When the River Ran Dry

by Robert Davies

  “The cops should run them off,” she declared with a scowl.

  “They can’t,” he replied. “It’s not like the old days when the Regulators enforced intrusion laws.”

  She looked at him for a moment.

  “I think it’s cruel, waiting around with their cameras and stupid questions. Everyone saw what they made you do; what’s the point of dragging you through it again?”

  Ricky smiled sadly and said, “Money. The advertisers want to get all they can, I guess.”

  “A lot of people are watching you, Richard; you’re not the only one who went too far with that horrible Starlight business.”

  Ricky’s face ran red.

  “You knew?”

  “Of course, but you always make your rent on time, so I stayed out of it; your personal life was none of my business. And anyway, those network bastards described your program in their commentary shows and they didn’t leave much to the imagination.”

  He turned away.

  “The Starlight programs are supposed to be kept private, but I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

  “They interviewed somebody late yesterday on the vids—a disgusting little man who runs one of the theaters, I think.”

  “Ellis Justman,” Ricky replied with a knowing nod.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Yes, I know him.”

  “He said your program was some sort of Egyptian adventure?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I thought I could keep it hidden, but…”

  “Are you going to continue?” she asked suddenly. “I know it’s not my business to say, but maybe you should think about leaving it alone now.”

  He looked up again, surprised by her meaning. Like Doctor Cason, Mrs. Abber understood enough to know Ricky’s future had been restored, but only if he cast off his desire for a false life waiting for him inside Reese Street Theater. From an experience cocoon, playing the hero in a contrived fantasy as the lover of an Egyptian princess, there were no worries or doubts; he could live an enviable life where ideal conditions were the norm—where no one could expose the raw truth of his failures, but his Walk turned him and ignited a conviction he never had before.

  “I’m not going back there,” he said at last.

  She put her hand gently on his shoulder and said, “I’m glad. I know it was easy and everything happens the way you want, but it wasn’t real. Remember what they made you do, Richard; you don’t need to hide away inside a simulation.”

  “I know. I took it way too far, but…”

  She took his hand in hers and said with a gentle squeeze, “I like you better out here in the real world anyway.”

  He took a deep breath and reached for the door. At once, they were on him, forming a tight circle beneath five or six camera drones that hovered and shifted position for the best angle. “How do you feel?” one asked. “Did you see the Chasers where they waited to ambush you at Broadridge?” wondered another, “or could you sense them in the darkness?”

  Ricky tried to answer, but still more questions were shouted in his ear, one on top of the other. “Would you consider making another Walk if the money was right?” “How much did you owe?” asked a thin girl who looked far too young for the part. “If you had a sponsor, do you see yourself going professional?” Ricky frowned and shook his head in confusion, but still more questions came at him like arrows out of the dark. “There’s talk of forming a league,” they said, “have you been contacted by anyone interested in making it a regular thing?”

  Ricky’s head began to spin as the assault continued. Question after question rained down on him—relentless and without regard. Shouted voices became unrecognizable and jumbled until he could hear only fragmented words, each crowding in until he could take no more. He looked past their faces toward Mrs. Abber’s window, but she was gone. Had she abandoned him? Was her kindness only a momentary convenience, he wondered suddenly? Ricky felt sick as the cacophony went on until at last, she appeared to guide him quickly to his apartment.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I didn’t think that…”

  “Shhhh, now,” she replied. “It’s over; they have what they came for.”

  After a week, interest in Ricky’s night of terror began to ebb. His ordeal set betting records that were trumpeted loudly across Novum, announcing more money was wagered on his odds than any previous Walk, especially since the near-miss episode with snipers at the irrigation pump house. Ricky’s unlikely survival established him as one of only six in the past twenty years who made it through alive and the others were hardened street enforcers like Junkyard, or City Defense soldiers trained in the skills needed to fight and win in a struggle to the death. A common man, making it through under extraordinary risk, Ricky had become an iconic symbol carefully calculated to show ordinary Flatwalkers anything was possible, but there was more.

  Starlight producers, ever watchful for an angle to increase their revenue, heralded Ricky’s successful Walk as an advertisement for the program’s realism, arguing his simulated life of danger had gifted him with an education in the lethal arts so complete, he had all he needed to survive. Obvious to many as a defacto endorsement, Ricky’s association with Starlight became an opportune marketing success, compelling others to open subscriptions and mimic his adventurous spirit in their own bid for fame. He looked at the phenomenon with contempt, knowing too well most followed an impossible illusion contrived by callous, self-serving salesmen encouraging ignorant dreamers to die alone in the dark for their trouble.

  Mercifully beyond the interest of the ‘nets and their persistent cameras at last, Ricky returned to his work, but it was clear things had changed. Orders came in from all sectors, and much faster than before. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to get their secret items from the Slider, regardless of cost. Any of the hustlers on the street would have done a proper job, but buying from the most famous street hustler in town had become a badge of honor. He didn’t mind the sudden, welcome increase in profit his notoriety produced, of course, but the days and nights seemed endless as he raced from one request to another.

  Though the thought took some time to reach him, Ricky smiled at another, more useful effect of his Walk; the hours once given to Starlight had been returned to him and Ricky was surprised to find he rarely thought of it—or Neferure. By the force of a single night’s run across the city, working hard in cold desperation merely to survive, Ricky’s need and desire for her was thinning quickly.

  At first, it felt like a betrayal, the process of forgetting, but there was no other way; Ricky would not allow himself to slip again and face the ruin that waited if he relented and went back to Reese Street. After a month, the invisible knot that once bound him began to loosen when he referred to Neferure and Starlight in a conversation with Litzi as a collective ‘it,’ rather than his traditional, anthropomorphic characterization of a software character profile as ‘her.’ In small, subtle increments, Ricky felt the soothing breeze of his emancipation—deliverance from a need only his life and death struggle could erase.

  The explanations to his mother and sister had been awkward and uncomfortable, but he made them anyway. Litzi’s softer tone was a surprise, considering her reaction to the news on that sweltering night when he rushed to move her away from Boris Konstantinou’s grasp. For her part, Helene accepted the networks’ disturbingly graphic descriptions of Ricky’s moments with Neferure as understandable and even predictable, but her disdain for Starlight was made clear enough. Ricky squirmed with embarrassment, but Litzi rescued him, reminding Helene of the dangerous Walk and Ricky’s survival so that ‘no more talk of it’ put an end to his misery. A mother’s relief her son was still alive was more important than his lewd, pornographic habits and the distinction did not go unnoticed.

  As Novum moved into the hottest months of summer, Ricky’s business soared with the temperatures. No longer drained by frequent and expensive visits to Reese Street, the money he collected for his services began to build. New clie
nts sought him out simply to announce to their friends ‘Slider’ was their chosen purveyor, but most stayed because he always delivered. Out on the streets, unwanted attention from Behavior Regulators was suddenly acute, but their clumsy agents could be eluded as easily as the MPE cops by those who knew how to find and stay in the shadows. Mrs. Abber checked in on him more than she had before, if only to reassure and remind him there was at least one other who cared. When she knocked gently on a cloudy, humid morning, Ricky smiled and motioned her inside.

  “You’re doing a lot better now, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Much better,” he replied. “I don’t think of it much, except when the pod train goes by Reese Street. Even then, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”

  She shook her head and moved toward him.

  “I meant your business, Richard; you don’t have those huge debts anymore.”

  “Oh.”

  She said nothing for a moment, but Ricky made the conclusion at last, smiling with a nod.

  “Ah. Time to up the rent, I guess?”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “It’s okay,” he said softly, “I don’t mind.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I just meant, now that you’re back on your feet, there are a lot better places than this to live and…”

  “Why don’t I move uptown?”

  “Yes.”

  Ricky looked at the floor, considering his words carefully. It was true; he had plenty of money to find a new apartment in the better quarters, but the idea brought with it changes he was unwilling to make. In his obscure, tiny corner of Novum, Ricky felt safe again, but more than that, he had no immediate desire to reprise the haughty, self-important follies that led him to a near-fatal downfall. Litzi saw it, too; she knew his grand apartment in those days before had been built on a fragile pillar that proved easily crumbled. Excessive money from the hustle made him into a caricature—a shallow, contrived parallel to those who sought a way up from the streets to take a place of opulence and comfort. He remembered in silence, pulled back by the fall from grace that nearly cost him his life.

  “I’m okay where I am; I don’t need a better apartment in some glittery, 5th Level neighborhood. Maybe someday, but not right now.”

  She sat next to him in the little dinette.

  “It’s nice that we’ve gotten to know each other better—that we’ve become friends. I like these visits and keeping an eye out for those horrible men who made you do that Walk, but you deserve better than this, Richard.”

  He shook his head.

  “I appreciate the thought, really, but there’s nothing wrong with where I am; I don’t have to worry about cameras everywhere, or herds of people walking by my door every minute of the day. The Regulators don’t come down here anymore, and MPE doesn’t bother me if I don’t bother them. Anyway, I’m going to get my mom moved into one of the two-story places south of Jefferson—those new buildings near the river? That will pretty much tap my reserves for a while.”

  Mrs. Abber smiled and said, “It’s good that you’re taking care of her, but you could still afford something nicer if you wanted.”

  “It’s nice right here.” He smiled.

  Behind her, a news runner at the bottom of his vid screen wandered through, showing air traffic alerts and congestion in the lanes at five hundred meters, warning Uppers to slow near the Trade Center. Ricky watched with detached interest until the red band and italicized white letters refreshed to the latest updates, but something else caught his eye. He sat forward suddenly and the words seemed to speak only to him. Justice Ministry officials announced the release of two suspects ‘wrongly and unjustly accused,’ detailing the short proceedings and a decision by Magistrates to free Benjamin Courtnall and Geraldo Espinoza, citing a glaring lack of restraint by MPE officials and a shoddy investigation that would be reviewed for ‘possible errors in judgment.’

  As Elden said it would, a corrupt mechanism allowed the sham to run its course. Once more, the two Bosses were restored to their operation with the Magistrate’s apologies, free to continue their dark activities unhindered. Ricky said nothing, preferring instead to shake his head in wonder and grateful beyond measure the little packages would be found exactly where he left them inside the old machine shop.

  Ricky’s return to the hustle settled at last. His days and nights were filled with the old, familiar tasks, seeking out and securing for customers those things difficult to find, or prohibited entirely up above the clouds. Behavior Regulators, suddenly determined to clamp down on illicit transactions, mounted campaigns to monitor token transfers and communications records, but the effort only drove insistent Uppers deeper into the underworld where Ricky (and others like him) waited to fill their orders. There was little doubt the Regulators’ motivation was driven by his notoriety as a hustler who made it through the Walk alive, but the move was little more than theater—it wouldn’t last long.

  Regardless of the bright spotlight that shone for a while on his every move, Ricky knew how to avoid attention and stay in those places where spying cameras couldn’t see. Watchers, forever poring over network and transit access logs, paid special attention so that patterns could be established and tracked, yet their work produced few results down on the streets; the Slider understood how to exploit their weak points, too.

  On a blustery Sunday morning nearly two months after his Walk, Ricky went quickly through a Sector 6 transit hub, hurrying to catch a pod train bound for home. The early delivery runs had been effortless, mostly because the items in his bag were not restricted or forbidden; Regulators and MPE cops couldn’t delay him without cause. The trains were running behind schedule again, held at their departure points while an overhead rail was inspected against wind damage, obliging riders to wait it out or walk to another station farther along the line. Ricky had nothing better to do, so he decided to loiter at the transit station’s bar and watch the big vid screens inside as news net updates scrolled through.

  A crowd had gathered, looking up at the broad display where an image of investigators mulling about near a public comm terminal in the old garment district told a sad tale of another street murder, but this one had their attention because an important personality had been killed for no apparent reason. Worse still, the man—a prominent Upper—was lured to his death down on streets the privileged who lived above the clouds rarely visited. Ricky looked closer as the camera view shifted to reveal a jumble of MPE air cars parked in a vacant lot nearby. As another image appeared in the upper foreground, Ricky felt the color drain from his face when the announcer’s hidden voice identified the victim as ‘Elden Fellsbach.’

  No one in Ricky’s circle of family and friends died since his father’s sudden heart attack fourteen years before, leaving him naked and unprepared to accept Elden’s death as it was described in cold detail on the bar’s vid screens. It couldn’t be, he thought; the old man’s retirement was comfortable, but hardly opulent. Violent crimes on the streets had always been common, but Elden had no business venturing out at night and into the teeth of the city’s darker corners, he thought; how could this have happened?

  Ricky stumbled when he turned to go and suddenly, the sounds around him changed to echoes and incoherent noise. His sadness was crushing—powerful and unyielding as he fought against the emptiness and despair. Hurrying from the platform, Ricky nearly fell on the iron steps to the street, catching himself at the last second by a weather-worn handrail. He had been there a hundred times, yet nothing was familiar. The faces of passersby showed no emotion and he wanted to scream at them. Couldn’t they see? Didn’t they understand?

  He wandered east for a while, walking in a daze without direction or purpose, but the confusion and frustration were building, taking him in halting, aimless circles until his anger pointed him suddenly toward city center; he had to see for himself. Hailing a land taxi, Ricky fidgeted for the half-hour ride; it would’ve been faster in a pod train, but backtracking t
o the station seemed a wasted effort. The bulbous, orange-colored machine made jerky, uneven progress through a maze of delivery vans and omnibuses, careening left or right through the heavy traffic but he didn’t notice. Instead, his thoughts were only of Elden.

  The taxi slowed on Ricky’s instructions, squeaking to a halt on the far side of a wide plaza where a complex of huge storage buildings consumed four square blocks. All but two MPE air cars had gone, but the glittering blue lights from their smooth, oval shells made it clear the work was unfinished. He paid the driver and went quickly toward Bryce Avenue, bypassing the cops where they loitered in a show of indifference Ricky resented in his silence. For them, Elden’s death was only another call and nothing out of the ordinary.

  The street was cordoned off for half a block, but no one seemed to notice when he slipped past a small group of cops standing at the curb, slouched with hands stuffed in their pockets as forensics technicians dressed in gaudy, red jumpsuits padded in wandering circles, inspecting and scanning with handheld instruments Ricky guessed had something to do with fingerprints or the revealing clues hiding in microscopic cloth fibers or drops of blood.

  It was strangely quiet there and he waited against a wall at a safe distance, mingling with onlookers who had come out from their shops to watch silently as other officials in expensive suits wandered about, pointing and nodding at something Ricky couldn’t see. He maneuvered for a better view, but it was clear Elden’s body had been removed and with it, any chance he might’ve had to say goodbye.

  At last, the suits seemed to lose interest. Ricky pretended to read from his wrist comm as two of them brushed past the gathered crowd, making quickly for their cars. Still he waited and watched until the others began to disperse, moving along the street in twos and threes, their hushed tones and murmurs drowned out by the clatter as each police car hissed to life and climbed into the still air.