Slow River

“What do you mean, we didn’t pay your ransom? Of course we did. Greta handled it. She told me so personally.”

“Greta,” I said. “Greta. Good old gray Greta. Greta will get the job done. Give it to Greta.” I hardly recognized my own voice, it was so twisted up. Oster looked sick. “Don’t you like who I’ve become, Papa? I’ve been through some hard times, staying alive. But I’m not a bad person. I don’t hide from the truth.” You’re doing it again, hiding from things, Magyar had said. Well, not anymore. “Let me tell you some things about Greta, Papa. Are you listening? Because I will follow you and speak until you do hear. Gray Greta, efficient Greta, is running a group like Jerome’s Boys.”

“But-”

I was implacable. “One of them, who goes by the name of Nathan Meisener, was almost responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people. I could have been one of them. And she’s risking the deaths of thousands every day. She had me kidnapped. Yes, my own sister. She probably kidnapped Lucas Chen.”

Oster looked bewildered.

“You’re not asking why, Papa, but I’ll tell you. She took me because I was an easy target. And she saw me as being the favorite, of you and Katerine. Maybe you would both pay the ransom. And she needed the money, because she needs to control things, have secrets, secret power. Only she didn’t know what to do when Tok started making the accusations.

Everything got confused. Maybe she thought Tok knew about her. Maybe she panicked and tried to get rid of me: I stopped being a person and became a liability. People aren’t real to her. Why? Because my mother made her crazy.” I was trembling with rage, only now it was not only at Oster but at Katerine. Katerine, who had ruined the lives of untold people. Who had nearly ruined mine. Katerine.

“Where is she?”

“What?”

“Katerine. Where is she” Where did you send her? She’s not in jail. It would have been on the net.”

“Tok said we should get the police. But I couldn’t. She’s your mother.”

She’s a monster. “She should be in jail.”

“I couldn’t…” He seemed unwilling to continue. I just waited. I was scared, I realized. What if she was somewhere nearby?

“Don’t you see? Not having control, not knowing what was going on hurt her.” Not enough. Not nearly enough to make up for Stella, and Tok, and me, and Lucas Chen. “I made her leave. Divorced her. Divested her of her holdings.” It all sounded impossibly military, like a court-martial. “She’s watched. We get reports…”

He trailed off. I had a sudden, sickening feeling in my stomach. “Who sees to the reports?”

“Greta.”

Greta. She was everywhere.

Oster was still talking to me. “… don’t understand why she would want to hurt you. She’s your sister. Are you… are you sure?”

He was hunched up, like a dog expecting a kick, I felt sorry for him. “I’m sure. And I don’t think she does want to hurt people. She doesn’t think about that. What she’s thinking about is the family. The business. Control. The patents, the intellectual property, the profits. It’s her life. The way she’s found to not think about being small and held down by her sweating, crying mother…” I was the one who was crying. Greta, who had got me a lock. My mother, lost…

He stared at me. His eyes were bright with city lights. “How do you know all this?”

“Oh, Papa, you are the one who should have known!”

He reached out and touched my tears, found a handkerchief. “We can’t be everywhere, and know everything at once,” he said sadly.

But you didn’t even try! He had removed himself from the responsibilities of ownership, He had been happy to leave it all to his wife and her family. He had delegated himself right out of the command chain, and gone off in his boat to count endangered fish.

“The business carries your name. You’re responsible.”

I didn’t know how to make him understand. I met a man called Paolo, I wanted to say, whose life is ruined because you didn’t care enough to oversee the business. The money comes in, and you take it, you don’t care how it’s made, you don’t care that we still rake in tithes on every patent use, that we preside over a monopoly that we don’t need anymore. We already have so much money we don’t know what to do with it.

But even when I was seven years old I had known he preferred to leave the real work to others. He wasn’t a termite on the forest floor, organizing the building; he was a brightly colored bird soaring up, up above the canopy, unconcerned with what went on below, as long as the sun still shone and there was nectar in the orchids.

There was too much for me to explain, and I didn’t have time.

“I have something to do tonight,” I said. “Something that won’t wait. I’ve made a tape. I’ll give it to you. You must make Greta give back Lucas Chen.” I hesitated, then decided not to threaten him with taking it to the police, making the whole sordid business public. “And I want your help. I want you to speed up the formal reclaiming of my identity. I want a copy of my PIDA.”