I looked into the hallway. Number 721 was still on. He hadn’t even closed the curtains.
“He still here?”
“He’s always here. He sleeps in there now, has to.”
“He works harder than all of us.” I said.
“Lot of good it’ll do him.”
I nodded.
Eric Forestall was in a lot of trouble. His parents chose not to sell his futures—they kept them safe for him till he was eighteen. When he got them, he went wild, selling them for cars, women and liquor. Within six months he had sold them all, and had nothing left but creditors expecting dividends.
“Serves the parents right, weakening a kid by not selling him outright,” Corbett said. “Never learned to handle money. Talk about Moral Hazard.”
The boy’s futures had plummeted, and now he was working night and day just to try to stay ahead of it. The lower they got, the more likely someone would simply reclamate him and be done with it. Every penny he made went to keeping himself out of the lye vats for one more day.
“You know,” shouted Corbett, “I hear they like to toss you into the vats while you’re still alive. It makes the best soap!”
There was no reply.
“Think he heard me?”
I shrugged. That notion was an old wives tale, something parents told their kids to get them to behave. It wasn’t true (well, at least I think it wasn’t. I honestly don’t know much about the process).
“Well, when they take him, it’ll be one more cubicle free. Can only help prices. That’ll be Collin in a year or two…”
At home I found Beatrice curled up on the floor in front of the television, a bowl of popcorn, some chips, and a remote office terminal in front of her. The poker championship was coming down to the last few throws, but she wasn’t giddy because of the game.
Already she was fantasizing about the executions, about each person begging for their lives, truly broken and in denial before the drop. They would realize their sins and repent, right before succumbing to the inevitable hand of justice. She delighted in watching them pay, as if every one of them had committed their crimes against her personally. Death sports—gladiators paid to put their lives on the line—never amused her. No, it was the executions or nothing. She once told me that she imagined them, dangling helplessly against the rope, willing to trade anything they ever had, anything they ever could have, for a second chance, but finding that no matter how much they wished, Ackerman’s wrath would always win out. She loved justice.
The stadium was packed with Alphas, most of whom paid as much as one hundred thousand caps a head to watch live. Execution parties were common—Corbett had his own every month (I usually paid him a few caps not to be insulted by my absence. Watching people die was a bit like watching pornography, it never did strike me as a group activity). My neighbor always had friends over to watch, too. We could hear the cheering through the walls with the crack of each broken neck, and the shouting of bets—like at a derby—when someone choked against the rope. We hardly needed our own television.
Beatrice never attended the parties either. She called them “debauched,” but really she just became enraged when she saw people enjoying the show. Who were they to be as offended by criminal behavior as she was?
“Running late?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she sighed, sending off another report. “Jennings is taking forever to call this last guy.”
Susan Jennings. Even I knew that name. Everyone knew that name. She was the greatest poker player in the world. Linus would never admit it, but he idolized her. When she lost a game, he bragged about her genius, throwing a couple matches a season to confuse competitors looking for tells or an angle on her strategy. When she lost last year’s championship, he pronounced it decisive proof of her brilliance—a gambit for dominating the league in years to come.
What do you feel, I wondered as I pulled out a few individually wrapped shots of whisky from the fridge, when your execution is delayed because the previous show ran long?
I downed my first shot.
Suddenly Bea jumped to her feet. “I almost forgot! Guess what I got you!” she said, handing me a thin brown paper bag. “A colleague of mine recommended this. The reviews were all glowing.”
Inside was a pornographic magazine, a picture of a naked woman bent over a sawhorse, a man with a whip behind her.
“Oh, my!” I exclaimed. “Yes, that does look good.”
“All the men on my floor say it’s the best. They’re always talking about it. Anyways, I don’t know how long it’s been… well, how long since you… anyways, I thought you might enjoy this. I heard that they use real leather whips.”
“No.”
“They do. And this cost only cost five caps!”
“Five? Wow, that is surprising. It’s higher quality than most stuff you’d find.”
“My colleagues know what they’re talking about. I guess there are a few scenes of men with men in there. I don’t know if that’s your thing. You can ignore those pages, or give them a try, whatever you want. I can leave for a little while after the show, give you some privacy.”
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 p
osition 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 t
hey 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 Water Thief Page 5
