The Water Thief (15 page)

She began
teaching me to survive, how to spot dangers and keep from being seen, how to
collect and distill rainwater and how to trap and skin rabbits. She even began
teaching me how to cook.

My job became
unbearable. I couldn’t work for Ackerman anymore, much less in Perception. My
colleagues did nothing but squabble, preen, and gripe, and I wondered how I had
ever tolerated it.

“People used to
live to be eighty—like, average people.” Bernard would say.

“That’s a lie,”
said Corbett

“It’s true.
Study history.”

“Any society
where the average person can live that long has real problems. If it is true,
no wonder they collapsed.”

“It’s true!”

“You just want
me to spend five caps looking up something that doesn’t mean anything anyway.”

“It’s true.”

“Go to hell,
socialist.”

“Because I know
history I’m a socialist?”

“No, it’s just
one of the reasons. You’re a weak commie bastard, and I look forward to
watching you get your ass handed to you.”

That was the
routine, day in and day out. I worked tiny, nuisance reports, nothing more
vicious than typos and the occasional dangling modifier. At night I’d make my
way into LowSec, browse the shops and pick up a little lavender oil or paper
tablecloths. It was all there once you knew where to look. Sometimes we’d move
the dining table aside and just eat on the floor. We talked about citizens, and
about governments and republics, or about ancient literature, culture, and
history. Sometimes we just talked about the weather. We talked about colleagues
like Corbett and Linus, friends like Jazelle and Sarah, and the family neither
of us had seen in ages. She’d crank up the turntable and I’d listen to songs
that I imagined hadn’t been heard in a hundred years. She showed me around LowSec,
showed me old buildings, bombed-out aquifers—even a transmitter which she said
had once broadcast television for free. She took me to an old flood-control
channel. A sign over it read “World’s Oldest Ditch (500 years).” I wondered by
what right they could claim to know that, and found myself fighting the urge to
find some small, obscure place to fill it in a bit.

And there were
solar stills everywhere, thousands of them. They were hidden under tiers,
behind tarps or on back porches. Everybody had at least one, and most people
had four or five. A funnel would capture rainwater and dump it into a
plastic-wrapped bucket or can. The sun would evaporate the water, which would
condense and collect on the plastic and eventually drip down into another
bucket as clean, drinkable water.

“So everybody’s
taking water?”

“Yep, right out
of the air. You have to, no water comes into most of these buildings, and the
sewer systems are four hundred years old. They used a split pipe back then,
water on one side and sewage on the other. You’d get sick if you drank it.”

“If everybody’s
doing it, why was Sarah the only one to get arrested?”

“That’s a good
question. We hide the stills and we’re usually not worth the bother anyway. I
don’t know who turned her in. Maybe someone didn’t like her, or a neighbor
needed a few caps to keep from starving. I don’t know.”

I was an
outsider in both worlds. Finding Kate had put me in considerable debt with
Ackerman, and I wasn’t doing my job in any meaningful way anymore. Like Eric
Forestall in cubicle 721, I had creditors I’d have to stay ahead of. But I
couldn’t simply vanish into LowSec; I needed Kate’s help. But her friends
hadn’t come close to accepting me. And why should they? For all they knew, I
was an agent, and even if I wasn’t, Ackerman would come looking for me.

Then, one night,
the light in cubicle 721 went out.

A number of
colleagues had gathered in the cantina, though Bernard was not among them.
Corbett sat drinking coffee and going over his day’s literature.

“Quiet today,” I
said.

“Yeah. Well, any
day Bernard isn’t here is a quiet one.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.
Trying to find a new kid to mentor or something. How that fat man gets anyone
to pay for his time is beyond me,” Corbett said. He picked up his coffee mug
and gave it a sour look. “You know,” he said, “with all this Kabul business,
you’d think that coffee would be better—at least until they get rid of the
ragheads.”

“Add some
chicory,” I said. “It’ll add flavor. Heck you can make coffee out of chicory if
you need to.”

“Chicory? What
the hell?”

“It’s a plant.”

“I know what it
is. Why the…? How do you know you can put it in coffee?”

“I… well, I’ve
been learning to cook,” I answered. “It’s actually fun, and you have a lot more
choices if you cook for yourself. It’s fresher than anything you’d get in here,
that’s for sure.”

“Oh my god,
Charles! It’s bad enough you ride that deathtrap into work every day. Now
you’re learning to cook? Do you know how that looks? You do realize that you’re
supposed to go
up
in rank?”

“Cooking is not
some LowCon thing; anyone can do it.”

“It’s LowCon.
Face it, they’re the only ones who can’t afford processed food.”

“Alphas have
private chefs. They eat the real thing.”

“Yeah, and the
chefs are all LowCons, I guarantee it.”

“You always say
that knowledge is power,” I told him. “So why not learn everything you can?
Like how to cook?”

“I’m not going
to cook. You’re just pissed that someone suckered you into learning crap like
this and now you’re trying to get me into it. It won’t work.”

“It’s fun,” I
said. “Cooking actually takes skill—”

“Whatever,” he
answered.

Weeks passed,
and I hadn’t received a payout for my Aisling report. It was a bad sign. I was
starting to suspect that Sarah Aisling had actually been a person of consequence
to Kate and her friends. I became sadder and sadder, keeping this secret from
Kate. She was getting sadder too, and I wondered if it was about Aisling.

One night we sat
in Kate’s apartment, talking about my new favorite subject, the republic. The
power was out again, it was raining, and the building shook with nearby strikes
of thunder. The windows all leaked and puddles formed on the floor.

“You know,” she
said, “man has walked the earth for sixteen million years. But only in the last
two million did we develop language. We can choose what we see, Charlie. People
say Darwin
believed in competition. But he believed in evolution too. Compassion exists,
and Darwin himself would say that was proof that we benefited from it. The
corporatists will tell you that compassion is like a vestigial tail. Why is it
such a leap to think it might be an evolution, like language, something that
allows us to do more together than we ever could apart? It’s been proven,
mathematically, that trust is essential to success. But corporations don’t
breed trust, they kill it.”

She’s talking about trust. Does she know
something?

“How do you
prove
trust is good?”

“A mathematician
named Nash did it. Before him people said that the best outcome occurs when
everyone works in their own best interest. But he showed that self-interest was
only half of the equation. The best outcome actually comes from people thinking
of themselves and the group equally.”

This is a message. She knows. She’s testing
me.

“Say two crooks
are working together. They commit a major crime that carries five years in
prison. But the police can only prove a smaller crime that carries two years.
So they separate the men and offer each a deal—rat your partner out, and we’ll
drop the lesser charges on you.

“Now, if one of
them takes the offer, he goes free, while the other gets seven years—two for
the lesser charge and five for the greater one. But both guys know this. So
what do they do? They each rat other out. So now each gets the lesser charges
dropped for cooperating, but gets five years on the testimony of the other.

“Now,
capitalists will point to this and say ‘See, each of these men did the best
they could for themselves. Each knows the other will rat him out, so they cut a
deal to get five years instead of seven, which is an improvement.’

“But here’s the
thing; if they both kept their mouths shut, they’d only get two years. It’s not
freedom, but it’s a lot better than five. The reason they talk is because
they’re in competition. They’re each so busy trying to protect themselves from
the other guy that they damage each other. Competing for the best possible
outcome, no time in jail, prevented the worst outcome of seven years, but it
also prevented the better outcome of two years. If they had both agreed to
shoot for the two years, they would have gotten it. If they could trust each
other, they’d be a lot better off.

“And this kind
of situation isn’t rare—in fact it’s the norm.”

“But that can
never work,” I said. “How could you trust the other person? I mean, if he rats
you out, he goes free? How can he resist that temptation?”

How can you trust me?

“That’s the rub.
The men must both trust and be trustworthy. It requires long-term thinking,
something corporations de-incentivize and are notoriously bad at.”

“But all it takes
is one person gaming the system,” I said. “If even one person betrays that
trust… How can it ever be sustained? You’ll never get everyone to be
trustworthy.”

“Well, yeah,
that’s the problem. If one person breaks the trust and goes free, others see that
betrayal is rewarded. So they begin doing it too. Soon everyone will betray
everyone, and greed becomes a virtue. Then everyone is back to getting five
years, shouting ‘Thank God we betray each other, or we’d be getting seven.’ And
then the worst option is to trust your colleague, because you’ll be taken
advantage of.

“In Zino’s
Bible, every capitalist implicitly trusted every other capitalist. They were
simply good people. And if that was always the case, capitalism would work
exactly as Zino predicted—a perfect libertarian utopia. But it’s not. Without a
strong third party to regulate, destruction and short-term thinking are
rewarded; entire generations live at the expense of their grandchildren, and
Zino is turned on her head. You need a system of laws and an entity capable of
enforcing those laws—common rights and guarantees, regardless of wealth or
power.”

“The leviathan…”
I said quietly.

“No, Charlie,
government. Your colleagues call it the Leviathan, the great whale from the
Jewish Bible. But that’s not where we get the name from.
Leviathan
was the name of a book written by Thomas Hobbes. He
defined the ‘social contract,’ saying that without sacrificing
some
freedom for the common good, life
was ‘cold, nasty, brutish and short.’”

“That’s not
communism?”

“God no. Even
Nash said that the best actions were the ones that
equally
balanced the needs of others with the needs of the self,
balanced selflessness and greed. Greed is exactly half of Nash’s equation. The criminal
isn’t expected to sacrifice himself for his cohort and say, ‘I confess to the
crime, I’ll take the seven years so my partner goes free.’

“What a good
government does, what a republic does, is moderate competition; allow the tug
of war, but never let one side walk away with the rope. They also establish
rule of law, and a safety net below which people cannot fall. Everybody can
vote, everybody can share power, no matter how rich or poor. Everybody has
rights, and the republic is strong enough to enforce those rights. Police,
health, mail, education, the things that everybody needs are guaranteed.
Corporations can compete, but they are kept reasonably honest and not allowed
to over leverage and risk people other than themselves. People will abuse the system,
some corps will get away with crime, but the distribution of a minimum amount
of power and resources to all people hedges the damage. And it forces the
wealthy, not to be slaves to the poor, but to have a modicum of concern for
them, because they can vote.”

“Do you trust
me?” I asked. I was glad the lights were off.

“Of course.”

I wished she had
said no.

“This is about
my friends, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Well….”

“You hardly ever
see them. They’re always sneaking around, calling and slipping me papers,
coming by at night. They don’t trust you. I know that. You can’t blame them. I
know you’re not Retention or Acquisitions, but I have to respect their
concerns. You arrived just after Sarah was caught. Earning their trust will
take some time. And she was a person of some importance around here.”

“Importance?”

“Well, she was
our—well—leader, for lack of a better word.”

Dear god. I crafted a perception of Sarah as
the head of a seditionist organization just to make a quick buck. But I was
right.

“Do you know
what ever happened to her?”

“No. Her ‘crime’
probably wouldn’t have been a big deal, but she’s stubborn and not all that
pragmatic. We were willing to chip in for an advocate. She said no. I thought
she meant she could afford one, but instead she just stood there and told off
the judge. I don’t know why she thought that was a good idea. He actually
didn’t seem to be too bothered by it, but her case was escalated anyway. We
haven’t heard anything. Maybe they somehow thought they could get more money
from her. We don’t even know if she’s alive.”

“Why would she
fight with the judge?” I asked.

“There was a
hotel fire. The building had revolving doors, and when the fire broke out,
people panicked. Too many tried to get through at once and the door couldn’t
turn. Six hundred people burned alive.