IV
Nika had an enormous amount of work. She'd cleared one large table in the middle of the laboratory, and on it, with Ivan and Denis, she was studying sketches she'd hastily drawn on a piece of paper. She was explaining:
"Here we have running water, and that should be used somehow, to bring water to the distant tubs with the seedlings."
"How fast is the water and how deep is the stream?" Ivan asked, staring at the sketch.
"It seems quite fast, and at this end," Nika pointed her finger on the sketch, "it forms a little lake that then flows out through a crack in the rock."
"We could put pumps there to draw the water from the little lake into the system," Ivan said pensively. He looked at Nika. "Can we run power there?"
"I saw cables hanging freely above the entrance, actually…" Nika stepped back from the table. She meant to head toward the cave. "Better I show you."
Before she could step away from the table, a little group of people approached them. Nika looked at them, confused. Finally, a freckled young man with strikingly yellow hair thrust out his chest and introduced himself:
"I'm Goran, and I've been chosen as the spokesman of the scientists' guild. You're Nika and one of the members of the triumvirate?" he asked, looking at Nika.
Nika confirmed with a nod, momentarily confused by the people gathered around her. Goran continued: "As a guild, we completely agree with your idea of hydroponics."
Many heads nodded in confirmation. "We're at your disposal to start working as soon as possible."
Nika studied the people gathered around her. They all seemed ready and interested.
"Excellent, then join us on the tour and feel free to offer your opinion or idea on how to get the project started as soon as possible."
She led them all into the cave with the running water. She stopped at the entrance.
"As you can see, a hole for infrastructure has been drilled in the rock." She pointed at a few hanging cables emerging from the opening above the entrance.
Ivan straightened to examine the hole and the cables, then announced:
"It seems there's enough room to run a set of pipes through it to the laboratory."
"And the power installations seem perfectly fine, even the ends are insulated," Denis added, holding the free end of a cable in his hand.
Ivan studied the stone floor, then the gray rock of the walls.
He crouched and ran a hand over the stone, while gauging with his eyes the distance between the entrance and the stream that cut through the cave some hundred meters ahead of him.
He rose, clapped his hands to clean the stone dust off them, and gloomily announced:
"It'll take hundreds of meters of pipe to connect it all into a system. I'm not sure the shelter has that much material."
"And the warehouses?" Denis asked.
"Maybe something will turn up, but I don't think it'll be enough." Ivan shook his head. "Someone mentioned that two floors are food warehouses, and the third is agricultural material."
Someone spoke up from the gathered group of people:
"Why not use rubber hoses? That could help with transporting the water, and their practical uses are enormous."
"Hmm…" Ivan agreed: "That would be quite all right, and those hoses are very long, so the water supply would be eased. Young seedlings need a lot of water. I'm not sure, though, about that aquaponics of yours that you plan to feed the shelter with."
"To set up an aquaponic farm we only need pools or tubs in a row. But that system is planned for later construction, and we planned it before we found the mineral-rich stream. For now we should concentrate on setting up the irrigation system and running power, as well as the UV lighting,
" Nika presented the project plan as she walked.
"Power's no problem, I see the cables are laid on the walls, and if there's basic supply, there'll be the option for normal lighting or UV lamps. The cables are of quite sufficient thickness." Denis pointed at the power installations around them.
"All right," Nika said brightly. "So how much time do you need to start the installations?" she asked the two of them.
They looked at each other and headed toward the stream, followed by the group of people murmuring, fascinated by the cave. Reaching the small stream and examining the uninterrupted flow of water, as well as the little lake by the rocky wall, Ivan studied the depth of the half-dark cave before him.
"How deep is that?" He turned to Nika.
"I'm not sure, it goes hundreds of meters in a semicircle and at the end joins the system of the other cave that ends at the clinic. I mean just the main part. On the sides I noticed niches and recesses, and maybe whole caves I didn't explore. By all appearances, it could be a whole complex,
" Nika explained.
Ivan nodded and turned to Denis.
"Coming with me? This has to be examined."
Denis nodded in confirmation, and Ivan looked at Nika.
"You asked about the setup time." Nika nodded. He continued: "I can't tell you for certain now how much time we need. The setup itself isn't time-consuming, hauling the hoses and equipment is. And we don't even know yet whether we have rubber hoses in the warehouses."
"There are plenty of hoses," Nick spoke up, having arrived a while ago but until then not deeming it worth interrupting their planning. "I've just come from the warehouse, and in passing I saw piles of coiled hoses on the shelves. It should be more than enough."
Ivan nodded, pleased with the information, and continued:
"As I said, hauling the equipment will take the most time. Setting up the system is done in sixteen hours at most."
"Well then why not put dozens of people to work helping you? Right now we have plenty of people who don't know what to do with their time and stand around idle," Nika suggested.
Denis and Ivan looked at each other in slight discomfort. Finally Denis spoke up:
"Look, we talked about it and we're not sure of our authority. We're just grunts, as they say, and we've noticed there are relatively few of us in the shelter's population. Our so-called guild numbers only seven members. And we were at the meeting only because you demanded a maintenance guild."
Nick looked at them in disbelief.
"And so what? What are you getting at?"
Denis answered him calmly:
"We're not sure how to approach people and tell them they're expected to be cleaners or plumbers. Especially since most people are from the university and…" He grew uncomfortable and fell silent.
Nick looked at him reproachfully, then asked: "You go to university, if I remember, engineering?"
"Yes, but it's not going all that well, I've failed the first year twice in a row. I install electrics to pay for the exams, which I fail again because I have no time to study." He blushed.
"Okay, and at this moment, are you finding your knowledge of electricity and power lines useful?" Nick asked him.
"Electricity, of course." Denis smiled awkwardly.
"Well, if it weren't for you with your knowledge of electricity, or Ivan with his knowledge of plumbing, this task would be much harder for us. Wouldn't it?" Nick looked at him.
"Well, it probably would," Denis agreed with the statement.
"If you, as a man who at this moment is here with us and knows more than any of us about power cables, asked for help in getting something working that will help all of us, do you think I'd refuse you because I consider myself better educated than you?"
Many of the gathered heads nodded in confirmation, which somewhat emboldened Denis. He looked at Ivan, who agreed with a shrug.
"Well, I believe they'd help if I asked."
Nick then looked at the gathered people and decided to set a precedent. He took the radio out of his pack.
"A radio like this was given to everyone essential to the shelter's functioning. In the shelter, a person with a radio is, let's say, special. At this moment I consider Ivan and Denis more important than me in the shelter."
He looked at the gathered, who nodded in confirmation.
"So, I hand my radio to the two of them so they can use all the possible privileges that people with radios have." He held the radio out to Denis.
Denis looked a little taken aback, but took the radio.
Someone applauded, and soon the others joined in.
The cave system, which until then had known only the sound of flowing water, now filled with the sound of applause and the odd positive whistle.
Nick then pulled Denis aside to explain how the radio worked, while Nika, impressed by Nick's gesture, turned to Ivan.
"There, you heard it, now you won't have problems recruiting people. How much time do you need?"
Ivan thought, then answered her: "If we have about fifty people in transport and another twenty or so in the setup, the irrigation system could be ready in 48 hours."
"Excellent," Nika was delighted. Then she turned to the gathered people. "You say scientists' guild. How many botanists are there?"
Two girls raised their hands. Nika looked at them.
"Okay, you two are my foremen and in charge of equipping the space for seeds and seedlings."
The girls nodded silently. Nika turned to the people again.
"Who's in the research branches?" Almost everyone raised their hands.
Nika was a little thrown, and then Goran spoke up:
"Almost all of us are from the Faculty of Science. Mostly the mathematical or theoretical-research track."
Nika saw no practical use in people used to working only with formulas.
She needed scientists capable of operating a laboratory, because she herself couldn't, and didn't even know how most of the equipment worked.
That's the bane of science. Most people focus on formulas and theoretical problems, while actually a very small percentage of them have practical knowledge of the branches of science she now needed. So she reformulated the question:
"Who has practical knowledge of the laboratory equipment we have?"
Only one hand in the air. Goran's. Nika sighed, better something than nothing.
"Goran, your task is to train people to work in the lab. We urgently need people able to at least somewhat operate the laboratory equipment."