way for the return.”
The conductor peered at his passenger and his voice softened. “Tell you the truth, you don’t look so good today. Your face is puffy. Are you all right, old friend?”
Cater heaved a sigh. “Not so good today. I haven’t felt this tired since I got the filter to clean my blood.”
A thumb-sized packet replaced cumbersome dialysis sessions that required him to sit connected to a machine for several hours each week. Researchers had tried for decades to develop an implantable filter. The problem was that the better the filter worked, the faster it became clogged.
Absolute efficiency in a self-contained module eluded nephrologists until an NMech scientist took a whale- watching boat from Boston to Nantucket and marveled at the giant beasts’ feeding habits. The whale’s baleen caught his attention. The feeding filters that sieve plankton and small animals from seawater to provide food for the beast reminded him of something. He invoked a heads-up display and studied the anatomy of the baleen. Its elongated pores resembled nephrons, the kidney’s filtering cells.
The solution to an implantable kidney filter was slit-shaped pores, modeled on the whale’s baleen. The NMech approach permitted a self-contained unit to process variable-sized nutrients and wastes in the blood. Dr. Marta Cruz had been able to insist that NMech provide 10% of its filters to poorer countries as part of NMech’s commitment to public health.
Jagen Cater had been one of the first recipients of the NMech IDD—Internal Dialysis Device. It had been a lifesaver for Cater and for thousands of others who suffered from chronic kidney disease. A signal from an NMech medical equipment datapiller kept the IDD operating properly, or else it would quickly become a clogged roll of inert plastic the approximate size and shape of a cigar. The NMech maintenance signal and redundant safeguards were monitored continuously to ensure Cater’s survival.
They were also monitored by Eva Rozen’s Cerberus program.
Five thousand, five hundred twenty-three miles east of Staff Sergeant Mike Imfeld’s United Nations EcoForce recon squad, and 9,889 miles east of Jagen Cater’s tea estate, Nancy Kiley gritted her teeth and left her smartbed’s comfort. Kiley was a good boss. She shared the hardships of her charges, and so she had been taking night shifts, working alongside her subordinates. Just as she fell asleep after a difficult evening, an alarm rang. Cursing, she donned a sun-proof and insect-repellant work suit. Kiley exited her small cabin at El Cerro Rojo—“The Red Hill”—a desalinization plant on Venezuela’s Paraguana Peninsula.
The private cabin was one of the project manager’s few perquisites at the desal complex. Scant compensation, she thought, for the time she spent in a landscape slightly less hospitable than the living conditions she imagined a planetologist would find on Mars. Would safety protocols on the Red Planet include thrice-daily examinations of clothing, linens, and shoes for biting creatures? Scorpions, Kaboura flies, and poison dart frogs were among the nasty critters that preferred the cool, dark comfort of Nancy’s clothing and shoes. One learned to check, to stay alert.
Her imprecations were out of character for the cheerful and charismatic woman who inspired loyalty among her staff. She relied on kind words and praise and sprinkled them like the gentle rains that once fell on South American’s coastline. But the rains had dried up and her mood had soured. A torrent of maledictions had replaced her upbeat patter. She damned the sun that beat mercilessly on her head, cursed the sand and pebbles that ground under her boots and made walking a chore, and swore at each tormenting species of insects with which she was forced to share the desiccated habitat.
Kiley’s compact body cast a short shadow in the midmorning sun. She clenched her square jaw in frustration at what was becoming a hopeless assignment. She squinted despite vision enhancements that included a photosensitive nictating membrane, a third eyelid—biological sunglasses for her ice-blue eyes.
Twenty-four hours earlier, her staff panicked when the nano-controlled biocide levels at the plant dipped unexpectedly. The biocides killed off bacterial contaminants in Cerro Rojo’s water. Then, as now, Kiley scrambled out of her slumber to attend to the malfunction. As she watched, the ’cides returned to their normal levels for reasons that were inexplicable. An hour later, when her heart had stopped racing and she was drifting back into sleep, a second emergency summoned her from Morpheus’ arms. The desal filters had quit. Electric currents that animated the ion transfer mechanism still flowed, but it was as if the system had stopped listening to its programming. The temporary halt in production scared the bejeezus out of Kiley and her staff. Had it lasted much longer, the 30 million people in the arid cities and hills of northern Venezuela and the island nations of the Caribbean would get thirsty. And thirsty people become angry people—desperate and prone to violence.
Kiley cursed the woman who coaxed her to this hellhole from the security of a government job with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
One year earlier, NMech’s Chief Executive Officer linked to Kiley in an abrupt attempt to prise her away from NOAA to become the Chief of Operations for the Cerro Rojo desalinization plant. An installation as complex as Cerro Rojo requires the steady hand of a manager who possesses a thorough understanding of the science behind the miracle.
She had turned Eva Rozen down. “I’m not interested in private industry,” Kiley had said, “I do good work here at NOAA.”
“You like petty people and petty science?” Eva had shot back.
Kiley shrugged. The gesture was invisible. Rozen waited until Kiley broke the silence.
“Look, I’ve been in government service for 18 years. Another 7 years and I can retire. NOAA may not be as exciting as your life, but I’ll have a nice pension and the time to enjoy it.”
“So it’s money?”
“Are you kidding? Government work and money do not a partnership make. No, I get to do good science. That’s the key, Ms. Rozen—science.”
“It’s
“Well, Dr. Rozen, I have my science and a secure position. Why do I need your little startup?”
“Little startup? Any idea how much NMech is worth?”
“Ms.—excuse me—Dr. Rozen, I don’t follow financial reporting. So, no, I don’t know. Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t see what you can offer that I’d want, and I have some petty science waiting for me.”
Eva simply stated a figure before Kiley could end the link. The number was an attention-grabbing number, a round number, a digit followed by zeros, as many zeros as there were digits in Kiley’s current salary. When the scientist hesitated, Eva lowered the figure. A second reduction, and Kiley capitulated. In the face of Eva’s irresistible force, there were no immovable objects.
A year later, the sugar plum fairies of fame and fortune no longer danced in Kiley’s head. This morning’s disaster? The desal filters had failed entirely. Not one drop of water was being generated. No one could find an explanation for today’s outage, nor determine when the filters might go back on line. This morning, a forlorn Kiley missed her former life in government service, with its scheming competitiveness, its venality—and its boring safety.
From 2,240 miles north, Eva Rozen observed Dr. Kiley’s frustrations. She smiled without mirth and entered the results of her observations into the Cerberus program.
23
UNQUIET PHENOMENA
