talked about the Great Black Swamp. And malaria.”
“Lima, Ohio, was named after Lima, Peru,” Lila said. “They imported quinine from Peru as a malaria medicine.” Malaria in Ohio: people used to be incredulous when she told them. The drainage tile used to dry northwest Ohio could be stretched from the earth to the moon. The diversion of water from the Great Black Swamp had created lakes that were still, over a century and a half later, among Ohio’s largest. Now the lakes were recreational areas, but in their early years after their formation they were notorious for mosquitoes and disease, places a sensible person avoided.
Lila said, “You know they used to call Cincinnati Porkopolis. That was because of water, too.”
Michelle gave Lila a thrilling sidelong glance.
“They built a canal south from Middletown to the Ohio River,” Lila said. “Once the canal was built, farmers could move their pigs to Cincinnati, and from there the pigs could be shipped by boat east to Pennsylvania or west to the Mississippi. People don’t think about it, but water opens markets.” Lila was surprised at the fervor in her voice; she did remember. She glanced at Michelle. A young youngie, Lila thought with a wave of fatigue. Then she relaxed: if Federal really wanted something from her, they wouldn’t send a girl like this. “So what are you here for?” Lila said brightly. “Training? Advice? Employees?” Michelle’s lips were parted, her dark hair swept down her back. God, that long hair. Lila could brush that hair across Michelle’s mouth and kiss her lips through the curtain of it. She could lift it off her neck and nuzzle the pale spot behind her ear. Lila’s voice came out surprisingly husky. “You running a little dry up on the Grid?”
A spot at the end of Michelle’s nose turned suddenly red. A flaw, there was always a flaw. Even in her glory days Lila had had one. The flaw had been Lila’s profile, her slightly bulging stomach. Now her belly lay across her thighs like a sleeping cat. Suddenly Lila felt angry at Michelle’s bosses. A little training mission here, get out and talk up the old folks, the powers-that-be of this or that inconsequential city. The jerks that would send a young woman to do this. “Am I a little too close for comfort here?” Lila asked, her voice quickening. “You are running dry on the Grid? I’ll tell you what: you get me a steady power supply for my treatment plant and I’ll give you all the water you Agros want.”
For a second the youngie looked confused, then she drew herself up and pulled on an invisible jacket of authority. “We don’t have any influence over electricity. That’s Consort.” Lila was old enough to remember the days before Consort, the aggregation of utility companies that had grown up in the early twenties. It had seemed so logical then, Consortium, with states shipping electricity and gas and wind and solar power back and forth, but then Consortium got bigger and bigger, the nickname “Consort” used first by the more intelligent, referring—ha, ha!—to its relation to the government, then taken up and somehow euphemized by the company itself, making it a cheerful name, a name implying convenience and compatibility and even a gleeful communion. “Consort with us,” the top of each bill used to read.
“But you’re a Fed,” Lila said.
“Of course.” Michelle leaned forward eagerly. “Consort is a business. Who are we to interfere with business?” This was a slogan: when the Alliance leaders pointed out how America forgot the poor, Americans responded with a truism about business.
God, Lila hated these rote answers. “Then why are you here?” She demanded. “You seem to want to interfere with my business.”
“You’re water. You’re still regulated. Water is local.”
“But you want to make my water not local.” Lila leaned forward. She decided to mention the rumor she kept hearing. “You want to transport it, just like those farmers who sent their pigs to St. Louis. You need it to irrigate the Grid.”
Michelle’s face had become shiny, more blotches joining the red spot at the end of her nose. “No. Not the Grid. Definitely not the Grid.”
“Then where do you want to send it?”
Michelle leaned forward into Lila’s desk and pushed up her sleeves, as if Lila were finally asking a grown-up question. “People at Federal are smart. You’d be surprised: Federal is very realistic.”
Lila was quiet, waiting.
Michelle, silent, propped her chin on her hand and stared at the wall behind Lila’s head. What was back there? Lila thought suddenly, wanting to turn and look.
“Extremely realistic,” Michelle said, lifting a hand to smooth her hair.
A hand-drawn picture of a fanciful fish, flowing in a blue stream. A photomontage of a turbine and the outflow over a dam. An old poster—Lila’s favorite—from the We Save Wawa series, featuring a priest and a transvestite. The transvestite was actually (no one but Lila knew this) her assistant Seymour in his younger days. The We Save Wawa campaign had been a huge hit. Not that individual conservation really made a difference—industrial water use, in New Dawn Dayton, had dwarfed any use of water for baths or yards—but the campaign gave ordinary people a goal, and promoted the image nationwide of Dayton as a water capital.
“And that means … ?” Lila said now. She’d never get to bury her nose in Michelle’s hair, never. Might as well give up lusting. Lila thought with regret of Janet, whose hair had always smelled of chlorine. How long ago was that, twenty years? Janet could never resist her. Lila intimidated people terribly, in her day. Lila had hammered them with questions they could neither answer nor forget. And she’d used her influence not just for seduction but also for public service. Lila de Becqueville, the governor of Ohio had introduced her, community asset. She wondered if she was too old to use her influence now. Not that it mattered. She was having no effect on Michelle.
And suddenly Michelle, looking much older, less ingenuous, was patting her cheek with her fingertips, little quick pats, as if she were dabbing it with powder, and indeed her little blotches were fading. “Not the Grid,” she repeated. “Definitely not the Grid.” Her eyes wandered, in an aimlessness Lila was sure was feigned, until they met Lila’s wide ones. “I know about you,” Michelle said, and Lila felt a buzzing thrill in her chest. “My mother doesn’t just remember your water talks. She remembers you later. She told me all about your leadership during the Short Times. I know about the ads, the time restrictions, everything. You know what my mom says? You made sacrifice fun.”
Was there a personal connection? Was that why this youngie was here? “Do I know your mother?” Lila asked.
“You should hear her talk about you. She was at the Needmore Rally.”
“Need less,” Lila mumbled, meaning to be dismissive, surprised by the wistfulness in her tone. RALLY ON NEEDMORE: NEED LESS! “Did I know your mother”—Lila hesitated—“personally?”
“She knew you. I mean, you were a public person.” Lila sighed in relief. Sometimes she could hardly believe the hussy she had been. On the other hand, she’d been a force: just last week a man in a weather-beaten coat had come running across the street to shake her hand: “Is it you? Is it really you?”
“You were wonderful,” Michelle said in a puzzled way, her lovely face clouding, and what Lila felt most keenly was the “were.” Lila was, once. “That’s why I wanted to come talk with you.” Michelle was sitting up straighter now, her crisp tone returned. “But I don’t have much direct information now. I’m here solely to prepare the soil. Don’t be surprised if you hear more from us. Be prepared.”
