Nicola Griffith - Slow River

Spanner squinted at the rising sun, sipped from her coffee. “So,” she said casually, “do you want me to tell you when I’m doing it, next time?”

Next time.

Lore watched the sparkle of morning sunlight on the river. It looked so bright, so optimistic, on the surface. But underneath there were river reeds, and pikes to eat smaller fish, and the rich river mud was made of dead things, including the bones of thousands of people.

Next time. “There’s no sign of business improving?”

“No.” Spanner waited for a waiter to refill her coffee. “This is more profitable, anyway.”

How many times had the river accepted victims? The river did not care whether those who slid under its surface were women or men, victims of murder or heroes trying to save a drowning child. It was all the same to the river. Death was all the same. Just as it did not matter what kind of person Lore felt she was inside: if there were many more times like last night, she would become someone else, someone who did those things.

But Spanner and the temporary fake PIDAs were all that held the implacable, uncaring river of her past from pouring in on her head. With Spanner she might drown; without her, she certainly would.

The message tone woke me minutes after I had gone to bed.

“Lore? Ruth. I heard about the plant. Are you all right.” I staggered out of bed. “I’m here.” I found the ACCEPT button. “I’m fine.”

“Oh. I woke you. Sorry.”

“It’s all right. What time is it?”

“Half past four. Listen, about Spanner.” I sat up straighter. “Ellen’s been with her. She called and left a message saying the medic’s been back and there’s no infection. Ellen seems to think the pain’s still pretty bad, though. Do you know what happened?”

“No.” If Spanner hadn’t told them, it wasn’t my place. Maybe one day. I was too tired to care if my lies were convincing.

“Well,” Ruth said uncertainly, “I’ll let you get back to sleep. You look exhausted.”

“Thanks. And thanks for calling.” I meant it. It was good to have someone who cared.

I was dreaming about a fire when the screen woke me again. This time it was Magyar. She must have got my number from the records.

“Hey, Bird, you there?”

“I’m here.” I scrubbed my eyes. “Time is it?”

“After five. They’ve just let me out. Kept asking me over and over what had gone wrong. And how I’d known how to fix it.”

“You didn’t tell them?”

“I told them part of the truth: that I’d been reading the manual a lot lately because I was worried that Hepple’s idiotic games were going to hurt the plant somehow.”

“What did they say?”

She laughed. “Not much. Then they sent Hepple from the room.”

“He was there?”

“Not for long.” When she smiled her eyes wrinkled upward, like a cat’s. She stretched. “I feel good, Bird. I don’t think he’s going to work in this city again.”

“You told them about the bugs, the nutrients?”

“Everything.” She yawned. “Thought you’d like to know: Someone from the command-post staff, the documentation people, said they’ve traced the spill upline to some off road drainage in the north of the county. Well away from any manufacturing complex and off the usual transport routes. The official opinion is fly dumping.”

“Right.”

She nodded. “As far as I’m concerned, this was planned.” She yawned again. “Before I forget, tomorrow’s shift is twelve hours: four till four. With overlap.”

“That’ll be fun.” I tried to imagine the chaos of overlapping shifts, with both shifts overtired and irritable.

“Yeah. But the pay’s good: time and a half for the whole twelve hours.” Another yawn. “Gotta go. Those leeches sucked me dry. You’d think it was my fault things went wrong. ‘So tell us again why you think the glucose line malfunctioned, Cherry.’ Over and over. Jesus. And I hate it when they call me Cherry.” She reached to the side to cut the transmission, then stopped. “I didn’t tell you earlier, Bird, but I think between us we did a good job. It was hard to not tell them what you did. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do.”

“Good, because it’s too late to change your mind without making me look like an idiot. I’ll see you at the beginning of the shift.”

No one had ever said to me before, See you later, at work.

When Lore gets back to her suite after swimming with Sarah, she is exhausted and has the faint beginnings of a hangover. The light on her screen is red: she has a message. She ignores it. All she wants is a shower and several hours’ sleep.

She is climbing into bed when the phone chimes. It takes her a moment to recognize the family-emergency override tone. She drags the sheet from. her bed to wrap up in.

“Yes?”

“Lore… Lore…” The screen remains blank and whoever has called her is sobbing. “Lore…”

“Tok? Tok, is that you?” The screen suddenly flashes into color: Tok’s face is swollen and ravaged with grief.

“She’s dead. Those bastards. Oh, Lore, she’s dead…” He says more, but his tears thicken the words beyond sense.

“Tok, please.” Who was dead? “Take some deep breaths. Tell me—”

“She was trying. God, she was… She killed herself, Lore. Can you imagine that? Feeling so bad you don’t want to wake up ever again and eat breakfast, you don’t want to look up ever again and see tiny white clouds in the sky. Just wanting to forget. That bastard. She…” More weeping.

Lore’s heart feels so big she can hardly breathe. “Tok, who’s dead?”

Tok looks up, astonished. “Stella. She killed herself. She…”

Lore does not hear the rest. She is flooded with relief that it is not Katerine. Tok is looking at her. “Why? Why did she kill herself?”

“Because of what that monster did to her. Almost every night. She only started therapy six months ago, Lore. She was finally facing it. But then I think it just got too much, I think she looked ahead and saw this thing, this black swamp inside her, this cloud that looked like it would stain her life forever, and couldn’t face it. Well, I can face it. I’m going to make that monster pay. Come back home, Lore, wherever you are. I need you. We’ll do this together.”

Lore just looks at him, horrified. What is he talking about?

“I’ll contact you in a day or two, tell you where I am. I’m going to put a stop to it. This has gone on too long.” He reaches to the side and his picture blips out.

Lore stares at the blank screen, unable to move. What is he talking about? Stella is dead. What does he mean? Who is the monsters. A quick image of Greta and a locksmith glide through her memory. She shakes her head. Stella is dead. She has a sudden image of Stella and her friends standing around the net screen, drinks in hand, vying to send money to some amateur charity. Stella is dead.

She does not know how long she sits there, but when someone knocks at the door and she gets up, she finds she is stiff. She expects Sarah, and opens the door without checking the peephole.

Two masked figures burst in. One takes her arms and the other points something at her face. There is a funny smell, and the floor comes up to hit her.

I opened my eyes again at eleven in the morning and thought it was the message tone that had awakened me. I was halfway out of bed before I realized it was the door.

Someone was knocking on my door.

This was the first time since I had lived alone that anyone had knocked. It made me think of Uruguay.

“Hold on.” I found a shirt, padded to the door. “Who is it?”