Slow River

“Why didn’t you turn it back on?”

“I did, but your mother didn’t. She wanted you to have all the visible trappings of the rich and powerful. As she said to me at the time, you can always dye it. Now lie down.”

Lore does. “What color am I supposed to dye it?”

“Any color you like.” He goes to the window and pulls the curtains closed.

Lore frowns at his back. “But how will I know which color is the right one?”

Right, wrong; on, off, yes, no. She is used to black-and-whites, but at seven Lore is suddenly realizing she can make of herself what she wills. When she is old enough she can have red hair or golden eyebrows or hot, dark lashes like spiders’ legs. And no one will tell her she is wrong, because no one will know. She could become anyone she wishes. But how will she know she is still herself?

She stays awake a long time, thinking about it. How does Stel know who she is if every time she stands in front of a mirror, she looks different? Before she falls asleep, Lore resolves that she will never, ever dye her hair.

Chapter 5

I knocked, the two short, three long taps we used to use. Spa

“We agreed I’d come here. Yesterday. In the bar.”

“Right.” She let me in.

I noticed the changes immediately. It was not just that someone else had been living there for a time—the different smells of soap and shampoo left behind in the bathroom, the exotic spices half-used on the shelf over the microwave—it was other things. We had never kept the place scrupulously tidy but it had felt alive and cared for. Now the worn places in the rug were dark with ground-in dirt and several plants were brown and curling. The plastic eyes of the power points were dull and cold and the equipment on the bench was covered in dust. I tried not to think about how she must have been supporting herself the last few months.

I couldn’t help glancing at the bench again. She noticed, of course, and laughed the laugh I had first heard a few months before I left, the ugly one. “Don’t worry. I haven’t lost my touch.” She ran her fingers through her hair, and the familiarity of the gesture here, in this flat, almost gave me vertigo.

“Let me see the PIDA.”

I handed over the baggie. “It’s sterile.”

Spa

“Not much for now. Change the fingerprint ID and physical description to start with. And add my middle name, of course.”

She nodded. “Less is better.”

It was as though that single sentence had been echoing in the flat for nearly three years, as though I had somehow just stepped out for a while and stepped back in to hear it once again. Less is better. If only she had kept to that axiom. I wanted to grab the PIDA, leave the flat, and never come back, but I did not know anyone else who could do this for me. At least, not anyone as good as Spa

“Let’s have those, too. You’ve used them to open an account?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. You remember some things, then, despite your distaste.”

I sighed and pulled a list from my pocket. “Here are the things I want. Her education and employment background are fine for now—unless someone wants to pay for an extensive backcheck.”

Spa

I went into the kitchen, put on the coffee, and opened the cupboard under the sink. The watering can was still there.

Most of the plants around the flat were beyond revival. I watered them anyway. I stopped by one pot for a long time. When I had bought the cheese plant for her it had been just over four feet tall. When I left it had been nearly six, the leaves as big and glossy as heavily glazed di

“Put it on the table,” she said when I brought out the coffee. “I’m just about done here.”

I sat, and after a minute she joined me. It felt very strange to be sharing the same couch.

“So. Payment.”

“Yes,” I said, and waited.

“That scam you were so keen on a few months ago. The net ads for charity. Think it’s still possible?”

“I can make the film, and it’ll bring in money. Can you do the rest?” I deliberately didn’t look at the dust on the bench.

“No problem.” She made a dismissive gesture. “The hard part is going to be start-up costs.”

“I’ve got nothing left. Not to speak of.” I wondered briefly what it would be like to get a paycheck. Another three weeks to wait for that.

“I’ll provide start-up, then, on condition that it comes out of the pot before we divide it.”

“Fifty-fifty?”

She laughed. “You already owe me, remember? Seventy-thirty.”

“Sixty-forty.” I didn’t care about the money. All I wanted was the PIDA. I was bargaining because Spa

“Sixty-forty, then.” She didn’t bother to hold out her hand. I wasn’t sure what I would have done if she had.

“How long?”

“I’ll need to work out what equipment we need. And then I’ll have to find it. Hyn and Zimmer should be able to help.”

I stood. There was no point talking further until we found out about equipment. “I know the way out.”

I walked back to my flat, thinking about Spa

Trees are not delicate. You can do all kinds of things to a fully grown tree—drench it in acid rain and infest it with parasites, carve initials in its bark and split branch from trunk—and it will survive. It is not presence but absence that will kill a tree. Take away its sunshine and it will stretch vainly upward, groping, growing etiolated, spindly beyond belief, and die. Take away its water and its leaves wrinkle, become transparent, and fall.

I tilted the watering can into the pot of my ficus tree, watching the brown, granular soil darken and smooth out as it absorbed the water. I sprayed the leaves, wondering when the light green of the leaves grown in the summer, summer when I had left Spa

I was still crying when I went into the bathroom. It was small, painted peach and cream, and everything in it was clean, but somehow it still reminded me of the bathroom Spa

I turned the cold tap, splashed my face. Enough, I told myself sternly. But how could it be enough when even the clear, cold water streaming into the sink reminded me of the first time I went into Spa

I looked at my hair more closely and sighed. The gray roots were begi

I had never liked red. I would buy some brown dye, and I would let my eyebrows grow back. Symmetrically.

Lore’s back was healed and her hair was a different color. She was as disguised as she was going to get. She was getting restless. She had been inside the flat for several weeks and, before that, the kidnappers’ tent. Now she was afraid to go outside. She sat by the livingroom window and watched the sky as it turned to November gray, and shuddered. It was so big, so open. She tried to imagine being out under the whipping clouds, among the people who all seemed to be hurrying toward destinations she could only guess at. But she had nowhere to head for. And she would be without a slate, without a real identity, with no one to call if she found herself in trouble. And people might recognize her, might stare and point…