COSMOS magazine

Book I: In the Beginning

Saturday, April 26

At nine on a gorgeous spring morning, Jill set out to do her bit to save the world. Westlake Hills Farmers' Market was set up every Saturday in the parking lot of the up-scale Balcones Shopping Mall. You could buy organic tomatoes picked at daybreak from the garden or brandied plum dessert tamales or delicately scented herbal soaps made from olive oil and goats' milk. Nature Forever had a table there, so once a month Jill took her allocated turn at handing out flyers and answering questions about topics such as hazardous cleaning products, bovine growth hormone, and returnable soda bottles.

By afternoon, the temperature in Austin would be in the low nineties, but the morning breeze was still cool enough to be refreshing. Today's other rostered Nature Forever volunteer, Nancy Buchanan, had set up their table under the shade of a sycamore tree.

"Hey, Jill? No junior today?"

Nancy sat primly on a folding chair; Jill perched herself on the edge of a stone planter overflowing with salvia and passiflora. A couple of bright orange Gulf Fritillary butterflies worked the purple and blue flowers.

"Nope. Alex's visiting with his dad for the day."

Nancy pulled a face. "That's a first." She had never made any attempt to hide her dislike of Jill's ex-husband. It was true, though, that this was the first time in months Keith had found it convenient to have his son over. For weeks Alex had been looking forward to seeing his half-sisters, but Keith kept putting him off, pleading pressure of work. A burst of love for her son swept through her and she wished Alex was sharing this pretty day with her.

Jill sighed, found the latest Nature Forever flyer, flicked through it, refreshing her memory. Each week the environmental activist group concentrated on a single topic. Today's was food irradiation. The flyers, provided by the Washington D.C. central office of Nature Forever, bore a photograph of an attractively arranged display of meats, vegetables, fruit, and eggs with a black radioactivity symbol stencilled over it. Above the photograph was the heading: IS IT WORTH THE RISK?

An elderly woman carrying a hemp shopping bag with the Farmer's Market logo stopped to look at the posters and tentatively took one of the flyers. "What's this they're doing to our food now?"

"Nuking it with gamma rays." Nancy pointed to a copy of a Nature Forever Public Service Report mounted for display in a plastic folder. "Making the food radioactive!"

That didn't sound right to Jill, but Nancy was thoroughly outraged.

"Oh my gosh!" The woman glanced owlishly at the article. "I don't have my glasses with me."

Jill leaned across the table, looked with a smile into the woman's anxious eyes. "Hi, I'm Jill Shannon."

"Mrs. Dwyer. Letitia." The elderly woman smiled tentatively. "Are you girls doctors, then?"

"Pleased to meet you, Letitia. No, although Nancy's a dental hygienist. I'm a lawyer." Jill held up the Public Service article. "See, what it is, the Food and Drug Administration has a charter of responsibility to consumers." The woman nodded. "But irradiation is a completely new method of preserving foods—"

"They're really using radiation in food?" Letitia Dwyer was aghast.

"Nuking it," Nancy said with satisfaction. "There was a story on Sixty Minutes."

That still wasn't exactly right. "They're meant to run strict tests to make sure new methods are safe." People tended to drift off at this point, get edgy, just walk away. Jill satisfied herself that she was holding the older woman's attention. "They're not supposed to allow the food industry to use it until they're sure it's safe. With food irradiation, the FDA violated their own testing protocol."

"They did?"

Jill spoke confidentially, as if to one of her legal clients. "Basically, they've told the food industry it's okay to use consumers like you and me as guinea pigs!"

"That's terrible!"

"It really is — you don't know if the food you eat is going to nourish you or give you cancer. So we're trying to do something about it." She noticed a tall bearded man with shoulder-length dark auburn hair quietly join them, pick up the pamphlet, flip through it. "We're working to force the FDA to re-evaluate their irresponsible position."

Nancy pushed a clipboard toward Mrs. Dwyer and held out a pen. "Would you be interested in signing our petition?"

"Why, yes—" Letitia squinted at the paper, which already contained a number of names.

Impatient, Nancy pointed. "Just print your name and address right here."

As Letitia wrote on the form, the man stood silently. Her son? When she was finished he smiled at the older woman and gently touched the clipboard. "May I?"

"You certainly may."

No, not son. Letitia was flirting, Jill saw with amusement. Couldn't blame her; he had the right sort of handsome face and expressive eyes. But he'd paused, pen poised over the clipboard.

"Before I sign this, would you mind explaining a bit more about the testing protocol? What rules exactly did the FDA violate?" His voice was full, rich, with an accent Jill could not quite identify. South African, perhaps, or Australian.

"They're meant to follow specific procedures when they run tests," Jill told him, wishing she could recall the details. "Which they didn't do." His polite gaze made her uncomfortable. Too alert, somehow, too intent. Damn it, she told herself. I should have done my homework more thoroughly,

"Yes, I see that, but what are those procedures?"

"Well, standard procedures are always meant to be used in scientific experiments. Control groups, for example, and double-blind tests."

"Right-oh. Which ones did the FDA fail to use in this case?"

"It might be better if you read the article. It explains everything." She held out the document, but he waved it aside with a pleasant smile.

"That's okay, thanks, I skimmed it while you were talking to Mrs. Dwyer. It says some of the tests were invalid. Doesn't say what they were or why they were invalid." He shrugged. "I just like to know what I'm signing."

To Jill's dismay, five or six people were now gathering around the front of the Nature Forever table.

"Look, I have to admit I don't know exactly which tests—"

"What's up?" asked one of the new spectators, a hefty fellow in a biker's leather jacket.

"We're presenting information on irradiated foods. Would you like a flyer?" Nancy looked a question at Jill, who nodded.

The biker accepted one and stood his ground, flicking his eyes down the page. Everyone was staring at Jill, who felt acutely uncomfortable. "The thing is, the FDA allows irradiated food to be sold to the public," she said. The long-haired young man was still holding the clipboard. "Sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"I'm Paul."

"Paul, Nature Forever has grave concerns about the safety of preserving food this way." He started to open his mouth and she rushed on. "Okay, let me list some of their concerns. Firstly, food irradiation uses the equivalent of a billion chest X-rays. That's enough radiation to kill 6000 people."

Even the biker looked shocked at that; Letitia Dwyer went pale.

"Hang on just a mo." Definitely an Aussie. He set down the clipboard on the table. "Boiling water's used for canning food. You could kill 6000 people by putting them into pressure cookers and turning up the heat—"

The biker guffawed.

"—but that doesn't mean you'll die from eating canned food."

"The food's radioactive," Nancy protested. Wrong, wrong, Jill thought, and grimaced.

Paul looked from one to the other, his expression very slightly mocking. "Oh. That's not one of the points made in the pamphlet here. In fact, paragraph five states that the food doesn't contain abnormal levels of radiation."

Nancy grabbed the document and began reading it.

Jill flailed around inside her head. Arguments she had accepted as perfectly logical while she was reading the pamphlet now seemed rather weak. "See, Paul, it's not that the food is radioactive when we eat it. Radiation changes the chemical composition of the food."

"Well, sure. So does canning or drying or cooking, or even just storing it for that matter. How is gamma irradiation worse?"

Ah, it was coming back to her. "Ionising radiation can kill beneficial microorganisms, as well as dangerous ones."

"Boiling and baking do that too."

She had him now. "But we've been using boiling and baking for centuries. Irradiation is a completely new process."

"I see." Paul rubbed his chin slowly with his free hand in a thoughtful manner. "So it's new. Like flying in an airliner instead of crossing the country on horse-back."

Jill decided it was more profitable to ignore the sarcastic comparison. "Actually, things are changing too fast, rushing out of control. We have to slow down. Take time to assess where we're going." Letitia was nodding doubtfully, but none of the other onlookers seemed entirely convinced. It did sound rather lame. Jill felt her face flushing. "It's called the Precautionary Principle."

"Okay. In that case, I don't think I want to sign this petition." He left the clipboard where it lay, but did not move away.

"I'm not sure I should have signed either." Letitia said apologetically. "I don't really understand any of this, it's all a bit over my head, dear. I think I should scratch my name out." Paul obligingly handed clipboard and pen to her while Jill looked on helplessly. He turned and walked away. Jill stood tensely, watching the infuriating man until he was out of sight. She felt completely drained of energy, as though she had just finished a ten mile run.

"Well, I'm still interested in looking at your petition." A young woman pushing a baby stroller picked up a flyer but left without offering to sign. The rest of the spectators drifted away.

Nancy carefully rearranged the messed-up pile of flyers and clipboard neatly on the table. "Thank goodness he's gone." She held up a book with a black cover. "Is this yours, Jill?"

"I think that Paul guy was carrying it."

"Shit, probably means he'll be back."

"I hope not. I don't think I could take any more of his interrogation today. Um, let me see it." Jill took the book from Nancy. It looked expensive. Gold print on the spine: Mitochondrial Function and Electron Transport Enzymes in the Brain. A scientist of some kind. No wonder he—

A hand reached out and reclaimed the book. Paul looked faintly flustered. "Sorry," he told her. "I'm getting more absent-minded every day." He gave her a smile that made her heart pound, and was gone again, walking fast and purposefully through the crowd of market shoppers. Jill watched him with an emotion of regret that surprised her.

Don't be ridiculous, she told herself. Little Alex is the only male you need in your life just now. Anyway, men are just trouble.

"What was the guy, some damn mad scientist?" Nancy said.

No, he wasn't, Jill thought. Well, yes, maybe. "He looked more like a musician to me," she said, a little brusquely. She shook her head, sat down again on the planter, and waited for her heart to slow down.

Saturday, April 26

Preoccupied, Paul hardly noticed his surroundings as he walked to the car. Interesting woman, that. Bamboozled, but passionate about her cause. Pity about the scars on her face, she could be quite pretty. Probably late adolescent acne, he thought. Our bodies are too bloody frail.

Lauren was already waiting beside the car. "Finally! You said to meet back here at eleven."

"Sorry, I got into a dispute with those nature cranks, then I left my book behind and had to go back for it"

Lauren rolled her eyes. "I'd have come looking for you, but my feet are killing me. I can't believe you parked seven blocks away."

Paul turned the key. Under the hood, something buzzed balefully.

"Oh god, Paul. Don't tell me the damned thing isn't going to start now!"

"It'll start. One way or another. You may have noticed that I was careful to park at the top of a hill."

Paul released the parking brake and pushed in the clutch pedal. The Nissan began to roll down the hill, and when he judged the speed to be sufficient, he popped the clutch. He grinned at Lauren as the engine caught. She frowned and shook her head, clearly not impressed. The bloke who'd sold him the decrepit Nissan had assured Paul it only needed a new battery, which proved a partial truth at best. Every trip in this car was liable to turn into a minor disaster, so Paul avoided driving whenever possible. In any case, he always felt slightly self-indulgent driving eight miles to buy bread, but supermarket plastic foam bread was intolerable, and besides the woman who sold the homemade loaves at the farmers' market was originally from Australia. Talking to her was like going home for a few minutes each week.

"Listen." Lauren managed to put a great deal of feeling into one word. "I told you before we left that I need to be back by 11:30. We're running late."

"I'm very sorry, Lauren. My fault. But it's an expensive book, and I don't even know if I can get another copy for any price." He could have come back next week but they'd probably have burned his book in their zeal to protect the world from scientists. He smiled at the thought.

"Should've thought about that before you left it lying around. Why'd you take a book to a farmer's market anyway?"

"I didn't want to leave it in the car." The locks didn't work either.

"Oh, right. Like someone's going to steal a book about molecular goddamn genetics."

Paul shrugged. Lauren was beautiful and sexy, but it would have been more fun to spend the morning with a tree frog.