“You are not the designated contact,” the boy said.

“No.”

“So why are you here?”

Saleh was sweating, though the air was chilly. He said, “I have something.”

“So?”

“Something to trade.”

The boy looked interested again. “Is it valuable?” he said.

“I think so.”

The boy seemed to consider. “Still,” he said. “We deal with the tribe, not with individual scavengers. It makes everything easier. Safe.”

Saleh said, “There is only me.”

“Excuse me?”

Saleh swallowed.

“There is only me,” he said quietly.

And then he started to cry.

The other boy’s name was Elias. Saleh sat miserably on a mat while Elias brewed sage tea.

Saleh accepted the tea gratefully.

Elias brought out pistachios and hard biscuits. He set them on a plate and sat cross-legged opposite Saleh.

“What happened to them?” he said. He spoke gently.

Saleh shrugged.

“We were excavating in Dahab,” he said. “It used to be a robotnik nest during the second, no, maybe the third war. You must have seen the satellite pictures of Dahab, right? It had a terrorartist attack in the fourth war and the whole place is suspended in a sort of still-ongoing explosion, but if you wear a null suit you can navigate through the temporality maze—anyway. We were digging. Dahab’s full of valuable old stuff, it’s just hard to get. Then, something . . . broke loose.” He blinked. “I don’t know what. A ghost.”

“A ghost?” Elias said.

Saleh shrugged again, helplessly. “One of the old Israeli robotniks, I think. It was still alive somehow, inside the explosion. Most power sources don’t work inside the terrorartist installation so we bring in portable fusion generators when we go in. I think my father brushed too close to the old robotnik and somehow it drew power from the generator and, and it came alive. They were cyborgs, with biological brains but mostly machine otherwise. I don’t even know if it was alive in any real sense, only responding to what it saw as battle. So it came loose and it killed my father and the rest of. . . . It killed everyone.’

“I am sorry,” Elias said.

Saleh closed his eyes. The tea cup felt warm between his hands.

“Everyone else was away,” he said quietly. He had to get the words out. Had to tell Elias what happened. In a way it was a relief.

“Most of the tribe’s down in Sharm or St. Catherine’s. But I got it, you see.” He opened his eyes and stared at the other boy, this Elias, with his strange goggles and short cropped hair and curious, interested gaze.

“You got it? What?” the boy said.