1269_UgliesFreeBook

UGLIES 345
it happened—the last panic, when the Rusty world fell
apart. They shrug and say that all their mistakes just kept
adding up, until it all collapsed like a house of cards.”
“That’s only partly true. The Boss had some old books
about it.”
“What did they say?”
“Well, the Rusties did live in a house of cards, but
someone gave it a pretty big shove. No one ever found out
who. Maybe it was a Rusty weapon that got out of control.
Maybe it was people in some poor country who didn’t like
the way the Rusties ran things. Maybe it was just an accident,
like the flowers, or some lone scientist who wanted to
mess things up.”
“But what happened?”
“A bug got loose, but it didn’t infect people. It infected
petroleum.”
“Oil got infected?”
He nodded. “Oil is organic, made from old plants and
dinosaurs and stuff. Somebody made a bacterium that ate
it. The spores spread through the air, and when they landed
in petroleum, processed or crude, they sprouted. Like a
mold or something. It changed the chemical composition of
the oil. Have you ever seen phosphorus?”
“It’s an element, right?”
“Yeah. And it catches fire on contact with air.”
Tally nodded. She remembered playing with the stuff in
chem class, wearing goggles and talking about all the tricks