The Water Thief (6 page)

I watched the
body bags being carted carelessly away. I didn’t feel anything for my murdered
colleagues. I just felt sorry for Simon, and wondered which bag he was in.

“They’ll fine
half our officers for not stopping it sooner, the duty officer for not
predicting this, human resources for not preventing it. It’ll be a blood bath…
pardon the pun.”

My father had
been an accountant. The theory of accounting is that it’s the accurate tracking
of money. The practice was about making the books look as attractive to
investors and stockholders as possible. He could have refused to do it on moral
grounds, but there were ten other accountants willing to take his place, and he
had a family to feed. He worked at a small firm that reclamated plastics. Most
of the people there worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day; they all shared
bunks on site. Suicide was a problem, so the firm installed bars in the windows
and netting between buildings to protect their assets. One day my father fell
into one of the processing vats. He shouldn’t have been up there, so his
insurance didn’t pay out. My mother argued with them; we needed the money to
live. But they said it was a suicide and wouldn’t pay us. And we both knew they
were right.

As Corbett
calculated the odds and permutations of perception, I wondered why I didn’t see
it coming. I had seen him that morning in the lobby, “reading” his book. His
condition should have been obvious.

You saw it. Don’t pretend you didn’t. And
don’t pretend you don’t get it. Whatever it was that drove Simon to that most
un-natural of acts, it’s creeping up on you too. Is that why you’re asking
Linus about subsidies and loyalties? Retention will find out sooner or later.
Are you trying to work your neck into a noose?

Ackerman
Employee Retention was the most dangerous division you could encounter—even
talking about them was risky. They had the right to blackmail, murder, extort,
and survey nearly anyone in order to ensure colleagues’ fidelity to Ackerman.
And Retention wasn’t simply reactive, they were proactive. They set up phony
job offers from other corps, bribes and blackmail attempts, all to test
loyalty. Their budget was classified, but they were the highest earning
division in the corp, and reported directly to Takashi himself. Purportedly
they had sleeper agents in every division, and I certainly didn’t doubt it.

 
“What’s wrong, man?” Corbett said. “Hey,
relax. We haven’t had one of these in a couple years. We were due. They had
three up in Occam last year alone.”

Someone will get me
.
Maybe it’ll be Corbett, or Linus, or
Bernard. Leoben the stabber would be a good bet, or one of my twenty other
supervisors. Doesn’t matter. Simon just had enough. Aisling too—she had gone on
strike, just pulled her money and her effort out of the system.

“Simon…” I
whispered.

“Simon, that’s
right. How’d you know?”

I had said his
name aloud. “What?” I asked, playing for time.

“Simon. You knew
the guard’s name?”

“Well, yeah, he
was the morning guy at the desk, we all knew him.”

“No,” said
Corbett, his eyes widening with the prospect of financial gain, “you knew he
was going to do this!”

I had thought
Corbett might get me, but I certainly didn’t think it would be today.

“Don’t be
silly,” I laughed. “I mean, sure, there was something wrong with him. Anyone
could see that. I reported my concerns to Human Resources nearly six weeks ago.
I had no idea he was still a danger. Heads are going to roll in HR when I find
out why they didn’t do something about him.”

He eyed me
suspiciously. Heck, it would be his word against mine. If he was smart, he’d
tell someone that I helped Simon plan the attack. Then I’m on defense, and Ackerman
would believe whomever it wanted. Hell, let’s be honest, since the truth of
things can never be known anyway, they’d go with whatever was more profitable.

He smiled a
touch out of the corner of his mouth. I didn’t know if he was satisfied with my
answer or not, but he grinned and shook his head. “Yep, a lot of money can
change hands over this one. The only real losers are going to be our insurance.
Simon was young; his futures had some value, even for an Epsilon.”

I nodded as I
wondered how much it might cost me to plant a backdated complaint about Simon
to HR. It’d cost a lot more now that he was dead. It might be enough just to
pay HR to keep an eye out for Corbett, in case he came checking into my story.

“And another
thing,” Corbett said, “your partner is after me again.”

“Stop saying
he’s my partner. I just rent him half my cubicle. I’ve got no more control over
him than you do.”

The tactical
teams packed up, and people were slowly being let back into the building.

“Increase his
rent.”

“If I do, he may
split, and I need his share.”

“Damn it, ever
since Gollum got mugged he’s done nothing but whine, and complain, and try to
get sympathy for it. It’s been three weeks now and he still chases me around
asking for a ride, saying he’s too scared of the subway. I’ve got better things
to do than to dodge him all day.”

“So just say
no.”

“Are you
kidding? This is a people business. The word ‘no’ shouldn’t even be in your
vocabulary; it just upsets people. It’s much better just to avoid him
entirely.”

“Charge him more
for the trouble,” I suggested.

“I charge him
plenty. He offers me fifteen or twenty caps a ride. The problem is that by the
time we get there he tells me he only has six on him, or his ledger is on the
fritz, or his transfer fees have just skyrocketed so he’ll just pay me one lump
sum at the end of the month. Then I’m on the hook for more rides, because if I
piss him off too much I won’t see a dime. It would cost me at least a hundred
caps just to file a breach of contract against him, and he knows it.”

“Diabolical...”

“Why don’t
you
get a car?” Corbett asked.

“We’ve got one,
but Beatrice usually takes it. Besides, it’s not worth the cost of diesel, the
maintenance, overhead...”

“It’s not the
overhead,” Corbett said, “but freeloaders and moochers trying to bum a ride off
me.”

“Well, that’s
overhead. Just take a bike, a lot less trouble.”

“To work? My
God, what if someone sees me? Nobody will take you seriously if they don’t
think you earn enough to drive. Besides, I’ve seen your bike... I choose life.
You know, I’ll bet you Susan down in accounting paid for it…”

“My bike?”

“No, the
mugging. Bernard’s mugging.”

“You don’t think
it was random?”

“No chance.
Nobody likes him, and he’s been trying to buy his way into her bed for months.
I’m thinking of getting a pool together, see if we can’t get him taken care of.
It’d be expensive, the guys upstairs like him and for some reason his stocks
actually have some value. Still, there’s got to be a way.”

I shrugged.
Corbett had always been after Bernard, but he appeared to have put some thought
into this.

“Maybe another
mugging and he’ll go the way of Simon,” he said.

“He’s not
Simon.”

“There’s got to
be a way to hurt him.”

“Hurt him bad
enough, someone will get you for it.”

He looked at me meanly.
“Don’t tell me things I already know.”

“Okay.”

“Some reason you
protecting him?”

“I told you, I
need his half of the rent.”

“All right, I’m
going back inside. Got to feed the beast.”

I nodded. “So
you don’t want him to know I saw you?”

Corbett pursed
his lips. He pulled my five caps back out of his pocket and slammed them back
into my hand. Then he went back inside. I watched the last of the bodies carted
away, and then followed after him.
 

The action on
the seventh floor was winding down for the day. Most of the people who weren’t
working through the night had gone home a little early to watch the hangings.
Corbett was hiding in my office, since that was probably the last place Bernard
would look for him.

“You know, Linda
wants to have kids,” Corbett said.

“Linda? Do you
want ‘em?”

“Do you know how
much they cost? The license alone is about twenty grand. And sure, if you sell
their futures right, it’s income for life, but it takes forever to just break
even. No, there are faster ways of making money. Besides, look at Eric.”

I looked into
the hallway. Number 721 was still on. He hadn’t even closed the curtains.

“He still here?”

“He’s always
here. He sleeps in there now, has to.”

“He works harder
than all of us.” I said.

“Lot of good
it’ll do him.”

I nodded.

Eric Forestall
was in a lot of trouble. His parents chose not to sell his futures—they kept
them safe for him till he was eighteen. When he got them, he went wild, selling
them for cars, women and liquor. Within six months he had sold them all, and
had nothing left but creditors expecting dividends.

“Serves the
parents right, weakening a kid by not selling him outright,” Corbett said.
“Never learned to handle money. Talk about Moral Hazard.”

The boy’s
futures had plummeted, and now he was working night and day just to try to stay
ahead of it. The lower they got, the more likely someone would simply reclamate
him and be done with it. Every penny he made went to keeping himself out of the
lye vats for one more day.

“You know,”
shouted Corbett, “I hear they like to toss you into the vats while you’re still
alive. It makes the best soap!”

There was no
reply.

“Think he heard
me?”

I shrugged. That
notion was an old wives tale, something parents told their kids to get them to behave.
It wasn’t true (well, at least I think it wasn’t. I honestly don’t know much
about the process).

“Well, when they
take him, it’ll be one more cubicle free. Can only help prices. That’ll be
Collin in a year or two…”

At home I found
Beatrice curled up on the floor in front of the television, a bowl of popcorn,
some chips, and a remote office terminal in front of her. The poker
championship was coming down to the last few throws, but she wasn’t giddy
because of the game.

Already she was
fantasizing about the executions, about each person begging for their lives,
truly broken and in denial before the drop. They would realize their sins and
repent, right before succumbing to the inevitable hand of justice. She
delighted in watching them pay, as if every one of them had committed their
crimes against her personally. Death sports—gladiators paid to put their lives
on the line—never amused her. No, it was the executions or nothing. She once
told me that she imagined them, dangling helplessly against the rope, willing
to trade anything they ever had, anything they ever could have, for a second
chance, but finding that no matter how much they wished, Ackerman’s wrath would
always win out. She loved justice.

The stadium was
packed with Alphas, most of whom paid as much as one hundred thousand caps a
head to watch live. Execution parties were common—Corbett had his own every
month (I usually paid him a few caps not to be insulted by my absence. Watching
people die was a bit like watching pornography, it never did strike me as a
group activity). My neighbor always had friends over to watch, too. We could
hear the cheering through the walls with the crack of each broken neck, and the
shouting of bets—like at a derby—when someone choked against the rope. We
hardly needed our own television.

Beatrice never
attended the parties either. She called them “debauched,” but really she just
became enraged when she saw people enjoying the show. Who were they to be as
offended by criminal behavior as she was?

“Running late?”
I asked.

“Yeah,” she
sighed, sending off another report. “Jennings is taking forever to call this
last guy.”

Susan Jennings.
Even I knew that name. Everyone knew
that
name. She was the greatest poker player in the world. Linus would never admit
it, but he idolized her. When she lost a game, he bragged about her genius,
throwing a couple matches a season to confuse competitors looking for tells or
an angle on her strategy. When she lost last year’s championship, he pronounced
it decisive proof of her brilliance—a gambit for dominating the league in years
to come.

What do you
feel, I wondered as I pulled out a few individually wrapped shots of whisky
from the fridge, when your execution is delayed because the previous show ran
long?

I downed my
first shot.

Suddenly Bea
jumped to her feet. “I almost forgot! Guess what I got you!” she said, handing
me a thin brown paper bag. “A colleague of mine recommended this. The reviews
were all glowing.”

Inside was a
pornographic magazine, a picture of a naked woman bent over a sawhorse, a man
with a whip behind her.

“Oh, my!” I
exclaimed. “Yes, that does look good.”

“All the men on
my floor say it’s the best. They’re
always
talking about it. Anyways, I don’t know how long it’s been… well, how long
since you… anyways, I thought you might enjoy this. I heard that they use real
leather whips.”

“No.”

“They do. And
this cost only cost five caps!”

“Five? Wow, that
is surprising. It’s higher quality than most stuff you’d find.”

“My colleagues
know what they’re talking about. I guess there are a few scenes of men with men
in there. I don’t know if that’s your thing. You can ignore those pages, or
give them a try, whatever you want. I can leave for a little while after the
show, give you some privacy.”