Nicola Griffith - Slow River

Why was he doing this? I considered, briefly, the Health and Safety Council, but once they found a reason to be interested in an operation, they investigated everything and everyone connected to it. I could not afford that.

I sweated in my skinny. The thick, humid air got thicker, more dificult to breathe. I felt trapped. The ache in my stomach reminded me of days with Spanner, unable to leave, unable to stay.

Paolo wore his rage like a cloak. He stumbled often, and seemed to be moving more slowly. While I was taking yet another set of readings, Hepple came across him in the far trough, struggling to balance a floating tray of rushes that needed rooting.

“Not there. Put them farther out, where they’ll do most good.”

Farther out was where the rushes were already most dense. Paolo shoved the tray ahead of him, shouldering aside the rushes, getting scratched. He took one of the stems from the tray, bent, came up again with the root still in his hand. He pushed the tray back toward the edge of the trough.

“Are you deliberately disobeying me, boy? I told you to plant these farther out.”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Couldn’t Hepple feel the rage and resentment burning behind Paolo’s blank expression?

“The water’s too deep. I can’t reach.”

“You mean, you’ll get your face wet if you try too hard.” Hepple smiled his soft-mouthed smile. “Get back out there and do it properly.”

The tendons along Paolo’s neck writhed like snakes.

“Well?” Hepple’s voice was dangerously pleasant.

Paolo turned the tray around, pushed it back out. Hepple watched. I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Sir!”

He turned. “Yes?”

“Sir, Health and Safety regulations state that at no time is an employee required to let contaminated water come into direct contact with his or her unprotected skin.”

“Is that so?”

I couldn’t afford to lose this job, but I couldn’t look at myself m the mirror if I stood by and let him do this to Paolo. “I just thought that for the good of the company you should be reminded, sir, in case something happened under your direct orders and Paolo decided to sue. Could be very damaging.”

“It could, it could.” He did not seem very perturbed. “Thank you for pointing that out.” He turned back to Paolo. “Mr. Cruz, all of a sudden I find that you are physically unsuited to your task. We should never have hired you in the first place. People like you always bring trouble. You’re fired. You can work the rest of the shift, then collect your pay at the office.” He nodded at him pleasantly, then at me. “Thank you once again, Bird.” Just like that, too fast for me to even think about it. He walked off, humming to himself.

Paolo’s face was the color of milky coffee gone cold in the cup. I didn’t know what to say. “Paolo, I’m sorry.”

But Paolo wasn’t listening. He was staring out at nothing in particular, and trembling all over. He walked toward the side of the trough. His mouth was moving. He climbed out, walked right past me, muttering through stiff lips. I had to lean in to hear him. He was repeating what Hepple had said: “People like you. People like you…”

“Paolo? Paolo, wait. Don’t leave. Just keep working here. I’ll get Magyar. We’ll sort it out. He can’t get away with this. He—”

Paolo turned; his eyes were completely black. “Yes, he can. People like that can get away with anything when it concerns people like me.” His voice shook, and now there was a twisty bitterness mixed in with the anger. It scared me.

“Just stay here. Don’t move.” I went straight to the monitoring station and called Magyar. “Hepple’s fired Paolo Cruz. No, nothing he’s done. You need to get here.” I was all ready to tell her I would talk to Kinnis and Cel and Meisener and all the others, that she would have a walkout on her hands if she didn’t come, but I didn’t need to.

“That’s it, Bird. You tell Cruz not to budge. I’ll be right there.”

Paolo was still standing near the trough, muttering. He did not seem to hear me when I called his name. I didn’t know what to do. I hesitated, then picked up some shears. At least I could keep an eye on him until Magyar got here. And I had my own work to do.

“Bird!” Magyar was talking and striding past me at the same time. “Come with me. Cruz, you stay right there.” I don’t think he even heard her.

I had to scramble out of the trough; she was not slowing down for anybody.

We found Hepple in the floor office, a clear-paned box twenty feet up with a view of the whole primary sector. He was sitting down, making notes on a slate. Magyar slammed the door open and was talking before Hepple had the time to sit up straight. “You have no right to fire one of my workers. Misconduct, if any, should have been reported to me, and I would have made the correct decision. You had no right to go over my head.” I stood slightly behind Magyar, surrounded by reflections in the glass walls.

Hepple and his reflection laid the slate aside, carefully, as though his conversation with Magyar would take only a minute and he did not want to lose his place. “He was insolent. We would have had to let him go anyway when we downsized the workforce.”

Magyar was momentarily thrown. “Downsizing? When was that decided?”

“This morning, I believe. So you see, it would have happened sooner or later.”

“Wait. Just wait a minute. I thought you had grand designs to expand this plant, increase the throughput.”

“I do, I do. But I persuaded the board that we don’t need as many people to achieve that goal.”

Magyar shook her head like a dog worrying a rabbit and I watched her reflection’s hair shimmer back and forth. “This was the wrong way to do it. You tormented that boy. If nothing else, common decency should…”

Common decency. The phrase rippled back and forth like the reflection of Magyar’s hair in the glass. She and Hepple were still talking, but I wasn’t listening anymore. Common decency… I finally remembered, finally realized what it was about Paolo and the way he moved that bothered me.

All my fault…

Guilt, mine, my family’s, stopped the breath in my lungs and pulled the muscles along my arms and legs rigid. But then fear—of him, for him, what he might do, all that bitterness—snapped me out of it.

“Sorry,” I said jerkily to the air, and reached blindly for the door.

Lore is fifteen. It is early March, and she is preparing to fly to Gdansk, where for the first time she will be assistant deputy project manager. An admin position, Katerine tells her, but a responsible one, nevertheless. Katerine will be taking charge personally.

Lore is up late the night before they fly, running over last-minute plans—so that she knows what is going on, so she won’t embarrass herself in front of Katerine, or Katerine in front of others—when the phone rings.

She accepts the call. “Tok!” He looks different, but at first Lore can’t pinpoint the change. Then she has it: his face has lost all trace of puppy fat. “How are you? It’s—”

“I’ve been talking to Stella,” he interrupts. “It’s true. All of it.”

“What—”

But he talks right over her. “Watch yourself. You might be next.”

Lore is glad to see him, glad to hear from him, but she remembers how he had fooled her for so many years. How he had never talked to her. How she felt betrayed when he left. And now he is being cryptic.

“I haven’t had any idea where you’ve been the last year or so, and now you…” She remembers she is fifteen; grown enough to take her first official job for the company. “It’s late,” she says, then—unable to help herself—bursts out, “Do you have any idea how badly you’ve hurt Mother”