instead at the readout for vinyl chloride, a vicious carcinogen. That was the red flag as far as I was concerned. VC levels told an observer a lot about the health and ratios between aerobic and anaerobic, methanotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria.
Magyar was still talking. “Here’s your methane. Other volatiles like toluene and xylene. Biological oxygen demand, but don’t worry about that, BOD’s not our problem. Though if it goes much above the indicated range”—she pointed to a metal plate inset above the station, inscribed with chemicals and their safe ranges—“pass it along to me. My call code’s written up there, too. Beginning and end of each shift I’ll want a thumbprinted report. The slates are here.” She pulled one down from a shelf and handed it to me. “Everything clear enough?”
She seemed a bit muddled, conflating more than one process, but I just nodded. “I think so.”
“Good. These readouts over here are remotes from the dedicated vapor points, but they’re often swamped during a big influx. And these two figures, in green, are the combined remotes from the on-line turbidimeter. The top one is NTU. Last but not least—” We walked three paces to a readout in red. “—the water temperature.” Magyar stopped. “What does it say?”
“Twenty-seven point three degrees. Celsius.”
“That’s what it should always say. Always. Not twenty-seven point six or twenty-seven point one. Twenty-seven point three. That’s what the bacteria need.”
For a denitrification-nitrification process, heterotrophic facultative bacteria were usually comfortable anywhere between twenty-five and thirty degrees, but I just nodded. “What about emergency procedures?”
“That should have been on the orientation disk.”
“I haven’t seen an orientation disk.”
Magyar swore. “Hepple said . . . Never mind. I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, anything comes up that looks out of place, call me. Immediately. If your GC goes pink, find one of these red studs—” She pointed to what looked like red plastic mushrooms that bloomed every five meters from walls and floors and ceilings. “—twist it through three-sixty, push it all the way down, and get out ASAP. But make good and sure that your GC really is pink. The but-tons shut down the whole system. That costs enough to mean that you’ll be out of a job instantly if you make a mistake. You got that?”
I nodded.
“Good. Then we’ll move on.”
We went back to the troughs. “One worker for every two troughs according to the original design, but we operate on three per, and some are having to handle four.” She pulled the slate off her belt, scrolled through a list, replaced it. “I’ll assign you two, numbers forty-one and forty-two, while you’re working TOC analysis.”
I opened my mouth, changed my mind, and shut it again. She lifted an eyebrow. “Something to say about that, Bird?”
“TOC and nitrogen analysis is pretty important at this stage?” I knew damn well it was. Magyar nodded. “I’m just not sure that it’s possible to keep a close eye on the readouts as well as maintaining two troughs.”
“Then you’ll just have to try extra hard. Any other questions?”
Does anyone here know what they’re doing? “What about masks?”
“Do you see anyone else wearing a mask?”
“No. . .”
“Masks are available on request. But they’ll slow you down, and if you can’t keep up you’ll be fired.” Magyar’s voice seemed almost kindly, but her eyes were flat and hard. “You’ll soon get used to the smell. Besides, management doesn’t take kindly to agitating for more so-called safety rules.”
“I understand.” Health and Safety regulations mandated the wearing of respiratory protective devices in the presence of short-chain aliphatics like 1,1,2-trichloroethane and aromatics such as 1,4-dichlorobenzene, but I wasn’t going to argue the point here and lose my job on the first day for being a suspected union organizer. If I lost this job, my Sal Bird identity would be useless. Ruth would not help me again, and I did not want to have to ask Spanner. I said nothing.
Magyar nodded and left me to it.
The first thing I did was find the schematic handbook. It was tucked behind the slates at the readout station. At the first break, I looked it over.
The plant was well designed: good automatic monitoring and lock systems. In the event of a massive spill, all pipes would shut down, the plantwide alarm sound, and the alert sent out to county emergency-response teams. An expert system then decided how far the pollution had spread and the pipes and tanks would be pumped out into massive holding tanks. I checked the capacity. Six hundred