Wastelands

by John Joseph Adams

  "Bobby, let's suppose it could be done and everything went according to schedule," I said. "It probably couldn't and wouldn't, but let's suppose. You don't have the slightest idea what the long-term effects might be."

  He started to say something and I waved it away.

  "Don't even suggest that you do, because you don't! You've had time to find this calmquake of yours and isolate the cause, I'll give you that. But did you ever hear about thalidomide? That nifty little acne-stopper and sleeping pill that caused cancer and heart attacks in thirty-year-olds? Don't you remember the AIDS vaccine in 1997?"

  "Howie?"

  "That one stopped the disease, except it turned the test subjects into incurable epileptics who all died within eighteen months."

  "Howie?"

  "Then there was—"

  "Howie?"

  I stopped and looked at him.

  "The world," Bobby said, and then stopped. His throat worked. I saw he was struggling with tears. "The world needs heroic measures, man. I don't know about long-term effects, and there's no time to study them, because there's no long-term prospect. Maybe we can cure the whole mess. Or maybe—"

  He shrugged, tried to smile, and looked at me with shining eyes from which two single tears slowly tracked.

  "Or maybe we're giving heroin to a patient with terminal cancer. Either way, it'll stop what's happening now. It'll end the world's pain." He spread out his hands, palms up, so I could see the stings on them. "Help me, Bow-Wow. Please help me."

  So I helped him.

  And we fucked up. In fact I think you could say we fucked up big-time. And do you want the truth? I don't give a shit. We killed all the plants, but at least we saved the greenhouse. Something will grow here again, someday. I hope.

  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 din't know I could do it muself 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 cmon 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 blas

  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 Parrier 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 ful 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 falt i love you

  forgivyu

  love yu

  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 eighty 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 name's Deaver Teague."

  "Tell the foreman, he'll write it up." The mechanic lifted the hood to begin the routine checks while the dockboys 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.

  Seven dollars for five days of driving and loading, sleeping in the cab and eating whatever the farmers could spare. It was better than a lot of people lived on, but there wasn't any future in it. Salvage wouldn't go on forever. Someday he'd pick up the last broken-down dishwasher left from the old days, and then he'd be out of a job.

  Well, Deaver Teague wasn't going to wait around for that. He knew where the gold was, he'd been planning how to get it for weeks, and if Lehi had got the diving equipment like he promised then tomorrow morning they'd do a little freelance salvage work. If they were lucky they'd come home rich.

  Deaver's legs were stiff but he loosened them up pretty quick and broke into an easy, loping run down the corridors of the Salvage Center. He took a flight of stairs two or three steps at a time, bounded down a hall, and when he reached a sign that said SMALL COMPUTER SALVAGE, he pushed off the doorframe and rebounded into the room. "Hey Lehi!" he said. "Hey it's quittin time!"

  Lehi McKay paid no attention. He was sitting in front of a TV screen, jerking at a black box he held on his lap.

  "You do that and you'll go blind," said Deaver.

  "Shut up, carpface." Lehi never took his eyes off the screen. He jabbed at a button on the black box and twisted on the stick that jutted up from it. A colored blob on the screen blew up and split into four smaller blobs.

  "I got three days off while they do the transmission on the truck," said Deaver. "So tomorrow's the temple expedition."

  Lehi got the last blob off the screen. More blobs appeared.

  "That's real fun," said Deaver, "like sweepin the street and then they bring along another troop of horses."

  "It's an Atari. From the sixties or seventies or something. Eighties. Old. Can't do much with the pieces, it's only eight-bit stuff. All these years in somebody's attic in Logan, and the sucker still runs."

  "Old guys probably didn't even know they had it."

  "Probably."

  Deaver watched the game. Same thing over and over again. "How much a thing like this use to cost?"

  "A lot. Maybe fifteen, twenty bucks."

  "Makes you want to barf. And here sits Lehi McKay, toodling his noodle like the old guys use to. All it ever got them was a sore noodle, Lehi. And slag for brains."

  "Drown it. I'm trying to concentrate."

  The game finally ended. Lehi set the black box up on the workbench, turned off the machine, and stood up.

  "You got everything ready to go underwater tomorrow?" asked Deaver.

  "That was a good game. Having fun must've took up a lot of their time in the old days. Mom says the kids used to not even be able to get jobs till they was sixteen. It was the law."

  "Don't you wish," said Deaver.

  "It's true."

  "You don't know your tongue from dung, Lehi. You don't know your heart from a fart."

  "You want to get us both kicked out of here, talkin like that?"

  "I don't have to follow school rules now, I graduated sixth grade, I'm nineteen years old, I been on my own for five years." He pulled his seven dollars out of his pocket, waved them once, stuffed them back in carelessly. "I do OK, and I talk like I want to talk. Think I'm afraid of the Bishop?"

  "Bishop don't scare me. I don't even go to church except to make Mom happy. It's a bunch of bunny turds."

  Lehi laughed, but Deaver could see that he was a little scared to talk like that. Sixteen years old, thought Deaver, he's big and he's smart but he's such a little kid. He don't understand how it's like to be a man. "Rain's comin."

  "Rain's always comin. What the hell do you think filled up the lake?" Lehi smirked as he unplugged everything on the workbench.

  "I meant Lorraine Wilson."

  "I know what you meant. She's got her boat?"

  "And she's got a mean set of fenders." Deaver cupped his hands. "Just need a little polishing."

  "Why do you always talk dirty? Ever since you started driving salvage, Deaver, you got a gutter mouth. Besides, she's built like a sack."

  "She's near fifty, what do you expect?" It occurred to Deaver that Lehi seemed to be stalling. Which probably meant he botched up again as usual. "Can you get the diving stuff?"

  "I already got it. You thought I'd screw up." Lehi smirked again.

  "You? Screw up? You can be trusted with anything." Deaver started for the door. He could hear Lehi behind him, still shutting a few things off. They got to use a lot of electricity in here. Of course they had to, because they needed computers all the time, and salvage was the only way to get them. But when Deaver saw all that electricity getting used up at once, to him it looked like his own future. All the machines he could ever want, new ones, and all the power they needed. Clothes that nobody else ever wore, his own horse and wagon or even a car. Maybe he'd be the guy who started making cars again. He didn't need stupid blob-smashing games from the past. "That stuff's dead and gone, duck lips, dead and gone."

  "What're you talking about?" asked Lehi.

  "Dead and gone. All your computer things."

  It was enough to set Lehi off, as it always did. Deaver grinned and felt wicked and strong as Lehi babbled along behind him. About how we use the computers more than they ever did in the old days, the computers kept everything going, on and on and on, it was cute, Deaver liked him, the boy was so intense. Like everything was the end of the world. Deaver knew better. The world was dead, it had already ended, so none of it mattered, you could sink all this stuff in the lake.

  They came out of the Center and walked along the retaining wall. Far below them was the harbor, a little circle of water in the bottom of a bowl, with Bingham City perched on the lip. They used to have an open-pit copper mine here, but when the water rose they cut a channel to it and now they had a nice harbor on Oquirrh Island in the middle of the Mormon Sea, where the factories could stink up the whole sky and no neighbors ever complained about it.

  A lot of other people joined them on the steep dirt road that led down to the harbor. Nobody lived right in Bingham City itself, because it was just a working place, day and night. Shifts in, shifts out. Lehi was a shift boy, lived with his family across the Jordan Strait on Point-of-the-Mountain, which was as rotten a place to live as anybody ever devised, rode the ferry in every day at five in the morning and rode it back every afternoon at four. He was supposed to go to school after that for a couple of hours but Deaver thought that was stupid, he told Lehi that all the time, told him again now. School is too much time and too little of everything, a waste of time.

  "I gotta go to school," said Lehi.

  "Tell me two plus two, you haven't got two plus two yet?"

  "You finished, didn't you?"

  "Nobody needs anything after fourth grade." He shoved Lehi a little. Usually Lehi shoved back, but this time no.

  "Just try getting a real job without a sixth-grade diploma, OK? And I'm pretty close now." They were at the ferry ship. Lehi got out his pass.

  "You with me tomorrow or not?"

  Lehi made a face. "I don't know, Deaver. You can get arrested for
going around there. It's a dumb thing to do. They say there's real weird things in the old skyscrapers."

  "We aren't going in the skyscrapers."

  "Even worse in there, Deaver. I don't want to go there."

  "Yeah, the Angel Moroni's probably waiting to jump out and say booga-booga-booga."

  "Don't talk about it, Deaver." Deaver was tickling him; Lehi laughed and tried to shy away. "Cut it out, chigger-head. Come on. Besides, the Moroni statue was moved to the Salt Lake Monument up on the mountain. And that has a guard all the time."

  "The statue's just gold plate anyway. I'm tellin you those old Mormons hid tons of stuff down in the Temple, just waitin for somebody who isn't scared of the ghost of Bigamy Young to—"

  "Shut up, snotsucker, OK? People can hear! Look around, we're not alone!"

  It was true, of course. Some of the other people were glaring at them. But then, Deaver noticed that older people liked to glare at younger ones. It made the old farts feel better about kicking off. It was like they were saying, OK, I'm dying, but at least you're stupid. So Deaver looked right at a woman who was staring at him and murmured, "OK, I'm stupid, but at least I won't die."

  "Deaver, do you always have to say that where they can hear you?"

  "It's true."

  "In the first place, Deaver, they aren't dying. And in the second place, you're definitely stupid. And in the third place, the ferry's here." Lehi punched Deaver lightly in the stomach.

  Deaver bent over in mock agony. "Ay, the laddie's ungrateful, he is, I give him me last croost of bread and this be the thanks I gets."

  "Nobody has an accent like that, Deaver!" shouted Lehi. The boat began to pull away.

  "Tomorrow at five-thirty!" shouted Deaver.