Pump Six and Other Stories Part 11

Raphel made his way through the village, dodging flooding alleys and the curtains of rain that poured off the haci roofs. Lightning flickered high above. Thunder rolled distantly. A young girl in black and red dashed down the alley toward him, smiling at his bare face, now unhidden by an electrostatic mask. His umbrella protected him from much of the dumping rain, but the girl was soaked, and clearly didn't care. Raphel turned to watch as she deliberately jumped into puddles and yellow flows, splas.h.i.+ng mud and water and laughing at the wet.

His grandfather's courtyard was empty, its red chilies removed indoors. Raphel stood dripping outside.

"Grandfather?"

The rasping voice was surprised. "You're still here?"

Raphel pulled aside the curtain and slipped inside. He carefully shook his umbrella outside the door, and left it leaning there. His grandfather sat beside the hearth, working on another hook knife. Several lay around his feet, all of them gleaming with oil and sharpening.

"Bia' wants you to come for dinner."

The old man snorted. "She won't live in my haci but she invites me for dinner." He looked up and studied Raphel's uncovered face. "You've completed Quaran, then?"

"Today."

"You return and the land turns green. Auspicious. And you haven't left for Keli."

Raphel sighed. He sat on the hard-packed floor near his grandfather's feet. "I am Jai, Grandfather. Whatever you think, this is my home. I am here to stay."

"I suppose it's good to see your face. Despite your tattoos."

Raphel squeezed the wet hem of his robe. It was spattered with mud. Water ran out between his fingers. "I feel like I'm finally home." He looked outside to the gray curtain of water pouring off the haci's roof. "It amazes me that I ever hated the sound of rain. In Keli it rained all the time, and no one cared. Or else they hated it. I think it's the finest sound I've ever heard."

"You sound like a Jai. If you picked up your hook knife, I'd almost believe you belong."

Raphel shook his head and grinned. "Pasho are neutral, Grandfather."

The old man's laughter was mocking. He reached for his bottle of mez. "Drink with me then, Pasho."

Raphel climbed back to his feet. "This time, I will serve you. As I should have done the day I arrived."

"And break Quaran? I think not."

Raphel took the bottle from his grandfather and set the clay cups on the ground. "You're right. We should observe the old ways. It's what distinguishes us from Keli people. We are true to our history." The long sleeves of his Pasho's robes dragged around the paired cups as he began pouring.

"Don't spill," his grandfather scolded.

Raphel smiled. He tucked his sleeves out of the way. "I'm not used to my robes, yet." He finished pouring the clear bright liquor into the paired cups. He capped the bottle carefully and handed a cup to his grandfather.

They held their cups to the sky, poured drops to their ancestors and drained them together. A moment later, Gawar's cup fell from his nerveless hand. It shattered. Clay fragments skittered across the hard-packed dirt. The old man's jaw locked. Air whistled between his clenched teeth as he fought to breathe. "Mez?" The word squeezed out.

Raphel ducked his head apologetically and pressed his palms together in farewell. "Undistilled. A common enough death for a Jai. You were right, Grandfather. War never ends. You taught the Pasho that. They have not forgotten. Even now you squat in their nightmares."

His grandfather grimaced and forced words out between his clenched teeth. "The Pasho side with Keli?"

Raphel shrugged apologetically. "Knowledge must be protected, Grandfather-" He broke off as his grandfather spasmed. Spittle leaked from the corner of the old man's mouth. Raphel leaned close and used the sleeve of his white robe to wipe the shaking man's drool. "I'm sorry, Grandfather. The Keli are too soft to withstand a Jai crusade. You would have slaughtered them like goats and turned all the Pasho work to ash: Keli's libraries, its hospitals, its factories. We Pasho cannot afford an open war; mez seemed the best alternative."

His grandfather's eyes were wide, stunned. He grunted, trying to form words. Raphel held the old man's hand as another spasm swept through him. The old man strained. Raphel leaned close to hear his whisper.

"You betray us all."

Raphel shook his head. "No, Grandfather, only you. Knowledge is a Jai birthright as much as Keli's. Your b.l.o.o.d.y crusade would have left ashes for our children. Now, instead of war, I will teach our people to sink water veins and help them plant crops that weather the hottest days of dry season, and we will flourish. Never fear, Grandfather, I am still Jai, whatever you think of my Pasho's tattoos. Your hook knife has dulled, but mine is still sharp."

Old Gawar's body stilled. His head lolled. Raphel wiped the death froth from his grandfather's mouth, the last residue of his pa.s.sing. Outside, rain fell steadily, softening the air and soaking the thirsty ground with the life-giving water of the wet season.

The Calorie Man.

"No mammy, no pappy, poor little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Money? You give money?" The urchin turned a cartwheel and then a somersault in the street, stirring yellow dust around his nakedness.

Lalji paused to stare at the dirty blond child who had come to a halt at his feet. The attention seemed to encourage the urchin; the boy did another somersault. He smiled up at Lalji from his squat, calculating and eager, rivulets of sweat and mud streaking his face. "Money? You give money?"

Around them, the town was nearly silent in the afternoon heat. A few dungareed farmers led mulies toward the fields. Buildings, pressed from WeatherAll chips, slumped against their fellows like drunkards, rain-stained and sun-cracked, but, as their trade name implied, still st.u.r.dy. At the far end of the narrow street, the lush sprawl of SoyPRO and HiGro began, a waving rustling growth that rolled into the blue-sky distance. It was much as all the villages Lalji had seen as he traveled upriver, just another farming enclave paying its intellectual property dues and s.h.i.+pping calories down to New Orleans.

The boy crawled closer, smiling ingratiatingly, nodding his head like a snake hoping to strike. "Money? Money?"

Lalji put his hands in his pockets in case the beggar child had friends and turned his full attention on the boy. "And why should I give money to you?"

The boy stared up at him, stalled. His mouth opened, then closed. Finally he looped back to an earlier, more familiar part of his script, "No mammy? No pappy?" but it was a query now, lacking conviction.

Lalji made a face of disgust and aimed a kick at the boy. The child scrambled aside, falling on his back in his desperation to dodge, and this pleased Lalji briefly. At least the boy was quick. He turned and started back up the street. Behind him, the urchin's wailing despair echoed. "Noooo maaaammy! Nooo paaaapy!" Lalji shook his head, irritated. The child might cry for money, but he failed to follow. No true beggar at all. An opportunist only-most likely the accidental creation of strangers who had visited the village and were open-fisted when it came to blond beggar children. AgriGen and Midwest Grower scientists and land factotums would be pleased to show ostentatious kindness to the villagers at the core of their empire.

Through a gap in the slumped hovels, Lalji caught another glimpse of the lush waves of SoyPRO and HiGro. The sheer sprawl of calories stimulated tingling fantasies of loading a barge and slipping it down through the locks to St. Louis or New Orleans and into the mouths of waiting meG.o.donts. It was impossible, but the sight of those emerald fields was more than enough a.s.surance that no child could beg with conviction here. Not surrounded by SoyPRO. Lalji shook his head again, disgusted, and squeezed down a footpath between two of the houses.

The acrid reek of WeatherAll's excreted oils clogged the dim alley. A pair of ches.h.i.+res sheltering in the unused s.p.a.ce scattered and molted ahead of him, disappearing into bright sunlight. Just beyond, a kinetic shop leaned against its beaten neighbors, adding the scents of dung and animal sweat to the stink of WeatherAll. Lalji leaned against the shop's plank door and shoved inside.

Shafts of sunlight pierced the sweet manure gloom with lazy gold beams. A pair of hand-painted posters scabbed to one wall, partly torn but still legible. One said: "Unstamped calories mean starving families. We check royalty receipts and IP stamps." A farmer and his brood stared hollow-eyed from beneath the scolding words. PurCal was the sponsor. The other poster was AgriGen's trademarked collage of kink-springs, green rows of SoyPRO under sunlight and smiling children along with the words "We Provide Energy for the World." Lalji studied the posters sourly.

"Back already?" The owner came in from the winding room, wiping his hands on his pants and kicking straw and mud off his boots. He eyed Lalji. "My springs didn't have enough stored. I had to feed the mulies extra, to make your joules."

Lalji shrugged, having expected the last-minute bargaining, so much like Shriram's that he couldn't muster the interest to look offended. "Yes? How much?"

The man squinted up at Lalji, then ducked his head, his body defensive. "F-Five hundred." His voice caught on the amount, as though gagging on the surprising greed scampering up his throat.

Lalji frowned and pulled his mustache. It was outrageous. The calories hadn't even been transported. The village was awash with energy. And despite the man's virtuous poster, it was doubtful that the calories feeding his kinetic shop were equally upstanding. Not with tempting green fields waving within meters of the shop. Shriram often said that using stamped calories was like dumping money into a methane composter.

Lalji tugged his mustache again, wondering how much to pay for the joules without calling excessive attention to himself. Rich men must have been all over the village to make the kinetic man so greedy. Calorie executives, almost certainly. It would fit. The town was close to the center. Perhaps even this village was engaged in growing the crown jewels of AgriGen's energy monopolies. Still, not everyone who pa.s.sed through would be as rich as that. "Two hundred."

The kinetic man showed a relieved smile along with knotted yellow teeth, his guilt apparently a.s.suaged by Lalji's bargaining. "Four."

"Two. I can moor on the river and let my own winders do the same work."

The man snorted. "It would take weeks."

Lalji shrugged. "I have time. Dump the joules back into your own springs. I'll do the job myself."

"I've got family to feed. Three?"

"You live next to more calories than some rich families in St. Louis. Two."

The man shook his head sourly but he led Lalji into the winding room. The manure haze thickened. Big kinetic storage drums, twice as tall as a man, sat in a darkened corner, mud and manure lapping around their high-capacity precision kink-springs. Sunbeams poured between open gaps in the roof where s.h.i.+ngles had blown away. Dung motes stirred lazily.

A half-dozen hyper-developed mulies crouched on their treadmills, their rib cages billowing slowly, their flanks streaked with salt lines of sweat residue from the labor of winding Lalji's boat springs. They blew air through their nostrils, nervous at Lalji's sudden scent, and gathered their squat legs under them. Muscles like boulders rippled under their bony hides as they stood. They eyed Lalji with resentful near-intelligence. One of them showed stubborn yellow teeth that matched its owner's.

Lalji made a face of disgust. "Feed them."

"I already did."

"I can see their bones. If you want my money, feed them again."

The man scowled. "They aren't supposed to get fat, they're supposed to wind your d.a.m.n springs." But he dipped double handfuls of SoyPRO into their feed canisters.

The mulies shoved their heads into the buckets, s...o...b..ring and grunting with need. In its eagerness, one of them started briefly forward on its treadmill, sending energy into the winding shop's depleted storage springs before seeming to realize that its work was not demanded and that it could eat without molestation.

"They aren't even designed to get fat," the kinetic man muttered.

Lalji smiled slightly as he counted through his wadded bluebills and handed over the money. The kinetic man unjacked Lalji's kink-springs from the winding treadmills and stacked them beside the slavering mulies. Lalji lifted a spring, grunting at its heft. Its ma.s.s was no different than when he had brought it to the winding shop, but now it fairly seemed to quiver with the mulies' stored labor.

"You want help with those?" The man didn't move. His eyes flicked toward the mulies' feed buckets, still calculating his chances of interrupting their meal.

Lalji took his time answering, watching as the mulies rooted for the last of their calories. "No." He hefted the spring again, getting a better grip. "My helpboy will come for the rest."

As he turned for the door, he heard the man dragging the feed buckets away from the mulies and their grunts as they fought for their sustenance. Once again, Lalji regretted agreeing to the trip at all.

Shriram had been the one to broach the idea. They had been sitting under the awning of Lalji's porch in New Orleans, spitting betel nut juice into the alley gutters and watching the rain come down as they played chess. At the end of the alley, cycle rickshaws and bicycles slipped through the midmorning gray, pulses of green and red and blue as they pa.s.sed the alley's mouth draped under rain-glossed corn polymer ponchos.

The chess game was a tradition of many years, a ritual when Lalji was in town and Shriram had time away from his small kinetic company where he rewound people's home and boat springs. Theirs was a good friends.h.i.+p, and a fruitful one, when Lalji had unstamped calories that needed to disappear into the mouth of a hungry meG.o.dont.

Neither of them played chess well, and so their games often devolved into a series of trades made in dizzying succession; a cascade of destruction that left a board previously well-arrayed in a tantrum wreck, with both opponents blinking surprise, trying to calculate if the mangle had been worth the combat. It was after one of these t.i.t-for-tat cleansings that Shriram had asked Lalji if he might go upriver. Beyond the southern states.

Lalji had shaken his head and spit b.l.o.o.d.y betel juice into the overflowing gutter. "No. Nothing is profitable so far up. Too many joules to get there. Better to let the calories float to me." He was surprised to discover that he still had his queen. He used it to take a p.a.w.n.

"And if the energy costs could be defrayed?"

Lalji laughed, waiting for Shriram to make his own move. "By who? AgriGen? The IP men? Only their boats go up and down so far." He frowned as he realized that his queen was now vulnerable to Shriram's remaining knight.

Shriram was silent. He didn't touch his pieces. Lalji looked up from the board and was surprised by Shriram's serious expression. Shriram said, "I would pay. Myself and others. There is a man who some of us would like to see come south. A very special man."

"Then why not bring him south on a paddle wheel? It is expensive to go up the river. How many gigajoules? I would have to change the boat's springs, and then what would the IP patrols ask? 'Where are you going, strange Indian man with your small boat and your so many springs? Going far? To what purpose?' " Lalji shook his head. "Let this man take a ferry, or ride a barge. Isn't this cheaper?" He waved at the game board. "It's your move. You should take my queen."

Shriram waggled his head thoughtfully from side to side but didn't make any move toward the chess game. "Cheaper, yes.... "

"But?"

Shriram shrugged. "A swift, inconsequential boat would attract less attention."

"What sort of man is this?"

Shriram glanced around, suddenly furtive. Methane lamps burned like blue fairies behind the closed gla.s.s of the neighbors' droplet-spattered windows. Rain sheeted off their roofs, drumming wet into the empty alley. A ches.h.i.+re was yowling for a mate somewhere in the wet, barely audible under the thrum of falling water.

"Is Creo inside?"

Lalji raised his eyebrows in surprise. "He has gone to his gymnasium. Why? Should it matter?"

Shriram shrugged and gave an embarra.s.sed smile. "Some things are better kept between old friends. People with strong ties."

"Creo has been with me for years."

Shriram grunted noncommittally, glanced around again and leaned close, pitching his voice low, forcing Lalji to lean forward as well. "There is a man who the calorie companies would like very much to find." He tapped his balding head. "A very intelligent man. We want to help him."

Lalji sucked in his breath. "A generipper?"

Shriram avoided Lalji's eyes. "In a sense. A calorie man."

Lalji made a face of disgust. "Even better reason not to be involved. I don't traffic with those killers."

"No, no. Of course not. But still... you brought that huge sign down once, did you not? A few greased palms, so smooth, and you float into town and suddenly Lakshmi smiles on you, such a calorie bandit, and now with a name instead as a dealer of antiques. Such a wonderful misdirection."

Lalji shrugged. "I was lucky. I knew the man to help move it through the locks."

"So? Do it again."

"If the calorie companies are looking for him, it would be dangerous."

"But not impossible. The locks would be easy. Much easier than carrying unlicensed grains. Or even something as big as that sign. This would be a man. No sniffer dog would find him of interest. Place him in a barrel. It would be easy. And I would pay. All your joules, plus more."

Lalji sucked at his narcotic betel nut, spit red, spit red again, considering. "And what does a second-rate kinetic man like you think this calorie man will do? Generippers work for big fish, and you are such a small one."

Shriram grinned haplessly and gave a self-deprecating shrug. "You do not think Ganesha Kinetic could not some day be great? The next AgriGen, maybe?" and they had both laughed at the absurdity and Shriram dropped the subject.

An IP man was on duty with his dog, blocking Lalji's way as he returned to his boat lugging the kink-spring. The brute's hairs bristled as Lalji approached and it lunged against its leash, its blunt nose quivering to reach him. With effort, the IP man held the creature back. "I need to sniff you." His helmet lay on the gra.s.s, already discarded, but still he was sweating under the swaddling heat of his gray slash-resistant uniform and the heavy webbing of his spring gun and bandoliers.

Lalji held still. The dog growled, deep from its throat, and inched forward. It snuffled his clothing, bared hungry teeth, snuffled again, then its black ruff iridesced blue and it relaxed and wagged its stubby tail. It sat. A pink tongue lolled from between smiling teeth. Lalji smiled sourly back at the animal, glad that he wasn't smuggling calories and wouldn't have to go through the pantomimes of obeisance as the IP man demanded stamps and then tried to verify that the grain s.h.i.+pment had paid its royalties and licensing fees.

At the dog's change in color, the IP man relaxed somewhat, but still he studied Lalji's features carefully, hunting for recognition against memorized photographs. Lalji waited patiently, accustomed to the scrutiny. Many men tried to steal the honest profits of AgriGen and its peers, but to Lalji's knowledge, he was unknown to the protectors of intellectual property. He was an antiques dealer, handling the junk of the previous century, not a calorie bandit staring out from corporate photo books.

Finally, the IP man waved him past. Lalji nodded politely and made his way down the stairs to the river's low stage where his needleboat was moored. Out on the river, c.u.mbrous grain barges wallowed past, riding low under their burdens.