The southern river delta was drowning in its own poisoned reflections.
The air-powered express carriage had hurtled south through the underground transit tube at eighty miles an hour.
Inside the car, Sister Teresa had spent the entire journey sterilizing her testing equipment, her hands moving with fierce, rhythmic care.
Giles and Toby had unrolled the complete high-pressure maps of the Southern Basin across the central table, calculating the water-pressure head at every pumping station.
“The southern delta is forty feet below the high-tide level of the Great Marsh,” Giles had explained, his pencil tapping the contour lines.
“The only thing that keeps that swamp from drowning four provinces is the balance between our drainage pumps and the gravity outfalls.
When the rift shifted the gravity slope, the marsh water found the lowest pressure point and siphoned straight into the town wells.”
“A sin of complacency,” Teresa had muttered, her eyes flashing.
