Slow River

It would have been so easy to shrug, profess ignorance, and just go about our work routine, anonymous and safe, but he was leaning forward, peering, reaching out to touch. He might never ask for something so simple, so hard to give, again. And if those tentacles tightened once more they might never loosen. So I pointed. “Nitrites, free nitrogen, ammonia. Then various subdivisions. But they’re not as important.”

“Show me again. More slowly.” I did. He nodded after each one. His lips moved as he repeated the names to himself.

“Paolo, do you want to learn?”

He shrugged guardedly. “Sure.”

I had thought his eyes were soft, but they weren’t. They were hard, like the thick brown ice that collects over muddy puddles, the kind you think you can see through until you really look. I don’t trust you, those eyes said. I’ve been played with before.

I shrugged back. “The more you know, the easier life is. I can teach you, if you like.” I hoped I could, anyway. I had been the youngest child, smallest sibling; always the student, never the teacher.

I think he knew I didn’t feel as casual as I looked; he wasn’t stupid. But maybe it was the fact that I was willing to pretend that made him decide to take the risk. He nodded.

“After the break, then.” When Magyar took her own rest.

After the break I took him into the concrete bunker. I pointed to the red button Magyar had used a few weeks ago, feeling a little self-conscious.

“I can’t slide back the floor to show you just how much water is pouring in here every minute, but believe me, four and a half million gallons a day is a lot.”

The numbers obviously meant nothing to him. You can do this, I told myself. “Try to imagine a hose as big around as a pregnant woman squirting green or orange water polluted with all kinds of dangerous and unpleasant guck at high pressure into an empty swimming pool. When the pool reaches a certain depth, the water starts to pour out the other end, so eventually you get the water roaring out the other side as fast as it pours in. Now imagine that it’s an enchanted pool, that somehow during its time in there, the water is changed from stuff that will kill you to clear, clean, crystal drinking water, and that water goes straight into the mains, where old men and little children drink it from the tap. It might not sound like much, but there are two things to remember. The water in that fat hose never, ever stops. And, most important, we—you and me and Cel and Kinnis and Magyar and all the others—are the magic. If we screw up or stop working, people die.”

Shock, in Paolo, was a strange turning of his arms and a blank cast to his face. I watched him struggle with the idea of all that responsibility. “But what about the machines, the failsafes?”

“They work well enough, most of the time. But if the systems go down again, or if someone misreads the alarms, or there’s an aberration so momentary that the sensors miss it at the influent point, then it’s up to us. And that’s just assuming that the problem is something the designers have anticipated. And that it’s accidental.”

“Sabotaged,” He blinked. “How could someone sabotage this place?”

“Any number of ways, but the best place would be right at the beginning—close the whole train down.”

“The influent?”

“Right here.” I pointed at the floor, which shook very slightly with the vibration of the water flowing beneath us.

“Put something big or lethal in there and, assuming the systems catch it in time, they’ll close everything down. If they don’t catch it at once, then the contamination will go on through to the whole of the primary sector and pollute four or five million gallons. And then there’s human error.” I showed him the spigot, the initial test readouts—all automated—the various lights that indicated what bacteria and algae were currently being used, their estimated biomass and suggested nutrients. “Depending on what’s coming in, we add biomass, or change it, or decrease nutrients. So if we get an influx of something nasty that kills selected strains, we can re-add. Or if some strain is struggling, we can add preferred nutrients or decrease the nutrients of the strain that’s proliferating too much and suffocating the desired strain. The initial readouts here, and then the ones I give to Magyar, determine what amount of which strain is needed.”

I led him out of the concrete bunker. “It’s important to understand the general principles.” I stopped by trough forty-one. “Looks like the gravel here needs reraking. You start at that side.” We pulled on our masks and got to work. I waited until we had both established our rhythms. “What did you learn from the orientation video?”

He pulled himself straight, as though this was a school test.

“Keep working. Magyar won’t be on her break forever.”