Slow River

Chapter 15

Common decency. I pushed my way out of the floor office and began to run. It was difficult to breathe in the hot, humid air by the water, and by the time I reached the readout station, I was gasping. I ran from trough to trough. No Paolo.

I stopped a moment. Think. I had to think. How would he be feeling? What did he know about the plant? Where would he go?

“Sabotage? How could someone sabotage this place?”

“Any number of ways, but the best place would be right at the beginning… ”

The influent. I ran.

There are times when the brain can’t deal with what it sees, so part of it sits back and the rest looks closely at some irrelevant piece of information. I noted that the concrete under my feet was shuddering with the weight of water coursing beneath it; that when the huge trap in the floor was pulled back the air not only hissed and roared with the exposed flow, but that it tasted different.

And why, I wondered, were people who were about to kill themselves so compulsively neat?

Paolo’s skinny was beautifully folded, collar top-and-forward the way shirts are sold in their cellophane packages. I had never been able to fold clothes like that. His limbs were piled just as neatly next to the skinny, all except one arm, which lay on its own to the side. I wondered idly how he had managed to take off that last arm, the right, I think. I supposed the designers had worked out a simple push-and-twist method.

Paolo was belly-down at the corner of the open trap, torso balanced over the chasm, lowering his throat toward the buzz razor jammed into the space between cover and floor.

“Don’t,” I said. Don’t, because it will please Hepple; because it will make a mess and I’ll have to clean it up. Don’t, because you won’t be able to change your mind later; because if you do, oh, I’ll feel guilty, so guilty, and I won’t, ever, be able to make it up to you…

He couldn’t hear me, of course, but he saw me, saw my lips, and his muscles knotted long enough to hold his upper body away from the humming blade, a few inches above the point where he would fall, and I moved gently, not too quickly, and lifted the slippery, ugly razor free. I flicked it off. The muscles over his ribs were tight and absolutely still. He hung in the balance. I didn’t think I could hold him up if he started to fall.

“Don’t move,” I said. “Don’t move.” I put the razor down carefully, not wanting to make a sudden move, a noise that might startle him out of his stasis. His skin gleamed with sweat. I knelt, braced one hand on the floor, and slid the other around his waist. If he wanted to, he could throw us both off, and we’d be sucked away in seconds and drowned, if we weren’t crushed first. He doesn’t know you’re a van de Oest, I told myself. I could feel him trembling.

I heaved him away from the edge.

He lay on his back, limbless, staring at the ceiling. I had the urge to apologize.

I got up and hit the stud that closed up the floor. I could hear his harsh breathing. I picked up the pile of limbs, carried them to his side. “Which one do you want first, right or left?”

“Right.”

We were both very matter-of-fact. There was no other way to be. I reconnected the prosthesis to his right shoulder, then turned away politely while he snapped on the other arm and then the legs. When he had put his skinny back on, I squatted down beside him and handed him the razor. He slipped it under his left cuff with a practiced motion. Carrying a razor was a habit. I wondered how I would have felt, before, if I’d known that.

His eyes were brown, opaque. “You shouldn’t have stopped me.”

“Why?”

For a moment I thought he would not bother to answer. Then he looked at me for a long time, and asked, “Who am I?”

“Paolo Cruz.”

“No. I’m nobody, a nothing.” So bitter. “The only person who cares that I exist is my brother. He brought us, me and my sister, here from Venezuela, to lobby for our rights. But my sister died, and no one will listen to me or my brother. ‘It was all settled long ago,’ the courts say. They’ve given us nothing. Except these plastic arms and legs. And maybe that’s all me and people like me are worth.”

No, I wanted to say. But why should he believe me? Who had there ever been to tell him any different?

“To the courts and the medical industry, to those rich people who caused all this in the first place, I’m one of the disposable masses. Not even wholly human.” He thrust his arm at me. “Feel that.”

“Feel it!”

It was soft and warm and dry. Pleasant.

“Just once, I thought, just once I wanted to be someone to those people, those Hepples and van de Oests. If I killed myself here, if my body fell into the water, they would have to turn everything off. They’d lose money. They would know who I was, me, Paolo Cruz, the man made of plastic.”

I did not know how to tell him that all his death would have accomplished was a minor inconvenience to this shift: his corpse would have been caught on the sieves, easily fished out, and the blood would only have provided more food for the microbes. Unless, of course, he’d thrown in his prostheses, which might have been tough enough to foul the machinery.

We were quiet for a while, then I stood up. “Are you coming back to work? Maybe Magyar will find a way to get your job back.”

“No. I don’t want to be a nobody in this place anymore.”

“But with what I’m teaching you, you could…” I shut up. I could not give him self-esteem. That was something he had to find for himself.

“What will you do?”

“I’ll think of something.” He smiled humorlessly, walked over to the doorway marked Emergency Exit, and opened it. Alarms rang. “I hope Hepple thinks all the pipes have burst.”

He left without a backward glance. After a moment, I closed the door behind him. The alarms shut off abruptly.

When I got back to the troughs, I found it had only been twenty minutes since I had gone with Magyar to Hepple’s office. I went about my work mechanically.

Magyar appeared. She was hushed. “Who used that door?” She looked around. “Cruz?”

“He’s gone.”

She swore. “And I got him his job back, too.”

“I told him you would.” Though I hadn’t believed it. “How did you manage it?”

“I put myself on the line, just confronting Hepple.” She was trying to explain something. “I took a few risks. I put you on the line, too.”

I suddenly felt very tired. “What have you done?”

“I told him he couldn’t fire Cruz on such shaky grounds, especially since a government employee had witnessed the whole affair.”

“You told him—”

Magyar’s eyes gleamed. “I didn’t actually say anything straight out, just hinted around. And then he said something about you spouting regulations at him, and got thoughtful. Then he said that, yes, maybe he had been hasty, and the downsizing would have to be looked at carefully and systematically. So Paolo is back in. Or would have been. And Hepple thinks we’ve got his balls in a press, so everything’s back to normal.”

It wasn’t. It never would be, not when I kept seeing that slack, empty look in Paolo’s eyes, hearing him say I am nothing.

“What’s the matter? I mean, I didn’t expect handsprings, but thanks wouldn’t be out of order. Or are you just upset that I told Hepple you weren’t quite who you seem to be? Which is something we still haven’t cleared up.”

“I’m not a government employee,” I said wearily. “I’m not after your job. I don’t mean anyone any harm at all. I’m glad you wanted to help Paolo, but as you can see, it’s too late. All I want…” I felt dizzy for a minute. “I want…” I wanted to tell her that all I wanted was to do my job and be left alone, but I found myself crying. “He tried to kill himself. He took off his… and the razor…”

Magyar took my arm tightly. I thought she was worried I would fall into the trough, or run amok, or something, but she just said, “Don’t rub your eyes. You don’t know what’s on your hands.”

Very sensible. And then she was walking me somewhere while I rambled on about Paolo and his limbs and how he had tried to kill himself. I found we were in the breakroom. She made me wash my hands, then gave me a towel. Neither of us spoke. The eerie sense of deja vu hit me, and I laughed.

“I wonder if Paolo felt like this when I was taking away his razor,” I explained. “As though he was about five years old and being humored by a wise, kind person.” And then I felt embarrassed.

She didn’t launch into a denial. Of course she was humoring me. That’s what you did with someone in distress. You patted them on the head, told them everything was fine, and waited for them to get back up to speed with reality.

I sighed. “We should get back.”

Magyar looked at her watch. “Are you up to date in your readings for Hepple? Good. Then you may as well stay here. We break in ten minutes.”

She seemed relieved to get away.

Lore woke up. It was five in the morning. She pulled a blanket around her shoulders and stumbled out of bed.

Spanner was at the workbench. Lore watched as she picked up a pair of delicate tweezers and opened up a PIDA, touched something inside, then inserted it into her box. She flipped it shut, hummed to herself at the readout, tapped a few keys.

“You’re very good at that,” Lore said.

“I know.” Spanner turned. “What gets you out of bed at this hour?”

“Just wondered what you were up to.” Spanner went back to her screen. “You know, you could get a job doing that.”

Spanner turned again, smiling. “Now, why would I need a job?”

The first few times she had gone to the Polar Bear, Lore had not realized that Spanner was doing business. Spanner would share a drink and a few words, there would be a slap on the back or a nod, and occasionally something would change hands—illegal PIDAs, temporary debit blanks, information. They would go home and Spanner would unload her pockets. The next day she would spend hours at her screens, matching magnetic codes, stripping information; copying the corporate electromagnetic signatures on a stolen debit card, transferring them to a blank; or simply calling people and telling them she had what they wanted. Hyn and Zimmer figured a great deal in the blanks transactions—“They’re more or less untraceable, dear”—but it was Billy who disturbed Lore the most. Every week or so he would cruise by, sometimes with Ann, usually without, and have a quiet word with Spanner, usually when they were at the bar and out of everyone else’s earshot. Lore thought she heard them talking about chickens, but she tried not to listen.

It was around February that Lore noticed a difference in Spanner’s bar dealings. She seemed to be talking more, and more urgently; there was more head shaking and less back-slapping, fewer things changing hands. And then one day Lore realized she had not seen Hyn or Zimmer for a while.

“What’s going on?” she asked Spanner.

“Business is getting tight.”

“Anything to worry about?”

“Not yet. There are always other ways to make money.”

Lore did not want to ask about that. “Where have Hyn and Zimmer been lately?”

“Who?” Spanner laughed. “They’re a couple of cautious old foxes. Whenever the police are cracking down they disappear for a while.”

“Shouldn’t you be more careful?”

“Oh, I’m too smart for the police.”

Nevertheless, Lore noticed that Spanner went out later and for shorter periods, and once she lay low for forty-eight hours straight, wouldn’t let Lore answer the screen at all. But then the next day she went out and came back grinning.

“Close your eyes.” Lore did. “Now open them and look on the bed.”

It was a Hammex 20. Lore picked it up, ran her hands over its familiar black curves. “These aren’t cheap.” She flicked the power switch, peered through the viewfinder. The drive hummed smoothly.

“Do you like it?”

“It seems in good condition.” She put it back on the bed and looked at it for a while, remembering Ratnapida, her first pictures of goldfish swimming slowly through crystal and shadowed water. She turned to face Spanner. “How can we afford it if business is bad?”

Spanner shrugged.

Lore thought of Billy, his mean eyes and fast mouth. “Are we in debt?”

“No.”

“Then how did we afford it?”

“I thought you’d like it.” Spanner sounded irritated.

“I do, I just don’t know how we can afford it.”

“Well, we can.”

Lore thought of Spanner’s disappearances, how tense she had been when she came back. The skin on the back of her neck felt tight. “How?”

“Does it matter?”

It did, but Lore did not have the courage to push any further. She was not sure she really wanted to know how Spanner had come up with the money, who she was blackmailing about what. Or what else she might be doing. Spanner, as though sensing her acquiescence, smiled and slid an arm around Lore’s waist.

“Do you like it? Really?”

Lore forced herself to smile. “You got exactly the right kind. They have the best lenses.” And despite herself, she was touched. The old-fashioned Hammexes were not easy to find these days. She imagined Spanner going from one dealer to another, reading the trade bulletins, bargaining. How she got the money, who had suffered, was none of Lore’s business. “Let’s find a disk and take some pictures.”

It was spring and Lore had the windows open. The soft breeze that blew across her editing desk smelled of new green. There were tiny buds on the branches outside—all the branches except one. She wondered how that had happened, why one branch would die while the others thrived. She supposed it just happened. Parts of things died. Nature. The door banged open. She turned, smiling, expecting Spanner to tell her they had made a lot of money.

Spanner threw a bag on the couch. “They’re not selling.”

“What?” Lore’s smile faded.

“The films aren’t selling.”

“You’ve been making a lot of copies.”

“Oh, I can move the units, but not for enough money. Not as much as we need. People tell me they’re tired of the same bodies in different situations.”

Lore looked at the frame lit on the screen. She did good work, but her library was so limited. “I need some live action. Or a bigger library.”

Spanner nodded and dropped onto the couch.

“You want me to stop?”

“No,” Spanner said. “Let me think about it awhile.”

Two days later, she disappeared for more than twenty-four hours. When she came back, she looked exhausted, but she was grinning.

“I’ve got something special.” She held up a vial full of some clear, oily liquid.

“What is it?”

“You’ll see. Come here.” Spanner dipped a fingertip into the neck of the bottle, rubbed the finger along Lore’s throat. She did the same for herself. “Just a little. It’s very concentrated.”

“It’s a drug? What kind?”

“You’ll see,” she said again, and her voice was low and multilayered, her eyes dark. Lore wanted to trace Spanner’s cheekbones with her fingertips, run her palm across her shoulders, reach down into her clothes, touch her, feel her moving under her hands. She wanted it urgently. She ached.

An aphrodisiac, then, a pheromone, but more powerful than any she had heard of, legal or illegal. This was unstoppable. Spanner began to unbutton her dress. Lore moaned.

“Anything you like, baby, anything.”

There were about thirty people in the big room, spilling out into the kitchen, onto the steps. Lore introduced people, though most of them knew each other better than she did. Everyone was drinking very steadily. She brought out snacks, made sure the music never faltered. She avoided Billy, who just stood in the corner and watched everything with his small, flat eyes that reminded her of all the things she tried not to think about.

“I don’t like him,” she hissed to Spanner in the kitchen.

“You don’t have to like him,” Spanner said, “just be civil. This is business.”

Lore refilled her glass and went back into the living room. Her wine was cold and aromatic, like sunshine at thirty thousand feet. The music was loud and insistent. Ellen was talking to someone at the other side of the room; they were laughing. Lore sat on the floor and wondered where Ruth was.

When Spanner came out of the bathroom she moved slowly from one group to another, smiling, shaking people by the hand, touching a cheek. The whole party suddenly seemed to Lore a gross parody of the business parties the van de Oests had occasionally hosted before Ratnapida.

“What’s the occasion?” Ruth asked, and sat down next to Lore on the carpet.

“Hmm?” Lore was thinking about Ratnapida: long cocktail dresses, expensive jewelry, uniformed caterers. Always for a reason, to gain or cement advantages. Never for fun. From the other side of the room, Spanner’s finger glistened just before she touched someone under the ear.

“The party. What’s it for?”

“I’ve no idea,” she lied, and nodded over at Spanner, who was still doing her hostess bit. “She just came home one day and said, ‘party time.’ So it is.”

Ruth looked at her curiously. “You know, you’re nicer than I expected. Not like Spanner’s usual—” She went red. “I mean…”

Lore wanted to tell her it was all right, but she knew that if she did, other things might come tumbling out—she would tell Ruth to find Ellen and run, now, before it was too late, before they were caught up in Spanner’s web. And mine, she thought, I’m the one with the camera. “Did you know the woman Spanner was with before?”

Ruth nodded. “And the one before that, and before that. They don’t usually last more than about six weeks.”

Lore looked into her wine. What would she do, where would she go without Spanner? “Have you known her long?”

“Less than two years.”

Lore wanted to ask more, but Spanner was heading toward them. “Ruth! Glad you could make it.” She touched the back of Ruth’s neck lightly. “Oh, there you are,” she said to Lore. “Why don’t you go get your camera?

Spanner’s pupils were tiny: the antidote, Lore assumed. Her own probably looked the same.

There were three people on the bed when she went to get her camera. They did not seem to notice her as she edged past them and lifted the Hammex. She checked the disk on the way back to the living room, where Spanner drew her aside. “Make sure you get everything. We need all the live action we can get.” She nodded over to the corner where a couple was kissing.

No one took any notice of the amorous couple. It was not the polite ignoring of an inappropriate display of lust but, rather, that everyone was becoming engrossed in his or her own partner. Everywhere eyes were glazed, skin gleaming, lips moist. The air was thick with sex. While Lore watched, one woman started to unbutton the fly of the man opposite her.

Lore turned away, lifted the camera to her shoulder. A man was turning around his partner and pulling down her trousers. Lore cleared her throat, pointed to her camera. “It’s switched on,” she said to the air eight inches above their heads, “but I need your permission before I…” She trailed off. They completely ignored her. She licked her lips, remembering how it felt to be wrapped in the drug.

She saw Ellen with Ruth and hurried over, intending to stop them, get them out of there, but they were already kissing. From the other side of the room, Spanner was watching her. Don’t let Spanner see even a chink. “Do I have your permission to film?” she asked dully.

“Just don’t get in my way,” Ellen said, and reached up under Ruth’s dress.

Lore put the camera to her shoulder and filmed. Her face ached and her cheek, wet with tears, chafed against the eyepiece, but she filmed for hours.

When Lore edited the film, she swapped around heads and bodies, or used library heads. She needed these images—they needed these images—to make films that would sell for enough to feed them, at least until summer, but she could not bring herself to use her friends without some kind of disguise.

Weeks later she got a call from Ruth. “You bastard.”

“What—”

“The film. I saw it. At a friend’s. You bastard.”

“Ruth… Ruth…”

“You think asking permission all nice and proper makes it right?”

“Ruth, I wanted to warn you—”

“I didn’t see any pictures of you,” Ruth cut in.

Yes, you did, Lore wanted to say. You’ve seen pictures of me in far more humiliating circumstances; and my abductors did not even have the courtesy to swap my head for another’s… And all of a sudden, Lore did not care. What did it matter that Ruth was upset? She, Lore, had been through much, much worse. Ellen had given permission of a sort, hadn’t she? And at least Ruth had enjoyed it while it was happening. Lore had not enjoyed one single minute of her ordeal.

She turned off the screen. Her mouth felt strange. She knew that if she looked in a mirror she would see her lip curling, like Spanner’s.

The first people into the breakroom were Meisener and Kinnis. Meisener flicked a look in my direction but said nothing. Maybe he’d heard something. Kinnis either had heard nothing or didn’t care. He went to the wall screen and V-handed the PIDA reader. He made a disgusted sound when the figures came up.

“Every month I check my wages—every month I hope someone somewhere made a mistake, or a program screwed up and I’ll be a billionaire. Every month it says I made seventeen hundred.”

“You should know better,” Cel said, sitting down to unwrap her food.

“Hey, Bird. You think I should know better. No, and I’ll tell you why. Hope is good for a person. You think I’d keep shoveling shit if I knew, really knew all I’d get was seventeen hundred?”

There were two other people waiting to use the reader to check their wages, so Kinnis moved aside. He sat between me and Meisener. “You got paid yet?” he asked Meisener.

“Na. Timed it all wrong. I’ll have to wait until next month now.”

“You?”

I blinked at him. Payday. Money. I nodded and joined the queue at the reader. Put my hand in when it was my turn, read the figures. Almost sixteen hundred. I had earned money, in my own right, without family help, without hurting anyone else. I drew my hand out and looked at it. I wondered if Paolo would get paid.

When I woke up the next morning the sun was bright and I lay in bed a few minutes, smiling. I was alive. I had the next two days off. I had been paid.

Sixteen hundred was not much, but it was manageable. I still had a chunk left from before—nine hundred, maybe—and the scam would net tens of thousands. I felt rich.

I took breakfast onto the roof and watched the clouds, the glints from the river. There were several barges on the water. I wondered what they were carrying today. Steel from Scunthorpe, maybe? I closed my eyes and let the breeze blow soft against my lids. People had been using the river for thousands of years. Wheat during Roman times. Clay before that. Maybe blue beads arid young, scared slaves; a tun of beer. And before then, in the days when boats were hollowed-out logs, scraped goatskins, dried fish from the coast, dyed feathers for a religious rite. What had the weather been like then, and how had the air smelled? Maybe life had been more simple. Maybe it was possible to sit high up every day of your life and just sniff the breeze. Maybe not.

When I climbed back through the window, the sun was shining full on the west wall, adding yellow to the already acidic green. Very ugly. I turned away from it, then turned back. This was my flat. I could change the color. I didn’t have to tell anyone, or ask, or take them into account. I could spray everything purple and orange if I wanted. I laughed, delighted. Mine.

Perhaps something neutral, alabaster or beige. Or linen. No, not warm enough. Maybe peach? The possibilities were overwhelming.

I sat down at the screen and pulled up the inventory of a couple of decorating shops. There were little tables that showed you how to work out how much paint you’d need. I did that. Decided I could afford it quite handily. Except I’d forgotten all the brushes and dustcloths and cleaning fluid and trays… I added it up again. Still manageable.

But then I looked at the walls again, at the kitchen, the bathroom, the steep stairway and complicated gables over the bed. I’d never picked up a brush or spray gun in my life. Where would I start?

Maybe Tom could help? But he was old. The only other people I knew were Spanner, and my shift at Hedon Road, and I couldn’t, wouldn’t, ask them.

Or there were Ruth and Ellen.

I remembered that interview with my mother on the net. How do you persuade employees or team partners to take on such difficult projects? the interviewer had asked.

Easy, she said. People love to be asked to help.

Easy.

It took twenty minutes pacing the living room before I could bring myself to tap in their number.

Ruth answered. The tendons down each side of her neck tightened for a second when she saw me, but she managed a guarded smile. “Lore. What can I do for you?”

“I just got paid. And I know we agreed to have dinner sometime, the three of us, but I wondered if I could impose on you for some help instead. My flat needs decorating and, well, I don’t know how. I thought maybe you could give me, ah, some advice. If you’ve ever done it yourself. I mean, I’ve never even bought paint before.”

She was looking puzzled. “You want me and Ellen to come help you choose paint.”

“Essentially, yes.”

She smiled, and this time the skin around her eyes stretched. “You’re settling down, then?”

“Yes. The flat’s nice, except for the color. And the temperature. I think it’ll be cold in a month or so.”

“Then you’ll need Thinsulate paper for all the outside walls. Have you thought about colors?”

“You’ll help, then?”

“Of course we’ll help! Why don’t you bring the measurements and samples and things round and we’ll have dinner.”

Dinner. “When?”

“The weekend.”

I grinned at her so hard I think there were tears in my eyes. “The weekend would be wonderful.”