Slow River

by Nicola Griffith

  I shoved the slate back on the shelf, angry for letting self-pity distort everything. Reality at Ratnapida would more likely be the family sitting at the table, pretending not to see me, pretending that the kidnap and abuse had never happened, that they had not received, not watched—over and over—the tapes my abductors had made for the net. My reality and theirs were different. Looking back, they always had been. The family had refused to hand over the money quickly enough for my abductors, but I doubted they would see it that way. Some might say it was their fault I had been subjected to such public humiliation, their fault I had ended up killing. But if I went back now they would just sip pinot grigio from crystal glasses, eat salad from Noritake china, and pretend that I had not been treated as a thing, had not had to scrabble to survive, that nothing had changed. And I would have to look at Oster and wonder if the decision not to pay had been deliberate, because I knew too much.

  No. There was no going back. I had known that when I lifted the rusty nail and stabbed it into Fishface’s neck. That part of my life was over.

  I breathed hard, and clenched and relaxed my face muscles. Self-pity could creep up on anyone, but I would not let it happen again.

  A flickering readout caught my eye. Readouts were not supposed to flicker. Another flashed from 20.7 to 5 to 87 and back again. That made no sense at all. Then all the readouts went berserk.

  I lifted the phone, tapped in Magyar’s call code. “This is station four, primary sector.” I had to shout over the trilling station alarms.

  “What is it, Bird?”

  “I have readout anomalies.”

  “Which ones?”

  “The whole bank. Going wild. Nothing makes any sense.” Magyar did not reply immediately. She probably did not know what to do. “I need your authorization to cut the flow to the secondary sector.”

  “But we don’t know that there’s anything wrong with our stream…” She sounded scared.

  “We don’t know that there isn’t, either, and they don’t have the sensors we do.”

  “It’s probably computer failure. Or maybe the monitors have gone down because of backflow. Flooding.”

  “The flood warning didn’t go off We have to-” I broke off. Judging from the entire bank of instruments going crazy, it probably was simple computer failure. There was another way. “Look, I think there’s a way I can cut the stream temporarily and divert it to the holding tanks. Fifteen minutes won’t do anyone any harm. Secondary sector might not even notice. And I can take some readings manually, if you have a handheld photoionization detector around.”

  There was a moment of silence. “There’s one in the locker that’s about knee height. In front of you. Get me your results ASAP.”

  The PD turned out to be an old-fashioned portable of a kind I had not seen since I was a child. It was calibrated in parts per trillion. I lugged the case out of the influent bunker and along to my trough. It took me a while to remember how to assemble it. Thigh-deep in water, I hoped I would not stumble into one of the irregular gouges the rake had formed in the gravel. With the weight of the PD I would overbalance and I had no barrier protection for my face. The machine bleeped softly in my hand. Everything looked good so far.

  It was full dark outside now, and the water, under its surface of reflected bright white, looked black, like ink. If the lights here went out, I wondered, would I be able to see the stars reflected in the troughs only if someone went onto the roof and cleaned off years’ worth of grime.

  Ten minutes later, when I waded out, Magyar was waiting, thumbs hooked in her belt.

  “The readings are fine. Dead on normal.”

  “Good.” I waited for her to say I told you so. The holding tanks would now have to be pumped out and cleaned. A lot of extra work for a shorthanded shift. She just nodded at the PD. “That’s not a handheld.”

  “It’s all there was.”

  “Looks heavy.”

  “It’s not so bad when you’re in the water. And, anyway, it feels a lot lighter than they used to when I was thirteen.”

  She gave me a strange look. “I’ll have to take your word for that.”

  I pretended not to notice her surprise, but I was disgusted with myself. First self-pity, now nostalgia. It led to slips I could not afford.

  Chapter 6

  Lore is nearly seven and a half. The family is staying with friends in Venezuela for a month or so over Christmas. Greta is there, too.

  The only image Lore really has of her half sister, Greta, is grayness: gray hair, gray eyes, and a gray kind of attitude to life. She is almost always away somewhere looking after the family interests. She is much older, of course—twenty-five now—and Lore tends to treat her more like an aunt than a sister, partly because Greta, even when she’s around, seems so distant, withdrawn. Not unkind, just preoccupied with whatever it is that always makes her look stooped and check around corners before turning them. Lore has never seen her laugh, though sometimes she does smile. At those times Lore thinks she looks beautiful: her face stretches sideways a little, shortening it, taking away the grooves and hollows and shadows, changing it from gray to gold.

  Lore’s most vivid memory of Greta has to do with the Dream Monster.

  Lore is asleep on her stomach with the covers thrown off the bed—how she always sleeps in a hot climate—when suddenly she is woken up by the monster. It has her pinned down and is breathing hot fire on her neck and groaning like a beast. She shrieks, and pushes, and doors bang open down the corridor, lights come on, and she must have blanked out for a minute or two, or maybe she really was dreaming, because then Katerine is sitting next to her on the bed, still dressed, and Greta is in the doorway, with Oster pulling on pajama trousers.

  “A dream,” Katerine is saying to Lore. She turns to Greta and Oster. “Just a dream.”

  But Lore is still shaking and realizes she is crying.

  “What is it?” Oster says, and kneels by the bed. He takes her hand. “If you tell me what you’re afraid of, we’ll fix it.”

  “Wasn’t a dream,” she hiccoughs. She has to make them understand. “It was a monster.”

  “Of course it was a dream, love,” Katerine says with a smile. “How could it have got in?”

  “Through the door.”

  Oster makes a shushing gesture at his wife. “A monster? Well, I don’t much like the idea of a monster being loose when we’re all trying to sleep, so you tell me all about him, and then we can keep a look out.” He ruffles her hair, which she carefully smooths down.

  She knows he is humoring her, but it doesn’t matter, because at least he will listen. “It was big and heavy, only not heavy like a rock, heavy like…” She doesn’t know how to describe it. Heavy like the end of everything. “Very heavy, anyway. It made monster noises. And breathed hot air.” She shudders. That air had felt so bad, like the breath of something dead.

  “Well, the solution seems easy enough. If it came through the door, we’ll give you a lock. A special lock that monsters can’t open. Only people. Will that do?”

  She considers it, then nods. By this time, Katerine is looking at the time display on the ceiling. “It can wait until tomorrow. It’s past three already and I have that net conference at nine.”

  Lore is not sure whether her mother is talking to Oster, or to Greta who is still and silent by the door, or to her. She turns a mute look of appeal to her father.

  He sighs. “I’ll deal with it, Kat. You and Greta get to bed.” They do. “I think we’ll be lucky to find a lock at this hour. But there might be a place… Will you be all right on your own for half an hour?”

  In answer Lore climbs down from the bed, puts on her slippers, and tucks her hand into his. He looks at her, then smiles. “Together it is, then.”

  In the end, they take the lock from the pantry door. It is an old-fashioned thing, attached by magnet to jamb and door, the mechanism a crude combination lock. But when they get it onto her bedroom door, and Lore wraps the combination cylinder with her
hand so that even Oster can’t see what number she chooses, she feels better. Oster tucks her up, kisses her forehead, and when the door closes behind him, she hears the satisfying click that means no one can ever come in here again until she rolls each of the white counters to its proper number.

  She is getting dressed the next morning when Greta knocks at the door. She opens it proudly. Greta seems awkward. “Did you sleep better, later?”

  Lore nods, then shows Greta her lock. Greta frowns. “This isn’t good enough.”

  “But-”

  “No, it’s not good enough. Lock the door behind me and watch.”

  Lore, mystified as usual by Greta and her ways, does so. Twenty seconds later, the lock clicks back and the door swings open. Lore is suddenly terrified. She doesn’t care that it is Greta who went out of the door, she is sure it is the monster coming back in. She runs to the bed intending to climb under it, forgetting that it is a futon and not her own, high bed in Amsterdam. The door closes again and Lore opens her mouth to scream.

  “It’s just me,” Greta says. But she seems distracted. “We’re going to do something about that lock.” And she sits down on the futon right there and starts contacting people on her slate. “There. Now let’s go eat breakfast.”

  They are the only ones at breakfast and though the maid drops Greta’s croissant, Greta does not seem to notice. Lore nibbles at her own food and watches her sister surreptitiously over the rim of her juice glass. Where does she go all the time? she wonders. Wherever it is, it does not seem very pleasant.

  The locksmith arrives only forty minutes later, and the three of them troop upstairs, again in silence. Greta simply points at the door and the locksmith nods.

  It takes five minutes. Lore watches, fascinated, as the old lock is removed with something that looks like a cooking spatula, and a creamy ceramic square with a glossy black face replaces it. Lore thinks he has finished until he fishes a second from his pocket and fits it over the door and jamb on the hinge side. He doesn’t look Venezuelan. When the locksmith is finished, he pulls out a white key remote the size of a rabbit’s foot. He presses a button, and the black face turns to deep blue. “All yours.” He starts to hand the key to Greta but she nods in Lore’s direction and he gives it to her instead. He leaves.

  “It’s a special lock system,” Greta says. “No one, and I mean no one, will ever be able to get through that lock. And because there are two, they can’t just take the door off its hinges, or knock it down They’d have to cut a hole through the middle. And the monster can’t do that.”

  Lore looks down at the fat white key in her hand and wonders about monsters in the Netherlands.

  “You can remove the locks and take them with you, wherever you go. I’ll download all the operating instructions to your slate later. You’d better choose the code when I’m gone. Anything you like. You can even make them different for each side. And you can use algorithms to make sure it’s never the same twice.” She taps the key in Lore’s hand. “Don’t lose that.”

  After she goes, Lore sits on her bed, turning the locks on and off, listening to them thunk competently open and closed;

  Greta leaves again the next day, and Lore develops a habit of reaching into her pocket to check she has her key whenever she is nervous.

  Chapter 7

  I was surprised when Magyar somehow managed to get hold of a combination of handheld and portable PDs. She piled them up on the gangway and called the section, some twenty-odd men and women, together.

  “You already know that the computer’s down. It’s going to stay down for at least a day. Systems want to dump the whole program, plus backups, to make sure there aren’t any other viruses. Meanwhile, these are handheld detectors. I’ll want readings every half hour-”

  “There won’t be time!” a red-haired man called. He worked two troughs down from me. He was flexing his right arm, over and over, testing his new neoprene and webbing elbow support, making it creak. His name was Kinnis.

  “Shut up and let me finish. And try to keep still while I’m talking to you.” The creaking noise stopped. “I’m not asking you to read every single trough every half hour—I only want readings from one trough per person. But make sure it’s the same trough, and make sure it’s from the middle. We want an idea of changes, got that? Good. Questions?”

  “How long are we going to be doing this?”

  “As long as it takes. Systems say they can’t guarantee they’ll have everything clean and back up in less than three days, but you know how much they overcompensate. It might only take a day. There again, it might not.”

  “But how do these things work?” Kinnis asked, looking dubiously at the pile of equipment.

  “Ask Bird. She seems to be an expert.” They all turned to look at me. I felt my blanket of anonymity evaporating, but it was my own fault. I managed to nod. What did Magyar suspect? Next time I would keep my mouth shut.

  A big, rawboned woman called Cel looked at her waterproof watch, and said in a Jamaican accent, “We’ve another six hours of the shift to go tonight.”

  “Yes,” agreed Magyar, “and those holding tanks have to be pumped out as well, so let’s not waste any more of it, shall we?” She strode off, leaving the workers to look at each other, then back to me.

  I shrugged, picked up one of the smaller handheld PDs. “This is a photoionization device. It’s calibrated in parts per billion The bigger ones there, the portables, are in parts per trillion. They’re heavy, so maybe we can take it in turns.”

  “I don’t mind heavy,” Kinnis said.

  “You wouldn’t,” Cel said. “What do they measure?”

  “Volatile organics. Totals only, I’m afraid.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad.” Kinnis picked up a portable, hefted it. “Easy.” He frowned, turning it around, looking at the case. “There’s no jack. How do you input the readings to Magyar’s master board?”

  “You don’t. They’re old. The readings will have to be input manually.” They looked at me in disgust, as though it were my fault. “I know.” The job was hard enough without the extra work. I hesitated. I was no longer anonymous; I might as well be liked. “Look, seeing as I’m already familiar with these things, why don’t I come round the first time or two and collect your readings? It’ll save you some time.”

  Cel looked at me suspiciously, as though trying to figure out what possible advantage I could gain from this. Then she nodded reluctantly.

  I spent the next hour trotting from trough to trough, collecting readouts. Once I had everything, I saw we had a problem. The source of the problem was obvious. The solution wasn’t. If I called Magyar and explained, she would have even more reason to suspect me. Would Sal Bird have been able to work out what was going on—and if she had, would she have cared? I didn’t know. But if I ignored it, the whole system would gradually fall out of sync, and that could lead to danger for other workers in other sections.

  I called Magyar. “Can you come down here?”

  “I’m in a meeting with Hepple, Bird. Can it wait?”

  I leaned against the readout console, trying to rest my legs a little. “Not for too long.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” She was. “This better be good.”

  I handed her the record slate. “Take a look.”

  Magyar glanced over them, frowned. “Lower than I expected.” Her skin stretched tight over high cheekbones when she narrowed her eyes. “How come you’re checking up on them?”

  What would Sal Bird say? “I just thought it would save time if I went and collected the data, rather than everyone coming to the control center, one after another.” And it meant someone was on top of the subtle changes, minute to minute. Someone had to be. The dangers here were real. I thought about Hepple happily releasing our stream into the mains and what could have happened if there’d been a spill while Magyar had been debating whether or not to close down for a few minutes.

  Magyar moved her shoulders, easing tension.
“You think there’s something wrong with the PDs?”

  I should have said I didn’t know, let her figure it out, but I didn’t know how long that would take, and I couldn’t bear to see a system fail due to simple ignorance. “No. Just the way people are using them. The highest concentration of airborne volatiles is at the center of the trough. Where the water is deepest.”

  Magyar understood at once. “And those soft bastards don’t want to get wet.”

  “You can’t blame them,” I said tiredly.

  “Yes, I can.”

  All of a sudden, I saw how young-looking that stretched skin was, how her anger covered vulnerability. She didn’t know what to do. I felt sorry for her. “If you wanted, I could probably come up with a formula to calculate the real concentrations, assuming they all go to about eight feet out.”

  The muscles around Magyar’s eyes and mouth tightened even more. She looked as though maybe her ancestors had ridden horses on the Mongol steppes. “That won’t be necessary.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll talk to you about this later.”

  Stupid. That was so stupid. Why was I risking myself like this?

  I never much enjoyed the forty-five minutes midway through the night when, by law, the section took a break. I managed by being amiable and guarded to those I could not avoid, and then taking a chair out of the way, near the screen showing the tape loop of fish. Watching the endless play of light on water, the dance of angelfish and eel, was the only time I allowed myself to indulge in memories of the past. The tape reminded me of the reefs of Belize, where I had swum at fifteen. I could ignore the sweat and the stink as twenty-some people stripped their skinnies to the waist to free their hands to eat.

  Usually I was left alone to eat the food I brought with me, while the rest of the shift complained about work, argued about the net channel, and played rough, incomprehensible practical jokes on each other. This time, Magyar was waiting for us.

  “Turn that thing off,” she said. “You people get paid to do a job. I’m paid to make sure you do. Sometimes both our jobs are easier than others. Now is one of the hard times. I’ve been looking over the readings you’ve given me in the last two hours, and they’re no good.” There were groans and one or two angry protests. “Oh, be quiet. If you’d walked those extra few feet into the middle of the troughs as you were supposed to then I wouldn’t have to say all this.” She looked at them one by one. “I’ve requisitioned chest-highs instead of the thigh waders, but they won’t be available until tomorrow. I’ve also asked for hazard pay for the whole of this shift.” There were a few smiles at that. “Don’t get your hopes up. You know management.”