Slow River

“To the courts and the medical industry, to those rich people who caused all this in the first place, I’m one of the disposable masses. Not even wholly human.” He thrust his arm at me. “Feel that.”

“Feel it!”

It was soft and warm and dry. Pleasant.

“Just once, I thought, just once I wanted to be someone to those people, those Hepples and van de Oests. If I killed myself here, if my body fell into the water, they would have to turn everything off. They’d lose money. They would know who I was, me, Paolo Cruz, the man made of plastic.”

I did not know how to tell him that all his death would have accomplished was a minor inconvenience to this shift: his corpse would have been caught on the sieves, easily fished out, and the blood would only have provided more food for the microbes. Unless, of course, he’d thrown in his prostheses, which might have been tough enough to foul the machinery.

We were quiet for a while, then I stood up. “Are you coming back to work? Maybe Magyar will find a way to get your job back.”

“No. I don’t want to be a nobody in this place anymore.”

“But with what I’m teaching you, you could…” I shut up. I could not give him self-esteem. That was something he had to find for himself.

“What will you do?”

“I’ll think of something.” He smiled humorlessly, walked over to the doorway marked Emergency Exit, and opened it. Alarms rang. “I hope Hepple thinks all the pipes have burst.”

He left without a backward glance. After a moment, I closed the door behind him. The alarms shut off abruptly.

When I got back to the troughs, I found it had only been twenty minutes since I had gone with Magyar to Hepple’s office. I went about my work mechanically.

Magyar appeared. She was hushed. “Who used that door?” She looked around. “Cruz?”

“He’s gone.”

She swore. “And I got him his job back, too.”

“I told him you would.” Though I hadn’t believed it. “How did you manage it?”

“I put myself on the line, just confronting Hepple.” She was trying to explain something. “I took a few risks. I put you on the line, too.”

I suddenly felt very tired. “What have you done?”

“I told him he couldn’t fire Cruz on such shaky grounds, especially since a government employee had witnessed the whole affair.”

“You told him-”

Magyar’s eyes gleamed. “I didn’t actually say anything straight out, just hinted around. And then he said something about you spouting regulations at him, and got thoughtful. Then he said that, yes, maybe he had been hasty, and the downsizing would have to be looked at carefully and systematically. So Paolo is back in. Or would have been. And Hepple thinks we’ve got his balls in a press, so everything’s back to normal.”

It wasn’t. It never would be, not when I kept seeing that slack, empty look in Paolo’s eyes, hearing him say I am nothing.

“What’s the matter? I mean, I didn’t expect handsprings, but thanks wouldn’t be out of order. Or are you just upset that I told Hepple you weren’t quite who you seem to be? Which is something we still haven’t cleared up.”

“I’m not a government employee,” I said wearily. “I’m not after your job. I don’t mean anyone any harm at all. I’m glad you wanted to help Paolo, but as you can see, it’s too late. All I want…” I felt dizzy for a minute. “I want…” I wanted to tell her that all I wanted was to do my job and be left alone, but I found myself crying. “He tried to kill himself. He took off his… and the razor…”

Magyar took my arm tightly. I thought she was worried I would fall into the trough, or run amok, or something, but she just said, “Don’t rub your eyes. You don’t know what’s on your hands.”

Very sensible. And then she was walking me somewhere while I rambled on about Paolo and his limbs and how he had tried to kill himself. I found we were in the breakroom. She made me wash my hands, then gave me a towel. Neither of us spoke. The eerie sense of deja vu hit me, and I laughed.

“I wonder if Paolo felt like this when I was taking away his razor,” I explained. “As though he was about five years old and being humored by a wise, kind person.” And then I felt embarrassed.

She didn’t launch into a denial. Of course she was humoring me. That’s what you did with someone in distress. You patted them on the head, told them everything was fine, and waited for them to get back up to speed with reality.

I sighed. “We should get back.”

Magyar looked at her watch. “Are you up to date in your readings for Hepple? Good. Then you may as well stay here. We break in ten minutes.”

She seemed relieved to get away.

* * *

Lore woke up. It was five in the morning. She pulled a blanket around her shoulders and stumbled out of bed.

Spanner was at the workbench. Lore watched as she picked up a pair of delicate tweezers and opened up a PIDA, touched something inside, then inserted it into her box. She flipped it shut, hummed to herself at the readout, tapped a few keys.

“You’re very good at that,” Lore said.

“I know.” Spanner turned. “What gets you out of bed at this hour?”