When the River Ran Dry

by Robert Davies

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Well, that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? I mean, Boris, he got no other choice but to nominate you for one of them Walks, okay? Like you said, the work houses ain’t gonna get him no money the way you owe, so he got to send it to them network vid boys and they put you on a Walk; that way he gets satisfied and you ain’t got no more debt, see?”

  Ricky stood still as the full truth rolled over him in a flash of clarity. Bartel knew better than anyone Ricky would not be able to meet and pay his staggering debt obligation, but the choices that remained were equally dismal: Convince Litzi to become the sex toy for a heartless criminal or submit himself to the Walk. He couldn’t bear to think of his baby sister in the grip of an insane, perverted animal, but the Walk was a death sentence for most who were forced to it as a last resort and deliverance from crimes or indiscretions committed against the powerful. Ricky looked away, tormented by the images of others who went before him.

  At once, he remembered evenings watching episodes from Vinnie’s apartment and the city’s ultimate expression of callous disregard for human life. Without a thought, they looked on as unfortunate debtors were forced to run and fight for their lives with millions across every sector watching the live feeds. Everyone knew the score; whenever a Walk was presented on the vids, reluctant debtors—far beyond the ability to settle up with those to whom they owed—were fitted with an array of tiny cameras feeding a transmitter and set on a path to a pre-determined location, usually at night to heighten the suspense and fear. As Novum’s population watched their vid screens with disturbing fascination, specialized ‘chase’ units—mostly MPE officers moonlighting for extra tokens—followed, equipped with a fearsome collection of weapons and the express sanction of the organizers to prevent the debtor from completing what had been cruelly dubbed a ‘Walk.’ Chasers never took prisoners; it was a race to survive and a fight to the death played out real-time in millions of homes.

  In the tradition of Challenge programs, pitting contestants against one another in the sorts of things that once counted as jail-worthy crimes, advertisers paid handsomely for commercial time on the vids as the curious and blood-thirsty looked on, moment by terrifying moment. On the exceedingly rare occasion when a debtor reached the goal alive, the injured party in a complaint was made whole from the advertising revenues, plus considerable, additional bonus royalties as compensation if the fight was particularly vicious and the resultant wounds inflicted were suitably gruesome. If, on the other hand, the Chasers found their mark, the debt alone would be met by subscription fees and replays for months after. The only relief a debtor could expect was found in the assurance further action would not be taken against the families left behind. Of course, few who made the Walk came out alive, sent on their desperate run with no weaponry or armor; they were on their own and left to survive or die as naked players—human targets—in that most final, savage game.

  Ricky knew the odds would be so steeply piled against, his life would surely end in a bloody mess somewhere across the bleak landscape of a city eager to watch the spectacle. With the grim image parading through his mind, Ricky saw the inevitable truth emerge; he would either find the money to pay off what he owed or draw his last breath alone and terrified on a dark night when the Chasers ran him down at last. He thought of Litzi, satisfied with a strange and unexpected suddenness, knowing at least she would be spared the sordid, despicable things Boris had in mind for her. No matter what they threatened, he would never turn her over. At last, he looked at Bartel.

  “Give me a week; there’s one more place I may be able to find the money. It’ll cost me in other ways, but it’s possible.”

  “Fuck that!” Junkyard thundered. “Make your choice now, asshole!”

  Bartel waved him back gently.

  “Okay, Junkyard, okay. Let’s see if Slider can get himself back; he done good for Boris before, so we let him try once and make it right. You know what? I think we get Boris to call Justman so he can take a little time for himself at the theater. What do you say to that, Slider?”

  Ricky only blinked as Bartel smiled and nodded.

  “We make it easy on you, okay? Boris, he ain’t gonna mind if you get a few hours with your sim girlie, right? I ask him tonight.”

  “Okay,” Ricky mumbled.

  “Maybe a nice visit with that computer sweetie, it help figure something out and clear your mind. Come on, Junkyard, he need some time to think about it.”

  Ricky waited until they disappeared beyond the buildings where the alley curved to the left. When the door closed behind him with a dull thud, he stood alone, drowning in the silent pool of misery his own weaknesses had made. The end was inevitable; he knew there would be no hope of finding enough money to settle his debt, but just as surely, he was determined to shield Litzi from the depraved violations Boris would inflict and that truth moved him quickly and with purpose.

  His jaw tightened and released with a newfound resolve as he waited for the comm link to open. After a moment, Litzi answered.

  “Ricky, I’m sorry for what I said, but…”

  Ricky understood, but his mission drove him quickly to the point.

  “Never mind that now,” he began, “you have to listen to me, okay? This is important.”

  “What’s wrong—is Mom okay?”

  His eyes closed reflexively, as though she would see and understand, even on the far end of a comm link.

  “She’s fine, but you have to get some things packed and be ready to go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re not going—you are. Tell your boss you need some time off, or maybe you have to take care of Mom for a few days; I don’t care what you say, just let them know you’re going to be out for a while.”

  “What’s this about? Look, I’m sorry for pushing you like I did, but it’s frustrating when…”

  “No, it’s nothing to do with that, Litzi, this is something else. Just do what I’m telling you, okay?”

  “You’re scaring me, Ricky!”

  “I know, and I’m sorry, but I need you to trust me.”

  “Just tell me, all right?”

  “Not here—not on an open comm. Go and pack; bring enough for a week, and I’ll be there in a little while. I’ll explain all this later, all right?”

  Again he waited, knowing the confusion his call had made for Litzi.

  “Okay,” she said, closing the link.

  At the corner where the alley met Rademacher Way, he waited and watched. No one would see him, he reasoned, if he stayed in the shadows of an ancient pawnshop’s doorway, nestled between two bay-style display windows covered over in hastily applied green paint. At last, he was satisfied Bartel and Junkyard had not hidden themselves across the intersection to follow at a discrete distance; his plan could just as easily occur to them, after all.

  Ricky had the tokens for a land bus, but the freights would get him to the new apartments near the river in half the time. The short walk downhill toward the tracks took ten minutes and he jumped an empty flat car as a local transfer slowed for the curves. Another thirty minutes passed before he hopped from the car’s ladder, trotting to a stop while the train clunked and clanked in measured time through a tangle of interchange tracks on its way to the yards inside Sector 2.

  The night was sweltering and humid, making the walk up to Litzi’s building a labored process. Ricky looked carefully at the figures waiting near transit stands or hurrying from the shops on the far side of a wide boulevard grown over with weeds since the housing units were finished three years before. There was little chance Bartel could’ve followed, but Ricky scanned the faces of pedestrians just the same; there were others in Boris’ employ who might be sent on a surveillance mission to note his movements.

  He found the call button for her flat and pushed three times until the heavy, gray doorway clicked open. When he reached the fourth floor, winded and sweating heavily, she was waiting with a pack slung over one shoulder.
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  “What are we doing?” she asked, worried under the weight of Ricky’s brief, confusing note an hour before.

  “Come on,” he replied quickly, guiding her toward the stairwell, “I’ll explain when we’re outside.”

  They hurried into the darkness, angling for a row of patchy shrubs that marked the outline of the apartment building’s grounds when suddenly, he stopped, still struggling to catch his breath.

  “I’m going to take you to a friend’s quarters down in the factory districts,” Ricky panted; “you need to stay there for a while. I know how weird this must seem, but you have to trust me, all right?”

  “I trust you, but why are we doing this? What’s happened?”

  The moment Ricky dreaded most had arrived. There were no convenient excuses or short answers that would do; he had to tell her the truth and expose himself to the scrutiny of one whose opinion of him mattered. Worse still, she would find in his words the full extent of his failures—his weakness. Ricky winced, knowing the thin illusion of success she already regarded with suspicion would be rinsed away at last, leaving behind the raw tissue of his selfish desires, now laid bare from each hour spent inside the Reese Street Theater. Time (and any hope of finding a solution) had run out. Before, in the grim silence of his apartment, he saw with perfect clarity what had to be done; the animals who threatened him could arrange for his death, but they would never find Litzi. Ricky moved her through a thicket, making for the transit station on the far side of an open field, speaking slowly and carefully as they walked.

  “You were right,” he began; “I’m in trouble, and there’s no way to get out of it. I owe a lot of money to some very bad people and I can’t pay it back.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “It doesn’t matter; they’re criminals who don’t take getting stiffed lightly.”

  “Ricky, answer me!” she demanded suddenly. “What people?”

  “One of the Bosses—a psychotic bastard called Boris.”

  Litzi’s shoulders sagged.

  “Boris Konstantinou?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Oh Ricky, how the hell did you get involved with that son of a bitch?”

  Ricky stared at her, shaken by the question.

  “Never mind that, how do you know about Boris?”

  Litzi scowled in disgust.

  “He comes into my office sometimes; I think he has money invested with the people upstairs. He’s a horrible man, Ricky; a crazy person who should be locked up.”

  Ricky looked away and said, “When I fail to pay him what I owe, you’ll see just how bad he is…”

  She knew at once what it meant.

  “It’s more than that; I can see it in your face.”

  Ricky said nothing.

  She reached with a thumb and gently lifted his head so that his eyes met hers.

  “It’s not just the money, is it?”

  “No.”

  “What are you not telling me, Ricky?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Ricky!”

  “He wants me to convince you to go with him.”

  Litzi nodded and said, “I guess it’s not surprising.”

  “It was to me!” Ricky replied at once. “You knew about this?”

  “I didn’t think he’d go that far,” she said softly. “Boris has been at me for months; every time he and those thugs who protect him show up at the office, he always stops at my desk. It makes me sick just thinking about it, but he keeps asking me if I want ‘something better than a desk job,’ and ‘why don’t I try it out for a while.’ It was miserable, every time I saw him walk in.”

  Ricky drew in a deep breath.

  “And now you know why I need to get you someplace where Boris could never find you until this gets sorted out.”

  Litzi heard the meaning behind his declaration.

  “What about you?” she continued. “What happens when you don’t give him the money and I won’t do what he wants?”

  “I’m working on that, but it’s not your concern.”

  She returned a nervous, unbelieving laugh.

  “Not my concern? I’m your sister, damn it!”

  Ricky was unmoved.

  “None of that matters, Litzi, just listen to me, please! Boris will send his people to find you very soon now because he already knows I can’t pay him. He thinks I’m cornered and the only way out is convincing you to become his temporary whore. I lied to his street agent and bought a little time, but I have to get you out of here before that happens, do you understand?”

  “I understand, but when he sees I’m gone, he’ll take it out on you!”

  “No, he won’t. There are other ways to deal with this, and he’ll be satisfied.”

  “Why don’t you run? Just get the hell out and try for one of the settlements out beyond the wire! You know some of the Agros out there, right?”

  “I can’t, Litzi; the debt has to be paid, one way or another. If I ran, Boris would issue an order to find and kill me, just to make an example for others. Even worse, it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy him; he will find you sooner or later.”

  “How much do you owe him, Ricky?”

  “More than I can pay.”

  “How did you get yourself into this? Did you steal something from him?”

  Ricky’s mind went to the machine shop and a pair of small boxes covered in filthy rags.

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “How much?”

  He fought to find the words—something to tell her that wouldn’t hurt so badly when she understood at last. As the fear of Boris’ perverse intentions for Litzi pushed him before, the embarrassment and guilt held him back. In the end, Ricky simply ran out of lies.

  “Eleven thousand.”

  She stared in silence, staggered by the image his words had made.

  “I thought I had a huge score—a package of stuff that’s worth a hundred times that amount, but it didn’t work out. I took an advance from him before I realized I can’t pay it back. I tried to get them to cancel and let me pay for what I used, but they won’t; I owe the full amount and that’s it.”

  Litzi shook her head slowly, trying her best to interpret the message hidden inside Ricky’s answer.

  “What you used?”

  “The advance wasn’t for money.”

  “You just told me that’s what you owe!”

  “It was for hours, Litzi…”

  “Hours? I don’t understand what you’re talking about!”

  “Starlight,” he said softly.

  Finally, he arrived at his own break point—a swan song, perhaps. For so long, he shunted aside the cautions and concerns of others who found adventure simulations a costly and useless waste of money; they couldn’t understand the magic of Starlight’s effect and the joy he felt in those moments with Neferure. The news vids ran stories of shattered lives and ruined souls who could no longer separate fact from fiction; impassioned and dramatic documentary shows, sending out warning signals that Starlight was a dangerous scam. They paraded them through on the screens in every home, describing the full effect of an addiction nearly impossible to shed, but few heard the dire message. He watched, but always with the satisfied belief he was different—better than them. In the suffocating heat on the edge of a metropolis, his own moment of clarity found him much too late.

  She stood away suddenly, stepping backward as though the word alone could injure her if not avoided.

  “Starlight? I never knew you…”

  “It was private; I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “I know it’s realistic, but eleven thousand? How could you possibly need that much time in a stupid vid adventure?”

  Ricky knelt down to pluck a thin leaf from a weed, twirling it between his thumb and finger, searching for an explanation that could ease the disappointment he heard in her voice.

  “It’s hard to describe; like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. The program lets you live in
another place and time, if you want. It doesn’t judge you or remind you of the things you could never do in real life. Inside, it lets you be a part of something better than what you have; better than what you are, I guess…”

  Litzi’s face went cold as the true meaning in Ricky’s words emerged. At once, she looked and saw a stranger, not her own brother. The weak ones—the losers who couldn’t find somebody—they were the ones who wasted their money and their lives in the Starlight theaters. She listened and heard what Ricky couldn’t say; a life-like amusement had become something much worse.

  “You can’t stop, can you?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, but his feeble tone was an answer in itself.

  “Damn it, Ricky, why didn’t you say something about this? Why did you wait until now?”

  “You wouldn’t have understood then any more than you do now.”

  “I understand enough!” she said quickly. “I know you’ve gone so far into that damn thing your life is in danger!”

  “It’s not that simple, Litzi; Starlight is more than a vid game or something they run at the illusion booths down on the Corridor. This is just like being there; it’s living a better life where…”

  “Better? Can it keep you from being killed out here in the real world? How is it better, Ricky? Can’t you see what it’s done?”

  “It’s not like that,” he protested, but the words sounded childish and ridiculous, even to him.

  “Listen to yourself! You’re addicted to that fucking thing!”

  He had no answer, looking upward to the cloud cover as a misting rain drifted downward through the streetlights across the field.

  “Let’s go,” he said at last; “I have to get you somewhere safe before Boris figures out you’re gone.”

  They walked in silence, aiming steadily toward a paved footwalk that paralleled the river where families once walked on sunny afternoons in a time long before. Her disappointment had been replaced by numb disbelief. There was no point in going on about it and Litzi stumbled along behind, suddenly caught up in her big brother’s nightmare. After an hour, they arrived near the 18 portal, brightly lit and bustling with movement.