Authors: David Seltzer
“I believe him,” she said as she continued scraping the mud away. “Isely, I mean.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He makes too many mistakes to be a liar.”
“Makes too many mistakes to be a good liar.”
“I don’t think he was lying.”
As Rob watched her cleaning the mud from her boots, he began to take an interest. As the grayish-brown slime trailed off her hand into the water, he detected glints of reflection in it, as though it contained tiny grains of something metallic.
“Besides,” Maggie continued, “if he were lying, how could he have offered to let you test the water? I mean, if there were something in it. How could he let you test the water?”
Rob’s eyes traveled to Maggie’s boots as she scraped
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away more mud, and he saw there, with chilling certainty, a faint streak of silver in the imprint left by her fingers. His expression suddenly went cold.
“Maybe it wasn’t in the water,” he answered.
Maggie caught his tone and quickly looked up at him.
“Maybe it was heavier than that,” he said.
The look on his face frightened her. “What do you mean?”
“Look at your boots.”
She did, and saw what he saw. She pulled a large clod of mud from the instep of her boot and separated it in her hands, uncovering a tiny nugget of a soft, metallic substance.
“It looks like silver,” she said. “It looks like a filling from a tooth or something.”
“Is it soft?”
She squeezed it. “Yes.”
“Silver is hard.”
“What is it, then?”
“Wipe your hands and touch it.”
She quickly dried her free hand on her wool scarf, then delicately touched the puttylike blob.
“Is it dry?”
“Yes,” she answered with amazement.
Rob’s face hardened with anger. But there was triumph in his expression, too.
“What is it?” Maggie repeated.
“They used to give us a trick question in medical school. I remember it because I got it wrong.”
“What was it?”
“What’s the only liquid that isn’t wet?”
“What’s the answer?”
Rob’s face was flushed with excitement. He now had something to go on.
“Mercury.”
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10
As the night creatures foraged beneath gentle moonlight in Manatee Forest, Robert Vern toiled intensely within his cabin, his face illuminated in an island of harsh white light from a kerosene lantern that stood on the kitchen table beside him. The thick stack of books that Victor Shusette had given him were slowly and grudgingly giving up their answers. For five continuous hours Rob had devoured one text after the other, feverishly jotting notes and checking cross-references, until now, at one o’clock in the morning, the enormity of what he had discovered began to take hold.
Maggie was in the loft, asleep; the pin-drop silence within the cabin accentuated the awesome clarity with which the discovery was unfolding.
An index at the back of a book on industrial poisons had supplied over a hundred symbols for chemical compounds containing mercury that were used in industry. One by one, Rob had set about narrowing them down. His own knowledge of chemistry was both an asset and a liability. Though it enabled him to understand the language, it prevented him from taking the direct route that someone more naive might have taken.
He knew that for a chemical to have such a profound effect on living organisms, the chemical itself had to contain living organisms. He therefore dismissed the laboratory-created synthetics and concen-
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trated on the biochemicals-the living cultures, made from mold, viruses and bacteria. But two hours of searching ended in frustration. After tracing each one of them down, he found that their uses were primarily pharmaceutical and agricultural. None of them had any possible application to the lumber industry.
Starting fresh, he began to work with the synthetics, the jViorganic chemical compounds, more commonly used in industry: the caustics and antiseptics used for hygenic purposes and to keep machinery parts clean. One among them began to stand out. It was called PMT. It was used for vegetation control, to keep algae from forming on machines such as oil rigs and sewer pumps that had to function under water. Rob recalled Isely’s telling him that if the logs soaked in water for too long, aglae formed on them, and this was undesirable. It was possible that they were using this or a similar compound in the ponds where they soaked their surplus logs, to keep them clean.
But it still didn’t make perfect sense. PMT was not organic. It was synthetic. Inorganic. Inorganic substances could only cause external harm, that of pollution. What Rob was looking for was something that could cause internal, biological chaos. He was looking for an organic substance.
Turning to a book on chemical analysis, he broke down the elements of PMT, and in so doing, found the key. PMT was the symbol for inorganic methyl-mercury. The “methyl” stood for methyl-nitrate. Methyl-nitrate, when ingested by a living organism, could turn organically viable as it was absorbed into the body. In other words, inorganic methyl-mercury could become an organic substance, the kind he was looking for.
Rob quickly drew a diagram to fix in his mind how the chemical chain-reaction worked. PMT is spilled into the water. The microscopic grains of mercury within it act like magnets with each other, each grain slowly finding another and collecting into small balls.
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The same magnetic attraction that draws the mercury together also collects plankton, the microscopic vegetable components of algae. Instead of fixing itself to the submerged logs, the algae grows on the small balls of mercury, which become heavy as they grow larger and sink down to the mud. The tadpoles, the minnows, the aquatic insects that eat algae, consume the green furry balls of mercury, and, as it goes through their bodies, it becomes organic. Those smaller creatures are eaten by larger ones. The concentration of methyl-mercury begins to escalate as it travels up the food chain. A single minnow will carry a minuscule amount of toxin in his body, a salmon will eat a thousand minnows. A bear with eat a thousand salmon. By the time the mercury has reached the top level of the food chain, the creatures that have ingested it are filled with toxin. Their waste products go into the ground, fertilizing the foliage that is eaten by the herbivores: the deer, the rabbits, the mice, the vermin. The entire environment becomes toxic.
But this was not all that Robert Vern was to discover on this night. He turned, finally, to a book called Legal Precedent with Regard to Industrial Decisions, which detailed case histories of the most catastrophic industrial accidents of the technological age. Listed in the table of contents was something called “MMT.” The symbol was different from PMT, but he quickly determined that the difference was only semantic, reflecting a change in the language of chemistry over the last twenty years. MMT and PMT were one and the same. Inorganic methyl-mercury.
What Rob found within the pages of this book made his blood run cold. The chapter on MMT was a detailed account, with photographs, of the most devastating industrial accident known to man. The pictures looked as if they might have been taken in a war zone: hospital photographs of maimed and disfigured people, deformed children, old men with glazed eyes and demented smiles. They were photographs taken in 1956, in Minamata, Japan. In that year, in
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that place, an entire community of one hundred thousand people had become diseased and disfigured and had died from methyl-mercury poisoning. A paper mill on the shores of Lake Minamata had been pumping methyl-mercury for fifty years into a watershed that was used as a source of drinking water for the entire population. Not one man, woman, or child had escaped its distastrous effects. When the symptoms first became evident, it had been called the “Drunk Sickness” or the “Grinning Sickness” or the “Cat Sickness,” so named because the population of pet cats, who ate only fish from the lake, were the first of the animal species to go insane and die.
It was discovered then and there that inorganic methyl-mercury, when converted by the digestive process to organic methyl-mercury, became a neurotoxin and a mutagen. As a neurotoxin, it attacked the brain cells, causing loss of sensation, disorientation, eventually paralysis and death. As a mutagen, it attacked the developing fetus. Unlike any other mutagen known to man, it had the capability of jumping the placental barrier, traveling through the blood-purifying organ which normally protected a developing fetus from impurities and poisons ingested by it’s mother. PMT actually concentrated in the fetal blood cells; a thirty-percent-higher concentration than in the blood cells of the mother. After extensive laboratory tests, methyl-mercury had been pronounced by scientists the most potent toxin to come of the post-World War II age. Its wide-scale use in industry was forever after outlawed by the World Court in The Hague, Holland.
The last page in the chapter was eloquent testimony to the power of PMT. It was a full-page photograph of a woman, crippled and bent, carrying in her arms, the body of a disfigured child.
Robert Vern closed the book and sat immobile in the silence of his cabin. He was too overwhelmed to move; numbed by the proportions of what he had uncovered. He struggled in his mind to get a grip on it, to somehow lock in the last pieces of understanding.
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The poison in Minamata had had fifty years to accumulate. Here, in the Manatee forest, the paper mill had been operating only for twenty.
Perhaps it could be stopped before it was too late. The unknown factor was the strength of the chemical used in Minamata compared with that used here. It was possible that fifty years could be shortened to half that time, if the strength of the chemical were doubled.
The last question that formulated in Rob’s mind was one that began to stir his emotions. How could they be using it here? How could they? Was it possible that they were ignorant of its effects? Was it possible that the change in chemical language that now labeled it PMT instead of MMT, made them think that it was not the same? Or did it give them an excuse, a reason to plead innocence.
How could they? his inner voice repeated. How COULD they? In a sudden explosion of rage, Rob smashed his fist down on the table, causing everything on it to jump. He rose quickly and threw open the cabin door, stalking out into the night. There he stood with fists clenched, gazing helplessly at the stars.
“Rob … ?”
He turned and saw Maggie descending from the loft in her nightgown. Her eyes were frightened as she came and stood in the open doorway.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Inorganic methyl-mercury,” Rob said on a trembling breath. “PMT. It’s a de-sliming agent. It collects algae and keeps it off the logs. That’s what they soak the logs in.”
He could see that she did not understand. “It’s a neurotoxin. In 1956 it wiped out a community of a hundred thousand people in Minamata, Japan.”
Maggie absorbed his words with confusion. “Why would they use it here?”
“Because it’s cheap and effective. Isn’t that what Isely said? They’re proud of their efficiency?” Rob was beginning to tremble with rage.
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“You’re sure of this?”
“The Indians eat the fish and behave like they’re drunk when they haven’t had a drop of liquor. Isn’t that what Hawks said? People think the Indians are drunk? ‘My people are fishermen.’-isn’t that what he said? In Minamata it was called the drunk sickness!” With his breathing accelerating, Rob began to pace, frustrated that there was no outlet for his rage. “A raccoon turns vicious and dies, its brain has turned to mush! A cat, the same! The forest ranger’s cat that ate fish? He told us that! And that old man. That Indian. Did you see the burns on his fingers?”
“That’s from mercury?”
“It’s from cigarettes! The reason he didn’t feel it is mercury. He has no feeling in his hands! He eats what comes out of that pond! It’s a chemical-soaking pond! That’s why there was a tadpole the size of what a frog should be!”
“The mercury did that?”
“The mercury did that! It’s a mutagen! And for twenty years it’s been spilling into this water!”
“A mutagen …”
“It’s a disaster, Maggie!!”
Maggie moved onto the porch, her expression becoming fearful as she watched Rob pace in front of her. “You man … it mutates … ?”
“It mutates. And how, it mutates. It’s the only mutagen that jumps the placental barrier. It concentrates in the fetal blood cells thirty percent higher than-”
“Rob,” she said softly, “I want to understand this …”
“You want to understand it? J want to understand it! I want to know why the hell it’s being used here!”
“It’s in the fish. Is that it?”
“Anything that eats the plankton. Anything that eats the algae. Anything that eats anything that eats the algae! That means everything!”
Maggie tried to keep her voice calm and not betray
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er fear. “What does it mean … jumps the placental barrier?”
“It adheres to the chromosomes just like it adheres to the algae-”
“I’m not understanding you. What does it mean?”
“Freakism!” he shouted. “Freakism!”
Maggie recoiled, as though hit with a body blow.
“That’s what’s going on out there!” Rob raged. “That’s why there was a goddamn salmon five feet long! You thought I didn’t see it? I saw it! Why the hell didn’t I know?”
Maggie felt a sudden pang of nausea and closed her eyes, trying to keep herself from crumbling.
“And stillbirths!”
“What?” Maggie gasped.
“That’s what that Indian woman said. Stillbirths. And deformed children. Grotesquely deformed children. Children that looked like animals, she said! And God knows what else is going on out there!”
Maggie felt herself trembling in every fiber, her mind beginning to spin. But she clung hard to reality, needing to be strong, needing to know more. “So if a pregnant … animal ate the fish it could …”