Chapter 10 - Conclusions Reached
At the Forest Preserve headquarters, a spirited debate was occurring amongst the gathered Board members. At issue was accepting the highest bid on the West Sector shops or holding out for a better offer.
The fact that the Board had an odd number of members guaranteed once a vote was taken, there would be a decisive outcome. Knowing this caused both sides to dig in their heels even more so than usual. Clare Moll, a high school social studies teacher, spoke first.
"We should just take what we can get. We're not going to get any other offers!"
"How do you know that?" retorted Brad Campbell, a local businessman. "The bidding is open for another two weeks!"
"The high bidder is threatening to lower their bid unless we accept" countered Clare.
"That's illegal!" spluttered Abby Sullivan, an attorney with a local practice. "They knew when the bid was submitted that excepting of clerical errors, no modifications were permitted. They signed on the dotted line!"
Kent Clarkson, a Forest Ranger and Ranger Policeman for twenty-five years before retiring, spoke up.
"We lose nothing by waiting, what's the hurry to seal this deal? The law is clearly on our side."
Hernando Sanchez, banker, pointed out that "If we close early, we'll have more time to begin rehabilitation of existing properties with the money we receive, whatever that amount is. We may be able to finish the reconstruction early and under-budget. The community always likes that."
"Yeah, and you'll be sued by anyone who was wanting to bid after we close but before the actual closing date that we specified" snapped Abby. "We're obligated to keep that posting open until the set close date. There's really not a discussion to be had here."
Kim Park and Shaunda Harris didn't say anything. As two of the three newest members of the board, with the least experience in matters both business and finance, they generally kept their mouths shut. They were surprised at Clare's outspokenness on this issue (the three of them were all newly-elected).
The fight over the tax levy had caused everyone to be on edge. Anything seemed to be pretext for a full-throttle debate these days. Though things rarely reached any level of incivility, the frequency of lengthy debates had risen sharply, much to the Board's dismay. Kent Clarkson and Hernando Sanchez were fully in favor of restoring the property-tax levy. Park, Harris and Moll all came in as anti-levy, though only Moll actually campaigned against the levy. Since then, Moll and Harris had softened their opposition in exchange for a discussion of reducing various fees charged to Forest Preserve users (boat rental, permits, camping).
Dr. Arnold Ross was busy analyzing the "sampLOLZ" he'd taken. He labeled them as such to both avoid suspicion (he always gave his samples weird names-no one then touched then) and remind himself what these samples were from. Culturing the cheek cells was tricky as they did not want to seem to grow on standard agar plates. Ross only had a limited number of the cells to start, and he wished to avoid going back to get more samples.
Analysis of the blood samples provided far more immediate results. The red-cell concentration was very high-almost 8 million per micro-liter of blood (by comparison, human females have 4-5 million per micro-liter). However, many of these cells contained a surprisingly low amount of hemoglobin compared to humans. Perhaps this was a figment of the alien's physiology, but it seemed remarkably inefficient to have many red blood cells with low hemoglobin content rather than fewer cells with a richer supply of hemoglobin.
This alien, Neytiri, had reported (and Dr. Ross had observed) tiredness, shortness of breath and muscle weakness. She seemed to be winded very easily, but did not look unfit. She'd also mentioned that she felt heavy, clumsy and uncoordinated. It would be easy to blame whatever event brought her to Earth for this, except that was weeks ago! Dr. Ross had not seen "Avatar" but now found himself sucked into a world he thought was entirely fictional. Fictional, except for the ten-foot blue woman who he had been asked to treat.
At first, Dr. Ross had been confused. These "Na'vi" had much more in common (at least on the surface) with humans than animals. Why did they not try to find a doctor of human medicine? Team Neytiri (Sarah, Steven and Lauren) responded that human doctors would have tried to pile on all sorts of "human" treatments which weren't known to be compatible with Na'vi physiology. Further, if they ever had to go see such a doctor at his or her office, it might cause a problem in the waiting room. A veterinary practice usually had far fewer people waiting around than Spirit of Her Holy Grace Hospital. Fewer people to avoid. It would also be easier to sneak Neytiri into the "large animal" treatment bay than to try to clear out the ER or "large patient handling room" at Grace Hospital.
Based on reading the (now questionably) fictional Pandorapedia, Ross noted that the gravity on this moon was lower than Earth's, 80% of it in fact. If a life-form was exposed to a higher-gravity environment than it was used to living in, at some point the life-form should begin adjusting in certain ways. For example, increased muscle mass would be expected since the daily task of moving was suddenly made more difficult. It would be akin to wearing arm and ankle weights 24/7. Though nothing was written about the exact levels of oxygen in Pandora's air, Ross inferred it might be higher than Earth's. If this was true, it would explain the high red-cell counts. Similar to people who trained at high altitudes for marathons, Neytiri might be experiencing an oxygen shortage. If that was true, then she would require greater quantities of hemoglobin, which came from iron.
Most of the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. If all these assumptions were true, Neytiri was weak because of the high gravity and insufficient iron in her diet to compensate for the thinner air. Iron supplements would fix this! Ross placed an order for high-concentration prescription-grade iron supplements.
ZZZZZZZZT! A paper slid out of the printer. Ross thought nothing of it. All orders were recorded both to the computer's hard drive (PDF) and printed out as a hard-copy.