The Water Thief

by Nicholas Lamar Soutter

  “No,” I lied.

  “That’s three ranks she’s lost in four weeks. That makes her... what? A Delta five? Maybe even four? Another couple of weeks of this and they’ll downgrade her contract. You’ll be married to an Epsilon, Charles, a LowCon,” he said, emphasizing every syllable.

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t done anything about it. I was loath to talk about it, though.

  “You’re compassionate. That’s the problem, Charles.”

  “I’m not!” I said.

  “Generous, maybe?”

  “What the hell!” I shouted. “Why, just this morning I—”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You are compassionate,” he said. “Get over it. I’ve seen it in you before. It’s why you can’t climb higher than Delta. It gets really bad around the executions. Tell me, do they bother you at all?”

  “Bother me? Of course not!” I snapped. “These people all stole from Ackerman; they’re all thieves and looters, and Ackerman has every right to recoup their losses.”

  “No, Charles. It’s not a right. It’s an obligation. Ackerman is duty-bound to its shareholders and to every colleague in the firm to raise profits as high as possible. These executions provide ad revenue, reclamation income, ticket sales, and deterrence against other violates. They’re a moral imperative.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Linus, taking a sip. “You think we should treat Kabul with kid gloves? You don’t want to confront your wife? You’re thinking like a child. Compassion isn’t natural, it certainly isn’t economical, and it’s the antithesis of capitalism.”

  “I know that!” I said.

  “Do you? A child looks at your wife and says ‘Oh, poor her. She’s having a hard time; I wish her life were easier.’ An adult says, ‘This is life, and I’m accountable for myself.’ A child sacrifices himself for a friend; an adult realizes when the friend is hurting him. She’s hurting you, Charles; this is self-defense, here. It’s is a business arrangement. If she has half a brain in that skull of hers, she won’t take it personally. But if she did, it wouldn’t be your fault.”

  She probably wouldn’t take it personally. Maybe that was part of why I hadn’t left her.

  Lunch had turned out to be a disaster, no two ways about it. Despite how much I paid for his mentorship, he had never had that much respect for me, and I wondered why he continued to see me.

  “You know,” he said, “there was once a farmer living in China....”

  Oh boy… a fable.

  “One day the farmer’s only horse broke free and ran away,” he continued. “His family was on the brink of starvation. The villagers tried to console him, but he would only say ‘it could be a good thing, it could be a bad thing.’

  “The next day his horse came back, and brought with it ten more horses. Now he was the richest man in the village. They tried to congratulate him, but he would only say, ‘It could be a good thing, it could be a bad thing.’

  “Weeks later the farmer’s son was thrown from one of the new horses. His back was broken and he was paralyzed from the waist down. Still, all the farmer would say was ‘it could be a good thing, it could be a bad thing.’

  “The next year their nation went to war. All of the tribe’s young men were conscripted. They all died, except the farmer’s son, who couldn’t go. And when the envious villagers told him how lucky he was to still have a son, he said ‘it could be a good thing, or it could be a bad thing.’”

  Linus appeared to think the moral was obvious, but I didn’t see it.

  “You need to understand this, Charles, because it’s very important. Every act, every single human act, has infinite levels of regression—of both good and bad consequences. When somebody says something is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they are simply presenting you with whatever set of consequences they find matches the beliefs they already hold.

  “But there is no such thing as good or bad; they’re illusions, words, arbitrary slices of time engineered to elicit a sympathetic response. Outside of that slice, they don’t exist. There is no difference between the saint who gives food to starving children and the worker who operates the gas chamber to kill them, except that one is making money and the other is losing it. These are the Objective realities Zino argued for.”

  “That’s not in the Bible.”

  “It’s the only logical inference from her work.”

  “If that’s true,” I said, “why bother being ‘good’ to the Corporation?”

  It was a stupid thing to say. I regretted it the moment I said it. But I felt a sense of relief, as if I had loosed the elephant in the room.

  Linus’ eyes bulged. “Because...” he whispered, leaning in, “they’re the only thing keeping you alive. How long do you think you’d last out there without your corporate contract? Rest assured, I have never done an unselfish thing in my whole life. I am loyal because I need powerful friends, and Ackerman is the best. You don’t think I get offers from other corps? You don’t think I’m in high demand? I don’t ever even think about it. I’m loyal to the corp because it’s good to me, because it’s in my best interest to be.”

  I felt an overwhelming sense of emptiness. Linus could easily be a Retention agent, which would explain his interest in me. Even if he wasn’t, any number of agents might be lunching in the café. I didn’t care. Sarah Aisling stood up to a judge. I couldn’t even stand up against a game of poker.

  “All living creatures care about their own survival—at least all the moral ones.”

  I gave my coffee a half-hearted stir.

  “Leave her…” He said in a commanding whisper.

  “I’ve thought about it,” I said, in a last-ditch effort to placate my colleague. “But the cost is way too high, and I’m sure she’ll turn herself around. She’s very—”

  He slammed his hand down on the table in disgust. “You see, Charles, that’s Delta level thinking right there. You won’t be promoted if you don’t start to think long-term. It’ll cost you 20k to get a divorce, but if you turn around and marry a rising star—a high Delta or low Gamma, you can get that money back in three or four years. You’re Gamma-level material, maybe even Beta-grade,” he said. “Well, at the very least you could get Gamma. You just don’t have the motivation, and honestly I have no idea why not. You probably think too much. But this ‘oh, she’s a real go getter; this is just a phase; oh, she’ll turn it around’ wishful thinking is absolute garbage. It’s beneath you; I have no idea why you entertain it.”

  A reliable divorce was closer to one hundred twenty-five thousand caps. I couldn’t imagine that he himself could get one for much less. But we were playing poker now, as we always did. And, as always, he could see all the dice on the table.

  Chapter 4

  I stood in the undulating subway car, thinking about Sarah Aisling. She was an aberration, a genetic defect. She could have gotten her life back but instead squared off with the judge. What must have happened to her? What secrets did she think she knew that caused her to choose self-expression over self-preservation? She probably didn’t like the executions anymore than I did, but she wouldn’t hesitate to say so. And besides the vigor of her conviction was the quality of her arguments. She had spent a lot of time thinking against the corporate structure. Aisling wasn’t the first socialist I had ever seen or heard of, not the first lunatic or atheist either. But that anybody so educated could be so liberal—it confounded me.

  When I returned to work I found nearly everybody out on the field. The building was cordoned off by officers and tactical teams, and colleagues were all bouncing off each other in a frenzy of chatter. Along a side street stood ambulances and police cruisers. A reconstruction team, carrying body bags, was just coming out of the building.

  “Charles!”

  Thane Corbett ran up to me, eager for a gratuity for being the first to fill me in. He was a sculpted, athletic black man, with a serious face and a very thin goatee. He was wi
thout a doubt one of the smartest people on the seventh floor. He exuded success. This, of course, ruined his career. Nobody likes success. Successful people remind you of your own failings, they highlight (to both you and your boss) what you’re doing wrong and how easy it is to do the job right. They increase competition and expectations, both of which make your life harder. No, Corbett was chained to the seventh floor, and for all his vaunted intelligence, he’d never figure out why.

  “Thank God you’re back. Have you heard?”

  I shook my head and handed him five caps.

  “One of the guards snapped,” he said. “He went on a killing spree, up on the second floor.”

  A pain shot through my chest and my throat felt thick. I already knew who did it.

  “It was hilarious! You know, there was actually an executive doing an inspection there,” he laughed. “Can you imagine that, if some executive was wiped out by a simple random act of violence? Classic!”

  “So what happened?” I asked as casually as I could.

  “Nothing, he shot some people, but security closed in and he killed himself. Obviously they won’t let us do the perception on this one, but there’s a pool going. It’s ten caps to get in. That new guy, Collin, thinks that they’ll be so thrilled the executive survived that security will get a commendation. Can you believe it? I’m going to love taking his money from him. Honestly, I’m going to find a way to destroy that naive little noob before the year is out. I’m gonna own him.”

  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.

  Chapter 5

  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.”