“That’s right, and what’re you doing with it?”
“I’m, um, you know, gonna pour it into the other bottle.”
“How much of it?”
The kid bit his lip, looked over at the screen. “Fifty milliliters.” With the care of a boy making a boomer, Mac poured the solution into an opaque bottle, breathed out.
“Now?”
“It says to cap it—with this?”
“That’s right.”
“He’s so patient,” Myata murmured as Rosalind nudged the boy to what looked to Eve like a tea bag.
“Talk us through it, Mac.”
“Okay, um, I’m opening the tea bag, and taking the stuff—”
“What stuff?”
“The, you know, tea stuff.”
“Leaves.”
“Tea leaves out of it. Then I need to put the, um, the po—po—”
“Read it on screen.”
“Yeah, um, the potassium iodide into the empty bag.”
“How much?”
“Um, a quarter tablespoon.”
“Measure it out.”
Eve figured she’d have wanted to stun herself by this time, but Rosalind stood, at his ease, as the boy painstakingly measured, added.
“Now I gotta, um, tie it closed, but there has to be enough of the string thing to hang over the lip of the bottle. Right?”
“Exactly right. Do that.”
He might have been tying a couple of poisonous snakes together, but Mac finally managed it.
“Do I go ahead and open the bottle now?”
“That’s right. Make sure you point the bottle away—safety first, right, Mac?”
With his teeth digging into his bottom lip, the kid angled the bottle away, uncapped it. Spotting the women at the door, Rosalind winked.
“Final step, Mac.”
“I gotta put the tea bag with the potassium iodide in the bottle with the peroxide.”
“Slowly.”
Glaciers moved faster, Eve figured.