The People of Sand and Slag Read online

  We'd intended to amputate her for the weekend, to let her try what she had done to me the vacation before. It was a new thing in L.A., an experiment in vulnerability.

  She was beautiful, lying there on the beach, slick and excited with all of our play in the water. I licked oil opals off her skin as I sliced off her limbs, leaving her more dependent than a baby. Jaak played his harmonica and watched the Sun set, and watched as I rendered Lisa down to her core.

  After our sex, we lay on the sand. The last of the Sun was dropping below the water. Its rays glinted redly across the smoldering waves. The sky, thick with particulates and smoke, shaded darker.

  Lisa sighed contentedly. “We should vacation here more often."

  I tugged on a length of barbed-wire buried in the sand. It tore free and I wrapped it around my upper arm, a tight band that bit into my skin. I showed it to Lisa. “I used to do this all the time when I was a kid.” I smiled. “I thought I was so bad-ass."

  Lisa smiled. “You are."

  “Thanks to science.” I glanced over at the dog. It was lying on the sand a short distance away. It seemed sullen and unsure in its new environment, torn away from the safety of the acid pits and tailings mountains of its homeland. Jaak sat beside the dog and played. Its ears twitched to the music. He was a good player. The mournful sound of the harmonica carried easily over the beach to where we lay.

  Lisa turned her head, trying to see the dog. “Roll me."

  I did what she asked. Already, her limbs were regrowing. Small stumps, which would build into larger limbs. By morning, she would be whole, and ravenous. She studied the dog. “This is as close as I'll ever get to it,” she said.

  “Sorry?"

  “It's vulnerable to everything. It can't swim in the ocean. It can't eat anything. We have to fly its food to it. We have to scrub its water. Dead end of an evolutionary chain. Without science, we'd be as vulnerable as it.” She looked up at me. “As vulnerable as I am now.” She grinned. “This is as close to death as I've ever been. At least, not in combat."

  “Wild, isn't it?"

  “For a day. I liked it better when I did it to you. I'm already starving."

  I fed her a handful of oily sand and watched the dog, standing uncertainly on the beach, sniffing suspiciously at some rusting scrap iron that stuck out of the beach like a giant memory fin. It pawed up a chunk of red plastic rubbed shiny by the ocean and chewed on it briefly, before dropping it. It started licking around its mouth. I wondered if it had poisoned itself again.

  “It sure can make you think,” I muttered. I fed Lisa another handful of sand. “If someone came from the past, to meet us here and now, what do you think they'd say about us? Would they even call us human?"

  Lisa looked at me seriously. “No, they'd call us gods."

  Jaak got up and wandered into the surf, standing knee-deep in the black smoldering waters. The dog, driven by some unknown instinct, followed him, gingerly picking its way across the sand and rubble.

  The dog got tangled in a cluster of wire our last day on the beach. Really ripped the hell out of it: slashes through its fur, broken legs, practically strangled. It had gnawed one of its own paws half off trying to get free. By the time we found it, it was a bloody mess of ragged fur and exposed meat.

  Lisa stared down at the dog. “Christ, Jaak, you were supposed to be watching it."

  “I went swimming. You can't keep an eye on the thing all the time."

  “It's going to take forever to fix this,” she fumed.

  “We should warm up the hunter,” I said. “It'll be easier to work on it back home.” Lisa and I knelt down to start cutting the dog free. It whimpered and its tail wagged feebly as we started to work.

  Jaak was silent.

  Lisa slapped him on his leg. “Come on, Jaak, get down here. It'll bleed out if you don't hurry up. You know how fragile it is."

  Jaak said, “I think we should eat it."

  Lisa glanced up, surprised. “You do?"

  He shrugged. “Sure."

  I looked up from where I was tearing away tangled wires from around the dog's torso. “I thought you wanted it to be your pet. Like in the zoo."

  Jaak shook his head. “Those food pellets are expensive. I'm spending half my salary on food and water filtration, and now this bullshit.” He waved his hand at the tangled dog. “You have to watch the sucker all the time. It's not worth it."

  “But still, it's your friend. It shook hands with you."

  Jaak laughed. “You're my friend.” He looked down at the dog, his face wrinkled with thought. “It's, it's ... an animal."

  Even though we had all idly discussed what it would be like to eat the dog, it was a surprise to hear him so determined to kill it. “Maybe you should sleep on it.” I said. “We can get it back to the bunker, fix it up, and then you can decide when you aren't so pissed off about it."

  “No.” He pulled out his harmonica and played a few notes, a quick jazzy scale. He took the harmonica out of his mouth. “If you want to put up the money for his feed, I'll keep it, I guess, but otherwise.... “He shrugged.

  “I don't think you should cook it."

  “You don't?” Lisa glanced at me. “We could roast it, right here, on the beach."

  I looked down at the dog, a mass of panting, trusting animal. “I still don't think we should do it."

  Jaak looked at me seriously. “You want to pay for the feed?"

  I sighed. “I'm saving for the new Immersive Response."

  “Yeah, well, I've got things I want to buy too, you know.” He flexed his muscles, showing off his tattoos. “I mean, what the fuck good does it do?"

  “It makes you smile."

  “Immersive Response makes you smile. And you don't have to clean up after its crap. Come on, Chen. Admit it. You don't want to take care of it either. It's a pain in the ass."

  We all looked at each other, then down at the dog.

  Lisa roasted the dog on a spit, over burning plastics and petroleum skimmed from the ocean. It tasted okay, but in the end it was hard to understand the big deal. I've eaten slagged centaur that tasted better.

  Afterward, we walked along the shoreline. Opalescent waves crashed and roared up the sand, leaving jewel slicks as they receded and the Sun sank red in the distance.

  Without the dog, we could really enjoy the beach. We didn't have to worry about whether it was going to step in acid, or tangle in barb-wire half-buried in the sand, or eat something that would keep it up vomiting half the night.

  Still, I remember when the dog licked my face and hauled its shaggy bulk onto my bed, and I remember its warm breathing beside me, and sometimes, I miss it.

  * * *

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  Paolo Bacigalupi, The People of Sand and Slag

 

 

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