The Water Thief (21 page)

The sulfur was
already strong in the air, and the wind was picking up. I jogged to the main
thoroughfare, where I was able to flag down a cab.

I piled in.
Bernard’s face flashed on the driver’s terminal, but he didn’t bother to look
at it.

“Where to?”

“The Galt.”

The cab pulled
away and merged into the traffic. With any luck they’d be following the mail
cart for a little while.

I had a few
moments to myself, and that’s when I noticed the pain in my chest. I clutched
it, and once again reached for my pills, which I had long thrown out.

I’m not dying. It’s in your mind, push it
out.

I repeated it
over and over. Every panic attack feels as if it’s the last one, as if this
time it’s a real heart attack. I could see the sky, the open air, but somehow
felt like I was back at Allenhurst. I wondered if I was still there, under the
weight of the building. Maybe I had never gotten out, the years since just the
hallucinations of a dying man.

Am I alive?

I took deep
breaths. The running was over, and I’d be safe once I snuck into the Galt, at
least for a little while.

I certainly
didn’t want to go there—a public place. My first instinct was to head straight
to Kate’s. If anybody could hide me, she could.

But I had no
idea what Ackerman knew.

I had been
acting suspiciously for some time, giving Corbett, Bernard, and even Linus
reasons to report me.

 
If they knew about Kate, they might be waiting
there for me. If not, I could lead them there. Hopefully they were headed to
LowSec in force, trying to get there before I warned her. With some luck, they
would draw enough attention that Kate and her friends could all escape to the
vault, where nobody would see or hear from them for half a century.

And that was the
rosiest end I could imagine.

Retention could
have paid Bernard to drop a fake report in my lap, on the off chance they might
make some cash, especially if they were already wary of me. But it could have
been far simpler than that. Maybe they’d disseminated hundreds of fake Aisling
reports across the territory, and then set up a rental office to see who stops
by.

The plot seemed
too intricate, too complicated. No doubt that’s what Evans thought.

I arrived at the
Galt. I figured Bernard could pay for expedited service, and I passed through
security almost immediately.

I sat at a computer
terminal and began looking up my futures. If they had been going down steadily
over the last week or so, I might have a reason to hope. But if they fell
immediately after meeting Kate, my fate was pretty much sealed. I got into the
Ackerman database just fine, but all of my records had been restricted, and
Bernard’s ledger didn’t have nearly enough credit to get around it.

I leaned back in
my chair. If they hadn’t figured out by now that I had his ledger, they would
soon.

Then I
remembered the phantom trades.

If everything
had been a setup from the very beginning, I could live with that. I’d be
reclamated for sure, but that would be fine. It was the not knowing that was
tearing me up. I could live with the lie. I couldn’t live with the doubt.

If I could find
the phantom trades, then the world was coming to an end, but Kate had been
real, and she might have escaped. If they weren’t real, then there was no
collapse, no Republic, no citizens—just the diabolically brilliant minds of
Ackerman Retention, a species of man that could both love their corporation
while at the same time lambast the absurdity and hypocrisy of it all.

I began poring
over Ackerman’s trading records, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It
was encrypted in the language of arbitrage, a cipher I couldn’t read. I began
printing as many of the records as I could. I needed a professional trader.

I was packing up
the printouts when two security guards approached me. I gritted my teeth. I
couldn’t see any weapons on them, but they’d be armed. There was no running for
it; security could lock the entire building down in a second.

“Mr. Thatcher?”

I didn’t say
anything.

“Mr. Thatcher,
the Director of Community Relations would like to speak with you.”

I stood in a tall,
octagonal chamber. Thirty-foot-high cherry wood bookcases with wrought iron
railings lined the walls. Ornate red and gold drapes hung from the ceiling and
over the windows. In the center of the room at cherry desk, sat a kindly
looking man wearing reading glasses. He looked up from his report and smiled
courteously.

“Mr. Thatcher,
good afternoon,” he said, standing to shake my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet
you.”

I didn’t reply.

“I’m sorry to
inconvenience you,” he continued, “but I’m afraid we have a bit of a problem.
We’ve been contacted by the Ackerman Brothers Securities and Investments firm.
It appears that they want you on suspicion of several crimes committed against
them.”

I looked down at
the floor. He had nice shoes.

“They believe
you are in the building, and requested that we hand you over to them.”

“I see.”

“Indeed. Now,
I’m sure that this is all a misunderstanding between you and the firm, and that
you’re as eager as anyone to see it all cleared up. But it’s our policy never
to hand clients over to anyone.”

I looked up at
him.

“Now, they
charge that you have taken the ledger of a colleague, a Mr. Bernard Milton.
Indeed, that is the ledger you used to get into the building. They have not
deactivated it, presumably so they can track you.”

“I see.”

“Quite. Now by
whatever circumstances you came into possession of that ledger, I’m sure that
they were legitimate. Nevertheless, its funds are limited, and once you can no
longer afford to stay in this building, we will have to ask you to leave.”

Neither he nor
the guards seemed hesitant, or in the slightest bit nervous, which troubled me.

“Okay.”

“Very well. Now
that we understand the situation, let me tell you what we can offer you. We
have several secret escape routes for just such an occasion. They are terribly
expensive, far more than you can afford at present.”

“I would assume
so.”

“However, this
ledger may have a significant line of credit. If so, you would be able to
purchase the use of one of our tunnels, and we would guarantee you safe passage
out of here.”

I scoffed. He
must have thought I was a noob.

“They’ll know
you let me escape.”

“What they’ll
know and what they can prove to the Karitzu are two different things. We’ll
claim you used the funds to bide your time while you escaped with Waste
Management.”

“Why do you need
me? Why not just take the money from the ledger yourself?”

“A forensic
analysis of the ledger could lead them to the physical person who used it. If
you’re the person taking out the loan, then we are not a party to any crime.”

I chuckled. They
did
know what they were doing.

“They’ll never
let you keep Bernard’s money,” I said.

“They have no
choice. Karitzu regulations on this are clear. The theft is considered to be of
the ledger and the funds, Mr. Thatcher, not of our services. We will tell them
that we charged the ledger in good faith. Since Ackerman failed to disable the
ledger, the liability is theirs.”

I looked at both
the guards for some form of guidance or signal, but they were motionless, like
statues, leaving the director and me alone in the room.

“Why would you
help me?”

“I’m not. This
is merely a service we provide. If you can’t obtain the loan, or if the funds
are insufficient, you will obviously be unable to avail yourself of it.”

“How can I trust
you’ll do what you say?”

“We’re a
reputable firm, Mr. Thatcher. The Karitzu might be filled with crime and
corruption, and I’ve no doubt Ackerman is. But the Galt prides itself on
honesty and dependability.”

This from a man
looking to rip off Ackerman for as much as a hundred thousand caps.

“We’ve never
turned over a customer’s records or violated a contract. This is my contract
with you.”

I’d have had a
hard time knowing what to do even with time to decide. But every second we
spoke, funds were draining from Bernard’s ledger.

I pulled out the
tablet and began racking up loans, liquidating everything I could. Then I
handed the device to the director. He swiped his card and tapped out a charge.

He watched,
indifferently, as the transaction processed. Finally it bleated.

“Very good, Mr.
Thatcher. I have a hundred caps for you, cash. That should help. We’ll be
keeping the ledger for Ackerman Brothers. My agent, Mr. Thompson, will take you
to the tunnels. I wish you the best of luck. We appreciate your business.”

Mr. Thompson
came out and motioned down a circular metal staircase and into a small room
with a large vault door. He entered a code at the control panel, and a red
light began to spin and a siren wailed.

I watched as a
long forked arm came out, traveled along the wall and locked onto a pinion. The
locks disengaged, the door popped off its mount, and the arm began rolling back
into the wall. Behind where the door had been was a dark cavern.

“Thank you
again, Mr. Thatcher.”

I stepped into
the rocky tunnel. The alarm wailed again, and the door slowly locked back into
place behind me.

It was slow
going. I was blind, no source of light at all. I stumbled along, using the cave
walls for support. Even a single trip could be disastrous, I could lose my
sense of direction and find myself headed back where I came from.

After a while I
noticed a slight upward slope. I came to a huge metal grate wall, a jagged hole
in it as if it had been blasted out. A faint light emanated from a manhole
cover in the ceiling just beyond it. I climbed through the wall and into an
underground structure. It was monstrous, wide enough for two cars. I walked
down it, finding a manhole every couple hundred yards.

I traveled that
way for two miles until I hit a dead end. It was a wall, and while it was pitch
black, I was pretty sure that the wall was solid.

I wondered if I
had missed a turn somewhere, or if this escape route was a trap. Maybe I was
one of dozens of people sent down there to die. But feeling along I found a
hatch. I opened it to find a small, dimly lit chamber. I climbed through, and
the hatch fell closed behind me, locking shut.

The chamber was
just big enough to hold an iron ladder. I climbed up and through another hatch,
finding myself in a brick room with landscaping implements and a door. I
stepped out of a maintenance shed in the middle of Browning Park.

I half-expected
lights and sirens as I exited the building, but it was quiet. I felt alone,
free. I had no ledger, mine or anyone else’s, and for the first time in my
life, nobody knew where I was.

The weather was
getting pretty wild by now. The park, littered with twigs and smaller branches,
was empty.

I hailed a taxi,
but only had enough cash to get about two-thirds of the way to Linus’ house. I
walked the rest of the way, clutching the papers to my chest against the wind
and rain. Darkness had fallen by the time I arrived at Ackerman’s wealthy Red
Oaks district and found Linus’ home.

The wind was
howling through the trees and branches were falling everywhere. All of the homes
had lowered steel shutters over the windows and were powered from buried power
lines or by generators. Like my first trip to LowSec, I didn’t see a soul. The
place looked abandoned. At least I didn’t see any sign of police either. But
they’d come. When, of course, depended on the severity of the charges against
me. It was a bad storm, and with any luck Ackerman had more urgent matters than
staking out every possible place I could go.

I rang the bell.
Linus opened the door with a look of shock on his face—something I had never
seen before.

“Charles, my
god! You’re soaking wet! How long have you been out there?”

“I walked.”

“From your
office? You shouldn’t be out in this weather. I’d have loaned you the money if
you needed cab.”

“No, no.
Something came up.”

“Well, come in,
make yourself at home. Take off your coat, let it dry. The rack is over there.
My god, why didn’t you at least wear a hat?”

“It doesn’t
matter.”

“There’s a storm
coming—it’s quite big. This is just the beginning. We’re going to see some
significant damage; roofs torn off, power lines out, the works. You should have
waited until tomorrow.”

“I can pay you a
thousand caps for an hour. I need you to review some documents.”

“Now? You’re
joking? You really want to spend a grand?”

I handed him the
records. He held them away from him in disgust.

“These are
soaked, I can barely read them. Most of them are completely ruined.”

“A few of the
pages are legible. I need you to go over them.”

“What am I
looking for?”

“Anything out of
the ordinary. Maybe… well, I don’t...”

I stopped
talking and began looking around the room.

“Oh,” Linus
said, picking his drink up off the table. “Don’t worry, I acquired a privacy
clause in my contract when I became a Gamma. Ackerman can’t tap my home without
a warrant issued by a Karitzu circuit judge, and I have it swept for bugs twice
a day anyway—there are some downright unscrupulous corps out there. Without
privacy, I wouldn’t be able to get
anything
done.”

The door was
right behind me, I could still make a break for it. I caught myself thinking
how strange it would look if I just ran out of the house, but how it looked
could be the least of my problems. I might well have made a mistake, coming to
Linus’—of course I knew that. But he was the only person I knew who could give
me an answer. If the price was getting caught, I was willing to pay it.