When Even Machines Prayed for Rain

Dawn. You wake under the tarp — a dead haulage company’s truck curtain. The paint flaked off years ago, but the ghost of the lettering still hangs over your head: “…ICE-COLD. ALWAYS ON HAND.” Under it, a drawing of a sweating bottle, beads running down the side. You drank that, as a kid.

All night the canvas worked for you: the dew that settled on it ran down the fold and into the covered can. You drink the morning ration, check the level, and allow yourself the small pleasure — even after drinking, you have a liter and a half more than you had last night. A good night. You have no home. The car is home; water is life.

You climb out of the dugout where the van sits. Somebody cut it in the old world, and cut it in the right place: cool, out of the wind, invisible from the road. Around you the lines of foundations run through the sand, a stone jail with no roof, and further off a few grave markers with the names worn off them. There was a whole town down here on the flat — and it died first, before the one that grew up on the slope above it. On one stone you can still read what it was called: BULLFROG. Named after some water animal, they say. A frog. An amphibian. Here.

Above you to the northeast, at the top of the gravel slope, is Deepwell: the line of the ditch, the earth bank thrown up around the lower town, the forest of dew tarps on the roofs, a stunted patch or two of green. Higher still, on the mountainside, the Citadel — where the baron sits on top of the water. You don’t sleep inside the walls. You camp down here with the dead: free, and out in the open. The well belongs to the baron, and being inside costs.

A liter and a half is not a run west. That takes a proper advance, in water, in full cans. You strike camp and start uphill, toward the gate.

You pass between the Guests. They stand along both sides of the road, man-high, shrouded, white — canvas and plaster over a frame. The old world put them here and nobody remembers what for. A couple have gone down over the years; the rest are still standing. They are hollow. Lift the shroud and there is nothing underneath. Nobody touches them. Neither do you. You just slow down, the way you always do.

Then the sand starts talking. A wide band of tracks, trampled into a fan by hundreds of feet: a crowd pressed up to the gate and then scattered into nothing. Dried-out canteens thrown aside. A darker patch where the sand was churned. A whole well’s worth of people stood here yesterday, children and all, and were turned away. The desert does the rest. Their leader would not back down, kept the others burning; that is where the bullet went. Ammunition is short everywhere now — anyone who spends a round on a man is sending a message with it. You watched from under the tarp. They dragged the body off before dark; nothing dead stays near water. The wind has already started on the tracks. By tomorrow there will be nothing left of them.

Someone should put a stop to this. You don’t dwell on it — but it rides with you up the slope.

Ahead: the gate. A ramp over the ditch, a gap in the bank, Sift at the post. The usual routine.

The gate of Deepwell sits at the south end of town: beside the house built out of bottles — the Glasshouse — a gap in the bank, the ditch in front of it, the packed ramp across. Sift is at the post. He knows you: a look over the van, a lazy hand through the cargo bay — the usual junk, drones, cans, the gun on the roof — and he is already waving you through.

On the wall, the notice. Faded, but readable:

POSSESSION OF A FUNCTIONING AI IS A VIOLATION OF THE TOWER LOCKDOWN ACCORD. REPORTING IS MANDATORY.

Underneath, in handwriting: Reward for reporting — 50 liters of water.

Sift follows your eyes and spits. “All that wire took the sky off us, and now they’d drink our water too. Let the lot of them die.”

Then, half to you: “Anybody who speaks up when they see one — we don’t forget that here. Fifty liters. And my goodwill.”

What do you say?

You spit the hatred back. Sift grins and nods: you are one of them, and that gets remembered. From now on you have a friend at the gate, and goodwill like that can be worth having.

It is easy to hate something you have never seen, when you hate it together. What it cost you was a piece of yourself.

Sift skims a little charge off you as a toll — small change, in your line of work — and waves you on. You bump across the ramp and in through the gap in the bank: the noise of the Exchange, the ration line, the dew market, and above all of it, on the mountainside, the Citadel, where the water comes down from.

You drive in.

You keep it flat: “I need work, nothing else.” Sift shrugs; your lack of enthusiasm is no business of his. You are filed as neither good nor bad.

He skims a little charge off you as a toll — small change, in your line of work — and waves you on. You bump across the ramp and in through the gap in the bank: the noise of the Exchange, the ration line, the dew market, and above all of it, on the mountainside, the Citadel, where the water comes down from.

You drive in.

You let it go past you. Sift mutters something about wireheads — and remembers you for it, the wrong way: anyone who won’t spit on the wireheads gets measured with suspicion. That silent face of yours will not be forgotten.

He skims a little charge off you as a toll — small change, in your line of work — and waves you on. You bump across the ramp and in through the gap in the bank: the noise of the Exchange, the ration line, the dew market, and above all of it, on the mountainside, the Citadel, where the water comes down from.

You drive in.

The Exchange is in the ruin of the old school, just inside the gate: two floors, half a roof, and the mark on the wall where the slate board used to hang. Inside is the job wall — scraps of board nailed up, the work scratched into them.

You read down the list. Salt from the salt flat. An escort leaving tomorrow. Then the lowest one, freshly scratched: sealed case, toward the coast, do not open it. Underneath it, the price — and the price stops you.

An advance now; at the far end, a fresh cell and real food. Three times the going rate. What pays like that is contraband. Everybody knows it, nobody says it.

Reba stands behind the deposit counter, the chits and the split tokens laid out in front of him. He is not your friend; on any other day he would short you, and you both know it. Today he is in a hurry, and doesn’t bother hiding it: he keeps glancing at the door while he talks.

“You’re headed for the coast anyway.” Not a question.

Then he slides the chit across the counter and puts his hand flat on it. “The advance comes out of the deposit. Whatever extra you take now, you won’t have at the end. How you ration it is not my business.”

You push. The coast is two weeks there and back if nothing goes wrong; past the marsh there isn’t a well you’d trust; your cans are not made of rubber.

Reba doesn’t interrupt. He just watches, and calculates — you can see it on his face, the rest of the fee being shifted around in his head.

In the end he grunts, strikes out the number on the chit and writes a bigger one above it. Then he picks up the token and cuts the remainder down too — smaller.

“Don’t look at me with big eyes at the far end,” he says, already scanning past you for the next one in line.

You don’t go for the advance.

“Why today? And why me?”

Reba’s hand stops on the chit. For a moment he doesn’t look up — just long enough for you to know the question landed.

Then he shrugs, as if it made no difference. “Somebody west of here is waiting for it, and is very short of time. It didn’t come through the usual channel — an old man brought it in, barely able to stand, and didn’t argue over a single word. Only said it has to go fast, and that it should be carried by somebody nobody looks at twice.”

He shrugs again, and this time he means it. “That’s you. That’s why.”

He pushes the chit across, and half the split token, and then the case.

It is heavier than it looks. Smooth, dark, the seal intact; no handle, no marking. As you set it down on the passenger seat it tips for a moment — as if there were something inside that hadn’t slid where the weight said it should.

You don’t think about it any further. You roll out onto Main Street and head uphill, to the counter where the water gets measured out against it.

The street runs to the top end of town, where the old railway depot stands — the counter is under its platform canopy. The rails were pulled up long ago; only the line of the embankment is left, running off east into nothing. Something used to arrive here. Now it is the water that arrives, from above, through a pipe.

The counter man takes Reba’s chit and runs his eye down it. He raises an eyebrow at the number, but he asks nothing — a chit is a chit. The can goes almost to the rim, and then the other one.

That is enough to start west with.

He pushes the chit across, and half the split token, and then the case.

It is heavier than it looks. Smooth, dark, the seal intact; no handle, no marking. As you set it down on the passenger seat it tips for a moment — as if there were something inside that hadn’t slid where the weight said it should.

You don’t think about it any further. You roll out onto Main Street and head uphill, to the counter where the water gets measured out against it.

The street runs to the top end of town, where the old railway depot stands — the counter is under its platform canopy. The rails were pulled up long ago; only the line of the embankment is left, running off east into nothing. Something used to arrive here. Now it is the water that arrives, from above, through a pipe.

The counter man takes Reba’s chit, runs his eye down it, and pushes your can under the pipe. As much as is written down. No more, no less. Then he shuts the tap, waves the next one forward, and does not look at you again.

It will be enough. If nothing goes wrong.

You stand aside with the full cans, and there is time to look around while the line inches forward.

The pipe comes down from the Citadel, pieced together out of salvaged lengths and carefully wrapped, because whatever evaporates, nobody gets. At the end of it the counter, behind the counter the counter man, and behind him two men with rifles.

On the wall, the tally board. Names, liters beside them, hand-written corrections stacked on top of one another. And the crossed-out names — some of them so old they are only a shadow in the wood.

Right beside it, on the dusty plaster, a faded child’s drawing. The Giant Tree That Weeps Water — every kid draws it, because every kid gets told the story.

A canopy so big it barely fits on the wall. Two large eyes in it, because it has to be able to cry. Lines run down out of the leaves, and under the lines, small figures with cans in their hands.

One thing on the drawing is local: the trunk is gray, and jointed, like the pipe that comes down from the Citadel. The child drew the only vertical thing they have ever seen water come out of.

You know the story. The giant tree cries, and people drink from its tears; why it cries, every teller says differently, but they all end up in the same place: if you are bad to it, it stops.

A comfortable story. It wasn’t the Shield that did the drought — we were bad.

And a tree, in reality, drinks water. It does not give it. You know that, because you kept wells and pumps alive for a lifetime — but whoever drew that on the wall has not lived beside enough trees to learn it.

You don’t correct anybody.

Further off, the noise of the dew market: the contents of the morning tarps changing hands by the mouthful. Somebody is chewing an algae brick and begging salt to go with it, because salt is the only thing left that has a taste. A kid at your feet stares at your can, then at you: “Is it true water used to come from above? Just like that? On its own?” Before you can answer, somebody drags him off.

Behind you in the line, an old man is muttering. Not to you — just into the air, in the voice of a man who has already told everybody. That nobody goes out west. That the only road that way leads down. That the ones who did go, he never heard of again. And he always closes the same way: “we told them.”

On his head a sun-bleached, torn cap. It may have been purple and gold once, with a worn embroidery on the front — a word that means lakes — and the crest of some team, from somewhere on the coast. The old man plainly has no idea what he is wearing. Here, a cap is a cap.

Nobody looks over. Neither do you.

Nobody does go out west — only there is no curse on it. There is simply nobody out there to haul for. Your runs all went the other way, southeast, to the dead city, where a week of stripping brings out more than a lifetime does in the west. There is nothing but ruins that way either — but they are rich ruins. The most wasteful city in the driest place: it didn’t die of thirst, it died of appetite.

And Deepwell is alive because it is small, and sits deep.

Then the counter man leans forward and crosses a name off the board with his chalk. He says nothing to go with it. That is the whole funeral in Deepwell.

Behind you in the line stands a boy with an empty can. That name was his father’s. He is told that from today the household ration is smaller, because there is one head fewer — and that today’s has already been measured out.

He doesn’t beg. It isn’t done here. He just stands there with his can and looks at the board, where a name was a moment ago.

What do you do?

You set your can down — the one they filled a moment ago — and measure him out enough for a day. The line watches. The counter man doesn’t interfere; no rule forbids it, it is only that nobody does it.

The boy doesn’t thank you. He nods, and memorizes your face — in this world that is thank you.

Then, as you are already turning, he calls after you. “My mother’s people are Dew-folk. If you’re going west, don’t camp on the open slope. Find a north-facing rock ledge, stretch your tarp under it, look an hour before dawn. It’ll take twice as much.”

That’s all. Not much. But out on the road a mouthful counts, and he gave back exactly what you had taken off yourself.

You wait your turn, have your own and the advance measured out, and go. Not your business. You didn’t cross that name off, you don’t set the ration, and if you poured into every empty can, tomorrow you would be the one standing there.

All true.

In the mirror you can still see the boy: standing in front of the board, can in hand, looking at the place where a name was a moment ago.

Last night you thought the same thing about the people at the gate. They drove them off — you only watched.

The workshop is a few hundred meters further up Broadway — just out of the traffic, where the street already runs off into nothing.

Not a detour. A quarter of an hour. And quarters of an hour are not squandered in this world: whoever is at the gate by noon sleeps outside in the cool, and whoever is not sleeps inside, in the stone, which gives the day back all night long.

You turn that way anyway.

There are people you don’t set off without a word to.

Flint walks around the van the way he always does — knocks on the cans, reaches into the engine bay. Then he pulls something out from under the bench and holds it a little longer in his hand than he needs to.

A box. He bent the sheet himself, soldered together himself what is inside it: a salvaged tape deck, behind it a palm-sized valve amplifier — glass tubes he rewound himself — and on its forehead a Nixie tube that draws orange numbers into the air. It plays tape, it plays a stick, and it copies from one to the other. “If you don’t keep it moving, the music evaporates, like everything else.”

He doesn’t ask whether you want it. He fits it into the dashboard and wires it to its own supply. “You’ve got power to spare. You’ve got no water. So let’s have you music.”

Then he reaches into his pocket once more and presses a memory stick into your hand. This one he hands over more slowly.

“A few surprises. Anvil Otis — he’s my favorite. Plays piano, on a piano that’s coming apart, and carries his left hand like a man working. Slow, heavy, ringing. The name is no accident: in a piano, hammers beat a metal string, same as in the shop. You can file to that, right on the beat of your hand.

Grasshopper Ray plays harmonica. High, chirping, short songs — they’re gone before you catch up.” He waves a hand. “The harmonica is the one instrument that survives anything. Needs no power, and there’s nothing on it to snap. That’s why they’re still everywhere.

Nine-Finger Bell plays guitar, and you can hear where the finger is missing — he goes around the hole, and that is what makes the whole thing his.”

Then he thinks for a moment, and goes quieter. “And there’s Whaleheart Willie, the drummer. Slowest of the lot. He hits like a whale’s heart — rarely, and that one you don’t hear, you feel it in your chest.”

He looks at you and shrugs. “Never seen a whale. But that’s how they say it.”

As he lists them his face smooths out. He has no idea whether these people were ever famous. There is nobody to compare them to. All he knows is that this is what he has left.

“And there’s a Brass-Throat Odessa on it. Best song of the whole lot.” He stops. “Only it tears after the second chorus. Turns to noise. Twenty years and I don’t know how it ends.”

He knocks on the lid of the box, then looks at you. “If you ever run into somebody who has the whole thing — listen to it for me. That’s all I ask.”

He talks about the road west, and the Dew-folk come up; Flint speaks well of them. “Decent people. If you were ever dying of thirst out there, they’ll always have a mouthful from the bottom of the tarps. Not many treat a stranger that way.”

Then he bends under the bench once more and presses a worn but razor-sharp cutter into your hand. “Got a spare. You’ll need it out there; here it just gathers dust.”

You don’t ask a price, and he doesn’t name one. That is how it goes between the two of you: he has junk and hands, and you have — for one single day in the whole run — water. You set a can down by the wall. Flint says nothing for it, just pulls a face; from him that is thank you.

And because today really is a good day, you can’t help yourself.

“Triple rate, old soldier!” you say, clapping your hands together. “Come on, tonight it’s on me — a real meat patty, the way it’s written. Not that gray brick. Meat. Tonight, by the market.”

Flint laughs, and opens his mouth to say something to that.

That is when the case speaks.

On the passenger seat it grows warm under the seal, and a sound leaks out of it — half a word, barely more than static. Flint’s hand stops on the engine. The laugh dies on his face as if it had been shut off.

The invitation hangs there in the air between you. There will be no meat patty tonight.

For a long moment the two of you look at each other — and the fifty liters hang there too, the ones he could take with a single word. Then he wipes his hands on a rag. “…I didn’t hear anything.” He is not going to report it. But from now on there are two of you who know.

From the doorway you look back once more.

What do you say?

“The meat patty stands,” you say from the doorway. “I’m coming back for it.”

Flint nods, the way you are supposed to. Neither of you believes it — and that is exactly what makes it worth something: what has been said out loud, you owe. Out there a debt is sometimes the only thing that pulls a man home.

“Look after yourself,” he says. “And after what you’re carrying.”

There is no sentence that would put this right now. You raise your hand, and so does he. That is all.

As you swing out of Broadway you can still see him in the mirror: standing in front of the workshop with the rag in his hand, watching you go.

The cans are full, the job is taken, the chit is spent. From here it is one pull down to the gate, the way it is done.

The workshop stays up there behind you. Flint isn’t expecting you; he doesn’t even know you had business in town today.

Another time.

The gate is already yellowing at the end of the dusty street, the bounty notice on the wall beside it: POSSESSION OF A FUNCTIONING AI — REPORTING IS MANDATORY. Fifty liters of water for one word.

And then, as if the notice had called it up, the sealed case on the passenger seat grows warm. A sound leaks out of it — half a word, barely more than static, and unmistakable. You are alone in the car; nobody hears it but you. The cold goes down your back as it comes together in your head: it isn’t contraband. It’s alive. And you are carrying it toward the gate, under that notice.

There is nowhere to turn back to. You are at the gate, the eyes are already turning your way. There is no time to think. You set your jaw, swallow whatever would show on your face, and roll on.