“I’m not talking about them! I’m talking about me! That’s how you played me! You act like you don’t know things, get me to show you around. Show you the ropes. Get you on the inside. You act all wet and sorry, and dumbass Timo steps in to help you out. And you get a nice juicy exclusive.”
“Timo… how long have we known each other?”
“I don’t know if we ever did.”
“Timo—”
“Don’t bother apologizing.” He shouldered the truck’s door open.
As he climbed out, he knew he was making a mistake. She’d pick up some other photographer. Or else she’d shoot the story herself and get paid twice for the work.
Should have just kept my mouth shut
.
Amparo would have told him he was both dumb and a sucker. Should have at least worked Lucy to get the story done before he left her ass. Instead he’d dumped her, and the story.
Lucy climbed out of the truck, too.
“Fine,” she said. “I won’t do it.”
“Won’t do what?”
“I won’t do the story. If you think I played you, I won’t do the story.”
“Oh come on. That’s bullshit. You know you came down here for your scoop. You ain’t giving that up.”
Lucy’s stared at him, looking pissed. “You know what your problem is?”
“Got a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“You’re so busy doing your poor-me, I’m from Phoenix, everyone’s-out-to-get-me, we’re-getting-overrun wah-wah-wah routine that you can’t even tell when someone’s on your side!”
“That’s not—”
“You can’t even tell someone’s standing right in front of you who actually gives a shit about you!” Lucy was almost spitting she was so mad. Her face had turned red. Timo tried to interject, but she kept talking.
“I’m not some damn Texan here to take your water, and I’m not some big time journo here to steal your fucking stories! That’s not who I am! You know how many photographers I could work with? You know how many would bite on this story that I went out and got? I put my ass on the line out here! You think that was easy?”
“Lucy. Come on…”
She waved a hand of disgust at him and stalked off, heading for the end of the cul-de-sac and the CAP fence beyond.
“Go find someone else to do this story,” she called back. “Pick whoever you want. I wouldn’t touch this story with a ten-foot-pole. If that’s what you want, it’s all yours.”
“Come on, Lucy.” Timo felt like shit. He started to chase after her. “It’s not like that!”
She glanced back. “Don’t even try, Timo.”
Her expression was so scornful and disgusted that Timo faltered.
He could almost hear his sister Amparo laughing at him.
You got the eye for some things, little bro, but you are blind blind blind
.
She’ll cool off
, he thought as he let her go.
Except maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe he’d said some things that sounded a little too true. Said what he’d really thought of Lucy the Northerner in a way that couldn’t get smoothed over. Sometimes, things just broke. One second, you thought you had a connection with a person. Next second, you saw them too clear, and you just knew you were never going to drink a beer together, ever again.
So go fix it
, pendejo.
With a groan, Timo went after her again.
“Lucy!” he called. “Come on, girl. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry…”
At first, he thought she was going to ignore him, but then she turned.
Timo felt a rush of relief. She was looking at him again. She was looking right at him, like before, when they’d still been getting along. She was going to forgive him. They were going to work it out. They were friends.
But then he realized her expression was wrong. She looked dazed. Her sunburned skin had paled. And she was waving at him, waving furiously for him to join her.
Another Texan? Already?
Timo broke into a run, fumbling for his camera.
He stopped short as he made it to the fence.
“Timo?” Lucy whispered.
“I see it.”
He was already snapping pictures through the chainlink, getting the story. He had the eye, and the story was right there in front of them. The biggest luckiest break he’d ever get. Right place, right time, right team to cover the story. He was kneeling now, shooting as fast as he could, listening to the digital report of the electronic shutter, hearing money with every click.
I got it, I got it, I got it
, thinking that he was saying it to himself and then realizing he was speaking out loud. “I got it,” he said. “Don’t worry, I got it!”
Lucy was turning in circles, looking dazed, staring back at the city. “We need to get ourselves assigned. We need to get supplies… We need to trace this back… We need to figure out who did it… We need to get ourselves assigned!” She yanked out her phone and started dialing madly as Timo kept snapping pictures.
Lucy’s voice was an urgent hum in the background as he changed angles and exposures.
Lucy clicked off the cell. “We’re exclusive with
Xinhua
!”
“Both of us?”
She held up a warning finger. “Don’t even start up on me again.”
Timo couldn’t help grinning. “Wouldn’t dream of it, partner.”
Lucy began dictating the beginnings of her story into her phone, then broke off. “They want our first update in ten minutes, you think you’re up for that?”
“In ten minutes, updates are going to be the least of our problems.”
He was in the flow now, capturing the concrete canal and the dead Texan on the other side.
The dogs leaped and jumped, tearing apart the man who had come looking for water.
It was all there. The whole story, laid out.
The man.
The dogs.
The fences.
The Central Arizona Project.
A whole big canal, drained of water. Nothing but a thin crust of rapidly drying mud at its bottom.
Lucy had started dictating again. She’d turned to face the Phoenix sprawl, but Timo didn’t need to listen to her talk. He knew the story already—a whole city full of people going about their daily lives, none of them knowing that everything had changed.
Timo kept shooting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paolo Bacigalupi is the bestselling author of the novels
The Windup Girl
,
Ship Breaker
,
The Drowned Cities
,
Zombie Baseball Beatdown
, and the collection
Pump Six and Other Stories
. He is a winner of the Michael L. Printz, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial awards, and was a National Book Award finalist. He currently lives in Western Colorado with his wife and son, where he is working on a new novel.
Sarah Langan — LOVE PERVERTS
On Display at the Amerasian Museum of Ancient Humanity, 14,201 C.E.
I’m checking my Red Cross crank phone when Jules walks up. We’re the last American colony not to get implants, which places us pretty firmly in the technological third world. My pipeline town in Pigment, Michigan might as well be a flood plain in Bangladesh.
“Ringing mommy dearest?” Jules asks.
“The Crawfords remain indisposed,” I tell her.
“Sucker-boy,” Jules says, not in a mean way, though she’s capable of that. She’s got Schlitz-sticky hair down to her hips and her cheeks are covered in glitter from last night’s rave. Colony Fourteen’s heat and electricity got shut off last week, so her nips push through the spandex cat-suit she’s wearing, hard as million year-old fossils. We’re all about energy conservation here at the dawn of apocalypse.