Time to secure his stuff. He’d brought a supply of parts, some extra air tanks—not just extra for the dive, but extra even over and above what he planned on taking down with him—and two more canteens of water. Those last had cost him time and coin—coin he’d borrowed from Marisa—but you can never be too careful. And there was an extra dive suit and visor, too. All of these he’d bury on the other side of the dune as soon as he was suited up. If someone stole his sarfer, he wanted to have at least an outside chance of living to dive another day. Burying gear nearby wouldn’t thwart an experienced and professional band of brigands, but most dune thieves were opportunists and not professionals.
Peary took a quick sand bath, rubbing the hot silica over his body, drying up some of the sweat, and then he started to suit up. The dive suit was hot and the soft rubber felt like it was burning his skin. This part of diving always made him work faster. It made him long for the cool chill of depth. He shouldered the twin tanks and dragged the two extras behind him, pulled on his visor and did a thorough check, even while his body was crying for the relief of the deep. The two tanks on his back pulled downward—toward Danvar, he hoped.
He’d never even attempted to dive more than two fifty. Never once. Hadn’t even wanted to. Around two hundred meters was always his personal limit. Today, he’d go deeper. He didn’t yet know how much deeper. He needed to pay Marisa back. At least the coin she’d lent him; the rest he could never repay. The love and care she gave him were priceless. How she continued to love him despite his folly, he’d never know. Sweet Marisa. Wearing herself out under a haulpole day after day so that he could dive salvage.
Where does love come from, and who made it? That was a question for rich, retired divers to ponder. It wasn’t for him, wasn’t for now.
Peary would leave spare tanks along the way down. Crutches, the daring divers would say. Training wheels. He wasn’t one of the legends who could go three hundred or more on a single tank and get back, and he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to. This wasn’t about personal feats or challenging himself. He wasn’t looking to have his name on the lips of divers and brigands throughout the Thousand Dunes or in the bars and whorehouses of Low-Pub or Springston. This was about Danvar, and the coin that would go along with it. This was the time when divers would be getting rich. Why couldn’t it be him? He’d rather be lucky than good
He pulled on his fins and fitted the regulator. It was diving time. That moment when all conceivable results were still plausible and, according to some nonsense he’d heard from divers who liked to talk, even existed out there at the same time. Wealth? Maybe. Death? Maybe that. He turned on his homing beacon and set it down, pushing it just under the sand. Time to concentrate.
He heard a dune-hawk overhead and wondered if it was a sign. Maybe. The hum started in his inner man and he started to move the sand. He took his first deep breath of canned life, and then the sand received him.
Ain’t No Coin in Gettin’ There
Chapter Three
Bolger wasn’t a bad man, all told. Bad men kill and steal things of value. That’s how you know they’re bad. Sure, the Poet had seen Bolger kill divers—through intentional neglect, abandonment, or just straightforward murder—but divers were expendable, and the Poet knew that in any corporate concern there would be collateral damage. Acceptable risks. No one cried for lost divers.
Bolger was a good boss because he kept the bottom line in view. He did what had to be done to make sure the crew ended up on the salvage. And by “on the salvage,” he meant literally on top of it. In reach of it. In the case of this expedition, the goal was Danvar, so success was far from automatic. No one had found Danvar yet—not in untold hundreds of years—unless the most recent rumors were to be believed. But there had always been rumors, and always would be. The rumors had sparked this latest rush. Someone said Brock was the man whose team had found Danvar.
Brock. He was the brigand and crew leader who now claimed the northern wastes. They weren’t his, but he liked to say they were. Claiming the wastes was like claiming the stars in the heavens, and you could—if you wanted to fight to hold them. The Poet had worked for the man before. Brock wasn’t to be trusted; not because he wasn’t after the coin and the goods—he lusted after coin as much as the next brigand—but because there was something else going on there. Some story under the surface. Like he was working for the Lords, or the gods from the before, or some powerful man who never showed his face. “Never trust a man with ideas,” the Poet’s daddy used to say.
The Poet watched his man expertly work the sails and draft in behind Bolger’s sarfer. Yep, the Poet thought, Bolger is a good boss. Don’t get his good men killed, which is the least you can ask from a clan leader. Better working for him than Brock. You can trust a man who cares only for coin.
Crew bosses that started speculating, gambling, or getting emotionally involved usually got everyone killed—and not just divers. Brigandage was fine with the Poet, but not stupid brigandage. The sand wasn’t the place for the compassionate kind. If God, or the gods of the before, or the Lords, or whoever made this world, wanted men to love one another, he (or they) wouldn’t have covered it with sand, or even water for that matter. The Poet had heard myths and legends about oceans, but had never met anyone who’d seen one. And if they did exist, they didn’t care a drop about a man’s life any more than the dunes did. That’s what his daddy always said. “Sand and water don’t care, boy.” His daddy would point out at the dunes and then kick some of the drift that might have gathered by his sandal. “If ever there was proof that man don’t matter, it’s right there.”
The convoy was heading north. Farther out into the wastes than they’d been before. Rumor had it that Danvar might be dead north of Springston, and that was a rumor the salvage world was taking as fact right now. But the sarfer surge had been thinning exponentially over the last dozen miles. Before long, Bolger’s team would be alone in the wastes, and the Poet was all right with that.
Sooner we get there, the sooner I earn my coin, he thought. “Ain’t no coin in the gettin’ there,” his daddy used to say.
The wind whipped his thin gray hair, and as the sift bombarded his goggles and his ker, and stung the exposed parts of his face like microscopic bullets, the Poet counted his blessings. Actually, he counted his coin. Same thing. By being smart and focusing on his reputation and his value, time had made him rich. Not that anyone else knew it. He didn’t flaunt his coin. To do so would be stupid and dangerous. He lived like a pauper when he was out in the open and only lived like a king in private. Dead men spend no coin. He’d seen too many divers out flashing their earnings only to disappear into the maw of the dunes within a fortnight. Not smart. Stupid, actually.
The miles shifted fast, and though he had his sand legs—always did—he was ready for camp. Decades ago he would have been longing for a tent and the feel of a woman, but now he just wanted the tent. A woman—even a camp woman—was just a hole into which a foolish man threw coin. Not everyone agreed, obviously, but the wisdom of the Poet didn’t sit right with every man.
Women divers though, that was another thing altogether. There weren’t many, but the ones he’d met were better than any man. Male divers thought with their sex and treated diving like it was a competition. A woman diver did her work, made her coin, and didn’t treat it like a game. She’d live longer than any boy. That’s why the mortality rate was so high among boys who ventured under the dunes. Near on a hundred percent, he figured, if you stretch out the timeline long enough.