“I hope you live long enough to follow through on your plans,” Nasri said. Then he signaled to his men, and they followed him from the hold, dragging us like old luggage.
Nothing prepared me for the scene that greeted us when we stepped from the carrier. If someone had told me we were on the moon, I wouldn’t have doubted it. The land was pocked and cratered, with holes as large as entire canyons. Though the sun was shining, it was through a dusty haze, weak and distant. Giant machines, which at first I thought were buildings, perched beside mountains of rocks and sand. A bone-rattling wind blew, and it carried a stench that was indescribable and yet horribly familiar: a metallic smell, like sticking your head into a venti-unit, or being buried alive. It was the smell of sickness, disease, and death.
Most striking, however, were the children: thousands of them scrambling over the piles of dirt or shimmying down into crevices between rocks. Deep in the canyon bottom, they scurried from drill hole to drill hole, emerging into the gloom like colonies of insects.
They were sick. I could see it even from a distance. Though some wore shields, they could not cover watery inflamed eyes, swollen lips, bloody noses, open scabs, and pus-filled wounds. Some were missing fingers, and others were missing entire limbs. Many were bald or balding, and every now and then, one would collapse and lay still.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
“It used to be a great waterfall,” said Nasri.
I’d heard about Niagara in school. So much water rushed from the mountains that it poured off the shelf of the land into the giant canyon. The power of the waterfall generated enough electricity to light an entire city, and the people who lived there grew rich and prosperous. Then oil replaced water as the cheaper form of power, and the people fled while the city deteriorated. Now water meant great wealth again, except it had been squandered and wasted, and all that remained was trapped hundreds of meters below ground.
Nasri repeated the story to us. He seemed to take pleasure in his history lesson. It was as if it gave him a sense of superiority to recount the foolishness of people who had thought their resources were endless. In dangerous times, people like Nasri ruled. They cared little for grand ideals, but much more for survival. They watched their backs and wielded quick knives. Their lives were nasty, brutish, and short.
“And the children?” I asked.
“Waiting for Santa Claus,” said Nasri.
His men shoved us roughly toward a tin-roofed compound that appeared to be the office or headquarters of whoever ran the drilling operation. Will dragged his bad leg while I tried to slow down so he could keep up. Although we passed several groups of children, none looked at us. There wasn’t a single one who appeared healthy. Even those with all their limbs and digits had open wounds on the backs of their hands or arms and scabby spots on their heads where their hair was missing. I tried to get Will’s attention, but he was staring at the children, his mouth open in horror.
I was interrupted by the sight of a tall man who appeared from the trailer with two armed guards. He seemed to know Nasri, and the two men exchanged greetings while the guards watched warily. Then he stepped over toward Will, took his lower jaw in his hand, and cast an appraising glance over the length of his body.
“What happened to this one?” he asked.
“Leg wound. He’ll be fine. It’s healing nicely.”
The man grunted and tore open the rest of Will’s trouser leg with a knife. His wound looked worse than before, more green than red and moist with fluid. The man poked at it with the tip of his knife, and Will winced visibly but remained silent.
“No worse than anyone else,” concluded the man.
Then he approached me, and I could smell his stink before he was within arm’s length. There was no way to describe it except to say that he had obviously never wasted any chemicals on cleaning himself. He was rancid, and I couldn’t help gagging.
“You’ll grow used to it,” he said. “They all do.” He lifted my head by my hair, then pulled down my eyelids with a thick blackened finger. “Good root tone,” he said. “I’ll take ’em both.”
“They’re fifty credits each.”
“I’ll give you forty for them both.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Fifty.”
“Deal.”
The man pulled out a wireless device from his rear pocket and beamed the transaction to Nasri’s handheld.
The entire encounter had taken no more than a minute, and suddenly we were locked in the strong grip of two guards. “There’s nowhere to run,” said the man. “You’ll learn that soon too.”
As bad as things had been, they were now worse. This was a prison camp disguised as a drilling operation, and I was certain the money that had just changed hands was not merely for free labor. Other horrors awaited us, deadly and unknown.
“Nasri!” I called out.
He stopped and turned around. “What is it?” he asked. His hand was already on the key pad of the hover-carrier.
“I don’t believe you are a bad man.”
“But I am.”