Tales from Kalgachia - 21

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After graduating, Vidgel Felcher had been told not to expect a job straight away. According to his well-meaning lecturers at the University of Bergburg's fast-expanding faculty of nuclear physics, competition was stiff and positions in the field would always be limited. He had believed them up until the end of his graduation ceremony in the university's central hall, when he and his peers were frustratingly delayed from embarking on their planned slivovitz bender by a group of men in suits who lay in wait for them at the exit. At the graduates' approach these strangers had assumed a formation worthy of the great armies of antiquity and advanced as one, striking forth with a flurry of handshakes and business cards at the moment of contact. Before he had even left the building, Vidgel had been head-hunted.

The man who had caught him was from the The Directorate of Health and Public Welfare; a slick but pleasant individual whom Vidgel suspected was kept in a box for occasions like this. In less than a dozen words of initial pleasantries the man had cold-read Vidgel's inner anxiety about the integrity of Kalgachia's environment and within a matter of seconds launched a recruitment pitch so flawlessly personalised that Vidgel began to suspect the man had been stalking him for some time. Kalgachia's internal security goons, the Prefects, were known to take an interest in the faculty; if they knew enough to feed a DHPW recruiter with background information, perhaps they knew about the kind of 'reading' material Vidgel kept under his pillow? The recruiter had made no mention of that, at least - his offer of a paid internship at the DHPW Nuclear Safety Bureau was made with seamless enthusiasm. For his part, Vidgel had accepted the offer on the spot - it was foolish to look a gift-goat in the mouth, he told himself, although by that point the conversation had run for some time and he was equally motivated to get rid of the waffling recruiter and catch up with his fellow graduates who had wrapped up their own job offers, departed the building and made a beeline for the stack of celebratory booze awaiting them in their lodgings. The cause for celebration was, in the circumstances, somewhat enhanced for Vidgel and his friends and they had thrown themselves into their libations accordingly. A little after two hours of the morning their wild carousings had triggered a mobilisation of the local partisans who had rounded them all up, dragged them off-campus and thrown them into the Parish drunk tank - the incident had nonetheless been good-natured and the partisans, no strangers to this kind of work around graduation time, had been kind enough to release all of the drunken graduates without charge the following morning thanks to the efforts of one of Vidgel's friends, who had landed a job with the Kalgachi Defence Force and pleaded with his captors all through the dawn hours not to bring him before a Parish tribunal lest it compromise his security clearance.

Good times, reminisced Vidgel as he stared into the blackness. He was on a train, looking out of a window which offered nothing but the dark of the tunnel through which it was clattering - a pointless exercise if he were not avoiding the peculiar middle-aged woman sat opposite, with shoddily-tied hair and an equally ragged turtleneck sweater of a light vomit colour, who had spent the entire journey staring at him with huge, disturbingly hypnotic brown eyes. The furtive glance of romantic attraction this was not - Vidgel felt like the woman was preparing to devour his soul - but she was not the only odd person aboard the train. There were a lot of Nezeni around with their hued, shiny complexions and many of the rest resembled what might be described as middle-class social rejects, ranging from the merely nerdish to the visibly unhinged. Vidgel himself was far from a pillar of social convention but he did note that the fashion sense and coiffure of his travelling companions left much to be desired. They were a ragtag bunch in every sense, but as well they may have been; most of them were initiates of the Troglodyti, that great occluded coven of esoteric autists which had quietly and inexplicably come to rival the Ketherist church as a guiding force in Kalgachi society. The train's destination was one of the rare shaft heads which granted access to the Lieutenancy of Lapivril, a Troglodyte-administered territory located deep within the lithosphere and nominally integrated into the Garden of Kalgachia - in reality its contituent strata and nodules enjoyed substantial autonomy from the Kalgachi government in Oktavyan, and administered itself without central leadership through an ever-shifting web of councils, committees, conclaves, covens, workings and invocations. Although pragmatically tolerating the general oversight of the Kalgachi government in exchange for resourcing, certain elements of Lapivril's small population were known to resent the presence of uninitiated surface dwellers among them - Vidgel had settled on this as the reason his bosses at the DHPW had sent him, not long promoted from an intern, to perform a round of nuclear safety inspections he considered well beyond his competence in what was rumoured to be a socially hostile environment. He squirmed in his seat at the prospect - he was not even there yet and vomit-sweater lady was already giving him the evil eye.

The window's darkness was periodically replaced by a constellation of whizzing lights as the train pulled up at a small station, each serving one of the many undergound settlements which comprised the Katarsis-Jollity-Bergburg conurbation. After a couple of stops the train had filled with passengers, each admitted aboard after a careful check of their papers by train guards - trains to the Lapivril shaft heads, accessed through a hidden tunnel diverging from the public rail route, appeared on no publically-listed timetables and were restricted only to those with official business in its depths and their immediate families who were notified to wait on the relevant platforms in advance. Soon the only seats Vidgel could see empty were those beside him and his staring lady companion. He began to wonder whether the newly-arrived passengers were avoiding him.

The next station was dimply lit, un-signed and barely wider than the running tunnel, lines with only a narrow sliver of platform. Vidgel watched as its sole occupants climbed aboard - two smartly-dressed older men accompanied by four younger, less well-tailored individuals with military haircuts. Some time after the train had left the station, the connecting doors at the end of Vidgel's passenger car slid open and these latest passengers entered. A series of murmurs arose from the seated passangers as the new arrivals advanced along the aisle: "Good afternoon, Doctor"... "Ah Hello Doctor!"... "Pleasure to have you with us, sir"... Vidgel tried to sneak another look at the object of their reverent greetings but his view was blocked by two of the younger men, apparently bodyguards to the older ones, advancing toward him. At the sight of two empty seats they stopped and studied Vidgel and the staring lady, addressing them in commanding voices:

"Papers, please."

Neither of the men had identified themselves but the staring lady immediately began to fumble in her handbag and Vidgel was in no mood to argue. From the silken pocket inside his suit jacket he fished out the relevant permit and handed it to the iron-faced man nearest him. It was studied, studied again, shown to the other bodyguard and eventually handed back. Now the bodyguards beckoned to the waiting VIPs, whose age-creased faces were no more recognisable to Vidgel as they approached.

"Some seats here, gentlemen."

The two old men duly sat down while the bodyguards remained standing in the aisle. To Vidgel's annoyance, even their presence did nothing to draw the staring lady's attention off him. He returned his gaze to the window and listened idly to the conversation between the two apparent dignitaries:

"Anyway as I was saying..." began the man sat opposite, "...the iodine problem is essentially solved at this point. We went for one-fifteen, off the argon-forty chlorine-thirty-five fusion. Shorter half-life but more raw material."

"But how viable is three body collision?" said the man next to Vidgel. "I'm surprised you managed it at all with asymmetric nuclei, but even if you did you'll be lifting drops from an ocean of bromine and krypton."

"We're waiting on a new tuning set for the calutron seperator. The DEO, in their great generosity, have exempted the design from their semiconductor ban so there's a decent chance of it actually holding its power setting."

"So the vacuum tube mafia aren't invincible after all!"

"They never were, dear fellow. Their main problem is with microcircuitry... what with EMPs and concussion and whatnot. So I had Doctor Dzholt submit a big chunky design, transistors the size of your fist, and it passed."

"But that's only half the job. The product still needs to capture ten neutrons in a half-life of what... a minute and a bit? As long as we're stuck in the stone age of graphite moderators there's only so much flux we can achieve. Scaling it up to a viable operation would use more electrical power then everything else in Kalgachia put together."

The old man opposite pouted nonchalantly. "Your point being...?"

"Well the potential energy's there I know," said the man next to Vidgel, "but the DPW can only drill so many geothermal bores at once."

"There are only two alternatives, Clacker. We could get our iodine from the brine wells in east Schlepogora, on the rim of the old Novodolor gas field. But that would compromise Lapivril's self-sufficiency. Alternatively we could try doing without iodine entirely, but I've seen the results of that. Tell me, have you ever been around the backcountry in Katarsis?"

"Can't say I have."

"Then you won't have seen cretinism up close. Creates whole villages of stiff-necked imbeciles. Perhaps you should go and visit the poor wretches... then you might start seeing solutions where you curently see problems."

"What, like a solution to the sheer amount of waste your process puts out? That's the biggest problem in the long run. The waste dwarfs the actual product by orders of magnitude... and a good amount of it would be heavily radioactive. I don't know if the sight of shuffling invalid Lywallers would help either of us figure out a way to dispose of it."

At this, Vidgel's half-attention was suddenly piqued and he looked across to the old man opposite. The latter, noticing the attention, fell silent for a moment and studied him back.

"Young man," he said, "either you've come from the surface or one of my reactors is leaking... pray tell me it's the former."

Vidgel was thrown into confusion for a second. "Oh, the tan?" he said, studying the backs of his hands. "Uhh yes sir, I've come from Bergburg. It's been a sunny few weeks up there."

"And what business brings you to our little hole?" said the man next to Vidgel, the one named Clacker. The lack of hostility in his eyes prompted Vidgel to give an honest answer:

"I'm with the DHPW, sir. Just going down for a few safety inspections."

"Oh?" said the man opposite. "In what field?"

"Uh, well..." said Vidgel, nervously tugging on his collar. "Nuclear, as it happens. But please don't be-"

He was halted by an eruption of laughter from the two men. "How about it!" said Clacker to his companion. "He listened to all that and didn't even offer an opinion!"

"Well," said Vidgel, "I hardly think myself qualified to scrutinise your level of work, gentlemen."

"Nonsense," said the man opposite, a mirthful glint in his eye. "You graduated from Bergburg Uni, yes?"

"Yes sir," said Vidgel.

"Then you're one of us, young man. Who was your principal lecturer?"

"Doctor Plotznik."

"Ah, young Plotznik. A sharp fellow he is. One of my better students."

"You taught him, sir?" said Vidgel. "I was told he was a student of Eager Chur-"

He stopped again, as renewed laughter from the two old men confirmed his sudden revelation. The man sat opposite was, in fact, Dr. Eager Churchytopp himself - the father of the Kalgachi nuclear programme, a figure of legend in Vidgel's small academic circle and the chief technician for Project Newrad, Kalgachia's main capital project of the moment. Now the bodyguards made sense.

"What, did you think I was dead?" said Churchytopp with a wink.

"Oh, uh no sir," stuttered Vidgel. "Forgive me, I had no idea. They removed all your photos from the university library before I enrolled."

"Because the sight of his ugly face was too much for them," said Clacker with a mischievous grin.

"That makes two of us, you old carbuncle," Churchytopp fired back, before rolling his eyes at Vidgel. "But yes, young man, since I became involved in The Project I've had to make certain accomodations for my new friends here." He jerked his head to indicate his bodyguards. "But pay no heed to that. If you want to be taken seriously down in Lapivril, you must dispense with the notion that you have nothing to offer in the face of your elders' experience. We old folks get set in our ways, you know. We need fresh blood around, to teach and to learn from. It motivates us. Take your job, for instance, the safety aspect. It bothers a lot of people, true, but where would we be without it? It may already be too late for dear old Doctor Clacker and I, we've worked with plenty of the hot stuff... who knows how many shredded genes we're carrying? Any one of them could lay us low with terminal cancer. But we shouldn't condemn future generations with such risks, so your work is most important. I could very well learn one or two things from your little stable of knowledge."

"Perhaps one day, sir," said Vidgel, visibly blushing at the compliment, "but this is my first solo field assignment."

"Even better!" said Clacker. "It means you're not jaded and cynical yet."

"Indeed," said Churchytopp. "Clacker raises a valid point about the waste problem and it happens to be in your field, so... what do you think we should do about it?"

"Well," said Vidgel with a shrug, "you've probably looked at more options than I ever could."

"Do you know that for a fact?"

"Well no, but-"

"Well then. Let's hear it."

Vidgel exhaled and thought for a moment. The great brown eyes of the woman opposite had silently pinned him in his seat for the whole conversation, making thought difficult. "Could you not fission it out?" he finally said. "Reduce it down to hydrogen and let it absorb into the rock?"

"It's possible," said Churchytopp, "but we haven't tried it yet."

"What stops you?"

"It'd need quite an intense neutron flux and we can't spare the generators. They're all assigned to production."

"But would you need generators at all? If you can seperate and concentrate all the beta-plus emitters from the waste itself, could they not irradiate the rest into a neutron-heavy state and excite them to spontaneous emission?"

"We haven't tried that either."

"Perhaps you should, sir. With all due respect."

"With all due respect, young man, perhaps the effort should be yours?"

"I'd gladly run a project on it, but someone of my position would never get the resourcing."

"Unless someone of my position authorised it." Churchytopp's wrinkled eyelid flashed a wink.

Vidgel experienced a momentary floating sensation, as if the timeline of his life had been shunted onto a different track. "Really, sir?" He croaked. "You'd do that?"

"Why not, young man?" said Churchytopp. "It's worth looking at. I don't think the process would be as simple as you laid out, but nor do I think you'd find the snags impossible to overcome. We need a solution to the waste problem, and I haven't heard any better ideas than yours."

"And who knows," added Clacker. "It might even work. That'd open the door to great things for you. You wouldn't have to run errands for the DHPW any more. In fact you wouldn't have to refer to the surface world at all."

"Would I find myself a prisoner like your good selves?" Vidgel delivered the provocation with a mischievous smirk.

Churchytopp chuckled. "If this is a prison, young man, I don't want to be free. There are no pleasures of the surface that we can't recreate underground in the Garden's good time. But I'm serious about my offer. Do tell me your name, I must make a note of it."

"Felcher sir. Vidgel Felcher."

During the ensuing handshake the staring lady, on hearing the name, finally broke her gaze and succumbed to a momentary fit of giggles, followed by a furious blush of embarrassment at the outburst. Vidgel, numbed by a lifetime of such reactions from the schoolyard onward, failed to register it - but later noticed that she was not staring any more.