Slow River

Lore put the camera to her shoulder and filmed. Her face ached and her cheek, wet with tears, chafed against the eyepiece, but she filmed for hours.

When Lore edited the film, she swapped around heads and bodies, or used library heads. She needed these images—they needed these images—to make films that would sell for enough to feed them, at least until summer, but she could not bring herself to use her friends without some kind of disguise.

Weeks later she got a call from Ruth. “You bastard.”

“What-”

“The film. I saw it. At a friend’s. You bastard.”

“Ruth… Ruth…”

“You think asking permission all nice and proper makes it right?”

“Ruth, I wanted to warn you-”

“I didn’t see any pictures of you,” Ruth cut in.

Yes, you did, Lore wanted to say. You’ve seen pictures of me in far more humiliating circumstances; and my abductors did not even have the courtesy to swap my head for another’s… And all of a sudden, Lore did not care. What did it matter that Ruth was upset? She, Lore, had been through much, much worse. Ellen had given permission of a sort, hadn’t she? And at least Ruth had enjoyed it while it was happening. Lore had not enjoyed one single minute of her ordeal.

She turned off the screen. Her mouth felt strange. She knew that if she looked in a mirror she would see her lip curling, like Spanner’s.

* * *

The first people into the breakroom were Meisener and Kinnis. Meisener flicked a look in my direction but said nothing. Maybe he’d heard something. Kinnis either had heard nothing or didn’t care. He went to the wall screen and V-handed the PIDA reader. He made a disgusted sound when the figures came up.

“Every month I check my wages—every month I hope someone somewhere made a mistake, or a program screwed up and I’ll be a billionaire. Every month it says I made seventeen hundred.”

“You should know better,” Cel said, sitting down to unwrap her food.

“Hey, Bird. You think I should know better. No, and I’ll tell you why. Hope is good for a person. You think I’d keep shoveling shit if I knew, really knew all I’d get was seventeen hundred?”

There were two other people waiting to use the reader to check their wages, so Kinnis moved aside. He sat between me and Meisener. “You got paid yet?” he asked Meisener.

“Na. Timed it all wrong. I’ll have to wait until next month now.”

“You?”

I blinked at him. Payday. Money. I nodded and joined the queue at the reader. Put my hand in when it was my turn, read the figures. Almost sixteen hundred. I had earned money, in my own right, without family help, without hurting anyone else. I drew my hand out and looked at it. I wondered if Paolo would get paid.

When I woke up the next morning the sun was bright and I lay in bed a few minutes, smiling. I was alive. I had the next two days off. I had been paid.

Sixteen hundred was not much, but it was manageable. I still had a chunk left from before—nine hundred, maybe—and the scam would net tens of thousands. I felt rich.

I took breakfast onto the roof and watched the clouds, the glints from the river. There were several barges on the water. I wondered what they were carrying today. Steel from Scunthorpe, maybe? I closed my eyes and let the breeze blow soft against my lids. People had been using the river for thousands of years. Wheat during Roman times. Clay before that. Maybe blue beads arid young, scared slaves; a tun of beer. And before then, in the days when boats were hollowed-out logs, scraped goatskins, dried fish from the coast, dyed feathers for a religious rite. What had the weather been like then, and how had the air smelled? Maybe life had been more simple. Maybe it was possible to sit high up every day of your life and just sniff the breeze. Maybe not.

When I climbed back through the window, the sun was shining full on the west wall, adding yellow to the already acidic green. Very ugly. I turned away from it, then turned back. This was my flat. I could change the color. I didn’t have to tell anyone, or ask, or take them into account. I could spray everything purple and orange if I wanted. I laughed, delighted. Mine.

Perhaps something neutral, alabaster or beige. Or linen. No, not warm enough. Maybe peach? The possibilities were overwhelming.

I sat down at the screen and pulled up the inventory of a couple of decorating shops. There were little tables that showed you how to work out how much paint you’d need. I did that. Decided I could afford it quite handily. Except I’d forgotten all the brushes and dustcloths and cleaning fluid and trays… I added it up again. Still manageable.

But then I looked at the walls again, at the kitchen, the bathroom, the steep stairway and complicated gables over the bed. I’d never picked up a brush or spray gun in my life. Where would I start?

Maybe Tom could help? But he was old. The only other people I knew were Spanner, and my shift at Hedon Road, and I couldn’t, wouldn’t, ask them.

Or there were Ruth and Ellen.