Water Rites

by Mary Rosenblum

  “Yes, sir.” Westerly scuttled away, crouched low.

  It might already be too late. It wouldn’t take much to wreck the automatic valves. Carter snatched his cell from his belt, using the secure channel.

  “Operations. Yes sir, Colonel?”

  “Any trouble?”

  “Negative, sir. It’s running fine.”

  “We’ve got intruders in the Shunt bunker. Put an override on all manual controls. Lock ’em down tight.” Worst case scenarios unrolled in his head. “Get ready to shut down the flow fast. Call me if anything at all shows upon the boards.” He snapped the phone closed and scrambled down the slope toward Roscoe’s rock. A Corps 4x4 lay on its side at the bottom of the bed; Carter thought he could see a body behind the wheel. Corporal Roscoe, a light-skinned black man with a long, bony face, reached for Carter as he got close and pulled him down behind the shelter of the dusty boulder.

  “I sure am glad to see you all.” His Louisiana accent softened his words. “The relief team walked right into an ambush. They were waiting for us.”

  Carter looked past him. Another Corps body lay in the sun — a dark-haired woman.

  “The hicks had it all set up, sir.” Roscoe’s eyelids flickered. “Lopez and I were up on the rim, sir. We couldn’t do anything. Lopez got it when we tried for the truck. They were already in the bunker, sir. Amesworth was in there.” His shoulders jerked.

  Carter put a hand on the Corporal’s arm, then slithered around the side of the boulder to peer up at the bunker. Its concrete walls gleamed white in the glare. If one of the teams he’d sent out could get gas in there, they’d have them. He’d have salvaged something from this mess, and he’d damn well wring some names out of them. Carter looked back up the bank. His people had spread out over the rocky slope of the riverbed. Sporadic bursts of gunfire rattled down the Gorge — all Corps fire. They were keeping the bastards busy, as ordered. Carter’s jaw tightened as two new vehicles pulled up along the highway. Media. Who the hell had called them? He reached for his cell again. “Any trouble?” he asked Operations.

  “Negative,” Bybee told him. “Thumbs up. We’ve locked out the manual controls.”

  Carter frowned as he replaced the phone. “I haven’t heard any more shots from the bunker. I wonder if they sneaked back into the Deschutes bed. They’d be out of sight from this angle. I don’t like it.” Carter felt a growing uneasiness. “They had plenty of time to screw up the valves before we got here. What are they up to?”

  “Colonel?” Roscoe cleared his throat. “They knew every move we were making out there. I think someone set us up, sir. Someone from the base.”

  And had called in the media to come watch the action.

  An explosion cut off their words, roaring through the Gorge like a vast roll of thunder. A fist of concussion slammed Carter flat. Rocks and dirt showered down, some chunks big enough to hurt. Ears ringing, blinded by dust, Carter wondered why the thunder of the blast didn’t stop. It went on and on and its low, hissing rumble shook the ground. Dazed, blinking, he lifted his head, caught a glimpse of brown motion, as if the entire riverbed had lifted and was sliding toward them. With a flash of horror he realized what he was seeing.

  Water.

  “Up to the road!” He staggered to his feet. “Move it, move it!” he yelled hoarsely.

  Captain Roscoe was already scrambling up the slope. Carter started after him and nearly tripped over a limp body. It was the kid, the private. Face bloody, he groaned as Carter hauled him to his feet. He slung the kid’s arm across his shoulder and staggered as the first rush of water hit him. Debris rode a crest of dirty foam, tugging at him with incredible force. Why the hell didn’t they shut down the flow? The flood washed higher, shoving the barely conscious private against him, tearing at them both.

  He went down on one knee under the weight of the boy’s body and the water seized them both, cold and deep now. Something slammed into his side and pain blazed through him. He couldn’t stand up, felt his footing going, his feet sliding as the water torqued them both. His arm had gone numb. Then the water pulled him off his feet and he stifled a cry as water closed over his head. Stand up, he told himself. It couldn’t be that deep. But the kid’s body twisted in his grip, dragging him down. His shoulder scraped sand . . . riverbed? Which way was up? They were rolling, tumbling. He slammed against rock and a new spear of pain blasted the air from his lungs. His mouth filled with water and his lungs spasmed as he struggled not to cough and breathe water.

  Let go, his brain screamed at him. Let go and you can make it. But his fingers had turned to stone, locked into the fabric of the kid’s coverall. He had to breathe now. One more kick. His legs felt like lead, but his toe caught a rock and shoved him a few inches forward.

  A hand closed on his collar and fingers dug into his armpit. Carter’s head broke water. He sucked in a blessed, agonized breath, choked on water, and gagged. Sunlight dazzled him, turned the world to a blinding kaleidoscope of silver light. Someone was yelling. The hands locked under his armpits dragged him higher, out of the cold clutch of the water and onto the welcome heat of the rocks. Carter took another breath and cried out as pain knifed through him.

  “Keep working,” someone said loud and close by. “Got a pulse yet?”

  I’m alive, Carter wanted to say, but it hurt just to breathe. He coughed and the world went gray and fuzzy. He coughed again and groaned, sucking the searing, wonderful air.

  A face moved into view, blocked out the glare of light. “You’re the biggest fish I ever caught.” Johnny gave him a faint grin. “The only one, for that matter. Not bad for a beginner.” Water dripped from his hair, ran down his face.

  “What the hell?” Carter whispered.

  “I showed up with the cavalry. Or the media, as the case may be. Not too many people can drown in a dry riverbed. You sure tried hard. They got the flow shut down, by the way.” Johnny’s face looked pale in spite of his flip tone. “It was something, seeing water in the riverbed. Scared the shit out of me, if you want to know.”

  “Thanks.” Carter forced the word out through the pain that banded his chest.

  “Any time.” Johnny raised his head and his face went grave.

  Carter heard the murmurs. The kid. They had been talking about his pulse. He tried to look, but when he moved, pain filled his vision with wavering black spots.

  “Take it easy.” Johnny put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “They’re going to bring a stretcher down for you in a minute.”

  “Did he make it?” Carter didn’t need Johnny’s headshake. He had heard the answer in the hushed voices. Damn, damn, dam. He closed his eyes. He had held on to him. He hadn’t let go. It should have counted. He should have lived.

  It seemed to take a small eternity for a medical team to arrive from the base and struggle down the bank with their equipment. Shaded from the sun by a makeshift awning rigged from a shirt, Carter watched the mud dry in the riverbed. The saboteurs had vanished, had probably set the charges and slipped up the Deschutes bed. The blast had shattered the multiple pipes where they entered the Shunt complex. The emergency system should have shut down the upstream flow as soon as the pressure dropped, but it hadn’t. Something was wrong about that, but pain fogged Carter’s brain and he couldn’t think straight.

  “How’re you doing, Colonel?” One of the paramedics bent over Carter, settling a plastic-framed stretcher down beside him. “We’re going to move you in a minute, okay?” He wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Carter’s upper arm, pumped it tight, frowned at the dial for a minute, then jerked a nod at his buddy. “All right, let’s go. Just relax and let us do all the work here.” He and his partner slid arms beneath Carter’s neck, back, hips, legs. “One, two . . .”

  “Three.”

  They slid him sideways onto the hot plastic padding of the stretcher. Carter had been prepared for pain, but something moved inside of him, and bone grated on bone. Sickness welled up in his belly. I’m going to throw up, he though
t, and passed out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Where exactly are we going?” Nita asked Renny. Bonneville was behind them. Up ahead the interstate curved away from the riverbed, veering west toward Portland.

  “Lydia works for Pacific BioSystems — the big vat company.” Renny concentrated on the road. “It’s north of the city, out where the Willamette bed hits the Columbia.”

  “Oh.” Nita shifted Rachel on her lap, dangling the beads for her daughter’s clutch. Rachel batted at them, her face screwing up again, still cranky.

  Because of Renny. She hurt. Nita stared out the window. In places, the riverbed ran narrow and deep and steep cliffs leaned over the road, like curtains of stone. What did Jeremy see when he walked along this highway? Nita turned away from the window, cuddling her daughter. We sacrifice the unfit to the Dry, Nita thought; beans and beats to biomass bushes that can live on salt water, goat kids to thirsty plants, a crippled child to abandonment. What was my father sacrificed to? she wondered bitterly. Water? Water is our god. No, she thought. Drought is our god and we offer it water. And blood.

  She thought about the Robinson boy Seth had told her about, shivering at the memory of his molten hatred. She shivered as Rachel’s hand closed over the beads, and she stroked her daughter’s cheek lightly. Jeremy wanted them to mean something. Not mutants or demons. Not crippled goat kids.

  “This is our turn-off.” Renny worked the wheel awkwardly, eased the rig off the wide asphalt lanes and onto a curving exit ramp.

  A lot of cars crowded the road — more cars than Nita had ever seen at one time. They made her nervous as they whispered by. People must be rich in the city. She had never even been to Eugene, much less Portland. She hunched her shoulders, oppressed by the people. It was like a huge crowd murmuring, murmuring, all around her. The truck had exited onto a wide city street. Buildings, concrete, brick, or flaking metal, crowded the road. Green grass grew on some of the roofs. Nita stared at it, wide-eyed. Why? Next door, weathered machines crouched on an asphalt lot. Nita recognized a front loader and tractors. Others were larger, their functions less comprehensible.

  “This was an industrial district, years ago.” Renny raised her voice to be heard over the engine noise admitted by the broken window. “A couple of good mechanics still operate here, but the city bulldozed a lot of it for the camp.”

  The road curved sharply around a mound of rubble. The rubble had been shaped into a wall of gray, crumbled concrete, twisted metal, and debris. Orange electrified wire, strung on white plastic poles, topped it. Beyond the fence lay the camp. Originally it had been laid out as neat rows of barracks, spaced by wide streets. Now haphazard shacks, cobbled together from plastic, cardboard, and scraps of rusty siding, crowded the spaces between the buildings. Dark knots of humanity huddled in strips of shade, or the doorways for the shacks. A flock of naked children chased each other through the dust near the fence.

  The government guaranteed water, housing, and basic medical care, if you needed it. You lived here if you had to take them up on it. Nita looked away. Despair drifted from the camp like the stench from a pit toilet. This was why Dan had driven down to the base to talk to Carter, Nita thought suddenly. People he knew — Sandy Corbett or Bob in the government store — might end up here. The camp had been here when her father was alive. Nita hoped suddenly and fervently that her restless, angry brother Ignacio wasn’t in there.

  That would have hurt her father more than anything else.

  The rubble-and-wire fence ended and Renny shifted gears. Nita was grateful when the dark echoes of the camp’s occupants faded.

  “This is the place.” Renny braked, turned down a wide, new-looking street. “I’ll park us behind the loading dock tonight, run on into town with the rest of my load tomorrow.”

  Nita looked out the window at an enormous building. “The roof looks like a tent,” she said. It rose above stained concrete walls in jet-black peaks and billows, shining in the sun.

  “It’s made out of photo-cloth.” Renny slowed as they approached a wide, chain-link fence. “This used to be an old racetrack — horses or dogs, I forget which. Pacific Bio put one of those new roofs on it. It converts sun to battery power.” She pulled a plastic card from an inside pocket and handed it to a uniformed security guard.

  He ran it through a slot in the tiny gatehouse behind him, then handed it back. “Run into some trouble?” He eyed the truck’s battered fender.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  “Dock R.” The gate began to rattle laboriously open. “Around to the right.”

  Renny put the rig into gear and the truck crept forward with a growl. “I usually make this stop.” She looked at Nita from the corners of her eyes. “I’ve got some good customers here. Very inside folk.”

  Customers for what? Renny was waiting to see if she’d ask. Baiting her again? Nita leaned against the door, tired of the game, tired of Renny’s pain.

  “I get them some good deals on antibiotics. I’ve got a sound connection in Chi. I used to have a couple, but the other guy got his in the riot.” She clucked her tongue. “Lost a lot of good contacts in that nasty little war.”

  Would it happen in The Dalles? Carter was afraid it would. They were circling the huge building, passing loading dock after loading dock, concrete ledges that jutted out in front of wall-mounted valves and racked lengths of corrugated plastic pipe.

  “This is where they unload the tankers,” Renny said conversationally. “They digest the chopped-up biomass at local plants — use some pretty fancy bacteria to do it. Then they haul the digested sludge — syrup, they call it — to the plant here. Add a few chemicals and some cloned tissue and bingo, you can grow a ton or so of cherry or wheat cells.

  “Do you carry the syrup?” Nita asked.

  “Not me, babe.” Renny’s lip curled. “That’s for the tanker jocks. That stuff stinks and it’s sugars, mostly; hell to get off the metalwork.” She and Nita clenched their teeth as she used both hands to back the truck up to a wide platform. Rachel fussed.

  “Everybody out.” Renny killed the engine, leaned her head back against the seat. “End of the line.”

  Her face looked gray. Fresh blood has soaked through the bandage on her arm.

  “Can someone here look at that?” Nita gathered up Rachel.

  “You did a good enough job.” Renny’s eyes snapped open. “I’ll get unloaded and then we’ll find Lydia.” She shoved her door open and hopped out.

  Nita wasn’t fooled, but she stood silently below the concrete dock as a coveralled kid hurried up. He took the e-pad Renny handed him, thumb printed it, and scurried away.

  “I deliver custom office supplies,” she said dryly.

  Which were really antibiotics. Nita watched Renny open a hand-sized panel on the side of the trailer to key in a long string of digits and letters on a keypad.

  “Some of the hotshots use palm locks. Techie toys.” She sneered. “All a ’jacker needs is your palm. It doesn’t have to be attached to you. Numbers they have to dig out of you, and sometimes it buys you a way out.”

  She sounded so matter-of-fact.

  The kid reappeared, followed by a rectangular platform on wheels. It had a rail along one side and its wheels squeaked as it trundled along the dock after him. The hair on the back of Nita’s neck prickled. The kid wasn’t touching the thing. It was following him like a dog, creaking along at his heels.

  “Magic.” The kid noticed her expression and leered at her. “I trained him myself. Stop, Max. Sit.” The platform obediently halted. Slowly the bed sank between its wheels until it rested on the dock.

  “Stop trying to impress the natives and get the boxes, punk.” Renny scowled up at him. “Those cargo trucks are voice activated with a three-chip brain,” she said to Nita. “The kid wears a transmitter and it follows him. Pacific Bio likes gadgets. You’ve got to stop gawking, babe.”

  Nita grimaced at Renny’s mix of irritation and amusement. “So I’m a native,”
she said. “Whatever that means.”

  “Means you’re no trucker and you don’t know the city from squat. Give me that.” She snatched the e-pad the sulky kid was holding out and thumb printed it. “Take good care of that merchandise.” She showed her teeth briefly and tossed a folded leaf of scrip in his direction.

  “Yessir.” The kid grinned, caught the script deftly, and tucked it into a pocket. “I’ll take real good care of it.” He turned on his heel and whistled two notes to the wheeled truck.

  It lifted itself obediently and trundled after him, four small cartons stacked neatly on its bed. Renny slammed the trailer doors. “Let’s find Lydia,” she said. “Then I want to sleep for a while. Damn that bastard.” She touched a raw scrape in the truck’s gleaming paint. “I hope he went through the windshield.”

  Nita shifted Rachel onto her hip and didn’t offer her arm to the trucker. Renny would bite her head off, no matter that she was feeling shaky. An echo of the woman’s cold nausea tightened Nita’s stomach as she followed Renny up the flight of concrete stairs that led to the loading dock itself.

  “We’ll take the back way.” Renny fished the plastic card out of her pocket and swiped it through a reader beside a green metal door with no handle.

  A bell chimed and the door slid sideways into the wall. Humid air puffed into their faces and Nita wrinkled her nose at the thick, almost fetid smell. A maze of gleaming pipes and round tanks surrounded them, and a low, throbbing hum tickled Nita’s ears, making her feel as if her bones were vibrating inside her flesh. Rachel squirmed on her hip, chuckling.

  “Like it, child?” Nita touched her daughter’s nose, smiled at her wide grin.

  “You coming?”

  Nita hurried after Renny, ducking beneath overhanging pipes. Some of them were no thicker than her finger. Others were as big as tree trunks. “What are these for?” she asked as she caught up with the trucker.