by JJ Pike
Mimi sat at the table, her face in her hands and wept. “You can’t do this. I can’t let you. She needs to be in a hospital.”
“Sorry, Mimi. You’re wrong on this one.” Petra was so calm and sure she had to double check herself. Yep, still no protests from the universe. This must be what it was like to be Paul. Amazing.
Jim rested his hand on Mimi’s good shoulder. “She’ll have the best care here. I promise you that.”
Sean clonked his way out of the kitchen and into the front room and started making calls.
“Could you see to the bodies, Petra? We don’t have time to bury them. Move them some place where no one is going to trip over them, then find their car and drive it down one of the tracks behind your old cabin. Just so it’s out of sight.”
Petra hated to leave Mimi, but she was inconsolable. She went back out to the yard. She wanted to talk to Sean, but she had two problems. First, where was she going to deposit three dead bodies? And second, she’d said the two words you weren’t supposed to say. You never wanted to be the one holding the “love you” bag. She’d caught feelings in a big way, but you weren’t supposed to say that until much later. She couldn’t think about it. They’d talk about it when they could. Or not.
“Hey.” Sean was behind her. He’d borrowed one of Jim’s crutches and was leaning heavily to one side. “That was some badass shooting skills you displayed there.”
Petra blushed. “I’ve been handling weapons since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”
“Still. Mighty fine.”
Petra’s phone buzzed. She answered.
“The hospital is being quarantined.” Cassie went straight to it. She was panicked. No Bueno.
“What?”
“That’s all I know,” said Cassie. “If you want to get your sister out of here, I think I should drive them out of the parking lot right now. Five minutes from now they’re going to expand the perimeter. We’ll be in lockdown if we don’t move immediately.”
“Then move,” said Petra.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“This is Dr. Patricia Fouge,” said Fran. “She’s on loan from Columbia University. She’s the Head of Microbiology.”
“I believe you’ll find she’s the Acting Head,” said Christine. “Grant Miller is on sabbatical. Dr. Fouge is an adjunct professor. I’ve followed your career with interest, Doctor.”
“I knew you two would get along,” said Fran. “I understand you wrote a paper together?”
Christine nodded at Fouge. Fran was right, they had written a paper when they were grad students, but “together” was something of a misrepresentation. Fouge had taken Christine’s ideas, many of which were groundbreaking, bordering on revolutionary, and claimed them for herself. She’d stopped short of plagiarism, but intellectual property—the arena of ideas—wasn’t well regulated in the university system. There was a code, but it was loosely enforced. You were “on your honor” when it came to not pilfering other people’s ideas. It had been too exhausting to fight, so Christine eventually worked her way into the private sector where the lines around one’s work and one’s IP were much more distinct. She liked bright lines and clear boundaries.
“Tell me about the water.”
“It’s New York water,” said Dr. Fouge, “so we expect certain contaminants.”
“Skip to the summary. I’ll ask you if I need more detail.”
“Ordinarily I would do just that, Professor Baxter, but there are a number of compounds that interact with one another, so it behooves us to consider them all. We’re dealing with what I like to think of as a multi-compound stew.”
“How many samples do you have?”
“Twenty-three.”
“And you’ve annotated the record to show the locations where they were collected?”
“Noted, where possible.”
“Where possible?”
“According to the field notes, Professor, the conditions were unstable. Some notes were added after the fact. We’ve done our best to reconstruct the record, but it might be…” she paused, her eyes rolled up at the ceiling.
“Wrong. It might be wrong.”
“Correct. All I can tell you is, these are samples from Manhattan, all taken within the last forty-eight hours, and what we’ve found is illuminating.”
“Do you have a list for me?”
Dr. Fouge flushed down to her roots.
“Of contaminants. Do you have a list?”
“I can make one.”
“I shall need that as soon as you can procure it for me.”
Dr. Fouge waved over an assistant who’d been hovering on the sidelines and barked instructions at her. She smoothed her features as she turned back to Professor Baxter. “We have all the usual suspects. At the top of the list are all the flushed medications such as antibiotics, hormones, contraceptives, anti-depressants, and steroids.”
“Do they interact with MELT?”
“Uncertain. Tests underway.”
“I’ll need to know how high the antibiotic levels are in particular. We’ll need to know if drug-resistant microbes and bacteria are in play. Continue.”
“Phosphorous and nitrogen…”
“We’d expect that. Be sure to note the levels. I’d be interested to see your own thoughts on how this ‘multi-compound stew,’ as you call it, might interact with MELT. I expect you already have theories on which elements are most likely to accelerate or retard the spread of MELT.”
Dr. Fouge made a note on her iPad. Not good. Fouge should have realized that herself. It was at the center of their investigation. All this fiddling about with centrifuges and reading out levels of contaminants didn’t amount to anything if they weren’t then taking the next step and calculating how each of those compounds—both individually and together—might interact with MELT. Christine didn’t like to spoon-feed her team, but Fouge hadn’t been part of her original team. She would never have made the cut. She wasn’t rigorous enough. The team they’d cobbled together in her absence, now that most of her people were “MIA” as the saying had it, was sub-par. Best be on the safe side and talk her through what her analysis ought to cover.
“Be sure to include the reference ranges. I want to know what’s in the water now, what’s in the water during the dry months, and what during storm drain overflow after heavy rains.” She turned to Fran, who might not have read the same journals as herself and Dr. Fouge. “When there are heavy rains, the sewers occasionally overflow, contaminating the water. Levels of contamination fluctuate with the seasons. I’ll want a side by side comparison, with those variables listed.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” If Fouge was trying to be funny she’d picked the wrong moment. Whatever she was signaling didn’t matter. They had to get this right.
“Doesn’t rain water go into a different system than the sewers?” said Fran.
So, Fran was somewhat acquainted with city infrastructure. How interesting. “In more modern cities that would be right. Combined sewers are mostly a thing of the past. With good reason. You don’t want heavy rain to force sewage into the street. However, most of the New York sewer system was built before 1950. Wastewater and rainwater flow into the same pipes. The mayor’s office is aware of this problem. There’s a program to add overflow-retention tanks and interceptor sewers…” All that planning, gone to waste. If what they were saying was true, if the Hudson and the East River were now joined across Manhattan, there would be no sewers to upgrade. It would be one mass, watery grave.
Fran and Fouge stared at her.
“Continue.”
Fouge smiled, though there was nothing to smile about. “We have dangerously high levels of lead.”
“Lead?” said Fran. “There’s lead in our water? From burst pipes? Is that where it’s from?”
Of all the things she could latch on to, “lead” was the compound that had alarmed her?
Fouge didn’t pause. “There are microbial pathogens, nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic carbon compou
nds; bacterial pathogens, Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio; human enteric viruses including the rotavirus, coxsackieviruses, and echoviruses; and finally, the protozoa you’d expect to find, Giardi lamblia and Cryptosporidium parvum.”
“As you say, ‘stew.’” Christine pulled MELT up in her mind’s eye. “Be sure to list nitrogen in all eight oxidation states.”
“Where are all these pollutants coming from?” said Fran. “Is this because of the flooding?”
Christine shook her head. “This is what is in New York water at all times. Some of it is filtered out, whereas other organisms make it through the filtration system in what are considered ‘acceptable levels.’ They come from people’s bathrooms, septic tanks, farms, factories, fields. The filters will have broken down by now. None of the water is potable. I was thinking earlier, you should be tested for infection. You were in that water for some time.”
Fran rubbed her arms. Perhaps the gesture was below the level of consciousness because her facial expression betrayed nothing. Professor Baxter could see why Alice was so fond of the young woman.
Dr. Fouge stepped up, stylus in hand, iPad at the ready. “Anything else, Professor?”
“Think systemically, Dr. Fouge. Tell your team to do the same. I want you to hire whomever you need to hire to crunch the numbers, but I want a detailed analysis. We don’t have anything close to a decent sample set, but we can draw some tentative conclusions from what you have here.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“You didn’t mention BPA or PSO.”
“Professor?”
Christine Baxter almost never lost her temper. She viewed it as a form of weakness. She kept her mouth shut for three whole minutes, until she was sure she wasn’t going to shred Fouge beyond recognition. “MELT breaks plastics down. Have you read my papers on MELT?”
“Yes, Professor.”
“And you didn’t think to include statistics on BPA or PSO?”
“I’m not in charge of plastics, Professor. That’s another department.”
“Holy hell,” said Christine. “We just spent half an hour talking about New York water and none of that data included a word about plastics. You’re a moron.” She left the room, Fran right behind her.
“Do you need time to cool off, Christine?” Fran was solicitous, but she didn’t understand the urgency of their situation. There was no time to indulge petty reactions. She had to get a hold of herself again.
“I do not. Take me to the next scientist, but move on ahead and prepare the plastics team. I shall want to see them, just as soon as they’re ready. Do not let them waste my time.”
“Understood,” said Fran.
They walked around an office partition and into the next “lab bay” for want of a better descriptor. What had felt like “home” just half an hour ago was starting to feel a lot like a circus.
A middle-aged man, well presented, his lab coat pristine, stood to attention at the door to his domain.
“Dr. Patterson is a forensic biologist who comes to us from…”
“Yes, yes,” said Christine. “Credentials later, facts first.”
Dr. Patterson didn’t hesitate. “We divided the rats into categories. The vast majority sustained damage that we believe to have been mechanical in nature.”
“Mechanical? How can a rat have a mechanical injury? This doesn’t make sense.” She turned to Fran. She was no Alice, but she was a better interpreter than most. Fran was not to be found. She’d gone on ahead as requested. Christine was going to have to school the man by herself.
“What I mean is, the cause of the injury was brought on by a machine of some…” Dr. Patterson had course-corrected himself.
“Say what you mean. It’ll make our lives a lot easier.”
Paterson nodded. “Understood. Of the three-thousand rats we retrieved…”
“Why is the sample set so small?”
“We were forced to leave Manhattan…”
She was so used to her own team talking in precise, analytic terms that relied on no hyperbole, she’d forgotten how tiresome it was to break in a new scientist. There was every chance he wasn’t talking about someone chasing them at gunpoint from the island, but she’d seen such things as she’d never thought to see in America in the 21st Century. Still, he was less irritating than Fouge. Christine pulled her irritation back and ignored it. “Forced, by whom?”
Dr. Patterson frowned. “By the situation?”
Were they trying to vex her? “A situation cannot force one to do anything. Your reaction to the aforementioned situation might engender a ‘flee’ response, but the situation itself is merely as set of eventualities.”
Fran appeared at her side.
“Not a moment too soon...help me with this one, would you?”
“Give me a moment.”
Christine opened her mouth to protest.
Fran smiled. “More than three minutes, but less than five.”
Christine stepped away while Fran talked to the Normal who’d entered her sphere. She split her attention between Fran’s expository presentation on her “condition,” as she called it, and the vacuum-packed rats in the bin in front of her. It seemed Fran covered all the salient points: be precise, don’t overstate, use no metaphor, use no idiom. Make inferences and hypotheses if you have the data to back it up, but be sure to label such declarations in the appropriate manner.
That the rats had been hit by boat propellers might be a fact, but it might be a fiction. Were they forensic specialists that they could say as much with any authority? She cast her mind back a few moments. Fran had mentioned that he was a forensic biologist. If he could stay on target, they’d do fine. She realized she was too tired to manage Normal-speak for any more than a few minutes.
Dr. Patterson joined her at the table. “Let’s start over. We were unable to remain in Manhattan.” His voice was stilted, choppy. Was it really so hard to talk to her in a way that relied solely on the facts? “The flooding, which I first observed in Alphabet City, which is on the east side…”
Christine cut in. “I know Manhattan well. I have worked there for fifteen years. I do not need a lesson in geography. I need you to talk to me about the rats.”
Dr. Patterson shot a look at Fran.
Fran joined the two scientists by the table. “As I understand it, there are three categories for us to examine. Dr. Patterson, please stop me if I misspeak.” Patterson nodded. “In bin number one, we have rats that were killed by boats and cars. In some cases, there might have been a human involved. If you want me to talk you through those injuries: where they are on the rats’ bodies, what tells us they were sliced by metal or a shoe, I can have Dr. Patterson brief me and then I’ll translate for you.”
“No need, though I appreciate the offer,” said Christine. “We believe these rats to have died of these ‘mechanical’ injuries. In Bin number two, what do we have?”
“These are the rats that drowned. They fall into approximately ten different categories, all of which are being photographed and catalogued in a neighboring warehouse. We want them housed away from people because of the number of diseases they might still carry, post-mortem.”
“Understood.” This was excellent. She was forming a picture of Dr. Patterson’s methodology. It wasn’t too shabby. Not as rigorous as her own investigation would have been, but given the time constraints and the lack of personnel, he’d done an adequate job of piecing together a puzzle that had grabbed her attention when she was in Manhattan, only to deepen when she was on the water. What was killing the rats? They were narrowing down the data.
“Sorry, Professor. Perhaps you didn’t hear the question. Do you wish me or Dr. Patterson to detail the number of pathogens rats can transmit, post mortem?”
“Is it a health hazard in this moment? Are we in danger? I thought you had vacuum packed the rats for this precise reason.”
“They pose no health hazard, as far as we know,” said Dr. Patterson. “But if you’d allow me to conduct you
to Bin Number Three. Here we have the rats that have been poisoned. We can see no gross injury and they inhaled no water, which means they were not drowned. Conclusion: they were poisoned.”
That was one of the problems with a new trainee. How to tell them she was merely blind to symbols, not facts. It wouldn’t help the man if she interrupted him now. He was obviously trying, to wit the fact that he had stepped back up after failing so badly.