Asimov's SF, October-November 2001 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-07-10T14:01:00+00:00

When this World is All on Fire by William Sanders

William Sanders has published many stories in this magazine and elsewhere, as well as numerous novels of SF, fantasy, mystery, and suspense. His newest science fiction novel, J., was published this summer. In his latest tale, he takes a disturbing look at a time…

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“Squatters,” Jimmy Lonekiller said as he swung the jeep off the narrow old blacktop onto the narrower and older gravel side road. “I can’t believe we got squatters again.”

Sitting beside him, bracing himself against the bumping and bouncing, Sergeant Davis Blackbear said, “Better get used to it. We kick this bunch out, there’ll be more.”

Jimmy Lonekiller nodded. “Guess that’s right,” he said. “They’re not gonna give up, are they?”

He was a husky, dark-skinned young man, and tall for a Cherokee; among the women of the reservation, he was generally considered something of a hunk. His khaki uniform was neat and crisply pressed, despite the oppressive heat. Davis Blackbear, feeling his own shirt wilting and sticking to his skin, wondered how he did it. Maybe fullbloods didn’t sweat as much. Or maybe it was something to do with being young.

Davis said, “Would you? Give up, I mean, if you were in their shoes?”

Jimmy didn’t reply for a moment, being busy fighting the wheel as the jeep slammed over a series of potholes. They were on a really bad stretch now, the road narrowed to a single-lane dirt snaketrack; the overhanging trees on either side, heavy with dust-greyed festoons of kudzu vine, shut out the sun without doing anything much about the heat. This was an out-of-the-way part of the reservation; Davis had had to check the map at the tribal police headquarters to make sure he knew how to get here.

The road began to climb now, up the side of a steep hill. The jeep slowed to not much better than walking speed; the locally distilled alcohol might burn cooler and cleaner than gasoline but it had no power at all. Jimmy Lonekiller spoke then: “Don’t guess I would, you put it that way. Got to go somewhere, poor bastards.”

They were speaking English; Davis was Oklahoma Cherokee, having moved to the North Carolina reservation only a dozen years ago, when he married a Qualla Band woman. He could understand the Eastern dialect fairly well by now, enough for cop purposes anyway, but he still wasn’t up to a real conversation.

“Still,” Jimmy went on, “you got to admit it’s a hell of a thing. Twenty-first century, better than five hundred years after Columbus, and here we are again with white people trying to settle on our land. What little bit we’ve got left,” he said, glancing around at the dusty woods. “There’s gotta be somewhere else they can go.”

“Except,” Davis said, “somebody’s already there too.”

“Probably so,” Jimmy admitted. “Seems like they’re running out of places for people to be.”

He steered the jeep around a rutted hairpin bend, while Davis turned the last phrase over in his

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