Earth Thirst (13 page)

She was an up-and-coming investigative reporter for one of the network affiliates in Boston. Too brash for an anchor job, she preferred the deep research, investigative exposé—building a story, chasing down witnesses, and packaging it all together in five-minute segments that would be doled out over successive nights in the heart of the prime time news slot. The New York and Los Angeles markets were already sniffing around, and she was on the shit-list of more than one lobbyist group in D.C. Meredith Vanderhaven was going places; it was just a matter of time. Organized crime and double-speaking politicos in the Boston area could not wait for her to move on.

It didn't matter if she was chasing the money trail of city-wide construction contracts gone horribly over-budget, or the social media scandals of city government candidates who didn't understand the first rule of texting sexually explicit pictures, or the byzantine backroom dealings of the fulsomely corrupt city government, she dug into it all with the same tenacity. But Big Ag could turn her head quicker than anything else, and it had been her story about the cattle conditions at Hachette Falls that had caught Arcadia's attention.

A family-owned cattle ranch, Hachette Falls was two generations past its sell-date. The current operator was half again as unconcerned about the quality of the meat coming out of the Hachette slaughterhouse as his father had been, and as a result, the stockyards were beyond inhumane. Downer cows and electric prods were the order of the day, and the workers were masters at spotting the signs of brain damage and virulent distress in the herd. They knew how to shock the sluggish cows right into the chute.

Mere got a video camera on site and her clandestine video footage was story enough, but what made her story pop was the arrogant indifference of Hachette senior management, especially in light of government subsidies the company was receiving for being a test farm for a new GMO-based additive in the feed. The product was made by a miniscule biotech that was getting inordinate handouts from the same government program—collusion of the most scandalous sort. The biotech company disappeared within days of Mere's footage finding its way onto the Internet. No mere trick there.

It was as if, having seen the presence of the Devil, Mere was now a true believer, a crusading convert, who would face any hardship in her relentless quest to hunt Old Scratch down, to purge his influence off the surface of the planet. Hachette's BSE haven was almost forgotten in her zeal to track the influence. The money was easy—right out of D.C.—what was harder was finding out who pulled strings to get the cash flowing the way it had been. And who had the power to make a company of twelve suddenly disappear.

Her search led her to Beering Foods, a subsidiary of a subsidiary who made patties from the ground chuck that came out of Hachette Falls. They were part of a resurgence on a community level to buy and eat local, though the community was clearly oblivious to the corporate chain behind Beering. They were equally oblivious—for different reasons—to Beering's black market channel of organ trafficking. This channel was run by a bunch of Chechens who had been schooled in modern international business by “retired” officers of the pre-Glasnost Russian secret police.

A fun bunch and Mere, having reported from the floor of a recent Republican National Convention, was a little too fearless for her own good. Arcadia was watching Mere's progress, and it was my job to steer her toward a data cache that would crack Beering open and force the FDA—who had been trying their best to look away as they counted their payoff—to step in and shut the company down. A shutdown that would have included the backroom organ-legging. The Chechens would have rolled up their shop and gone somewhere else—which was victory enough for the time being—but Mere wanted more—she wanted to expose the whole operation.

Illytch Dmitri Kirkov had a different idea. One that involved a private conversation about some of the more exotic interrogation techniques he had learned during the First Chechen War.

I shouldn't have gotten involved. We had risked exposure in retrieving the corporate data and leading her to it. My surveillance of Mere had been ongoing. Twenty-four seven. We had an interest in her. We couldn't walk away. We had made an investment. She was a valuable asset. She could be useful, properly pointed at our enemies. If she died, we would have no voice in the media. This is how I justified taking the Chechen's knife from him, how I convinced myself that dragging him away and leaving Mere—unconscious and bleeding from the cut in her throat—was an acceptable risk for myself—for Arcadia.

I did what I did for Mother's sake. What son wouldn't have done the same?

* * *

“You gave me a lot of money,” she explains when she returns, laden with bags. “I bought some clothes for both of us. I… I guessed your size.”

“I'm sure they'll be fine.” I'm sitting by the window, a cup of tea on the table next to me. “There's more water,” I point out, “if you want tea. I could make coffee too.” Pretending I don't know that her first stop was a coffee shop where she ordered an enormous beverage that was more sugar and milk than espresso.

“I'm good,” she says. She sorts through the clothes, laying them into several piles. She points to a white bag adorned with the logo of a local chain. “Toiletries and the like are in there,” she says, “including your loofa.”

“Thank you.” I stand and walk over to the bag, inspecting its contents. “I guess I'll go clean up.”

She makes a face. “I'll go first.” She snatches the bag out of my hand and flees to the bathroom. The door shuts firmly behind her.

I can't say I blame her. I need to scrub off a lot of dead skin.

For me, she's picked out a few nondescript t-shirts, a pair of dark jeans, and a thin wool sweater. The color of the last isn't one I would have chosen for myself. Magenta, perhaps, maybe vermillion—it all depends on how upscale the brand marketing is meant to be. I run my fingers across the wool as I try to recall the last time a woman bought me clothes. Before World War II? Paris? No, somewhere else.

It's been a while.

In her rush, she didn't take her own new wardrobe into the bathroom. I carefully strip off all the tags and pile them neatly on a chair I set before the door. I return to my seat by the window and listen to the world rush by while she showers.

My hearing is getting better. I can hear her humming as she stands beneath the steaming water.

Memory gets slippery after a few centuries. There's too much to remember, and no good way to retain it all. After a millennium, you learn to not worry about what you've forgotten, but that doesn't mean the sense of loss is any less frustrating.

What was her name?
I can see the café where we met, down the street from the theater. On Posthumalaan, yes, in Rotterdam. She had loved the movies. What had we seen at that theater
?
I remember her face. She had cut her hair short, a flagrant dismissal of her family's authority, and she was wildly ecstatic about her emancipation.
Valentien.
Yes, that was it. She let me call her Val.

She had bought me a suit.

I had been wearing it the night the German Blitz had started.

* * *

“What are you thinking about?” Mere is wearing a gray t-shirt and loose shorts—the sort of casual wear that would look like undergarments on men, but women manage to turn them into
accidentally
alluring lounge wear. Her hair is still wet, and she's worrying sections of it with a towel as she wanders across the room.

“Someone I knew once,” I say. The sun has gone down, and I've opened the curtains again. The sky is nearly black, and the clouds are outlined with a faint roseate glow.

“A woman?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she now?”

Dust. Crushed beneath a ton of rubble when her apartment building collapsed.

“I don't know,” I answer honestly.

“Are they going to find us?” She changes the topic, sensing there is nothing more of the previous subject that I wish to share.

“Eventually.”

She winds her hair up into the towel and wanders over to look out the window. “What are we going to do?” she asks.

I let my gaze flick up to the towering white cone perched atop her head.

“After my hair dries,” she amends.

“I suppose I can take my turn now.”

She rolls her eyes. “You're going to make me wait, aren't you?”

“Not unless you want to scrub my back.”

“Silas,” she sighs, “
eeeew
. Not a turn-on. Really.”

“I'm out of practice.”

“Stick with being enigmatic and confounding. It works better for you.” She jerks her head toward the bathroom. “Go.
Exfoliate.
And then you had better start talking when you come out.”

* * *

She is curled up on the bed when I finish with my shower. Her towel had slipped off her head, and her red hair curls around her face. I brush some of it back, my fingers lightly caressing her cheek.

I suddenly remember the way the morning sun used to stream in through the porthole-shaped windows in Val's bedroom. She would accuse me of purposefully leaving the curtains open. I was always apologetic, but continued to forget.

I liked watching the sun creep across her face.

Mere's breathing is slow and restful. Whatever dreams she had fallen through on the way to the deep trough of sleep were not troubling her.

When did I start caring for her? Was it when I entered the warehouse and took Kirkov's knife from him? Has Mother known since then? Had I become expendable? Was that why I had been chosen for Talus's mission? Mother doesn't love me anymore, and maybe that means it is time for me to finally die, after all these years. This is how it ends, like Eliot says. ‘Not with a bang, but with a whimper.' I am one of his Hollow Men. Who will miss me when I'm gone?

“No one,” I whisper.

They're all dead. Everyone I ever cared about. Mother took care of the pain. She always did. I would fall into her embrace, and she would take away the memories that hurt the most. That was why we went back to her; that was why we loved her as we did. She gave us life, and she helped us forget.

After Val, I had sworn that I was done with consorting with mortals.

I lie down next to Mere, as close as I can without actually touching her. When I inhale through my nose, I can smell her scent. Mere's right; I don't breathe when I sleep. None of us do. I close my eyes, but I don't let myself rest.
I'm not going to fade. Not yet.

Maybe this is just a reaction to my exile from Arcadia, a sudden panic that my life—my three millennia plus, quasi-immortal existence—is coming to an end. Maybe I'm not ready to let this world consume me. Not having died, I don't quite know how to do it.

Or maybe I'm just an old soldier and it's been too long since I've had something worth dying for.

FIFTEEN

I
t finally dawns on me where the tiny buzzing noise is coming from. It started shortly after I lay down next to Mere, and I had been trying to sort through the pieces of this puzzle I had scattered in my head, but the tiny beelike buzz kept intruding. I get up from the bed, and find the noise-maker in the inner pocket of my wrecked coat. My cheap cell phone has been trying to tell me that I've missed a few calls. All from the same number.

There's only one person who has this number. I put on the clothes that Mere bought and slip out of the room, all without waking her. I take the back stairs down to the ground floor, and duck out into the open parking lot. The moon is peeking around the edge of the office building on my left, and the sky is clear. I stare up, wishing it were darker so that I could see the stars.

I call Ralph back and he answers on the second ring, out of breath and somewhat guarded. “Ah… hello?”

“It's me,” I reply.

“Oh, you,” he says. “Yes. You got my message?”

I glance at my phone and see the tiny blinking symbol that indicates that, yes, I do have voice mail. “No,” I say. “Why don't you tell me again so I don't have to figure out how to access my voice mail.”

“You haven't seen the papers?”

“No.”

“There was a fire at Eden Park.”

“When?”

He doesn't say anything, and I realize why he's being cagey. “You think I started it?”

“I… I don't know,” he says. “Why don't you tell me your version of what happened.”

“My version?” I stop myself before my anger takes over control of my tongue. “Are you covering the story for
The Independent
?”

He makes a noise in his throat that I take to be a
yes
.

“What about Secutores?” I ask. “You know they're involved. You know they had people at that location, that they want to keep things covered up. You know about Kyodo Kujira.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “But I don't know who
you
are.”

I stop looking for the stars. “I'll have to call you back, Ralph,” I say.

“No! Wait—”

I end the call before he can say anything else. He's got a valid point. He doesn't know me. He doesn't know what my motivation is or who I might be working for. I don't blame him. Until he knows enough to trust me, he's going to be worried that he's getting involved in a personal spat between me and Secutores. The type of disagreement that involves people with guns. Ralph strikes me as the type who steers clear of those sorts of disagreements.

I glance back at the hotel. Should I let him talk to Mere? He'll trust her; she trusts me. Can I keep things contained? Can I keep my secrets safe?

I dial another number. It rings a long time before it is answered; even then, the line clicks and hums for a bit before I hear his voice. “It's me,” I say.

“Where are you?” Callis asks.

“Same place, more or less.”

“Progress?”

“There's a private security company called Secutores that is running interference. They came in shortly after the boat was found and scared off Prime Earth's legal team. Spirited the survivors away to a place called Eden Park—old asylum outside of the city.”

“This wouldn't be the same Eden Park that burned down less than twenty-four hours ago?”