Hepple, obviously, had never heard that bit of wisdom. There wasn’t even a last-line human observer here in the release room. One major spillage upstream at the same time as a computer failure here and there would be thousands of immediate deaths due to central nervous system toxicity, followed twenty years later by hundreds of thousands of premature deaths from various cancers. The implications were dizzying.
He looked at his wrist. “Time’s getting on.” He stared abstractedly into space a moment. “We’re shorthanded in three sections this month but I think, with your experience… I imagine the Immingham plant gave you some ideas of nitrification and denitrification processes?”
I tried to work out how much Sal Bird would understand of this conversation. “You mean the tidal marshes?”
“Just temporarily, of course.” That translated to Just until you’re no longer at the bottom of the heap. Shit work. “The salary is scale, Grade Two, with an additional percentage for the unsocial hours. You’ll be paid monthly, in arrears. Questions?”
I was just glad I still had a lump of money left. How did other people manage without pay for a month?
“Good. I’m sure you’ll enjoy working with Cherry Magyar, your section supervisor. You should find her understanding. She’s new at her job, too. I promoted her myself, just two weeks ago.”
We did not shake hands. No welcome-aboard speech. He just nodded, told me to get myself assigned a locker for the skinny and goggles, and to report back at 6 P.M. sharp tomorrow.
It was cool outside. I walked the mile and a half back to my fifth-floor flat, trying to sort out how I felt about starting a job as a menial in a plant I could have run in my sleep.
I didn’t expect to get much sleep tonight. That direct mains release setup would give me nightmares.
* * *
While her back healed, Lore’s days passed in a haze of drugs and conversations at odd times of the day or night. Spanner would disappear some evenings and not return until the following afternoon. On the mornings she was alone, Lore had nothing to do but watch the window.
There was always the tree, of course. Even when she could not see it, she could hear it. The leaves hung down like dead things now, and when people walked past, she heard their feet crunching on those that had already fallen. She spent hours watching the sun travel across the warm sandstone of the building opposite. When she got well enough, she sat up against the window. When the sun was at just the right angle, she could see where layers of sandstone had been blasted away to cleanse it of the soot: acid, black effluvium from generations of factories, coal-burning fires and, later, combustion engines. The sandstone shone a deep, buttery yellow early in the morning, bleaching to lemon and then bone as the light increased. She guessed at the shape of the building she lived in by the shadow it cast, on the one opposite.
She listened to the morning chorus of sparrows and the evening calls of thrushes as people came and went in algal tides. She liked to drowse while the pigeons on the window sill cooed and whirred their wings. The sill was white with their excrement. She wondered what they found to eat in the city. Once, waking from a thick, Technicolor afternoon dream, she found a squirrel on the cable outside, watching her. She could see the muscles and tendons of its haunches as it gripped the thick cable with tiny claws. It had eyes like apple pips, hard and opaque. Then it ran off, tail twitching.
But the window could not keep her occupied all the time, and then Lore would wonder if the man, the kidnapper she knew only as Fishface, had really died, if the police were still looking for her. Perhaps the other one, Crablegs, had confessed, or been found. Maybe Tok had already denounced Oster.
Once she tried to access the net, to check back on the news, see if any bodies had been discovered, what the police were doing about finding her, but she was locked out. The keyboard was dead, and voice commands resulted in nothing but a flat, still screen. She did not mention her attempt to Spanner. She wasn’t ready. Not yet. She began to wonder if this whole episode was a drug-induced nightmare, some scheme of her supposedly loving father.
But then Spanner would return from her jaunts crackling with manic energy and a restlessness that did not disguise her fatigue, and Lore would understand that it was all too real.
Lore never asked where Spanner had been, but she wondered what she did in those hours that made her so tense. Business, she supposed, though she wondered why Spanner had to get so wired to transact a supposed victimless, low priority crime. Sometimes it would be two or three hours before Spanner’s deep blue eyes stopped their constant roving around the room, alighting on windows, doors: checking, always checking, as if for reassurance, the exits.
After a wreck, when Lore could get around the flat a little, Spanner called her over to the screen. “Sit,” she said. Lore sat on the couch.
“It’s me,” Spanner told the terminal. The screen lit to light gray. “It’s voice-coded. Won’t even display the message-waiting light unless I tell it to. I’m going to set it up to accept certain commands from you.” Lore felt herself being studied but she refused to give Spanner any idea of how it made her feel to be controlled like this. She said nothing.
Spanner sighed. “This is just a precaution on my part. I want you to understand why I’m doing this. I don’t want you calling Mummy and Daddy when those painkillers start to wear off and you realize what a mess you’re in. I can’t afford any kind of notice, never mind the kind of wrong conclusion the authorities might jump to if they find you here, injured, and half out of your mind on drugs.”
Lore kept her face still, but she remembered a tent, drugs, being naked. Was this any different?
“I’ll allow any passive use. That means you can listen to my messages. Or some of them. You can access news. But you can’t interact: no talking, no sending messages, no shopping. I’ll bring you anything you need. At least for now.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No,” Spanner agreed. “But this is the way it has to be.”
The first time the screen bleeped when she was alone, it was a man’s face that appeared: black spiky hair, blue eyes, thin eyebrows, smile like a cherub. “Remember those chicken hawks we came across last month? If you’re still interested, get in touch.”
That was it. Even with all Spanner’s precautions the message had not said much. But Lore knew about chicken hawks. That was not victimless crime.
When Spanner got home, she went straight to the screen, took the message, called back. “Me. Yeah, I’m still interested. Usual place? Fine.”
Lore waited for an explanation.
“Billy,” Spanner said. “Business.”
“I thought you said your business was victimless.”
“Yes.”
“Where there are chicken hawks, there are chickens getting hurt.”
“You know more than I thought you might.” Lore just nodded, and waited. Spanner sighed. “We got the information from some straight-looking punter’s slate: he runs a daisy chain.”
“Daisy chains?:
“A ring of fresh young faces. Younger than chickens. This one and his friends like them younger than four.”
Lore felt her cheeks pulling away from her teeth in disgust.
“It’s not much to my taste, either. So what Billy and I do is put a tap on him. Blackmail,” she amplified. “A certain rough justice to it, don’t you think? Those who hurt others get a taste of how it feels to be powerless, and we make money. All very neat.”
Lore stared at her. Spanner thought she was some kind of Robin Hood. “But the kids still get hurt.”
“Often they stop molesting them, once they’ve been burned.”
“Often isn’t always.”
Spanner shrugged.
“You don’t care, do you?”
“It’s business. We can’t go to the police because they’ll want to know where we got our information. Besides, it could get dangerous if we meddled too far.”
Lore remembered Spanner coming home with flushed cheek
s; the hectic eyes, the sharp jaw where her teeth were clenched together and could not or would not let go, not for hours. Blackmail. “And who else do you blackmail?”
“No one who doesn’t deserve it.”
No one who can’t pay. Lore thought about chicken hawks and daisy chains. “You could send an anonymous tip to the, police.”
“We’ve done that. Now and then. When we think the situation warrants. But without solid evidence, they don’t usually take any action.”
Lore saw that the lack of police action suited Spanner just fine. If the men who ran the chains weren’t making money, they couldn’t pay quiet fees to insure silence.
Lore dreamed that night of being rolled, dead-eyed, into a plasthene sheet and tipped into a grave. On the lip of the grave, throwing shovelfuls of wet mud, were cherubs called Billy, laughing, and Spanner holding something out of reach, saying, When you’re all grown up, and Lore, who could not close her eyes because she was dead, saw that what Spanner held were manacles.
She woke up gasping and clutching her throat, remembering her lungs fighting the plasthene for air, a cupful, a spoonful, a thimbleful. It was morning. Spanner was gone, but the screen was lit to a sunburst of color and a cartoon of a rabbit with a thought balloon saying, Call who you want. It’s open to your voice. Lore stared at the screen a long, long time. She would not call the police. She wondered how Spanner had known that. She did not feel too good about it.
Spanner was still out when the medic returned in the early evening. He pronounced Lore’s back to be healing well and left her a tape-on plaskin sheath to wear when she was in the bath or shower. “The rest of the time, let the wound breathe. You won’t need any more injectable painkillers. These distalgesics should do,” He handed her a bottle of brightly colored caplets. “You need anything else?”
He seemed in a hurry, and Lore wondered what mayhem or despair he was rushing to.
“Do you ever wonder where your patients get their injuries?”
She thought of a three-year-old, and what injury an adult might do her or him in the name of need.
He looked at her with sad eyes. “There’s no point. I just do my best to heal what I find.”
When he had gone, she went into the bathroom to look at her back. It hurt to twist and turn, but she looked at the scar in the flyblown mirror as best she could. It stretched diagonally from her right shoulder blade to the lower ribs on her left side. At the top, it was nearly an inch wide. She could not bear to look at it. She stared out of the window into the backyard instead. It looked as forlorn and closed in as she felt: a fifteen-by-forty patch of rubble and weeds and what might be scrap metal, surrounded by a six-foot-high brick wall; barren and broken and played out. The walls were topped with broken glass set in cement.
The door banged open. Lore pulled on Spanner’s robe, tied the slippery silk belt, and went into the living room. Spanner was snapping on switches, humming. She looked up at Lore and smiled. “I’ve got something for you. Be ready in just a minute.” She punched a couple of buttons, read the bright figures that came up on her screen, then, satisfied with whatever the machine was doing, she popped something small out of one of her decks.
“There.” She held out her hand. On her palm was a round black metallic button. A PIDA. “It’s for you. Just a temporary, of course.”
Lore pulled her robe tighter with her right hand and looked at the slick black button. Her new identity. She was not sure if she wanted it. “Where did you get it?”
“Friend of mine works for the city morgue. Once they’ve been through official identification, and embalmed, corpses aren’t too particular about their PIDAs. Don’t worry. Ruth’s a stickler for hygiene. It’s probably cleaner than you are and, anyway, this one won’t be going under the skin. Well? Don’t just stand there, hold out your hand and I’ll put it on for you.”
Lore held out her left hand.
“You’ll need to hold it in place for me.”
“Let me sit down.” She had to let go of the robe to keep the PIDA in place on the scar that was fading to pink. Spanner used a pair of scissors to cut a square of plaskin to shape.
“Not as fancy as the medic’s spray, but this kind has one advantage.” She pulled off the backing, carefully laid it over the PIDA. “It says your name is Kim Yeau. I’ve added the middle initial L., but just the initial. Less is better. The PIDAs will change, but as you get to know people, you’ll have to have a stable name, one we can call you by. You have forty-three credits. You’re eighteen.” She looked up at Lore. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
Spanner knew damn well how old she was; this was just her way of reminding Lore how much she knew, that knowledge equals power. Lore didn’t say anything, but the muscles in her forearm tightened.
“Hold still.”
Lore stared at the top of the head bent over her hand. Spanner’s scalp was creamy white, untouched by UV. Lore wondered how long she had been living a nocturnal existence, how long she had been rifling corpses and blackmailing and stealing. What did that do to a person? And yet Spanner did not seem bad. Just interested in looking out for herself. Maybe because no one else had ever been there to do it.
“You’ll have to be careful how you use this. It’s just a superficial job—it’ll get you on and off the slides, pay for groceries or a download from a newstank, but that’s it. Avoid the police. Don’t try to get any licenses or whatever.” Spanner squeezed the skin around the PIDA and the webbing, and straightened. “There. Should hold for a couple of weeks. The plaskin will match your natural skin color in an hour or so.” She held Lore’s arm up to the light, admiring her handiwork.
Lore could feel Spanner’s breath on her skin, the robe slipping open, revealing her breasts.
“Beautiful,” Spanner said.
Lore looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her hair was wholly gray now, and grown past her ears.
“Can you cut hair?” she called, but Spanner was working and did not hear. She opened the medicine cabinet, looking for scissors. There was a tube of dye on the top shelf. Brown. She tapped it thoughtfully against her palm. The sooner she could change the way she looked, the sooner she could get outside the flat, feel less… dependent. Brown would do to start with.
“Can I use this?”
“Um?”
She stepped into the living room. “This dye. Can I use it?”
Spanner did not look up from the screen. “If you like.”
“I can’t imagine you with brown hair.”
“It’s not mine.”
The dye around the top of the tube was not crusted and dry. It had been used fairly recently. Lore stared at it for a while.
In the bathroom, she read the instructions. Wet hair. Apply generously with comb. Wipe off any excess from skin. Leave for ten minutes. It seemed simple enough, though not as easy as the way she was used to, when all she had to do was run a bath, pour in the nanomechs, and submerge herself for thirty seconds. With nano dyes and antinano lube, one could layer diferent colors on body hair, like silkscreening, and the results were clear, clean, and crisp. But nano dyes were for the rich.
This dye was a sticky paste. It was not brown, as she had expected, but a curious greenish yellow. It smelled like rotting leaves and had the texture of mud. She massaged it into her scalp, remembering to do her eyebrows and eyelashes.
When she had rinsed and dried, the mirror showed a strong chestnut. It suited her, suited her eyes, her mouth. She liked it. She turned this way and that, letting the cool northern light that seeped into the bathroom and reflected from the tiles play over the hair. It looked so good it was probably pretty close to her natural color. She smiled at her reflection: disguising herself by making her hair her real color had a certain ironic appeal.
She walked into the living room. “What do you think?”
Spanner turned after a moment. Said nothing.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure brown is the right color.”
Lore flushed. “I don’t understand.”
“Come into the bathroom with me.” Spanner positioned Lore in front of the mirror, hands on her shoulders. Lore did not like the possessive feel of those hands, but it was Spanner’s bathroom, Spanner’s mirror. “Now, take a look at yourself, a really good look. Then look at me.”
Lore studied herself. Brown hair, straight brown eyebrows, clear gray eyes, skin a little paler than usual but still tight-pored and healthy. Thinner than she used to be. Even teeth. She thought she looked remarkably good, considering what she had been through. “I think I look fine.”
“Now look at me.”
Spanner’s skin was big-pored over her nose and cheek-bones. There was a tiny scar by her mouth. Her teeth were uneven, her neck thin. Her complexion had a grayish tinge, like meat left just a little too long. Lore thought she looked a lot better than Spanner.
Spanner was nodding at her in the mirror. “Exactly. You see the difference? You’re too damn… glossy. Like a race-horse. Look at your eyes, and your teeth. They’re perfect. And your skin: not a single pimple and no scars. Everything’s symmetrical. You’re bursting with health. Go out in this neighborhood, even in rags, and you’ll shine like a lighthouse.”
Lore looked at herself again. It was true. Eighteen years of uninterrupted health care and nutritious food on top of three generations of good breeding had given her that unmistakable sheen of the hereditary rich. She was suddenly aware of the cold tile under her feet, of the cracks she could feel between her toes. It was not yet winter. She wondered what it would be like to be cold involuntarily. She touched her eyebrows, her nose. How strange to discover something about oneself in a stranger’s bathroom. “I assume it can be fixed.”
Spanner dipped her hand into a pocket and pulled out a stubby buzz razor. Lore backed away from the flickering hum of its blade, remembering blood, the plasthene sheet. Spanner laughed, lightly enough, but Lore heard the cruelty in it: Spanner knew Lore had been scared, and enjoyed it. “It’s for your eyebrows. Cut them a bit, make them uneven.” Lore took the sleek black razor, not taking her eyes off Spanner. “I’m going to get a different dye, one that doesn’t suit you as much..”
Slow River Page 4