Everyone is looking at Katerine. She seems calm, but Lore understands that she is devastated. It means the world to her that her children work in the family business. For the first time in years, Lore feels something for her mother apart from the urge to please. She feels the need to protect her. Katerine looks so fragile.
Oster sighs. “He’s probably decided to go study the flute, like he was always threatening to do.”
“What?” Katerine looks dazed.
“The flute,” Oster says again. “He has always loved music.”
Lore is staring at the table, watching dozens of tiny fans turn the wrong way in the spoons, trying to understand. Music. Her brother, Tok, has always loved music. How had she not known this? She looks at her father. And how had he known? She looks at the family, at Greta and Katerine, Willem and Marley, and wonders what else she does not know.
Why did Tok say nothing? Why did Oster not tell her? Something inside her twists just a little.
“… working on the phosphorus problem in the Lau Group islands,” Greta was saying.
Katerine seems to have moved out of her daze. “Is Sahla up to that?” she asks Marley.
Marley shakes his head thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. No.”
Katerine wipes her mouth decisively and drops her napkin on the table. “Then I’ll fly out there tonight.”
“Katerine,” Oster says. “For god’s sake. You can call him instead. And he knows how to ask for help. He-”
“Who knows when Tok wrote that letter-”
“It’s dated three days ago,” Willem says.
“-how long Sahla’s been out there alone, making who knows what kind of errors. Costly errors.” She pushes her chair away from the table.
“It’s not a big project. Not that important-”
But Katerine is already standing. “I’ll fly tonight.”
Lore finds herself standing, too. “I’ll come with you.” She tries not to see the hurt in Oster’s eyes.
Chapter 13
Magyar was not around when the shift started, and Paolo was as eager as ever to learn. We were scheduled to check the leachate barriers under and around our troughs, a tedious, time-consuming job. It seemed like a good time to start him at the beginning.
“There are all kinds of different ways to classify bacteria. There’s temperature: thermophilic bugs prefer hot water, fifty-five to seventy-five Celsius; mesophiles like it medium; psychrophiles a bit cooler. They can be grouped by how they do or don’t use oxygen. Aerobic bacteria only work in oxygen, anaerobic only work without it, and facultative bacteria work with or without. Beyond that, there’s what the bugs eat. Heterotrophic bacteria feed on organic carbon sources, and autotrophic bacteria utilize carbon dioxide. Lots of those categories can be further divided into gram-positive and gram-negative, which is to do with the difference in the cell-wall structure.” Paolo looked confused.
“You’ll have to stop me when I talk about things you don’t understand.”
Maybe someone had told him to shut up at school. Asking questions did not seem to come easily. I just waited. “What’s the difference between bacteria and fungus?” he asked diffidently
Fungi, I thought, but now wasn’t the time to correct him. I wasn’t sure where to begin. “There are different ways to differentiate, but for our purposes, the difference is in how the microorganisms go about breaking down pollutants. Bacteria produce enzymes that break down the bonds between elements in a carbon chain. The enzymes are specific to certain types of organic compounds, and they’re intracellular.” He looked blank. “It means that the contaminant has to be soluble. It has to be able to enter the bacterial cell. So if the contaminant is a heavy organic, then a fungus is probably better. The enzymes they make also break down the carbon bonds but they’re nonspecific and extracellular. So they need only close proximity, not solubility.” His face was closing up. “Where did I lose you?”
“Everywhere.” His eyes were hard and dry, but his voice shook. “I don’t know enough to even learn. What’s a carbon chain? Or organic? An enzyme? What does soluble mean? I feel like there’s a whole world floating just out of my grasp, as though I’m blind and you’re talking about colors. Heterotrophic, you say, or enzyme, and you may as well be talking about… about flying to a bird that’s had its wings chewed off!”
He turned away and I wanted to reach out to him, put an arm around his hunched shoulders. I remembered just in time that he didn’t like to be touched.
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault for starting in the middle instead of the beginning.”
“You just didn’t expect me to be stupid,” he said bitterly.
“You’re not stupid.” He wouldn’t turn around and look at me. “Paolo, listen to me. You’re not stupid. Not knowing the right definitions is no different from not having the right tools to fix a burst water pipe. You can learn. I can teach you.”
He looked at me over his shoulder for moment, then turned all the way round. “Can you?”
“Yes.”
He studied me. By his expression, he didn’t know whether he wanted to believe me or not. Hope could be dangerous.
He probably needed time to think. “We need to get all these barriers checked and that feed line on forty-two unclogged before the break. We can talk about it more then.” He seemed relieved.
Paolo and I were the last into the breakroom. When we got there, both screens were off and the assembled shift was very quiet. Magyar was there, with Hepple. Her eyes were as hard as beryl.
“… and so our acting shift manager-”
“Night manager, now.” Hepple was smiling slightly and rocking up onto the balls of his feet.
Magyar forced a smile. “Mr. Hepple, recently promoted to night manager, has decided to take a look, in person, at our particular part of the operation. He’ll be on duty with us this evening.” So. That was what she was angry about. He was checking up on us and, by implication, her.
Hepple nodded at her, a patronizing, dismissive little gesture. It made me angry. “Thank you, Cherry.” Oh, he was enjoying himself: “As you may know, I have long asserted that Hedon Road could be even more efficient than at present. I have been given this new position with a mandate to improve productivity. Toward that end, I have decided to pay closer attention to the on-floor management process.” Magyar’s smile was brittle. We were her team, only she could harangue us or praise us, and now Hepple was embarrassing her in front of us all. Judging by the way she kept her body turned slightly away from him, the stiffness in her shoulders, she wanted to stuff him in our dirtiest effuent and watch him swallow sewage. “And now we’ll leave you to take your well-earned break in peace.” She stressed well-earned, letting us know that this was not her idea, that she knew we worked hard enough as it was without being dogged every step of the way.
But Hepple had not finished with us. “I’m looking forward to watching you all in action. I’m sure I’ll find—despite Cherry’s protestations of understaffing—that you are a fully capable and hardworking team. That’s all.”
He seemed to be waiting for us to leave, then remembered it was our breakroom. He nodded at the room in general and opened the door. Magyar preceded him.
“Christ,” Cel said. “That’s all we need.”
“I thought Magyar was going to pop him.” Kinnis sounded as though he wished she had. “What do you think of that crack about ‘Cherry’s protestations’?”