He glanced up and men were falling everywhere, most dead and some wounded, and other men were streaming down the dunes toward them. Brigands. Screaming in the voice of war. At a glance they looked like they could be Brock’s men, but the Poet couldn’t tell with blood running into his eyes. The two divers poked up then, at just the wrong time, and the Poet saw them killed right quick. They always thought they’d die down under the sand, or up on top in a bar somewhere, but they died half in and half out, with sand up to their waists.
Without hesitation, the Poet reached under his robe and activated his suit. He’d learned to dive as a boy, hiding from his father in the box town outside of Low-Pub. And he was good, too—a natural, they said. He never dove deep and he never took salvage, but he could move sand like no one’s business. But that was before his daddy taught him about the fundamental worthlessness of a diver, about how being a diver was like being a dog, only without the intrinsic values of loyalty and obedience that came with the canine species. So the Poet had given up diving, though he kept up his skills by going out a couple of times a year—out into the Thousand Dunes, to make sure he could survive.
Now he took a big gulp of air and made himself sink until the sand swallowed him whole. He struggled with the robe on, but what could he do? He worked his way under the sand and over to his gear bag, and when he knew he was near it he thrust his hand up above the surface and groped around until he felt his hand hit the bag.
Open the bag. Reach in for the visor. Now goggles. Got it.
He dove again, the sand ripping at the gash on his scalp, and when he was ten meters down he stopped and softened up the sand enough that he could pull on his goggles and visor. He went through the process of trying to clear the gunk from around his eyes, but he knew the best he could do was remove enough to allow him to see colors through the visor.
His lungs were straining now, driving him to want to exhale. He hardened the sand by his feet and pushed off toward the north, kicking for all he had. He would need to clear the nearest dune before he could risk surfacing for a split second to grab a breath. He pushed and kicked and he could feel his head growing lighter and the blood pulsing in his temples and neck. Counting down, he supposed, to his death. He wasn’t a young man anymore. He was already operating beyond his abilities, he thought. Yet he kicked and kicked, and when he thought he couldn’t go another stroke, he kicked again.
He guided himself by the colors. When it looked to him like he’d cleared the nearest dune and was on the backside, he pushed again. Angling upward, toward the purple, he moved his body skyward as his every cell screamed for him to exhale and then suck in anything—anything at all. He broke the surface in a burst of energy and rolled onto his back, gasping and straining for air. One second. Two seconds. And then he turned back to his stomach. He forced himself to not just lie there, and when the first dollop of blood hit the sand in front of his face, he sucked in all the air he could and dove again. He calmed himself. This time he moved more slowly, kicking his feet against the sand that he hardened behind himself and pulling himself forward with each stroke. His muscles were screaming, but he put that pain out of his mind. After a one-hundred count, he pushed up toward the purple again, letting only a portion of his face break the surface this time. He sucked in air and grit and dove again.
In this way, he pushed farther north, farther into the wastes.
The Sand Don’t Care
Chapter Six
Peary did a cursory hand search around the bodies. Both dead men were in dive suits, coffined in the sand. He tested the first man’s tank and tried to take a breath through the regulator, but the tank was dry. Both of the bodies clung to some kind of metallic superstructure that came to a point at the top, with long antennae pointing up from there toward the surface. Down a ways he could see where horizontal shafts of steel extended outward from this main tower where he’d found the bodies.
The dead men were only a few feet apart, so whatever had happened, it looked like they had died together. Maybe there was some peace for them in that, but Peary wouldn’t know. He was, as always, alone.
He softened the sand as best as he could, but it was tough going at that depth. He did the calculations in his mind and he realized he didn’t have enough juice to make it back to the top if he tried to drag both divers’ bodies with him, even if he could physically do it, which he doubted. One diver was clutching some kind of case in his hands, and had obviously been trying to get the salvaged materials back up to the surface when something had happened. It was a pretty common story with divers. Coffining happened most often either when a diver panicked, or was trying to move heavy salvage.
Instinctively, Peary reached his hand down the man’s leg to see if the man was carrying a dive knife—something that might have his name on it so that the body could be identified. He couldn’t find the knife, but he did find out what had contributed to the man’s death.
There was a long, steel cable wrapped tightly around the man’s leg. He felt farther down and found the cable’s other end was wound almost in a knot around the heavy metal of the structure. He pulled hard a few times to try to free the diver’s leg, but the man was stuck and there was no extricating him.
Peary took a pull on his own regulator and got that response that told him his own oxygen was running out. Better get moving or there’ll be three dead bodies down here. He was to the bottom of his twin tanks. Obviously, he’d been down here longer than he thought. A lot longer.
Don’t panic. You have a spare, and another waiting at one fifty.
It was time to go. When he felt his tanks were completely empty, he swapped out the twins for his one spare, but he didn’t start breathing from the new tank yet. He needed to ration his air. If for some reason he couldn’t find his stashed tank on the way back up, he would probably die. No two ways about it now. Peary checked the other dead diver and found no dive knife or any other item that might be used to identify him. This man was also clutching a hard-sided case, so Peary freed the two cases from the dead men’s clutches and then took his first long breath from his new tank. He felt his blood respond to the oxygen. Time to head back up.
He oriented himself by following the direction the antennae pointed, red arrows directing him to life, and when he was ready, he pushed toward the surface. His mind had been on the salvage, and now that he was kicking upward he once again realized just how dense the sand was at this depth. Now, instead of sinking down while carrying only spare air tanks, he was struggling against both gravity and the sand pressure while trying to drag two heavy cases up. The effort required was multiplied, and he was using a whole lot more oxygen, working to flow the sand around both himself and the cases he carried with him.
He felt like he was making no progress at all. Meters were counted in what seemed like minutes and not seconds. He almost coffined again when he felt panic begin in his mind and then tremor down his whole body. When that happened, the sand tightened on his throat and chest—and only by stopping and re-focusing his mind was he able to loosen the sand enough to continue his upward journey.
His biggest problem was that he had no idea how deep he was. His visor had yet to pick up the surface, so he had no reading on his depth. He stared upward and couldn’t see even the faintest trace of the blood red indicator that would mean he’d found his spare tank. He struggled, pulling against the sand, and he was forced once more to stop and re-focus his mind. It was harder to push toward the surface dragging the bags. Harder than he’d expected.