I nodded again, solemnly this time. “I’d thought of two dozen, but you would have a better idea about that than I would.”
“Indeed, I would.” The subordinates he’d mentioned by name nodded or raised hands to indicate they would go along with him. Catford moved to the front of the room and joined me beside the holodisplay. “Well, we have the people we need.”
Gypsy shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sam, but he does have the experience that would give him an edge here.”
“I know, and I just want this to work.”
“It will.” Catford grinned broadly and his lieutenants returned that smile with confidence. “So, which of these purification plants are we hitting?”
“We’re not.”
“What?” Catford looked at me angrily. “But after all you said…”
“Oh, water is very important, Major, in two ways. It comes in to the house and it goes out. Where it goes out, is where we go in.”
Needless to say, Catford’s face flushed—no pun intended—as the reality of what he’d volunteered for came to him. Others in the room were kind enough not to laugh, though smiles did occur when they recalled I said the job stunk. Catford, having claimed the glory of the assignment, and having avowed he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, was stuck.
He had to—no, I’ll resist that pun—fish or cut bait and he decided to fish. This was good, because I really did need his people to carry the whole thing off.
Two days later, after a day and a half of torrential rains, we put the operation into effect. When Manville’s downtown district had been created, the Broad River was channeled rather tightly within levees hidden by parks and walkways. Buried deep in the earth, paralleling the river, were massive storm sewers that handled all the runoff. According to the guidefiles I’d gotten at the store, and the wonderful tour of the storm sewers offered by Manville Public Service, during the storm season the sewers would actually carry more water than the river, and all of it had to flow to the water treatment plants before it could be allowed to run back into the river itself.
The water treatment plants had several holding basins to deal with this excess water. Massive pipes would channel it into these effluent lakes, where it would wait until it could be processed through the plants. Our operation demanded that the sluice gates that would pour the water back into the plant be blown open, and that the anti-reflux valves in the plant itself likewise be jammed open.
Catford and his commandos, working by the light of lightning, accomplished these goals at 2A .M. on the sixth. What this resulted in was an incredible pressure wave where millions of metric tons of water flowed back into the city’s sewer system. When you have ten-meter diameter pipes flowing at capacity, and their load is transferred to pipes running into homes—with their pipes being thirty centimeters in diameter—the result is rather spectacular.
Lucky homeowners on the west side of the city had old pipes that burst somewhere in their yards. Water boiled and bubbled, churning turf and mud into a stinking swamp that, a year later, would actually result in a pretty good lawn. Apartment dwellers were similarly fortunate if the pipes burst in their building’s basement.
But the unfortunate—and there were many of them according to news stories—were those people who had good pipes and, for whatever reason, happened to be enjoying a bath or a moment of solitude when the wave hit. Raw sewage geysered into homes, staining ceilings in cases where the flow was unimpeded. It filled tubs to overflowing, backed into dishwashers, dripped from sinks into kitchens, basements and vanities.
In a couple of places the larger street pipes burst, creating instant sinkholes that sucked down parked hovercars and left fetid lakes slowly creeping along the streets. In some places a drenched and irate citizenry raised the alarm immediately, while others were left to awaken to peculiar smells and woefully soggy carpeting.
And the toll on businesses, especially in the lowest areas of the city, was equally devastating. Schools were closed on the west side and Count Germayne appeared on Tri-Vid to ask that anyone who did not need to leave their homes just stay there while the city cleaned up. While his reasoning was sound, no one wanted to linger in a cesspit of a house, especially when anything that went into one sink just bubbled back up into a tub or the basement. The citizens started burning from the start, especially when the richer folks located in the hills were reported to have escaped disaster.
Aldrington Emblyn swung into action immediately, which was great. One of his subsidiary firms was a housecleaning concern that had grown out of the staff he had for his hotels. The company, NextToGodliness LLC, offered an immediate Good Neighbor discount of ninety percent, and hired people to expand the workforce. He also brought folks who had been flooded out of their homes into empty rooms in his hotels, which likewise endeared him to the populace.
The Germayne government countered by opening a variety of municipal garages and hangars where folks could camp out in donated blankets, sleeping bags and cots. Emblyn raised that bid by donating more blankets, pillows and spare beds. The Germaynes suffered an additional setback when vehicles they parked on the street to open a garage got swallowed up in a sewage swamp.
The local Tri-Vid media compounded our victory with their profiles that showed Germayne officials being inept. At first the disaster was explained away as a catastrophic failure of the restraining dikes. The rush of water just tore the blown gates away and erased all signs of our blasting. It wasn’t until two days after the event that they found the doors and then started to claim it was a deliberate act of sabotage. Once they made that claim, all manner of hoots and tweets floated to the surface declaring that there had been a cover-up and that evidence had been faked, which covered our trail better than I could have hoped.
On the domestic front, Catford was left in a quandary. Everyone congratulated him for pulling the job off, and I gave him the lion’s share of the credit. He knew he couldn’t trust me, but I was quite sincere, so that confused him and, I’m sure, made him even more determined to get rid of me. He’d have to wait, though, until one of my plans failed.
Putting myself in Catford’s shoes—soggy as they were—I figured out that if one of my plans did not fail on its own, he’d make sure to tank one. This meant I had to make sure he had enough to do that pleased him, that he stayed his hand. I also realized he’d now be trying to come up with operations that would continue doing what I was doing, so I’d have to be fighting him on that front. I was pretty sure I could stay out in front of him per se, but he had a brain trust to be bouncing things off and I didn’t. Could be one of them would come up with a good idea and I’d have to scramble.
The success of the attack did win a lot of converts to LIT. Some were thoughtful in their analysis and insights, clearly cadging for future work, whereas others simply said, “That was good.” Catford’s attempts to paint me as someone stupid simply failed. I still didn’t have the full confidence of those I had to work with, but they’d be willing to listen in the future, which was important. If I could offer them plans that would let them get paid without getting killed, they’d go along and I could minimize collateral damage.
Gypsy had been very generous in his praise for the effort, but on the seventh he surprised me by handing me a three-thousand-stone bonus in its C-bill equivalent. “Our master was pleased with your effort. He sent this money to you to express his pleasure.”
I fanned the bills. “How much did you skim?”