Jasmel was silent a while longer, then: What do you want from me?
Adikor blinked. I, ah, I should have thought it was obvious, he said. I want you to speak on my behalf at the dooslarm basadlarm.
Me? exclaimed Jasmel. But Im one of those accusing you of murder!
Adikor held up his left wrist. Ive carefully reviewed the documents I was given. My accuser is your mothers woman-mate, Daklar Bolbay, acting on behalf of your mothers children: you, and Megameg Bek.
Exactly.
But she cannot act on your behalf. Youve seen 250 moons now; youre an adult. Yes, you cant vote yetneither can I, of coursebut you are responsible for yourself. Daklar is still the tabant of young Megameg, but not of you.
Jasmel frowned. II hadnt thought of that. Ive gotten so used to Daklar looking after my sister and me
You are your own person under the law now. And no one could better persuade an adjudicator that I did not murder Ponter than his own daughter.
Jasmel closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly in a long, shuddery sigh. All right, she said at last. All right. If theres a chance, any chance at all, that my father still lives, I have to pursue it. I have to. She nodded once. Yes, Ill be the one to speak on your behalf.
Chapter 14
The conference room at the Creighton Mine had wall diagrams showing the network of tunnels and drifts. A hunk of nickel ore sat as a centerpiece on a long wooden table. A Canadian flag stood at one end of the room; the other had a large window overlooking the parking lot and the rough countryside beyond.
At the head of the table was Bonnie Jean Maha white woman with lots of brown hair who was married to a Chinese-Canadian, hence her last name. She was the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, and had just flown in from Ottawa.
Along one side of the table sat Louise Benoit, the tall, beautiful postdoc whod been down in the SNO control room when the disaster had occurred. And on the other side sat Scott Naylor, an engineer from the company that had manufactured the acrylic sphere at the heart of SNO. Next to him was Albert Shawwanossoway, Incos top expert on rock mechanics.
All right, said Bonnie Jean. Just to bring everyone up to date, theyve started draining the SNO chamber, before the heavy water gets any more polluted. AECL is going to try to separate the heavy water from the regular water, and, in theory, we should be able to reassemble the sphere and load it up with the recovered heavy water, getting SNO back on-line. She looked at the faces in the room. But Id still like to know exactly what caused the accident.
Naylor, a balding, tubby white man, said, Id say the sphere containing the heavy water burst apart because of pressure from the inside.
Could the displacement caused by a man entering the sphere have done that? asked Bonnie Jean.
Naylor shook his head. The sphere held 1,100 tonnes of heavy water; you add a human being, weighing a hundred kilosone-tenth of a tonneand youve only increased the mass by one ten-thousandth. Human beings have about the same density as water, so the displacement increase would only be about one ten-thousandth, as well. The acrylic could easily handle that.
Then he must have used an explosive of some sort, said Shawwanossoway, an Ojibwa of about fifty, with long, black hair.
Naylor shook his head. Weve done assays on the water recovered from the tank. Theres no evidence of any explosiveand there arent that many that would work soaking wet, anyway.
Then what? asked Bonnie Jean. Could there have been, I dont know, a magma incursion or something, and the water boiled?
Shawwanossoway shook his head. The temperature of SNO, and the whole mine complex, is closely monitored; there was no change. In the observatory cavern, it held steady at its normal value of 105 degreesFahrenheit, that is; forty-one Celsius. Hot, but nowhere near boiling. Remember, too, that the mine is a mile and a quarter underground, meaning the air pressure is about thirteen hundred millibars30 percent above that at sea level. And at higher pressures, of course, the boiling point goes up, not down.
What about the flip side? asked Bonnie Jean. What if the heavy water froze?
Well, it would indeed have expanded, just like regular water, said Naylor. He frowned. Yes, that would have burst the sphere. But heavy water freezes at 3.82 Celsius. It just couldnt possibly get that cold that far down.
Louise Benoit joined the conversation. What if more than just the man entered the sphere? How much material would have to be added before it would burst?
Naylor thought for a moment. Im not sure; it was never specced for that. We always knew exactly how much heavy water AECL was going to loan us. He paused. Maybe I dont know, maybe 10 percent. A hundred cubic meters, or so.
Which is what? asked Louise. She looked around the conference room. This rooms about six meters on a side, isnt it?
Twenty feet? said Naylor. Yeah, I guess.
And its got ten-foot ceilingsthats three meters, continued Louise. So youre talking about a volume of material as big as the contents of this room.
More or less, I suppose.
Thats ridiculous, Louise, said Bonnie Jean. All you found down there was one man.
Louise nodded, conceding that, but then she lifted her arched eyebrows. What about air? What if a hundred cubic meters of air were pumped into the sphere?
Naylor nodded. Id thought about that. I thought maybe a belch of gas had somehow welled up into the sphere, although how it would get inside I have no idea. The water samples we took were somewhat aerated, but
But what? asked Louise,
Well, they were indeed aerated, with nitrogen, oxygen, and some CO2, as well as some gabbroic rock dust and pollen. In other words, just regular mine air.
Then it couldnt have come from the SNO facility, said Bonnie Jean.
Thats right, maam, said Naylor. That air is all filtered; its free of rock dust and other pollutants.
But the only parts of the mine connecting to the detector chamber are in the SNO facility, said Louise.
Naylor and Shawwanossoway both nodded.
Okay, okay, said Bonnie Jean, steepling her fingers in front of her. What have we got? The volume of material inside the sphere was increased by, at a guess, 10 percent or more. That might have been caused by an infusion of a hundred cubic meters or more of unfiltered airalthough unless the air was pumped in very rapidly, it would have been compressed by the weight of the water, no? And, in any event, we dont know where the air came fromit certainly wasnt from SNOor how it was conveyed into the sphere, right?
Thats about the size of it, maam, said Shawwanossoway.
And this manwe dont know how he got into the sphere, either? asked Bonnie Jean.
No, said Louise. The access hatch between the inner heavy-water sphere and the outer regular-water containment tank was sealed tight even after the sphere broke apart.
All right, said Bonnie Jean, do we know how thisthis Neanderthal, theyre calling himeven got down into the mine?
Shawwanossoway was the only one present who actually worked for Inco. He spread his arms. The mine-security people have reviewed the security-camera tapes and access logs for the forty-eight hours prior to the incident, he said. Caprinithats our head of securityswears that heads will roll when he finds out who screwed up by letting that guy in, and he says even worse will happen when he finds out whos been trying to hide it.