Maybe it was the water. Maybe it was the air. Maybe it was the earth itself. Whatever the cause, people were sick, and not just our mother. In our building, eight adults had been to the hospital in the last month alone. Most of them were not old, and two were young enough to still live with their parents. At school kids were always absent with colds or coughs, and even I had a sore throat for most of the winter. Will complained of aches in his muscles, which our father treated with warm compresses and synaspirin. It seemed like there was always an ambulette parked in front of our building or racing down the street.
The teachers taught us to cover our mouths when we coughed and to wash our hands. Germs were spread by contact, they said, and children were always touching things. But Will said germs were in the air, carried by the wind. We couldn't help breathing them, eating them. That's supposedly why the school had venti-units. But the units actually made things worse, because they trapped germs and blew them around. Shakers thought they were cleaning the air, but really they were dirtying it.
"They're making us sick," Will insisted.
We were in the back of the old electric car, driving with our father to the water distribution center. The car whined and lurched on the potholed road. Our father had forgotten to plug it in before the power grid switched off the previous night, and the battery was nearly drained.
"It doesn't work that way," said our father. "No one can make you sick."
"If someone sneezes on you, they can make you sick," I said.
"This is different," our father said. "Will blames the Water Authority for making your mother sick."
"Did they?" I asked.
"Of course not!"
"How do you know?" Will demanded.
The car stalled and stopped. Our father muttered a curse under his breath. He thought we couldn't hear him. He placed both hands on the wheel and turned around to face us.
"First of all, the Water Authority is not a person," he explained. "If they made anyone sick, there would be reports about it-news texts, public hearings. People would notice."
"Will noticed," I pointed out.
"Second," said our father, ignoring me, "the Water Authority takes care of us. They don't make us sick."
"Maybe it was an accident."
Our father sighed. "I know this is hard for you. It's hard for all of us. But your mother is getting good medicine, and the doctors say she can get better. She just needs rest."
"She won't get better," said Will.
"Will!" I said.
"She won't, Vera. She's sick. As long as she keeps drinking their water, she's going to stay sick."
"So what should she do? Stop drinking?"
"We should take her someplace where the water is clean."
"Basin?"
"Basin's no better."
"What about us? Shouldn't we stop drinking the water?"
Will nodded. "We'll get sick too before long."
"Stop that talk!" said our father, interrupting us. "We're not going anywhere. This is our home." The car suddenly lurched forward, throwing us against our seats. "Now I want you to quit it, Will," our father said. "Your mother is going to get better. She will."
Normally Will wouldn't quiet down so easily. Even if he was wrong, he spoke with such conviction that it seemed he must be right. In those days, when we argued, I usually gave in before he did. Everyone did. He had the kind of intensity that made adults look to him as a leader and had kids currying his favor.
But Will didn't respond, and our father drove the rest of the way in silence.
When we arrived at the center, I grabbed a free cart while our father and Will unloaded the empty bottles. The center was crowded with other families picking up their weekly supply, and we stopped to chat with people we knew. The Jarviks lived in our apartment complex, and their son Tyler was in Will's class. Tyler was a skinny boy with acne who coughed frequently and picked at the scabs on his face. Will didn't like him, but he pretended to, just to be polite. I felt sorry for Tyler, because he never had enough to drink at lunchtime and was always begging other kids to trade him water or syn-juice for the hard soy crackers his mother packed in his lunch box. But the crackers were stale and crumbly, and he rarely found a taker.
A man was selling coupons from a ration book, and I suggested we buy a pack. Our father said we had enough water for the week and didn't need any more coupons. This wasn't exactly true. We weren't as thirsty as Tyler, but we never had enough water either. For weeks the only work my father had was part-time-repairing hoses for a small business that did a decent trade in used rubber parts. He made barely enough money to pay for a nurse to check in on my mother. But I didn't want to disagree with him-not after his disagreement with Will-and I knew he really meant we couldn't afford more water. Everyone wanted more water; they just couldn't pay for it.
There was plenty of water for sale at the driller's market downtown; but here, in the distribution center, the only water was rationed, government-issued, in familiar blue and white bottles. It wasn't "real" water, Will explained, but desalinated water. This meant it came from the ocean and was processed in a giant factory where all the minerals were removed and chemicals added so it was fit for drinking. The bottles didn't disclose their origin, but you could tell the water was desalinated because it felt slippery on the tongue and had a tangy aftertaste-like licking a burnt match. After a long, dry summer, the Water Authority imported extra bottles of seawater in trade with the Great Coast for building materials like limestone and granite.
We waited in line behind a family of seven whose cart was stacked high with bottles. Our father had only four coupons, so we purchased only two bottles. I was already thirsty and planning how I could fill my canteen from the fountain at school when the monitors weren't watching. In a pinch I could drink tap water, but that could really make a person sick. The hospitals wouldn't even treat a patient who drank tap water; they claimed it was a "self-inflicted" injury. It had happened to one of our neighbors, and he lost forty pounds and never fully recovered. If our mother was being poisoned, we were all being poisoned. We had to drink something. A person could go without food for a month, but dehydration could kill within days. This was why we bought water at the distribution center rather than on the black market or even from the drillers. It was the least likely to kill us.
After buying water our father took us to buy some new clothes. He complained we grew so fast that nothing fit for longer than six months. Will went through shoes like rags. I tore holes in the knees of my pants. Although our father exaggerated, it wasn't far from the truth. It took two chemo washes to remove the dirt from my jeans, and even Will's best shoes had holes in the soles.
I loved shopping. When my mother was well, we would spend hours going through the racks, fingering the dresses and blouses she loved to wear. Her favorite color was green, which she said redheads weren't supposed to wear, but I always thought the clothes she picked looked beautiful on her. She would throw together an old top with a forgotten skirt, and suddenly she looked as if she had spent the whole day getting ready. It was a skill I couldn't copy, hard as I tried. The same clothes that looked glamorous with her red hair looked drab with my dark brown bangs, and my small nose made everything I wore seem too childlike.
I needed new jeans, but I also needed tops and a new pair of shoes. My shirts were too short, and my toes were scrunched. But I didn't say anything to my father, because I saw the way he looked when he fingered the price tags on the outfits I handed him. "Do you really need three?" he asked. I shook my head and pulled my favorite from the bunch-a floral print top with green swirling patterns that reminded me of clouds. It was made from a synthetic fiber called cattan that felt slightly oily to the touch. "This one," I said. I told myself that one outfit was better than none. As for the shoes, I would just have to keep squeezing my feet into the ones I had.
Will picked a new pair of jeans. Our father took Will's pants and my top to the cash register where he paid with his credit chip.
Then it was back to the car for our last stop of the day: the grocery store.
Our father could cook almost anything with nothing. Even when our mother was well, our father did most of the cooking. Now as we roamed the aisles, he fingered the synth-fruit and quasi-vocados, checking for ripeness and disease. "How do you feel about guacamole?" he asked.
We felt great about guacamole-which gave me an idea.
"Kai loves Mexican food," I said, though I had no clue if this were true.
"Kai? The boy in the limousine?" our father asked.
"He's lonely."
"His parents would never let him visit for dinner."
"We could text them our certificates."
"Even so, he doesn't need fake food."
"He might want a home-cooked meal," Will piped up, coming to my aid.
Our father considered this. None of us could remember the last time we had guests at our apartment. The three of us ate quickly at our small table, often in silence, the gloom of illness like a shroud. Loneliness was something we understood, even in a crowd.
Soon we were grabbing the ingredients for a Mexican feast off the half-empty shelves at the store: a package of synth-tortillas, another package of chips, a bottle of salsa made with three percent real tomatoes, and a bag of soy cheese. Our father even bought a six-pack of Beer-o, which he claimed was almost as good as the real thing, although Will made a face behind his back like he was gagging. I pushed the cart while our father inspected items on the shelves, reading their ingredients and hefting them in his hands as if he could discern the harmful chemicals simply by weighing them.
This was our happy father, the one I remembered from the days when our mother would take us shopping, singing songs about to-may-toes and to-mah-toes that always made us laugh. Our mother had been the silly one, but since she had become sick, there was very little silliness in our house.
"It's a lot of food for four, and even more for three," said our father. "Let's hope he can make it."
In the parking lot, the car started right away, and our father let Will drive home. He leaned into the steering wheel, grasping it with both hands, while our father kept one hand close to the emergency brake. The sun was low in the sky, and for once it looked warm rather than desolate. Even the fake flowers in the window boxes outside our building looked brighter, as if they had bloomed in our absence. We coasted onto the entrance road, and Will executed a perfect turn into the garage.
While our father mashed quasi-vocados in the kitchen and Will rehydrated the beans, I tried to reach Kai on the wireless using the ID he had given me. But after fifteen minutes without a signal, I gave up in frustration.
Kai lived only three kilometers from our building-a quick ride in the car or on my pedicycle-but at first my father didn't want to hear about it.
"At this hour who knows who's on the road?" he said.
"I'll text you as soon as I get there."
"You just said the wireless isn't working."
"It probably works at Kai's."
We went back and forth for a while, but eventually my father gave in, as I knew he would. I could tell he was excited about a visitor-especially someone wealthy and mysterious-and now that he was making all this food, someone had to eat it.
Our family lived in a section of Arch called "the Rails" where trains had once rumbled. Long ago it had been one of the least expensive places to live, but after the transportation system broke down, it was one of the few places where food and water were still available. As the other suburbs collapsed, the Rails survived and even thrived. But the legacy of poverty was hard to shake, and anything that reminded us of plenty held us in an incantatory grip.
It was an easy ride to the Wellington Pavilion. No one passed me on the road, and the wind at my back made pedaling easier. The guards stopped me by the front gate, and I removed my goggles to show them copies of my Certification of Health and Vaccination. Still, they wouldn't let me inside. Instead they called Kai on an intercom, and in a few minutes he appeared.
"Hi," I said. "Are you hungry?"
When he cocked his head, he looked like a sunflower, I thought, a rare prize that grew only in hothouses: tall, reedy, with silky blond hair that shone in the twilight. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
"Inviting you to dinner."
"When?"
"Now." I held out copies of our certifications, and he took them tentatively in his hand.
"What are you cooking?"
"It's a surprise."
He was only gone for five minutes. When he returned, he carried two plastene jugs and a small satchel on his hip. The jugs were stamped with a seal from the Water Authority, certifying that they contained real water from pure aquifers. He beckoned to me, and the guards stood by indifferently as I entered the compound. In a moment the black limousine appeared from an underground driveway, its powerful gasoline engine growling hungrily. It circled the interior courtyard and stopped in front of Kai. The bodyguard stepped from the driver's side, machine pistol at the ready, mirrored glasses on the bridge of his nose.
"Come on," Kai said to me. "We'll drive you."
"I have my cycle."
"Martin will bring it back after he drops us off."
I looked at the bodyguard, but his eyes were impassive behind the lenses. He stood there, alert, one hand holding open the door, the other on that machine pistol, head constantly scanning for threats.
I climbed into the car and folded myself into the back seat. It smelled richly of leather and coconut-scents I knew only from chemo-washes. There was a glass divider between the front and back, and below the divider-incredibly-were a sink, a dozen small bottles of colored liquid, and six plastene liter bottles of water.
"It's a bar," said Kai when he noticed me staring.
"What's it do?"
"It doesn't do anything." He smiled at my ignorance. "You mix drinks for yourself."
Of course I knew what alcohol was, but no one I knew mixed it with anything. At parties sometimes shakers would pass around home-brewed stuff, and I had even seen my father take a glass every now and then, but no one had the money to mix real alcohol with other liquids. When I looked at Kai I had to remind myself to stop staring at his skin. It wasn't calloused or dry like paper. A faint scent-real soap, I realized-emanated from his hair. It was all I could do to stop myself from touching him, and I felt my face grow hot from the thought.
The ride was luxurious and smooth. I'd never been in a car like this. The limo's big tires absorbed every jolt in the road, and its thick windows and doors (bulletproof, Kai said) blocked outside noise. We barely had time for a few words of conversation before we arrived at the front entrance of our building. Martin parked near the unmanned gate, then came around to unlock our doors. Kai gave him instructions for dropping off my cycle, and the man nodded wordlessly. He waited-gun at the ready-while we walked upstairs. My father opened the door. He was wiping his hands on his thighs, but when he saw the water, he stopped.
"Thank you for having me to dinner," said Kai.
"You didn't have to do that."
"Dad." I scolded. "This is Kai."
"I'm sorry. Where are my manners?" He accepted the jugs. "Thank you, Kai," he added. "It's nice to meet you." His voice sounded hoarse.
Will appeared at his side, and his gaze went right to the water jugs. Without a word he took one bottle from our father's hand and retreated to the back bedroom. Before Kai could ask any questions, I ushered him into the living room, where my father's guacamole awaited. It was delicious, as always-the perfect blend of tangy salsa and creamy quasi-vocados. We had scooped up half the bowl when Will returned. His eyes were red-rimmed, but he was wearing a broad smile. "She drank a little," he said.
"This is Kai." It had been rude of Will to leave without even so much as a nod, but if he noticed my sarcasm, he pretended to ignore it. He said hello, then spooned himself some guacamole. Soon the boys were sitting on the couch chatting about the latest YouToo! and We! uploads. I followed their conversation like it was a Ping match: from screen to screen to screen. They could have been brothers of different mothers: one blond and smooth, the other ragged and lean, both tapered and fine.
Our father returned from the kitchen. Kai looked at his empty plate longingly. "I've never had guacamole," he said.
"It's my dad's specialty," I told him.
"My dad can't cook," Kai said.
"I haven't met your parents," said our father. "Are they registered?" Adults who had passed a rigorous security screening were allowed to travel freely between the lower republics and often had diplomatic or important business jobs.
"My father's a driller."
This wasn't the answer anyone expected, but it made perfect sense. Drillers were wildcatters, risk-takers, and often rich-if they found water. That explained the limousine and the bodyguard.
"Why aren't you in school?" our father asked.
"My dad needs me. He says I don't have to go."
"What about your mother?"
"She died when I was a baby."
We were silent for a moment, remembering. Before our mother had gotten sick, there was little she hadn't done: school activities, recycling duties, and lots of volunteer projects. She had been the water-smart mom in my class all through elementary school. For Will's prom, she taught the boys how to dance. When I remembered those times, I saw our mother in a favorite green hat, her red hair corkscrewing to her shoulders. People said I resembled her, but it was only the freckles. I wished I were as pretty as my mother. Every time I looked at my own arms, my hands, and my legs, the freckles seemed to mock my pale skin and uninteresting mouth-not at all like our mother's vibrant lips and high cheekbones. Who would want to kiss such boring lips or such a flat pale brow? I knew it was petty to think those things, but thinking about anything else only made me sadder.
"Why don't we head to the kitchen?" said our father. "Dinner's ready."
He had set the table with the "good" china-plates that required sanitizing before putting them away-as well as silverware, glasses, and even smaller plates for the chips and salsa. Four fat candles glowed, spilling light onto our mother's favorite tablecloth: silver threads in a rich red fabric. Three bowls of various sizes bubbled and steamed. The food itself was like a decoration, the brightly colored peppers contrasting with the browns of the beans and the tans of the tortillas. Everything looked perfect.
Before he sat down Kai withdrew something that looked like a thick laser pencil from his satchel. He lifted his shirt and jabbed at the fleshy side of his stomach. Then he took his place at the table and smoothed his napkin over his lap as if nothing had happened. We couldn't help but stare.
"It's for the sugar before I eat," he explained.
"You have diabetes," said our father.
"Yes. Since I was thirteen."
Diabetes was an old-fashioned disease, one I had heard about but never seen. The bodies of people with diabetes didn't produce insulin. Without it, diabetics could die within weeks. Kai had his insulin tucked inside a pencil: real medication that must have cost a fortune-and that kept him alive.
Despite his wealth, however, Kai ate as if he were famished. He piled his plate, then had second helpings-and thirds. Even Will couldn't keep up. Our father poured from Kai's jugs, and we each drank two glasses of water. I couldn't believe how good it tasted: crisp and pure, almost like nothing at all. There was no bad aftertaste, no lingering hint of salt or algae. I held the glass aloft, and the water sparkled gold, green, and silver in the light.
"It's delicious," I said.
"We drilled it from an upper-republic aquifer," said Kai.
"I thought we had drained all our aquifers," said Will.
"Not all of them. There are still some left-if you know where to look. You have to get beneath the surface."
"How do you know where to look?"
"My father knows."
Of course no driller would share his secrets. There were plenty of tales about how drillers found water-divining rods and specially trained animals, sunspots and moonbeams. But if any of these methods worked, there were no screens verifying it and no witnesses except the driller himself and his closest confidantes. Water was money, and money was power, and no one would give up one without the promise of the other.
"Once there was water flowing down in rivers from the mountains into the sea," said our father.
"They were thousands of kilometers long," added Kai. "During the rains they would flood and wash everything away."
"Yes. You could drink it and bathe in it. People even used the rivers to clean their clothes."
When the teachers taught about that time, they made it seem as if the rivers were viewed as inconvenient and expensive highways, wasted resources pouring out into the ocean. Now dams caught all the water, powered turbines, and irrigated the land. Water was too valuable to let it flood the prairies and spill into the sea.
"Your mother and I sailed on a river once," said our father. "It was thick, fast, and, in some places, hundreds of meters deep."
"When was that?" I asked.
"Before you were born. In Sahara, when it was known as Africa."
I had never heard this story before, but I knew my father didn't like to talk about the earlier times: the world before the wars and water shortages. When he was a boy, there were still green fields and blue lakes. Kids played sports outside, like baseball and football, that existed now only on the screens. You could lie in a tub filled with warm water for no reason except to relax. It seemed foolish and wasteful and wonderful-to live as if the sky were endless and time itself had no measure.
"Do you think we'll ever be able to travel down a river again?" I asked.
"No." Our father shook his head sadly. "But long after people are gone, the rivers will return."
I had never heard our father talking like this, and I wondered if Kai's presence had loosened his tongue.
Then Kai spoke. "I know a river."
"Where?" I asked.
"I can't say."
"Can you sail down it?"
Kai ignored my question. "My father told me."
"Tell us," said Will. "We can keep a secret."
"I promised my father."
"If your father knows a river," said our father, "he should tell the government."
Kai laughed. He didn't sound like a kid at all. His laugh was scratchy and untidy, like an adult cackling at a dirty joke. To tell the truth, it scared me a little. "The government is stupid," he said.
This was scandalous. Even Will seemed shocked. No one said that about the government. It could get a person-even a teenager-arrested.
"Kai," our father said gently. "We don't say those kinds of things."
"Why not, if they're true?"
Our father sighed and looked down at his hands. Then he looked up and said, "These are difficult times, Kai. It's not like when I was growing up. We have to watch what we eat and drink and be careful of what we say. The world is a dangerous place, and the government is just trying to protect us. There are bad people out there who want to do bad things. Sometimes, to protect all of us, some of us can't say everything we want to say."
"It's about the water, isn't it, Dad?" asked Will.
"It started with the water," said our father. "But now it's about so many different things."
Will squinted, his left eye nearly closed, the green in his iris like a sliver of emerald. I knew he was thinking about the war, and the army, and what awaited him next year. I was too. Everyone spent a year in the military, then five years afterward on active reserve. We had to protect Illinowa-guard the earth and sky. But the Rails seemed a long way from Basin, and I wondered who was really protecting whom.
A klaxon rang outside signaling the last hour before the grid shut down. I could hear the car outside waiting, the low humming of its motor like the grid itself. Kai regarded our father coolly. He suddenly didn't look anything like a boy. His face was planed by shadows, and his fine hair hung over his eyes. "The government is keeping secrets from you," he said.
"What kind of secrets?" our father asked.
"The kind they don't want you to know."
"Well, then, it's probably better we don't."
Our father's smile was a tight line, but Kai didn't smile at all. "The river is the beginning," he said. "If they can't control it, we can start again."
A new beginning, I thought. Without hunger, thirst, or war. A river could be like a time machine: Step into the same place and it was already changed. But I wondered if there could ever be enough water to start again.
Kai watched me from across the table, his eyes lidded low, pupils barely visible. His skin glowed, and his lips gleamed moistly. When he spoke, his voice was soft and low. "Someday," he said softly to me, "I'll take you there."