The Water Wars

by Cameron Stracher

  “Give me your hand,” he said.

  He took my good arm and gripped it tightly. The hard calluses on his palm scratched my skin. His other hand was on my shoulder. His chest was pressed close up against me. I could see every line in his face, the fine hairs on his cheeks above his beard where no beard grew. I could feel the thumping of his heart, the hard steady rhythm that matched mine. He steadied himself with a deep breath and turned away. Then he pulled.

  The pain was like nothing I had ever experienced. It was as if every fiber in my arm cried out at once, then was ripped from its anchor. A swirl of violent colors washed over my eyes, and my face burned as if on fire. Then something slipped and fell back into place, and just like that the pain subsided. I was left dizzy and nauseated, covered in a cool, clammy perspiration.

  “It’s done,” said Ulysses.

  Then I did vomit, in a wrenching spasm that doubled me over. Nothing but a thin stream of spittle emerged, however, and once it was gone the nausea passed. I wiped my mouth and sat up straight. “I’m okay,” I said.

  Ulysses tore a strip of cloth from his shirt and tied a makeshift sling from my neck to my wrist. “It’s not what the doctor ordered, but it will hold your arm.”

  Will was staring at me with something like awe. “Did it hurt?”

  “Not that much,” I lied.

  The jet thundered again overhead and dropped two flares into the geno-soy. Plumes of red smoke rose toward the sky.

  “They’re flagging us,” said Ulysses. “Let’s get moving.” He put an arm around me and helped me stand, then beat a path through the soy with his free hand. The plants were thick and hard to bend, but Ulysses held them down until we could pass. The stalks reached higher than my head. I kept looking up to make sure the sky was above me, but it only made me lose my step, and I still felt trapped and claustrophobic.

  After a few minutes, I noticed Ulysses had slowed and was limping.

  “You’re hurt,” I said.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  But his leg was dark red with blood. It had soaked through his pants and the wound appeared to still be bleeding. I insisted we rest, but Ulysses refused. “In about five minutes, they’ll be here with robo-sniffers and guns,” he said. “They won’t stop until they’ve caught us. They’ll leave the bodies in the fields.”

  His tone was calm, but there was something in his voice that betrayed him. It took me a moment, but I realized he was frightened, and his fear made me more nervous than anything he could have said.

  “These are not ordinary people,” he continued. “Pirates steal, and we’ll cheat if we need to, but we do it to survive and because our enemies do the same. Even PELA has a code, though they don’t always live by it. But Bluewater cares only about money. They don’t even care about the water, really. They have no loyalty and don’t look out for their own. It’s greed, pure and simple. Nothing will stand in their way. Not laws, not governments, and not any pirate with a gun.”

  “How do we know they haven’t killed Kai?” asked Will.

  “No. They’ll keep him as long as it suits their purposes. The boy is a diviner. That’s worth a lot of money. He can tell them where water is, and they can keep him from telling others. They won’t kill him as long as there’s use for that.”

  “He needs medicine,” I said.

  “They’ll give him that too.”

  The jet had disappeared now, but there came another sound in the distance, harsh and braying.

  “Sniffers,” said Ulysses. “Move!”

  The three of us were battered, two of us bleeding, but we ran as quickly as we could. Will winced with every step, his leg healing but not healed. Ulysses showed no pain, but his pale face betrayed his injury. My shoulder had begun to throb, and every plant that brushed me was like a whipping.

  We were deep in the soy fields. I had never seen so much vegetation. I could practically feel the plants pulsating, exhaling moisture like breathing. Without any protection from the sun or the sky, they flaunted the great wealth of their growers. Even with their genetic alterations, they still wasted enough water to quench the thirst of a large town. But their growers didn’t seem to care. They had resources to burn, and the food not only tasted better, it was a potent reminder of their enormous power.

  “Run, Vera!” Will urged me forward.

  The braying grew louder. We followed Ulysses, who beat at the plants with his powerful arms. The pain in my shoulder was nothing compared to the burning in my lungs, the aching in my sides, and a terrible, drill-like pulsing in my skull.

  And then suddenly, without warning, Ulysses collapsed.

  For a moment time stood still. It was not possible that the great pirate king could fall. Even when I thought Ulysses had drowned, I never saw his body, and I had refused to accept he might actually be gone. But now there he was, splayed out before us, his pants leg soaked and his face white.

  I grabbed his hand. “Ulysses,” I begged. “Ulysses.”

  He looked up at me, and his eyes fluttered slightly.

  “You remind me of her,” he said.

  “Who?” I asked, although I knew.

  “She was skinny, like you. She used to call me Poppy.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Please. We’ll get you help. I promise.”

  And then the sniffers were upon us.

  CHAPTER 15

  The prison cell was no larger than the back of a flatbed truck. I leaned up against one wall, a dull banging in my head like the headache that comes after a beating. It started low, at the base of the skull, and then worked its way up to the temples and the forehead until it threatened to explode.

  “Open the door,” commanded a voice from beyond the walls.

  The banging stopped, and the great steel door swung open. A nearly hairless man walked into the prison cell. He was as tall as Ulysses but with no eyebrows, eyelashes, or beard. His eyes were a pale gray-blue, and he might have been albino, except his skin was a sun-ripened brown. Behind him, hopping on one foot, his face scarred and ravaged, was Nasri. He seemed as excited to see us as we were surprised to see him.

  “That’s them,” said Nasri. “The pirate and his spawn.”

  The hairless man practically filled the room. Although he was the most unusual man I had ever seen, the most curious thing about him was his shiny fingernails. It looked as if he painted them with polish. There was no trace of dirt, and there were no scabs or other visible injuries on any of his fingers. In fact, as I observed him, I noticed how clean his entire body appeared, and as he approached, I smelled a scent that reminded me of flowers—the real ones grown in hydro-vaults, not the fake chemo ones planted about the town.

  With one foot the hairless man pushed at Ulysses’s prostrate body. Ulysses moaned slightly but did not move.

  “This one is injured,” he said in a voice liquid and smooth. “Get the medic.”

  “But Torq,” protested Nasri, “he’s a pirate.”

  “And now he’s our prisoner. We will not let him die quietly.”

  Nasri hopped from foot to foot but did not protest. Torq obviously frightened him as much as he frightened me. Nasri’s mouth worked silently, as if he were chewing over something. He glared at Will, and his hand went involuntarily to the scar on his face. Then he backed from the cell, never letting us out of his sight until the door closed behind him.

  In his absence the room seemed to grow smaller. Torq moved closer.

  “Why are you here?” Torq directed his question to Will.

  “You brought us here,” said Will.

  “Where did you get the rotorcraft?”

  “Where did you get the jet?”

  Torq slammed the wall behind Will’s head with such force that I was certain he would break something. He picked Will up by the hair and held him ten centimeters off the ground.

  “I. Ask. The. Questions.” He spat out each word, then dropped Will back to the ground. “You answer!”

  Will stammered out a partial vers
ion of the truth: We had been rescued by Ulysses from a drill site and were flying back to a pirate camp.

  “Pirates don’t rescue children,” said Torq, raising one hand as if he might yank Will’s hair again.

  “We’re his children!” I blurted.

  Torq looked at me for the first time. I held his gaze. His eyes were like pools of dirty gray water—flat and dangerous.

  “That may be useful,” said Torq.

  Nasri arrived with the medic. He was a small man, skittery and nervous. There was dirt or dried blood on the front of his white tunic. He examined Ulysses quickly and gave him two injections. Ulysses did not stir. The medic cut away his bloody trouser leg with a scalpel. I averted my eyes. The sight of all that blood made me feel faint again. I heard the medic murmuring about sepsis and shock, but I put my head in my hands and blocked the sound.

  There was some more cutting, and then some stitching. Another shot. Bloodied medi-pads discarded on the floor. A second medic wheeled a gurney into the room. Both men heaved Ulysses onto the bed.

  “Where are you taking him?” I asked.

  “Don’t you worry,” said Torq. “He’ll be better in no time. Then we’ll stick pins in him until he bleeds again.” Torq and Nasri laughed, and the medics wheeled Ulysses out of the cell. Nasri gave us a last violent look, then the steel door clanged shut behind both men, and Will and I were alone in the tiny cell.

  “They’re going to torture him!” I cried.

  “No, they won’t,” said Will. “Not right away. Didn’t you hear them? They need him awake.”

  “So they can torture him!”

  “That gives us time,” said Will. “Wherever they’ve taken him, I’ll bet that’s where they’ve got Kai. If we can find one, we can save the other.”

  “But we’re trapped. It’s hopeless.”

  “You told me not to say that!” Will snapped.

  “But it is, Will. It is.”

  He shook his head. The color had returned to his face, and he looked like the Will who once outraced a boy, three years older, on a dare. The medicine Nasri had given him back at the drilling site must have been powerful stuff, because he stood without much effort or visible pain. “You said Kai was our friend and we had to help him. Well, Ulysses is our friend too, and that means we’ve got twice the people to help, and we’ve got to work twice as hard.”

  “But what can we do?”

  Will looked around the cell. Except for a small air vent in the ceiling, and window grates in the steel door, the walls appeared solid and impenetrable. There was no handle on the door and no way to open it from the inside. His eyes darted back to the air vent.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “But even if we knew where that went, we can’t possibly reach it.”

  “Easy,” said Will. “Just like condenser duty.” He approached the wall, and felt its surface for imperfections. Although it appeared smooth, the wall had hundreds of cracks and fissures—the result of trying to build anything without water. The imperfections were small, but not so tiny that Will’s fingers could not grasp them, or his toes without shoes could not find footing.

  “Give me a hand,” he said.

  I made a step by interlocking my fingers and gave Will a tentative boost up the wall. A sharp pain cut into my shoulder, and I staggered backward, but Will had already dug his toes into an open space. He reached out with one hand and felt for the next toehold, then pulled himself up another ten centimeters. In this way he made steady progress. When he approached the corner where the wall met the ceiling, he extended his arm and just barely grasped the vent.

  I scurried beneath him. I didn’t know if I could hold Will, but I would be there if he fell. I waited while he rested and pursed my lips in silent prayer. I didn’t pray about any of the things they taught in school; instead I promised our father that we would return home, no matter what. Will gave one hard yank, and the vent clattered to the floor. Then he pulled himself up and inside. In a moment his face reappeared in the open hole in the ceiling. “There’s a passage,” he said. “Climb to me.” He extended his arm through the hole.

  There was no way I could shimmy up the wall as Will had. For one thing, I lacked his strength and agility. For another, my shoulder throbbed badly now, and I knew the effort would rip my arm from its socket. Nevertheless I tried to slip my fingers in the cracks and crawl up the vertical surface. But I had no strength, and the pain was brutal and unrelenting.

  “I can’t, Will,” I cried.

  Will undid his shirt and knotted it, then extended it through the hole like a rope. His head was stretched through the vent while his arm dangled the shirt. I leaped and grabbed the end of it with my good arm. But when I tried to pull myself up the wall, I couldn’t hold to the crevices. I fell backward and let go, and Will nearly toppled from the ceiling trying to hold on.

  I lay on my back on the floor. I did not cry. I was exhausted; we both were. We had traveled nearly two thousand kilometers, crossed several republics and the Empire of Canada, reached the Great Coast, seen hundreds dead, killed several ourselves, starved, thirsted, fought, and were dirtied and bloodied. But we were not dead yet. And neither was Ulysses or Kai.

  “You go,” I said. “Find the way out, and come back and get me.”

  It was the only option, and Will knew it. He nodded. “I’ll come back. I promise.”

  Then he was gone.

  I sat for a long time on the floor. I listened to the fading echoes of Will’s feet overhead and the indistinct rattling of activity occurring somewhere outside the prison walls. If I was very still, I could feel the floor swaying slightly, as if it were moving in a breeze. I thought about all that had happened, each event leading inexorably to the next: if I hadn’t seen Kai; if we hadn’t become friends; if I hadn’t gone to his home; if he hadn’t come to mine; if he hadn’t told us about the river, or showed me the secret spring; if we’d never kissed. But I also knew many things had been set into motion years before I was born: if there hadn’t been the Great Panic; if there hadn’t been war; if there had been enough water…Where did it all begin? Our father remembered rivers, but now the rivers were gone. Our mother remembered boat trips and warm baths, but now she was ill. Even Will could remember school before they closed the doors at recess and forbade students from going outside. What did I remember?

  Our mother at the kitchen table, laughing at something our father had said. Both our parents, hand in hand, watching the news on the wireless. Climbing into our parents’ bed with Will in the morning—the warm blankets and the clean smell of newly sanitized sheets. Will and I running for the bus, screaming madly as we raced to be first. All those memories—once vibrant, now faded. Earth itself changed.

  Somewhere in my recollections, I nodded off, and then the memories mixed with dreams and became tangled in half-truths and impossibilities. My mother was lifting me in the air as the clouds spiraled and the sun broke through in curtains of yellow light. Again, I cried. Again! We twirled and spun beneath the luminous rays. Her head tilted back, my mouth tilted open, spinning, breathing, whirling, alive.

  There was a thump and then a bang, and suddenly the outer door swung open.

  “Will!”

  He turned the handle on the door. “It’s not even locked,” he muttered with what sounded like disgust. With no knob to open the door from the inside, there was no need to lock it from the outside. But now that it was ajar, I wasted no time joining him.

  The hallway was dingy and grimy. No sign of life. The walls were covered in chipped white paint and orange rust. We passed open doors and empty cells. If the prison had held other captives, they were long gone. We moved stealthily toward a pair of double doors at the end of the short hallway. Will put a finger to his lips, although that was unnecessary. My feet glided over the floor without weight or friction. It felt as if my body had escaped gravity, floating just a few centimeters above the surface. Despite the pain in my shoulder and our desperate situation, we had escaped.

/>   Now we were on a steel island, policed by a private army.

  We moved like ghosts. Nearby there was water: moisture in the air, on the crease of my neck, in the folds of my elbows and knees. The crinkly, crunchy dryness that was usually my skin felt elastic here, plumped with a thousand invisible molecules. I plucked at the back of my hand, just to make certain, and it sprang back into place without a wrinkle.

  When we reached the double doors, they were unlocked. We pushed through into a hallway as clean and white as a medical ward. Even the air had a different smell: freshly filtered and oxidized. Electronic sensors dotted the walls, and there were tiny cameras positioned in the corners. I pointed to one, and Will nodded—he had already seen them. If there were cameras, there were screens somewhere with people watching. But no alarms rang, and no one rushed from the shadows to stop us.

  Will hugged the wall, and I followed. The creaking sound was more evident here, and the floors were definitely swaying—it wasn’t just my imagination. There was another sound too, like a wireless broadcast. Voices rising and falling, but without the soothing music found in the water conservation programs in the mornings. We moved toward the sound along the wall as it curved, then widened into a common area. The voices became more pronounced: stern, scolding, lecturing, like teachers at school—except no one seemed in charge. They spoke over each other, interrupting and arguing, and no voice took the lead for more than a few moments. I had the feeling it would not end well for the losing side. Will held up one hand, and I stopped, trying not to breathe. My heart thumped as loud as a drum in my chest. From the other side of the hallway, two men emerged into the common area. They wore a dark blue—nearly black—uniform, and their muscles rippled through their shirts. Both had communicators in their ears, security shields dangling from their necks, and heavy firearms on their belts. I squeezed against the wall, trying to press myself into two dimensions. The men were nearly upon us, and I was certain we would be caught and returned to our cells—or worse.

  Then there was an electronic squawk, and one of the guards began talking into the air. He signaled to the other guard, and they reversed direction, walking in a heavy-booted fashion back the way they had come. In a moment all was clear.