Little Deadly Things (31 page)

ROCKFORD, VA.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2044

A
panel winnowed the field of prospective vendors to two finalists: established remediation leader, CleanAct, and upstart NMech. A year before the plant was intended to open, the competitors met to address the bid committee, a debate to help decide a winner.

CleanAct’s president, Fritz Reinhart spoke first. The Chinese-educated Texan of German descent was at ease. He knew several of the bid committee members from industry meetings. Two had worked for him in the past. Reinhart was tall and well-groomed, comfortable speaking to an audience. He wore his thin blond hair in a military-style crew cut and kept a well-trimmed moustache that drew attention to a full mouth with generous lips. His mannerisms were prim, almost prissy, but when he spoke, he transformed himself into a folksy cowboy. He wore a bolo tie, cowboy boots, and a western hat and spoke in an exaggerated drawl. He doffed his hat and bowed slightly—Fort Worth meets Frankfurt—when he took the podium.

“The single reason y’all want to accept our bid is that we’ve done exactly this kind of work for years. No one has anywhere near the experience we have in remediation.” Reinhart paused, making eye contact with each member of the bid committee. He was charismatic and easygoing. The committee leaned forward as one.

“We completed 45 major cleanups in the last five years. Clean-Act’s performance exceeded the contract specifications. We were right on time and right on budget. We have six more projects and all of ’em are even a mite ahead of schedule. And we aim to finish ahead of schedule on this one, too. That’s our corporate style. It’s also a guarantee to you. I promise to this bid committee, right now, that your remediation plant will be fully operational three weeks before the end of the performance clause in the contract. That’s part of our culture: better and faster.”

One member of the bid committee broke in with a choreographed question, a softball objection intended to appear challenging. “But the bid requires that you use nanoscale ZVI. You have no experience with nano production. And now you’re promising to finish early? How are you going to make that work?”

“Now that’s a good question. Heart of the matter, yes sir.”

“Yes, Dr. Reinhart, it is the central issue. How can you ensure that you’ll have enough of the ZVI in nano form? And how will you keep it safe? After all, you have no experience with it. Mismanagement of nanoscale materials can be hazardous.”

Dr. Reinhart drew a handkerchief from his inside breast pocket and mopped his forehead. He rubbed his chin. He might have appeared flummoxed by the question but his confidence never wavered. “If y’all are worried about hazards, I’d look to that river there. That’s what’s hazardous and we aim to clean it. As far as safety, well, we have an effective approach. We’ll flood the ZVI storage building with pressurized helium—good, safe, inert helium—before one particle of ZVI goes down the hatch. If even a single atom of helium escapes, we’ll know. We don’t expect any leaks, no sir, none at all, but if there are, we’ll find ’em and fix ’em and
still
be on time and budget. From transport to operations, the ZVI stays in helium so it doesn’t combine with anything at all until we inject it into the river.”

“But you have no experience with ZVI.” The friendly inquisitor pressed for more.

“True. But we have ourselves a real simple solution. We bought the experience.”

The Committee, dutiful and attentive, chuckled.

“I’m pleased to announce that CleanAct has acquired FeFree, the very best producer of ZVI. ‘Fe’ is the chemical symbol for iron, and we think FeFree has the best ZVI fabrication process in the world. We don’t have the experience to create the stores of ZVI that y’all need, but FeFree does. So, we bought ‘em, lock, stock, and containment chamber. Problem solved.

“So, ladies and gentlemen, CleanAct’s approach might not be sexy, but it works. Now, let’s take a peek at what NMech proposes. Those Boston folks claim that they can convert carbon atoms into iron atoms to solve the logistics problem.” He stared for a moment at Eva Rozen and then started to clap. “I have to give you a hand, Dr. Rozen. Rewritin’ the laws of physics. Now that’s one darned good trick.”

He failed to see the tightening around Eva’s eyes, the bunching of the muscles in her shoulders. Nor did he notice a trembling in her hands and feet.

Reinhart turned back to the bid committee and pressed on. “Now, I’m not the brains of our outfit. I just give our people a little nudge here and there to help keep things runnin’ smoothly. But we’ve got some darned smart folks in Texas. One or two of ’em even went to college in Boston, at Harvard, same as Dr. Rozen. They tell me that you
can
change one element into another, but only with highly radioactive elements. Give ’em a shake and they shed a few electrons. That turns ’em into some other mighty radioactive elements.”

Eva looked up. Had the bid committe caught it? Had anyone? No! Her head shook imperceptibly in disbelief. Stupid cows, they were, every single one of them.

Reinhart continued. “Carbon? Can it shed some electrons to become iron? Last I checked, carbon has six electrons and iron has 26. So, carbon doesn’t have enough atomic bits to shed. You would need atomic fusion to make it work, mashing your atoms together.” He mimed making a snowball, in case the idea was difficult to follow. “You find atomic fusion in thermonuclear weapons. I think we’re in the business of cleaning up after weapons, not makin’ new ones.”

Now Eva grinned.

“Well. Maybe Dr. Rozen wrote some new laws of physics. Maybe it’s different in Boston. But in Rockford, we go by the same God-given laws of nature that have run the universe for about four billion years. Give or take a few million.”

He winked. Pure charm.

“Mind you, I had our scientists look at changin’ atoms all around. After all, if NMech has something novel, it ought to be repeatable. NMech says it’s got the experts to do it but we don’t see anything published to show just how. Maybe they’re just keepin’ it a secret, or maybe they’re playin’ for time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, don’t sell CleanAct short in the area of fabrication. We bought the best in the business and we’re ready to start—and to finish ahead of schedule. That’s our corporate culture: better and faster.

“Let me close by quotin’ a proverb from the Bible, ‘There is a time to every purpose’—I believe that our time is now and our purpose is to clean up that dreadful river.”

Reinhart sat down to applause. He nodded to his rival as Eva mounted the lectern to address the committee. She showed neither embarrassment nor amusement by Reinhart’s barbs. She was not a compelling presenter. She tended to speak in a monotone and often employed a technical vocabulary that estranged her audience. Today she started in better form.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting NMech here today. I’m not here to tell you jokes. I don’t have Dr. Reinhart’s sense of humor. In fact, most people say I don’t have any sense of humor at all.”

The committee smiled. A good sign.

“Besides, the problem is too serious for quips. Let’s start by being accurate. Dr. Reinhart, your Bible quote is not from Proverbs, but Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, verse 1. This is the smallest of Dr. Reinhart’s inaccuracies. Second, Harvard is in Cambridge, not Boston. Small points, you might say. But they reflect Dr. Reinhart’s consistent fuzzy thinking.”

“His larger mistakes are astonishing in their stupidity. Nuclear fusion is the result of combining the nuclei of atoms, not by adding or shedding electrons. Atoms give up electrons in the normal course of forming molecules. For example, sodium sheds an electron when it binds with chlorine. Is the result dangerous? Radioactive? No. The result is table salt.”

“I’m not sure why this committee would entrust the largest remediation project in history to a company run by a man who does not understand the fundamentals of chemistry. How can this man expect to manage cutting-edge nanotechnology? That’s like asking an illiterate to read an anatomy text in order to perform surgery. Reinhart’s fundamental ignorance should frighten you.

“As far as their proposal, so what if CleanAct bought FeFree? FeFree is best at producing advertising, not ZVI. If they had a workable solution, they could have made a fortune licensing the process to remediation companies instead of selling themselves to Clean-Act. We estimate that the successful remediation of the Nuovo River will use approximately $11 billion of ZVI over the next decade, but CleanAct paid less than that to buy FeFree. Why would FeFree sell themselves so cheaply if their process were dependable?

“But let’s assume for a moment that FeFree really can produce the ZVI needed. CleanAct’s approach relies on transporting ZVI to Rockford. The problem is safety. If there’s a leak in transport, or in the containment module, the helium escapes. Dr. Reinhart, the last time I checked, helium is lighter than air and iron is heavier. That means that if there’s a breach, your helium goes north and your ZVI goes south. If you’re lucky, it rusts. If not, then it explodes.”

Eva saw confusion on the faces of the bid committee and explained. “If the ZVI leaks anywhere from production at FeFree, to transport, to loading into the containment module, you get a cloud of nanoparticles. If you suspend small particles in air, then you risk an explosion. Ask any farmer about the dangers of a grain dust explosion. Ask a baker about flour explosions. There were over a hundred of these disasters in the last century. Talk to the survivors of the Washburn explosion. A grain elevator there blew and the blast leveled two mills and most of the town. Never mind that CleanAct’s approach is unproven: it’s dangerous.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will use simple, proven nanotechnology to fabricate and to safely handle more than enough ZVI. Creating new atoms is not fantasy. Reinhart ignores a half century of atomic manipulation. Go back fifty years. Scientists at one corporation took 35 xenon atoms and picked them up and set them down to spell the name of their company. Wrangling atoms is easier for a real scientist than wrangling cattle is for a real cowboy. By the way, Dr. Reinhart, those are some nice boots you’re wearing. You’ve driven a lot of steer in your time, have you?”

Eva had the committee’s attention. “Cowboy Fritz here says that there’s nothing published? Perhaps Dr. Reinhart’s team should forget about chasing cows and catch up on their professional reading. Scientists started fabricating what are called superatoms in the early 2000s—and they published their work. Superatoms are made of several atoms linked together to act as another atom. If you vaporize carbon and condense the vapor, you can build an iron superatom. It isn’t easy, but if Dr. Reinhart were capable of understanding the science he wouldn’t stand here and make a folksy fool of himself.”

Eva was lit by her own passion—and something more. Her face was pepper red and her upper lip was beaded with sweat. Her movements were jerky and her voice was too loud. The bid committee looked on in growing discomfort. No one nodded agreement. Perfunctory applause accompanied her to her seat.

The committee chairperson rose and thanked the speakers and promised a careful deliberation and a decision once both proposals were reviewed. In truth, the outcome had been decided months ago when a cabal of CleanAct’s executives, all ex-military or Department of Defense veterans, sat down with the military command at the munitions plant and hammered out a deal. Yes, there would be competition. The law required it. And after the bid committee’s careful consideration of both bids, CleanAct would win the contract, fair and square. It had been decided.

Dr. Reinhart stood and approached Eva with a smile and an outstretched hand. “Dr. Rozen, that was one interesting presentation. I must say, you’re a formidable competitor.”

And you’re a dead man walking,
Eva thought as she ignored the proffered hand and walked past him to join her ashen-faced colleagues. They saw what Eva could not see as she walked back to her seat: the smug grins on the faces of the CleanAct executives.

NMech had lost the bid. In truth, they never had a chance. They had failed to consider the political factors that would guide the selection of a vendor, and moved as fatted calves into a den of hungry bureaucratic wolves.

___________________________________________

DISASTER

BOSTON, MA AND ROCKFORD, VA
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2045

O
ne year later, Eva Rozen, Marta Cruz, Jim Ecco and Dana Ecco gathered in an NMech conference room and watched scores of Rockford’s residents join the munitions plant officials and the CleanAct’s executives gather for the remediation plant opening. The launch of a dump site seldom generated much public excitement, but CleanAct’s public relations department had had a year to feed the public’s imagination. A video stream broadcast the event and fed the dreams of delegates of other toxic sites who watched in anticipation. Schoolteachers used the occasion to illustrate the principles of environmental responsibility and scientific achievement. Financiers calculated whether remediation would be the Next Big Thing. Even the viewers at NMech were mesmerized by the scope of the celebration.