Water Rites (32 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

W
here exactly are we going?” Nita asked Renny. Bonneville was behind them. Up ahead the interstate curved away from the riverbed, veering west toward Portland.

“Lydia works for Pacific BioSystems — the big vat company.” Renny concentrated on the road. “It’s north of the city, out where the Willamette bed hits the Columbia.”

“Oh.” Nita shifted Rachel on her lap, dangling the beads for her daughter’s clutch. Rachel batted at them, her face screwing up again, still cranky.

Because of Renny. She hurt. Nita stared out the window. In places, the riverbed ran narrow and deep and steep cliffs leaned over the road, like curtains of stone. What did Jeremy see when he walked along this highway? Nita turned away from the window, cuddling her daughter. We sacrifice the unfit to the Dry, Nita thought; beans and beats to biomass bushes that can live on salt water, goat kids to thirsty plants, a crippled child to abandonment. What was my father sacrificed to? she wondered bitterly. Water? Water is our god. No, she thought. Drought is our god and we offer it water. And blood.

She thought about the Robinson boy Seth had told her about, shivering at the memory of his molten hatred. She shivered as Rachel’s hand closed over the beads, and she stroked her daughter’s cheek lightly. Jeremy wanted them to mean something. Not mutants or demons. Not crippled goat kids.

“This is our turn-off.” Renny worked the wheel awkwardly, eased the rig off the wide asphalt lanes and onto a curving exit ramp.

A lot of cars crowded the road — more cars than Nita had ever seen at one time. They made her nervous as they whispered by. People must be rich in the city. She had never even been to Eugene, much less Portland. She hunched her shoulders, oppressed by the people. It was like a huge crowd murmuring, murmuring, all around her. The truck had exited onto a wide city street. Buildings, concrete, brick, or flaking metal, crowded the road. Green grass grew on some of the roofs. Nita stared at it, wide-eyed. Why? Next door, weathered machines crouched on an asphalt lot. Nita recognized a front loader and tractors. Others were larger, their functions less comprehensible.

“This was an industrial district, years ago.” Renny raised her voice to be heard over the engine noise admitted by the broken window. “A couple of good mechanics still operate here, but the city bulldozed a lot of it for the camp.”

The road curved sharply around a mound of rubble. The rubble had been shaped into a wall of gray, crumbled concrete, twisted metal, and debris. Orange electrified wire, strung on white plastic poles, topped it. Beyond the fence lay the camp. Originally it had been laid out as neat rows of barracks, spaced by wide streets. Now haphazard shacks, cobbled together from plastic, cardboard, and scraps of rusty siding, crowded the spaces between the buildings. Dark knots of humanity huddled in strips of shade, or the doorways for the shacks. A flock of naked children chased each other through the dust near the fence.

The government guaranteed water, housing, and basic medical care, if you needed it. You lived here if you had to take them up on it. Nita looked away. Despair drifted from the camp like the stench from a pit toilet. This was why Dan had driven down to the base to talk to Carter, Nita thought suddenly. People he knew — Sandy Corbett or Bob in the government store — might end up here. The camp had been here when her father was alive. Nita hoped suddenly and fervently that her restless, angry brother Ignacio wasn’t in there.

That would have hurt her father more than anything else.

The rubble-and-wire fence ended and Renny shifted gears. Nita was grateful when the dark echoes of the camp’s occupants faded.

“This is the place.” Renny braked, turned down a wide, new-looking street. “I’ll park us behind the loading dock tonight, run on into town with the rest of my load tomorrow.”

Nita looked out the window at an enormous building. “The roof looks like a tent,” she said. It rose above stained concrete walls in jet-black peaks and billows, shining in the sun.

“It’s made out of photo-cloth.” Renny slowed as they approached a wide, chain-link fence. “This used to be an old racetrack — horses or dogs, I forget which. Pacific Bio put one of those new roofs on it. It converts sun to battery power.” She pulled a plastic card from an inside pocket and handed it to a uniformed security guard.

He ran it through a slot in the tiny gatehouse behind him, then handed it back. “Run into some trouble?” He eyed the truck’s battered fender.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Dock R.” The gate began to rattle laboriously open. “Around to the right.”

Renny put the rig into gear and the truck crept forward with a growl. “I usually make this stop.” She looked at Nita from the corners of her eyes. “I’ve got some good customers here. Very inside folk.”

Customers for what? Renny was waiting to see if she’d ask. Baiting her again? Nita leaned against the door, tired of the game, tired of Renny’s pain.

“I get them some good deals on antibiotics. I’ve got a sound connection in Chi. I used to have a couple, but the other guy got his in the riot.” She clucked her tongue. “Lost a lot of good contacts in that nasty little war.”

Would it happen in The Dalles? Carter was afraid it would. They were circling the huge building, passing loading dock after loading dock, concrete ledges that jutted out in front of wall-mounted valves and racked lengths of corrugated plastic pipe.

“This is where they unload the tankers,” Renny said conversationally. “They digest the chopped-up biomass at local plants — use some pretty fancy bacteria to do it. Then they haul the digested sludge — syrup, they call it — to the plant here. Add a few chemicals and some cloned tissue and bingo, you can grow a ton or so of cherry or wheat cells.

“Do you carry the syrup?” Nita asked.

“Not me, babe.” Renny’s lip curled. “That’s for the tanker jocks. That stuff stinks and it’s sugars, mostly; hell to get off the metalwork.” She and Nita clenched their teeth as she used both hands to back the truck up to a wide platform. Rachel fussed.

“Everybody out.” Renny killed the engine, leaned her head back against the seat. “End of the line.”

Her face looked gray. Fresh blood has soaked through the bandage on her arm.

“Can someone here look at that?” Nita gathered up Rachel.

“You did a good enough job.” Renny’s eyes snapped open. “I’ll get unloaded and then we’ll find Lydia.” She shoved her door open and hopped out.

Nita wasn’t fooled, but she stood silently below the concrete dock as a coveralled kid hurried up. He took the e-pad Renny handed him, thumb printed it, and scurried away.

“I deliver custom office supplies,” she said dryly.

Which were really antibiotics. Nita watched Renny open a hand-sized panel on the side of the trailer to key in a long string of digits and letters on a keypad.

“Some of the hotshots use palm locks. Techie toys.” She sneered. “All a ’jacker needs is your palm. It doesn’t have to be attached to you. Numbers they have to dig out of you, and sometimes it buys you a way out.”

She sounded so matter-of-fact.

The kid reappeared, followed by a rectangular platform on wheels. It had a rail along one side and its wheels squeaked as it trundled along the dock after him. The hair on the back of Nita’s neck prickled. The kid wasn’t touching the thing. It was following him like a dog, creaking along at his heels.

“Magic.” The kid noticed her expression and leered at her. “I trained him myself. Stop, Max. Sit.” The platform obediently halted. Slowly the bed sank between its wheels until it rested on the dock.

“Stop trying to impress the natives and get the boxes, punk.” Renny scowled up at him. “Those cargo trucks are voice activated with a three-chip brain,” she said to Nita. “The kid wears a transmitter and it follows him. Pacific Bio likes gadgets. You’ve got to stop gawking, babe.”

Nita grimaced at Renny’s mix of irritation and amusement. “So I’m a native,” she said. “Whatever that means.”

“Means you’re no trucker and you don’t know the city from squat. Give me that.” She snatched the e-pad the sulky kid was holding out and thumb printed it. “Take good care of that merchandise.” She showed her teeth briefly and tossed a folded leaf of scrip in his direction.

“Yessir.” The kid grinned, caught the script deftly, and tucked it into a pocket. “I’ll take real good care of it.” He turned on his heel and whistled two notes to the wheeled truck.

It lifted itself obediently and trundled after him, four small cartons stacked neatly on its bed. Renny slammed the trailer doors. “Let’s find Lydia,” she said. “Then I want to sleep for a while. Damn that bastard.” She touched a raw scrape in the truck’s gleaming paint. “I hope he went through the windshield.”

Nita shifted Rachel onto her hip and didn’t offer her arm to the trucker. Renny would bite her head off, no matter that she was feeling shaky. An echo of the woman’s cold nausea tightened Nita’s stomach as she followed Renny up the flight of concrete stairs that led to the loading dock itself.

“We’ll take the back way.” Renny fished the plastic card out of her pocket and swiped it through a reader beside a green metal door with no handle.

A bell chimed and the door slid sideways into the wall. Humid air puffed into their faces and Nita wrinkled her nose at the thick, almost fetid smell. A maze of gleaming pipes and round tanks surrounded them, and a low, throbbing hum tickled Nita’s ears, making her feel as if her bones were vibrating inside her flesh. Rachel squirmed on her hip, chuckling.

“Like it, child?” Nita touched her daughter’s nose, smiled at her wide grin.

“You coming?”

Nita hurried after Renny, ducking beneath overhanging pipes. Some of them were no thicker than her finger. Others were as big as tree trunks. “What are these for?” she asked as she caught up with the trucker.

“The big ones carry the raw syrup. The little ones carry all kinds of stuff. Trace elements, chemicals, antibiotics.” Renny shrugged. “Ask Lydia. She’s the one who plays with all this shit.”

“They were skirting the main floor of the vast building now. Sunshine filtered through wide strips of translucent plastic in the black fabric roof, filling the space with soft light. Huge tanks stood in rows; round, silver, domed with clear plastic. Nita caught a whiff of citrus on the heavy air as she climbed a metal stairway after Renny. From up here she could look down into the nearest tank. Thick yellow sludge filled the tank, scummed with an oily layer of clear liquid. Like fat on a pot of meat soup, Nita thought. She wondered what it was, feeling slightly revolted. She’d eat beans any day, thank you.

Renny waited for her on the narrow walkway that ringed the factory, radiating fatigue, pain, and irritable impatience. Without a word, she pushed open one of the doors that lined the walkway. It opened into a small office. The color struck Nita first; every square inch of wall space was covered with pictures of flowers, some old, some bright and new, holos and what looked like the pages from old magazines. Rachel cooed with delight. The rainbow of colors overwhelmed Nita. She recognized a few of them from the dusty hills above the valley — yarrow, desert parsley, and fleabane. David had told her the names of the plants as they hunted bees together. Real flowers even grew beneath a small, shaded light tube. Petals like the wings of a butterfly unfolded above crystal dishes of pale golden jelly.

“Well, well. And when did you wander in?” A small woman stood up from her seat in front of a large, flat-screen. “Renny, you should have told me you were coming. My God, what happened to you this time? Hijackers?” She walked into Renny’s embrace, careful of the trucker’s bandaged arm.

She looked as if she was maybe in her thirties, with a thick mane of carefully cut short hair so blonde that it looked white. Her skin was paler than any skin Nita had ever seen, and her eyes were a vivid lavender as she turned to smile at Nita. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Lydia.”

Nita took her hand, surprised at the strength in the petite woman’s long fingers. “I’m Nita.” She felt awkward and grimy and out of place.

“Nita needs some answers, so I brought her to you. I think I’m going to go crawl into your bed and sleep,” Renny said. “I’m feeling a little frayed.”

“You look like hell.” Concern flickered in Lydia’s eyes, and she kept her arm around the trucker’s waist. “You all right? You going to tell me what happened?”

“Yes, I’ll live, and later. I’m just ready for some rest.”

“So go rest,” Lydia snapped. “I haven’t changed my door code. Refrigerator’s full and there’s good scotch in the top cupboard. Nita can tell me what she wants.”

Renny laughed suddenly, disengaged herself from Lydia’s arm with surprising gentleness. “Yes, ma’am.” She gave Nita a lopsided smile. “She’ll get you everything you need, babe.” The door closed behind her.

“Damn that woman.” Lydia let her breath out sharply. “I don’t suppose you’re her lover, are you?” She raised a pale eyebrow at Nita.

“No. I’m . . . not.” Nita felt her face heating. Jealousy? No, that wasn’t what she was feeling.

“Too bad. She’s such a bloody loner.” Lydia lifted her shoulders in a jerky shrug. “So. What is it that Renny thinks I can do for you?”

“Renny said you were good at finding . . . information.”

“Yes, I am. Spill it.” Lydia perched herself on the edge of her terminal console, one foot flicking in the air like a cat’s tail.

Worrying about Renny. “I need proof that someone is putting in new fields in the Valley. I need to know who’s doing it. Renny thought you could find out for me.” She held her breath.

“Is that all?” Lydia hopped down and dropped into her chair. “Honey, that should be no problem. It’s in the public domain — field permits. Didn’t you know that?” Her long fingers danced across her keyboard and one quadrant of her big flat-sceen flickered.

Rachel was kicking, fussing a little. She wanted to get down. Nita shrugged her pack off her shoulder, took the quilt out, and spread it on the floor. Rachel wanted the flower pictures. Her frustration flared like heat lightning as she rocked onto her hands and knees. One hand moved, then a knee. With a frustrated screech, she flopped onto her face, but she was closer to the bright wall.