Slow River

by Nicola Griffith

  Finishing at four in the morning felt different from two. Bleaker. Or maybe I was just tired. It was one of those strange, warmish winter nights, when the air is full of moisture and you can hear the wind.

  “Bird.” It was Magyar, waiting for me. “I expect you’ve heard the rumors.”

  “Yes.”

  We walked in silence.

  “You won’t ask, will you?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t take the job!” She seemed angry. At herself, or me.

  I didn’t know what to think, or how to feel. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It just…”

  I smiled, I couldn’t help it. “Cel said you wouldn’t know what to do with those soft wankers.”

  Magyar grinned back. “Work their asses off.”

  We walked some more. I had no idea. where we were going.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time: better hours, more money. No Hepple. Then they asked me who they should give my job to. I thought about you. You know more about that place than you’ve any right to. You’d do a good job. But… I don’t know… you’re not who you say you are.”

  “You could have suggested someone else. Cel, maybe.”

  “Don’t think I didn’t consider it. But the more I thought about you, the more I thought we had some unfinished business. You lied about your identity to get a job you’re way, way too qualified for. I can’t trust a person who does that.”

  “I wouldn’t cause trouble.”

  “Maybe not, but how can I be sure?”

  I did not point out what I had done last night.

  She made a soft sound of frustration. “I like you, but I don’t trust you. Who are you?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Then tell me why you took this job.”

  “Because it was something I knew how to do. And it’s inconspicuous enough to avoid attention.”

  “From the police?”

  I nodded. We walked some more. We were in the dock-side area now—the real docks, not the tourist arena.

  “What did you do?”

  “I think I killed someone.”

  Five dangerous little words. They hung there like gnats. If I could I would have leapt and snapped them back, like a dog. For a split second I thought about running. Magyar would not follow me.

  Instead, after a brief falter in my steps, we kept walking.

  “That’s not everything, is it?”

  “No.”

  “But it’s all you’re going to tell me.”

  “Yes.” I was cold and tired. I stopped walking. “What will you do?”

  “Nothing.” I couldn’t see her face, just her breath, pearly against the dark, industrial sky. “You helped me last night. You helped all of us. And I’m a patient woman.”

  You’ll tell me eventually, she meant. It wasn’t a threat. Not quite.

  “Get to bed. Bird.” Or whoever you are. “You look worn out.”

  I went to the Polar Bear.

  * * *

  The data-slate business stayed tight, and more and more Lore woke up with restraint marks on her wrists, or arms sore from paddling some flabby-legged sixty-year-old. Once, toward the end of summer, she woke up in their flat with a butt plug still strapped inside her, and she rushed to the bathroom and vomited. Afterward she hung limply over the bowl and whispered to the water, “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me…”

  But even as her gorge rose again, her skin flushed with remembered heat. She wept.

  Sometimes all Spanner would have to do was show her the little bottle and she would nearly come.

  By November, they were tricking six nights out of seven, and sometimes more than once a night. They usually took it in turns: one to perform, one to guard. On the nights or afternoons when she was the one watching Spanner fucking some spoiled teenager or limp old man, she felt powerful: she was in charge.

  She was the one who made sure there were latex and antivirals; she was the one who pulled Spanner off when the client had had enough; she was the one who took the money. She was in charge; she had choices.

  This might not be love, but she was not being lied to. They earned a great deal of money, but they always seemed to need more. The holiday season came again. Lore wandered the streets, ending up by the medieval gate that had been excavated thirty years before. She stared at it, then out at what had once been a dock, long ago. A huge shopping mall, tawdry with age, floated there now. She wondered why modern creations became uglier faster. It was raining. Something about the gray sky and the sturdy shoes splashing through puddles reminded her of Den Haag, of her hand in her father’s as they ran, laughing, from the chauffeured car to the brightly lit store. She had bought Tok an art program for his slate that year.

  Her father had helped her choose presents for everyone.

  And she had felt so lucky.

  Her father was a busy man, with meetings to run and schedules to keep, but here he was, running through the rain with her, choosing presents as though the future of van de Oest Enterprises rested on their decisions, queuing up like an ordinary person at the store cafe for hot chocolate while they gloated over the presents all snugged up in the bags under their chairs.

  Lore smiled to herself, caught sight of that smile in a storefront window, and faltered. It was all a lie, because he was all a lie. All her memories of him were tainted, soiled by what he had done to Stella. How could someone do that to another, and smile and smile and pretend love?

  She found herself huddling against the cold armored glass of a clothing store. She could not think of a single thing to buy Spanner that would not be a lie, because all their money was a lie.

  * * *

  I don’t know why I went to the Polar Bear—to exorcise some ghosts, maybe; maybe I just wanted some beer; maybe I couldn’t face being on my own—but I did not expect to see Spanner.

  She was holding court at one of the center tables, gesturing with one hand, laughing, pausing to drink.

  Just go, she had said last time I saw her. She would rather have suffered that terrible pain than have me in her flat. Yet here she was, waving me over. And here I was, sliding into a seat, nodding pleasantly at the woman and two men I didn’t recognize at the table.

  “Lore!” She twisted her head over her shoulder and shouted at the bar, “Bring Lore a beer.”

  Judging by the smears on the table and the flush on their cheeks, they had been there a few hours. Spanner’s color was high, too, but I noticed that although she lifted her glass often, she drank slowly, and there was a stop-start quality to her movements. I guessed that as well as the enormous dose of painkillers floating through her bloodstream she must be popping with stimulants.

  After a few how-are-yous which meant nothing, I was left out of the conversation while Spanner laughed and glittered some more. It was warm. I settled into a half-lidded somnolence, sipping now and again at my beer, more tired than relaxed. Then Spanner and the others were standing up, shaking hands.

  “The weekend? No problem. Yes, it was good to talk to you. No, no, I’ll stay and have a chat with Lore here.”

  Then it was just us.

  “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I let it pass. If Spanner could walk, she was fine. It didn’t matter what that walking would do to her, how it would damage her for the future; it didn’t matter how many drugs, or how much, it took; if she could walk, she was just fine. It was not my problem anymore. It wasn’t.

  “Is your video ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then we’ll go tomorrow night. Four-thirty.”

  “I can’t.” I cast about for an excuse. “I’m working until four.”

  “How long does it take you to walk half a mile?”

  “But the equipment-”

  “It’s ready.”

  “-and the information…”

  “I’ve got it. I’ve looked at it. We’re ready. And tomorrow, at four-thirty, at a
switching station here in the city, is our hole.”

  “No.” The idea was ridiculous. “Look at you. You couldn’t even lift that pint without a shot.”

  “So? The fact is, I can lift it.”

  “And how sharp will you be, full of drugs? No. We’ll wait.”

  “We can’t wait.” She pushed her beer away. “I can’t wait. The information and equipment cost money and favors. I owe several people. By now they’ll have heard…”

  She spread her fingers in a fan, indicating her body, the way it had been injured. I could see the faint glimmer of powder under her eyes where she had covered dark circles. She had already owed money before all this. Now, to get the equipment, she had pulled in favors. The people she owed would be getting worried: it was why she was out and about, counteracting the rumor that she was finished.

  In the game Spanner played, worried creditors were lethal.

  I hesitated. There was a lot at stake. If Spanner was just a microsecond slower than she had to be, the alarms would ring. If the alarms went, odds were they would get us. We’d be hauled in. She knew what that would mean for me: my family, the public humiliation, the possibility of a murder charge. I could only guess at what it would mean for her.

  “Can you do it?” Tell me the truth. Just for once. Can you do this with all those drugs coursing through you?

  “Yes.”

  She could have left me that night in the rain, just pretended not to hear me, and walked away. I could have died.

  “All right, then. Tomorrow.”

  We didn’t shake hands.

  It was raining, but I didn’t feel it. I was wrapped in plasthene hood, long coat, booties over my boots, hands sprayed with a transparent layer of plaskin. I crouched on the pavement, shielding the open pack with the waterproof coat. Spanner cursed in the darkness. I waited. The switching station’s lock was standard design; it should not be too hard. Not usually. I could feel words welling up my gullet like fish on a rising tide: Let’s go back. It’s not too late to change our minds… But then the lock clicked, and Spanner slid the door open, and I was handing her one pack and carrying the other inside. I pulled the door shut. It was pitch black until I found the lights.

  The station was ten feet square and low-roofed. Digital relays switched soundlessly, lightlessly. It was cold. There was one chair on casters. The floor was smoothed concrete. We shook ourselves to get rid of the worst of the rain, but didn’t dare take off the coats. We were clean for this job: no stray skin or hair for the security snoops to read for DNA.

  “Do you want the chair?” I asked.

  Spanner was already unfastening her tool roll. She shook her head.

  The stillness and silence were unnerving. “Why aren’t there any console lights?”

  Spanner reached up and touched something and then there were soft reds and ambers and greens, an occasional pink and turquoise.

  I unfastened my own pack and began handing Spanner things one by one: the disk that had taken me hundreds of hours to put together; the matte, featureless box that had cost so much; a flatscreen; connectors… Spanner had spent hours earlier, cleaning everything with ultrasonics where she could, a toothbrush where she couldn’t. No stray hairs or skin or oil to be left behind for analysis. I sat back and watched her work.

  With tools in her hand and a job to do, she was transformed. Each gesture was gentle, precise as she set up the diagnostic flatscreen watched the waveforms, nodded, reached for her tone pad. I remembered those hands touching my back, the spaces between my ribs, stroking. I remembered the whites around her eyes, the way she had trembled with the effort of not moving, not jarring her dislocated joints before the medic came.

  I swallowed convulsively.

  She pushed the disk into its drive, watched the screen, frowned, sucked air through her teeth.

  “Trouble?”

  “Um? No. Take a few minutes.”

  I was distracting her. It was time I prepared myself for my part.

  The access window was flat to the wall behind and to the right of Spanner. I pushed the chair until it was opposite, then sat down with a board on my lap. I thumbed it on, maneuvered myself and the chair until the green ALIGNED panel lit up. All the other panels came up amber one by one: the station’s security systems were all online, doing their job, checking and rechecking access. They would flash red one by one as Spanner piggybacked the net signal, but we had a program to override the alarms at source. As long as the human overseer did not check during the dozen or so seconds we were working the signal, we should be fine. And according to the information bought along with the hardware, they shouldn’t check. But they might.

  There was no way to know whether or not the program would do what its writers claimed; there was no way to make sure the handshake box would successfully mimic the net’s signal, which was changed on a random basis. Spanner had looked over the code—I had even taken a look—and as far as we could see it was the real thing, but there was only one way to be certain.

  I looked over at Spanner. She was working smoothly. A soft tone seeped through the room. “Box has the handshake,” she said. “Now we just wait.” She reached up and turned on the station screen.

  The schedules had listed a rerun of an old, fashionably cult-status sitcom on the assigned channel, and the net was nothing if not efficient. Nevertheless, I found myself breathing hard with relief when the star appeared with her trademark grin. If that was as planned, maybe everything else would go smoothly. I wondered what people would be watching on the demand channels: films, live sports, live sex, dog shows, cartoons…

  “Commercials in two minutes eleven seconds.”

  Usually, commercials were tailored for the viewing audience, but we were going to hit everyone with the same thing. As Spanner had said, “Look, we may be going after the rich and stupid, but the kind of people who regularly watch the net at four in the morning—the depressed, the sleepless, the drunk, people who’ve been up fucking their new love all night—we can pull them in, too.” What she meant, of course, was: Let’s take from the defenseless, the ones who don’t really have anything to give, or who will give to anything because they are about to end their lives.

  “Hope the damn handshake doesn’t change in the middle of the commercial,” she muttered. I didn’t ask what would happen if it did. I didn’t want to know.

  “Is the account program online?”

  “Yes. Commercial in fifty seconds.”

  My hands were tight on the board, going purply white at the joints. We were going to wait until the end of the first advertisement; probably thirty seconds. At that point there was less chance of the security snoop noticing—they weren’t paid to guard the advert signal. We had no idea what the commercials might be, but Spanner had watched dozens of the most likely candidates, and written interrupt programs for them. If it was something we didn’t recognize, though, she would have to do it by hand.

  “Twenty seconds. Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen…”

  My board was amber all the way.

  “We’re synchronized.” We would ride silently for a few seconds.

  Still amber. “All clear.”

  “Four seconds. Three. Two. One.”

  The screen cut to a brilliant green. “This is-” and Spanner swore. The screen suddenly dulled to brown and red: the ruined floor of what had once been rain forest.

  “What’s happening, what’s happening?

  “Minimercial,” Spanner said briefly. “They’ll take the whole commercial spot.”

  We had less than three minutes to decide what to do. “Board’s amber.”

  “And the signal’s very sweet,” Spanner said. “I’m going to do it.” Her voice was sharp, decisive. “I’ll cut in when it’s done. Steal program time.”

  “You know this commercial.”

  “No, but a windup’s a windup.”

  She was right. You could always tell the last few seconds of an ad. “Do it,” I said.

  It was dangerous, mu
ch more dangerous than we had planned. Viewers never timed adverts, but after years of always getting the same number of seconds their bodies would be tuned to it. Inside, they would think, Hey, there are a lot of ads today… And maybe one of those viewers would be the security snoop. Maybe he or she would be fast, would flip the trace before we cut.

  “Here’s the windup.”

  “All clear.” No going back now. If the drugs had affected Spanner in the slightest, if she made one millisecond’s mistake, the cut would be obvious. Adrenaline tightened the muscles around my eyes; my breathing got shallow.

  She was perfect. The white lettering faded out and then in to the bright red and yellow that was the first frame close-up of Tom’s tie.

  I looked at the board. “Ten-percent red. Twenty.” The security program had started to trace our signal. It wouldn’t find us until the whole board lit.

  “Come on, you babies, come on,” Spanner muttered. I wondered what the account program was telling her.

  “Twenty-five percent. Fifty!” The sudden flicker of red across the board made my heart leap sideways. “Seventy!”

  “Taking us off.” My board went blank. She started stripping down the screen, unhooking the box.

  I found I was kneeling on the floor, stowing things in the backpack without knowing how I got there.

  “Nearly twelve seconds,” she was saying.

  “Cut the account,” I said.

  “Money’s still coming in-”

  “Cut it!” I didn’t care how much or how little we had. We needed to cut and run. A nanosecond could make a difference to a security program.

  She touched a key, pulled a lead free. “All closed down.”

  And then we were standing outside in the rain, pulling the door closed, leaning against the wall, laughing. The rain ran in my ears, my mouth, down my neck, but I didn’t care. We should be running, but I didn’t care. Adrenaline exhilaration could do that. I laughed and laughed: we were free, safe. I had forgotten how sweet it felt to operate outside the law, how good, how big it made me feel…

  Reluctantly, I pushed myself away from the wall. “We have to hurry.”