The Water Knife

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  A caked REI filter mask and goggles were dropped on the table by the computer, lying in a pile of sand and dust, as if she’d come in, too hurried to even bother shaking them off before getting to work, because she’d wanted so badly to get to her computer.

  Bookshelves. Pictures. Some of them images that she had clearly shot. Windows into collapse. A family riding out of Texas in a pickup, a bunch of girls and boys, shotguns and hunting rifles bristling, as they sat atop the family’s three-hundred-gallon water tank. They waved their state flag with them. It made Angel wonder how much farther they’d gotten with that kind of provocation waving.

  More images: Merry Perry prayer tent, people down on their knees, begging God to save them, whipping their own backs with ocotillo thorn stalks; a chip-sun twinkling chain of vehicles streaming down a highway, surrounded by red sandstone desert beneath scalding blue desert skies—maybe Texans making the New Mexico crossing under guard. It had to be old. National Guard kept people in place now. Didn’t help them get where they were going.

  One frame stood out, cycling slowly through images of kids and someplace green. A place where people smiled and skin was soft with humidity.

  “Family?” Angel asked.

  Lucy hesitated. “My sister’s.”

  A pale-skinned woman with her head on the shoulder of a dark-skinned man who looked to Angel like he might have been Middle Eastern or Indian.

  The woman had Lucy’s face but none of the hardened depth of Lucy’s eyes. Lucy had been down the rabbit hole of suffering and come back, scarred but unbroken. This other woman, this pale version of Lucy, she’d break easy, Angel thought. He could see it even in her picture. Lucy’s sister was the kind of people who broke easy.

  “Looks green,” Angel said.

  “Vancouver.”

  “I hear your underwear molds in places like that.”

  A small laugh from Lucy. “That’s what I say, but Anna keeps denying it.”

  Books on one shelf, a small collection of old titles. Isak Dinesen, bound in leather. Alice in Wonderland, in an old illustrated edition. The kind of things someone kept to show visitors how smart they were. Accessories to identity. But one book—a copy of Cadillac Desert, old. He reached for it.

  “Don’t,” she said. “It’s a signed first.”

  Angel smirked. “ ’Course it is.” Then: “My boss makes all her new hires read that. She likes us to see this mess isn’t an accident. We were headed straight to Hell, and didn’t do anything about it.”

  “Jamie used to say that, too.”

  “The water lawyer? Your friend?”

  “Your boss, Catherine Case?”

  Angel grinned. “Whoever.”

  He leaned against her counter. Silence stretched between them.

  “You want water?” Lucy asked.

  “If you’re feeling hostly.”

  She gave him a look that seemed to say she wasn’t sure if she was feeling hostly or still wanted to put a bullet in him, but she got a glass and flipped open the spigot on her filter urn. The digital display came alive as water spilled into the glass.

  28.6 gallons…28.5 gallons.

  He noted that she filled the glass one-handed. She hadn’t stopped keeping her eye on him, and she hadn’t put down her gun. At least she wasn’t pointing it at him anymore. He decided that was probably as much of a concession as he was going to get from her today.

  “You used to be more careful about what you wrote,” he said.

  Lucy glanced over wryly as she finished filling the glass and handed it across. “You’re a critic now?”

  Angel took the glass and toasted thanks but didn’t drink. “You know that tamarisk hunters, in the old days, would always share water when they met each other on the Colorado?”

  “I heard something like that.”

  “They were competing to kill off anything that sucked extra water out of the river. Tamarisk, the cottonwoods, Russian olive, whatever. This was before California started putting so much of the river in a straw, so competition was fierce. The more they cleared, the more water they got as a bounty. So they traded water every time they met. Just a little. One canteen to another. And then they’d drink together.”

  “A ritual.”

  “Sure. Kind of a reminder. A way for them to keep track of the idea that they were all in it together, even if they were fighting over the same scraps.” He waited. “Will you drink with me?”

  She studied him, shook her head finally. “We’re not that close.”

  “Suit yourself.” He toasted her again anyway. A gift of life from her hand. He took a sip. “Losing your friend Jamie seems to have made you take some risks. Now you’re jumping at shadows, and you think the Devil’s coming for you. So why the change?”

  She looked away, blinking rapidly. Seemed to harden herself. “I can’t believe I care. He was such an asshole.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He was…full of himself.” She paused, searching for words. “He liked to look good. Liked to think he was smarter than everyone else. And he liked to prove it.”

  “And that’s why he’s dead now.”

  “I tried to warn him.”

  “What was he into?” Angel asked.

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  There it was, the hardness again. There was vulnerability underneath, but not for him. Now she was looking at him with those chip-gray eyes, and whatever soft part of her existed, it was locked away.

  “Guess it had to do with water rights,” Angel said. He carried his glass of water over to the shock-proofed computer. Took a sip. “Something big. Valuable.” He studied the computer and its edges.

  “It’s locked,” she said.

  “Don’t mean to pry.”

  “Bullshit. Why’d your friend Vosovich get killed?” she asked. “Who was he working for?”

  “If you got his name, I guess you already know who he worked for.”

  She gave him an irritated look. “His ID says he’s with the Salt River Project. But that’s clearly bullshit. He might have been pulling a salary there, but I think he was a mole for someone else.”

  “Sounds pretty far-fetched.”

  “Moles?” She laughed. “Los Angeles dried up the Owen Valley in the nineteen twenties, and even then they had moles working for them. If it was worth doing back then, it’s damn sure worth doing now.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  He came back to the counter. Set his glass down on the tile. Noted her purse and keys and phone lying out. Purple leather bag, worked heavily with silver stitching.

  “Nice purse,” he said, touching it.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Still a nice piece of work.”

  “It’s a Salina,” she said. “You don’t look like a clotheshound.”

  “Mostly just go with CK Ballistic.” He touched his jacket. “Gets the job done, you know?”

  She seemed disappointed. “Jamie knew clothes. He’s the one who bought it for me. I never had much time for things like that, but he was always trying to give me some ice.” She shrugged. “That’s what he was always saying. ‘You need some ice, girl. You need some ice.’ ”

  “Everyone wants to be icy,” Angel said, reaching for her phone.

  Lucy plucked it out of his hands. “You still didn’t answer my questions.” She went to sit on her couch and set the pistol beside her. Crossed her legs.

  Angel was suddenly aware of the shape of her. She did it for him, he decided. He liked her legs, her hips, her ass. He liked the look of those gray eyes. He liked that she wasn’t going to let herself be afraid of him or put up with any bullshit, and that she was willing to risk something to learn what she wanted.

  “So?” she pressed. “Who was your friend in the morgue?”

  “Seriously?” Angel found a chair and dragged it so that he sat across from her. “You’re too smart to need to ask that.”

  She looked annoyed. “I don’t play guessing games.”
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  “So don’t guess.”

  She frowned, studying him. “Vegas,” she decided. “You’re a water knife, and you work for Catherine Case. You’re one of hers.”

  Angel laughed. “Thought you were going to say 007.”

  “I doubt you’re smart enough to be 007,” she said. “You’re enough of a pig the way you look at my ass, but you’re not smart enough.”

  Angel leaned back, hiding that she’d stung him.

  “Water knives don’t exist,” he said. “That’s just something people talk about. It’s a myth, right? Like the chupacabra. It’s just something people make up so they can have a bogeyman to blame when shit goes wrong. Catherine Case don’t have water knives. She’s just got a lot of people who solve problems. She’s got lawyers and informants and guardies, sure. Water knives?” Angel shrugged. “Not so much.”

  Lucy laughed sharply. “So she doesn’t have people who infiltrate other cities’ water departments?”

  “No.”

  “And she doesn’t have people who make farmers disappear in the middle of the night when they won’t sell their water rights?”

  “No.”

  “And she doesn’t have people who organize and arm militias on Nevada’s southern border to attack people from Arizona and Texas and New Mexico if we try to cross the Colorado River and get into your state?”

  Angel couldn’t help a small smirk. “Now you’re catching on.”

  “And you don’t have black helicopters that blew up Carver City’s water-treatment plant, either.”

  “Oh no. We definitely did that. That water was ours.”

  “So you are Nevada. Working for Catherine Case.”

  He shrugged.

  “Don’t be coy. I knew you weren’t California. Those people like business suits.”

  “Different cut,” Angel said. “Fabric’s still ballistic, though.”

  She gave him a tight smile. “So why don’t you tell me what your not-a-water-knife friend was doing with Jamie, when they both got themselves killed.”

  “I bet you know that, too. Think it through. Lay it out.”

  “Seriously? You think you can work me like this? Every time I guess something about you, you use it to try to ask me something? No.” She shook her head. “You don’t get to come into my house and pump me like that. You talk to me, or you go.”

  “Or what, you shoot me?”

  “Try me.”

  He held up his hands, apologizing. “So ask your questions.”

  “Aren’t you tired of destroying things?”

  “Destroying things?” He laughed. “That’s not how I roll. You got me wrong.”

  “You think? Everywhere you go, people suffer.” She waved her hand toward her barred windows. “Don’t you ever feel ashamed for what you did here in Phoenix? Do you even pause to think about it?”

  “You make me sound like I got magical powers or something. I didn’t do anything to Phoenix. Phoenix did itself.”

  “Phoenix didn’t cut the CAP. Someone came in and did that with high explosives.”

  “I heard it was Mormon secessionists.”

  “The city was out of water for months before they got it repaired.”

  “Look. Phoenix made itself vulnerable. That ain’t my fault, any more than it’s my fault that Carver City built themselves in the middle of a desert on a bunch of junior water rights. Simon Yu can bitch all he wants, but that city had no business pumping that water in the first place.”

  “That was you, wasn’t it?” Her eyes widened. “You were actually in Carver City. You’re one of the ones who blew it up. Christ, you’re probably the one who did the CAP, too.”

  “Somebody’s got to bleed if anybody’s going to drink.”

  “You sound like a Catholic.”

  “I mostly roll with La Santa Muerte. But as far as guilt goes? No. I don’t feel guilt. If Vegas didn’t push this place over the edge, California would have done it.” He jerked his head toward the copy of Cadillac Desert on Lucy’s bookshelf. “Lot of people knew this was a stupid place to grow a city, from long way back, but Phoenix just stuck its head in the sand and pretended disaster wasn’t coming.”

  “So you don’t even pause at blowing up their last stable water supply,” Lucy said.

  “You like this muckraking, don’t you? Digging up the lies. Shouting out the truth, even if it gets you killed.”

  “Of course—” Lucy broke off. “No. You know what? No. I don’t give a damn about the lies. Lies are fine. Truth. Lies. One way or the other, at least—” She broke off again, shaking her head. “It’s not the lies. It’s the silence. Silence is what gets me. All the things you don’t say. All the words you don’t write. That gets to you. After a while it just kills you. All the stories you teach yourself not to tell. All the truth and lies that you never ever print because all of it is too dangerous.”

  “But now you’re up on the rooftops, shouting.”

  “I’m tired of it.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe the things I don’t write about.” She shrugged. “Or maybe you would.” She made a tired gesture. “You’re part of it.”

  “If you say so.”

  She scowled. “Vegas water knife, thinks he’s a badass.”

  “I hold my own,” Angel said.

  “You think?”

  “I’m still here. And so is Vegas.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You’re bush league.” Abruptly, she stood and went to look out her window. “California. Those people know how to play the game. Los Angeles. San Diego. The Imperial Valley companies. Those people know how to fight for water. It’s in their veins. Their blood. They’ve been killing places for water for five generations. They’re good at it.”

  She went to another window and looked out, scanning the sundrenched yard beyond. “Catherine Case is playing catch-up,” she said. “I used to think she was someone who mattered. Water knives like you were the bogeymen, thanks to the CAP.” She shook her head. “But you’re nothing. I know that now.”

  “Because of Jamie,” Angel supplied. “You think the Calies killed him.”

  She glanced back at him. “They didn’t have any reason to. He was giving them what they wanted…” She trailed off. “I assumed it was your people. Las Vegas.”

  “It definitely wasn’t us, so it had to be California.”

  She didn’t seem to be listening. “A while back,” she said, “I went to interview a man. This exec from a company that was doing water exploration for the state. Drilling and hydrofracking, hydrological analysis—things like that. This man sits down across from me, and I think we’re going to talk about drilling and pumping, aquifer recharge. Maybe some of the work they do down in Texas on aquifer desal around whatever’s left of San Antonio. Water geek stuff. At worst, he’s going to blow some smoke up my ass about how Arizona’s got a deep-water aquifer and how they’re going to frack us into becoming the North Dakota of water or some other bullshit. Instead, he’s got a blood rag with him. He tosses it on the table.” Lucy paused, looking back at Angel. “You’ve seen the blood rags, haven’t you?”

  Angel nodded. “Last night you said you were working for them.”

  “It’s a good way to look harmless if you’re a journalist,” she said. “You cover bodies, but you don’t cover the stories behind the bodies. Bodies without background are just fine.” She changed her voice. “Just the blood, ma’am. Just the blood.” She smiled tightly. “That’s what Timo likes to say.”

  “Your photographer friend, right? I talked to him.”

  “He’s good at his job. Anyway, this place is falling apart. Everyone knows it’s narcos moving in, working the squatter territories. Turning Texans and New Mexicans and half of Latin America into mules to go north. Gulf Cartel against the Juárez Cartel fighting over who controls the plaza here. But nobody writes about it…” She trailed off, seeming lost in her thoughts, then finally said, “But here’s this man sitting across from me, and he’s got this blood rag with
him. Wearing a suit. Tie. Little glasses. You know, the new ones, that have the AugReal layer? And he sits down, and instead of saying he’s making some drilling play, he says, ‘You write a lot of stories that are critical of California.’ ”

  She laughed bitterly. “You would’ve thought I was getting minded by the Ministry of Public Information in Beijing. But it wasn’t that. It was just me and this man with a blood rag beside him.”

  “And this was an executive for a drilling company?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it Ibis?”

  She gave him a blank look. “I forget. If you want to tell me which companies Las Vegas has infiltrated, I’ll remember which ones California uses.”

  “Touché,” Angel said. “So you’re talking to an Ibis exec, and he says…”

  Lucy laughed. “You know Arizona’s fucked when California owns the companies that are supposedly helping them find water.” She laughed again. “So yeah, this Ibis exec made me an offer. I could write about anything I wanted, but maybe I should stop worrying about what California was doing here or there and spend more time worrying about other things. Maybe I could focus more on Colorado River Compact revisions, or changes in staffing in the Interior Department. Or Nevada.” She gestured toward Angel. “Write about shadowy Las Vegas water knives. Or maybe write about how America doesn’t have enough FEMA staff to handle hurricanes on the Gulf, and tornadoes in the Midwest, and floods on the Mississippi, and seawalls collapsing in Manhattan. Human interest stories are wonderful. Write about exhausted FEMA personnel, and how the federal government doesn’t have enough energy to take care of a bunch of Texans whose towns have just dried up. There were so many stories I could write about. So many interesting things happening in the world.” Lucy laughed bitterly. “He wasn’t telling me what to write. He was just saying that maybe I should think a little bit about all the other really interesting stories that needed covering.

  “And then he pushed a stack of yuan over to me that must have been eight inches tall. He wasn’t even embarrassed about it. He just pushed the money over and got up. Said, ‘Thank you for your time,’ and walked out.

  “And there I am, sitting with a stack of money and that blood rag with a picture of some swimmer with her blood draining out in the bottom of an empty pool and wild dogs down there with her, licking up the blood. There I am.”