Paolo Bacigalupi - The Drowned Cities

You’re not begging this time , she thought. You’re buying.

“Is this going to work?” Ocho whispered as they closed on the clipper ship.

“Yeah, it’ll work. Put up that old flag. The one with the stars in a circle, and the red and white stripes.”

“That old burned thing?”

“Yeah. That’ll get their attention. They’ll want it, for sure.”

Their zodiac hurtled across the waves, flying its ragged banner. Sure enough, the clipper ship’s sails that had been unfurling halted, and started rolling themselves back up.

Mahlia could see people on deck, looking down on them with binoculars. Watching them. They’d want what she had to sell. Her heart beat faster. It was going to work. It was really going to work.

“Keep your guns down, boys,” Ocho said. “Try to smile and look friendly.”

Mahlia almost laughed at that. Ocho seemed to catch her humor, but his smile faded, almost as soon as it showed.

“You think they’ll take us? Really?”

“They already are.”

“No. I mean…” He touched his cheek and his brand. “They’ll know what we did, right? They’ll know what we are.”

Mahlia looked at him, and once again, saw that other part of him. The part that was other than a soldier. Some part of whatever the sergeant had been, before the Drowned Cities had swallowed him up. The scared kid who’d been beaten and whipped and shoved around so long he’d almost lost every bit of his humanity. He was right there. A whole other person, trying to believe.

She started to answer, to try to tell him that everything would be okay. They could buy respect. They could go someplace where no one had even heard of the UPF or the Drowned Cities or the Army of God. Where none of it even existed. Beijing, maybe. Or Seascape Boston. Or farther even. They could disappear from everything that they’d been.

Somewhere they’d find a place, she wanted to say.

But then she looked down at her own hands, her missing right and the bandage on her left, and she wondered the same thing herself. What good was anyone going to find in a doctor girl who had only four fingers?

Finally she said, “One step at a time, soldier boy. We’ll take it one step at a time, and we’ll figure it out.”

They swept up beside the clipper ship and it loomed over them. Someone threw a rope ladder down, and then soldier boys were scrambling up the ladder and climbing aboard. They went up one by one, and then the ladder was in front of Mahlia.

She took a deep breath, then reached up and hooked her arms through the rungs. The soldier boys helped her, shoving her higher, and then she was lifting free of the zodiac, climbing.

MICHELLE NIJHUIS FOR TELLING me about the coyote-wolf hybrids that became the basis for coywolv. Ruhan Zhao for some desperately needed language expertise when my rusty Chinese skills failed me. Rob Ziegler for talking me off the ledge and keeping me from throwing the book away, yet again. All the folks at Blue Heaven who read this book, when it wasn’t this book at all. My editors: Jennifer Hunt, who supported me and was willing to wait so that I could write the best book I could; and Andrea Spooner, for guiding me through the final miles to make it even better. My wife for having faith when it all took longer than it should have, and Arjun, because he makes this matter. Any errors or omissions are mine alone.

Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of Ship Breaker , a Michael L. Printz Award winner and National Book Award finalist. He is also the author of The Windup Girl and Pump Six and Other Stories , and is a Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner. He lives in western Colorado with his wife and son.

“Suzanne Collins may have put dystopian literature on the YA map with ‘The Hunger Games’… but Bacigalupi is one of the genre's masters, employing inventively terrifying details in equally imaginative story lines.”

“Beautifully written, filled with high-octane action, and featuring badly damaged but fascinating and endearing characters, this fine novel tops its predecessor and can only increase the author’s already strong reputation.”

“The novel’s greatest success lies in the creation of a world that is so real, the grit and decay of war and ruin will lay thick on the minds of readers long after the final page. The narrative, however, is equally well crafted…. Breathtaking.”

“Bacigalupi writes with a furious energy that makes this brilliant depiction of an all-too-believable future impossible to forget. A story that will resonate beyond its final page.”

“Bacigalupi’s intense, action-filled novel is a heartbreaking and powerfully moving portrait of individual resiliency amidst extreme circumstances that rivals, if not surpasses, the excellence of its predecessor.”

“Bacigalupi brings to life a post-apocalyptic America that thrills the mind.”

“A compelling read, this engaging book does not glorify war and violence, but shows its true nature.”

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Paolo Bacigalupi

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First e-book edition: May 2012

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ISBN 978-0-316-20261-9