The Water Knife

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  “You should never have let him go. He’s all over the news right now, talking about Las Vegas water knives.”

  “Seriously? Little pissant town like that’s getting coverage?”

  “Journos love the black helicopters angle.”

  “You want me to lean on people? Make the story go away?”

  “No.” Case shook her head. “Journos have the attention span of gnats. By tomorrow they’ll be chasing a supertornado in Chicago, or some Miami seawall break. We’ll lie still, and everyone will forget this ever happened. Even if Carver City wins a class action in a couple years, it won’t exist as a town anymore. That’s all that matters. Carver City’s sucking sand, and we’ve got their water.”

  “So how come you don’t look happy?” Angel asked. “Carver City’s done. We move on. Cut something else, right?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple.” Her brow knitted. “Carver City had investors that Braxton’s due diligence didn’t turn up. An eco-development project was leasing Carver City’s water rights. Earthship sustainable arcology. Vertical farm, integrated housing, eighty-five percent water recycling—sort of a low-rent version of a Cypress development. It turns out that a lot of people were invested.”

  “People, huh?”

  “Connected people,” Case said. “A senator from back east. A couple of state reps.”

  The way she said it made Angel glance over, surprised. “State reps?” he asked. “You mean Nevada state reps? Our guys?”

  “Montoya, Kleig, Tuan, LaSalle…”

  Angel couldn’t stifle his laughter. “What the hell were they thinking?”

  “Apparently they thought they knew where we stood on Carver City.”

  “I’ll be goddamned.” Angel shook his head. “No wonder Yu looked so surprised. Motherfucker thought he’d bought himself some solid-gold insurance. He had our people in his pocket. When I was down there, he kept saying I was going to piss off powerful people.”

  “Everyone’s hedging these days,” Case said. “Right after Carver City’s water plant went down, I got a call from the governor.”

  “He was in there, too?”

  “God, no. But he was fishing for information, trying to know if we were planning any other hits.”

  “Where’s he invested?”

  “Who the hell knows? He’s too clever to say anything over a line where he might be recorded.”

  “He’s still backing you, though, right?”

  “Well, he doesn’t get votes if Vegas goes dry. As long as I keep delivering his water, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has carte blanche. We can tax, we can build—”

  “We can cut.”

  “—and we can plan for Nevada’s economic future,” she finished over Angel. “But still, every time I turn around, I run into some…asshole…hedging his bets. You know there are actually bookies who will take bets on what town’s going to lose its rights next?”

  “What are the odds?”

  She gave him a sardonic glance. “I try not to look. I’ve got enough conflict-of-interest lawsuits on my hands with the Cypress developments.”

  “Yeah, but I could make some real money.”

  “The last time I checked, you weren’t exactly underpaid.” She squinted out at the dead suburb. “I used to think I could at least trust our own people. Now I’m either looking over my shoulder for some redneck with a rifle, or I’m dealing with a mailroom clerk who’s leaking our ag water bidding strategy in return for a residence permit in Los Angeles. You can’t trust anyone anymore.”

  “Braxton’s the one who missed all these state reps, right?”

  “So?”

  “Just saying he don’t normally miss things.” Angel shrugged. “Didn’t used to, anyway.”

  Case glanced over sharply. “And?”

  “Just saying he didn’t used to screw up.”

  “Christ. And you think I’m paranoid.”

  “Like you say, it only takes one bullet.”

  “Braxton didn’t screw us.” She gave Angel a warning look. “And I don’t need my top water knife feuding with my head of legal.”

  “No problem.” Angel grinned and held up his hands. “Long as Braxton stays off my back, I stay off his.”

  She made a noise of annoyance. “This job used to be easy.”

  “Before my time.”

  “Not that long before. It used to be that if you negotiated a water-swap project with San Diego and JV’d on a desal plant, you looked like a genius. Now?” She shook her head. “Ellis is saying that California’s running guardies all the way up the river into Wyoming and Colorado. He’s seen their choppers on the upper Green River and the Yampa.”

  Angel glanced over, surprised. “I didn’t know Ellis was working that far upriver.”

  “We’re trying to figure out who’s got senior rights up there. In case we need to start making new buyout offers.” She made a face. “And California’s already there, grabbing Upper Basin rights ahead of us. We thought renegotiating water transfers on the Compact was going to work in our favor. Now it scares the hell out of me. We’re playing catch-up. Next thing we know, California could just own Colorado or Wyoming outright. They’ll put the lower Colorado in a straw and claim the evap savings, and they’ll buy the upper Colorado.”

  “Rules are changing,” Angel said.

  “Or maybe there never were any rules. Maybe all we have are habits. Things we do without even knowing why.” She laughed. “You know my daughter still says the Pledge of Allegiance? I’ve got three different militias assigned to hunting down Zoners and Texans who cross our border, and Jessie is still putting her hand on her breast and saying the Pledge. Figure that one out. Every single state has its own border patrol, and my kid still calls herself an American.”

  Angel shrugged. “I never really got patriotism.”

  “No,” Case laughed, “you wouldn’t. Some of us used to believe in it, though. Now we just wave the American flag so the feds won’t come down on us for recruiting militias.”

  “Countries…” Angel trailed off, thinking back on his own early life in Mexico, before the Cartel States. “They come and go.”

  “And mostly we don’t see it when it’s coming,” Case said. “There’s a theory that if we don’t have the right words in our vocabularies, we can’t even see the things that are right in front of our faces. If we can’t describe our reality accurately, we can’t see it. Not the other way around. So someone says a word like Mexico or the United States, and maybe that word keeps us from even seeing what’s right in front of us. Our own words make us blind.”

  “Except you always see what’s coming,” Angel said.

  “Well, I feel like I’m flying blind.” She ticked points off on her fingers. “Snowpack up in the Rockies—that might as well be zero. No one planned for that.” Tick. “Dust storms and forest fires are playing hell with our solar grid. No one planned for that.” Tick. “All that dust is speeding snowmelt, so even when we get a good year, it melts too fast or else evaporates. No one planned for that.” Tick. “Hydropower.” She laughed. “That’s shot except in the spring because you can’t get a decent head in the reservoirs.” Tick. “And then there’s California putting all these calls on the river.”

  She was regarding her open palm as if she could divine the future from it. “I’ve got Ellis over on the Gunnison now, making offers, and I’m afraid we’re too late there, too. It’s like we can’t catch a break. Someone is always ahead of us. Someone who sees more clearly than we do. Someone who has better words to describe where we’re headed.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to look into Braxton?”

  “Let it go with Braxton. I’ve got other people on him already.”

  Angel laughed. “I knew it! You don’t like him either.”

  “It’s not about liking—it’s about trusting. And you’re right, he didn’t used to screw up.” She paused. “I’ve got something else I want you to look into, though. Down in Phoenix.” />
  “You want me to cut the CAP? I can do it for good this time.”

  “No.” She shook her head violently. “We can’t get away with anything like that again. Not without real legal cover. The feds have drones watching now, and the last thing we need is the army piling in on Arizona’s side. No. I want you to go down to Phoenix and sniff around for me. Something seems to have gone wrong, and I can’t get a good read on it.”

  “A read on…”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be sending you down. I feel like I’m not getting the full story. There’s some low buzzing coming out of California, too. They’re pissed about something.”

  “Who’s buzzing?”

  She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Let’s keep this compartmentalized, shall we? Just sniff around. I want another set of eyes down there. An independent set of eyes.”

  “Who’s running Phoenix?”

  “Gúzman.”

  “Julio?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s good.”

  “Well, now he’s pissing himself and begging to be extracted. Keeps saying he’s lost people. He sounds like Chicken Little with the sky falling.”

  “He used to be good.”

  “I probably left him down there too long. Phoenix was supposed to hurry up and die, so I left him in. Instead, they keep holding on by their fingernails. You know they’re even building an arcology now? Some of it is already up and running.”

  “Little late for that.”

  “Chinese solar energy money and narco dollars. Apparently you can do anything with that combination.”

  “Water does flow toward money.”

  “Well, between the Cartel States and Chinese energy developers—”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “It’s almost like Phoenix could be a player again. A few weeks ago Julio was telling me he had a line on something big, and then suddenly things go wrong for him, and he starts panicking and begging to come across the river. I want you to dig into whatever got Julio so excited, before he started jumping at his own shadow. There aren’t many people I trust right now, and this…” She trailed off. “It just feels wrong. I want you to report directly to me. Don’t go through SNWA channels.”

  “Don’t want the governor looking over our shoulder?”

  Case looked disgusted. “You know, there was a time when we could actually trust our own people.”

  They made small talk for a few more minutes, but Angel could tell Case was already on to her next problem. He’d been assigned, fitted into her mosaic of the world, and now her restless mind had moved on to other data and other problems. A minute later she wished him luck and climbed out of the Tesla.

  Her entourage of armored SUVs ground out over broken glass, leaving Angel alone, staring out at the broken landscape that Case had created with the stroke of a pen.

  CHAPTER 5

  A truck idled in the alley behind Lucy’s house, a predatory gasoline growl. It had been rumbling outside for ten minutes and didn’t seem to be leaving.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Anna asked. Lucy’s sister was staring out from the computer screen, her expression a mix of frustration and pained compassion. Cool gray Vancouver light streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows behind her. “It’s okay if you want to leave.”

  The truck wasn’t leaving. Its engine revved, rattling Lucy’s windows before falling back to bass grumble.

  Lucy stifled the urge to go outside and challenge the assholes.

  “—keep saying it’s horrible,” Anna was saying. “You don’t need to prove anything to anyone. You’ve stayed longer than any journalist who’s been assigned down there. You’ve beaten them all. So leave.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It is, though! For you, it is. You’ve got New England ID. You’re probably one of the last people down there who can just walk right out. And yet for some reason you’re still there. Dad says you’re begging to get yourself killed.”

  “I’m not. Believe me.”

  “You’re afraid, though.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Then why are you calling?”

  Anna had her there. Lucy wasn’t the one who called—that was Anna’s role. Anna was the one who maintained relationships. Anna, who still had all her East Coast manners and still sent physical Christmas cards every year—real cards and real paper, crafted with real scissors and the help of her sweetly real children. Intricate images of snowflakes and evergreens accompanying red-ribboned gift boxes containing replacement REI microfilters for Lucy’s dust mask. Anna always was there, reaching out. Maintaining contact. Caring.

  “Lucy?”

  There wasn’t a single bar on Anna’s windows, Lucy realized. Her window glass was beaded with rain, and her garden beyond the glass was emerald, and there wasn’t a single bar to keep Anna’s family safe.

  “Things are just…difficult right now,” Lucy said finally.

  In her mind this was code for Someone pried my friend’s eyes out and dumped him in the middle of the Golden Mile, but Anna couldn’t decrypt the words, which was probably best for both of them.

  Outside, the truck revved its engine again.

  “What’s that sound?” Anna asked.

  “A truck.”

  “Who the hell makes trucks like that anymore?”

  Lucy made herself laugh. “It’s part of the culture.”

  Stacie and Ant were giggling offscreen, playing with Legos, programming some creation of theirs to chase the cat around the house. Lucy suppressed an almost overwhelming urge to reach out and touch the screen.

  “I’m not looking to move,” Lucy said. “I just wanted to say hi. That’s all.”

  “Look, Mommy!” Stacie shrieked. “Grumpy Pete’s eating it!” Peals of laughter.

  Anna turned to tell her children to pipe down, but even Lucy could tell she didn’t mean it.

  Stacie and Ant’s laughter quieted to whispers for a few moments, then exploded again. Lucy caught a glimpse of the cat, riding on the back of a rover the pair had built. Stacie had an American football helmet on her head, and it looked as though Ant had on the luchador mask that Lucy had given him the last time she’d come up to visit.

  It was surreal, their two realities separated by a thin wafer of computer screen, so close that Lucy imagined that if she were to take a hammer, she could crack the distance between them and pass through to that green safe place.

  Anna turned serious again. “What’s going on down there, really?”

  “I—” Lucy broke off. “I just missed you.”

  I like seeing a place where kids don’t know to be afraid.

  Seeing Stacie and Ant alive and well reminded her of the first body she’d covered, a girl not much older than Stacie. A pretty Hispanic girl, marionette-shattered, lying naked in the bottom of a swimming pool. Lucy could still remember Ray Torres standing beside her, taking a drag on a cigarette, telling her, “You don’t got to write about the bodies.”

  Lucy remembered Torres as a good ol’ boy cop in a good ol’ boy cowboy hat and tight faded Levi’s. A big belt buckle and polished gray cowboy boots. He’d smirked at her from behind black-wrap mirrored cop sunglasses that ran facial recognition even as they talked. “There’s plenty of other shit to vulture on in this city,” he said.

  A few med techs and cops had been down in the dusty swimming pool with the girl, stomping around the body, trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

  When Lucy ignored him, Torres had tried again. “This ain’t the kind of thing a pretty Connecticut girl like you wants to be writing about.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” she’d replied.

  At least that was how she remembered it now. She remembered herself as being tough, standing up to the patronizing cop. She definitely remembered Torres tipping his cowboy hat in response and ambling off to join the cops and EMTs beside the ambulance.

  The girl had been dumped like trash. She couldn’t have been
much into her teens, and now she was dead in the bottom of a dirty turquoise hole that was bluer than the sky overhead.

  Wild dogs had been down in there with her, tugging her back and forth, worrying at her guts, leaving trails of bloody mud before fleeing at the arrival of crime scene techs. The girl’s blood had clotted. The scrapes on her knees were black blood and gray dust. A young girl with pixie-cut black hair and little silver heart earrings who could have been anybody, except that she had become nobody.

  Torres and his friends had joked with one another, occasionally glancing in Lucy’s direction as they smoked their cigarettes. Saying things in Spanish that she couldn’t catch. Lucy’s Spanish had been shit then. She’d forced herself to stand at the pool’s edge, looking down at the girl’s snapped arms and legs longer than she wanted, feeling the men’s eyes on her, trying to prove she wasn’t intimidated by Torres’s gaze.

  And then Torres had come back over, tipping his cowboy hat at her again. “Seriously. Don’t write about the bodies. They got a way of making more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “What about her?” Lucy had asked. “Doesn’t she deserve to be remembered?”

  “Her? She don’t care now. Hell, maybe she’s glad she ain’t here. Maybe she’s glad she finally found a way out of this damn place.”

  “You’re not even going to investigate?”

  The cowboy laughed. “Investigate what? Another dead Texan?” He shook his head. “Shit. The whole city’s a suspect. Who misses these people?”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “Hey.” He grabbed her arm. “I’m serious about the bodies. You want to make your career in the blood rags, there’s plenty to see. But some bodies”—he jerked his head toward the girl in the bottom of the empty pool—“they aren’t worth the heat.”

  “What’s so special about this girl?”

  “Tell you what. I’ll put you in touch with the editor over at Río de Sangre. You can hit all the bodies for them. I can even give you exclusive ride-along if you want. After this girl, I got two cholobis dropped over on Maricopa in a drive-by. Plus I got five more swimmers I still got to hit, soon as my partner gets back.”