When the River Ran Dry

by Robert Davies

  He watched the desolate scenery as it passed by in the growing dawn light, spent and quiet in his solitude. No amount of fear Bartel and Junkyard could bring matched the surging despair; there were few options, short of theft, that would allow him to keep pace and buy the hours needed to prevent the inevitable disaster. Excessive taxes alone would take months to pay and soon, the hours at Reese Street would begin to shrink and his absence would surely be interpreted as disinterest in Neferure and from it, all Thutmose would need to argue his case successfully. Worse still, the advance against money he could never repay had become a disaster and its promise taken cruelly from him as he replaced Courtnall and Espinoza’s treasure beneath the cold floor of the machine shop. With a power he could scarcely have imagined, time—and the miserable poverty waiting patiently for him—had become Ricky’s greatest enemy.

  When the rains eased at last, Novum moved slowly into the final months of the heat season and with it, a customary, thick layer of smoke and haze that hovered at two hundred meters, blotting out the sun most days as surface temperatures soared. During summer, days seemed endless and only those who worked near the transport tunnels beneath the surface fared better than most, cooled by rushing air making its way through machine-carved caverns toward the surface. Ricky did his best to drum up new business, but little of it changed. He watched in helpless despair as his weekly intake failed to match the drain on his funds by Boris’ price increase and the ill-fated hours advance.

  As he knew they would, the sessions dwindled and she began to notice. He tried to explain it away to Neferure as a temporary condition, but her confusion and loneliness was turning quickly to suspicion. Why, she asked, did he stay away for so long? Had he grown weary of her? Despite his reassurances, she spoke with the unmistakable voice of one who had been abandoned; not anger or jealousy, but a tone of resignation and sadness that haunted him in those quiet moments alone where no one could ease the persistent ache. Again he fought against the unseen truth worming its way out from his thoughts, but there was no use; he gave in at last to a shameful idea he would never have considered before. More alone than he had ever been, Ricky walked slowly toward the Square.

  It wasn’t mere greed or avarice that gnawed at him. Instead, a compulsion he could no longer ignore urged him to it as a necessary, even justifiable solution. What had once been unthinkable became reality when he stepped from a transit pod onto the platform near the blocks, only a short walk to his mother’s apartment on Demarest Street.

  The neighborhood was unchanged and any meaningful difference from his first days on the hustle was measured in the emotionless faces of tenants moving quickly for their shift changes. Dull, uninviting blockhouses stained in blackened streaks of ancient mold presented the grim, joyless image of standard factory housing. Down every narrow, garbage-strewn street, there was little color except competing shades of concrete and steel.

  A noisy swarm of children, scarlet faced and noses running, kicked at a crude ball made of cast off rags and old shirts, thumping it against a wall beneath a vacant unit with windows covered over by thin, metal panels. Above, a warning sticker ordering others to stay clear had been applied by MPE cops intent on discouraging streeties and transient squatters who looked for the dark, empty places where rent payments were never due. They took no notice, but Ricky watched them for a moment, remembering a time long before when he and Litzi followed a similar path, waiting aimlessly with the other kids after school until parents returned from work.

  To the outsider, it was a scene of indifference and cold, relentless poverty; the traditional spawning ground for common laborers, petty thieves and those who took jobs no one else wanted in a static, cheerless world. For Ricky, it was the place where he began. In those early days, the signs of squalor were invisible to young eyes; he and Litzi knew nothing of the Uppers or the lives they lived above the clouds where everything was clean and bright. Instead, they played street games and shouted in shrill echoes along passages between the blocks like all housing kids left to their own inventiveness while Helene Mills pulled wiring harnesses at an appliance factory each day. For them, life was met and lived as they found it, with no expectation of something more.

  Ricky climbed the cement steps, crumbling and chipped, to key in the access code of his mother’s front door, ignoring a wailing infant’s cry through an open window across the muddy street. Two small planters she once kept there were gone, leaving only a thin ring of dirt as evidence and reminder of a time when innocence still kept them safe in the shadow of the mega-towers. He called out to her as he kicked his shoes next a closet, now missing its door.

  “Mom?”

  “We’re in here, Ricky,” Helene replied with a playful tone that stood in stark, cruel contrast to her condition. He moved through the kitchen, pausing only to inhale the aroma of stew simmering slowly in an iron pot on the two-burner stove as he had so many times before. It was their favorite and with Litzi’s visit, Helene decided, a good excuse to go through the effort. On most days, fast packs of processed dinners sealed in cellophane wrappers was all she could manage, but today, the stew.

  Ricky leaned to kiss her cheek, moving next to embrace Litzi.

  “Smells wonderful!” he said automatically.

  “I saved the good potatoes you got for me,” Helene declared, “and none of them had black spots!”

  “You don’t have to hoard them, Mom; I can find the clean ones any time you want.”

  “I know, honey, but I don’t like to waste things, and…”

  “You could’ve gotten more meat, Ricky,” Litzi said suddenly and the disappointment in her voice was clear.

  “I got her what she asked for.”

  “All those rich people you trade with, I don’t know why you don’t get her a better place.”

  “All those rich people don’t give apartments away for free, Litzi!”

  “Stop it, both of you!” Helene ordered, determined to keep order and restore a Sunday dinner to its proper tone. “I don’t need another place, and I’m doing just fine as it is. They gave me three months, with pay, before I have to be back at the plant. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  Litzi looked only at Ricky as she spoke.

  “Mother, this apartment was built before you were born; he can find something better if he’d just try!”

  Ricky heard the misperception in Litzi’s complaint; hustling had indeed brought him more than enough money to move Helene into one of the newer, medium-rise buildings near the river, but he had spent nearly all of it in the Reese Street Theater. Despite Litzi’s belief otherwise, he was not the well-heeled dandy he once portrayed when business on the streets was non-stop. He felt his face redden, knowing the chance of making his pitch was disappearing quickly.

  Again, Ricky felt the sting of inadequacy and shame; others would have invested the tokens or bought into a legitimate business. Instead, he had given in to the lure of a Starlight program and within it, an imaginary person made real by the magic of a software suite’s code and the sensory activators inside an experience cocoon. She couldn’t know how it felt and there was no way to tell her; Litzi’s life had not been steered in so frivolous a direction. He looked away, hoping the silence might deliver him, but his desperate problem remained. Litzi saw the shift in his manner and a pained expression as evidence of the torment hiding within.

  “Are you in trouble?” she asked suddenly.

  Ricky fought to keep firm his composure.

  “Trouble? Not at all; why would you ask?”

  “Because I know you,” she answered, but now in a softer, easy voice. “If your business was going well, you wouldn’t leave her here.”

  Ricky said nothing.

  “Let’s not talk about money right now,” Helene said, motioning them to the kitchen. “It’s time to eat and I’d rather enjoy the afternoon than argue our way through it, all right?”

  “Okay.” Litzi smiled, helping her mother gently from a couch. Grateful for the break in a
discussion he hadn’t wanted, Ricky followed in silence. It wouldn’t end there, he knew, but a respite from his sister’s interrogations was welcome as they sat at the tiny kitchen table while Helene ladled the stew into three shallow bowls. They ate quietly, with only the usual family banter to break the silence. Ricky’s mind wandered, taken by a chilling reality Helene and Litzi couldn’t know, but it felt good to sit once more where the worries that plagued him could be kept at a temporary distance.

  It was after seven o’clock when Litzi closed the bedroom door slowly and found Ricky placing the dishes into the washing unit with deliberate care. Medicated four times daily against the temporary pain from her surgeries, Helene would sleep through the night. Litzi leaned against the counter’s surface with folded arms, but still he said nothing. At last, she touched his shoulder.

  “How bad is it?” she asked softly.

  “It?” he answered, holding fast to the pretense.

  Litzi wouldn’t budge.

  “I know you don’t want to make her worry, but Mom has no idea what you really do; she still thinks you’re a document courier for the Transport Ministry.”

  “I know.”

  “Ricky, she didn’t see your big apartment; she doesn’t know you’ve been hustling all this time. You moved into that shitty little hole of a flat because, you said, ‘the big-shots needed your place for one of their favorites,’ but that wasn’t true by half, was it?”

  It was pointless to continue the ruse and Ricky knew it.

  “It’s just a down time right now,” he replied, slipping ever closer to the admission he could never make.

  “A down time?” she replied incredulously. “You made twice my yearly pay in a month, but still you had to move back down to the Square! Where did all that money go?”

  “It’s a complicated deal, Litzi!”

  “It must be. Look at this place, Ricky; she shouldn’t have to live like this anymore!”

  “What the hell do you want from me? You make a decent living, too, but I don’t see you doing much about it!”

  At once, he regretted the words. Before Litzi could speak, Ricky felt the pounding sensation of guilt.

  “Then why not take a job in the storage houses? You know that work as well as anyone, and I heard they’re hiring. Or, if you’d take the time to go downtown and try the tests again, I could probably get you something at my office; Walden is a friend and he knows you’d make a good portfolio associate.”

  Ricky scoffed and said, “It’s not that bad; I don’t need to spend my time dragging cargo back and forth inside some warehouse for half what I get now, or ask my little sister to find me a job!”

  “How much are you getting?” she asked suddenly, but Ricky knew his answer wouldn’t matter. “How much, Ricky?” she persisted.

  “More than I’d make in your building, that’s for sure!”

  “Oh? Then why don’t you transfer some of your tokens into one of our accounts? We have Uppers who do that every day, and they have a lot more at risk than any of us.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Litzi.”

  “Because you don’t want anyone knowing how you got the tokens, or is it something else?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Are you living off your savings, now? Has business dried up that bad?”

  “I’m doing fine; just forget about it.”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  “You still can’t take good advice, even from your own sister, can you?”

  “Advice?” He laughed. “Or just a sales squeeze to make yourself look good in front of those assholes who pay you next to nothing? Which is it?”

  Litzi held up both hands in mock surrender.

  “Have it your way, Ricky. Just remember I offered, and before you go, take a nice, long look at where our mother stays. You could’ve done something about it a long time ago, but…”

  Ricky turned away, pretending to arrange the worn, tarnished silverware in its drawer. The reason for his visit, ever-present and unrelenting, had been frustrated and now, defeated. He had meant to ask Helene for a loan, drawn against the settlement made by the factory’s lawyers to prevent her from taking her discontent—and the debilitating injuries her fall had caused—to the public forum. The payoff was sizable, and more than enough to put him ahead long enough to wait out Boris’ price increase and the crushing mistake of advance hours granted by a calculating predator, waiting patiently as a victim wriggled ever deeper into a trap without hope of escape.

  When winter came and business picked up, he reasoned, the money could’ve been returned to Helene’s accounts with no one any the wiser, particularly Litzi. As it stood, there was no longer any chance of that and Ricky felt himself slipping once more into despair. He heard the front door close, knowing she had gone. Quiet desperation had been made worse by the shame he felt and the disappointment Litzi carried with her. He closed the curtains that looked out at an empty field behind the blocks where they once played without a care, reminded again how far he’d gone—and how low he had fallen.

  The pod train to Morrissey Square swarmed with shift change workers trying to beat the rush, only to create one of their own. It was also a ‘local,’ obliging stops at every transit station along the way, but Ricky took no notice, preoccupied with the nagging guilt Litzi’s words exposed. As it was from the ill-timed theft of Courtnall’s hidden treasure, Ricky’s bid to find money in Helene’s settlement ended in a silent debacle. He would have to find another way, but his options were thinning.

  As the train eased through an interchange, slowing briefly where the overhead rail veered smoothly into the north-south line, Ricky leaned close to the pod’s glass dome. Below, he saw the big cranes, like giant, metal giraffes loosed from an impossible menagerie where they towered over a canal. Long before, the old boats left off their cargo on bustling docks piled high with the stuff of commerce. Now silent and listing over in the mud to rust away with each passing year, the empty barges were quiet reminders of a past few could remember.

  Ricky waited and watched for the landmark as his signal, knowing the empty river docks were only a short walk from Reese Street. He had the tokens for at least an hour with her, and the session would provide a much-needed salve on an open wound of intense loneliness. When the warbling tone announced the train’s next stop, he gave in to the impulse and walked quickly from the high platform, turning south near the shops.

  Justman looked up from a monitor, adjusting scratched, grease-smeared spectacles perched on the end of his nose, forever crooked and bent. Behind him, Lady Gem busied herself with a bag of potato crisps, unaffected by an overpowering, invisible cloud of stench made by her latest batch of cheap perfume. It was quiet in the lobby for once, but Ricky wished otherwise; the little man would take notice and insist on the usual, endless banter most knew to be automatic and forced.

  “It’s been a while, Slider.”

  “Do I still have those hours?” Ricky asked. “The time I already paid for, I mean?”

  “Sure,” Justman replied with a false smile, waiting impatiently for the account pass to re-set and begin preparation coding to wake the program in one of the experience cocoons beyond.

  “Almost seven, but then the account goes over to the advance, okay? After that, you’ll have to settle up and clear the total before I can let you in.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Number twelve?” Justman offered.

  “Thanks,” Ricky replied automatically as he turned for the theater’s gallery. Within, she waited, but there was no hint or clue that could prepare him; Starlight’s intuitive programming would surely have made adjustments. He felt his pulse quicken when the machine opened and he settled quickly, determined to remove any doubt in Neferure’s mind. He closed his eyes, waiting to cross over.

  The voices outside his tent pulled him from that strange place where all Starlight users wait as the images firm and take control. He felt the warmth of the early sun as it creste
d the barren, rocky hills on the eastern side of the great valley. Apheru moved into the harsh morning light, signaling without a word for an attending soldier to fetch his chariot as another handed over a cup of cool water.

  “A message rider has arrived, Captain; may we bring him to you now, or would you rather refresh yourself first?”

  “Send him.”

  “At once, sir.”

  A voice from behind began with a laugh.

  “Could it be your other commander who summons you?”

  Apheru turned with a smile to greet Ankhshesh, his oldest and dearest friend.

  “Either way, I’m still commanded by an authority greater than mine,” he replied. “Sit and take water with me.”

  “We have one more day until we journey to Canaan, Apheru; a last pause before we engage the miscreants who fancy themselves and their useless insurrection as an historic moment.”

  “No one forced them to it, Ankhshesh; the folly is theirs alone.”

  “Perhaps, but their arrows and spears are no less lethal.”

  “Do you doubt our chances?”

  “Of course not, but some of our men will not return. It will be a wasted effort, both for Pharaoh’s enemies and for us.”

  Apheru looked across the narrow divide between two hills where his compliment of foot soldiers, archers and cavalry went about their duties. Ankhshesh was correct; lives would be lost needlessly for little more than a strategic nuisance.

  “You would think by now we would have won some measure of lasting peace, especially since the cataracts. Word has obviously not reached Canaan to acquaint them with our deeds against a vastly superior force of Nubians.”

  “It has always been so, Apheru; the truth is too often mixed with what others wish to hear. I think truth becomes lost altogether and a new battle must be won to prove the same point, again and again.”

  “They will find that truth in Canaan soon enough, my friend.”