The Water Wars - Cameron Stracher [2]
CHAPTER 2
That night Will and I stayed up late. Will had dragged his mattress across the hallway to my room, where it rested on a couple of wooden crates our father had salvaged from a food drop. The two beds made a kind of giant spongy stair. I was on the top step, and Will was one below. We had two covers, both of which I tugged more closely around me. Will complained, but he gave up as soon as I told him about Kai.
“He must be rich,” Will concluded.
“He is,” I said. “And Will…” I waited until I had his complete attention. “After the bus came, they picked him up in a limo.”
“Who picked him up?”
“I don’t know. There was a guard with a gun.”
Will squinted with his left eye. I always thought it was unfair that I got our mother’s freckles, while Will had our father’s witch-hazel eyes: pinwheels of green, gray, and gold. When he squinted, it was like peering into the glass end of a kaleidoscope.
“His father must be a WAB minister, maybe.”
“There are no WABs here,” I reminded him.
“He could live in Basin.”
“Then why would he be out walking on our road?” I asked.
If the boy’s father were on the Water Authority Board, he wouldn’t live in the Wellington Pavilion, as nice as it was, and he wouldn’t be outside walking. There were places a lot nicer, and a lot more expensive, with better security. Most of the WAB ministers lived in Basin, the capitol, about sixty kilometers away. The Water Authority controlled the flow and distribution of water and was the closest thing we had to an actual government. Our republic—Illinowa—was all that remained of the Midwestern pieces of the old United States, and the only thing left to govern was water. The decisions made by WABs in Basin could mean life or death for the rest of us. I’d never been to the city, but photographs showed leafy trees growing from beneath semi-porous grates and real grass in the park. Everything seemed to be breathing, and the air was gauzy with moisture.
“He must live around here,” I decided. “He says he does.”
“We should invite him to dinner.”
“We don’t have any food.”
“That’s not true.”
“Synth-food’s not food,” said Will. “And Dad is a terrible cook.”
“He doesn’t have time to make a real meal.” I hated when Will criticized our father’s cooking. “Anyway, I don’t mind synth-steaks.”
It was months since we’d eaten anything except the synthetic food the Water Authority Board provided in weekly food drops. They claimed it tasted like the real thing, but of course it didn’t. Everything had a sort of bland sameness. Steak tasted like chicken; orange juice tasted like tomato juice. The only real differences were the colors and textures. Still, people could get used to anything, and we did.
If Kai was rich, he didn’t act like it. Rich people lived in secure compounds with guards and robo-dogs and rarely left their buildings. When they did, they wore kev-jackets on the streets and carried laser-tasers or guns. In Basin they were permitted to shoot first if a stranger approached without identification. Even in Arch, where we lived, the occasional businessman was ferried about in an armored vehicle. You could never be too safe, or too protected. That’s what our teachers said. Men would kill for a glass of water, and did.
Will and I talked until the power grid shut down and the lights flickered, then went dark. He had a small glow light, but it wasn’t fully charged or bright enough for both of us to read by. The darkness settled. I felt myself growing weightless, thoughts flitting half-formed through my mind, pieces of one thing replaced by endings of another. I knew sleep was coming. In my dreams Kai offered me plastene cups filled with water, but I couldn