Are you reading this?
My gears are starting to get a little sticky. For the first time in years I’m having to think about what I’m doing. The motor-movements of writing. Should have hurried more at the start.
Never mind. Too late to change things now.
We did it, of course: distilled the water, flew it in, transported it to Gulandio, built a primitive lifting system—half motor-winch and half cog railway—up the side of the volcano, and dropped over twelve thousand five-gallon containers of La Plata water—the brain-buster version—into the murky misty depths of the volcano’s caldera. We did all of this in just eight months. It didn’t cost six hundred thousand dollars, or a million and a half; it cost over four million, still less than a sixteenth of one per cent of what America spent on defense that year. You want to know how we razed it? I’d tell you if I had more thyme, but my head’s falling apart so never mend. I raised most of it myself if it matters to you. Some by hoof and some by croof. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know I could do it myself until I did. But we did it and somehow the world held together and that volcano-whatever its name wuz, I can’t exactly remember now and there izzunt time to go back over the manuscript—it blue just when it was spo—
Wait
Okay. A little better. Digitalin. Bobby had it. Heart’s beating like crazy but I can think again.
The volcano—Mount Grace, we called it—blue just when Dook Rogers said it would. Everything when skihi and for awhile everyone’s attention turned away from whatever and toward the skys. And bimmel-dee-dee, said Strapless!
It happened pretty fast like sex and checks and special effex and everybody got healthy again. I mean—
wait
Jesus please let me finish this.
I mean that everybody stood down. Everybody started to get a little purstective on the situation. The wurld started to get like the wasps in Bobbys nest the one he showed me where they didn’t stink too much. There was three yerz like an Indian sumer. People getting together like in that old Youngbloods song that went c-mon everybody get together rite now, like what all the hippeez wanted, you no, peets and luv and
wt
Big blast. Feel like my heart is coming out thru my ears. But if I concentrate every bit of my force, my concentration
It was like an Indian summer, that’s what I meant to say, like three years of Indian summer. Bobby went on with his resurch. La Plata. Sociological background etc. You remember the local Sheriff? Fat old Republican with a good Rodney Youngblood imitashun? How Bobby said he had the preliminary simptoms of Rodney’s Disease?
Concentrate Asshole
Wasn’t just him; turned out like there was a lot of that going around in that part of Texas. All’s Hallows Disease is what I meen. For three yerz me and Bobby were down there. Created a new program. New graff of circkles. I saw what was happen and came back here. Bobby and his to asistants stayed on. One shot hisself Boby said when he showed up here. Wait one more bias
All right. Last time. Heart beating so fast I can hardly breeve. The new graph, the last graph, really only whammed you when it was laid over the calmquake graft. The calmquake graff showed ax of vilence going down as you approached La Plata in the muddle; the Alzheimer’s graff showed incidence of premature seenullity going up as you approached La Plata. People there were getting very silly very yung.
Me and Bobo were careful as we could be for next three years, drink only Par-rier Water and wor big long sleekers in the ran. so no war and when everybobby started to get seely we din and I came back here because he my brother I cant remember what his name
Bobby
Bobby when he came here tonight cryeen and I sed Bobby I luv you Bobby sed Ime sorry Bowwow Ime sorry I made the hole world fill of foals and dumbbels and I sed better fouls and bells than a big black sinder in spaz and he cryed and I cryed Bobby I luv you and he sed will you give me a shot of the spacial wadder and I sed yez and he said wil you ride it down and I sed yez an I think I did but I cant reely remember I see wurds but dont no what they mean
I have a Bobby his nayme is bruther and I theen I an dun riding and I have a bocks to put this into thats Bobby sd full of quiyet air to last a milyun yrz so gudboy gudboy every—brother, Im goin to stob gudboy bobby i love you it wuz not yor fait i love you
forgivyu
loveyu
sinned (for the wurld)
SALVAGE
by Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is the best-selling author of Ender’s Game, which was a winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The sequel to Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, also won both awards, making Card the only author to have captured the field’s two most coveted prizes in consecutive years. Card is also the winner of the World Fantasy Award, eight Locus Awards, and a slew of other honors.
In addition to Ender’s Game and the other books in the Enderverse, Card is the author of dozens of other novels, including the books in the Tales of Alvin Maker saga and the Homecoming series. He has also published more than 80 short stories, which have been collected in several volumes, most notably in Maps in a Mirror.
“Salvage” was one of the first stories in which Card openly explored his religion, and was among his first forays into post-apocalyptic SF. This tale, one of Card’s “Mormon Sea” stories, originally appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and was later included in Folk of the Fringe, a collection of stories set in the post-apocalyptic state of Deseret. There, on the shores of a flooded Great Salt Lake, the remnants of a ruined civilization rely on their faith—and each other—to carry on and rebuild…
The road began to climb steeply right from the ferry, so the truck couldn’t build up any speed. Deaver just kept shifting down, wincing as he listened to the grinding of the gears. Sounded like the transmission was chewing itself to gravel. He’d been nursing it all the way across Nevada, and if the Wendover ferry hadn’t carried him these last miles over the Mormon Sea, he would have had a nice long hike. Lucky. It was a good sign. Things were going to go Deaver’s way for a while.
The mechanic frowned at him when he rattled in to the loading dock. “You been ridin’ the clutch, boy?”
Deaver got down from the cab. “Clutch? What’s a clutch?”
The mechanic didn’t smile. “Couldn’t you hear the transmission was shot?”
“I had mechanics all the way across Nevada askin’ to fix it for me, but I told em I was savin’ it for you.”
The mechanic looked at him like he was crazy. “There ain’t no mechanics in Nevada.”
If you wasn’t dumb as your thumb, thought Deaver, you’d know I was joking. These old Mormons were so straight they couldn’t sit down, some of them. But Deaver didn’t say anything, just smiled.
“This truck’s gonna stay here a few days,” said the mechanic.
Fine with me, thought Deaver. I got plans. “How many days you figure?”
“Take three for now, I’ll sign you off.”
“My names Deaver Teague.”
“Tell the foreman, he’ll write it up.” The mechanic lifted the hood to begin the routine checks while the dock boys loaded off the old washing machines and refrigerators and other stuff Deaver had picked up on this trip. Deaver took his mileage reading to the window and the foreman paid him off.