Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction

Cobalt

58.9332

Merfolk

The first deliveries of asteroidal cobalt were flown down to the north

central Pacific Ocean in the form of lifting bodies in the year 2116. The

splash-point was just off the coast of Hawaii. By chance, this was not

far from Poseidonis, the undersea city where lived the water-breathers

who gathered cobalt deposits from the shallow ocean floor.

Each lifting body contained as much cobalt as could be mined from the

Pacific in a year. Seven came down in the space of a single week. Before

that week was over, twenty thousand merfolk found themselves out of work.

They had a mass meeting in the SubPacifica Amphitheater.

Just what are we supposed to do now? one signed. I paid my life savings

for these?he indicated his gills?and now there isn't any work!

"We need welders and cutters to disassemble the lifting bodies for

processing," said the government spokeswoman. A translator signed her

words as she spoke them. "There'll be openings for?oh, maybe two hundred

of you."

As one, the assembled mermen and merwomen rose to their feet and shook

their fists in a silent howl of outrage. No! they signed, and Strike!

they demanded, and Riot! it became.

They boiled up out of the amphitheater.

By the time the riots had at last been quelled, nearly a hundred ships

had been sunk by the merfolk, and all the dock facilities in Hawaii had

been trashed. A good third of the merfolk had been killed, and half those

who remained were in the hospital.

That night the government spokeswoman returned at last to her home. She

was exhausted. Her lover gently took all of her clothes off, and then

gave her a hot oil massage. Whenever the oil beaded up and started to

drift away, he darted out a silvery hand to gather it up again.

"Was it hard?" the spokeswoman's lover asked.

"Telling an entire race of people that they're obsolete? I can't imagine

anything worse."

"It's done now, though."

"Well, no, not exactly." She flipped over, so she could see the Earth,

floating big and fat and beautifully obsolete through the pressurized

window, and sighed. "I really don't look forward to going down there

tomorrow and having that same discussion with the air-breathers."