Slow River

Lore was alone. Alone in a room filled with shadows of furniture she had never seen before, things that belonged to a woman she did not know, in a city that was strange to her. Alone. A nobody with nothing, not even clothes. It was like being kidnapped again, but this time she had no escape to dream of, nowhere to run to. Her sister had killed herself. Her father was a monster who had lied to her, year after year after year.

She stood in the middle of the room, aware of the strange smells and temperature, and knew clearly that she needed this woman Spanner; depended upon her, in a way that was shocking. Lore’s fear was sharp, undeniable as a knife pressed against her cheek. It woke her up a little from her dreamy shock state. She was thirsty.

The bathroom was enormous, its window bare; It was too dark outside to see much, but she thought there were perhaps walls, and the remains of a path. She did not want to put the light on, but she could make out a yellowing, old-fashioned tub and huge, cracked black and white tiles. The water ran from the bulbous taps under low pressure, twisting like crossed fingers. She let it pour over her fingers automatically, tasted with the tip of her tongue. Salty. Ions: probably chloride and fluoride and bromide… and suddenly she was crying.

Her fingers turned cold under the tap as she wept. She would have to drink this water that wheezed out from old lead pipes, would have to accept what she was given from now on, and she would have to like it.

When she had finished crying, she splashed her face with water and dried herself with a towel—Spanner’s water, Spanner’s towel—and went back into the living room.

In the street twenty feet below, a freight slide rumbled to a stop but everything else was quiet. She looked down at the judo mat and imagined trying to sleep on it, facedown, back toward the closed curtains of Spanner’s bedroom. Horribly vulnerable.

The judo mat probably weighed less than twenty pounds but it was awkward to handle. In the end she had to drag it behind her like a travois. Several things fell as she barged fifteen feet over to the east wall. She lay on her stomach facing the shadows. The freighter moved off again. She counted to two hundred and fifty-one before another passed. In the silence, she heard the creak of a tree limb rubbing up against the bricks of the outside wall.

As the streetlights faded and the sun came up, the red eyes glowed less insistently and the shadows before her shifted. An electronics workbench, she thought, and tools…

Lore dozed on and off until around ten in the morning, when the noise of passenger slides and people passing by on the street filled the room with a bright hum, There was no sound from the bedroom.

The living room was big, twenty by twenty-five at least. The centerpiece of the shorter south wall was an elaborate fireplace, cold and empty now. A variety of leafy green plants stood on the hearth and on a low tin-topped table nearby. There were some books, but not many. A rug. Then the couch and coffee. table, all well used, not exactly clean. The carpet was rucked up where she had dragged the mat over it last night in the dark. Squares of bright sunlight pointed up the wear in its red and blue pattern. The tree outside cast shadows of branches and shivering leaves over the wall behind her. From this angle, all she could see of it was the glint of low morning sun through leaves already beginning to turn orange and red, but the leaves looked big and raggedy, like hands. Maybe a chestnut. She lay under its shadow and tried to imagine she was at Ratnapida, lying on the grass. The birdsong was all wrong.

A large proportion of the room at the north end was taken by two tables and a workbench, all covered with screens, data-retrieval banks, a keyboard and headset, input panel, and what looked like some kind of radio and several haphazard chipstacks, all connected together by a maze of cable.

She could not figure out what it was all for.

In what Lore would come to realize was a pattern, Spanner woke up around midday. She went straight from bed to the connecting bathroom, and about twenty minutes later emerged into the living room via the kitchen door, carrying two white mugs of some aromatic tea. The silk robe she wore had seen better days, and in the daylight her hair was the color of antique brass. “Jasmine,” she said as she held out a mug.

Lore reached for the tea. The red scar between her thumb and forefinger showed up clearly against the white ceramic. Moving hurt. Spanner nodded to herself. “I called the medic. He’s on his way. And don’t worry. He won’t report this. Or you.”

Lore felt as though she should say something, but she had no idea what. She sipped at the tea, trying to ignore the pain.

“I know who you are,” Spanner said softly. “You were all over the net.” Lore said nothing. “I don’t understand why you’re not screaming for Mummy and Daddy.”

“I’ll never go back.”

“Why?”