She wiped the bottles while waiting for the reply, but still had three to go when the AI reported, “I can have general population figures on both series in six minutes sixteen seconds.”
“Great.” It took almost that long to pipette out the samples and slide them into the machine. “Have a good time.”
The AI clicked as it received them. “OK.”
Nils moved around in front of her as she bent to unstrap her hip boots. “What exactly will this run of tests tell us?”
“It’ll tell us whether or not the margin sloughs and the Odarkan Sea share the same bottom water. If they’ve got the same bacteria in the same populations, it’s a pretty safe bet the water’s all coming from the same place.”
“Wait a minute…” Nils offered his elbow as a brace when she stepped one boot on the toe of the other for leverage. “I thought you said nothing could live in anoxic water.”
Rahel accepted his outstretched arm. “Nothing you’d ever notice can live in anoxic water,” she amended, jerking one foot loose with a hopping stumble. “But there are various one-celled organisms that get their energy from compounds other than oxygen, so they don’t care how stagnant the water is. They live in the water in different percentages at different depths, depending on how much oxygen has already been eaten up, and what compounds are still left to munch on.” She freed her second foot, then padded barefoot away from the puddle that had gathered under the waders. “Those are the bacteria we’re looking for.”
Picking up the boots one in each hand, she slipped sideways past Nils to carry them hastily into the bathroom. She could always rinse them off later. Or, better yet, get one of Sadena’s ever-helpful hotel staff to come clean the whole inside of the pachyderm as though it were a guest room. Nils handed her the basin with the reach-stick and used glassware, and she slid it into the bottom of the shower stall with the boots.
“Ma’am?”
Rahel paused in hauling mop rags out of the cleaning supplies. At the front of the pachyderm, Jynn stood poised on the step between the pilot’s area and the rest of the ship, his dark face naked with concern. He came down to take a rag from her when she moved out to join him.
“Ma’am, I didn’t mean to be listening, but I couldn’t help but overhear.” He dropped the rag across the biggest puddle and moved it around with his foot. “Am I understanding right? If you find the same bacteria in both the jellyfish water and the swamp water, that’ll mean you’re right—that water leaking out of the swamps is what’s causing the jellyfish to die?”
Rahel nodded, kneeling to sop up the trail of footprints leading from the testing station to the door. “That’s right, Jynn.”
The plot nodded slowly. “Ma’am, is this something Mr. Sadena can fix?”
She rocked back on her heels and looked up at him. Nils, sitting in the chair at the testing station, looked back at her without offering any frowns or eyebrow lifts to try to tell her what she should say. When even the lawyers are quiet, you know you’re in trouble.
“There’s a good chance,” she finally admitted. “First we’d have to locate where anoxic water’s draining from. If it’s a point source—like an old estuary, or a fissure in the bedrock—we should be able to divert the water and aerate it before it hits the Odarkan. Add oxygen and bingo! No anoxia.”
Jynn nodded. “But if it isn’t a point source?”
“Well, that’s a little harder.” Rahel planted hands on her legs with a sigh. “If it’s coming off the entire slough shoreline, it’ll take a lot more engineering to aerate it all. You could still do it, but Sadena’s gonna need a geological investigation before he can even think about it, not to mention some estimate of the environmental impact that kind of intervention would have on the sloughs.” She shook her head. “That size project would take a hell of a lot of money.”
Jynn lowered onyx eyes as though in thought, but a polite chime from the testing station postponed any other questions he might have asked. “I have the preliminary sample results for Odarkan Series #3 and Southeastern Margin Slough Series #1.”
Rahel climbed to her feet and waved Nils out of the testing station chair. “Put it on screen.”
“OK.”
Neatly carved wedges of statistical data grew up on either side of the screen, snake lines of blue, yellow, red, and green chasing alter bits of information in an effort to pin down primary indicators. Rahel slipped into the seat, searching out the few specific microbes who would most readily tattle on their wandering brethren. Her hand stopped with its index finger pinning the Odarkan Sea’s iron reducers, her pinkie angled down to find the margin slough’s sulfates. “This can’t be right.”
Nils jerked beside her. “What?”
“Chemosynthetic bacterial concentrations are correct within 0.0015 percent.”
Rahel hit the side of the machine with her hand. “Not you.”
“Rahel, what is it?” Nils squirmed unwillingly aside as Jynn pushed in beside him. “Isn’t this what you were looking for?”
“Ma’am, does this mean we have a problem?”
Rahel snorted and tapped the top of the screen. “Hell, Jynn, we already had a problem. But see this?”
Both men leaned forward to glance at where she pointed. Jynn only nodded, but Nils asked, “What of it?”
“Basically, everything up here at the top of the display is from the highest water, water that still has some oxygen in it.” Rahel moved her hand to the lower part of the display. “Everything down here is from the bottommost water that doesn’t have any oxygen left at all. Anything that can live up here—” a single tap above, “—can’t live down here.” She rested her hand on the bottom of the screen again. “And vice versa.”
“Ma’am…” Jynn touched the display alongside her, as though feeling out the printed pages of a book. “These numbers don’t look like they match.”
Rahel sat back in her seat with a sigh. “That’s because they don’t.” Nils groaned softly behind her. “Look at the percentages of methanogens here at the bottom. These guys can only live in the most stagnant water—oxygen can’t even think about sharing the same water space. If I took a cupful of that swamp water out there and poured it into a glass of tap water, the oxygen in the tap water would wipe out the methanogens in a matter of seconds.”
“But…” Nils reached over her shoulder, tracing a line from one side of the screen to the other. “There’s 77.65 percent methanogens in the Odarkan water, and only 3.37 percent in the slough water.” He angled a look down at her, and Rahel could see the question in his frown that he wasn’t sure he was supposed to ask.
“The biggest bacterial population in the slough water is sulfur reducers—” Rahel pointed to the wedge of microbes that gifted the sloughs with their lovely aroma, “at 69.89 percent. But the Odarkan water only carries 15.02 percent sulfur reducers, and they’re both low on iron and nitrogen reducers.”
“Ma’am, it sounds like you’re saying the Odarkan Sea has even less oxygen in it than these margin swamps.”
“Nonsense.” But Nils sounded more brusque than usual, and leaned down to half look at Rahel as he talked, as though quietly requesting her approval. “It ought to be like with the glass of water—more oxygen after the slough water mixes with the Odarkan, not less.”