The Water Knife

Lucy lies in bed for a while, listening to the dust storm blowing outside. Her dog, Sunny, is huddled beneath the bed, refusing to come out. Lucy begins to feel anxious and paranoid that something might be outside in the storm. She gets up and checks the deadbolts on her doors and makes sure her windows are all sealed. She decides that if she can’t go back to sleep, she might as well work. Lucy, a journalist, covers the decay of Phoenix. She opens her laptop and browses a story she had previously posted, what Lucy refers to as “collapse pornography” (24). Lucy then sees that another story is developing: the destruction of the water-treatment facility in Carver City. She opens a video of a man (presumably Yu) ranting that the attack was the work of Las Vegas and Case and that he had been abducted and dumped in the desert to hike his way back to the destroyed plant. Lucy flags the story for her own followers, but it’s too late for her to take much credit for the story. Lucy wasn’t born in Phoenix, but came to the city to document its collapse. Now, however, she’s gotten close with the people of Phoenix and has set down roots in the city. She feels more like a resident than just a visiting journalist. Lucy notices another developing story outside of the Hilton 6 downtown. Lucy reluctantly heads to the scene to investigate and finds her former friend Jamie, tortured and murdered, his body lying in the street.

Lucy recalls a conversation she had with Jamie at the bar of the Hilton 6 not long ago. Jamie was a bureaucrat for Phoenix Water. He told Lucy that he had found a way to break the Colorado River Compact and ensure that water flowed straight to Phoenix—senior water rights that the Supreme Court would enforce. Lucy was suspicious of what Jamie had meant during this conversation.

Lucy stands over Jamie’s body. His eyes have been dug out of his skull. Lucy leaves, worried that the killer might be watching her at the crime scene.

Maria waits at the Red Cross/China Friendship water pump, watching for the price of water per liter to drop. Maria is a Texas migrant, trying her best to hustle money and eventually find a way out of Arizona and across the Colorado River. The relief pump provides water to many Texas refugees who have built communities around the pumps. Maria’s father had worked construction on the Taiyang Arcology for the Chinese. Maria refuses to see things in the same idealistic way as her father. Maria’s friend, Sarah, complains about waiting around at the water pump with Maria. Sarah makes money by sleeping with wealthy men who live in the Taiyang Arcology. Sarah is currently seeing a man in the Taiyang regularly and offers to share him with Maria, though Maria isn’t interested. Maria had listened earlier to what Sarah’s regular had been telling them about the market pricing of water. The man had wanted Maria, but Maria was more interested in listening to him talk about hydrology. Sarah’s regular, Ratan, is a senior hydrology specialist for a company called Ibis.

The price of water at the relief pump begins to drop. The big vertical farms had stopped pumping water, preparing for a harvest, and so the price begins to drop. Maria begins filling as many plastic containers as she can once the price hits its lowest point. Maria makes Sarah give her all the money that she has so she can keep buying more water at the low price. Maria’s plan is to take the water to the construction site outside of the Taiyang and sell it to make a profit.

Case and her entourage of Southern Nevada Water Authority security teams meet with Angel in the alley of a burned-out town near the Cypress 3 arcology. Angel recalls how Case had chosen him as a water knife and rescued him from a life in prison. She had told him:

You fit a profile I can use. You’re aggressive, but you have sufficient impulse control. You’re intelligent. You’re flexible to changing circumstances. You’re tenacious […] It doesn’t hurt that you’re a ghost as well […] I have uses for ghosts (54).

Inside Angel’s Tesla, Case and Angel discuss Carver City’s news coverage. When Angel asks Case if she wants him to make the story go away, Case tells him, “We’ll lie still, and everyone will forget this ever happened.” Case then proceeds to tell Angel that Carver City had people who were connected to an eco-development project that Braxton’s research didn’t turn up; some of them were Nevada state reps. This makes Case suspicious; she doesn’t know who she can trust anymore. Case decides to send Angel to Phoenix to “sniff around for [her]” (60). She doesn’t know what it is for sure, but there is something wrong going on in Phoenix. Case tells Angel that he’ll be meeting up with one of her agents, Julio, who has been begging to be extracted from Phoenix.

Lucy sees a truck idling outside of her house, but she can’t see who’s inside. Meanwhile, Lucy is video chatting with her sister, Anna, who asks Lucy why she doesn’t leave Phoenix. Lucy has New England identification and is one of the few people in Phoenix who could leave at any time. Seeing Anna’s children playing in the background of the video screen reminds Lucy of the first dead body she covered as a journalist in Phoenix. Ray Torres, a “good ol’ boy cop in a good ol’ boy cowboy hat and tight faded Levi’s” (64) had warned Lucy about writing about dead bodies in Phoenix. Torres tells Lucy that writing about bodies has “a way of making more trouble than they’re worth” (65). Lucy remembers that this was back when she was naïve about how things worked in Phoenix.

Anna tells Lucy to come live with her and her husband in Vancouver. Anna worries about Lucy living in Phoenix and thinks she’s going to get herself killed. After Lucy closes the connection with Anna, she grabs a pistol and goes outside to confront the truck that is still idling out front. The truck eventually speeds off. Lucy isn’t sure if she’s being stalked. As Lucy begins clearing dust from her house, she thinks back to Jamie, who had told her that the deal he was about to make was going to be big. He had said, “How much would you pay to keep a city alive? […] What would you pay to keep the Imperial Valley’s agriculture from turning into a dust bowl?” (70). The same truck as before slowly begins cruising past Lucy’s house. The truck keeps going, and Lucy wonders whether she should have taken a shot at the truck with her pistol. Lucy decides that she isn’t going to be paralyzed any longer. She opens her laptop and begins writing about the bodies that Torres told her not to write about. She writes about Jamie. After she is finished, Lucy grabs a beer and toasts Jamie’s memory. She keeps drinking on her front porch as the sun goes down.