The Water Thief (14 page)

She nodded.

“It’s real?”

“Yeah, it’s a
couple of days north of here. You can get there a little faster on a snow-sail.
NullSec isn’t pretty, but we have a few weapons, and we know where we’re going most
of the time. I actually like going. I imagine it’s what archeology used to be
like, going into Egyptian tombs, fighting booby traps and old mummy curses. I
see something new every time I go.”

I was scared at
the very thought. But I wanted to go, too. I breathed deep. She saw me and
laughed.

“Did you know
that the moon is white?”

“Get out!”

“Nope. I’ve seen
pictures, records. It’s the sulfur that makes it yellow.”

She knew
everything.

“You really came
out here to see me?”

I nodded.

“Of course
competition is natural, Charlie,” she sighed, “stars, planets and all that.
Sure, it exists, in some way, in all systems. But to assume that it’s all there
is—that’s simplistic. Entropy exists in all systems too. Does that make entropy
all there is? Cooperation exists in all systems, too, even stars and planets.
All these things exist everywhere; there’s no ‘universal constant’ that
describes everything.

“You see what
you want to see. The truth is that the glass is both half-empty and half full.
What you can control is how you choose to see it. If I give a beggar a quarter,
you could say I was altruistic, because I helped him. But it’s just as true to
say I was selfish, that I gave him that quarter to alleviate my own sense of
guilt. Neither view has a monopoly on the truth of it. People never do anything
just for one reason.

“But what’s
funny is that this charge of ‘unnatural’ behavior comes from the capitalists
who believe the most in dominating nature. Pasteurization, immunization,
antibiotics, air conditioning, toothpaste—these are all direct assaults on
nature. The people who most enjoy conveniences of modern living—as far from
natural forces as possible—will be the first to tell you that to ask them to
spend a dime to help others is to spit in God’s face. Giving litigators to
people who can’t afford it is immoral—as if being the victim of a crime means
you deserve to be victimized. They say giving medical treatment to people who
can’t afford it is unfair, as if there’s any fairness in who gets cancer. It’s
unjust to give people free schooling, as if there’s any justice in who is or is
not born into a family that can afford an education. Fairness is nothing more
than the distribution of wealth and power as those who already have it see fit.
Money lets you buy favorable interpretations of right and wrong, and that
benefit accrues quickly.”

She shook her
head. Then she cleaned a knife and chopped up some kind of green plant before
tossing it into the skillet. Finally she opened a small cabinet and pulled out
a yellowed jar.

“This is
poteen.”

“Is that
liquor?” I asked.

“Yeah, but not
like whisky. It’s a disinfectant. Don’t drink it, you’ll go blind,” she said,
grabbing a towel and gently applying it to my wounds.

The lights
flickered and went out.

“Did you pay
your bill?” I asked.

She laughed. I
could hear her walk across the room to a small makeshift fireplace. She pulled
out a rod of Firesteel, which she struck, igniting a small pile of kindling.
From that small fire she lit several candles and began distributing them throughout
the room.

“The power is
always going out around here. We only have electricity about half the time.”

“What about
heat?”

She shrugged.
“The fireplace works, when you can find something to burn. I have blankets. You
can wear a couple of layers of clothes at a time, too. In a pinch you can even
huddle around the candles. It’s rare that people actually freeze to death out
here.”

With what I made
in a week, I could have redecorated the whole place: put in real curtains, fix
the windows, and get a working television. But I knew she’d never take the
money. Apparently even citizens had pride, just like everyone else.

“Do all LowCons
think like this?” I asked

“I wish. Three
quarters of all colleagues in the world are Delta-grade or lower, less than one
percent are Alphas. If all low-contracts thought like this, we wouldn’t be
having this discussion. But a lot of LowCons are just trying to keep their
heads above water. Others have been oppressed for so long that even hoping for
relief is painful. And some of them love Ackerman more than most executives
do.”

“How’s that
possible?”

The potatoes and
a little cabbage were next to go into the skillet. Gradually, agonizingly, the
heat began to overcome the iron, and the hash began to sizzle and pop.

“There are a million
reasons. Beggars can’t be choosers—so, naturally, they want to be. They want
dignity, and there’s dignity in choice. If you’re poor and espouse the merits
of social services, people say ‘Well, of course you do, it’s in your interest.’
But vocal support of a system that is stacked against you grants a sense of
pride, of autonomy. And if you think that there’s nothing you can do about it
anyway, this sense of pride doesn’t cost you anything.

“Besides,
probably ninety percent of LowCons would bet their lives that they’ll be that
one half of one percent who actually gets out of here, becomes a HighCon. Who
wants to rock that boat, or tempt fate by arguing against the system?

“Then there are
the people so desperate to scrounge something up for themselves that they prop
the system up, because it’s better to be a living doormat for the higher
contracts than a reclamated hero for the lower ones.

“And heck, let’s
not forget those people who are just what HighCons think they are—lazy
uninterested bums.

“There are so
many reasons why LowCons put up with it that people just choose whichever one
suits them best, makes them feel better about themselves. They decide that
that’s the whole truth and stereotype the whole class.”

The bleeding had
stopped, and whatever she had given me for the pain was taking effect. The
swelling had gone down. As my eyes had adjusted to the darkness I took the
opportunity to look around a bit more. The apartment had a similar layout to
mine, but smaller. The appliances were left unplugged in case of power spikes,
and bars guarded the windows. The bedroom was tiny, consumed mostly by a twin
bed; an old mattress on it with the life and comfort beaten out of it.

I already felt
more at home than in my own place.

“So we can’t do
anything?” I asked. “Nobody wants to fight, nobody wants to change things? This
is just the way things are?”

Kate smiled. “Of
course not. They can’t get inside your head, Charlie. They can’t make you be
anything you don’t want to be. You can’t control them, but you can control
yourself. And you know that. I know you do, because you chose to come here.
They don’t own everything.”

Maybe not there,
they didn’t. But that was only because they didn’t care about LowSec. It had no
gas, power was intermittent, and the water was probably poisonous. Their lack
of material wealth meant safety. It meant freedom.

I was breathing
again, and my ribs didn’t hurt anymore. But the anesthetic had made me dizzy. I
wasn’t going anywhere that night.

“We aren’t
stars, Charlie. People wish we were. It’s gratifying to be mean, to visit
injustices—done unto you—onto other people. Vengeance is cathartic, and to
distill everything down to raw competition is a great excuse to justify it
without having to worry about the effects of your actions on others.

“But they’re
hypocrites, all of them. I see people espouse the benefits of corporatism all
the time, and all I can think is,
why are
they telling me this
? The ruthless executive who convinces people he has a
heart of gold succeeds far better than the one who goes around telling others
that they should be ruthless too! Why increase your competition? It’s ego,
that’s what feeds colleagues. They have complete contempt for everyone, and an
overwhelming desire to be worshiped for it. The truth? These capitalists don’t
want to get away with murder; they want you to
choose
to let them get away with it.

“Ask these same
people, Alphas and advocates of competition as a moral system—those who say
that competition creates strength, and that giving things away for free, or
insulating people from their failures, creates weakness—ask them to let their
loved ones live without the added benefits and protections of wealth behind
them—and nobody will cry foul faster. Hypocrisy never troubles a true
capitalist.

“Take Takashi.
One of his sons is in oil—all he’s ever managed to do is drill a lot of dry
holes into the ground. He’s bankrupted three different companies. Does this
corporate magnet let his son suffer the consequences of his mistakes? Nope. He
bails him out. When the poor screw up, it is their own fault; when the rich do,
it’s someone else’s. You can let the poor suffer their mistakes, but never
kin.”

She scooped the
mash onto a couple of plates and handed me one along with a beaten up fork. “I
don’t have knives, sorry.”

“I wouldn’t have
it any other way.”

I couldn’t
identify the meat on the plate. But it was crisp on the outside, soft inside,
and very tasty. And she was right about the onions. She broke out some alcohol,
something we could drink. With the meds it made me light-headed and happy. I
never wanted to leave. I didn’t need my mid-level contract anymore, or my
MidCon apartment or my MidCon job. Just her.

She saw it
before I had even moved towards her. I threw my arms around her and kissed her
as if she were the first woman I had ever met. By any measure I knew, she was.
I kissed her as though we were the only human beings alive, as though the
universe itself existed only inside that tiny apartment. She was love, life,
all of the things I had never known. She was the antithesis of everything I had
been taught. And at that moment love was something stronger and more passionate
than I had ever imagined.
 

When I was six,
I caught one of my teachers having sex in the school bathroom. I told my
parents, who sold their silence to her for several thousand caps. Years later
my mom sold me to Ackerman. My first real girlfriend hacked my work account,
stole my reports, and was promoted for it.

I couldn’t even
trust my own wife.

I lay in Kate’s
arms, naked, on her trampled mattress. I’m sure I was a terrible sight with
gashes and scabs on my face. But she ran her fingers through my hair like it
didn’t matter. No money was to be had, no profit in any measurable sense. But I
was happy.

She could have
been Retention, the entire rental office nothing more than a front to catch
wayward colleagues. And I could just as easily have been one too, come to
ferret out pockets of resistance to corporate theology. There was no way to
know, so we just accepted what we had.

No doubt Kate
had other suitors, men of her world—LowCon born and educated—who were
predisposed to principles of cooperation. Common sense said that’s where her
heart should lie. But those men hadn’t ever been on the other side. It was one
thing to rail against things you could probably never get anyway. But I came
from MidSec. I had lived in Capital City. I knew the alternatives. Like Sarah
Aisling, I was there by choice.

As we lay in
bed, she found the scar running down the length of my right leg. She ran the
tips of her fingers down it. I recoiled.

“I don’t mind,”
she said.

I wanted to be
perfect for her, no scars or disfigurements. She just nuzzled me closer.

“What happened?”

The room was
dark, too dark for me to feel comfortable telling the story. I reached for my
pills before remembering that I had thrown them out.

“It’s okay; you
don’t have to tell—”

“I was up at
Allenhurst, on an interview for a job in one of the maintenance buildings.
Nothing fancy, I wasn’t skilled, and only an Epsilon at the time. I’m at the
front desk waiting with maybe a dozen or so other applicants, and an Alpha
comes in. His terminal is on the fritz, he’s put in a bunch of petitions to get
it fixed, and he’s sick of it. He wants to know why he can’t get anybody on the
phone.

“Well, the
methane generator had sprung a leak. I’m passing him to go to the interview,
and it blows. The whole building comes down on everyone.

“I wake up, I
can’t feel my leg—honestly, I thought I must have been dead. I couldn’t see or
hear anything. After a few minutes I recognize the sound of dripping water—some
burst pipe somewhere—and I realize that I’m alive, my leg crushed under a beam.
Then I hear digging.

“Well, I can’t
figure out why they’re bothering with any of us. Then I realize that the Alpha
is buried right underneath me. He’s worth a hell of a lot, so they triangulated
his ledger and started digging like crazy. But they can’t get to him without
cutting out the beam, and when they do, I get out.”

I took a deep
breath.

“Besides the
Alpha, nobody else in the lobby was worth rescuing. I guess if you’re going to
get blown up, doing it next to an Alpha is the way to go.”

She rubbed my
leg once more, and put her head on my chest.

As the days
passed, I spent more and more time in LowSec. When someone asked where I was
going, I ignored them. They assumed that I
was
going to LowSec, rebounding from my divorce with thrills both perverse and
cheap. I always used the underground, paid cash, and never took my ledger with
me.

While Kate
trusted me, her friends were another matter. She had a clique of them, like
Jazelle, Spag and the other two who beat me, the bald man at the rental office
and a few more. None of them liked me, and they made no effort to hide it. They
would come by at odd hours of the night, whispering quietly between them. Her
apartment turned out to be just a block from the warehouse. They’d hold
meetings, which would end abruptly when I arrived. I never asked about these
machinations, and she never volunteered. She had gotten them to agree to let me
see her, and that was enough.