of nature about to fall into a series of unstoppable environmental catastrophes - came up with their own "ultimate solution". Setting off with carefully disguised vials of a super plague, these men and women travelled by air to every major city in the world to deliver a pestilence that would wipe out half of mankind.

And that was just the beginning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Quijano
• Release date: Mar 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311873125

Mary Quijano

Mary Quijano is a published author of 5 novels, 2 novellas and 3 screenplays. She has 5 children, 9 grandchildren, 1 dog, 2 cats, 2 goats and a plethora of wild chickens, and lives in the most beautiful place on earth. She teaches 6th grade students at a small public charter school near Hilo Hawaii, spends weekends surfing in the lush country setting of Pohoiki bay near her home in Pahoa, travels once a year to Hillsong Conference in Australia, once a year to Cali to visit her grandchildren and children, thinks too much, rests too little, laughs a lot and always takes a chance when it comes along. Good life!.

Book preview

Part 1:

First of the Seven Seals

Chapter 1

Vatican City

And I saw a beast come out of the sea. It had ten horns

and seven heads, and on each head a blasphemy.

Revelation 13:1

It was time.

The vision had come in the midnight hour, or three am, or just before dawn. Did it matter? Only that it had come at last, at last.

The great red dragon, archbishop of hell, servant of the servants of death, prince of demons and darkness, had come.

Wake up, he commanded, and Pope Caius II was instantly awake, eyes wide open in the dark of the sumptuous papal suite. He may have been the chosen second, but his heart never-the-less raced in fear.

The demon sat in the corner of the room on the Pope's throne-like chair. He wore seven heads, six of which were restless, endlessly looking around, back and forth, the single horn in the middle of each forehead twitching like an antenna. The central head, however, remained still, focusing intently on the cowering pope, who was sitting in his bed with the covers pulled up around his neck. This head had two pairs of horns protruding from its forehead just above the large reptilian eyes.

Forty-two months, the dragon said: You do understand the significance?

Yes master, Caius replied.

Forty-two months ago my blood was in the communion cup that was given to the cardinals of the church during high mass, at the coronation of Sixtus. By drinking that blood, the cardinals became my own, my purpose became their purpose. And every time they officiated at a mass from then on, offering the Eucharist, they infiltrated the wine of communion with my blood, making all those who imbibed it mine as well. Enough have now been converted to my army to ensure that the next stage of my appropriation of the worldwide Catholic Church and all its believers will proceed with success.

Uh, yes master, said Caius, figuring he was expected to say something.

You're an idiot, the dragon sneered. Luckily you don't have to do any thinking on your own, just do as I command, say what I tell you to say and you'll be fine. The doctrine of papal infallibility will take care of the rest.

Caius blew out a breath, nodded.

You did proceed to have the Statue of Marcus sculpted by Rowena?

Yes. Secretly, per your directive: It is at a location in Rome, well hidden from the public eye, ready to be moved to the basilica and unveiled at your command.

Good. So here's what you do.

Chapter 2

San Francisco

Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death,

and Hades was following close behind him.

Revelation 6:8

The clock on the wall read two fifteen when the doctor came back into the examining room, one of a dozen or so small screened-off cubicles in the emergency section of the large metropolitan hospital.

Marija had been given medication to ease the pain, once the possibility of appendicitis had been ruled out; but the tension in her body, the way she gripped Joe's hand, confirmed that much of the earlier agony remained: That, and fear. Her face was pale and dotted with perspiration, her green eyes huge as she tried to read the internist's face.

The, uh, the MRI detected an abnormal mass in your uterus, Mrs. Martens, the doctor apologized. Quite large, actually: Are you certain you haven't experienced any other symptoms prior to the pain that brought you in tonight?

MJ licked her lips: They were quivering and she strained to bring them under control. His words weren't quite registering, or else she was rejecting their message as quickly as her mind grasped its potential: Abnormal Mass: Does that mean...?

No doctor, nothing: No irregular bleeding, no cramps... She shook her head as a tear slipped from beneath her lashes, then another. Are you sure? she asked him.

My wife just underwent a complete physical not two months ago, Joe exclaimed angrily. How could something like this have been missed?

I don't know, the internist replied cautiously. Sometimes these growths do spring up quite rapidly. Perhaps when your regular gynecologist arrives to examine her and look over our workup, he'll be better able to answer your questions.

When will that be?

He'll see you first thing in the morning. I've already discussed our findings with him by phone, naturally, and he concurs with my recommendation, provided of course that his examination does not disagree with my own findings.

Which is? Marija asked, her voice barely audible.

Uh, we feel that a complete hysterectomy is probably the safest course of treatment at this point.

Ah Jesus, Joe swore softly.

Shit, sobbed Marija.

In the three and one half years they'd been married, they'd been trying to get pregnant without success. Now it looked like that would never happen.

I'm sorry, the doctor said. You don't have children?

Two, said MJ.

But they're adopted, added Joe. We wanted...more.

Almost three years ago MJ's sister and her husband were tragically killed in a car accident, and MJ and Joe had adopted their two children without hesitation. Eric was just four and Sandy eight at the time, and the couple had quickly fallen in love with the pair of siblings. But they'd still hoped for a child of their own making.

Well, when we have a tumorous mass growing this rapidly, Mrs. Martens, we need to excise it without delay before it can invade the surrounding tissues. Of course we'll biopsy the growth as soon as it's out.

The woman felt the world tilt and spin. She pressed her face into her husband's chest, eyes staring and terrified. This couldn't be real, it must be a nightmare. Just a few hours ago she'd been fine, perfect. She knew it. What could have done this to her?

Suddenly there, in the fabric of Joe's shirt an inch in front of her eyes, she saw two almond shaped orbs blink open, crimson colored eyes with black vertical slits for pupils. Then one of them winked at her.

Her screams had gone on and on, like she would scream forever. He heard them still, lying here in their bed alone. It had taken two shots to knock her down, but even as she drifted into the blackness she'd grabbed his collar in her two fists, pulled him close and whispered: It's him, Joe. He's back: He's the one doing this to me.

Joe prayed to not know what she was talking about, prayed it was just nonsense, the drugs speaking, a hallucination. Anything but what she said it was.

Please God, let it be anything but that. I already fought that monster once for you: No man should have to face such a thing twice in his lifetime.

********

He walked alongside the gurney, holding her hand, looking down into the eyes of this woman he loved, catching on the pain and fear he saw there and looking away again too quickly so she wouldn't see his own eyes fill with tears. The cell phone in his pocket buzzed again, but he wouldn't answer it, not until he'd seen her into the operating room. He felt so helpless, and at the same time angry, irrationally stupidly angry at her for putting him through this, this fear, this despair. He was scared to death for her, for them.

She squeezed his hand as if reading his thoughts. The gurney stopped at the door to the operating room. He bent to give her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, and she wished for more, wished for a full throttle lip-lock. But she didn't feel up to asking for it.

I'll be right outside honey, he told her. Don't worry, okay? Everything's going to be okay.

Sure, she said, trying hard to smile reassuringly at him. I'll be fine.

Once the door closed behind her and the attendings, Joe took a seat on one of the hard plastic chairs in the hall and checked his cell phone. There were three voicemails, all from Mike Muldoon. Curious: they kept in touch, but usually just to shoot the shit, nothing urgent. Three calls had to mean something.

All three calls had the same message: Call me. Something's come up I need to talk to you about.

Yeah, no shit. Like a wife in the operating room with possible cancer, hallucinating that our old friend Havohej is back. We could talk about that.

He dialed Mike, suddenly needing the comfort of the priest, needing to share this burden.

But what he learned from Muldoon was hardly comforting.

Joe, something's happening at the Vatican: I think Satan has returned for another round, Mike said."

Crap! Mike, I'm at the hospital right now with Marija. They're operating as we speak: They think it might be cancer.

Oh my God, Joe, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have bothered you with this.

How could you know? Just pray for her, okay Mike? She, she thinks he's back too.

Who?

Havohej, Mike: Satan. She thinks he's the cause of her condition. I thought maybe she was just hallucinating, but then you call me about this, and it's the same shit. He shook his head in disbelief. So what is it, Mike, what's going on at the Vatican?

Cardinal Magliano just got a summons to go to Rome for the unveiling of some huge statue of Pope Marcus, with an inscription declaring Il Papa è Il Figlio."

Which is?

It translates as 'The Papa' - which means the Pope - 'has become the Son.' Essentially what they are proclaiming is that Pope Marcus is the second coming of Christ.

I thought this was over when we killed him!

Apparently not: I've heard rumors, things that seem not quite right in the church over the past three years, strange rites and rituals not part of our doctrine...

Not to mention molestations becoming more and more common, the accusations and admissions just swept under the rug with a 'boys will be boys' attitude by the Catholic hierarchy? Joe added.

Yeah, Mike sighed. Stuff like that. I've tried to ignore the signs, but now I'm beginning to think Satan got a foothold in the church somehow, despite our getting rid of Pope Marcus and Sixtus three and a half years ago. And I think he may be coming back with a vengeance now.

********

Inside the operating room, the glare of the lights made Marija squint, but she didn't want to close her eyes, not just yet. She watched the preparations being made, feeling more and more detached from the drama. Perhaps it was simply the effect of the tranquilizer they'd given her back in the hospital room, but she felt almost peaceful now. This was all out of her hands. Someone spoke to her, one of the incognito faces behind white masks, but she wasn't sure what he'd said and didn't want to make the effort to understand. She murmured something noncommittal and continued drifting.

Now the anesthesiologist was injecting a vial of something into the clear plastic tube of liquid that ran down into her left arm. She watched the sluggish yellow substance mix and swirl inside the narrow hose as it drew closer and closer to her vein. Soon, she told herself, I'll be waking up and it will all be over. There was the sudden pungent taste and smell of garlic invading her senses, and the world disappeared.

********

Joe felt physically ill.

Why are you telling me this? He asked the priest unnecessarily.

We were brought together by God once before to fight this: I thought you should know the fight is not over.

I can't go, Mike: I can't leave Marija, not while she's so ill.

I understand, Joe, really. I'll accompany Cardinal Magliano and do what I can to keep him safe; you come if and when you're able.

When do you leave?

Not for a few days: We have to get things in order here first.

Can you come by the hospital before you go? I know MJ would like to see you...and I would too.

As soon as I can, Joe; as soon as I can, Muldoon assured him.

********

The blackness lifted, and she found herself looking down at the woman's body on the operating table. It was so peaceful for that moment: She had this sense that everything would turn out okay after all. Then all at once she was back inside that body, deep inside the womb, where an ugly pink globular mass of deformed cells was growing and spreading, multiplying geometrically before her very eyes. She saw the fingerlike tentacles of misshapen flesh crawl up into her fallopian tubes and fill her swollen ovaries to bursting; saw others spread rapidly down the vaginal walls and begin to billow from the outer orifice like bubbles of strawberry tapioca. Tiny seed colonies were breaking off from the outer perimeter of the main growth, working their way through the lining of the uterus and into the bloodstream. As it grew and spread, the ugly red mass of tissue began to take on an odd shape, almost recognizable. It was, it was....

The red dragon opened his wide slit of a mouth, tilted his many horned head back on the thick neck and roared with malignant triumph.

You won't escape me this time, bitch! He laughed, then snarled and spat. It's too late; no one can save you now, Marija. Not your beloved hubby, not that sacrosanct priest, no one! Too late, you cunt, tooo late!

Too late, she heard the doctor saying in a hushed voice. I've never seen any cancer spread like that, at such speed...Oh! He'd looked over, seen her eyes were open.

His grey and white features were slowly coming into focus, taking on color and form, and now she could make out Joe, standing beside him.

She's coming out of it. Good evening Mrs. Martens, the surgeon said, taking her hand. How are we feeling?

She opened her mouth, wanting to cry out for help, wanting to tell them what she'd seen, what was growing inside her. But what came up from her larynx was not hers, but a deep guttural monster voice: Go fuck yourselves! It ordered.

Chapter 3

San Francisco

Ask the Lord, your God, for a sign.

Isaiah 7:11

Monsignor Michael Muldoon was escorted into Cardinal Magliano's office by Father Murphy, the same young priest who had once apologetically thrown him out of his own church at the command of his superior, Bishop Dumore. That was when he was temporarily excommunicated by the directive of Pope-elect Sixtus for trying to exorcise the demon from Marija through a seance that went tragically wrong.

But after he and Joe had managed to warn the Vatican curia about Satan's plot to take over the church through his minion Sixtus, and with the help of Magliano and the other cardinals had ended the threat, Magliano was subsequently made head of the San Francisco archdiocese by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Mendice. Dumore was immediately transferred to some other distant diocese - Dayton or DC or some such - and Murphy, always an amiable fellow, had replaced him as the new Cardinal's personal secretary. He had proven himself a loyal and faithful servant ever since: None-the-less he still seemed embarrassed about the earlier incident, doing the mea culpa thing every time he saw the reinstated monsignor.

As the door closed behind him, Muldoon knelt to kiss the Cardinal's ring, then stood to give his friend a hearty hug.

You're looking more svelte every time I see you, he exclaimed, standing back to take in the once portly Italian's leaner meaner self. How much have you lost altogether?

About twenty five kilos, give or take, Magliano grinned: It's all these hills.

You could take a cab.

Yes, but then I'd still be chunky. I've also cut back on the pasta...they just don't make it here like back home, so I'm not too sad about that.

Speaking of back home, Mike said, raising a brow.

Yes. Well. Magliano shook his head. I'm not sure what is going on, but from the looks of it, what we thought we'd finished three and a half years ago isn't over yet.

What do you make of it Luigi? Muldoon asked.

I've been in touch with Mendice, and he's contacted Falliano and Bertini...You know they were all sent abroad as nuncios by the new Pope shortly after he took office?

Yes, but I didn't think it particularly worrisome: Frequently people taking office want a whole new curia, don't they?

Not so much in the church hierarchy, but generally I agree; I didn't think too much of it at the time either: We were so sure we'd won, that we'd rid ourselves of Satan's threat to our church. But now that this has happened, I'm reevaluating everything. I now believe that they were purposely sent away so that they wouldn't be able to keep an eye on what was happening in the Vatican until it was too late.

And what about Pope Caius? What do you know of him personally? Can you think of any reason he would be a willing party to this?

Before he was elected Pope he was sub-dean of the College of Cardinals - Cardinal Mertinello, Bishop of Porto and Santa Rufina - and a pretty straight-up, Catholic traditionalist, so his election made a lot of sense. But since he became Pope there's been some subtle indications that he's changed: Nothing major that would draw undue attention, mind you, just little differences in the way he does things, the way he interprets certain protocols.

Like secretly commissioning a huge statue of a dead Pope that had been infested by Satan, and declaring him the second coming of Christ, subtle little things like that? Mike queried.

Luigi shrugged.

So when do we leave?

You haven't actually been invited, Magliano reminded him.

Yeah, but I'm not letting you go into this snake pit alone and unarmed.

Two days, Magliano said. Pack light.

Chapter 4

Brisbane, Australia

And it became as the blood of a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea.

Revelation 16:3

As Rome tucked herself snug and secure into bed that night, while some in San Francisco could not sleep at all, a man stood on the small private balcony of his hotel room at dawn nearly half a world away, silently greeting the new day with his mental middle finger.

The sun reached out tracing a golden path across the skin of the sea, its gentle fingers of light caressing his bare skin, and bathing the tall tanned figure that leaned against the sixth floor railing in a gentle promise of the summer warmth to come. His head tilted up to meet her touch, eyes closed against the glare. He inhaled deeply of the opalescent sea air as if its fragrance might serve to cleanse his palate of the residual fuzz left over from a sleepless night and the morning's angry grit of realty.

This moment of silent communion, a reaching out to touch what was essential inside himself, was Charles Hemmings' way of preparing himself mentally and spiritually to face the day. He particularly needed it this day: This was to be his stand - his personal one-shot, fifty minute verbal blitzkrieg against the immovable forces of fence-riding rhetoric that had immersed his scientific colleagues in the slow death of inaction too long. Far too long.

The political and financial pressure attached to the research funding done by these members of the World Oceanic and Atmospheric Coalition, coming as it did primarily from private industry grants and government programs with their own vested interests to protect, had been used as an excuse for inaction over too many years, until the environmental crises they investigated could no longer be ignored; the timidity of their watered down, ambiguous conclusions were no longer tenable by any standards; and their refusal to make a stand and tell the truth amounted to an irresponsible, unconscionable betrayal of the public trust and their own ethical code as scientists.

He intended to tell them so today.

It wasn't like these renowned and brilliant researchers didn't realize the scope of what was happening to the world: The program for this five day International Symposium had read like the storyboard for a disaster movie on the Irwin Allen or Roland Emmerich scale. Of course one had to be able to read behind the carefully neutral titles and neutered content to hear the terror inherent behind the dry and purposely inconclusive data that was presented. One had to stand back and look at the greater picture to see how all the pieces fit together without flinching, and that took more testosterone than this group of ivory tower talking heads apparently possessed, combined.

The Greenhouse Effect: Magnetic and Rotational Accumulation of Atmospheric Pollutants in the Polar Regions and Resultant Effect on Polar Ice Caps. Now there was a doozy, especially when viewed alongside Herlihy's paper on The Erraticity of the Diminishing Jet Stream due to North Pacific Gyre Wobbles, and Brunhardt's controversial theory entitled, succinctly: Global Pressure Variants which hinted that the warming trends over the poles might be disrupting the normal polar to equatorial high-low pressure systems upon which normal global wind patterns, weather and ocean currents depended.

To the layperson this was just so much meaningless jargon, even to the fairly well educated science reporters in their midst. With interrelationships as complex and enigmatic as chaos theory, it was impossible to say with certainty what any of these studies could actually predict; thus it was far easier to dismiss the worrisome aspects of their findings as hyperbole and accept the senior scientists' conclusion that there was nothing to look at here, move along folks.

Except that what they were really talking about in the grand overview was an incipient global catastrophe, a perfect storm of synergist conditions that could unleash Mother Nature's wrath in a way no nation could hope to cope with.

In addition to the oceanic and atmospheric studies, there were as well numerous presentations by the marine biologists in the gathering which indicated a growing dysfunction of the marine ecological balance.

Johnstone's Ozone depletion and Marine Phytoplankton Growth Curves, indicated that the so called pasture of the sea - upon which all ocean life depended for food and oxygen - was being decimated during the months when the protective ozone layer was at its lowest level. There was as well a report on the recent disruption of shipping in the Caribbean due to the mysterious appearance of massive floating islands of decaying kelp in the sea lanes. The author's conclusion, however, had not been directed towards discovering the cause of the algal death but had merely advised shifting the shipping lanes two hundred miles to the north temporarily until the mess could be burned off with gasoline. Not coincidentally, Hemmings had noted in reading the paper's abstract, the funding for the study was through a grant from Richfield Oil.

Similarly a report on the recent beachings of hundreds of starving sea lion pups in Southern California had made no attempt to uncover why their food fish species had disappeared nor to suggest ways to remedy that problem, it had just called for donations by the marine rescue organizations to help feed the animals back to health and return them to their empty larder.

Study the ocean, but don't make waves, that seemed to be the motto of the vast majority of researchers he'd heard during the first four days of this conference. Well, today he was going to change that if he could. Today's meeting might be his last opportunity to force these entrenched opinion leaders to listen, to evoke their collective conscience, make them confront what was really going on, and make them step up and take responsibility for the ocean they purportedly loved, the ocean that was dying before their eyes.

A soft hand quietly touched the back of his shoulder, startling him: a pair of soft lips pressed against the hard flesh of his upper arm where the sun had warmed it, adding their own heat, a message gentled by familiarity and love. He turned to the woman who'd shared his life; his dreams, disappointments and bed these past 14 years. She still looked good in the morning, even after two kids. Good? She looked great!

He smiled into her soft brown almond eyes, watching them change, the barest chameleon wave: First the color of relief that his mood seemed good passed through their inner depths, then another wave, brighter still, the color of desire.

His smile broadened and her eyes sparked mischievously as the want passed between them.

He touched her breast.

A slender finger went to her lips as she flashed a quick sideways look in the direction of the second double bed in their economy suite, where two small dark haired boys still slept like slack-mouthed angels. She giggled, then took his hand, the one that wasn't on her breast, and led him in tiptoeing playfulness to their own bed.

Afterwards he took a long invigorating shower, letting the drumming water pound back into him the energy Linda had so sweetly tapped. Unfortunately some of the anxiety returned as well. This was it, the day he'd been working toward for over sixteen years, ever since he'd taken that seminar course in Marine ecology his senior year at the University of Hawaii, and found the cause and calling that his life had unwittingly been seeking.

The shower drummed on in an endless supply of hot water from the hotel's giant boilers - at no additional charge Linda would've hastened to point out - massaging him into a state of reverie, a review of his past which seemed not just appropriate but vital, putting into perspective all that which had lead up to this day.

Doctor Charles Hemmings PHD - associate professor of marine environmental ecology at the University of Hawaii's extension research laboratory in Lahaina Maui, and maverick brainchild of his relatively untrammeled field of marine ecological biochemistry - had been what could most kindly be described as a late bloomer. (Less lenient in their adjudication, his parents had pronounced him a surf bum, refusing to relent in that conviction until he was well into his junior year at the university. It had taken five semesters of nearly perfect grades to convince them that he was actually serious about college and career at last.)

Not that he could really blame their skepticism: He'd wasted his last two years of high school and the subsequent five following his skin-of-the-teeth graduation chasing the waves, the contests and the girls around the world in the foolish dream of making a living as a pro surfer.

As it turned out, his early wanderlust had paid off in the long run - as he'd reminded his parents numerous times without much appreciable change in their opinion - since the majority of his monthly ocean samples were collected at surf spots around the planet by the friends he'd made during his widely travelled youth. If he hadn't those resources to call on for his herculean research task, it would have been nearly impossible to pull it off, especially with the budgetary constraints he labored under by refusing to take any grants with industry or government strings attached.

He'd fallen into marine biology as his major field of study quite naturally, partly because of his long term love relationship with the sea, and partly because it was the specialty of the University of Hawaii, thus offering a large and excellent teaching staff, extensive grad programs and a better than average opportunity for getting into some sort of government subsidized research project once he graduated.

But it wasn't until the final semester of his senior year, when the famous environmentalist Doctor Robert Erlich arrived on campus to deliver a seminar series on marine environmental ecology, that Charles Hemmings finally discovered what he was supposed to do with his knowledge.

Twenty years, thirty tops, Erlich had stated ominously on that warm November morning, sitting cross-legged on the gently sloping green outside the natural sciences building, looking like an angry owl to the thirty or so rapt and wide-eyed students seated on the damp grass in a semi-circle before him.

At the current rate in which man is polluting the oceans - and I'm speaking not so much about heavy metals, radioactive waste and all the other toxic by-products of industry which, though significant in their long term effects, are not so voluminous as to pose an immediate threat to all mankind...unless of course you eat fish, he grinned at the substantial number of Asian students in the audience. "But I'm talking about the widespread and imminent danger caused by the millions of tons of chlorinated organic and organophosphate compounds introduced into these great bodies of water annually - millions of tons annually! he'd repeated for emphasis. At this rate we have only about fifteen years before the damage is irreparable and the oceans begin to die."

Students in the audience looked back and forth at one another quizzically: no one was smiling now.

Farmers, claim they need such chemicals to increase their yields - while being subsidized to burn their excess crops in the field in order to keep prices up, he'd said with an arched brow. So they pour tons of these harmful chemicals onto their fields each spring and summer; then each fall and winter the residuals of these poisons are leached back out of the soil during the rainy season, finding their way into groundwater basins, streams, rivers and ultimately into that last great un-flushable toilet for all the world's wastes - the ocean.

Erlich had paused at this point to pull an old, highly polished briar pipe from his jacket pocket, going through the ritual process of filling and tamping and lighting the sweetly scented tobacco while the students fidgeted and murmured nervously over his last revelation and in anticipation of his next. It was exactly the effect the professor had intended.

Let me introduce you to a new term here, one I've coined personally: the OLLL, or Oceanic Life Lethal Limit. This is the concentration, expressed in parts-per-billion seawater, of the aggregate accumulation of all these agricultural chemicals, the concentration at which the simplest marine organisms - the phytoplankton and zooplankton upon which all ocean food chains depend - will begin to die off. The OLLL is measured at or near the ocean's surface, primarily because that is where the vast majority of these organisms are found, and also because most of the chemicals we're concerned with are dissolved in an oil base, which causes their residues to float.

Erlich blew a cloud of white smoke thoughtfully over his head. Through my own extensive research, he continued; I've been able to predict that the Oceanic Life Lethal Limit will be reached near most shorelines and river outlets by the year 2016, and within ten to twenty more years - as these toxic wastes are carried out into the open seas and spread globally by the major ocean currents - we will reach or closely approach the Life Lethal Limit for the entire ocean.

A dead hush had fallen over the gathering of students; no one even talking or looking at anyone else as they digested the import of what they had just learned.

He stopped to relight the pipe at that point, drawing hard with concave cheeks until the smoke began lifting in thin white streamers above his head, the rich burning odor almost as comforting to his nervous little class as it was to the speaker, their minds drifting awhile together on the smoke.

When the OLLL is reached, he continued, his gaze suddenly seeming to direct all its energy into the worried brown eyes of one Charles Hemmings, as if lecturing to him alone; "the phytoplankton and zooplankton covering the top several feet of the ocean's surface will begin to die en masse. Fish and marine organisms will subsequently experience large die offs as well, but due to starvation rather than lack of oxygen. And the effect won't right itself until all the chemicals have finally broken down. In the case of DDT, the estimated half-life is 300 years if adsorption is considered. And this deadly chemical is still being used in enormous quantities by many countries around the world including the first and second most populous countries in the world, India and China.

Chuck could feel even now the sensation that had rocketed down his spine at the professor's next words. Thus, in my humble opinion, once we reach OLLL, the process will be irreversible.

One girl, a slender Asian chick with a smattering of pimples and plain black-framed glasses had begun very quietly to cry: Linda. Chuck's own throat felt thick and lumpy even now, remembering the moment. A number of students' hands had shot up, mouths pursed around questions, but the professor had raised an authoritative hand, silencing their unspoken outcry.

The oceans of our planet comprise more than seventy percent of the earth's surface. Much of this area, as I've said, is covered with a floating layer of phytoplankton several feet deep - The Pasture of the Sea - which not only provides directly or indirectly the food for every other living thing in the sea, but provides as well a significant portion of the dissolved oxygen necessary for these organisms to convert the food they eat into energy for maintenance and growth...arguably as much as 90%.

He waited, his smile a hard Rod Serling grin. As expected, several hands shot up. This time he acknowledged, calling on one with a curt nod.

Doctor Erlich, are you telling us that, should the oceans become as critically polluted as you predict, the resultant die off of marine phytoplankton would not only bring about the slow starvation of all living organisms in the sea, but would as well cause an even quicker death by asphyxiation, as the dissolved oxygen content of the ocean was used up and not replenished?

The boy that had spoken was a wimpy, bookish type; a bespectacled kid with a military haircut and acne standing up in bright revue across his forehead and cheeks, the sort who early on in school had assumed the role of interpreter for the rest of his classmates, presuming it his duty to explain the obvious to those less bright.

Give that boy a cigar, Erlich had responded, doing his best imitation Groucho, an ash-flicking, eyebrow-raising parody.

The other students had laughed, but it was a nervous uncomfortable noise. No one was feeling particularly jolly by then.

You're absolutely right, of course, the teacher had acceded more kindly, with a little wink in the blushing youth's direction; although it's a bit more complex than that. As the algae is depleted, you see, the CO2 it is no longer taking up from the water for its own growth will begin accumulating in higher and higher concentrations, and that's at least as significant, if not more so, than the diminishing dissolved oxygen content. An excess of carbon dioxide in the water interferes with the uptake of oxygen by the blood, so even if dissolved oxygen was sufficient the fish could still suffocate. In addition, he sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose wearily with his fingertips; the decaying plankton will quickly begin to release their own toxic compounds into the marine environment, further weakening or killing the animal life nearby, while at the same time their bacterial decomposition will use up any available oxygen remaining. In other words, the marine animals will be getting it from all sides in a rapidly accelerating process of death and destruction. That's why I said that the process, once the Oceanic Life Lethal Limit has been reached, is virtually irreversible.

He'd stopped talking at this point, his silence hanging over the group like an axe for several minutes while various emotions warred across his craggy features: Utter sadness was the strongest, anger next. Some students were beginning to gather their things, thinking he was done.

Finally he spoke: "Unfortunately the above described events are not the worst of it for planet Earth, not the capital B - Big - revelation I've got you all hanging breathless on my every word to hear."

That hard grin, the attempt to inject a little humor, had failed utterly this time: No one even smiled.

As much as ninety percent of the free atmospheric oxygen, he went on somberly; is produced by the ocean's pasture of the sea" as well. Ninety percent, ladies and gentlemen - though a few diehards still argue that it's only sixty or seventy percent, despite the fact that most of our rainforests, grasslands and old growth forests have been destroyed in the past 100 years. Ninety percent of that stuff on which you and I and all other air breathing terrestrial life forms depend to sustain our basic life processes, gone. Do you realize that an average of twenty cubic feet of oxygen is absorbed by every man, woman and child each day - 140 billion cubic feet of oxygen daily - just to keep the human race in its current semi-catatonic state? This does not even include the billions and billions more consumed by their pet cats, dogs, gerbils, and livestock."

The professor had begun to sweat, a thin film of perspiration beading up on his broad forehead. He'd raised up on his haunches, plucking nervously at the grass between his feet.

"Oxygen, the 'other fuel' without which our gas combustion engines will not combust, our industrial furnaces will not fire, our electrical generators will not generate...do you have any idea how much of the Earth's available oxygen is burnt up every minute to produce and operate all those items of comfort, convenience and pleasure we've come to take for granted: our cars, TVs, computers, air conditioning, refrigerators and lights...even our toilet paper?!"

He'd looked over the double row of mute, slowly shaking heads, then shook his own. "No, of course not. Who wants to know that? If you knew, if you really got it, that might force you to give up something you like, or at least feel guilty about it, right? So let's just keep our collective head in the sand and let someone else solve the problem."

But tell me this, young friends; what do you think will happen to our wonderful world of technology if it kills off, through its by-products, the very source of the most vital fuel it needs to run at all? No! he'd shouted angrily at the instant response of raised hands that had shot up from his eager young audience, shocking them. He'd jumped to his feet, looking down on the group with a stern and penetrating glare. Don't answer yet: It's far far too important for any glib or superficial replies.

The professor had started to pace, tight little circles that made the grass beneath his feet bleed green.

It's a textbook case, ladies and gentlemen, the classic test tube culture growth curve; macrocosm/microcosm, all that crap! He'd begun beating the bowl of his pipe against the heel of his palm, loosening the burned out residue, shaking it onto the grass at his feet. Industry, like a culture of microbes in a nutrient broth, has been proliferating at a logarithmic rate, using up the finite set of nutrients and O2 on this planet while at the same time slowly poisoning the ambience which supports it. Test tube Earth, he'd smiled, looking dangerous.

In a bacterial culture, what happens after a while is that the exponential growth curve levels off, then begins to decline rapidly, the microbe population dying off as the nutrients become too scarce and the toxic wastes of respiration too great to allow life to continue. Why should we suppose it to be any different in the macrocosm as in the microcosm? Aren't we in an equally finite and closed system?

Your assignment, my hope, is to go home and think about it, think about test tube Earth and think about OLLL: Think long and hard, diagram it out. By the time class reconvenes on Thursday, he'd concluded, abruptly walking way, throwing them a last facetious grin over his left shoulder; perhaps you'll all have come up with some world-saving solutions for me. I sincerely hope so.

No solutions had come forth. And that was over sixteen years ago.

Hemmings sighed audibly: All Erlich's predictions had come true, and he hadn't even included the effect of the ozone hole in his calculations. This is what he was going to tell his audience today, even though by now it was really too late, wasn't it? Based on his