Diving for Treasure
Chapter Fourteen
Down below, Peary was moving toward the salvage cases. Almost from the surface he could see them. Not quite, but almost. At first they were just a shimmer of opacity in a sea of orange, but when the deeper colors appeared, the deep blues and greens, the cases took form by relief, red in his visor amid the darker colors in the distance. He moved slowly, enjoying the cool of the sand after the heat up on top, and felt his tensions ease after the pressures and fears brought on by the loss of his salvage. He was in no hurry.
Escaping Low-Pub and the death and carnage taking place there had powerfully focused his thoughts. Like the sand, his days were numbered. Everyone’s were. And as with the sand, he couldn’t know what that number was. This was a tenuous life for certain, and every moment of it needed to be valued. The salvage from Danvar was now more than a ticket to riches or fame. It was a new life somewhere with Marisa. Maybe they’d find a village somewhere in the Dunes. Maybe he’d hire workers with haul-poles and dig a well, and sell water to the natives. Some kind of change was in the offing, he knew that. Maybe out west, over the mountains and toward the sea.
Peary had no idea what had led to the demise of Springston and the events in Low-Pub, but he knew that things were changing. This was one of those moments in life when the old order was being overthrown and something new was coming to be. Like the first time diving, when he’d first moved the sand. That moment of revelation. He remembered now how that had felt. How his whole world had shifted, and how he’d known immediately that from then on his existence would be different.
Like the first time he’d kissed Marisa. Changed.
The sand flowed cleanly by his mask and visor, and he concentrated on the flow, sipping sparingly from his oxygen as he glided downward.
Now his consciousness moved to his hands, and he formed the sand around and under them into grips, like handholds in stone. This was the kind of practice a good diver did in the shallows to improve skills and master the sand. He’d heard talk of a woman who could dive down eight hundred meters—half a mile. Even the thought of it unnerved him. But she hadn’t learned to do that while down deep. No amateur made that kind of dive. She’d learned her skills in the shallows. Mastering the sand. Working on techniques, and breathing, and the little tricks that only the best could perfect. Step by step she’d learned the workings of the sand at each strata, until the silica operated as a part of her—an extension of her consciousness. This is how she’d become the best, working down the column so that at each depth she knew exactly how the sand would react to her thoughts, and how to keep breathing. That was the hardest part. How to mitigate panic. How to avoid coffining, which was the biggest threat at those depths.
Peary formed little shelves above his feet and pushed off of them. He moved the sand around his chest. Slowed his breathing. Felt the life moving through the apparatus. Studied the deep red of the cases in his visor, and concentrated to make the sand loosen around them.
Then, without thinking too long about it, he moved them.
He formed the sand up under the cases into a platform, stabilizing the chaotic with his thoughts. He lifted them a meter, but then could go no more. His thoughts stumbled. The sand didn’t care. It had to be moved, because it had no life of its own. Every grain had to work in unison with the others, but if you thought of the sand as grains you’d lose everything. The body is made of cells, but you can’t think of it that way or it loses all meaning. Life works when you think in wholes and not only in parts. The body was held together by something that managed and directed the space between the cells. And that something—whether it was incorporeal, or fluid, or some other unknown force like electricity that no man in the sand age had ever seen—forced the cells to work in unison.
He closed his eyes and focused again, and once more the cases began to move upward. He’d never even tried this before, moving salvage with the sand. By doing so he was playing with fire. This was the kind of power that could be used to kill others. Using the sand as a weapon was the unforgivable sin in the land of the dunes. So using the sand like this was an action that was at once both thrilling and perilous. However innocent, it was still the possible prelude to the inconceivable. Some divers could do it well, and they were feared for it.
It was one thing to soften the sand under a playmate and then trap them by the ankles in the stonesand as a joke. It was frowned upon—technically it was criminal, actually—but every diver had done it at least once. It was quite another to form the sand and use it against another human. Like the person who had speared the brigands back in Low-Pub had done. That kind of power was frightening to behold. Even for good divers. Even when used against criminals and murderers. It was for this reason that using the sand in that way was the ultimate crime, punishable by immediate death—at the hands of any diver anywhere.
Peary opened his eyes again and saw that the cases were still floating upward. He tweaked the rise with his mind, slowing it, then speeding it up again. Watching with amazement as the sand below the cases responded to his thoughts.
When the cases broke the surface, he realized that he’d not been breathing, and he took a deep tug on his tank before flipping up his visor and pulling the mouthpiece out. He was still half-submerged, but he stopped and wiped his teeth with his tongue and spat out the sand that was lodged there. Then he moved the sand again and was soon seated on top of it, watching as the sandal hop and the old man moved together to drag the cases over to the sarfers.
Peary sat back and watched as the Poet helped load the cases. The old man was moving well for someone who’d been feigning sickness nigh on to death not too many hours ago. The old man walked back to where Peary was resting in the sand. He tied on a second ker and then pointed at the sand.
“How was it in the under?” the Poet asked.
“Nice.”
“Well, you aren’t done. I have two more cases down there. Down at one fifty.” The Poet’s hand came up and he pressed the ker tighter against his face. As if he were trying to block his voice from being overheard by the sandal hop, or by the dune hawks, or anyone other than Peary. “Valuables. Coin. Riches. If we’re going to try to move your salvage, we might as well get it all, because we’re going to be on the run awhile.”
Peary looked into the old man’s eyes, studying him. “Okay. But if I’m going back down there then you’re going with me.”
“But—”
“We have extra tanks,” Peary said.
The old man’s hand moved up to where his wound was, but then it faltered. As if he realized his protestations would not be heard. “All right. We’ll go together then.”
The Old Man and the Sea of Sand
Chapter Fifteen
The two men passed fifty and pushed on deeper. The Poet rarely dove deep, and never with another diver. He looked back and saw Peary, an orange-ish form against the backdrop of purple and magenta. He could see the white flash of the beacon on the surface, and looking at the indicator on his visor he watched the meters tick by.
He slowed for a moment to watch Peary move the sand and he was awed. He’d had no idea the young man was so good. As for himself, he struggled—at least in comparison. Diving… that he’d done plenty of, but never any real salvage work, and almost never going this deep. He’d dropped his riches down here in the first place, but going down with packs was an entirely different prospect than going up with them. A part of him had even believed that he’d probably die topside without ever having the opportunity to retrieve his hidden wealth. One fifty would definitely be a limit for him. He had no desire to go deeper.