With Perfect Clarity

by Wendy N. Wagner

  Grandla and I stand here studying the tiny mark in the porcelain. It is hard to make it out in the faint light. Light from the bulb at the top of the stairs barely reaches this point, and neither does light from the landing below. This particular step is the darkest point of the entire stairwell. Someone knew that.

  Grandla reaches out to trace that terrible little mark. “Whoever did this knew the undercity.”

  I can not bring myself to respond. All the moisture has gone out of my mouth, and my tongue, dry, clings to my hard palate. It takes years to know the undercity the way whoever had chosen this spot must know the underground.

  “Who could do such a thing?” Grandla asked.

  I can think of one person, but I refuse to imagine her doing it.

  The bell on the counter rings. It’s been two days, but I can’t stop thinking about Shaba and what happened to her. Between patrons at the request counter, I have to lean against the wall and push down the feelings welling up inside.

  The bell rings again. I force a deep breath, turn around, and fix my eyes on the plaque on the wall. I draw strength from the words: Clarity is purity.

  I drop my eyes to the requestor. “How can I be of service?”

  Councilor Rand smiles. Not a grudging smile, but a positive beam of happiness. He lays a sheet of paper on the counter and gives it a firm tap. “Just turning in my request.”

  “Request?” My head spins. My stomach turns along with it.

  His smile broadens. The tips of his canine teeth are unusually pointed. I hadn’t noticed that about him before. “It’s a personal request. I’m adding someone to my household.”

  I pull the form toward me. It looks complete, with all the addresses and names in the right places. I touch a box and look up at him, sick inside. “Charice Fleming?”

  “The plumber can read,” he sneered. “But can she also file? You’ll find my paperwork is quite in order.”

  I can’t look at his face any longer. I glance over the forms, whose every box is checked and every line correct. “The Water Council meets to grant approvals tomorrow,” I manage to say.

  “I think we should manage to address a few requests, despite our busy agenda. It’s a great weight on the Board, of course, Shaba’s loss. But we’ve got to look to the department’s future.”

  The Council will vote for Shaba’s replacement tomorrow, then. I had wondered how long it would take them.

  “Thank you, Councilor,” I say. He has turned away already. He doesn’t bother to reply.

  The form looks up at me with its pale, flat face. Charice’s name stands out against the other words. I blink back a second wave of tears. I had spent so much time showing her around the undercity, carrying her tool box, sharing my lunches when she forgot. Had she been using me that whole time? Was that the only reason she put her hand on my knee and looked up at me with those beautifully sparkling eyes?

  I throw open the filing cabinet and find the Fleming file. Five, ten, a dozen overages. Three ration token request forms, asking for extra water for visiting friends. So many friends using so much water. She’d clearly been just as popular aboveground as below.

  I can’t breathe. I am so angry I slam shut the cabinet. If Shaba were here, she’d tell me to set Charice aside. She’d remind me that what mattered was Water Law and its clarity. That nothing mattered more than keeping the water.

  Even thinking of Shaba’s wisdom doesn’t help. My stomach tightens around itself like fingers around the handle of a pipe wrench. Still, I file the request form in the appropriate basket. Procedure must be followed.

  Water must be free.

  The door to Shaba’s office is unlocked, but it takes me several long minutes to find the switch for the lamp on her desk. I have never seen this room dark before. Even before she’d been named Executive Water Keeper, Shaba could be found in here, reading old paperwork by the light of the battered desk lamp. Her predecessor had encouraged it, perhaps even depended upon it. Most everyone undercity had depended on her for something.

  For the first time, I walk around to the desk chair and sit down. The cushion has flattened out in the center from years of her bulk pressing into it. I never thought about that, not in all the time watching her take a seat on that dusty thing. Why hadn’t I ever gotten her a replacement?

  I cover my mouth with both hands. Pain rises up my throat like the tears that fill my eyes, a flood of pain, a torrent of longing. I blink it back. I don’t deserve to open that tap.

  “I thought I’d find you here.” Grandla leans against the doorframe. Her brown face has grown ashy and dark patches float beneath her eyes. If Shaba’s death has been bad for me, it must have been many times worse for Grandla. They trained as Keepers together. They spent years living in the same hallway of the barracks, sharing meals in the mess hall and shifts in the office. Even Shaba’s promotion had failed to separate them.

  “The council plans to vote on Shaba’s replacement tomorrow.”

  Grandla follows the golden light to the desk and sits in the stiff wooden chair Shaba kept for visitors. “I know.” She closes her eyes for a moment. “A friend from Sanitation heard something today. The Ministry of Finance announced its intention to absorb the Water Department into its administration.”

  I slap my hands against the desk top. “How? How can they do it? It goes against the city’s constitution.”

  “They claim the city’s water is an asset, and that they are obligated to manage all such assets. They maintain the Water Department has reduced the value of water to absolute zero.”

  “But water must be free. It’s a human right.”

  She swallows. “There’s more.”

  The beds of my nails go white as I press down against the worn wood of Shaba’s desk. “Of course there’s more.”

  “Councilor Rand has already named a candidate for Executive Water Keeper.”

  “Charice Fleming.”

  Grandla nods. “She will support Finance’s decision.”

  Shaba’s pen lays on the desktop. I squeeze the pen in my fingers. Its ancient plastic cap is prickly, the plastic surface smashed and battered by Shaba’s constant process of thought. I wish I could think half as clearly as Shaba did.

  “Charice Fleming killed Shaba.” My eyes are dry and hot. “No one from Water would have done it. And Charice knew the undercity as well as any of us.”

  “That’s the same conclusion I came to,” Grandla whispers. “And I hate it.”

  “I hate her, Grandla. She knew us. She knew the undercity. How could she do this to us?”

  “Even disbanded, water will still need plumbers.” Grandla attempts a smile, but it only makes her face look sicker than before. “At least Charice will keep us on for that work.”

  I get to my feet. “We’re not plumbers, Grandla. We’re Water Keepers.”

  Grandla stares up at me. “What are you thinking, Yalan? What are you going to do?”

  I don’t answer her, but I give her shoulder a squeeze. The golden light of Shaba’s desk lamp pools around her small figure, and her shadow stretches long across the floor. My shadow stretches still farther, a long dark stain against the concrete.

  I walk through the undercity in the dark. I don’t need my hand torch or a map. The water guides me, even though its murmur is quieter than I’ve ever heard it. I know that the city’s heartbeat slows in the later hours, but I never realized how quiet everything becomes. The pad of my bare feet against the concrete is the loudest sound in my ears.

  At the end of the tunnel, I climb the ladder mounted on the wall. It follows the slender pipe running into a basement, and there’s an entry hatch beside it that allows a worker to check the overflow drain. Most people pay little attention to their basements, and Councilor Rand is no more observant than any other person.

  The drain is narrow, but I am used to compact spaces. I slip my toolbox inside ahead of me and squeeze through the little hole in the floor. The basement
smells musty and stale, like laundry long forgotten. My nose crinkles.

  I leave the tool box, but I take what tools I need and put them in the pockets of my denim jacket. The pipe wrench, I pull tight against my body as I make my way upstairs. I do not dare risk it bumping anything and making noise. Like the pipes below me, I will be quiet.

  It only takes me a few minutes to find my way to the bedroom, its big bed nearly as large as my entire room in the Keepers Barracks. Two shapes lay still in the center of the bed, two faces show in the faint light coming in through the window.

  Tonight the councilor’s face is slack, his mouth open, his long eyelashes a fringe of darkness across his closed eyes. He hardly looks like himself.

  Charice Fleming is curled around him like a spoon. Even though it’s night, I can still see the traces of her makeup, a little smudge beneath her eyes, a glimmer of glitter across her cheekbone. I can remember our one kiss, tender and a little sad as she said goodbye and walked out of the undercity.

  If I walk out of this room, then at this time tomorrow, this woman will be my new boss. She will take over Shaba’s office and move all of it—the maps, the files, the ugly lamp—up into the bright dry world that is hers. I close my eyes for a second, imagining what would come next. How long would it take Finance to get rid of the ration credits and start issuing bills, just as they did with Electric? How long would it take for people to start missing their payments and then losing their water? I know ways for people to live without electricity, but water cannot be done without.

  That’s why I am here, for those who would lose their water. Not for Shaba, who had been killed for this woman to secure the Water Department, and not for Grandla and the other Water Keepers. Not for me or the pain that still presses against the back of my eyes when I think about Shaba or the time I spent with the traitor who killed her.

  I am here to safekeep the water.

  I raise the pipe wrench. Charice stirs a little in her sleep, and my heart gives a squeeze, the same squeeze it gave every time I saw her when we worked down below. She is so beautiful. I can’t believe she left me for this man and the world aboveground.

  The pipe wrench has never felt so light in my hand. I have to remind myself: This is for the water.

  The screams begin as red spots dapple the wall like the pushpins in Shaba’s map. They don’t last long. I’ve been trained to do this quickly.

  For the water. Of course.

  ___

  Copyright 2017 Wendy N. Wagner

  Wendy N. Wagner is a full-time nerd. She is the managing/associate editor Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines, and has published more than forty short stories about heroes, monsters, and other wacky stuff. Her third novel, a sci-fi thriller called An Oath of Dogs, was recently released by Angry Robot Books. She lives with her very understanding family in Portland, Oregon, and you can keep up with her exploits at winniewoohoo.com.

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  Giganotosaurus is published monthly by Late Cretaceous and edited by Rashida J. Smith.

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