feet above the floor. As we moved farther downstream and the water became progressively more clean, the heat lessened, as did the light, and the smell got better. “Our main sources of income at this stage are the bass and trout, and the lilies.” As we glided past the hydroponic growth, the smell of flowers was almost overpowering. “We’re planning to convert to thirty percent bald cypress next month.”
That was ambitious, but I said nothing.
“Ah, here we are.” We stepped down from the walkway. It was a plain white room, full of thick pipes. One had a spigot. I recognized a pressure reduction setup. Hepple pulled a paper cup from a stack and held it under the spigot, turned the tap. The cup filled with clear water. He drank some. “Here, taste it. Cleaner than what comes out of your tap at home. Pure. And that’s our effluent.”
I sipped, to show I was willing.
He slapped a pipe. “This is it. From here the water is no longer our responsibility.”
He seemed to expect some admiring questions. “Where does it go from here? Out to sea?”
“Not so long ago, it did. And then we realized we had a practically foolproof system and started simply piping it back to the watertable.” I nodded. Standard practice. “Now, though, even that’s not necessary.”
I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. “The water goes straight back into the mains?”
He looked amused. “Certainly. We avoid all that unnecessary transport of water, cut out the waste of time and energy and worker hours. Productivity has gone up twenty-three percent.”
I tried not to look as horrified as I felt. My half sister, Greta—a lot older than me—had told me, “Lore, there’s no system on earth that’s foolproof. One mistake with a wastewater plant and without that vital break in the cycle, you could have PCBs and lead and DDT running free in our water system. No matter how many redundancies there are, no matter how many backups, things go wrong.” Hepple, obviously, had never heard that bit of wisdom. There wasn’t even a last-line human observer here in the release room. One major spillage upstream at the same time as a computer failure here and there would be thousands of immediate deaths due to central-nervous-system toxicity, followed twenty years later by hundreds of thousands of premature deaths from various cancers. The implications were dizzying.
He looked at his wrist. “Time’s getting on.” He stared abstractedly into space a moment. “We’re shorthanded in three sections this month but I think, with your experience . . . I imagine the Immingham plant gave you some ideas of nitrification and denitrification processes?”
I tried to work out how much Sal Bird would understand of this conversation. “You mean the tidal marshes?”
“Just temporarily, of course.” That translated to Just until you’re no longer at the bottom of the heap. Shit work. “The salary is scale, Grade Two, with an additional percentage for the unsocial hours. You’ll be paid monthly, in arrears. Questions?”
I was just glad I still had a lump of money left. How did other people manage without pay for a month?
“Good. I’m sure you’ll enjoy working with Cherry Magyar, your section supervisor. You should find her understanding. She’s new at her job, too. I promoted her myself, just two weeks ago.”
We did not shake hands. No welcome-aboard speech. He just nodded, told me to get myself assigned a locker for the skinny and goggles, and to report back at 6 p.m. sharp tomorrow.
It was cool outside. I walked the mile and a half back to my fifth-floor flat, trying to sort out how I felt about starting a job as a menial in a plant I could have run in my sleep.
I didn’t expect to get much sleep tonight. That direct mains release setup would give me nightmares.
While her back healed, Lore’s days passed in a haze of drugs and conversations at odd times of the day or night. Spanner would disappear some evenings and not return until the following afternoon. On the mornings she was alone, Lore had nothing to do but watch the window. There was always the tree, of course. Even when she could not see it, she could hear it. The leaves hung down like dead things now, and when people walked past, she heard their feet crunching on those that had already fallen. She spent hours watching the sun travel across the warm sandstone of the building opposite. When she got well enough, she sat up against the