Anne told him to forget about it after all, they didn’t need the barn for anything else.
As he raked and pulled shoots in the garden, Macadam’s back ached and his head buzzed with a pain threaded by frustration and stitched in granite. All told, Plasroc had cost him twelve years of his life, his stable if uneventful career, his home, his credibility, his daughter’s respect, forty pounds on his already bony frame, and 750,000 perfectly good Australian dollars. The only thing it hadn’t cost him, it seemed, was the affection and respect of his wife. Some days that was almost enough to balance the ledger. Almost.
From the fifth row of vegetables, Macadam heard the telephone ring inside the house. A moment later Anne pushed open the screen door and stepped out onto the porch. Macadam stood and smiled at her. He couldn’t help it, for she was always smiling at him first. Despite their rocky path, she had aged gracefully, the sweet, upturned lines at the corner of her mouth forever hopeful that all things would work out for the best.
“Telephone’s for you,” she called.
“Who’s it?”
“A Yank. Says he’s calling from the North Pole.” With all the frustration and adversity they had endured in the past decade, Anne seemed unwilling to find any surprise in this. A telegram from Father Christmas himself was just another day in the life of David Macadam, madcap inventor and retired rock builder.
“What’s it?”
“He says he needs your magic brew. A lot of it.”
“What d’ya mean,‘a lot’?”
“Twelve thousand yards, he says.” The corners of Anne’s mouth lifted even further, breaking into a full smile.
“Serious?”
“Um-hum. He says he needs it in three days so he can save the world.”
Macadam dropped the rake and began to run.
The odd simplicity of Byrnes’s comment stayed with Garner the entire trip back to the Rushmore. By the time he had boarded the vessel, he remembered an article he had read about a kind of synthetic rock someone had developed in Australia, a plastic compound that could seal toxic wastes and render them inert for long-term disposal. A chemical slurry that, when properly prepared, could contain environmental menaces like nuclear wastes just like fruit slices suspended in Jell-o.
Garner relayed the sparse information to Carol, who in turn radioed a request back to the librarian at Nolan Group headquarters. Twenty minutes later. Garner had David Macadam’s home telephone number. Half an hour after that, both Garner and Macadam had a great start on the information they would need to permanently contain the radioactive water.
Talking to Macadam, Garner quickly realized that the Plasroc was exactly what was needed to complete the cleanup of the contaminated ice. Once the hot ice — with its load of Thiouni-laden algae — was captured in the containment booms, it had nowhere to go. The contamination might be taken out of the water, but as the ice melted, as the algae and bacterial cells died, the harmful isotopes would only seep back into solution. This was the problem of containment that had been bothering Garner since they had left Halifax. Now it seemed like the only possible answer.
As Garner understood it, the main containment solution was a gluey, environmentally inert mass that could be sprayed through industrial-scale fire equipment. A second organic chemical, a sealing resin, was then sprayed onto the first solution and the combination bonded into a high-density compound. So tight was the crystalline structure of the Plasroc that the toxic elements — whether they were bacteria, chemical weapons, or radionuclides — were trapped forever, at least in human terms. Garner then contacted both the Hawkbill and the Phoenix. A three way radio conference was quickly established and he quickly relayed the details of his plan.
“You are out of your freaking mind,” Carol said.
“Can you give me a better solution?” Garner asked, grinning at the pun. “Once the leak is stopped, the slick will continue along its present course, to the east-southeast. Then the water bombers will splash the track with the Ulva and the Ulva can go to work soaking up the contaminated Thiouni.”
“Then the Phoenix, Vagabond, and North Sea, with some help from Byrnes’s little runabout, will start mowing the lawn,” Zubov added from aboard the Phoenix.
“While the Des Groseilliers and the Sovietsky Soyuz bring the containment booms up from behind,” Garner continued. “Meeting Macadam and his magic gelatin at the western end of Fury and Hecla Strait.”
“Like I said: out of your mind,” Carol repeated.
“Not at all. The only two things we don’t know yet is how much of a delay the storm will cause us, and where the best place to draw the containment booms will be.”
“Then we’ll need a dredging ship,” Krail noted, listening in from the Hawkbill.
“We will,” Garner agreed.
“It’s going to be hard enough to find a dredger, much less one we can get up here and operate around all this goddamn ice,” Krail muttered.
“I’d also like you and the guys from the U.S. Geological Survey to review the latest sediment profiles you have for the areas east of here.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Clay-based sediment, ideally. A hundred tons’ worth at a depth where excavation is reasonably possible. That’ll be our target. That’s where we’ll tell the cleanup crews to plan on catching the contaminated ice.”
Krail wasn’t as confident in this arrangement.
“I’ll have a look at our profiles for Committee Bay.” Lying immediately east of the Gulf of Boothia, Committee Bay bounded Melville Peninsula and would be the last position to capture the slick west of Fury and Hecla Strait.
“It’s a tall order — the bottom is pretty much solid bedrock in there — but I’ll relay the coordinates of any areas that look promising. We may have to go into the strait itself.”
“That’s getting a little close to Igloolik, don’t you think?” Junko quickly pointed out. Igloolik was the largest settlement on the peninsula. After what had happened at Victor’s outpost, the doctor’s immediate reaction was to quickly avert any further risk of human exposure.
“Once the waste is bound into the Plasroc, it should be stable enough to bury almost anywhere,” Garner tried to assure her.
“And before it’s stabilized, I say we arrange an evacuation,” Junko countered.
Even as she voiced this concern, they all realized that any attempt at evacuation at this point would probably be incidental to the radiation already inflicted on the unsuspecting population. She quickly thought of the other settlements on Melville Peninsula perhaps twenty-five hundred Inuit in total and added them to the evacuation list. “Looks like I’ll get on that too,” Krail said, resignation mixed with sarcasm in his voice. “There goes my lunch break.”
“I’ll get on the horn to Parsons and the Coast Guard,” Carol offered. “Between the Canadian Forces and the RCMP, we should be able to clear a path.”
Junko was yet to be convinced.
“Will we have enough time for all this?” she asked.
“We’ll make time,” Garner replied. “The radioactivity won’t leave the containment booms until Macadam says it’s inert.”
“When can we expect our Aussie friend to arrive?” Zubov asked.
“He asked for a couple of days, plus the travel time to get here.”
“There’s one more thing we don’t know yet,” Zubov said. “Whether or not the demolition team will actually stop the leak.”
“It’ll be tight,” Garner admitted. “We can’t wait to find out if Charon’s demolition works.”