Lehi rowed them through the skyscrapers to the east of the old city, and then Rain started the motor and they skimmed along the surface of the lake. The Lake Patrol didn’t see them, but Deaver knew now that it didn’t matter much if they did. The Lake Patrol was mostly Mormons. They undoubtedly knew about the traffic here, and let it happen as long as it was discreet. Probably the only people they stopped were the people who weren’t in on it.
All the way back to Magna to return the underwater gear, Deaver sat in the front of the boat, not talking to the others. Where Deaver sat, the bow of the boat seemed to curve under him. The faster they went, the less the boat seemed to touch the water. Just skimming over the surface, never really touching deep; making a few waves, but the water always smoothed out again.
Those two people in the back of the boat, he felt kind of sorry for them. They still lived in the drowned city, they belonged down there, and the fact they couldn’t go there broke their hearts. But not Deaver. His city wasn’t even built yet. His city was tomorrow.
He’d driven a salvage truck and lived in a closet long enough. Maybe he’d go south into the New Soil Lands. Maybe qualify on a piece of land. Own something, plant in the soil, maybe he’d come to belong there. As for this place, well, he never had belonged here, just like all the foster homes and schools along the way, just one more stop for a year or two or three, he knew that all along. Never did make any friends here, but that’s how he wanted it. Wouldn’t be right to make friends, cause he’d just move on and disappoint them. Didn’t see no good in doing that to people.
THE PEOPLE OF SAND AND SLAG
by Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of the several short stories, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, and the anthologies Logorrhea and Fast Forward. In 2006, his story “The Calorie Man” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and was nominated for the Hugo Award; in 2007, a story set in the same world, “Yellow Card Man,” also made the Hugo ballot, and serves as the basis for a novel-in-progress. “The People of Sand and Slag,” which first appeared in 2004, was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. A collection of Bacigalupi’s short fiction, Pump Six and Other Stories, is due out in February 2008.
Bacigalupi says that this story was inspired by a feral dog that lived in the Atlantic Richfield Company’s Berkeley Pit, a toxic waste site outside of Butte, Montana. It was too wild to catch, but it would accept food that was set out for it, and it somehow managed to survive despite the sulfuric-acid and heavy metals that were poisoning its surroundings.
Set in the far-future, featuring characters barely recognizable as human, “The People of Sand and Slag” considers and comments on humanity, technological progress, and our love for the simple solution to the complex problem.
The People of Sand and Slag link
“The People of Sand and Slag” starts as straight military SF—and then twists. It was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
“Hostile movement! Well inside the perimeter! Well inside!”
I stripped off my Immersive Response goggles as adrenaline surged through me. The virtual cityscape I’d been about to raze disappeared, replaced by our monitoring room’s many views of SesCo’s mining operations. On one screen, the red phosphorescent tracery of an intruder skated across a terrain map, a hot blip like blood spattering its way toward Pit 8.
Jaak was already out of the monitoring room. I ran for my gear.
I caught up with Jaak in the equipment room as he grabbed a TS-101 and slashbangs and dragged his impact exoskeleton over his tattooed body. He draped bandoleers of surgepacks over his massive shoulders and ran for the outer locks. I strapped on my own exoskeleton, pulled my 101 from its rack, checked its charge, and followed.
Lisa was already in the HEV, its turbofans screaming like banshees when the hatch dilated. Sentry centaurs leveled their 101’s at me, then relaxed as friend/foe data spilled into their heads-up displays. I bolted across the tarmac, my skin pricking under blasts of icy Montana wind and the jet wash of Hentasa Mark V engines. Overhead, the clouds glowed orange with light from SesCo’s mining bots.
“Come on, Chen! Move! Move! Move!”
I dove into the hunter. The ship leaped into the sky. It banked, throwing me against a bulkhead, then the Hentasas cycled wide and the hunter punched forward. The HEV’s hatch slid shut. The wind howl muted.
I struggled forward to the flight cocoon and peered over Jaak’s and Lisa’s shoulders to the landscape beyond.
“Have a good game?” Lisa asked.
I scowled. “I was about to win. I made it to Paris.”
We cut through the mists over the catchment lakes, skimming inches above the water, and then we hit the far shore. The hunter lurched as its anti-collision software jerked us away from the roughening terrain. Lisa overrode the computers and forced the ship back down against the soil, driving us so low I could have reached out and dragged my hands through the broken scree as we screamed over it.
Alarms yowled. Jaak shut them off as Lisa pushed the hunter lower. Ahead, a tailings ridge loomed. We ripped up its face and dropped sickeningly into the next valley. The Hentasas shuddered as Lisa forced them to the edge of their design buffer. We hurtled up and over another ridge. Ahead, the ragged cutscape of mined mountains stretched to the horizon. We dipped again into mist and skimmed low over another catchment lake, leaving choppy wake in the thick golden waters.
Jaak studied the hunter’s scanners. “I’ve got it.” He grinned. “It’s moving, but slow.”
“Contact in one minute,” Lisa said. “He hasn’t launched any countermeasures.”
I watched the intruder on the tracking screens as they displayed real-time data fed to us from SesCo’s satellites. “It’s not even a masked target. We could have dropped a mini on it from base if we’d known he wasn’t going to play hide-and-seek.”
“Could have finished your game,” Lisa said.
“We could still nuke him.” Jaak suggested.
I shook my head. “No, let’s take a look. Vaporizing him won’t leave us anything and Bunbaum will want to know what we used the hunter for.”
“Thirty seconds.”
“He wouldn’t care if someone hadn’t taken the hunter on a joyride to Cancun.”
Lisa shrugged. “I wanted to swim. It was either that, or rip off your kneecaps.”
The hunter lunged over another series of ridges.
Jaak studied his monitor. “Target’s moving away. He’s still slow. We’ll get him.”
“Fifteen seconds to drop,” Lisa said. She unstrapped and switched the hunter to software. We all ran for the hatch as the HEV yanked itself skyward, its auto pilot desperate to tear away from the screaming hazard of the rocks beneath its belly.
We plunged out the hatch, one, two, three, falling like Icarus. We slammed into the ground at hundreds of kilometers per hour. Our exoskeletons shattered like glass, flinging leaves into the sky. The shards fluttered down around us, black metallic petals absorbing our enemy’s radar and heat detection while we rolled to jarred vulnerable stops in muddy scree.
The hunter blew over the ridge, Hentasas shrieking, a blazing target. I dragged myself upright and ran for the ridge, my feet churning through yellow tailings mud and rags of jaundiced snow. Behind me, Jaak was down with smashed arms. The leaves of his exoskeleton marked his roll path, a long trail of black shimmering metal. Lisa lay a hundred yards away, her femur rammed through her thigh like a bright white exclamation mark.