Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

“How do you know?”

“I used to run leaks for Continental all the way from Golden Meadow to Tennessee. That’s how we spotted leaks by chopper.”

“How?”

“By yellowing. Grass and leaf yellowing over the pipeline. I got so I could spot the slightest off-green.”

We look hard at the map as if we could see it.

“I don’t understand,” says Lucy. “Couldn’t it be a gas pipeline supplying Grand Mer?”

“No. It wouldn’t be there. This runs from Grand Mer to Ratliff number one.”

Again we look at the map.

“Well, if there’s a pipeline there,” says Lucy slowly, “wouldn’t there be a cleared right-of-way with signs and so forth?”

Vergil smiles and shrugs. Ask me about pipes but don’t ask me why folks do what they do.

Lucy looks at me. “Am I being stupid? Ya’ll seem to know something I don’t know. What does he mean?”

“He means that there would be a right-of-way and signs only if they wanted you to know the pipeline was there.”

“What are you saying?”

“Vergil is suggesting that there is a pipeline there and that it is hidden.”

“I see. You mean that if there is contamination of the water supply, it is deliberate.”

“That’s right.”

She muses, eyes blinking and not leaving my face. “Why do I have the feeling that you are not only not surprised but that you know a lot more about this than you let on?”

I don’t say anything.

She looks back at Vergil. His face is blank.

“What kind of contaminant are we talking about?” asks Lucy.

I shrug and tap the pencil on the cone on Tunica Island. “This is an old heavy-sodium reactor, one of the first and, I believe, one of the few still around. Right, Vergil?”

“Right,” says Vergil, taking the pencil and warming to it. The subject is pipes. “Dr. More is right about the heavy sodium, but it’s not the core, the reactor, it’s the coolant. Okay?” He corrects me gently. He begins to sketch. “Okay, this is an old LMFBR, liquid metal fast breeder reactor. You’ve got your core here, a mixture of oxides of plutonium and uranium, and around it you’ve got your blanket of uranium, U-238. Now here’s your primary coolant loop of liquid Na-24, used because of its heat-transfer properties — it’s liquid over a large range of temperatures. Here is your secondary nonradioactive sodium loop, which cooks the steam, which in turn drives the turbines. And here is your water loop, which cools your condenser and turbine.” With an odd little deprecatory gesture, Vergil both offers the drawing and shakes his head at it.

We gaze at the loops and the small tidy blacked-in core.

“I still don’t get it,” says Lucy. “Are you telling me that stuff from here”—she taps the primary coolant loop—“gets over to here?” She taps the Ratliff intake an inch away.

Vergil is silent. His eyes are black and blank.

“How?” Lucy asks both of us.

“By a pipe,” I say, watching Vergil. He nods.

“But who—?” she begins.

We are silent.

“By a pipe, you say. But if that stuff was in a pipe in the willows here, it would be a liquid, wouldn’t it? So how—”

We’re back in Vergil’s territory. “That’s right. It would have to be treated, converted to a water-soluble salt, probably a chloride — like this.” He picks up a crystal cellar from a corner of the map.

“But somebody has to do this!” Lucy accuses him. Vergil cuts his eyes, passes her to me.

“That’s right, Lucy. Somebody designed it and built it.”

We think it over. Now Lucy has the import.

“You mean to tell me,” says Lucy in a measured voice, tapping pencil on table with each word, “that somebody has deliberately diverted heavy sodium from here, through a pipe, through the Tunica Swamp here, to put it in the water supply at Ratliff number one here?”

Vergil gazes at the map as if the answer were there.

“That’s what we mean to tell you, Lucy.”

“Does that mean it is something done officially, with NRC approval, perhaps by NRC, or could someone have done it surreptitiously?”

Lucy looks at me. I look at Vergil. Vergil shrugs.

Lucy puts her head down, raises a finger. “We’re talking about somebody official, right? Nobody could have slipped in there and done it.” We both shrug.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“A good question.”

“Now wait,” says Lucy.

We wait for her.

“Assuming there is a pipe there, why is it leaking? Why the yellowing?”

I look at Vergil — he shrugs. “It don’t take much of a leak— especially if somebody was doing the plumbing in secret without routine pipe checks.”

Lucy is gazing at me. “We don’t know this,” she says at last. “We’re guessing.”

“That’s right.”

“We need more to go on, Tom, Vergil. Hard evidence. A piece of pipe. Let’s go back and look. But look for what?”

Vergil clears his throat. “We could check out the pumping station.”

We both look at him.

“Pumping station?” I say.

“Right here.” He puts the point of the pencil on the stippled green of the Tunica Swamp between the tower and the intake.

“Pumping station?” says Lucy. “What for?”

Vergil is almost apologetic. “Well, your liquid here is not going to run by gravity upriver to your intake here.”

“It’s not going to run by gravity upriver,” Lucy tells me.

“That’s right, Lucy.”

“I don’t believe it. Who would put a pumping station there?”

Vergil smiles for the first time. “Ask him,” he says, nodding to the window. There’s the uncle, trudging across the overgrown yard, headed for the woods, down shoulder angled forward leading the way, the pointer at his heels. Vergil, smiling and good-humored, has allowed himself to lapse into local freejack talk. “He the one showed it to me. We went hunting birds last Christmas, you remember, Miss Lucy?”

“I remember,” says Lucy absently. “We still got some of those quail frozen. We had some this morning.”

“Mist’ Hugh think it’s an electric substation. I didn’t say nothing. But there no wires except a little line to run the pump, no insulators. No signs, except a radioactive warning. I told him it is not a substation. But you not going to tell Mist’ Hugh anything.”

“There is something I don’t understand,” I tell Vergil.

“What’s that, Doc-tor?” He almost said Doc.

“You say you and the uncle went quail hunting there.”

“Yes, suh. My daddy evermore love quail and my mamma can evermore cook them, idn’t that right, Miss Lucy?”

Lucy nods absently.

“Mist’ Hugh, he some kind of hunter. A dead shot. I’ve seen him shoot two birds crossing with one shot. He and old Maggie.” Vergil laughs.

We can see Maggie’s tail stiff and high moving through the Johnson grass like a periscope.

“He loan me his automatic and kept his old double-barreled.12 and got more birds than I did. The reason we went to the island was to get woodcock. He claims they like it there, but we didn’t see any. He say he can tell by the way Maggie points whether it’s birds or woodcock.”

“How did you get in there?”

“How you mean?”

“I mean whoever put in that pipeline and pumping station is not going to want people to see it — and there’s that eight-foot fence plus barbed wire up here next to the intake.”

“That’s right. But they don’t watch the other end of the island. Here.” He touches the lower blind end of Lake Mary. “The fence goes right across Lake Mary, but except at very high water you can ease right under it. They don’t care. Nobody bothered us.”