Little Deadly Things (28 page)

“Well,” Jim said, “your track record is pretty darned good, Eva. It’s hard to argue with success. Right now, I bet you could sell lies to a politician.” He and Marta chuckled.

Eva did not so much as smile. She had already dismissed the bucolic splendor of the Nuovo River, which many considered to be among the most beautiful in the world. She dismissed Rockford’s plight, a town wedged between environmental woes and economic concerns. Rather, she was impatient to see a stinking, nine-mile toxic stretch of water in southern Virginia where the river hugs the Rockford Munitions Plant. Into this aquatic embrace, the plant spews out pollutants and turns the watercourse from pastoral to poisonous.

The gunk had built up for close to a century, increasing and abating with arrival and departure of war. Eva’s attention was fixed on the Pentagon’s budget not the river’s despoiled beauty. When the military bowed to public pressure and announced that it would seek proposals for cleaning the site, Eva began to plan. Military business was big business. The textiles division sold armored uniforms to the military, but its profits were marginal. Rockford would be huge.

“So, what can you tell us about this project?” Marta asked.

“Not a lot. The military classified much of what was dumped into the Nuovo, but we’re pretty sure that there’s dioxin, mercury, lead, ammonia, and copper. Not to mention DBP—di-n-butyl phthalate—which causes fetal mutations.”

“Lovely,” said Marta, wrinkling her nose. “The stuff we know about includes heavy metals, carcinogens, and mutagens. Am I getting this?”

“Yup. There’s lots of it.”

“And then there are pollutants that the military refuses to identify?”

Eva nodded.

“And we don’t know anything about remediation?”

Eva nodded again. “No more than an undergraduate science major would.”

“Sounds perfect. Let me guess. You have a plan?” Marta asked.

Eva nodded. “The cleanup shouldn’t be too hard. The technology is mature. Use ZVI and scoop.”

“Huh?”

“ZVI. Zero valent iron. That’s iron in its pure state.”

“Iron?” A note of incredulity crept into Marta’s voice.

“Not just iron. Pure iron—zero valent iron. Doesn’t matter too much what’s in the water. ZVI takes it out.”

“Can you expand on that a little? Dioxin, I understand. It’s gotta be among my favorite industrial wastes. Who wouldn’t love a carcinogen? But I wanna hear about this, this...iron stuff.”

Eva ignored Marta’s sarcasm. “Okay. Start with iron’s instability,” Eva said.

“Give me a break. Iron isn’t unstable. What are you talking about?”

“Look, I don’t tell you how flowers grow. Don’t lecture me about chemistry.”

“Well, excuse me. Why don’t you explain how iron is,” Marta made quote marks with her fingers, “unstable.”

“Actually, in its pure form, it is very unstable. Iron has two, or sometimes three, electrons in its outer shell. It wants eight to be complete. So it wants atoms with electrons to spare, or to donate the electrons in its incomplete outer shell. It yearns to combine with other atoms. That’s how it binds with the contaminants. The pollutants become chemically locked to the iron. The iron-heavy sludge settles out of the river. Scoop it up, haul it away and, bingo. Your cesspool becomes a swimming pool.”

“Electrons yearn?” asked Marta. “Do they write poetry, too?”

“In a sense they do yearn,” said Eva. “They’re driven, compelled, motivated—you pick the word that makes you happy. But atoms want their outer orbits to be complete. So they either shed a few electrons or grab a few.”

“Interesting,” said Jim. “So, how come nobody’s done this before? After all, iron isn’t exactly a rare metal.”

“You’re right. It’s maybe the tenth most common element in the universe. The problem is one of logistics. How do you keep the ZVI pure before it comes in contact with a pollutant? I have some ideas, the beginnings of a plan. We need to be ready to submit a bid the beginning of next year. That’s six months. Figure another six months till the military makes up its mind. So, a year from now, we’re in the remediation business.”

Marta and Jim looked at each other and shrugged. Eva had said the magic word: plan.

“Wait a minute,” said Marta. “You may be superwoman, but developing a new technology, creating a manufacturing plan, a logistics plan, a cost accounting system for the project,
and
pulling together a comprehensive proposal in six months? That’s impossible! You could work around the clock for six months and you still won’t be on schedule.”

“That may be true for other people,” said Eva, “but I can do it.”

Jim said, “Do we have to do this one? I mean, there’s no harm in bidding on the next project. Lord knows there’s enough pollution to go around.”

“No.” Eva’s voice was emphatic. “This is the one I want to start with. I didn’t say it would be easy, but I can do it. Nailing this contract would put NMech at the forefront of ecological reconstruction. Granted, there are some problems, but everyone faces the same problems.”

“Problems? What sort of problems?” asked Jim.

“Pure iron or ZVI combines with anything it comes into contact with. Mostly it rusts since there’s plenty of oxygen in the air. So the biggest hurdle is keeping an inventory of ZVI. Most people fabricate it and haul it to where it’s needed. That’s expensive. I have a better approach.”

“Which is...?”

“I’ll get to that. Solutions are simple. It’s framing the question that’s hard. I can explain once I give you some chemistry background. Let me list the challenges first, then we can talk about the details.”

“What’s the second problem?”

“Here’s where it gets interesting. ZVI is way more effective when it’s nano-sized. I’m talking many times more effective.”

“How come?” asked Jim.

“Because as the size of the ZVI particles decrease, the proportion of surface atoms increases. Then there are more available atoms craving more interactions with the polluting substances. But that creates a drawback. The nanoparticles are so effective that they consume themselves rapidly. So it’s tough to maintain a supply of ZVI. These two problems are matters of logistics, not chemistry. So far, nobody’s been able to keep enough ZVI on hand to be effective in a project this size. Remember, we’re talking about cleaning an entire century of gunk.”

Marta was nodding. She had subvocalized and was peering into a heads-up display. Eva guessed she was accessing data on ZVI.

“Bottom line? None of the remediation companies knows much about nanoscale production. So what if we’ve never cleaned up an ammunition dump? Nobody else has either. But we know more about nanotechnology than anybody. And I’m telling you, this is going to be big. We get this contract and a relationship with the military and we have a chance to become the biggest company in the world. The military does not write small checks.”

“Uh, Eva. Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves? We still have to win the contract,” Marta said.

Eva grinned. “Don’t worry.”

“I know, you’ve got a plan,” intoned Marta.

Jim smiled. “Of course she does.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a plan.” Eva’s grin faded. “And nothing is going to stop us.”

“Of course not, Eva,” teased Jim. His smile was cut short.

Eva turned to face him. “Let’s get something clear,” she said. “This is the next step for NMech’s evolution. We are going to win this contract. Period. Nobody, nothing, is going to stop us. This is the future. Got that?”

“Sure, Eva,” Jim shrugged and backed up a step and offered a mock salute. “No half measures. Aye-aye, Commander. Full steam ahead.”

“Can the jokes, Jim. I’m serious.”

Jim and Marta sat back in their smart chairs. The temperature in the boardroom seemed to drop. They looked at each other and back to Eva. Marta said, “Eva, lighten up. No one is trying to trivialize your project. You enjoy making money? Fine. You want NMech to be the world’s largest corporation? Fine. Let us enjoy our work, too. Let us enjoy your friendship. Look, you and I have come a long way since Harvard. I know I rub you the wrong way sometimes, and God knows that you can push my buttons. But take it easy. Joking can be a good thing, so let’s go with the flow, okay?”

“What does that mean, ‘go with the flow’?”

“Look at the pictures of the jellyfish on the drapes. They can use the ocean’s currents to go where they need to go. Let’s not fight the currents. That’s what I mean. You can be yourself—determined, intense, and impatient, and that’s okay. We’re friends. But let us be ourselves, too, and part of that is Jim’s sense of humor. Or what he thinks is a sense of humor.”

Eva looked at Marta and nodded. “Friends,” she said. “Okay, I get it. Fine. Just don’t expect a group hug any time soon.” Her partners looked at Eva, trying to gauge her. Did she just attempt to lighten the mood?

Eva turned back to the jellyfish display. Keeping to herself, she saw the transparent hoods swaying in the currents. The Medusalike tentacles held her attention. Some hung for tens of feet, and each was packed with millions of nematocysts—specialized cells that bulged with venom.

___________________________________________

HALCYON DAYS

FROM THE MEMORIES
OF DANA ECCO

Z
eus created Aeolus to control the wind. Aeolus calmed the wind and seas for seven days during the winter solstice to allow a certain kingfisher bird to lay her eggs in safety.

The bird that merited the Aeolus’s care was his daughter, Alcyone. The unfortunate lass had thrown herself into the ocean when she learned that her husband had drowned at sea. The gods then turned the storm-crossed lovers into kingfishers. I would think that a simple rescue would have done nicely—why not have another ship come along? But the gods have their own sensibilities, and human-to-avian transmogrification it was.

Those seven days of calmed seas came to be known as halcyon days. Take the letter, “H” from
‘hals’,
Greek for seas, plop it in front of Alcyone, ditch the “e,” and you have the word halcyon, a nostalgic reference to the sunny days of youth.

Rockford ended my halcyon days. The winter that followed was severe, even by New England standards. There were no calm days for kingfishers—nor, as it turned out, for petrals, nor thunderbirds.

If Alcyone was a kingfisher, then Eva was another seabird, the storm petral, the smallest of the seabirds, with a short, squarish body, and dark plumage. It hovers just above the ocean’s surface and appears to walk on water. The metaphor was apt. When my parents considered Eva’s remediation project, she seemed to be capable of miracles.

She nearly was. Eva attacked the task of preparing NMech’s bid with a scorched-earth vigor that would rival General Sherman’s march to the sea. She commanded every resource at NMech’s disposal and quite a few that were not, in a frantic attempt to meet the submission deadline for Rockford.

If Eva were a storm petrel, then I was a thunderbird, a truculent and quarrelsome fifteen-year-old, creating storms as I flew. My parents mostly ignored the outbursts and tantrums. They could see me struggle to mature and they remembered their own painful rites of passage through adolescence. Eva, however, was beginning to fear that the bid would not be ready on time, and she lacked the time or the emotional resources to be empathetic with me, or to be patient.