Are You Haunted (part fifty-one)

Are You Haunted

(part fifty-one)

He shivered in his undershirt, hugging himself as though he’d been caught outside half-dressed in midwinter. He knew outside it was warm. He was thirsty and unwilling to move. He was hungry, and there was no help for that. But there was water. He might be too far lost to find it again.

He asked: “Did they figure out what caused the accident?”

“You, I suppose, knew nothing of the first war. All that was over, and you had not been born. My country was prohibited, in the days when I began my work, from trade in certain commodities, and the manufacture of certain materials. The great interest was in discovering, therefore, some ersatz formula, for fuels, medicines, every sort of industrial use. The Americans eventually became interested in this, too. I was not so much trying to escape. I did not believe I was in danger. However…”

The darkness seemed to render him lucid, comforted, perhaps, as Powell had always been, in a dark place away from noise and discovery.

“My work to me had taken on the quality of a cloistered life, if you see. I came to this country, and my days were spent no differently. I saw few people outside the lab. The purpose of the work existed only in terms of abstraction. But you cannot escape. Even if you are only an ersatz fugitive.”

“Did they find out…?” Powell tried again. If he never understood the chemist’s meaning, it would make not much difference. It was enough in these last hours to hear another human voice.

“Dust.”

After a moment, Rohdl added, “Well, I oversimplify. The day-to-day production had filled the ductwork with dust, as the production was the finishing of cloth to make it waterproof. This involved a sanding of the surface, so that the treatment would attach uniformly. I believe that following the explosion people began to say we had built bombs, but no, the mill produced for the military these same goods, the treated cloth. The authorities were pleased to have a rumor easily dispelled. That would give the impression that nothing else was to be learned.

“The laboratory was built under the guise of a warehouse. The loading dock, and the area used for storage of both the mill’s materials and our own, was between the two buildings, connecting them. The fire was not inside, but on the dock itself, and the steel doors had been closed. Drybrook ordered the ventilation system shut off, to keep oxygen from fueling the fire. But when he believed the fire had been extinguished, he gave an order to turn it back on, to clear the smoke. And so the chemical stores were breached from the opposite side, by the ignition of the dust.

“Now you see how I became an apostate to my old religion. It was no use to say I had nothing to do with killing, that my work might save lives, and therefore my choice was rational. Fate is not rational, but she turns the card, and so you have what you are given.”

50

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part one)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)