The Water Thief (9 page)

“You know I’m
not an escort, right? That’s another service.”

“Oh, no, no!
That’s not it at all! I’m celebrating. I’ll bet you get a lot of that, don’t
you? People hiring friends to try to get pleasuring services on the cheap.”

“I would
imagine. So what’s the occasion?

“Well, hiring a
friend is an occasion all on its own, don’t you think?”

“Sure.”

“What do you
mean,” I asked, “‘I would imagine?’”

“Huh?”

“I asked if
people try to get pleasuring services on the cheap, and you said you’d
imagine.”

Kate gave a
disappointed look. “Well, I’m... this is my first day working as a friend.”

 
“Really?” I said. So we toasted providence.
“Why the change in careers?”

“Oh, no, I’ve
still got my old job. It’s just—well, one of the agency’s colleagues ran into a
spot of trouble….”

Sarah Aisling.
This was the closest I had ever been to someone I had reported, the first time
I saw Aisling as a person. Those kids, with the broken soccer ball, whom I
reported for slander. They had friends, family, parents who enjoyed watching
their games. The difference between a name on a report and a person standing in
front of you is the difference between seeing a sketch of two lovers, and the
act of making love.

God help me, I
had been reporting real people and somehow never knew it.

“... so I’m
filling in.”

I nodded. “My
name is Thatcher, by the way.”

“Thatcher? The
invoice said your name is Charles.”

“Charles? Oh my
god, yes, that’s my first name. I guess… well, in the corporation you go by the
last name until you get to know someone.”

“I like
Charlie,” she said.

“Charlie? My
mother called me Charlie. My sister too.”

“I like it.”

“Thank you. A
bit informal, though, don’t you think?”

“Well, in LowSec
we almost always go by first name. You hired a friend, so I thought... But
whatever you prefer, Thatch—”

“No,” I
interrupted. “No, I think I do prefer Charlie.”

We sat there
quietly for a few moments, me with my first friend, and her with her first
client.

“You have a
sister?”

I nodded. “She’s
a sheet metal worker for a small corp on the west coast somewhere. At least she
was. Mother worked there too. My dad died when I was seven. He was in a work
camp for a while, and then went into accounting. Anyways…”

I remembered a
small shack we lived in before I was sold to Ackerman, just two years after my
father died. I remembered the smell of old, soft wood, and the way you could
look out through the cracks in the boards, and how the whole house creaked,
even in breezes so small that you could only feel them by the hairs on your
arm. The wood was weathered gray, the same as the gallows. I wondered why I had
never remembered that before.

My mother
was
a metal stamper, I remembered
clearly now. Every year or two she’d come home with one fewer fingers on her
hand. After losing three and the tip of a fourth, they put her on polishing—she
took a cut in pay and I was sold to make up the difference.

“Filling in?” I
said, changing the subject.

“It’s just for a
week. I’m keeping my regular job.”

“Two paychecks
must be nice.”

“Oh, I wish. I’m
not getting paid for this.”

I coughed up a
swig of whisky on that. She apologized profusely for the shock. “She’s a
friend, Charlie. I’m filling in for a friend while she deals with her
problems.”

“You sublet
her?”

“No,” laughed
Kate. “A compeer. You know, a friend in the archaic sense.”

“Oh my god,
really? What good is one of those?”

She shrugged.
“Commercially? None, I suppose. But I offered to help out, we all did.”

“That’s not your
job.”

She shook her
head. “It’s nobody’s job. That’s why we did it.”

I had done
it—hit the mother-lode. She was a colleague—no, a friend—of Aisling’s.

“Wow, a real
flesh and blood communist.”

“I’m not a
communist, Charlie,” she laughed. “God, no.”

“You do things
for free, isn’t that the definition?”

“No, and I don’t
do
everything
for free, by any means.
And I
do
get something out of helping
out a friend, just nothing you can put on a balance sheet. We make each other
laugh, we have fun together. When was the last time you laughed?” she asked.

“A colleague of
mine went long on a thousand shares of Senya right before it went belly up.
That was a riot.”

“Ever laugh when
it wasn’t at the suffering of someone else?”

“Comedy is just
tragedy from the other side of the street.”

“Really? Have
you ever had a colleague who would stand by you even if you couldn’t make it
worth their while?”

“That’s
socialism.”

“I see…” she
said. “You know, socialism is a very specific set of theories. Tossing out that
word is a great way to kill an honest discussion, but having friends does not a
socialist make.”

“It’s
unnatural.”

“Really?”

“Everybody is
selfish. We all want money, power. People who deny that are just afraid to
compete or are just too lazy,” I said, futilely.

“And people who
say that are simply trying to justify their participation in a vicious system.
You need money, sure, you can’t live without it. But happiness is a need too,
Charlie, not much point in living without that. Tell me, are you happy?”

“Nobody’s happy.”

“Nobody
you know
is happy. They all have to buy
their lovers. They compete like a hamster on a wheel—every step they take does
nothing more than bring the next one closer. Nobody’s the best, someone is
always coming up right behind you, so there’s always further to run. You
compete, you guard yourself against everyone you meet, and then you die.
Pretending you’re happy costs less than admitting you’re not.”

I looked at the
floor. I wondered if this was what all friends did—lecture you on how you’ve
screwed up your life.

“So your life is
perfect?” I asked her.

“Of course not.
I could use more money, but I wouldn’t trade my freedom for any contract
Ackerman has ever issued.”

“Everybody’s
free,” I said. “You can do anything at all, so long as you—”

“…pay for it.
Yes, I’ve heard. But money doesn’t buy freedom, Charlie. Freedom is a right.”

“That’s not what
the Bible says.”

“Ahh, yes,
Zino’s Bible. The only book in the world that you can bet, the more someone
quotes it, the less likely they are to have read it. Most CEOs don’t even
bother with it.”

“It’s the bible
of capitalism, of course they read it.”

“No, they think
it’s silly. It has too many rules,” she said.

“Rules? There
are no rules, that’s the point!”

“Oh, Zino’s Bible
is full of rules. Rules like honesty, integrity, pride in one’s work. Zino
thought these qualities were paramount to capitalism. She argued that lying
never worked and that cheaters were always caught. I wish that were true, but
as a foundation for a system of governing? Christ, that’s insane. Like Marx
before her, Zino had a great theory that hinged on completely unrealistic, even
idealistic, assumptions. Capitalists are people, no more or less trustworthy
than socialists. People choose the path of least resistance, and for most
people that includes cutting corners.

“No, most CEOs
don’t read the Bible. But they do love to quote it. It convinces the masses to
cede all power over to corporations, and that any failure is simply their own
fault. It argues well—seductively—for the virtual elimination of government and
any sort of regulation of power. People cling to the ‘free hand of the market’
as a perfect god. They’re so eager for a solution that can be neatly applied to
every situation that they’re desperate to overlook its faults. Those born to
HighCon—children of affluent families—think that they built that wealth
themselves, and that their claim on the privileges and protections of fortune
are stronger than those who work under the yolk of poverty—simply by virtue of
their birth..

“The wealthy say
that hard work should be rewarded. But they gloss-over the fact that most poor
people work far harder than they do.

“Try to get a
HighCon, a man who purports to believe that competition builds character, and that
giving unfair advantages is a Moral Hazard, to send his kids to a LowCon
school. Ask him to start his child on a level field with everyone else and
compete from there, and you’ll hear a different tune.”

“Yeah, but
governments were inefficient, bureaucratic nightmares. That’s why they called
them leviathans.”

“That’s not why,
Charlie. And you act as if you’ve never worked a day in a corporation. How many
bosses do you have? How many supervisors? How many memos do you get? If you
need to requisition something, how long does it take? How many litigators does
Ackerman have? How many rules does the Ackerman Employees’ Blue Book have?”

“Corporations
eliminated crime,” I answered

“There aren’t
any laws! They didn’t eliminate crime; they simply defined it out of existence.
It’s been capitalized, that’s all. Under a republic, police didn’t create
crime, firemen didn’t watch buildings burn, and people weren’t allowed to die
simply because they couldn’t pay for healthcare.

“Ackerman can
pay for health screenings at airports, but it would cost them money. They
don’t, so tuberculosis gets in from Europa and it spreads. Ackerman can then
make money treating the sick, and whatever paycheck you got last week goes
straight back to them—you work for free now. Corporations try as hard as they
can to make you think that they care about you, while simultaneously trying to
rob you blind. Insurers are incentivized to cut corners and drop policies,
firemen to burn down buildings, and cops to create crime.”

“So your system
is perfect?” I asked.

“No system is
perfect. If finding fault with a system is all it takes to throw it out, you’re
in for a world of disappointment. I don’t need perfect, but I can ask for
better. A lot of the time competition is best. I like fast cars, tasty cornflakes
and soft toilet paper. Capitalism makes those things possible. But we all have
needs common to the human condition. We need air, medical services, and
insurance—not against our own failings, but acts of God that can strike anyone.
We need police, and some form of guaranteed legal recourse against people who
violate contracts or hurt people. We need education and a skilled workforce.
And what blows my mind is that even HighCons would benefit from these things!
If a poor man gets drunk and drives, that’s fine so long as he pays for
whatever damage he does. But if he puts a family of five in the hospital, or
God forbid kills them, how’s he going to compensate for that? Just how many
times can you reclamate him?”

“That’s why a
leviathan is better?”

“Government,
Charlie, not a leviathan. A republic. They gave the mass of people a say, a
means to be represented, an unbiased third party to protect people with
enforceable laws.”

“You mean corral
them, herd them and regulate them.”

“Yeah, Charlie,
because you’re completely free now. Life is a grand old tart!”

“But people took
advantage of the system.”

“Of course they
did! That’s what people do. That’s what people have done from the dawn of man.
That’s why power needs to be distributed evenly, why the poor must have a
voice, and why people need to be engaged.”

The rain was
still coming down. I had never had an argument like this before. It was
exhilarating. She was a seditionist, a pagan—a worshiper of gods long dead. I
had been so busy fighting her that I hadn’t realized how much I was enjoying
it.

“If they were so
good, why did they fail? Corporatism beat out government fair and square.”

“Another of
Zino’s assumptions that isn’t even close to true. Even in the corporate world,
the best product doesn’t always win. Ackerman has horrible brake pads, but the
firm is so big that they can leverage every competitor out of the market.
General Automotive was one of the best car manufacturers in history; Panther
Inc. made worse cars—at a higher price! But they had better Perception
Management. Don’t lie to my face and tell me that the best product always
wins—I’m not even sure it wins half the time. Three quarters of Ackerman’s
budget goes to Marketing, Perception Management, and Litigators—and that’s not
including Retention. Tell me how any of those departments make products better?
How that’s efficient? If a corporation put its money into nothing but making a
better product, they’d get wiped out.

“Once we lost
the ability to moderate competition, it stopped working. Nobody makes real
products, they make consumers. Darwin is a messiah, and if I don’t say that I
believe he’s
always
one hundred
percent right, I’m a blasphemer and a socialist who’s afraid of honest
competition. We’ve lost the ability to believe in any power but unadulterated
self-interest. Communism may breed laziness, but capitalism breeds greed. And
it’s killing us.”

“And what does
corporatism breed?” I asked.

“Paranoia.”

She had already
proven herself worth far more than I was going to have to pay for her. She
might have been insane, but I’d have paid ten times the hourly rate.

We argued for
hours. I threw everything at her, championing the joys of corporate life and
the natural simplicity of free markets. Her answers all refused to disappoint.

“Tell a man he’ll
get food for free, and he won’t buy any. Tell him he’ll be insured against
unemployment, and he won’t work.”

“How do you
figure that? I’m not saying you give away steaks and apple pie. We can make
protein bars. They taste awful but you can live off them. We could feed the
world Charlie—not animals or livestock—but flesh and blood people who are
starving. Nobody says ‘Well, I’d rather starve to death than work.’ And if
working gives you a chance to buy better food, get that video game you’ve
always wanted, or take a girl out on a date, you’ll do it. Why do capitalists
always espouse the value of an honest day’s work but assume that given the
chance, nobody would ever do one?”