1269_UgliesFreeBook

346 Scott Westerfeld
you could do with it. But no one ever thought of a trick that
wouldn’t kill someone.
“Oil infected by this bacterium was just as unstable as
phosphorus. It exploded on contact with oxygen. And as it
burned, the spores were released in the smoke, and spread
on the wind. Until the spores got to the next car, or airplane,
or oil well, and started growing again.”
“Wow. And they used oil for everything, right?”
David nodded. “Like those cars down there. They must
have been infected as they tried to get out of town.”
“Why didn’t they just walk?”
“Stupid, I guess.”
Tally shivered again, but not from the cold. It was hard
to think of the Rusties as actual people, rather than as just
an idiotic, dangerous, and sometimes comic force of history.
But there were human beings down there, whatever was left
of them after a couple of hundred years, still sitting in their
blackened cars, as if still trying to escape their fate.
“I wonder why they don’t tell us that in history class.
They usually love any story that makes the Rusties sound
pathetic.”
David lowered his voice. “Maybe they didn’t want you
to realize that every civilization has its weakness. There’s
always one thing we depend on. And if someone takes it
away, all that’s left is some story in a history class.”
“Not us,” she said. “Renewable energy, sustainable
resources, a fixed population.”