The Water Thief

by Nicholas Lamar Soutter

She has a solar still.

  “I’m sorry. They’re really worried. I’m not licensed. You could be the police, or even Retention.”

  “What would Retention want with you? You’re not even Ackerman.”

  “I was filling in for a friend who was arrested a week ago for stealing water. It’s not a huge deal, but it was Ackerman’s water. Now she’s gone, and nobody knows where she is or why. If Retention took her, they could make her say anything. It won’t matter what the truth is. They’ll perceive whatever gives them the most profit in perceiving. If they’re looking for more thieves—or worse—they’ll start by sending scouts. Someone like…”

  “Was she a good friend?”

  Kate nodded. “She was my best friend.”

  My chest tightened. It had been an incredibly bad idea to come.

  “I just wanted to talk to you,” I said. “You know me, I’m not a spy. I was just so happy to have met you.”

  “I met you after the arrest. You could be anybody.”

  “I’m a Delta from Perception.”

  “Maybe. It’s sweet that you wanted to see me, Charlie, but what are you doing here?”

  I wished I could tell her that I had thought that far ahead.

  “I guess I just wanted to know more about government.”

  “Government? Couldn’t you have just gone to the Galt? They have everything you could want to know about it. Coming out here, at this hour, it’s insane.”

  “You’re right. I’m afraid of every colleague I know, everybody. Except for you. You’re different. I guess I wanted more of that,” I said, looking at my shoes. “There’s nothing at the Galt. You know it, you’ve lived it.”

  “I’m not a real citizen, Charlie. I’ve never actually lived in a country or republic. Honestly, what do you need to know so badly?”

  I didn’t know. I had lied to her—even with the baseball bats and the beating, I’d still have come. And I had no idea why.

  “I guess I wanted to know if they were… were they happy?”

  “Oh my god,” she said. She slumped into a chair. “Oh my god, Charlie.”

  “Were they happy?”

  “Do you know what could happen to you if you get caught?”

  “I don’t care. Just tell me, were they happy?”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. I think they were, but people can adapt to just about anything. Some people are happy in corps and others sad under governments. No matter how good things are, people will find things to complain about; they always do.”

  “But you must know if they were happy.”

  She sighed. “Compared to people now, yeah, I think they were happy. Republics caused problems, too, but for the most part they were an impartial third party that protected people. They had laws—rules nobody could break no matter how much money you had, and a system to enforce those laws. And people did cheat the system, but enough power was left to the public that you couldn’t leverage the whole thing. At least that was the theory of it all.”

  “I have a mentor, his name is Linus. He says people broke laws all the time, hardly ever got caught or brought to justice.”

  “Sometimes it happened. Like I said, no system is perfect. If that’s what you’re looking for, good luck, I’ve never seen anything that makes me think a perfect system exists.”

  “How can you know that they were happier?”

  “Well, I’m not sure how to define happiness. But if I had to, I’d say it’s the variety of things you can do, and the amount of time you have to do them. A prisoner may have all the time in the world, but nothing to do with it. A colleague might be able to afford almost anything, but spend all his time acquiring and defending his wealth.”

  “But competition is natural. It’s a universal constant: stars compete for hydrogen, planets for carbon, and solar systems for space. All resources are limited. Isn’t competition the fairest way to distribute it?”

  Kate smiled. She stood and walked over to the stove. “When was the last time you ate something?”

  I shrugged. She took out a small petroleum burner and lit it. “We haven’t had gas in this building for about twenty years. It’s slow, but this works.”

  “You cook food?”

  She nodded.

  “Isn’t it safer to…?” I stopped myself. She couldn’t afford anything processed or sterilized. I wondered if they killed their own food out here. I thought about the terrier.

  “My father taught me how to cook. It’s good to know how to, and it really is a lot of fun. Takes a lot of skill to do it right.”

  I had never thought of cooking as a matter of skill. It was, as far as I had heard, little more than putting slabs of meat onto a hot surface.

  “Cook something too long,” she went on, “and it becomes tough and hard to eat—the flavor and nutrients are all gone. But not enough and you can poison someone. And there’s a lot you can do to make something taste really good. I grow onions out back. An hour on low heat with a little lard, and they caramelize—they’ll make anything taste great. Timing is important too. If you throw something on too early or too late, you’ll ruin the whole thing.”

  She pulled out an iron skillet and put a dab of tallow onto it.

  “Love, true love,” she said, “is cooking on a cast iron skillet.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure. They’re hard as hell to clean, and they’re heavy, so nobody uses them. But to this day nobody’s invented a better cooking surface. They hold heat perfectly; distribute it evenly. My father always said that the number one ingredient in food is love. I thought he was just being cute, but it’s true. Love is a cast iron skillet.”

  I watched the tallow start to soften.

  “They’re good, too, for whacking Ackerman agents that come through the door.”

  I went to the window. I hardly needed to pull back the curtains—they were so thin I could see through them. The alleyway behind her house was barely wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder, and trash was piled so high that the bins were buried under mountains of it.

  “So where are your parents?”

  “My mother,” she said, dicing up a few potatoes, “died of cancer. Dad raised us, my sister and me.”

  “So you learned about the government from him?

  Kate didn’t say anything, and for a moment I thought she hadn’t heard me.

  “He was a library clerk,” she continued. “He’d bring us books when he could. The rare stuff, the republic stuff. These were books from actual countries, philosophers and writers talking about economics and government. He used to read to us by candle-light every night.”

  Her voice trailed off. She was tossing a thin meat of dubious origin onto the skillet, trying to hide the fact that she was crying.

  “You loved him, didn’t you?”

  She shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”

  She tossed the mixture, then put it back onto the flames.

  “I wish to God I did. But I hated him. I thought he was weak. He’d read those books, and all I could think was that he was using them to excuse his own failings, to justify why he was nothing more than a clerk. He worked ninety-hour weeks, and I thought he was lazy. Can you imagine that? Every argument he read about the superiority of a republic made me hate him more. Brooke, my older sister, ate it up. We’d fight all the time; I called her a communist, looter, plunderer, lazy, disloyal… I hated her even more.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “The corp got her. She hadn’t done anything, but they said she violated the ‘interests’ clause of her contract. Who gets to decide that? Christ, the term is so ambiguous, come to work ten minutes late and technically you’re violating it.

  “Anyway, there was so much money against her that the judge went the company’s way. She was tried and convicted. Dad sold everything we had to get her out, but it wasn’t enough. They took it all anyway and then tried him on bribery charges. Brooke was reclamated. And Dad,” she said, “he was sold to a medical compa
ny for his organs.”

  I grimaced at the tallow in the pan.

  “Oh, God no,” she said. “We don’t buy lard or soap on the open market. A friend of mine makes it from deer and squirrel suet.”

  Still, I didn’t think I could eat it. I looked back out into the mud-brick alleyway.

  “Did you ever find out who turned your sister in?” I asked. She didn’t hear me.

  “Anyway, that was it. I was done. I left and came here. I made a life as best I could. I hunt deer and cook, and that gets me by. I have some of my dad’s old books; my friends and I share and talk about the republic. We go into NullSec every now and then, to hunt or to try to find old libraries or records.”

  “You go into null security areas?”

  She nodded. “A few times a year.”

  “Aren’t they a wasteland? With cannibals and stuff?”

  “Yep. There are roaming tribes of people; they’ll eat anything they can—even you. There’s about a billion bodies out there too, if you believe the history books. Most of the city is buried under thirty feet or so of ice.”

  “The city? You mean New York?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s real?”

  “Yeah, it’s a couple of days north of here. You can get there a little faster on a snow-sail. NullSec isn’t pretty, but we have a few weapons, and we know where we’re going most of the time. I actually like going. I imagine it’s what archeology used to be like, going into Egyptian tombs, fighting booby traps and old mummy curses. I see something new every time I go.”

  I was scared at the very thought. But I wanted to go, too. I breathed deep. She saw me and laughed.

  “Did you know that the moon is white?”

  “Get out!”

  “Nope. I’ve seen pictures, records. It’s the sulfur that makes it yellow.”

  She knew everything.

  “You really came out here to see me?”

  I nodded.

  “Of course competition is natural, Charlie,” she sighed, “stars, planets and all that. Sure, it exists, in some way, in all systems. But to assume that it’s all there is—that’s simplistic. Entropy exists in all systems too. Does that make entropy all there is? Cooperation exists in all systems, too, even stars and planets. All these things exist everywhere; there’s no ‘universal constant’ that describes everything.

  “You see what you want to see. The truth is that the glass is both half-empty and half full. What you can control is how you choose to see it. If I give a beggar a quarter, you could say I was altruistic, because I helped him. But it’s just as true to say I was selfish, that I gave him that quarter to alleviate my own sense of guilt. Neither view has a monopoly on the truth of it. People never do anything just for one reason.

  “But what’s funny is that this charge of ‘unnatural’ behavior comes from the capitalists who believe the most in dominating nature. Pasteurization, immunization, antibiotics, air conditioning, toothpaste—these are all direct assaults on nature. The people who most enjoy conveniences of modern living—as far from natural forces as possible—will be the first to tell you that to ask them to spend a dime to help others is to spit in God’s face. Giving litigators to people who can’t afford it is immoral—as if being the victim of a crime means you deserve to be victimized. They say giving medical treatment to people who can’t afford it is unfair, as if there’s any fairness in who gets cancer. It’s unjust to give people free schooling, as if there’s any justice in who is or is not born into a family that can afford an education. Fairness is nothing more than the distribution of wealth and power as those who already have it see fit. Money lets you buy favorable interpretations of right and wrong, and that benefit accrues quickly.”

  She shook her head. Then she cleaned a knife and chopped up some kind of green plant before tossing it into the skillet. Finally she opened a small cabinet and pulled out a yellowed jar.

  “This is poteen.”

  “Is that liquor?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but not like whisky. It’s a disinfectant. Don’t drink it, you’ll go blind,” she said, grabbing a towel and gently applying it to my wounds.

  The lights flickered and went out.

  “Did you pay your bill?” I asked.

  She laughed. I could hear her walk across the room to a small makeshift fireplace. She pulled out a rod of Firesteel, which she struck, igniting a small pile of kindling. From that small fire she lit several candles and began distributing them throughout the room.

  “The power is always going out around here. We only have electricity about half the time.”

  “What about heat?”

  She shrugged. “The fireplace works, when you can find something to burn. I have blankets. You can wear a couple of layers of clothes at a time, too. In a pinch you can even huddle around the candles. It’s rare that people actually freeze to death out here.”

  With what I made in a week, I could have redecorated the whole place: put in real curtains, fix the windows, and get a working television. But I knew she’d never take the money. Apparently even citizens had pride, just like everyone else.

  “Do all LowCons think like this?” I asked

  “I wish. Three quarters of all colleagues in the world are Delta-grade or lower, less than one percent are Alphas. If all low-contracts thought like this, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But a lot of LowCons are just trying to keep their heads above water. Others have been oppressed for so long that even hoping for relief is painful. And some of them love Ackerman more than most executives do.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  The potatoes and a little cabbage were next to go into the skillet. Gradually, agonizingly, the heat began to overcome the iron, and the hash began to sizzle and pop.

  “There are a million reasons. Beggars can’t be choosers—so, naturally, they want to be. They want dignity, and there’s dignity in choice. If you’re poor and espouse the merits of social services, people say ‘Well, of course you do, it’s in your interest.’ But vocal support of a system that is stacked against you grants a sense of pride, of autonomy. And if you think that there’s nothing you can do about it anyway, this sense of pride doesn’t cost you anything.

  “Besides, probably ninety percent of LowCons would bet their lives that they’ll be that one half of one percent who actually gets out of here, becomes a HighCon. Who wants to rock that boat, or tempt fate by arguing against the system?

  “Then there are the people so desperate to scrounge something up for themselves that they prop the system up, because it’s better to be a living doormat for the higher contracts than a reclamated hero for the lower ones.

  “And heck, let’s not forget those people who are just what HighCons think they are—lazy uninterested bums.

  “There are so many reasons why LowCons put up with it that people just choose whichever one suits them best, makes them feel better about themselves. They decide that that’s the whole truth and stereotype the whole class.”

  The bleeding had stopped, and whatever she had given me for the pain was taking effect. The swelling had gone down. As my eyes had adjusted to the darkness I took the opportunity to look around a bit more. The apartment had a similar layout to mine, but smaller. The appliances were left unplugged in case of power spikes, and bars guarded the windows. The bedroom was tiny, consumed mostly by a twin bed; an old mattress on it with the life and comfort beaten out of it.

  I already felt more at home than in my own place.

  “So we can’t do anything?” I asked. “Nobody wants to fight, nobody wants to change things? This is just the way things are?”

  Kate smiled. “Of course not. They can’t get inside your head, Charlie. They can’t make you be anything you don’t want to be. You can’t control them, but you can control yourself. And you know that. I know you do, because you chose to come here. They don’t own everything.”

  Maybe not there, they didn’t. But that was only because they didn’t care about LowSe
c. It had no gas, power was intermittent, and the water was probably poisonous. Their lack of material wealth meant safety. It meant freedom.

  I was breathing again, and my ribs didn’t hurt anymore. But the anesthetic had made me dizzy. I wasn’t going anywhere that night.

  “We aren’t stars, Charlie. People wish we were. It’s gratifying to be mean, to visit injustices—done unto you—onto other people. Vengeance is cathartic, and to distill everything down to raw competition is a great excuse to justify it without having to worry about the effects of your actions on others.

  “But they’re hypocrites, all of them. I see people espouse the benefits of corporatism all the time, and all I can think is, why are they telling me this? The ruthless executive who convinces people he has a heart of gold succeeds far better than the one who goes around telling others that they should be ruthless too! Why increase your competition? It’s ego, that’s what feeds colleagues. They have complete contempt for everyone, and an overwhelming desire to be worshiped for it. The truth? These capitalists don’t want to get away with murder; they want you to choose to let them get away with it.

  “Ask these same people, Alphas and advocates of competition as a moral system—those who say that competition creates strength, and that giving things away for free, or insulating people from their failures, creates weakness—ask them to let their loved ones live without the added benefits and protections of wealth behind them—and nobody will cry foul faster. Hypocrisy never troubles a true capitalist.

  “Take Takashi. One of his sons is in oil—all he’s ever managed to do is drill a lot of dry holes into the ground. He’s bankrupted three different companies. Does this corporate magnet let his son suffer the consequences of his mistakes? Nope. He bails him out. When the poor screw up, it is their own fault; when the rich do, it’s someone else’s. You can let the poor suffer their mistakes, but never kin.”

  She scooped the mash onto a couple of plates and handed me one along with a beaten up fork. “I don’t have knives, sorry.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  I couldn’t identify the meat on the plate. But it was crisp on the outside, soft inside, and very tasty. And she was right about the onions. She broke out some alcohol, something we could drink. With the meds it made me light-headed and happy. I never wanted to leave. I didn’t need my mid-level contract anymore, or my MidCon apartment or my MidCon job. Just her.