While the heavy iron was moving, Imran Bell was conducting an ecological audit of the basin’s southern outer edge from his console in Harrowby. Through the high-resolution clockwork image feed relayed from Pella’s message slate, Imran had identified dozens of burrowing water-shrew colonies and nesting marsh herons along the willow dikes.
‘Pella, don’t let the drag-shovels cut the southern willow bank,’ Imran warned through the audio link. ‘Those willows are stabilizing the toe of the levee with their root systems. If you dig them out, the bank will wash into the channel under twenty pounds of head. More importantly, there are forty breeding pairs of water-shrews nesting in the turf. They keep the mosquito grubs out of the drinking water tanks.’
Pella right away rerouted the shovel gangs, assigning young Tavi and six boys from the boat ramp to mark a four-acre protected safe hall along the willow fringe. Working with wicker baskets lined with dry moss, the boys carefully relocated forty-two nests beyond the new dike line, moving the animals into the high reed beds before the earthmovers arrived.
‘Some folks would say it’s foolishness to worry about river shrews when forty thousand people are at risk,’ Sister Merrow remarked. She handed Tavi a cup of hot broth. ‘But your father always said that a man who tears up the marsh without looking at the birds will wake up to find his drinking water tastes of rot. The river belongs to the shrews as much as to the Senate.’
