Slow River

“You still hot?” Spa

“Aren’t you hot?”

“No.” Spa

Lore shook her head, trying to clear it, and wondered when the drug would start to work, when she would stop caring. The heat decided her. She stood up, pulled off the dress, then her underwear, and dropped them on the carpet. The woman turned briefly, nodded, then turned back to the screen. Lore snuggled back next to Spa

Spa

As if being naked had freed something, all of a sudden Lore could smell the shampoo in Spa

“Kiss me,” Lore whispered. Spa

Spa

“Sshh, quietly.” Spa

Spa

“Ah.” Lore was moving now, unable to keep still. Her belly was full of lava and blood ran thick and heavy under her skin, making her feel slow and liquid.

“Yes,” whispered Spa

Spa

“Now,” she said, and Spa

It was still hot. The man snored gently. The screen was blank.

The hardest part of the shift for me was always half an hour after the break, when there were still nearly four hours to go and my blood sugar was low. Today, I felt restless and tense and hot. At the readout station I pushed the hair off my face with the back of one hand and just hoped there was nothing toxic on my glove. Hepple, though he was keeping a low profile since Magyar had hinted I was a Health and Safety spy, was still demanding hourly readings.

The readings were normal, absolutely normal, but something nagged at me. Maybe it was just the fact of Hepple’s demands, but something seemed not quite right. I checked everything I could think of, even the enzyme levels and secondary by-products like dichloroethylene. Everything on the button. It must be the heat making me tense. I waited for my neck muscles to relax. They didn’t.

I missed Paolo, wondered what he was doing now, but it wasn’t that. I was waiting for something to happen. I just didn’t know what, or why.

I downloaded the latest results onto a slate and went to find Hepple. He was in his glass office.

Instead of motioning me to put the slate on his desk, he reached for it immediately. He was looking the numbers over thoroughly when I left.

Maybe he was expecting something, too.

I went back to trough forty-one, decided to replace some of the rushes, just because I was restless, then changed my mind and went back to the readout station and checked the monitors. Everything was fine. So why wasn’t I happy about it? Think. Start at the begi

And then I remembered. The puddles, the truck, the driver calling, “Sorry about that!” The logo: BioSystems.

I swore, ran a sample on the bug food. Took down one of the slates and after a few minutes’ fiddling managed to access some old records. Compared the two. Just as I thought. I picked up the phone. “Magyar, I need to talk to you.”

“What’s happened?” Even over the line I could hear her tension. She was waiting for something, too.

“Just get here.”

I felt savage. If Hepple had appeared right then I think I would have kicked him until he bled. Four million gallons a day, straight into the city’s mains, and he was risking it all for the sake of shaving half a percent from the plant’s operating costs.

Magyar arrived, breathless. “Tell me.”

“Hepple. Stupid bastard.” I was so angry I could hardly speak. “The bug food. Hepple bought the cheap stuff. Generics.”

The folds around her eyes seemed to swell slightly, making her eyes look smaller. “How bad is that?”

“Right now, not very, but I don’t know how long it will stay that way. I can try adjust the nutrients by hand until we can replace it. The system should catch any big swings—ones that are within known parameters, anyway—but the van de Oest proprietary nutrients have got to be restored.”