Water

Water

I

Brenna’s pass no longer worked. He passed the useless plastic card over the reader several more times, to no effect whatever. Officer Saleb gave him a pleased look.

‘Lesson learned, I trust?’

Brenna gave him an agonized grimace. ‘But where shall I go?’

Saleb’s brief smile vanished. ‘Crawl back into your hole, civilian.’

Brenna walked back to his apartment block in a daze, heedless of the blazing sunlight on his black uniform. By the time he reached the apartment block his underclothes were awash with perspiration. He waved his card at the entrance to Company block 17. It still worked. Perhaps they might give him his job back, after an enforced penitential sentence. It had been known to happen. But without his salary his credits would evaporate all too soon. He drew a cup of precious water from the tap, watching the numbers decrease on the meter. He had seventeen litres left. Would he still get water credits? That was a far more urgent problem. The Company owned all the water. You could harvest water from condensation on your walls and windows; but that was just reclamation. You needed water to make water. The daring and desperate even took water from the Block roofs, though that was an infraction punished severely.

He didn’t regret his moment of madness. He knew the woman. She had stood in line with the others with her plastic bucket. Everyone had to swipe their card and have the value deducted from their balance. She had stared at him in silence. Brenna knew she had no credits left; so he had let her fill her bucket for free. Her hazel eyes had flashed him a piercingly grateful look. But there was no escaping the omnipotent surveillance cams. He sipped the water, savouring every drop in gratitude and slow-mounting terror. He had been lucky to get the job at all. Officer Saleb had made it clear that he had barely passed the entrance examination; and his personnel card was very much the gift of his grandmother, Founder Agar. Who had been the Company’s chief engineer, and builder of the Dam.

The Dam! At first it had been a blessing in a parched continent. Water which had gone to waste in rivulets and evaporation was painstakingly hoarded in a covered reservoir and doled out to those who needed it. But the climate turned hotter; the rain came less often; and the price exacted rose inevitably. The news bulletins denied it, but whispered rumour suggested that water was being siphoned off by Company executives, who resold it at exorbitant rates to the desperate. Trees and plants withered outside the Company’s irrigated farms, and still the endless heat beat down on the teeming city.

What was he to do now? Wait, and see if the Company relented and allowed him his job back? If they did not he was doomed. The Underclass would not accept him. They eked out a lawless existence in the back alleys and teeming tenements. They would take one look at his well-nourished body and kill him without scruple. Possibly they would eat him. There were rumours of cannibalism among the Underclass. Brenna did not feel he could blame them. He undressed, wrung out his sodden clothes into a basin and allowed the water to settle. There was nearly half a litre there when he had finished: enough to turn dried beans into a filling meal. Then he sat down at his terminal and attempted to log in.

ACCESS DENIED

Brenna stared at the screen and attempted to type something. Whichever keys he pressed, nothing appeared on his screen, which continued to flash the ominous message at two-second intervals. He stared at the screen and began to tremble all over. Without computer access he was at the Company’s exceedingly dubious mercy. He stood up, drank a little of the sweaty water from the bowl and thought for a long while.

II

Lying on his joyless single bed, Brenna found himself thinking of his grandmother. She was long dead, of course, but was it possible she had left him any legacy beyond her continual insistence that he study higher mathematics? He slipped off the bed and crept to the computer terminal once more. Grandmother? he typed. For a while nothing happened. But the ACCESS DENIED message had disappeared. He typed HELP. The screen flashed on in a riot of psychedelic colours for a moment. Then he stared at the screen. Small serif-enhanced letters began to appear. Integral of one over one plus four x squared from zero to one? Three SF. You have fifteen seconds. Don’t waste them.

Sweat poured from his forehead. He had no means of knowing the time now, but he hoped the answer was correct. He typed 0.554, held his breath, and hoped for the best.

Hello Brenna. I knew you wouldn’t let me down. Now you are back in the system. This sub-program is a back door I left just for you. I’m not here any more, of course. But I’m guessing you’ve lost your job. Is that correct?

He typed Yes, watching his melancholy admission appear in the centre of the screen.

I really hope you haven’t lost that locket. You know? The heart-shaped one. I warned you not to give it away to some silly girl. Do you still have it?

Yes.

Good for you. Now if you like, you never have to work again. You can collect all the rations and water you want, and the apartment you’re currently in has disappeared off the surveillance system. Officially, it no longer exists. You can be a rat in the wainscotting for as long as you like. Is that what you want?

No. Brenna smiled. The terminal had put his refusal in letters that covered the entire screen. He waited.

Good boy! Now, if you enter the secret code in the back of the locket with the answer to my first question, you can blow the dam. Go and get it.

Brenna walked slowly to his underwear drawer, pulled it back, and there was the small black leather case. He opened the box and admired the slender golden chain, and the heart-shaped locket. It was as he remembered: a piece of tasteless-looking junk jewellery. Goldish at best. But he had kept it because it had been grandmother's. He returned to the terminal and typed I have it. What now?

It is now armed. The destruct code is activated by pressing the back repeatedly.

Brenna thought about a world in which the dam was destroyed. The Company’s tyranny would be irrevocably finished. But. He thought of the woman he had lost his job by helping her. What would become of her? And all the others entirely dependent on the precious water?

Grandmother, no. I don’t think that would help anybody. I won’t do it.

The speakers uttered a brief, triumphant fanfare before falling silent.

Good boy! I didn’t raise my favourite grandson to be a terrorist! And just so you know, your principled refusal has opened up the water conduits to everybody. Just a trickle, but that will keep everyone alive without them having to pay for it. I think the Company is probably too rich for their own good already.

There was another pause. Grandma, what would have happened if I had activated the locket?

The locket would have self-destructed. It wouldn’t have hurt you. But I’d have cut you adrift. I don’t want anyone here who would press that button.

Here? Are we talking about the afterlife?

No, you stupid boy! I’m still alive, I’ll have you know. In all probability. I’m, let me see, seventy-three is it? We all live like kings down here. Want to join us?

I suppose there’s a map, with directions? And another mathematical puzzle to show I’m worthy?

I always said you were quick on the uptake.

Brenna stared at the expression which blossomed across the screen. Bloody hellfire, a contour integral! He had studied complex variable calculus. Once. Right now his memory of it was a perfect blank.

How long have I got to solve it?

Ten minutes. Take your time. Exact values this time please.

Thanks Grandmother, he muttered under his breath. There was a trick to this. What was it again? 2πi times the sum of the residues! So how many of them did we have?

After a few minutes he typed in -5pi + 4i. A detailed map splashed across the screen. Written across the bottom was the cursive legend MEMORIZE THIS! And bring the locket!

Brenna did his best, but managed to find a pen and a piece of paper. Memory is all very well, but there’s nothing like hard copy backup.

III

The tunnel wasn’t so bad at first. It was a long-abandoned mine filled with iron-red tailings and discarded rubbish. It was hardly surprising the Company paid no attention to it. But the tunnel grew narrower, and the roof lower, until it was barely tall enough for him to walk upright. Brenna had sensibly brought an LED torch, as well as all his spare clothes and food, safely tucked into his backpack. He was feeling claustrophobic, and his breath came in short gasps. And standing right in his way was, of all things, an ancient wooden wardrobe, looming in the pallid torchlight. Oh, really? Brenna mused. A wardrobe? Please let there not be a lion on the other side of it.

He opened the cupboard and walked right through the back of it into a solid metal tunnel. With a steel door barring further access. His LED light flickered down to the hinges, and up to the dark, gleaming roof. He knelt down, and found a small panel at floor level. Ten buttons in two rows showed the numbers zero to nine. Oh good, he thought. Another mathematical puzzle. Grandmother! he muttered under his breath. No question anywhere to be seen. Now what would it be? It wouldn’t be π, surely? He began pressing three, one, four, one, five and nine. Absolutely nothing happened. Was the next digit two, or six? He couldn’t remember. And it seemed unlikely anyway.

What had she said again? Her last words were… what? Bring the locket.

Brenna unhooked the heart-shaped locket from around his neck and shone the torch upon it. The front was the bulbous heart-shape he remembered. He turned it over. Inscribed in thin letters on the back was the following: 2 / e

She had given him the locket when he was fourteen. At the time he had not even been curious about it. He had only kept it because he had been so proud of her. He did some calculations in his head, and punched 7357. The door slid open, and Brenna gasped.

Before him a vast cavern had opened up. Brilliant yellow lights illumined a gleaming white road. On either side were stone houses, with verdant gardens. There were orange trees laden with blossom. There was a field of wheat away in the distance. There were people going hither and yon, straight-backed, with fearless faces. And everywhere the sound of falling water: water in pools, water in torrents, water in streams running beside the pearl-white roadway.

‘Brenna?’ Standing before him was Grandmother, dressed simply in a grey robe. His mouth opened, but he found no words. ‘Never mind talking for now. We’ve been waiting for you. Do you like what you see?’

‘Did you make all this?’

‘Don’t be foolish, dear. I had help, of course.’

One of the passers-by turned towards him and grinned. ‘Welcome, Brenna!’

Brenna gaped at him. ‘Officer Saleb?’

The man had changed utterly. Ease and comfort filled his ebony face and eyes, and he took Brenna’s unresisting hand.

Grandmother Agar laughed merrily. ‘Officer Saleb has steered many folk down here. We’re very particular about who we invite. Never mind. Come, and feast with us.’