Nicola Griffith - Slow River

“Is that why Stella dyes her hair? To stop the cancer?”

“No. Stel changes her colors because she wants to. Like your mother changes the color of her contact lenses.” He smiles and ruffles her hair, the hair he has just brushed. Lore pats it back down. “She doesn’t have to, none of our family do, because Grandmama van de Oest was so rich she could have genetic treatment—do you understand what genetic treatment is?” Lore nods, even though she doesn’t. He is crossing and uncrossing his legs, which means he is getting restless. “She had genetic treatment against cancer. It’s very, very expensive, and it takes a long time, and it hurts.”

“Then why did she do it?”

“Because she was stupid and too rich. She—”

“Does that mean we’re too rich?”

He looks at her for a long moment, his blue eyes still. “I suppose it does.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and Lore has to prompt him. “So Grandmama pays a lot of money for the cancer stuff…”

“Yes. And then she paid a lot more money to have her genes fixed so that all her children would have gray hair and the anticancer protection. Her way of saying to the world, look, I’m so rich I can afford to have this expensive anticancer treatment so I don’t need to care about having gray hair. And, like a lot of stupid and wasteful things, it became fashionable. Which is why your mother has gray hair, too.”

Lore sits up in bed so she can see herself in the mirror on the dresser. She turns her head this way and that, touches her gray hair. “Can we turn the gene back on?”

“Yes, but it won’t make any difference to you, Only your children.” He holds the covers, waiting for her to slide back down.

“Why didn’t you turn it back on?”

“I did, but your mother didn’t. She wanted you to have all the visible trappings of the rich and powerful. As she said to me at the time, you can always dye it. Now lie down.”

Lore does. “What color am I supposed to dye it?”

“Any color you like.” He goes to the window and pulls the curtains closed.

Lore frowns at his back. “But how will I know which color is the right one?”

Right, wrong; on, off, yes, no. She is used to black-and-whites, but at seven Lore is suddenly realizing she can make of herself what she wills. When she is old enough she can have red hair or golden eyebrows or hot, dark lashes like spiders’ legs. And no one will tell her she is wrong, because no one will know. She could become anyone she wishes. But how will she know she is still herself?

She stays awake a long time, thinking about it. How does Stel know who she is if every time she stands in front of a mirror, she looks different? Before she falls asleep, Lore resolves that she will never, ever dye her hair.

I knocked, the two short, three long taps we used to use. Spanner opened the door. Her eyes were gummy and vague.

“We agreed I’d come here. Yesterday. In the bar.”

“Right.” She let me in.

I noticed the changes immediately. It was not just that someone else had been living there for a time—the different smells of soap and shampoo left behind in the bathroom, the exotic spices half-used on the shelf over the microwave—it was other things. We had never kept the place scrupulously tidy but it had felt alive and cared for. Now the worn places in the rug were dark with ground-in dirt and several plants were brown and curling. The plastic eyes of the power points were dull and cold and the equipment on the bench was covered in dust. I tried not to think about how she must have been supporting herself the last few months.

I couldn’t help glancing at the bench again. She noticed, of course, and laughed the laugh I had first heard a few months before I left, the ugly one. “Don’t worry. I haven’t lost my touch.” She ran her fingers through her hair, and the familiarity of the gesture here, in this flat, almost gave me vertigo.

“Let me see the PIDA.”

I handed over the baggie. “It’s sterile.”

Spanner carried it over to the bench. She took off covers, Ripped a couple of switches, then pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves, took the PIDA out of the bag, and slid it into the reader. She scanned the information that came on-screen. “How much detail do you want?”

“Not much for now. Change the fingerprint ID and physical description to start with. And add my middle name, of course.”

She nodded. “Less is better.”

It was as though that single sentence had been echoing in the flat for nearly three years, as though I had somehow just stepped out for a while and stepped back in to hear it once again. Less is better. If only she had kept to that axiom. I wanted to grab the PIDA, leave the flat, and never come back, but I did not know anyone else who could do this for me. At least, not anyone as good as Spanner. As Spanner used to be. “I have the fingerprints ready to go.”

“Let’s have those, too. You’ve used them to open an account?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. You remember some things, then, despite your distaste.”

I sighed and pulled a list from my pocket. “Here are the things I want. Her education and employment background are fine for now—unless someone wants to pay for an extensive backcheck.”

Spanner just nodded for me to put the paper down on the tabletop by the screen. “You could make us some coffee.”

I went into the kitchen, put on the coffee, and opened the cupboard under the sink. The watering can was still there.

Most of the plants around the flat were beyond revival. I watered them anyway. I stopped by one pot for a long time. When I had bought the cheese plant for her it had been just over four feet tall. When I left it had been nearly six, the leaves as big and glossy as heavily glazed dinner plates. And now the cheese plant was dying, the edges of its leaves yellow and parchment thin, the trailing aerial roots hanging like the shriveled skins of snakes.

“Put it on the table,” she said when I brought out the coffee. “I’m just about done here.”

I sat, and after a minute she joined me. It felt very strange to be sharing the same couch.

“So. Payment.”

“Yes,” I said, and waited.

“That scam you were so keen on a few months ago. The net ads for charity. Think it’s still possible?”

“I can make the film, and it’ll bring in money. Can you do the rest?” I deliberately didn’t look at the dust on the bench.

“No problem.” She made a dismissive gesture. “The hard part is going to be start-up costs.”

“I’ve got nothing left. Not to speak of.” I wondered briefly what it would be like to get a paycheck. Another three weeks to wait for that.

“I’ll provide start-up, then, on condition that it comes out of the pot before we divide it.”

“Fifty-fifty?”

She laughed. “You already owe me, remember? Seventy-thirty.”

“Sixty-forty.” I didn’t care about the money. All I wanted was the PIDA. I was bargaining because Spanner would think me weak if I didn’t. I wondered how dangerous her creditors were, and how much she owed them.

“Sixty-forty, then.” She didn’t bother to hold out her hand. I wasn’t sure what I would have done if she had.

“How long?”

“I’ll need to work out what equipment we need. And then I’ll have to find it. Hyn and Zimmer should be able to help.”

I stood. There was no point talking further until we found out about equipment. “I know the way out.”

I walked back to my flat, thinking about Spanner and her dying plants.

Trees are not delicate. You can do all kinds of things to a fully grown tree—drench it in acid rain and infest it with parasites, carve initials in its bark and split branch from trunk—and it will survive. It is not presence but absence that will kill a tree. Take away its sunshine and it will stretch vainly upward, groping, growing etiolated, spindly beyond belief, and die. Take away its water and its leaves wrinkle, become transparent, and fall.