If you act like a servant, you will die like a dog. - Paolo Bacigalupi

No one had ever come for him... not his mom, not his dad, not his brother, not a dozen people who he'd called his friends back in his town on the coast, not a one of them had ever come looking for him, trying to get him back. They'd just let him go. That was the difference. But this castoff cripple-hand civvy girl had come all the way in. Ocho scowled down at her limp body. See what loyalty gets you? See?

The symbol for the Environment Ministry is the eye of a tortoise, for the long view—the understanding that nothing comes cheap or quickly without a hidden cost.

At first, when California started winning its water lawsuits and shutting off cities, the displaced people just followed the water—right to California. It took a little while before the bureaucrats realized what was going on, but finally someone with a sharp pencil did the math and realized that taking in people along with their water didn't solve a water shortage.