The Water Thief (18 page)

Linus was still
smoking, but nobody dared hassle him about it. And despite the horror, I saw a
ray of hope, from someone I had not expected.

“You saved a lot
of lives today,” I said.

Linus shook his
head. “No, Charles, I protected our assets. It’s the mitigation clause in every
Ackerman contract. I had to.”

“No, that wasn’t
mitigation. You took charge, you led us. You saved lives. The world is a better
place because of what you did.”

Linus sighed and
took another drag. He was exhausted, and resented having to spend the energy to
try one last time to explain.

“I don’t see how
you can miss this, Charles. You don’t get it, even now. It’s my job to know
first aid, to help assets in trouble, to protect Ackerman and mitigate damage
to it whenever I can. I did my job, I did it well, and I expect to be paid
commensurate with the quality of my work. And I will be.

“We’re assets,
you and I. But you have this sentimentality; you seem to think that life should
offer more. Well, I don’t know about what should be. I just know that this is
the way it is. We got caught in the crossfire of a rather tough negotiation
today. That’s all. Don’t look for any more meaning than that. All that awaits
idealists who can’t stomach a harsh reality is disappointment, misery, and
death. You should want more than that for yourself.

“I’m happy with
the way things turned out. I’m happy because I believe in Nash. I will never
get those responsible for this, I’ll never meet them. But my colleagues will,
rest assured. This will cost Kabul
everything. I trust my colleagues. I did my job today, and tomorrow an Ackerman
sniper will do his. If we all keep doing our jobs, Kabul will be gone, it’s that simple.”

He stood up,
took a final deep draw and then tossed the cigarette aside. “This should clue
you into the real world, Charles. This is what happens if you let your guard
down, even for a second. Everyone, the entire world, is either with us or
against us. They want to divide us, like the two prisoners. That is Nash.

“You did well
today. You took direction in less than ideal circumstances. I’m proud of you,
and you should be proud of yourself. You honestly could make Gamma. It’s a
shame you don’t really try. In any case, you saved her life—I think. And you’ll
be paid well for it, I’ll see to that.”

It was with that
that Linus, torn clothes and covered in blood, walked away. I looked up into
the sky, one of the few clear blue skies I had seen all year. War had come to
Ackerman.

Kate tended my
wounds as I sat in a chair in the middle of her living room.

“Seems like I’m
always cleaning you up.”

I nodded, though
I wasn’t really listening.

“You okay?” she
asked.

“I just can’t
believe Linus. The people he saved, they meant nothing to him. They were just
assets.”

“He’s lean,
sculpted by years of corporate work. He doesn’t have emotions anymore. No fear,
no sadness. He doesn’t hesitate, he doesn’t regret his decisions, he just acts.
That’s why he loves poker so much, why he’s so good at it.”

“I hate poker.”

“Of course you
do, you hate lying. You wear your heart on your sleeve. Poker is all about
deception. People think ‘cuz there’s dice, it’s random. But it’s not. The odds
are always the same. And everyone knows that you bet high on a good hand, and
low on a bad one, so everyone tries to deceive you by doing the opposite. But
we all know that everybody knows, and so on. So in the end it’s the best liar
who wins, the person who can most convince you of the weakness of his roll.”

“He said that
Nash supports corporations…”

“That’s what all
corporate agents say,” she laughed. “He wasn’t against them, but he said that,
for the best success, trust had to be balanced equally with competition. Do you
trust
any
of your colleagues?”

The stitches on
my calf were neat, the bandages tight. Out in the wilds of LowCon were no
hospitals to speak of, and experience was the best first aid. They had their
own education.

“I’ve had
enough. I can’t go back. I’m done, Katherine. I can’t work for Ackerman
anymore.”

“I know, hon. I
know it’s hard. Just keep working there a little longer.”

“Longer? What on
earth do I need to go back there for? My life is a joke, it’s fake, and it
doesn’t mean anything! I’m never going back.”

“I know, I know.
But they own your futures. They’ll come after you.”

“Let them.
They’ll never find me here. If I cash everything out, move out here, I can drop
my ledger into a river and....”

“Charlie, you
can’t,” she cried.

“Oh, no. I
didn’t mean… I didn’t mean to presume I was going to come
here
. I can get my own place.”

“It’s fine if
you move in here with me. That’s not what I meant. You can’t quit Ackerman. Not
yet.”

“But you can
show me. I can steal water, grow food, you can teach me to survive.”

“You just
can’t,” she pleaded. “You have to keep working.”

“What are you
talking about?”

She clasped her
hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide and she began to cry.

“I can’t tell you,”
she said.

The woman who
had never been frightened by anything looked at me as if I were already dead,
as though my death was a certainty no one could avoid.

“What have you
done?” I said.

“It’s not me,
Charlie.”

“Your friends. Oh
my god, are they going to turn me in? I should have….”

“No, it’s not
them, Charlie, please!”

“Why can’t I
leave Ackerman?”

She still
refused to answer.

“I have to
leave. It doesn’t matter where I go, but I can’t stay there. You have to
understand that.”

She shook her
head. “It’s over, Charlie.”

“What? You’re
leaving me because I’m going to quit work?”

“No. Ackerman is
over. They’re through. Everybody is. Corporations, the world, it’s coming to an
end. It’s going to crash. It’s all over.”

I laughed.

She had gotten
me worked up over nothing. We had spent so much time in her world that I
sometimes forgot how little she knew about mine.

“There are
crashes all the time,” I said, reassuringly. “It’s a part of business.”

She fell to the
couch and held her head in her hands.

“No, you don’t
understand. Everything, the entire system. Every corporation, every
colleague—everything is going to go bankrupt.”

“Not everything.
Ackerman certainly won’t,” I chuckled. “They’re too big; they’re insulated from
problems like that. It’s called diversification. You may know governments, but
I know corporations, and I hate to tell you, but nothing is ever going to end
Ackerman.”

She choked and
shook her head. She couldn’t look me in the eye.

“They’re the
cause of the problem. And it’s not
going
to happen. It’s already happened. Ackerman is dead, they just don’t know it
yet.”

“Whoa, I was
there this morning. They’re fine. I don’t know what you think you know, or what
someone told you....”

“Nobody told me
anything.”

“I’m telling
you, it’s not possible.”

“I’m sure that’s
what governments thought—‘It’s a crash, like any other.’ But crashes get worse
each time. The people willing to risk or sacrifice the most will probably win,
and so the line of acceptable behavior moves closer and closer to mutually
assured destruction. Everyone keeps wagering more and more until everything is
leveraged, and then the system dies.”

“What are you
talking about?”

She breathed
deeply and began. “Ten years ago we had a really cold year, and ice began
encroaching into habitable land. Land prices shot up.”

“Yeah, but it
was an off year. The next year was warmer and the ice receded.”

“Yes, but land
prices never came back down. That initial increase sparked massive speculation
on the market. So many people were buying land that they artificially inflated
the price, fueling more speculation. I mean, land is real, right? Not like
paper money. So they thought it was a sure thing. Land prices got so high that
everybody wanted in on the boom, making the boom even larger. The reality of
how much land was actually available didn’t make a difference. People wanted it
because everybody else wanted it.

“Ackerman saw a
huge opportunity there. They got in early, and they got in big. They figured
out that if they put everything they had into land—that simply by investing in
land—they could cause the price to go up even more. It was like printing money.
Buying more land made the land they had more valuable.

“But that only
works if the prices keep going up, so they had to keep putting more money in
it. They started selling the futures of the land they were buying to buy even
more. They were taking out loans against property they didn’t even own yet.”

“Who on earth
would lend them the money to do that?”

“They’re Ackerman!
Who in their right mind thinks Ackerman can’t pay back a debt? It’s the largest
corp in human history. And when other people saw them doing this, they said,
‘Hey, no corp would be that stupid, they must know something we don’t!’ and
they all jumped on the bandwagon. The price of land went up four hundred
percent in three years.”

“I remember
this—the bubble burst after that. This all happened years ago,” I said. “If
Ackerman had actually done all of that, they’d have gone bankrupt.”

“They did.”

I waited, but
she didn’t say anything else.

“What do you
mean, they did?”

“Ackerman went
bankrupt about five years ago.”

“Kate, I work
there every day. I’m telling you, they’re financially sound. Christ, Ackerman
has the most solid financial foundation of any corporation in history.”

“That’s
Perception Management talking. Takashi knew that if people learned how bad
Ackerman had been hit, they’d make all their margin calls and Ackerman would be
wiped out. So he hid the debt, and just started kicking the can down the road.”

“You can’t hide
debt like that!”

“Sure you can.
Just keep moving it around.”

“Look, we may
have lost some money in real estate, but we’re a brokerage firm, and we’re
making record profits in Arbitrage.”

“That’s where
it’s hidden,” Kate said. “The entire debt is just washed out over the trading
floor. Takashi ordered trade quotas raised by fifty percent and gave huge
bonuses to anybody who doubled their previous earnings. Well, you can’t get
blood from a stone, so traders from Ackerman offices all over the world are
simply trading to each other. Ten million rolls of toilet paper in Guam are
sold to Ackerman offices in Paris, then to New
Washington, and then back to Guam. They get traded three times in one day and
never leave the warehouse, and all of those sales count as revenue coming in.
And the traders are all getting record commissions on these phantom trades.”

“But there would
be no real money coming in,” I said. “Somebody would have noticed that.”

“Nobody noticed
when they were doing the same thing with land. Money is coming in; it’s just
coming from future trades nobody’s yet made. On paper, every phantom trade
looks as though it brings in money. But in reality it costs the corporation
money in commissions and services. Since they didn’t have the money for a real
trade in the first place, they can’t pay for the phantom one, so every five
phantom trades executed this month requires another eight next month to pay
for. The trading floor doesn’t even do real trades anymore; they don’t have the
time for it. They’re the hardest working division in Ackerman and their only
job is to hide debt, to try to purchase fewer losses this month than they did
last.”

I couldn’t even
feel the gash in my leg or the cuts on my face. Her revelation was stronger than
any painkiller. I fell back into my chair.

“At this point
they’re just in a state of denial. They can’t fathom a world without Ackerman.
They really believe something will come to save them if they can hold off the
grim reaper just a little bit longer. They can’t believe that, collectively,
they’d do something that stupid, so they must not have. They figure that
someone has a way out of all this, that some colleague out there has a plan to
rescue them. So they keep gaming the system, get as much money before the
problem is fixed. Hey, they’re making so much on commissions that it can’t
possibly be wrong, right?”

“So Ackerman is
going to fail?”

“Yep.”

As the reality
set in, my fear melted, and I felt an overwhelming sense of joy. Everyone
thinks themselves above petty revenge, but there was justice in this. All those
people, everyone at Ackerman who thought themselves masters of the universe,
who bought and sold lives for pennies on the dollar, they were all about to be
taught one hell of a lesson.

“Why are you
smiling?”

“Don’t you see?
We’re going to be free! Ackerman can’t come after us if they’re bankrupt! This
is all the more reason to leave, get out while the getting’s good! This is
wonderful!”

“Oh my god,
Charlie, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.”

“I understand
perfectly! Ackerman can’t hurt us. This is great!”

“No. The problem
started in land. More than eighty percent of all corporations at the time had
something invested in real-estate, and probably a third of those were hit hard
enough by the correction to go bankrupt. Less than five percent of them
actually failed. So what the hell happened to the debt?”

“Well I don’t
know. But the corporations survived, so it must have gone somewhere.”

“Well, that’s
what you said about Ackerman. Every one of those corporations say that they
made all their money back. But if Ackerman—one of the most powerful
corporations in the world—couldn’t squeeze a dime out of the market to save
themselves, what makes you think any of the other corporations could?”