“To sell papers. If you read the article, you'll find that the quote was taken out of context. The MIT prof said it could destroy all life in Boston Harbor that happened to eat a large amount of it.”
“Well, that's good,” Boone said. “That's fine, from our point of view. We don't have to beg the media to cover it. The news is out.”
Kelvin agreed. “It's really only a matter of time before the whole thing is exposed.”
“Publicizing it isn't that important,” I added. “The catastrophe's still going on. That's what we should worry about. Publicity doesn't kill the bug.”
“Is that really you talking?” Boone said. “How do we kill the bug, Kelvin?”
“The chlorine-converting bug is an obligate anaerobe-” Kelvin said, then added for Boone's benefit, “-that means it has to live in an environment with no air in it.”
“That's impossible,” I said. “There's oxygen dissolved in the water. It wouldn't survive.”
“Exactly. So they didn't make just the one bug. They made two of them. The other is an aerobe - it has to have some air to survive. Its metabolism doesn't hurt anything - it just uses lots of oxygen and creates a locally oxygen-poor region where its salt-eating buddy can live. The killer bug is a parasite on the aerobe. Or symbiotic, or one of those terms - I hate biology.”
“Look, I know I'm no expert here,” Boone said, “but every environmentalist knows that a lot of water doesn't have any air dissolved in it. Right? Polluted water, anything that's got undecayed garbage or shit in it, doesn't have air.”
“Right,” Kelvin said, "because the organisms that break those things down use up all the air in the process. The more sewage there is in the water - that is, the higher the Biochemical Oxygen Demand - the less oxygen is present. When Dolmacher and company designed this bug, they had a simulated ocean environment for it to work in. They probably used something like an aquarium full of aerated seawater. The symbiosis worked just fine in that environment.
“It didn't occur to them that this pair of bugs might end up in an environment in which there wasn't any air. They probably weren't thinking of using it in a totally uncontrolled fashion, around raw sewage - or if they were, they didn't think about the BOD. Even if they were aware of that problem, it didn't matter because management got to the bug before they could test it in that situation. It was released into the Harbor.”
“Into a part of the Harbor where there ain't no dissolved oxygen - because of all the raw sewage,” I said.
“And Spectacle Island. That's got to be one big oxygen-sucker,” Boone said.
Kelvin nodded. “Which means that in those bad parts of the Harbor, most of the aerobes are dead. Nothing to breathe. But the chlorine bugs, the ones we're worried about, did fine, because they didn't need the aerobes - in that particular situation. But if a lot of oxygen were injected into their environment, they'd all die.”
“So if the contaminated parts of the Harbor can be oxygenated, the bugs die,” Boone said.
“How do you propose we oxygenate whole, big patches of the Harbor floor? Get a shitload of aquarium bubblers?” I said. I was tired and I was wired. I was pissed and bouncing off the walls. Kelvin just stood there and took it calmly.
“Ozone. They use it at the sewage treatment plant. Put it on boats. Run tubes from the ozone supply down to the Harbor floor. Bubble the ozone through the sludge. GEE can't do it, it'll take a big governmental effort, but it can be done. The Harbor will stink like a privy for a few weeks, but when it's done, the bugs will be gone.”
We enjoyed a moment of golden silence. Boone said, “Not much for us to do, then, is there?”
Kelvin shrugged. “There doesn't have to be. In this case, the governmental machinery might actually work.”
Boone and I looked at each other and laughed.
“Kelvin,” Boone said, “they can't even handle sewage treatment.”
“Couple of days ago I called the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,” Kelvin said. “This was after Dolmacher had told me everything. I got through to one of their investigators. He'd heard all about this epidemic of chloracne in Boston. The local hospitals had already noticed it, especially City Hospital. So I explained the whole thing to them, about the genetically engineered bug.”
I'm an asshole, I do it for a living, so this shouldn't surprise anyone: in a way, I resented Kelvin for this. He knew everything before I did. And he'd made the right phone call. I never thought of calling the Centers for Disease Control. He'd probably saved a lot of people. The real reason was probably this: I wouldn't have the chance to make the Big Revelation, to call the press and inform them, to be the ecoprophet.
“Every doctor on the Bay knows about it now. They've been treating it with activated charcoal - in gastric lavage and enemas - and with trimethoprim. And they just put out an alert late last night, not to eat any fish from the Harbor. That's what inspired those headlines.”
“Doctors can't put out that kind of alert.”
“Right. You see, all the state authorities are aware of the problem now. They're dealing with it. I already called them and told them about this oxygenation idea. I have the impression they're working on it.”
Zodiac
31
BOONE AND I SAT DOWN to wait for our laundry to run through the dryer. Charlotte went out to get some coffee and when she came back into the room, found us out cold. We woke up about four hours later. Boone felt spry as a puppy and I felt like someone had stuffed a rancid lemon into my mouth and flogged me with a hawser.