He pulled himself straight, as though this was a school test.
“Keep working. Magyar won’t be on her break forever.”
“Oh. Well, undifferentiated waste comes in there,” he pointed with his chin back to the bunker, “where it’s churned up to mix the solid waste into the liquid. Then the slurry is split into eighty treatment streams and piped into the troughs. That’s where bacteria change some of the more poisonous nitrogen compounds into less poisonous ones.”
I was impressed. “You picked up a lot from the orientation video. But the troughs do more than start the denitrification process. They also begin the biodegradation of some of the other substances. Go on.”
“The surface water is siphoned off to the next stage, to those big tanks, the transparent ones, where it’s busy and noisy and hot.”
“The silos are kept at over forty degrees Celsius—forty-four to be exact—for the mesophilic bacteria that do all the work at that stage.” It felt good to talk about species after so long. “And the water’s kept in violent motion—spiral jet mixers, coarse bubble diffusers—to eliminate stagnation and prevent liquid stratification, always likely with heated water. And it helps to keep those solids suspended.”
He pulled down his mask to get more air. It was hard to work and talk and get enough oxygen through the filters all at the same time. “You know a lot.” Faintly challenging. His look around—at the rakes, the troughs, the stinking brown smear on my plasthene-coated thigh—was clear. If you know so much, how come you shovel shit like the rest of us?
I was not in the mood to play games. “You don’t know me, or why I’m here. I don’t know you. But I’ve decided to trust you, anyway. And you can learn from me.” I needed him to trust me. I needed to help him. I needed, just this once, to feel good about myself.
My bluntness disconcerted him. He raked away at the gravel for a while. I was content to just do my work, too, and let him think.
Eventually, he stopped. I stopped, too, and waited. “I thought that water treatment was all about separating the sludge from the liquid. But…” He shrugged, and I noticed again how graceful he was, but how that grace stopped short of his arms and legs. A vague memory of some hotel room and Katerine on the screen scooted almost within reach, then disappeared.
“That’s the way it used to work, when the solids were going to be buried or just spread around in fields to dry and decompose as best they could and be carted out to sea in barges. Here, they’re actually used. Once at the tertiary stage and beyond, the algae, moss, and duckweed use the nutrients in the sludge. The moss is taken away and recycled for the heavy metals consolidated in it, but the algae and duckweed are eaten by snails and zoo-plankton. The snails are harvested and added to the next stage—where they’re eaten by the bass and tilapia and minnows. The fish add to the solid waste, of course, but in a form readily used by the lilies. Except in the primary sector, where the air scrubbers take out some of the more toxic gases, everything that’s produced is used to increase production of something else. That’s the beauty of-” I broke off and pulled my mask back up. Magyar was heading our way.
Her stride was stiff and fast, and even from here I could see the muscles in her jaw clenching and unclenching. My PIDA might be safe, but something had obviously happened to make Magyar very, very angry. I steeled myself, but Magyar walked right past. Her rage radiated from her like heat. I wasn’t the only one who had noticed. Kinnis looked over from his trough and shrugged elaborately. I wondered what was going on.
I spent the rest of the shift alternately looking over my shoulder and telling Paolo about the delicate ecological balance of the plant.
“The snails and the plankton reproduce at a rate directly proportional to the amount of algae available, but the zoo-plankton is far more susceptible to metals than the diatoms, so the proportions are constantly in flux. The algae have to be monitored very carefully, and in conjunction with the moss and metal uptake.”
It was a beautiful system. Every time I arrived at the pseudo-Victorian monstrosity that was this building, I was amazed that such a pile of metal and stone and glass and electricity could facilitate such a miracle: fish and flowers and shrubs from sewage and deadly chemicals. Sometimes I wasn’t ashamed of my family and how they earned their money.
I might be doing a low-grade job, but what I had said to Paolo was true: We made a difference. And it didn’t have to be just in the general sense. By taking the risk of talking to Paolo, even just a little, I was making a difference to him and his life, teaching him things that he could use or take with him wherever he went. Seeing the change in his face, those unguarded moments, made a difference to me, too. It made me feel as though I was doing something worthwhile. I hadn’t felt that way for a long time.
The only smudge on the horizon was Magyar. I wondered what had happened to anger her so much. My PIDA was safe. Spanner had fixed it. Hadn’t she? But if Magyar was as smart as I thought, then no matter how my PIDA matched my height, weight and DNA, she would know I wasn’t Sal Bird, aged twenty-five, the line-worker grunt from Immingham. She would keep checking, keep digging. And a PIDA could not protect me against a personal call to Bird’s last job site, a chat with the supervisor…
If I could just explain to Magyar what the job meant to me. Tell her about Paolo, how good I felt to be teaching him. How much easier life would be for me, for all of us, if we just let down our guards a little and talked, helped each other. Maybe I should try trusting her the way Paolo was trusting me.
I waited for her outside. Fog condensed on the street-lights and dripped onto the pavement. Even here in the city, the night smelled of autumn: damp leaves mulching, wood smoke, wool coats slightly musty from six months in the closet. Ten minutes became twenty, then half an hour.
Then suddenly she was through the gates and five paces away, fog billowing around her.
“Magyar.”
She whirled, pulling her hands out of her pockets. “Bird! What are you doing here?” We stood ten feet apart. The fog made everything feel enclosed, quieted, unreal. She put her hands back in her pockets.
“I want to talk to you.” My voice was steady. How odd.
“It’s too cold to stand around. You can talk while we walk.” She set off, obviously not caring whether I walked with her or not. She walked fast, with big strides. Her shoes were soled with some soft, absorbent material; I felt as though I were watching a film with the sound turned off
Try it, I told myself. Just try. “You seemed angry. Earlier.”
“I was.”
“I just thought we could clear the air between us.” It sounded lame. She seemed to think so, anyway. She snorted. This was a mistake. “It’s just… Look, you were angry-”
“I still am, Bird.”
But the anger did not seem to be directed at me. “Is something wrong at the plant?”
She stopped abruptly, swung to face me. “Now why should I want to tell you?”
I felt a bit bolder. “Because it might affect me and everyone else who works on the night shift. I don’t like surprises.”
“You don’t like surprises? What a shame. I don’t much like being lied to, by you or anyone else. You want to know what’s wrong with the plant? Then go to your bosses and get them to tell you what’s going on.”
“I can’t. I’m not who you think I am.” And I was stupid for thinking I could have achieved anything, risking myself like this.
“I know you’re not Sal Bird.”
“I’m the only Sal Bird there is,”
She waited, hands clenching and unclenching in her pockets, but when it became obvious I wasn’t going to tell her any more, she walked away.