The Water Thief (7 page)

I nodded. “Very
thoughtful, thank you. Did you bill me for this?”

“It’s already on
your ledger.”

“Oh, thank you.
No, this is really nice, thanks. I’ll be sure to look it over after the show.”

I didn’t know
what else to say. If it really cost only five caps, then maybe it was a good
deal, even if it wasn’t a style or brand I liked. But in all the time I had
been married to Beatrice, “bargains” like this came along only after a fight,
or as a prelude to one.

She sat back
down. The whisky made me feel warm, and my mind began to wander.

No debt… His work record was fine. He’d
never have made Alpha, but that was true of most people. Simon had a steady and
reliable job. And Aisling, throwing her life away for no reason. Forestall will
be next, but at least he’d have an excuse. It’s a rash of suicides, a cluster.
Maybe the hormone content of the water is off or something.

I downed a
second shot.

The apartment
shook with the stamping of feet as Jennings destroyed her last opponent. Bea
gave a petite, joyous clap of her hands.

“Are they killing
anyone special today?” I asked. I didn’t care. In fact, I’d rather not have
known.

“Malcolm Evans,
the spy!” she said with glee. “They’ll probably make him the last one.”

I shuddered.

“Aren’t you
excited?” she grinned.

Evans was a
Beta, a good one. He had been well respected, efficient and avaricious. He
worked in Acquisitions, luring disgruntled or undervalued employees from
competing corps (even from our own Karitzu, if he could get away with it), and
obtaining insider information from people willing to sell it.

The job was as
dangerous a one as you could get. Enemy Retention programs were ruthlessly
trying to stop you, feeding you disinformation while trying to trick you into
giving up your own secrets.

Evans had been
doing a great job, but he suffered from a disease that plagues most colleagues
at one point or another: he thought he wasn’t being paid enough. He was
approached by a man pretending to be a Hiragana Acquisitions agent. He
flattered Evans, told him that Ackerman didn’t appreciate him enough or
recognize his genius, and that a smaller corp like Hiragana understood his
needs much better.

Evans didn’t buy
it on the first pitch. He had been dissatisfied with Ackerman, for sure, but
they probably knew it. He made the guy for a Retention agent right away. But,
like any good Acquisitions operative, Evans kept pretending to be interested,
mining for information.

Then the agent
offered to have a meeting at Hiragana’s headquarters, and Evans’ interest was
aroused. He figured that not even the best Ackerman Retention agents could ever
set up a sting from the main offices of a hated rival like Hiragana. He
researched the people he’d meet with, the contracts he’d sign—everything was on
the up-and-up. They’d offered him more money than he’d ever make at Ackerman, a
position as an executive running their Acquisition Department, and a guarantee
against Ackerman retaliation.

He signed the
contract and they arrested him on the spot.

He had been
right, of course. Hiragana would never have let Ackerman do an operation from
their own HQ. But Retention had blackmailed a bunch of Hiragana officers and
promised to let them off the hook if they set up and executed the sting
themselves. They held dozens of meetings throughout the day, all with real
Hiragana employees and Hiragana branded contracts. By the time it was over,
seventeen colleagues were in the hands of Ackerman Retention.

But that was
just the start. Retention offered Evans a deal—pay off some of your debt by
becoming a stabber. Rat out your colleagues, and maybe we’ll let you live. For
four months he tried. He asked co-workers questions about their work habits,
personal lives, pet projects—all the while trying to find something he could
use to gain leverage. But he was desperate and clumsy, they all suspected him
right out of the gate. He started gathering whatever intelligence he could,
turning in confidential documents to help Retention in old cases or to start
new ones. They took it all, and then added espionage and spying to his list of
charges.

That’s the real
reason the hangings were so popular. Like watching a car wreck, it was
conclusive proof that, no matter how badly you screwed up your life, somebody
else had done it worse.

The television
screen faded out. The sound of booming Takio drums filled the air and the
spotlights came into view. In the sky was a blast of fireworks, and the stadium
lit up. Beatrice squealed as the ceremonies began.

For the last
fifteen years or so the ceremonies had been hosted by the same three pundits.
Paul and Steve were the youngest. Paul was dark-haired, athletic, with an air
of intellectualism about him. Steve, on the other hand, was a gentle giant,
bigger even than Linus, with a broad chiseled chest, but wearing a finely
tailored suit that made him look nicely kempt.

The third
commentator was Alice. She was vacuous and plain-looking. She wore a tan skirt
and coat over an off-white blouse, and she was showing every one of her
fifty-five years.

“Oh, that woman.
She is horrible. They shouldn’t ever put her in front of a camera, don’t you
think?” Beatrice said. “They should let me produce the show. I’d get someone
with looks in there, attract more men. She’s stupid, too. Producers don’t know
anything these days. Don’t you think I could do a better job? You know I could!
I’d clean house. I’d fire the whole production staff, starting with her. Keep
Paul and Steve, those two are awesome!”

The anchors
reviewed the night’s line-up. Alice would invariably say a nice thing or two
about each of the condemned before being trounced by her co-hosts. She would
point out how maybe the crimes weren’t as bad as the media made them out to be,
or that maybe the courts or police hadn’t treated them fairly. Every time—by a
revolving mixture of a cold recitation of the facts, persuasion, and ridicule—she
would come around.

“And then
there’s the main event, Malcolm Evans!” said Steve.

“Oh,” said
Alice, excitedly. “He’s the Acquisitions one?”

“That’s right,
Alice!” said Paul. “The worst of the bunch!”

“Well, you
know,” she said flippantly, “I know he’s a bad guy and all. But do you really
think he’s guilty of ALL of the charges?”

“Here we go…”
moaned Steve.

“I’m just
saying, espionage? I know he tried to get out of his contract. But once they
had him on that, it looks a lot like it was Retention that blackmailed him into
committing more crimes. They’re the ones who asked him to turn on his own
colleagues.”

“A crime is a
crime,” answered Paul.

“But Retention
forced him to! He was just trying to save him—”

“Exactly!” said
Steve. “He put his own needs ahead of the corporation. Nobody made him do
anything. He could have just accepted responsibility for his crimes. But no, he
tried to bribe Retention, save his own skin by throwing colleagues under the
bus. Frankly, he’s getting off easy.”

“I suppose that’s
a good point.” said Alice, as Bea snarled at her. “But if he wanted to leave
the firm, shouldn’t he have been free to go?”

“Of course Evans
was free to go! He just needed to buy out his contract. And what’s wrong with
that? Ackerman invested a lot of money into him, it’s only fair. And he was
paid for his loyalty. He cashed those checks, and look what he did!”

Beatrice raveled
her hands into her shirt and flexed in anger. “Yeah!” she cried. “My God, the
communist! How do they let people like this on the show? She’s been doing this
for like a decade now! Honestly, does nobody at that network think? What I
could do with the entire department if they let me manage it. They simply don’t
hire people with talent over there—they’d be intimidated by me, that’s the
problem!”

The first round
of hangings began. The commentators bantered back and forth about the man’s
crimes. Alice, ever the voice of compassion, was universally rebuffed and
overpowered by the weight of a single principle: the only chink in Ackerman’s
armor was disloyalty; Ackerman failed its colleagues only if its colleagues
failed Ackerman.

The first few
people were hanged. Beatrice grinned from ear to ear as each one dropped. When
a neck broke, she let out a disappointed sigh. When it didn’t, she watched them
suffocate for minutes, squirming and clawing the noose for air.

“What made you
think you could get away with it? It’s your own damn fault!” she shouted at the
television. “Honestly, idiots all of you! I mean nobody
wants
to hang their own colleagues, but when you behave like this…
what did you think was going to happen?”

The gallows were
iconic—every child knew what they were. Like the steps in Atlas Square, they
were allowed to age. Once a golden oak color, they were a battered, weathered
gray, cracking and splitting along every beam, yet somehow always up to the
job.

They had an
arcane and checkered history. A guard had once been careless with a prisoner
and found himself tossed off the edge with a rope around his neck. A bloodstain
still marked the fourth trap, the remaining ichor of Edgar Wellington, a
horribly obese man whose head popped off when he fell. And let’s not forget the
bullet hole from a particularly incensed Alpha who took a shot at an
extortionist, only to find himself hung three months later for the same crime.

For the first
time in my life, I was part of that history. Sarah Aisling could end up there
herself because of me.

No, your report isn’t bad enough to send her
there. The worst she’ll get is hard labor.

But it wasn’t
true. If my superiors embellished as much as I had, if we all just kept heaping
accusations on to her, of course she’d end up on the gallows. I knew that.

But it’s not your fault. You can’t control
what other people do.

No, but I was
responsible for my own actions. At some point we had abandoned responsibility
and began fostering corruption in others so that we might shield ourselves from
persecution by virtue of a common guilt. We did this in the name of profit, and
we justified our crimes with the rationalization that, somewhere down the line,
better people would safeguard our victims from us.

I wasn’t a
looter or a moocher. I wasn’t a producer either. None of us were. We certainly
weren’t capitalists. We were pillagers.

Decency exists.
That alone must make it important; even the great Darwin himself would say
that. But we tried to cut decency out of others so as to lower the bar for
ourselves.

We are relative
creatures. The man who teaches his slaves to read is a saint in a world where
slavery is legal, and a monster where it isn’t. We aren’t born knowing if we’re
good or bad. We decide by comparing ourselves to others—and by that yardstick
it’s no different to measure by our own successes than by our neighbors
failures, save that it’s easier to corrupt the neighbor.

A corporation
wasn’t a producer simply by virtue of being a corporation. Zino held up
capitalists as the engines of the world. But those in her Bible succeeded
because they were great people, not because they were capitalists. Not even she
got that distinction.

Don’t presume to know what Zino thought.

She was a
person, just like me. And she said that A=A and that there was no God, and that
to say so was Objective. But just as Objective was the inevitable conclusion
that it must not be the crime that is wrong, but getting caught. Objectively,
with the death of God, how could it be any other way? And with God dead,
capitalism is as good a substitution as any.

Things can’t really be this way.

I took another
shot.

“Should you be
drinking that much? Do you know how expensive those are?”

I didn’t care. I
didn’t care how much they cost, or that they cost the same as it did to watch
the executions in high definition. I didn’t care that the lights were all on,
or that she always drove the car.

I tried to
figure how long I had to wait before I could take another shot without protest.

Linus often said
that the executions were the greatest gift the corporation could give its
colleagues. They were an expression of God and of the state of nature. It was a
thinning of the herd, casting off the excess weight from a racecar, and allowed
us all to better reap the benefits of our firm. But when I looked at these men
and women dangling from ropes like carcasses in a butchery, all I could think
was that it was the most unnatural thing I had ever seen.

The room began
to spin. I could taste the whisky coming back up, and made a tumbling dash for
the toilet. I lifted the seat and began to vomit.

“Darling, please
try to keep it down in there,” she said warmly. “I’m missing some of the
commentary, and you know that’s my favorite. And turn on the fan if you get a
moment.”

I heaved even
more, dizzy and short of breath, clinging to the bowl. I begged for the surge
to stop, but all I could do was brace myself for the next lurch.

“The fan,
darling, remember the fan! You don’t want to ruin the show!”

The retching
finally stopped, and I slumped down, exhausted, hugging the john.

Finally I made
my way to the sink, pulling the string to light the small bulb that hung from
the ceiling.

The four walls
made a cell—there was no better way to describe it. The gray paint, not
retouched through four tenants, was cracking and chipping off. I placed my palm
on the wall and rubbed, feeling the plaster break off and crumble under my
hand. I turned on the water, splashed it on my face and rinsed out my mouth.

I heated up the
water a bit, then washed the drywall dust from my hands—letting them lay
there—bathing in the warmth and letting it circulate over the rest of my body.