Water Rites (21 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

D
an and the Coalition had managed to come up with an impressive number of people on short notice. Carter leaned against the hood of the parked truck, watching the crowd mill in the blazing sunshine. The afternoon was windless for once, and dust hung in the air, burning his damaged lungs.

Hands Off Our Water!
The crude signs had been lettered in blood red paint.
Uniforms Get Out! This Land is Our Land!
He couldn’t see the expressions from this distance. Here at its mouth, the Deschutes bed was wide and rocky. The crowd had spilled over from the highway, but so far they had stayed behind the tape barricade that the Corps had erected. But he didn’t have to see their expressions to know what their mood was. A man and a couple of women were leading chants:
Army out, it’s our water
, and
Water water everywhere, how come the Valleys get our share?
In between the chants, the crowd murmured with the sound of a big animal growling low in its throat.

This was different from Chicago. In Chicago, the violence had built up like gas pocket in a mine — odorless, invisible. The explosion had come suddenly, violently. Maybe Greely was right, and the yelling would bleed off some of that deadly power. Maybe.

They were chanting again. The media was here, just as Greely had wanted. Reporters with vid-cams stalked the fringes of the mob, angling for dramatic shots. Carter’s lips tightened as he walked the line they had set up, clapping shoulders, speaking to his officers and NCOs. They were all nervous. This wasn’t what they had signed on with the Crops to do. They were water people, trained to maintain the Pipeline. They weren’t combat troops. They were welders and flow specialists, dozer drivers and surveyors. “Let them yell,” he said to one of his sergeants. The man was wire-tight, and Carter put a hand on his shoulder. “Barking dogs aren’t so likely to bite.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

They were wearing the new-issue riot gear — helmets, Kevlar coveralls, rock-shields, and stun wands like cattle prods but with a lot more oomph. Riot gear must be a growth industry, Carter thought bitterly. Gas masks dangled from every belt. He had parked the convoy of government vehicles in a rough line about twenty yards in front of the silocrete dome that housed the complex Shunt valves. Inside the Shunt bunker, a carefully selected detail crouched, armed with laser-sighted M20s. If civilians got past the trucks, they had orders to open fire. And it would all go to hell after that. Carter shaded his eyes against the glare.

Lava rock, eroded by ages of wind and water, stuck up out of the riverbed clay in long ridges. They reminded Carter of dirty molars jutting out of a bare jawbone, like the horse’s skull he and Johnny had unearthed in the meadow behind Johnny’s family compound one summer afternoon. The sun was still well above the horizon and the riverbed held the heat and dust like a bowl. Here and there, umbrellas stuck up above the crowd among the signs, casting tiny pools of shade.

On the slopes above the rocky sides of the gorge, green leaves shimmered in the sun — sugar beets. Carter took a hand-held amplifier from the back of a truck.
They’re desperate
, he had told his officers this morning.
They’re scared for their kids and their homes.

It was hard to keep that in mind as the crowd chanted and growled.

“Tell us.” The florid-faced Ransom bawled from the front rank of the crowd. “Tell us why you bastards decided to cut off our water?”

“We’re not cutting off your water.” Carter kept his voice calm and reasonable, but his hand amp boomed it out over the riverbed, harsh and loud. “We have to send more water down to Mexico or the Alliance goes down the drain. And then Canada can legally short us. Then you’ll really see water cuts.”

“Screw Mexico,” Ransom bawled. “Don’t feed us this Mexico shit. You’re taking our water to feed those damn bush farmers. It was on the news. You cut us four and a half percent. You know what those numbers mean? They mean that our kids are gonna go hungry. Or do you care?”

Damn the media. It sure had been on the evening newscasts, was all over the internet, and he would give a lot to know who’d leaked it to them. Carter unclenched his teeth with an effort. “This cut means that you’re all going to have a hard time,” he said. “Some of you are going to lose your farms. I wish that there was something that the Corps could do, but there isn’t. If the water doesn’t go down the Shunts, a lot more people are going to have a hard time — the people who depend on the valleys for their food. If the bushes die, they go hungry. Their kids go hungry. We’ve got to get the maximum use out of every gallon of water. Numbers count. It’s damned tough, but they do.”

“At least he’d not jerking us around,” a man yelled from the crowd. “He’s saying it like it really is.”

“Sounds like shit to me,” a sarcastic voice rang out. “Feels like, smells like it, too.” A ripple of muttering and nervous laughter ran through the crowd.

The laughter didn’t relieve any tension. If anything, that sarcastic voice had cranked it tighter. “You’ve got real complaints.” Carter raised his voice. “But you’re picking on the wrong people. Yeah, we carry out the orders. We reprogrammed the valves that reduced your water, but we didn’t make the distribution decisions. Water Policy did that, and right now we’re looking at some numbers that may change things, let us bring in water from the Great Lakes to make up the difference. But right now, we have to do what they tell us to do.”

“So what?” The sarcastic voice yelled again. “You gonna send us to Washington to talk to the Committee? You think we really believe you’re looking at numbers? None of you care about us as long as you eat. So I say we do something about that.”

The crowd roared approval, drawing together like an animal crouching for the attack.

There he was — the voice — a ginger haired man with a square, calculating face. Carter tensed. He knew that face, had a sudden, cloudy memory of an arm beneath his chin, choking him. “Violence gets you nothing,” Carter yelled over his speaker. “If you wind up in jail, if there’s no water in the Pipe, what the hell have you gained?”

“Won’t matter then, will it?” Red-hair faced the crowd, arms raised stiffly, fists clenched. He had to be wearing a mic and a hi-tech amp because you could hear his voice all across the riverbed. And that voice was like a whiplash, charged with energy, crackling with power and anger. “Yeah, go ahead and listen to the uniforms,” he yelled. “Let’s shuffle on home like good little citizens. We can sit in our houses and behave while our crops wilt and our kids die. Or we can make those fat cats in Washington listen. We can hurt ’em where they’re hurting us, right? If they’re hungry enough, they’ll pay attention. Let’s do it!” he howled. “Smash those valves. Let the bushes wilt this time.”

A rock banged off the fender of a truck. Another starred the windshield of Carter’s Chevy. The crowd surged forward, individual voices lost in the mob roar. Dan’s people were trying. You could see them, like rocks in a flood; men and women grabbing at people, shouting, forming little whirlpools in the slow forward surge of the crowd. He spotted Greely near the center. He was holding his own, slowing people down, but it wasn’t enough.

“Spread out,” Carter ordered. “Hold the line. Don’t break.”

They had to stop the crowd well in front of the trucks. His people were moving forward, protected from the scatter of rocks by their shields. Out in the crowd, the redheaded man swung a fist and one of the dissenters went down. The first people hit the line and Carter heard screams. Those stun wands hurt. You blew it, Dan, Carter thought. Time to stop this. Now. Carter headed for the truck where they had set up the gas launchers. A windshield shattered, spraying him with bits of glass. Carter ducked, searching for Dan again in the milling chaos. He’d disappeared. Dust drifted in choking clouds, obscuring the struggling bodies. The line was being forced back, pushed toward him and the trucks. His orders had been to launch the gas if the line gave. Carter grabbed the comm. Link from his belt. “Wilson? Captain?” Nothing but static. What the hell had happened?

They were on him; a struggling line of swinging wands and riot sticks, still backing. The locals were using fists mostly, no gunfire, thank God. A couple of them had gotten hold of riot sticks. Dust blinded Carter, filling his eyes with tears. A corporal staggered backward and collided with him, half stunned, clutching his face where a stone had hit. Blood gleamed on his fingers. Carter got an arm around him and stumbled for the launcher, fear cold in his gut. If they got past the trucks, they’d have to open fire. A stone hit him in the back and he tripped, pulled off-balance by the corporal’s weight. A bearded man loomed suddenly out of the dust, a riot stick swinging for Carter’s face.

Carter flung up his arm, bracing for the blow.

A uniformed shoulder slammed him aside as the soldier pivoted into a high, straight-legged kick. The local took the blow just under his sternum, and went down gasping. “Are you all right, sir?” The soldier grabbed his arm, hauled Carter to his feet.

She was a short, stocky woman. “Thanks, Private — Wasson.” He read the name from her uniform pocket. “Take him and follow me,” he gasped, shoving the dazed corporal at her.

“Yes, sir.” The square-faced woman grinned, but her eyes looked scared.

He ran for the truck with Wasson right behind him.

“Permission to open fire, sir?” Delgado emerged from the dust. “They’re through the line, sir.”

“Why the hell didn’t they launch the gas?”

“Wilson said you called, sir, told him to hold off.”

Carter chopped off his words with a savage gesture. “Do it.”

“Sire, they’re too close.” Delgado’s eyes burned with suppressed triumph. “It’s too late to stop them.”

“
Now!
Help them,” Carter snapped at the private. “Drop the canisters along the Deschutes edge of the crowd.” What little wind flow would carry it back over them.

The Corps people who didn’t get their masks on in time were going to get a dose, too. No help for it. The
whump
of the gas launcher echoed across the riverbed, and Carter heard the first packed yells as the white clouds billowed up. People staggered drunkenly as the gas hit them, going down onto hands and knees, sprawling sideways as they tried to stand. The stuff knocked out your sense of balance, left you flat on the ground, retching with dizziness. It wasn’t much fun. Some of the gagging figures on the ground wore Corps suncloth, but things were starting to break up. A media vid-cammer was down on the ground with the locals. Carter felt a sour satisfaction as the man retched.

“Get our people up here and then start picking up the locals,” Carter ordered. “I want to talk to Wilson
now
.” If Delgado was lying — if he’d interfered with the launch order — he’d face a court-martial and to hell with Hastings. “We’ll pick up only the locals who were doing the actual fighting. And I want Greely here. Let the rest go. No rough stuff, Major.” They’d salvage what they could out of this mess.

“Yes, sir.” Delgado saluted and vanished into the dust, his expression carefully neutral.

Carter went looking for Greely, angry and hurting from the stone bruise on his shoulder blade. It had been damn close. The crowed had blown up fast. Greely had underestimated them, or had overestimated the Corps’ power. Or it had been a setup.

Carter scanned the scattered bodies still retching into the dust. Greely wasn’t on the ground. He wasn’t among the sullen locals being loaded onto a truck. The medical team was already on the scene and Carter went to get a report on injuries.

He kept an eye out for Greely as he secured the bunker and made sure that the soldiers didn’t get too zealous or too rough about rounding people up. He did see Sandy Corbett; she was helping some of the gas-struck. Ironically, the gas had hit the people in the rear of the demonstration hardest — the people who had hung back from the fighting. At least Harold Ransom had breathed gas. If anyone deserved it, he did. He kept a sharp eye our for Red-hair, but he had vanished, too.

It could have worked, it might have worked, if that bastard hadn’t gotten started. He had been damned good at getting the crowd hot. Coming wired for sound had been clever. Everybody had heard every word. A media copter lifted, and Carter groaned inwardly. Ratings ought to be real high tonight. His were going to be pretty damn low.

The whole afternoon had been a disaster for everyone except the media. Carter fought a rising sense of discouragement as the sun set and darkness crept down the riverbed. They had arrested twelve locals. Besides an assortment of minor injuries a private had gotten his jaw broken when he was hit in the face with a riot stick. Carter’s people were sullen, angry that they hadn’t been able to settle the score. Half a dozen had breathed gas, and Delgado radiated righteous vindication. Wilson had cleared him. Someone had played a sophisticated game with the electronics. That was some serious sabotage, not the stuff of dirt farmers. Corps communications were supposed to be un-hackable. Carter had to think about that.

An insider? Delgado himself?

At least nobody had started shooting. Greely had managed to keep the rifles at home, he’d give him that much. Carter detailed extra security for the Shunt dome. They’d have to keep a twenty-four-hour armed guard there, he thought wearily. He didn’t dare trust his electronic security anymore. That meant more duty hours and less sleep for everyone. And the plan to use locals on patrol was laughable now. The trucks were pulling out, heading back for the dam. Where the hell had Greely got to? He was looking real bad right now. Carter’s shoulder twinged as he backed the Chevy around and followed the last truck up the access road to the highway. He should have tapped someone to drive.

He drove one-handed, taking it slow. Back at the base, he’d have to report into Hastings. He was not looking forward to that conversation. Carter eased the car around a bulge in the Gorge wall. He wanted Greely to tell him why it hadn’t worked, and he wanted that explanation to be damn good.

The moon was up. It turned the riverbed into a wasteland of gray shadow, sterile and alien in the cold light. A blot of darkness bulked at the edge of the bed. Carter took his foot off the accelerator, slowing even more. A side road took off from the main highway here, a narrow dirt track that meandered down into the riverbed from a gap broken through the rusting guard rail of the interstate. He could just make out a car parked close against the bank, almost invisible from the highway. It looked like a Corps vehicle.