The Fifth Sacred Thing (66 page)

A
n unaccustomed silence woke Maya in the middle of the night. At first she couldn’t identify what was wrong, only that, as she emerged out of a disturbed dream, she felt disoriented, not sure where she was.

“Sam,” she said, poking him gently. “Wake up, Sam. Something’s wrong.”

He woke instantly, a legacy of his years of training on emergency wards. “Are you okay? Where does it hurt?”

“Nothing hurts. But something’s wrong—something doesn’t feel right. Listen.”

He listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s right. The stream—it’s silent.” For twenty years she had slept lulled by that music, since they had first blocked the street and liberated the water from its underground pipeways back to its restored bed. The sound of water was her security, her healing. No one, they said in the City, could be wholly ill or sad near the sound of running water, and so they had created nets of streams and pools and little waterfalls that sang almost as sweetly as falling rain. And now the song was gone.

“Sam, what’s happened? Where is the stream?”

“Soldiers must have dammed it,” Sam said.

Maya threw off the covers. “Let’s go see.”

The walkways that ran in front of the house gleamed under the moonlight. The moon was waning, Crone’s moon, time of ending and dissolving, Maya thought. The soldiers had imposed a curfew after dusk. For a week, people had obeyed. But tonight Maya and Sam were not the only ones out: others had apparently been woken by the stilling of the accustomed sound or by networks sounding the alarm. Door after door opened and people thronged the walkways, heading silently, grimly, up toward the slopes of the hill where the reservoir lay.

Maya walked slowly, leaning on Sam’s arm. She was afraid. This was the confrontation; this was war at last. Bird, she thought, will he survive this? He
had not been sleeping in his room. Often he stayed all night after a meeting with the Council to avoid the risk of running the curfew. But he would come for this battle, she was sure of it.

The crowd climbing the hill grew, a dark tide rising to the level shelf of land where a deep pool held the spring water that fed the streams. A group of soldiers was closing the floodgates with sandbags and cement. A much larger platoon stood guard, laser rifles trained on the crowd. Old Salvia Westin from the Water Council was addressing the guards, her silver-wire hair flashing under the moon as she tossed her head.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve worked fifteen years perfecting that stream. It’s not just water, it’s a living community of incredible complexity and beauty. Fish and insects and plants and birds depend on it. To dam it is to destroy it, to take its life! You are murderers. Murderers!” Her voice was rising in pitch and a young man stepped forward, put a hand on her arm, and whispered something in her ear. She shook free of his arm, but he spoke to her again, and reluctantly she moved away. The soldiers stood expressionless.

“There is still a place for you at our table, if you will choose to join us,” the young man said.

“Yes,” people chorused, “even now, there is a place for you.”

But Maya could hear other mutterings, and even a few shouts and threats. Tension rippled through the line of soldiers.

“We will never let you take our water!” someone shouted, too far back for Maya to see.

“Try and stop us,” one of the soldiers taunted, and there was a surge in the crowd that might have pushed them all forward onto the rifles of the soldiers when suddenly Maya heard the beat of a drum. The sound was soft, hardly audible to the ears but more of a pulse in the body, a heartbeat, at once insistent and utterly calm. Two women and one man walked up to the edge of the floodgates and sat down, their bodies just in the spot where the next load of cement was due to be dumped.

The commander of the guards walked over to them. He was a young man who strutted with his shoulders thrust back and his chest ballooned out.

“Move,” he said. “Or we’ll make you move.”

They sat, impassive, silent.

“We’ve been easy on you people so far, but we’re cracking down now. Game time is over.”

“You will have to take our lives to take our water,” one of the women said. The silence in the crowd was absolute.

“There is a place set for you at our table, if you will choose to join us,” the man said.

The officer gestured to his men. “Carry on building. If they don’t get out of the way, cement them in.”

The men moved hesitantly forward with a hose attached to a mixing machine. The machine began to roar. The crowd surged forward, and suddenly twenty or thirty people were crowded around the floodgates, between the soldiers and their objective. Instead of sitting like the first three, they kept moving in a writhing mass. Plastocement spewed out of the hose, and they tromped through it, keeping it from setting.

“I give you ten seconds, and then we shoot,” the officer yelled. “This is no game! Ten. Nine. Eight.…”

There was a sudden flare of lights and the screech of a phalanx of motorcycles coming to a halt behind him.

“Attention!” a voice thundered.

A large man dismounted from the sidecar of the lead cycle. Instantly the soldiers formed an honor guard on either side of him. He wore an elaborate uniform decorated with stripes and gold braid and medals hanging from colored ribbons. The gray of his clothing leached color from his bone-pale skin, but mottled red and blue veins tinted his cheeks and nose and forehead. His body was solid, robust, although he carried a paunch that protruded over his gunbelt, and his gray eyes gleamed like bullets.

“What goes on here, Jones?” he asked.

“General Alexander, sir, these people are obstructing the work. Request permission to execute, sir.”

“Request permission? What the hell do you think we issue you rifles for? Is this how you carry out your command?”

“Sir—”

Behind Maya the crowd stirred and parted. Through the opening came Bird and Lan and Roberto, led by Marie. Bird looked grim, remote. His eyes never turned to greet Maya.

“General,” Marie said, her musical voice pitched to carry, “as the elected representatives of this city, we are here to lodge a formal protest.”

“Lodge your ass!” came a voice from the back of the crowd. Somebody hushed him, and the drumbeat intensified.

“Water runs free in this city,” Marie went on, “and belongs to everybody. Indeed, water is one of the Four Sacred Things that nobody can own or desecrate. No one in this city goes thirsty. No one begs for water or has ever had to steal it.” She was speaking, Maya realized, not to the General but to the lines of ordinary soldiers behind him. “We are pledged to see that this does not change. Because we preserve our waters, there is plenty for everyone, even for you. Living in our way, none of you need ever thirst again. And there is a place already set for you at our table, if you will choose to join us.”

Bird stood behind Marie, to back her up. They had agreed that she would speak first. Everything seemed etched in glass, translucent, already fading. This is exactly like one of the role plays we set up in the training, he thought.
Maybe when it’s over we’ll all sit down and process together, ask the General how he feels? He almost wanted to laugh, but he bit his lips. Somewhere behind him was the drumbeat, and the sound steadied him.

General Alexander looked at the four of them. He seemed unsure as to which one of them he should address. Marie was white, but a woman; Roberto was the oldest and largest male, but brown. In the space of time his quandary bought, more people joined those massed by the floodgates.

Finally he seized on Roberto, looking him in the eye.

“Understand this,” he said. “All water belongs to the Corporation by executive order. Water is a scarce and precious natural resource, made more scarce by the wasteful squanderings of the greedy and ignorant. For this reason, the Stewards have assumed control of all water resources, for their better preservation and distribution. Now either you order your followers to cease obstructing our lawful work here or, I’m warning you, there will be bloodshed. And you will be responsible.”

Roberto’s face was calm and composed. He looked into the General’s eyes and said mildly, “You misunderstand. We cannot order anyone to do anything. We are the ears and voice of the people; we express their will. We cannot command them to do ours, even if we wanted to cooperate with you. But we of this city will never cooperate in the theft of our own waters. Water is sacred, one of the things we will risk our lives for. And still there is a place set for you at our table, if you will choose to join us.”

The General drew his pistol and shot Roberto through the temple.

Roberto made no sound. His eyes opened wide; then blood burst from his nostrils, a dark stain in the dark night, as he fell. The crowd gasped.

General Alexander turned to Lan.

“Do you understand me now when I say we are not playing games here? I’m not asking you for cooperation, I’m telling you you don’t have a choice. If you want to die for your right to waste water, we can provide the opportunity. Now, boy, what do you say?”

Now it comes, Bird thought, and oddly enough he wasn’t afraid any longer. There was nothing more he had to do, except stand there and, when his turn came, say one phrase. Easy, and then it would be over quickly. No long-drawn-out waiting, no agony. He would die out here, in the moonlight, in this perfect clarity that settled over him. Suddenly it seemed he could see every face in the crowd, gleaming silver under the moon, could feel the green gardens still alive below them, and hear the singing of the wind in the spinners above and the drumbeat like the city’s phantom heart. To die in this moment was not so bad. Maya was nearby; he wished he could meet her eyes and smile, but he was not that brave.

“There is a place set for you at our table, if you will choose to join us,” Lan said, and died.

My turn now, Bird thought, as the General turned to him. He was barely aware of what the man was saying, as he thought, one by one, of the people he loved.
Adiosa
, Madrone. I wish I could have seen you one more time. Goodbye, Maya. I’m sorry I can’t kiss you goodbye.
Adiosa
, Sage and Manzanita and you, too, Holybear.

Alexander was waiting. Bird opened his mouth to speak.

Suddenly there was a stir in the crowd. A flock of children, led by Rosa, dodged through the masses of stunned people. Before anyone could move, they had surrounded Bird and Marie and the two bodies on the ground. The officers stepped back in surprise, while Bird was barricaded by a ring of children five deep.

“There is a place for you at our table,” Rosa said to the General, smiling her brightest and most engaging smile, “if you will choose to join us.” She favored the whole line of men with a broad and friendly grin. Some of them were sweating visibly.

Bird felt sick with the sudden descent of terror. Damn those kids! Damn their emulation and their hero worship and those stupid trainings that made them think they were prepared for this. If something happened to Rosa …

The General looked amused.

“Okay, Jones, this is about your speed. Let’s see you handle this.”

Jones stepped forward. “You kids get out of here,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt no kids, but I will if I have to.”

They remained, silent and smiling. How could they smile? Bird wondered. He couldn’t, even if it would have saved their lives.

“I’m counting to three. One, two …”

A young boy Bird didn’t know stepped up next to Rosa.

“Three.”

Nobody moved. Jones looked at the kids, back to his men, back to the kids again.

“I warned you. I don’t want to do this, but I will if you don’t move. Now I’m giving you one more chance. One, two, three.”

“There’s a place set for you at our table, if you will choose to join us,” the boy said.

The soldier slowly drew his gun, pointed it at Rosa.

“Move.”

The line of children held firm.

He took a step forward, thrust the nose of the pistol under her chin, and said, again, “Move.”

Bird felt cold. He could see the muscles tense in the man’s arm, see his eye narrow, and his finger begin to squeeze. If I could only grab the gun, he thought, but if I make a move toward him, she’ll be dead.

Then there was a loud noise and the officer crumpled, a dark bleeding
hole through the back of his neck. Somewhere down the line, a soldier threw down his gun and began running wildly away from the open space around the reservoir. Others ran after him, while the crowd surged between the fleeing man and his pursuers. People were running and screaming, but the crowd around Bird was packed too tight to move. His body wanted to run but his mind said, No, wait. This was what he’d volunteered for. Then there were shots into the crowd, and more screams, and as the people scattered a soldier stuck a gun into Bird’s back, grabbed his arm, and pinned it behind him.

“Got the little bitch!” someone yelled behind him. Bird twisted his head to catch a glimpse of a struggling Rosa being roughly searched and handcuffed. Then his own hands were cuffed together, and he and Sister Marie were led away.