There were one or two laughs but I wanted to yell at everyone: You think two extra people will make a difference if a fireball rips through here? Kinnis slapped Meisener on the back and Cel called out, “Hope you can swim,” as she pulled on her waders.
“Right, people. Time to get to work.” They began to file past Magyar. For all her apparent joviality, I could tell by the flush in her cheeks and line of her jaw that she was angry about something. Magyar pulled aside Kinnis and then me before we could walk past. “Kinnis, you take Meisener here. He has some experience, but it was a while back.” She watched as Meisener followed Kinnis down the corridor. I could feel the other one, the teenager, looking at me. “Cruz, you’ll be following Bird around for a day or two. She knows a lot more about the way things work around here than you might think.”
It was impossible to miss the bite behind those words. I did not like that. Was she suspicious enough yet to back check Bird’s records? As if I didn’t have enough to worry about.
I shepherded the new man ahead of me and felt Magyar’s hard, bright eyes boring into my back all the way down the corridor. Paolo, though he must have noticed, said nothing.
During the next couple of hours, as I showed him the ropes, pointed out that his back support had the over-shoulder cross straps for a reason, he hardly spoke at all. Something about him still bothered me. I watched him as he walked out into the trough, PD held at waist level.
“Not the talkative type, is he?” Cel said from behind me.
“No.”
“Not like that Meisener. Talking a mile a minute.” She lifted the PD she was holding. “How do you reset these things again?” I showed her. Cel clipped the PD to her belt, then nodded at Paolo, waist-deep in the water. “Let me know if you need me to take him off your hands for a while.”
I was surprised at her friendliness. “Thanks. I might.”
“New ones are always a pain.” She looked at me assessingly. “Usually, anyhow.” She waved, and moved off back to her own troughs. I returned my attention to Paolo.
Water sloshed as he strode another couple of feet deeper. I had watched several people taking their readings by now, and the one thing they all had in common was the gingerly way they walked through the polluted wastes. I did it myself. It was not just the possibility of overbalancing; you never knew what you were about to step on, or through. It was hard not to imagine the floating feces or lumps of glutinous matter, the variety of things, organic and nonorganic, that people flushed down their toilets or that wriggled their own way through the municipal drains. It did not matter that your legs were protected by a double layer of polyure thane and plasthene; you could still feel the slimy things that bumped against you.
Paolo waded to the edge of the trough, seemingly unconcerned by what he might be treading on. He held out the PD. I waved it away. “Just read them out, it’s quicker.”
He did. Every fourth or fifth word, I caught an accent; not the softened consonants of Castilian, or the nasal vowels of Central American Spanish. Something else. Like the way he waded through the foul water unconcerned, it felt as though it should be familiar, and it bothered me. I shook my head at my own imagination.
“You want me to stop?” He was looking at me anxiously.
“No. You’re doing fine.”
When he finished with the readings, I held out my gloved hand to help haul him out of the trough. He pretended not to see it, and climbed out unaided. I could tell by the hunch of his shoulders that he was embarrassed about deliberately avoiding my hand, and wondered why. I did not ask.
I watched Paolo on and off until the break, and it was when I was handing him the scrape, a short metal tool for unclogging the rake tines, that I realized he had not refused my help—he had refused my touch. Oh, he was very adept, graceful even, but he always made sure his hand never touched mine, or my foot his, when we were thigh-deep in the water, me holding back the bulrushes for him to clip the heads.