Slow River

by Nicola Griffith

  “What’s wrong? What’s happened to her?”

  “All her limbs have been dislocated and then snapped back in. Several times. She’s the second person I’ve seen with this in three days.”

  “Dislocated…”

  “There’s some maniac out there who seems to get their kicks from hurting people severely. I’m tempted to ignore my Hippocratic Oath and report this to the police. Oh, your friend there will be fine, if she rests, and if no infection sets in, but people like the one she met up with last night shouldn’t be allowed to go free.”

  I was taken by a sudden, low impulse to tell him I don’t live here! I don’t do this kind of thing! I’m not like her! but I had, once. And I had been, no matter how unknowingly or unwillingly, complicit in this.

  “How long will she need to stay in bed?”

  “Up to her. The danger of spontaneous redislocation and infection should be past in about forty-eight hours.” He nodded once, shortly, and left. I felt terribly ashamed.

  At four that afternoon, Spanner woke up and managed to drink some water.

  “Go home.” Raspy, but perfectly clear.

  “The medic said-”

  “Just go away.”

  “You shouldn’t be left alone.”

  “What about. That job. Of yours.”

  “I’m not going anywhere while you need me.”

  “I don’t want you. In my flat. You left it once. I won’t have you staying. Here. Out of pity. Go away.”

  “You need-”

  “Go away.” Her eyes were so wide that white showed all the way around the irises. She meant it.

  “There are four hypos left. I’ll set the system to wake you every four hours. You must use them. The medic says there’s danger of infection. He’s coming back tomorrow morning. I’ll lock the door behind me, just the mechanical lock, and give him a message about where the key is.”

  Silence, apart from her breathing. “I got the money.”

  “I don’t care about the money!”

  “I do. I earned every. Single. Penny.” Her face was. gray again. “Shit. Shit. Hurts.”

  I wondered if she had laughed and come while he had been popping out her joints. I turned away, swallowing bile.

  She laughed, very softly, so as not to shake her arms or legs. “You never could. Face reality. Go on. Go back to your job. Earn your. Respectable money. But don’t forget. Me and you. Have a bargain.”

  “I’ll call you when-”

  “Don’t. I’ll call you. When it’s time. About ten days.”

  Tom was leaving the building just as I got back. He asked me something about the fake ad I was making, then peered at me.

  “You look terrible.”

  “I’m fine.” I tried to smile and push past him.

  He grabbed my arm. “Leave him,” he said bluntly. “Or her. Find someone who’ll care about you.”

  “I’m fine,” I repeated tiredly. “I need to get some rest before work.”

  He sighed and let me go.

  I called Ruth and Ellen’s. Both out. No forwarding, as usual. “This is Lore. Spanner’s hurt. She won’t let me help her. She might let you, Ellen.” I told her where I had left the key. “Please. Help her.”

  I went on shift that day as though everything were fine. Nothing happened. The readings kept showing normal. It was easier to concentrate on the job than to think about Spanner and her pain.

  The next day, and the day after that, I went to each equipment locker on my list and tested oxygen tanks, meters, foam canisters. The moon suits, the level-A protective gear, were good quality stuff flashproof as well as fitted with two-stage regulators. The battery’ telltales were green when I tested them, and the radios were in working order.

  “Everything so far is in surprisingly good shape,” I told Magyar.

  “Good. Keep checking.”

  I made sure that the EEBA by the readout console was working, then checked the portable eye showers, the emergency lockdown valves, the reverse pumps. There was fresh oil on one of the pump works. I rubbed it thoughtfully between finger and thumb. The oil felt strange, almost tacky, on the plasthene gloves. After I’d checked the exits and the sprinkler system I called Magyar again. “I’m puzzled.”

  “You surprise me, Bird.”

  I ignored that. “I found fresh oil on one of the pumps.”

  “Good. Or isn’t it?”

  “It’s just puzzling. None of the maintenance logs indicate any attention in the last few months. But I find all the batteries are charged, all the pumps freshly greased, all the air tanks full. That last is especially unusual. A good snort of O, works well on a hangover.”

  She caught on fast. “Then who’s been topping everything up?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me that.” But I was more interested in why than who. Someone was making sure the emergency gear was in good condition. Whoever it was knew enough to understand we might be heading for trouble. “Who here knows how to use all this stuff?”

  “I doubt if anyone does. I can use the moon suits, but the others haven’t clapped eyes on an EEBA since their orientation video, assuming they were shown it, or bothered to watch it if they were.”

  “They need to learn.”

  “Training will mean a drop in productivity. Hepple won’t authorize it.” A moment of silence.

  “If you’re thinking of asking them to stay behind on a voluntary basis, they won’t like it.”

  “But they’ll do it.” She looked offscreen at her watch. “Still twenty-five minutes of break left. Lots of time to spread the good news.”

  I was right: they didn’t like it.

  “Why?” demanded Cel.

  “First reduced productivity pay because of the masks,” grumbled Meisener. “Now this.”

  Kinnis just looked surly. “I don’t understand.”

  Cel folded her arms. “We’re already shorthanded, worked half to death. I think we need a good reason to go along with this as well.”

  “How about this,” Magyar said pleasantly. “One week from today there will be a test of emergency procedure know-how. All personnel who fail will be dismissed without notice and without pay in lieu. Good enough?”

  Kinnis sighed. “What’s the pass rate?”

  “I’ll be fair. Anyone who attends all sessions and spells their name right passes. Lessons start tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your break.”

  I was beginning to appreciate Magyar more and more.

  Chapter 18

  It is five weeks before Lore’s eighteenth birthday, She is at the party of a young woman called Sarah. Sarah’s family owns half the real estate in Montevideo. The party is being held in what is sometimes called an aesthetics research institute, but is really a pleasure resort, dug into cave complexes beneath the Rio Negro.

  Lore and Sarah and about a hundred other invited guests are standing, bare-armed in their finery, in a vast underground auditorium. The walls, which are more than three hundred feet high, are tiled with white ceramic; the floor is paved with milky brick; the corners and doors and lights are sealed with white enamel. The air is frigid.

  Sarah, whom Lore has known for only a week, has beautiful, satiny beige skin and black hair cut longer at the front than the back. Her hair is blowing this way and that in the cold breeze coming from the tunnel that leads into the cave from the right. Although the tunnel is probably ninety feet in diameter, it occupies only the top corner of the wall.

  People are talking and drinking, but they have been promised a surprise by Sarah, and there is a current of tension under the conversation. They are waiting.

  It is hard to say when it actually begins. Over the tinkle of crystal and the susurrus of silk Lore hears, no, feels, a change. A vibration. The breeze falters, resumes differently. Something is skimming toward them down the tunnel. Others feel it now, too. Heads turn this way and that; Lore catches the anxious glitter of diamond earrings. It is coming.

  There is a whispering from the tunnel, and Lore c
an feel it against her skin: the approach of something huge. Everyone watches the dark hole. No one is talking. Lore thinks of beasts and their lairs, the tunnels they make. But what animal would make its home in this kind of cold?

  Suddenly warmer air comes boiling, nothing from the tunnel, and she can see something approaching, something so huge and black it fills the opening of the tunnel. It is so big her mind quails, and it is gathering its muscles to leap.

  God! she thinks, because this is not a projection. She can feel the heat radiating from the beast; she can feel the air moving. And there is an animal smell, dusty and hot, and the electric tension of the hunter’s mesmerizing gaze. Someone cries out, and there is a burst of muscle-straining panic: people throw themselves to the floor, pearls breaking, stones ripping from jeweled chokers. Lore catches a glimpse of eye-white and feline green, and ivory yellow reaching claws as the beast pours smoothly from the tunnel.

  And then Lore wonders if time really does slow to molasses when one is in fear for one’s life, because the beast doesn’t fall upon them in a snarl of sleek pelt and glinting teeth, it… stretches.

  She blinks, thinks perhaps she is a little mad as the huge panther thins and seems to shudder before her. And then it bursts, exploding into thousands of small birds, all soaring and swooping and twittering at once. The air is filled with bright avian song.

  “They’re birds!” someone shouts. And Lore is laughing, climbing to her feet, unable to turn away from the swoop and flutter in the air.

  Birds.

  Sarah is holding out a glass. Champagne. Lore takes it. Her hands are shaking. “Electromagnetic control,” Sarah says. But Lore doesn’t want to hear the mechanics, just savor the wonder, She gulps the champagne, holds it out for a refill from one of the passing waiters. Sarah slides her arm around Lore’s waist. Her fingers are very warm just above Lore’s hip. The birds wheel twice, then begin to pour back into the tunnel.

  The water room is sixty by sixty, tiled in an intricate pattern of blue and azure with walls of aquamarine and turquoise glass block. Vitrine sculptures of fish and mermaids stand in the corners. There are fountains everywhere, and water runs down the walls. The air is damp and full of the music of liquid. The tank, about twenty feet square, is sunk into the center of the floor.

  Lore takes off her dress, kicks off her shoes, then peels Sarah out of her green silk sheath. Her stomach is not flat but slightly rounded, with the side ridges and sliding muscles of a belly dancer. Her navel looks naked, as though an emerald should glint there. Lore dips the tip of her little finger in. Sarah tilts her chin up: Take me.

  “In the pool.”

  She wants to soar and swoop and mate on the wing, gulp at the medium that buoys her, like a bird.

  Lore is nervous and excited. She takes Sarah’s hand and they step to the side of the pool. The heavy pink liquid laps idly at the tiles. The first ledge is about three feet deep.

  They step down, slowly, and the liquid, body temperature, slides up their ankles, their calves, and behind their knees. Up, further.

  Sarah bobs a little, letting the surface tension rub between her legs. Lore moves behind her, circles her waist, and throws them both in. She keeps hold of Sarah as she kicks for the bottom, twenty feet down. She wraps one leg around the ring there and waits, shuddering with fear that she tells herself is anticipation.

  It is not water, of course, but perfluorocarbon, and when Lore has no breath left in her body, she opens her mouth and breathes in. It is like breathing a fist.

  Her body shoots toward the space, ancient habits demanding that she cough up the liquid and breathe air, but her lungs are full long before she reaches the silvery pink of the surface, and she can still move, still think, and the panic recedes. She is alive! She laughs, a strange, gushing affair, and experiments with pulling the perfluorocarbon in and out of her lungs. The liquid moves in and out, in and out, like a sliding arm.

  She swims down and Sarah up; they meet near the middle, porpoising over each other, belly to belly. Even their skin feels different: rubbery and resilient, like that of marine mammals. Lore strokes back over Sarah, turns her face down, covers her, belly to back, and cups the small, cool breasts in her hand. Sarah dives. Clinging like limpets, they swerve at the last minute, then turn this way and that along the smooth bottom. Lore imagines they are seals diving after agile fish. They part by mutual consent, enjoying themselves, playing like children. But they swim around each other, always each other’s focus, like dolphins courting. Lore is exhilarated. Partly the champagne, partly moving in three dimensions, partly the fact that the perfluorocarbon supplies two to three times as much oxygen as air. She swims all the way to the top, until her back and buttocks poke out into the air, and floats, like a hovering hawk, until Sarah is directly beneath her. Then she stoops.

  The liquid pouring into her lungs is like a river running through her. She feels as though she could be hauling herself along a rope, a line made of water, the rope running through her, tight, taut, fiercely singing. She catches Sarah and clamps an arm around her waist, a mouth at her throat. Sarah keeps swimming, laughing, until Lore traps Sarah’s legs in her own and thrusts a finger inside her.

  They make love for nearly an hour. Each time they come they thrash like fish.

  Chapter 19

  It happened just before one in the morning, and there was nothing anyone could have done about it. I was walking away from the readout station with the latest figures when something in my peripheral vision made me turn back. The numbers on the volatile organic counters were rocketing. All the alarms went off.

  It was like a stun grenade: red lights on the ceiling rotating; a mechanical clanging; in electronic shrilling. All designed to pump adrenaline into the system and make you move fast. A computer-generated voice came over the sound system. “Attention! This is not a drill! Attention! Evacuate the premises in accordance with emergency procedures! Attention…”

  I pulled off my filter mask, grabbed the emergency-escape breathing apparatus from the shelf, and snapped the mouthpiece over my face. Air gushed, cool and clean. I held the mask in place while I slipped on the head straps and clipped the minitank to my belt. My suit would protect most of my skin, and I had five minutes of air.

  Beyond the glass people began to run. I looked at the readouts.

  System already locked down and isolated. Influent diverted. Bright amber numerals ticking away the seconds since the alarms kicked in: fifty seconds. Gauges for holding tanks beginning to show increasing volume as the line pumps reversed their flow. Good.

  Good, I thought again, and wished my heart didn’t feel squeezed between two plates.

  I waited, and waited another ten seconds before I realized no one was giving orders. The emergency-response coordinator had evacuated the plant. Job finished. The rest was up to the regional fire department’s response teams, and the expert system. But that would take too long.

  I pulled the microphone free from its hook, switched it to Manual and Primary Sector… “This is Bird. Attention Magyar, Cel, and Kinnis—stand by. Attention everyone else.” My voice was blurred by the EEBA mask, but not too badly. “Emergency escape breathing apparatus available in hatches six, eleven, and fourteen. The air’s good for five minutes. Leave immediately. Attention Magyar. There are two moon suits at hatch six. Suit up, bring the second suit to me here at the monitoring station. And hurry.”

  I checked my tank—four minutes left—and the readouts. The system had still not identified the volatile organic compound. I did equations in my head. Protection factor, threshold limit value, maximum use concentration. Worst-case scenario: There were maybe three minutes left before the fumes would be dangerous to someone without a mask. Air for one minute after that. I checked the clock: 2:18.

  I was shivering. Run, my body was saying. I began to wheeze. Psychosomatic—it had to be.

  “Cel, Kinnis. When your EEBAs are secure, go to locker… Go to locker…” But my mind was blank. What locker, why?

>   You’re panicking.

  Red light skimmed the white concrete floor as the ceiling lamps outside went round and round. Think. Where was the self-contained breathing apparatus stored?

  Think! No good. The afterwash of the panic had wiped the memory away.

  “Attention Magyar, Kinnis, Cel. I can’t remember which locker the SCBAs are in. Cel, Kinnis: You have four minutes’ air left. Go to drench shower two and wait. Magyar: Find the SCBAs, take them to Cel and Kinnis at drench shower two. Cel, Kinnis: If Magyar isn’t there in three minutes, leave. Otherwise, I want you all here, on the double.”

  3:40. It seemed strange to be in the middle of such a brightly lit emergency. In my imagination there had always been smoke, no power. Thick black murk. But everything looked normal except for the flashing red and the howling noise. The clock trickled seconds like sand: 3:58, 3:59.

  The troughs were draining into the holding tanks. Microbes and their nutrient flow had also been diverted. I checked the concentrations: the system was compensating well, sending the correct ratios of bacterial strains.

  I imagined the pollutant: smoky and sickly, an oily stink that curled around my mask.

  Tetracholoroethylene, the readout said now. PCE, a short-chain aliphatic. Not as dangerous as some. If Magyar wasn’t panicking I would have plenty of time to get into the moon suit before the bugs started to metabolize the PCE into the more dangerous vinyl chloride and dichloro-ethylene. Skin-permeable, flammable, toxic. I switched radio frequency on the microphone.

  “Magyar, can you hear me?” Maybe she had overestimated her proficiency with the suits. Maybe the real thing had been too much and she had fled with the others. “Magyar. Magyar, report!”

  “I hear you, I hear you.” Her breathing, harsh in the enclosed environment of a level-A protective suit, came over the station’s speakers. “Don’t lose your marbles.”

  I grinned under my mask—despite the smell, despite the danger, everything. There was never any way to tell who would panic in an emergency. “I wasn’t.”