“Some of them. Over the years.”
“You knew what was down there.”
She didn’t answer.
“She told you not to come,” said Lehi. “You knew about this too?”
“I knew people came, I didn’t know what they did.”
And suddenly the magnitude of it struck him. Lehi and Rain had both known. All the Mormons knew, then. They all knew, and he had asked again and again, and no one had told him. Not even his friends.
“Why’d you let me come out here?”
“Tried to stop you,” said Rain.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
She looked him in the eye. “Deaver, you would’ve thought I was givin you the run around. And you would have laughed at this, if I told you. I thought it was better if you saw it. Then maybe you wouldn’t go tellin people how dumb the Mormons are.”
“You think I would?” He held up another metal prayer and read it aloud. “Come quickly, Lord Jesus, before I die.” He shook it at her. “You think I’d laugh at these people?”
“You laugh at everything, Deaver.”
Deaver looked at Lehi. This was something Lehi had never said before. Deaver would never laugh at something that was really important. And this was really important to them, to them both.
“This is yours,” Deaver said. “All this stuff is yours.”
“I never left a prayer here,” said Lehi.
But when he said yours he didn’t mean just them, just Lehi and Rain. He meant all of them, all the people of the Mormon Sea, all the ones who had known about it but never told him even though he asked again and again. All the people who belonged here. “I came to find something here for me, and you knew all the time it was only your stuff down there.”
Lehi and Rain looked at each other, then back at Deaver.
“It isn’t ours,” said Rain.
“I never been here before,” said Lehi.
“It’s your stuff.” He sat down in the water and began taking off the underwater gear.
“Don’t be mad,” said Lehi. “I didn’t know.”
You knew more than you told me. All the time I thought we were friends, but it wasn’t true. You two had this place in common with all the other people, but not with me. Everybody but me.
Lehi carefully took the metal sheets to the stairway and dropped them. They sank once, to drift down and take their place on the pile of supplications.
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
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.”
