Slow River

It was not a rhetorical question. But she had known what Ki

“Maybe I do. But I need to hear it. I don’t think I can take any more surprises from you.” She got up, came around to my side of the desk. We stood about twelve inches from each other. The hairs on my neck and the backs of my hands tried to rise. It was like being in a strong magnetic field. I felt very exposed in my ski

“I like you,” I said suddenly. Which was not quite what I had intended. “I like being near you. And I admire you. What you think matters to me.” And I had made myself vulnerable. She was the only person in the world apart from Spa

I could see every pore in her face, the way the creases around her eyes deepened when she smiled. “Why didn’t you start trusting me a bit earlier?” She moved closer, nine inches, six.

I could feel the heat of her body through the plasthene of my suit. Our hipbones were almost touching. I imagined the feel of her skin under my hands.

The end-of-break Klaxon sounded. Down below there was movement as the shift came back to the troughs.

“Shit.” I started to turn away.,

She snagged my hand. Plasthene on plasthene. Safe and erotic. She did not seem to care about the glass walls. She moved her hand to my wrist, tugged until my arms came around her waist. She laid my palm against the small of her back, pressed it in place. My belly was an inch, half an inch, from hers. Heat swarmed up my legs, down my spine. “Is this what you want?”

I nodded.

“Say it.”

“Yes. This is what I want. You are who I want.”

What was between us swelled suddenly, and was almost tangible: ceramic and smooth, rounded as an egg.

We stepped apart by mutual consent. Magyar did not sit behind the desk again, but perched on one corner. I hovered uncertainly by the door. “We have a lot to do,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And I’ll have to split my time between this”—she gestured at the space between us, the possible murder, she meant—“and the sabotage.”

“Yes.” I turned to go, got as far as touching the door handle, turned. “Magyar, were you ever loved by your family?”

“Yes.”

So sure. “I don’t know if I was. I know that no one else ever did. I’m not sure what love is, but I want… I want to be real.” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say. “All the people I’ve slept with, none of them knew who I really was.” None of them had whispered my name, sent me love notes. Told me they couldn’t live without me. “I’ve never had any romance, ever. But how could I? I’ve been so many people, I never knew which ones were real. I want to find that out before you and I… before we go any further. I want to see what that’s like. Do you understand?”

“No,” she said softly, “but I’m trying.”

Good enough.

Chapter 24

The seven hours between lunch and di

Something is different. Both men come into the tent together. She sits at the far end of the tent while they stand at the entrance. They fill the tent, breathe all her air. She must not look scared or they will know she is no longer drugged,

“Your family is stalling,” Crablegs says.

Lore looks from one to the other, not sure if she should say anything.

Fishface squats down until his hooded face is only a foot or so higher than Lore’s. “We’ve asked for thirty million,” he explains, “which isn’t much.”

“They say ten is all they’ll give, We think maybe they don’t care whether you live or die.”

Fishface stands. “If they don’t give us the money, we can’t give you back. You do understand that, don’t you?”

He sounds genuinely regretful. Lore wants to reach out and pat his arm, let him know she understands that he is really trying.

“Think about what you want to say to them, to persuade them to pay.” They leave without another word.

Ten million. What can she say that will make them pay if they don’t want to? And why wouldn’t they want to?

She thinks of Katerine, and Oster. Perhaps they are still competing for her.

Then why haven’t they paid?

When Crablegs brings the camera again, what will she say to convince her parents that she is worth thirty million?

Lore looks inside herself and finds only a vast space. Who is she? Her father would recognize the Lore who goes with him to count fish in the bay, and talk about the silliness of their ancestors. Katerine, on the other hand, knows and cares only for the Project Deputy, the efficient young woman who designs huge systems and suavely courts the Minister for This and the Commissar of That.

But what of the girl who would lie in A

Chapter 25

I was on the roof; nailing planks together to make a planter big enough for a tree, when my phone buzzed. I scrambled back in through the window, picked up a handset. “Yeah.”

“Meisener,” Magyar said.

“What?” I put my hammer down on the table.

“It was Meisener who sabotaged the plant. Had to be.”

“Hold on.” I climbed back through the window with the handset and sat down. The slates were cold through the thin material of my trousers. “Go on.”

“Four people with enough know-how to jam the glucose line and ready the emergency equipment started work at Hedon Road in the last three months: you, a day-shifter, and Paolo and Meisener.” She added dryly, “I assumed you didn’t count.”

“Thanks.”

“The day-shifter joined just the day before the spill. Not enough time to fix things.”

“No.”

“So that left Paolo and Meisener. And apart from the fact that Paolo left before it all happened, I don’t think he was capable, do you?”

Paolo had neither the knowledge nor the focus. “No.”

“Right. So I had a look at Meisener’s records-”

“Which will be false.”

“Yeah, they read like yours: plausible dates and places—names of plants and supervisors, family, even vacation dates—but something just doesn’t add up.”

“Go on.”

“Even if you only believe part of his records, he’s had enough experience to know what he’s doing.”

“Where was he when the spill came in?”

“I’m getting to that.” She sounded a

“Nothing incriminating about that.”

“No, but he apparently helped half a dozen people into EEBAs before leaving.”

“That’s significant?”

“I think it is,” Magyar said. “He already knew where everything was. Which means he was expecting something to happen.”

“It could.” It could also just mean he was an old hand, like me, like Magyar herself, and knew a badly run plant ready for an accident when he saw it. “If he’s guilty, he’ll be moving on soon.” To whatever his next job was, for whomever paid him. Meisener, the cheerful, bandy-legged little man.

“… little bastard.”

I was thinking, irrelevantly, of sea and sand and sitting on a log. Then of my last van de Oest project in the Kirghizi desert. Of a truck driving through a puddle, and Hepple.

“What?”

“I said, I want to strangle the little bastard. He could have killed my people. All for money! But why? That’s what doesn’t make sense. Who benefits? The whole thing smacks of organization, which takes money. Even if we had shut down for several days and managers lost their profits, it doesn’t mean anyone else would have made money. Unless it was a matter of market share, and even then-”