He and Hap inched downward, spinning as they went.
“They’re using vibes to hold this together. And to loosen the sand before they pump it.” Palmer remembered the soft and slushy feel of the sand as they had worked their way down the crater.
“The bottom’s coming up,” Hap announced. “I can see the sand down there.”
Palmer imagined the generator shutting off, or someone killing the power that held back this wall of sand, and all of it collapsing inward in an instant. It became difficult to breathe, thinking about the press of earth. He nearly turned his dive suit on, just in case.
“I’m down,” Hap said. “Watch your fins.”
Palmer felt Hap’s hand on his ankle, steering him so he wouldn’t land on top of his partner’s head. The shaft was tight with the two of them on the ground. They worked the knots around their chests loose and tugged twice on the ropes like Brock had said. “I’ll take lead,” Hap offered. He pulled his regulator from his chest, checked the line, then reached over his shoulder to spin the air valve. He made sure it was locked before biting down on his regulator.
Palmer was busy doing the same. He placed his regulator between his teeth and nodded. Somehow, an odd calmness overcame him as he pulled that first deep breath from his bottle. Soon he would be beneath the sand, the only place he had ever felt at peace, and all of this craziness around him would be forgotten. It would be just him and the depths, the calm cool sand, and the chance, however crazy, of discovering Danvar deep beneath their fins.
Hap powered on his suit by slapping the large button on his chest. Standing this close, Palmer could feel the vibrations in the air. They both set their homing beacons on the sand and turned them on. Palmer reached to his own chest and turned on his suit, then folded the leather flap over the switch so the journey through the sand couldn’t accidentally shut it off and trap him.
Hap pulled his visor down over his eyes, smiled, and waved one last time. And then the sand loosened around his feet and seemed to suck him downward—and Hap disappeared.
Palmer turned off his dive light to save the juice. He pulled his visor down and switched the unit on. The world went black, then gelled into a purplish blotch of shifting shapes. The air screwed with the sandsight, making it impossible to see. With the visor’s headband pressed to his temples, Palmer thought about what he wanted the sand to do, and it obeyed. The suit around him vibrated outward, sending subsonic waves trembling through molecules and atoms, and sand began to move. It began to act like water. It flowed around him, and down Palmer went.
Once the sand enveloped him, Palmer felt the exhilaration a dune-hawk must feel in flight, a sense of weightlessness and liberation, the power to glide any direction he liked. He directed his thoughts like his sister had taught him so many years ago, loosening sand below and pressing with a hardening of sand from above, keeping a pocket loose around his chest so he could breathe, diverting the weight of the earth around him to hold back the pressure, and taking calm sips from his regulator to conserve his air.
The wavering purple splotches were replaced with a rainbow of colors, the cool purples and blues of anything far away, bright orange and red for anything hard or close by. Glancing up, the shaft above him glowed bright yellow. It glowed like only the sand hardened by a suit could glow. It was so bright that the white pulsing of the transponders was difficult to spot, but one beacon was as good as any other. He looked down and found Hap, a spot of orange with green edges. His new visor worked great, had a much better seal to keep the sand out and far better fidelity than his last pair. He could clearly make out Hap’s arms and legs where once he would’ve seen a single blotch. Diving down after his friend, he spoke in his throat to let Hap know he had a visual on him.
I hear you, Hap responded. The sound came from behind and below Palmer’s ears, vibrating in his jawbone. The two of them went straight down, letting the sand flow around them. The pushback on the suits grew, making the flow more strenuous the deeper they went, making it more difficult to breathe. Palmer calmed himself by thinking of this as a quick down-and-up. No need to scavenge. Just one of those braggart dives where you go hard and fast as deep as you can, take a glance, come back up. A dive like his sister warned him about. But this wasn’t for ego; this was for coin. This was a job, not him proving something.
You picking anything up?Hap asked.
Not yet.Palmer watched the depth gauge in his visor. The distance was fed from the transponder left behind. Fifty meters. A hundred meters. It grew more and more difficult to breathe, and it required more concentration to move the sand. The farther down they went, the more packed and heavy the column of sand above them. This was where many divers panicked and “coffined,” or let the sand freeze stiff. His sister had pulled him out of a coffin twice while training him on some of her old gear. When the desert wraps its great arms around your chest and decides you won’t breathe anymore, that’s when you feel how small you are, just a grain of sand crushed among infinite grains of sand.
Palmer kept his mind clear as they drifted through one fifty. He hit two hundred meters. This was about as deep as he liked to go. He calmed his mind, ignored the bit of sand getting past his visor and into his ears, the sand at the corner of his mouth as it filled that gap between lips and regulator, the sand crunching between his teeth, and just concentrated on the flow. The batteries on his suit were strong; he’d doubled them up a few dives ago. His gear and mind were good. He felt that serenity that hits him when he’s able to hold his breath for minutes at a time, that complete feeling of peace, the sand cool on his scalp and neck, the world drifting further and farther away.
Two hundred and fifty meters. Palmer felt a surge of pride. He couldn’t wait to tell Vic—
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The words rattled through his teeth—Hap must be shouting in his throat. Palmer looked down at his friend, and then he saw it too. A bright patch. Something hard. Something huge.
Where’s the ground?Palmer asked.
No fucking clue. What is that?
Looks like a cube. Maybe a house? Quicksand got it?
Quick don’t go this deep. Fuck, it goes down and down.
Palmer could see that now. The square of bright red glowed into orange as they got closer, and he could see how the hard edges of the structure faded through to greens and blues as it went down. It was a square shaft of some sort, buried beneath the sand, sitting vertical and massive and deep.
Getting hard to breathe, Hap said.
Palmer felt it as well. He thought it was this strange object in his sandsight making it difficult to breathe, but he could feel how much more packed the sand was, how much harder to make it flow. He could still sink, but rising up would be a test. The weight of all that sand above him could be keenly felt.
We turn back?Palmer asked. His goggles said two fifty. It was another fifty or so down to the structure. With the two hundred meters they’d cheated from the dig, they were technically at four fifty right then. Damn.He had never dreamed of diving so deep. Only two fifty of it was him, he reminded himself. But still, his sister had told him he wasn’t ready to go even that far. He had argued with her, but now he believed. Goddamn, was she ever wrong about anything?
Gotta see what it is,Hap said. Then we go back.