The Water Thief (4 page)

I tubed the report, shredded all my
notes, and went to lunch.

The subway smelled like putrid
milk, urine and moldy bread. It was sticky with substances I preferred remain a
mystery, and the incessant squealing of brakes and rumbling of trains made me
cringe. The tracks groaned and creaked under the weight of the steel hulks, and
the tunnels were so small, the margins through them so thin, I thought that at
any minute the coach would strike the wall, seize, and come to a grinding halt,
entombing me so far below ground that any rescue would be uneconomical.

All this had very little to do with
why I hated trains.

I hated them because they made a
very good target—all those people crowded together. It was a LowCon way to
travel. The stations increased in security the closer we got to Atlas Square,
but passengers weren’t fully screened until we got out. With every sudden jolt
I’d wonder if my life was over, lost to a rival corp who considered a briefcase
full of detonite a cheap and effective means of robbing Ackerman of some
assets.

Arriving at Atlas Station, we were
herded through x-ray machines, body scanners, and past bomb-sniffing dogs. That
was where some suicide bomber would detonate, there in the crowd. I hadn’t
gotten my smoke in before coming, so I just closed my eyes and tried to relax,
rubbing the referred pain out of my leg and wishing I had brought my pills as I
was ushered through security.

I did, somehow and through the
grace of God, arrive at Atlas Square. It was HighSec. In fact, short of the
Galt, it had the highest security in the territory. It was the seat of Ackerman
power and influence, the pinnacle of luxury and commerce, and a testament to
the success of capitalism. A large rotunda sat in the middle, made of a
beautifully trimmed lawn with
real
grass. It was surrounded by a U-shaped plaza made of two levels of HighCon
shops and restaurants. In the center stood a towering marble statue of the god
Atlas, on one knee, shrugging the whole world from his shoulders. The whole
place was designed to make you feel important, as if you stood with the kings
of men, that your very presence was enough to give your life meaning. You
couldn’t walk through the square without rolling your shoulders back,
broadening your chest, and drawing your breath up from your shoes.

The only things that were allowed
to wear were the stone slab sidewalks. They sagged slightly in the middle under
the repeated pounding of millions of footfalls for hundreds of years, like a
trickle of water that can, with enough time, cut through the strongest rock.
The stones were original, never repaired or replaced, as if to say “Ackerman
has existed since the dawn of time, and will continue to exist forever.”

Around the square, past the markets
on the far side, was an old intersection, from back in the days when cars were
allowed to drive through. In the center on a small island sat a newsstand. It
was pricy, but filled with literature from Ackerman, our Karitzu, and even some
competing corps. I used it in a pinch, or after lunch sometimes to show Linus
that I wasn’t afraid to spend a little money. The proprietor was a nice man who
always seemed to know just what kind of stuff would help me out the most.

Past the newsstand, on the other
side of the intersection, was the Café Americana. This nostalgic place honored
capitalism in its infancy, back when it was regulated and looted by states and
governments. It was long and slender, made up to look like a 1970’s diner.
Overstuffed red leather stools crowded the front and booths ran down the
length. On the walls were posters of famous capitalists like John Rockefeller
and Pablo Escobar, painted in bright reds and blues, with stars and sunbeams
behind them.

It was one of the best coffee shops
in the district, with a wide assortment of light fare. The prices were
outrageous, even for a small sandwich, but that ensured a certain caliber of
customer. I always bought lunch, and Linus’ menu choices seemed calculated to
be just enough to cause me pain, but not enough to humiliate, a mark he hit
with frightening accuracy. But it was good for me to have a mentor and to be
seen rubbing shoulders with a colleague of his stature.

Normally the place was quiet,
exclusive—never more than half-full. But on that morning it was packed, and a
long line had formed out the front. Thankfully, Linus was sitting on a stool in
the front corner, quietly reading
The
Arbitrage Daily Journal
. An empty seat waited beside him. Nobody asked him
about it, and when someone bumped it or his table, he would simply look over
his half-frame wire reading glasses and check that nothing had spilled.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said.

Linus looked over the rim of his
glasses, dubiously, as if I had arrived exactly when he had expected.

“Never apologize,” he commanded,
quietly. He raised his arm grandly and thrust it out, exposing his watch in a deliberate
stroke. Then he drew his eyes from me to the timepiece. He turned back to his
magazine. “For anything.”

Linus Cabal was built like a tank.
He had played rugby at school, and leveraged his skills into a scholarship at
François Quesnay, one of the most prestigious universities in the territory.
For most athletes their intellectual careers ended there. But while he ranked
third in the sport, he studied too, and graduated fifth in a class of eight
hundred. The players called him a nerd who didn’t have the guts to dedicate
himself to the sport. The academics called him a muscle-head who could have
been valedictorian if he had gotten serious.

But when the recruiters came, he
told the firms that he hated the tedium of corporate life, and he told the leagues
that he was terrified of getting an injury. The ensuing bidding war over his
talents landed him a position in Ackerman’s Arbitrage division at the highest
starting salary of any colleague on record, almost double what his
valedictorian got.

“Business is war,” Linus would say,
“and all war is based on deception.”

I wondered, casually, if Linus
could tell the difference between the truth and a lie anymore, or if, indeed,
the distinction was even important to him.

In
the war that is business,
I wondered,
what
new front has opened up to cause all this?

“Why the crowd?” I asked.

Linus scowled and began stirring
his coffee, as if the answer was so obvious it irritated him.

“Kabul Coffee is trying to set up
their first shops in our territory. They snuck in under one of our free trade
clauses with another Karitzu, so we have to let them in. They’re opening up
three shops in the capital next month. The first will be in the square by the
end of next week. So Takashi ramped up production and cut prices. He’s even tapped
our bean reserves.”

“He’s lowering the price to drive
Kabul out?”

Linus nodded. “They don’t have
Ackerman’s deep pockets… We can run coffee at a loss for a decade without
feeling a pinch.”

“Isn’t that...” I said hesitantly.
I had started the sentence, and now I realized I would need to finish it. “...
a subsidy?”

Linus pulled the spoon from his
coffee and tossed it on the table.

“Honestly, Charles, sometimes I
don’t know why I meet with you. We’re not socialists. Subsidizing an industry
is obscene. It’s illegal. Mr. Takashi would never do it. How on earth do you
make your way through the world, even as a Delta, not understanding that?
You’re in Perception, for Christ’s sake! If it looks like a subsidy to you,
maybe you haven’t thought it all the way through! To even suggest...”

He was right, of course. The
suggestion itself was slander, probably actionable. Nobody in
that
café would have found a reward of
five or ten caps worth the bother. Still, I shouldn’t have said it.

Takashi was CEO, so he was perfect.
This was not a point of pride, but a natural law. LowCons were a plague of
biblical proportions on a corporation, tolerated only because their sheer
numbers gave them considerable market power. A MidCon was simply someone who
had learned either to screw up less, or to better demonstrate that his
“mistakes” were actually the fault of those below him. Executives made nearly
no mistakes, but rather spent the bulk of their time compensating for the
ineptitude of their subordinates. The CEO, therefore, was perfect. If not, a
superior colleague would have replaced him long ago.

When Takashi did appear to make a
mistake, it was the good colleague who could trace the mistake back to its
actual source, usually a lower-ranked worker. Being a MidCon, the blame often
landed suspiciously close to my own desk, and I spent about half my day
demonstrating how the problem was actually the fault of someone below
me
.

The real problem for Kabul was
that, while Ackerman had started as a securities and futures brokerage firm,
they soon began vertical expansion—making their own discount paper, coffee and
snacks for their colleagues. Then they began selling on the open market,
competing globally, and before long Ackerman had its own generic equivalents of
nearly every product imaginable, from toilet paper to carburetors. When a
higher quality or better value product came along, Ackerman just leveraged
income from other products to wipe it out.

“If Kabul coffee does a better job,
shouldn’t they be allowed to compete on a level playing field?”

“Level playing field? How is that
not code for socialism? Who’s going to level the field? Who sets the rules,
decides what makes it level? Who’s going to enforce it without regulating the
rest of us into the ground? Governments? Those old relics destroyed
productivity. No, no, the only Objective way to do it is on the fly, between
corporations. Fair is what the market decides or allows for, taking into
account all of the forces that come to bear. If Kabul wants to try to take us
on in Coffee, they can go right ahead. They’ve been cleaning up in Europa, and
that’s fine, but if they want to come here and start setting up shops, we’ll
defend ourselves. And when they set up in other territories in the Karitzu,
we’ll defend those too, because we’re the biggest and strongest and that’s our
job, because pride is a commodity too. Nobody undermines our products in our
own territory.”

“If coffee is running at a loss—” I
said.

“It’s not a loss; it’s an
investment in our colleagues, our brand name and reputation, and in the future
stability of the coffee market. It’s long-term thinking. Only a Delta thinks
it’s a subsidy.”

It was boredom, that force which
pushes the state of equilibrium towards a greater and greater tolerance for
risk, especially with other people’s money.

I shifted uncomfortably, trying to
curry favor with a new topic. I thought about telling him about my Aisling
report. He’d have liked it. But I didn’t say anything.

“I looked into broadening my
portfolio.”

“Good, it’s about time you took my advice
to heart. Who are you looking at?”

“Studio One. They’re an
entertainment and television production firm. They—”

“I know who they are, stay away
from it.”

“Well, it’s a good company, I
looked into it,” I said. “A
lot
of
people are buying it.”

“Exactly why you need to avoid it.
It’s a solid company, sure. But the stock keeps going up even though they have
the same shows as last year. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. People think it’s
good so they buy it, driving up the price, which makes more people think it’s
good. The price skyrockets until finally someone points out that the emperor
has no clothes. The stock plummets, and everyone is wiped out. It’s a trend,
that’s all, and by the time you notice a trend it’s too late to get in on it.”

I didn’t tell him that I had
already bought the stock.

Linus looked at me wryly. “You need
to play.” he said.

He was referring, of course, to
poker—that ubiquitous game synonymous with corporate living. On rare occasion
you could find people who played it with cards—but at Ackerman we played the
original Greek way, with dice. The stakes were decided up front. Then each
player would throw six dice and keep what they rolled hidden from the others.
The first player would bet on the minimum quantity of any given number on the
table—for example two fives. Each subsequent player would have to raise the
bet, either by raising the quantity of dice with that number, or the number
itself (say two sixes, or three ones). This continued until someone called.
Then everyone revealed their dice. If the total quantity of that number was
equal to or lower than the bet, the better won; otherwise the caller did. Most
everyone carried dice on them and played three or four games a day.

If Linus felt any emotion for
anything at all it was a love of poker. He denied it, but he had recorded every
televised game—every match, every championship—for the last twenty years. He
watched them, over and over again—studying faces, tells, and dice
probabilities. He talked about how he’d spend thousands of caps in games he had
no intention of winning, just to learn people’s tells and get them later when
the stakes were higher.

“My boss comes up to me…” Linus
once recalled. He loved telling stories, old fables and personal vignettes. The
grand and royal nature of storytelling attracted him to it, playing to his
dramatic tendencies and delicate flourish. “He waited until I was in the middle
of the trading floor giving my morning briefing. I had all of my subordinates
around me, and he threw down. Challenged me to a game for a hundred thousand
caps.”

“So you beat him?” I had asked.

“Couldn’t. If I beat him publicly,
he’d destroy me for it.”

“So you refused to play?”

“Couldn’t. If I didn’t play, I’d be
seen as a coward to my subs. They’d all start jumping ship to work for someone
with balls—someone like him. Make no mistake, this wasn’t a game, it was
extortion.”