The Water Knife

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  “You want to see if something happens,” Sarah muttered resentfully.

  Her shadow moved in the darkness, trying to find some part of concrete that hadn’t absorbed the day’s heat. Finally she gave up and sat on the wagon, pushing aside the plastic bottles that Maria had scavenged. They plunked hollowly against one another. “So now I got to lose my beauty sleep, ’cause you want to hang with Texans.”

  “You’re a Texan,” Maria said.

  “Speak for yourself, girl. These shagua pendejos don’t even know how to take a bath.” Sarah spat something black onto the pavement as she watched the movements of the nearby refugees. “I can smell ’em from here.”

  “You didn’t know how to use a sponge and bucket either, till I showed you.”

  “Yeah, well, I learned. These people are dirty,” Sarah said. “Just a bunch of dirty fucking Texans who don’t know shit. I ain’t no Merry Perry.”

  In a way it was true. Sarah was schooling away her Dallas drawl, scraping away Texas talk and Texas dirt, scrubbing and scraping as hard as her pale white skin could take the burn. Maria didn’t have the heart to tell her that no matter what Sarah did, people saw her Texas coming from a mile away. The point wasn’t worth arguing.

  But for sure, the Texans around the pump stank. They stank of fear and stale sweat that had moistened and dried. They stank of Clearsac plastic and piss. They stank of one another from lying crammed together like sardines in the plywood ghettos that they’d packed in close to wherever the Red Cross had spiked relief pumps into the ground.

  The blocks around the Friendship pump were an oasis of life and activity in the drought-savaged wilderness of the Phoenix suburbs. Here, among the McMansions and strip malls, refugees clogged parking lots and streets with their prayer tents. Here, they erected wooden crosses and begged for salvation. Here, they posted numbers and names and pictures of loved ones they had lost on the bloody roads out of Texas. Here, they read handbills passed out by street kids hired by the professional coyotes to get out the word:

  GUARANTEED ENTRY!

  THREE TRIES into CALIFORNIA, or your MONEY BACK!

  ONE PRICE, ALL INCLUSIVE:

  Truck to border. Raft and Floats. Bus or Truck to San Diego or Los Angeles.

  MEALS INCLUDED!

  Here, close to the relief pump, there was life: bonfires burning two-by-fours hacked from the husked-out corpses of five-bedroom houses. The tents of the Red Cross, swaybacked with the recent storm’s accumulated dust. Doctors and volunteers wearing filter masks against the dust and valley fever fungus, tending to refugees lying on cots, and crouching over infants with cracked sandy lips as they took saline drips into their hollowed bodies.

  “So what’s this about, girl?” Sarah asked again. “Tell me why I’m out here when I should be with a client. I got to earn if I’m going to make the Vet’s rent—”

  “Shh.” Maria motioned her friend to keep her voice down. “It’s market price, girl.”

  “So? It don’t never change.”

  “I think sometimes it does.”

  “I ain’t never seen it.”

  Sarah’s miniskirt rustled again as she tried to find a more comfortable position. Maria could make out her shadowed silhouette under the dim blue light of the pump’s price readout: the gleam of the glass jewel in her belly, the tight little half-shirt meant to show off the cup of her breasts and the plane of her sleek stomach. The promise of a young body. Every bit of her clothing trying to make Phoenix give a damn that she was here.

  We’re all trying, Maria thought. We’re all trying to make it.

  Sarah shifted again, shoving aside Pure Life and Softwater, Agua-Azul and Arrowhead labels. A bottle fell out of the wagon and bounced on the dusty pavement with a hollow rattle. Sarah reached down to pick it up.

  “You know, they let you just get water for free in Vegas,” she said.

  “Fangpi.” Maria used the Chinese word that she’d learned from the construction managers who had worked with her father.

  Bullshit.

  “Fangpi yourself, loca. It’s true. They let you take it right out of the fountains in front of the casinos. That’s how much water they got.”

  Maria was trying to keep her eye on the pump and its price. “That’s only for the Fourth of July. It’s like a patriotic thing they do.”

  “Nuh-uh. Bellagio lets you take a cup anytime. Anyone can go and get a cup of water. Nobody neverminds it none.” Sarah tapped the empty Aquafina bottle on the edge of the wagon, an idle hollow thunking. “You’ll see. When I get to Vegas, you’ll see.”

  “ ’Cause your man’s taking you there when he leaves,” Maria said, not bothering to hide her skepticism.

  “That’s right,” Sarah shot back. “And he’d take you, too, if you partied with him. He’d take us both. Man likes to party. All you got to do is be friendly.” She hesitated, then said, “You know I’d let you be his friend, too. I don’t mind sharing.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “He’s good people,” Sarah insisted. “He don’t even want nasty things. He’s not like the Calies in the bars. And he’s got that fine apartment in the Taiyang. You wouldn’t believe how nice Phoenix looks when you got decent air filters and you’re up high. Fivers live good.”

  “He’s only a fiver for now.”

  Sarah shook her head emphatically. “For life, girl. Even if his company don’t send him to Vegas next like he says, that man is a five-digit forever.”

  She went on, waxing romantic about her man’s fiver lifestyle and her own prospects for after he left Phoenix, but Maria tuned her out.

  She knew why Sarah thought there was free water in Vegas. She’d seen it, too. Hollywood Lifestyles had been following Tau Ox, and Maria had been watching from the doorway to one of the bars where Sarah tried to get men to buy her drinks.

  The star of Undaunted had pulled up in front of one of those fancy Vegas arcologies in an icy-looking Tesla. The camera had been following Tau Ox, but Maria had lost interest in the star when she saw the fountain.

  Huge-ass fountain, spraying water straight up into the air. Dancing water spouts. Water like diamonds in the sun. And little kids splashing their faces with it. Just wasting it.

  It was like the fountains she’d spied inside the Taiyang Arcology, but without the security guards to keep you away. And it was outside. They were just letting water evaporate. Letting it go.

  When Maria saw that fountain, right out there in the open, she’d finally understood why her father had been trying to get them to Vegas. Why he’d been so sure that city was the place to go.

  But his plan hadn’t worked out. They’d been a little too slow to move out of Texas, and then the State Independence and Sovereignty Act had put up walls they couldn’t cross. Every single state realizing it was in trouble if it kept letting people flood in.

  “It’s just temporary, mija,” Papa had said. “It won’t stay this way.”

  But by that time Maria had stopped believing so much in what Papa said. He was an old man, she realized. Viejo, right? Living according to an ancient map of the world that no longer existed.

  In Papa’s head, things looked one way, but in Maria’s experience they were nothing the same. He kept saying that this was America and America was all about freedom and doing what you wanted, but the crumbling America that they drove across, where Texans were strung up on New Mexico fence lines as warnings, most definitely wasn’t the America he kept inside his head.

  His eyes were old. Ojos viejos. Her father couldn’t see what was right in front of his face. People didn’t get to come back to their houses like he said they would. You didn’t get to stay in your hometown, the way he said you would. You didn’t see your school friends ever again, the way he said you would. Your mother wasn’t there for your quinceañera, the way he said she would. None of it worked out the way he said it would.

  At some point Maria realized that her father’s words were dust. She didn’t correct him every time he was wron
g, because she could tell he felt bad about being wrong about basically everything.

  Sarah made an impatient noise. “How much longer we got to wait?”

  “You should know,” Maria goaded. “Your fiver is the one who told me about this.”

  But Sarah cared only about keeping the fiver’s hands on her body and making sure his party plans always focused on her.

  Maria, on the other hand, had listened to the man’s words.

  “It’s market price,” the fiver had said. “If it weren’t for that, Phoenix would never permit those Red Cross pumps, and Texans would be sucking dust on the I-10 and dying out in Chandler.”

  The man had been pouring habañero salsa over cochinita pibil, a meal he claimed wasn’t Mexican at all but Yucatecan, which to him seemed to justify the fact that he was spending more on the white-tablecloth meal than Maria and Sarah spent on a week’s rent.

  “Market pricing keeps control of everything.”

  He’d gotten onto the topic of Red Cross pumps because they’d been talking about Merry Perrys and all the faith trinkets they sold in their revival tents. And then Maria had said something about how Merry Perrys always set up their prayer tents next to relief pumps, because they could use water as bait to get people to listen to them preach.

  Sarah had given Maria a nasty look for reminding the man that they lived anywhere near relief pumps, but the fiver had perked right up at the mention of water.

  “Those pumps and those prices are probably the only smart thing Phoenix has done for water,” he said. “Too little too late, but you know, better late than never.” He winked at Maria. “And hey, it gives Merry Perrys a new way to recruit.”

  The man wanted Maria. She could see it in the hopeful way he kept his eyes on her body and barely paid attention to Sarah. But he was polite about it. He at least made the effort to try to impress her with all his geeky knowledge of hydrology, even as he edged around the question of whether Maria could be bought.

  “You just got to meet up with us,” Sarah had said. “Smile at whatever he’s talking about. Make him feel like he’s a big man. He’s, like, into water and shit. Loves talking about drill rigs and groundwater. Just listen and act like you care.”

  But to Maria’s surprise, she did care. And the more the fiver talked, the more it became apparent to her that men like him saw the world through different eyes than her father had.

  Maria’s father had seen the world cloudy, but this hydrologist saw the world clear.

  Michael Ratan—senior hydrology specialist, Ibis Ltd.—lived high up in the Taiyang Arcology and understood what was happening with the world. He spoke a language of acre-feet of water, spring runoff in CFS, and snowpack depths. He spoke of rivers and groundwater. And because he saw the world true and accepted it, instead of living in denial, he was never blindsided.

  He told Maria how the Earth held hundreds of millions of gallons of water deep underground. Ancient water that had seeped down into it when glaciers melted. He’d described this world to Maria, hands darting, outlining geological strata, sandstone formations, talking about Halliburton drill soundings, telling her about aquifers.

  Aquifers.

  Whole huge underground lakes. Of course they were almost pumped dry now, but long ago there had been vast amounts of water down there.

  “It’s not like the old days,” the hydrologist had said, “but if you drill deep enough and frack right, you can open things up. Water will perc okay.” He shrugged. “At least in most places there’s still an aquifer or two you can crack open and get a little water flowing. Down here, though, it’s tougher. Mostly you just got the empty aquifers that Arizona fills up with CAP water.”

  “CAP water?”

  “The Central Arizona Project?” He’d smirked at her ignorance. “Seriously?”

  Sarah kicked Maria under the table, but Ratan pushed aside wineglasses and laid his tablet on the table.

  “Okay. Here. Look.”

  He opened a map of Arizona, then zoomed in on Phoenix. He pointed at a thin blue line that wrapped around the northern edge of the city and traced it west across the desert.

  In contrast to the lumps of ranged hills and mountains around Phoenix, the blue line was as straight as a ruler. It bent a few times, but it lay on the land as if someone had sliced the desert with an X-Acto blade.

  When he zoomed in, Maria could see the pale yellow of the desert and black rocky hills. A few lonely saguaros, casting shadows, and then they were down on top of an emerald river of water, flowing along a concrete-lined canal.

  Ratan scrolled the map farther west, following the straight-ruled artificial river until it reached a wide pool of blue, glittering with desert sunlight.

  Lake Havasu, it said.

  And feeding it, a squiggly blue line: Colorado River.

  “The CAP is Arizona’s IV drip,” Ratan explained. “It pumps water up out of the Colorado River and brings it three hundred miles across the desert to Phoenix. Almost everything else that Phoenix depends on for water is done for. Roosevelt Reservoir is about dried up. The Verde and Salt Rivers are practically seasonal. The aquifers around here are all pumped to hell. But Phoenix still has a pulse because of the CAP.”

  He drew back the map, showing the distance of the canal again, the slender line crossing all that desert. His finger lingered over it.

  “You see how tiny that line is, right? How far it’s got to go? And it’s coming out of a river that a lot of other people want to use, too. California pumps out of Lake Havasu, too. And Catherine Case up in Nevada doesn’t like letting water down into Havasu at all because she needs it up in Lake Mead.

  “And then you’ve got all the lunatics farther upriver in Colorado and Wyoming and Utah who keep saying they aren’t going to send any water down to the Lower Basin States at all. They like to say it’s theirs. Their mountains. Their snowmelt.” He tapped the CAP’s slender blue line again. “That’s a lot of people fighting over too little water. And that’s a mighty vulnerable line. Someone bombed the CAP once, almost knocked Phoenix off.”

  He leaned back and grinned. “And that’s why they’re hiring people like me. Phoenix needs backups. If someone comes after them again? Pfft.” He made a dismissing gesture. “They’re done for. But if I find a decent aquifer? Phoenix is golden. They can even grow again.”

  “Will you find something?” Maria asked.

  Ratan laughed. “Probably not. But people will grab after whatever mirage they think will save them if they’re thirsty enough. So I go out with my maps and my drilling crews, and I look busy, and I tell people where to punch holes in the desert, and Phoenix keeps hoping we’ll come back with some mother lode of aquifers so they can stop worrying about how they stand on the Colorado River, and they can stop looking over their shoulders at Vegas and California. If I find some new magical water source, they’ll be saved. I guess it could happen. I’ve heard of miracles. Merry Perrys sure believe. Jesus walked on water, so maybe he makes aquifers, too.”

  The man had laughed at that, but afterward Maria had dreamed about aquifers.

  In her dreams they were always vast lakes, deep underground, cooler and more inviting than any abandoned basement, huge caverns filled with water. Sometimes she dreamed that she rowed a boat across those wet cathedral spaces with stalactites phosphorescing overhead like the body paint Sarah wore when she hunted her customers in the dance clubs of the Golden Mile. The roof of the cavern had glowed, and Maria had drifted across those dark reflecting waters, listening to water dripping, trailing her fingers in the soft cool liquid.

  Sometimes she dreamed that her family was in the boat with her, and sometimes her father even rowed, carrying them across to China.

  And now Maria sat in the darkness beside the oasis of the Red Cross/China Friendship pump and waited to find out if she could see the world as clearly as Sarah’s hydrologist. And if Sarah didn’t understand, well, Maria would try to help her see clear, too.

  “It’s market price, girl. Th
e price on the pump right here is all about how much water is down underground. When it gets low, the price goes up so people will slow down and not take so much. When the aquifer gets full, the price goes down because they’re not so worried about running out. And sometimes the big vertical farms that the Chinese made stop pumping water so they can dry out for harvest. And they do it all at once, so it fools the water-level monitors. Makes them think there’s enough water for everyone, so then sometimes the price—”

  The pump’s blue glow flickered and dropped to $6.66. Went back up to $6.95.

  It flickered again. $6.20. And then back up to $6.95.

  “You see that?” Maria asked.

  Sarah sucked a breath in surprise. “Whoa.”

  “You stay with the wagon.” Maria sidled closer to the pump. It was late. No one else was watching. No one else had noticed yet. She didn’t want them to notice. Didn’t want anyone to see what she was about to do.

  The price dropped to six dollars, then kicked up a nickel as someone’s automated pumps put orders in on the water that was deep down below her feet. But each time the price seemed to dip lower before it went back up.

  Maria reached into her bra and pulled out the wadded sweaty bills she kept safe against her skin.

  On the pump, the digital readout flickered, prices changing.

  $6.95…$6.90…$6.50.

  It was dropping—Maria was sure of it. Farmers were still shunting water into drip fields, getting their subsidized price. But the big vertical farms had suddenly stopped pumping, just as the hydrologist had said they would, preparing for a harvest that happened only a few times a year.

  And here she was, standing beside the pump, watching the numbers.

  $5.95. $6.05.

  The price was definitely falling.

  Maria waited, her heart beating faster. Around her a crowd began to take notice and press close. $6.15. People started running, seeing finally what was happening. Word spread into the Merry Perry tents and pulled people away from lighting candles at the Santa Muerte shrine to look, but Maria was already there in the sweet spot.