The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [14]
"It means I couldn't take the chance that they really did want you arrested for your own safety," said Ngoyi. "If a UN Weapons Inspector died in Kinshasa, that would throw the hand grenade well and truly in the muck spreader for the police chiefs, after all."
"I take it some of them are the men who originally installed the containers. If so, they know very well full amnesties are available for war crimes —"
Ngoyi shook his head. "Not for crimes committed after the war."
Mativi was alarmed. "After?"
"They've been using the machines as execution devices," said Ngoyi. "No mess, no body, no incriminating evidence. And they work, too. The bacheques are terrified of them, will do anything to avoid being killed that way. They think they're the homes of demons."
"They're not far wrong," muttered Mativi.
"— and then there are the undertakers," continued Ngoyi. "They've been using the machines for mass burials. Otherwise the bodies would just have piled up in the streets in the epidemics. And the domestic waste trucks, about five of them stop there several times a week and dump stuff in through the skylights. And my own trucks —" "Your own trucks?" "Yes. Three times a week, sometimes four or five." Ngoyi returned Mativi's accusing stare. "Oh, sure, the UN gives us geiger counters and that bacterial foam that fixes fallout, and the special vehicles for sucking up the fixed material and casting it into lead glass bricks —"
"Which you're supposed to then arrange for disposal by the IAEA by burial underground in the Devil's Brickyard in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica," finished Mativi. "Only you haven't been doing that, have you? You thought you'd cut a few corners."
"The UN gives us a budget of only five million a year!" complained Ngoyi. "And by the time that reaches us, it has, by the magic of African mathematics, become half a million. Have you any idea what it costs to ship a single kilo of hazardous waste to Antarctica?"
"That's what you're supposed to do," repeated Mativi, staring up the barrel of the gun, which somehow did not matter quite so much now.
"We were talking astrophysics in the Bar B Doll only the other night. You told me then that once something crosses the Event Horizon, it never comes out!" said the civil servant, mortified. "You promised!"
"That's absolutely correct," said Mativi. "Absolutely, totally and utterly correct."
"Then," said Ngoyi, his face brightening insanely, "then there is no problem. We can throw as much stuff in as we want to."
"Each one of those containers," said Mativi, "is designed to hold a magnetically charged object that weighs more than ten battleships. Hence the reinforced concrete floor, hence the magnetized metal casing that attracts every bit of ferrous metal in the room. Now, what do you think is going to happen if you keep piling in extra uncharged mass? Nothing that crosses the Event Horizon comes out, Jean. Nothing. Ever. Including you, including me, including Makemba and Kimbareta and little Laurent."
Ngoyi's face fell. Then, momentarily, it rose again.
"But our stuff is only a few hundred kilos a week," he began. "Much less than what the domestic waste people put in."
"I feel better already. You're not going to be personally responsible for getting the whole planet sucked into oblivion, it's going to be some other guy-"
"The sewage outlet, mind you," continued Mativi. "That must be pumping in a good thousand litres a day."
Mativi's jaw dropped.
"Sewage outlet?"
"Sure. The sanitation guys rerouted the main waste pipe for the city as a temporary measure. They have to keep replacing the last few metres - the machine keeps eating the pipe." Ngoyi shrugged. "How else do you think they keep five million people's shit out of the drinking water?"
"Jean-Baptiste, you people have to stop this. You have to stop it now. You have absolutely no idea what you're doing."
The gun was still pointing at the centre of Mativi's chest; now, just for a moment, it stopped wavering and hit dead centre.
"I know exactly what I'm doing. I