“Probably directly.” Mitch looked up then to each side as they all tried to ascertain what might direct water to this particular spot. It was Leslie who pulled out her tablet and began tapping until she had a topo map of the area where they stood.
Holding it out toward the rest of them, she pointed. “Here, here, and here.”
She was noting the higher peaks near them. “They might drain this way.”
“Drainage is bad,” Joule said as she realized she was too dumb to keep her mouth shut. “Drainage picks up everything it runs over—mud, dirt, sometimes gravel. Anyway, it's not clean water. It's usually too dirty to even see through if you put your foot in it.”
“So, anything we do, we need to calculate well above the floodwaters.” Mitch nodded along as he spoke.
“How far above?” Leslie asked the group at large.
“It's a good question.” Mitch took the lead. “How long is the array supposed to stay in place and function?”
Joule didn't know the answer to that. In fact, she would have thought Mitch did.
“We have to calculate for the growing likelihood of problem,” Mitch continued. “Flooding now is worse than it was a decade ago, which was worse than it was twenty years ago. If our array is to stay on for ten years, then we have to calculate for how bad a decade from now could be. If the array is supposed to continue working for twenty or thirty years, the floodlines could be much higher.”
“But the flooding could also be something we get under control,” Leslie countered. “In which case, we would have over-calculated.”
“True. So what's the error if we over-calculate?”
They all looked to each other, and Joule would have felt put on the spot, but she was growing used to it. Mitch, she’d learned, enjoyed spitball answers—even the stupid ones—so she blurted out, “Extra supplies.”
“More money invested than needed,” Deveron said at the same time.
“Whatever environmental damage the extra height causes,” Lindsey added, and Dev ran with that.
“We would have to sink the pylons lower to counterbalance the height. And it might require different materials to make them stronger, taller.”
“So it's not negligible.” Mitch nodded, once again looking up toward the top of their test system. “But if we under-calculate….” He left it hanging.
“We lose the whole array,” Lindsay filled in, saying what they were all thinking.
Once again, the winds picked up.
“I don't know how much longer we can stay out today.” Mitch looked away from the pylon and off toward the edge of the sky. “Storm’s coming in.”
13
“Oh, that was painful.” Cage watched as Sarah moved to shove her hands into pockets that weren't there. Maybe she thought she was wearing overalls again.
“That hurt me in my cold little heart,” Joule replied, tossing and catching her keys almost casually as the wind whipped her curls to Medusa-like life.
The four of them were some of the last to leave the squat, tan building that housed the local Lions Club and today, the big meeting. The parking lot was almost empty, the day as gray as dusk. Not a good feeling for four in the afternoon.
A storm had been threatening for almost twenty-four hours now, the winds and gray skies lingering since early yesterday. Radnor said it was a good test of the equipment. Though on the drive home last night, Dev had commented, “The only real test is an F6 tornado—”
“Bite your tongue!” Sarah interrupted with the quick reprimand, though Cage was already countering that they only needed an F3 or F4.
“That’s right,” Sarah pointed out. “That’s about the worst that comes through this section of Alabama. And again, that’s why we built the array here.”
But though he’d been ready to quip about running a tornado test yesterday, now—with the weather growing stranger by the second—Cage was wishing they hadn’t even mentioned it.
The parking lot was almost empty. The only other cars left were those owned by the Helio Systems Tech employees who still lingered inside to clean up after the verbal carnage. A few other clusters of his coworkers were trailing out behind them or already pulling out of the lot.
“Hey,” he commented with concern. “We should check the car. That didn’t go well in there, and I’m wondering if someone might have keyed it.”
“How would they know which one we were in?”
“All they need to do is recognize the cars we drive in every day. They came often enough to know…” Sarah approached Cage and Joule’s car and, instead of reaching for the door handle, she wandered around the back. She motioned the others to circle around.
“What?” Sarah asked when Deveron leaned down as if to look under the car.
“Check everything. Key marks, dented bumper, slashed tires.” But he quickly backpedaled. “I don't see them! I'm just checking everything.”
“Will we even know if they dented the bumper?” Sarah asked.
“Rude!” came almost immediately from Joule.
But Sarah’s question wasn’t out of line. Their car was older and a bit dinged up, but it had been with them through college. They'd bought it after the last one had been damaged by the flood. The longer it stayed with them, the more Cage felt a kinship for it—as if the machine itself were a living creature, ferrying them back and forth to work. As though he'd failed by letting the last one get flooded and totaled.
When the car checked out, they climbed in, closing the doors against the wind as Cage breathed a little easier. Nothing in the town hall had gone smoothly. He’d expected a meeting of the minds, that the Helio people would see how they’d misframed their message or failed to get the necessary information to the public. He’d believed the public would hear that the crew wasn’t poisoning the well water or ruining their deer-hunting season. He’d expected
