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  “We stay together, Poet.”

  Poetry

  Chapter Thirteen

  It took the rest of the morning to retrieve and load the sarfers, and Peary spent every minute of it pressing the Poet to lead them to where he’d buried the salvage from Danvar. So much so that Peary was shocked when the old man finally caved. But with Springston gone, and Low-Pub maybe falling too, the Poet recognized that the ground had shifted, and an old man should take allies, however tenuous and temporary, where he could find them.

  Now Peary sailed the first craft with the Poet riding in the haul rack. On the second sarfer, Marisa drove with Reggie napping in the stretched net of the rack. The two craft cruised to the spot, gliding in from the northeast, and when they were down between the dunes they lowered the masts and began tying down the sarfers.

  The sun was high as they pulled on ropes and Reggie drove dragnels[iii] into the dune face. The Poet covered the sun with his hand, then measured finger lengths with his other hand until the bottom of his fist was on a line where an imaginary horizon would be if they were in flat land. “One on the clock,” he said. “I put the cases fifty meters down, but you can’t miss ’em.”

  Before leaving Low-Pub, they’d grabbed extra air tanks and another dive suit and visor from the old man’s house. Together they now had enough gear for them all to dive if they needed to. Once Reggie finished tying down the sarfers, he began pulling some of the gear off of Marisa’s sarfer, intending to put on a dive suit. But Peary stopped him with a wave of the hand. The diver made it clear he was going down alone, and Reggie didn’t argue. The old man just watched and didn’t react. For now, he was an observer.

  Ain’t nothin’ but folly this way. That’s what his old daddy would have told him, the Poet thought. Nothin’ but folly and death. Ain’t no coin in sentimentality, boy. He pushed the thoughts out of his mind. Too late now. He’d already thrown in his lot with this crew. He’d probably doomed himself when he’d tried to save their pitiable lives, but now he was in it. If Low-Pub went the way of Springston, there’d be greater safety in numbers anyway. Maybe they’d come up on an independent diver camp or a trading shanty town. He’d beg out then, if that time came, and let these three go their way. For now, though, he was stuck.

  Peary handed the gun to Marisa, then began to prepare himself for the dive. “Can you work that?” he asked.

  By way of reply, Marisa deftly ejected the ammunition cartridge, then cleared the weapon with trained proficiency. When she was done, she popped the cartridge back in and chambered a round. “Yep,” she said. “My father taught us all how to shoot.”

  Peary smiled. “So I guess the next question is, ‘would you shoot these two if you had to?’”

  Marisa nodded. “The world’s gone sand-side up. I suppose we have to do what we have to do.”

  “Good,” Peary said. “If they act up, punch their tickets and we’ll bury ’em when I get back up.”

  “Ain’t gonna be no problems from Reggie!” Reggie said, raising his hands in mock surrender.

  The old man looked on as Peary pulled on his goggles and visor and checked the air in his tanks. He admired the young man, even if he didn’t understand him. Maybe things’ll be better this way, he thought. The other way—me on my own—maybe I don’t make it. Maybe I’d’ve been killed in the streets in Low-Pub, or left there to get vaporized if the brigands blow the town. Or speared on pikes of sand in the town center. This old world is changing. That’s what his daddy would be telling him. Danvar found. Springston gone. Low-Pub maybe blown into sand too. His daddy would say, better to find a new way to get by, boy. Things are going to change.

  His hand unconsciously rubbed the wound on his head through the ker. It seemed like the injury was beginning to heal. He still felt no heat or signs of infection. The crack across his nose was more of a discomfort than a worry. He’d had his nose broken before. Didn’t care, so long as he could breathe.

  Peary set his beacon, smacked the button on his chest, and disappeared into the sand. The Poet looked at Marisa and she calmly steadied the weapon in his direction. No trust there. He couldn’t blame her. Trust was something he’d earned from thieves, divers, brigands, and men running crews, not from regular folk. She was wary. He was everything she’d been taught her whole life to distrust. And from the looks of her, she knew how to handle the pistol, too. Finger off the trigger, resting alongside, pointed at him with an unspoken accusation. Not that he’d try anything. He was old and tired, but not dumb.

  Marisa was a pretty girl, beautiful really, and smart. Could handle herself right well, the Poet saw. The sandal hop Reggie was a different matter altogether. Not much to read there. Clever. An opportunist with a quick wit and a searching eye. Stayed alive fixing sandals and running errands. Traded in secrets or anything else that would bring coin without peril. Didn’t usually deal in dangerous things, and probably was just glad to have a few sponsors with coin to make sure he had something to eat.

  “What’s your name again, boy?” the Poet asked. “I’m old and I get forgetful.”

  The sandal hop smiled. “You could call me Springston, since that name is no longer in use. Or is it too soon?”

  The Poet shrugged. “What does your mother call you?”

  “Bastard, mostly,” the man replied, “back when she was alive. Before the sift filled her lungs and took her.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” the Poet said. “That’s the way my wife went. Now give me a name to call you, or I’ll give you a smack and leave it at that.”

  The sandal hop winked at the Poet. “A Poet’s smack now. Angry fact for sandy friends. Trading force for tact.”

  The Poet rubbed his wound through the ker. “Haiku. And a poor one.”

  “Everyone’s a critic in the dunes,” the sandal hop said, laughing.

  The Poet produced a dive knife and pointed it at the sandal hop, then grinned.

  “Reginald,” the hop said. “As I said before.” He thrust his hands up into the air and smiled innocently. “You can call me Reggie.”

  The Poet returned the dive knife to its sheath. “Good to know. Now we can be friends.” He turned to look at Marisa as he snapped the cover on the sheath. Stoic was the right word for her. She’d not so much as flinched when his knife came out. Still the pistol was pointed at his heart. Earnestly.

  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. Chang
ed.

  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.

  He thought about diving out in the sand with the woman who’d been his wife. How she’d stay up top, breathing in the sift without a ker, and she’d always quiz him when he returned about how deep he’d gone. He’d lie and tell her some number sure to elicit a proud response, but going deep had never been his thing. Let the divers go deep, boy, his daddy would say. They got nothing up top to live for.

  Quit daydreaming, old man. He heard the voice almost in the back of his throat, the vibrations moving up from his jawline and entering his brain—without, it seemed, passing through his ears. It was Peary, speaking to him through his communicator. We’re not down here sightseeing. Save the oxygen, Poet. Let’s get down and back up, okay?

  The Poet nodded his head, then realized that Peary probably couldn’t make out such a tiny motion. Got it, he said and pushed deeper. The sand didn’t move so easily for him, and he felt awkward as he kicked, the aged muscles never quite responding as he’d hoped; and if the body struggled, then the sand was always worse.

  One hundred meters.

  He thought of a thousand poems he’d written in his mind, and that helped him move with a little more fluidity. In the distance he could see the red glow of his cases in his visor and he forced his mind to concentrate on them. He reached for them with gloved hands, and that was when he felt something on his ankle. He looked back and saw Peary, who had grabbed him and was now slowing to a stop. The ghostly figure of the young diver, orange with greens shimmering on the edges, pointed with his hand, and the Poet heard the man speak.

  There.

  He looked in the direction Peary had pointed—mostly up and a little to the south—and he could see two forms moving through the sand. Humans. Divers. The Poet’s heart jumped, and immediately he could feel the chill of the sand and the pressure of depth, things he’d just begun to tune out. The attackers picked up speed, and the Poet’s own hand, almost disembodied but still under his control, reached for his dive knife.

  ***

  Up top, Reggie
saw them first. The tips of sarfer masts and sails moving toward them through the dunes. He shouted at Marisa, who—though she became alert and looked in the direction he pointed—kept the gun trained on the sandal hop.

  “Trouble,” Reggie said.

  “Stay calm,” Marisa replied. “Maybe they’re going on by. Maybe they won’t see us.”

  “I need a gun.”

  “Stay calm, Reggie.” Marisa turned in a full three-sixty to see if there were sarfers coming from any other direction. She didn’t see any, but it was hard to tell. “Probably just heading north to look for Danvar. Besides, we’re too close to Low-Pub for pirate work. There’s nothing out here to steal.”

  “There’re always things to steal,” Reggie said, “even if it’s just sarfers or lives.”

  “Shut up for a minute,” Marisa said. Her thumb flipped up the safety, just in case.

  The sarfer sails grew larger, and one of the sand ships crested a dune and headed straight for them. There were three men on the craft, eyes covered with dark goggles, kers tied fast around their faces. Their kers and their red sails marked them as part of the Low-Pub Legion, but Marisa couldn’t imagine what they’d be doing this far south when everyone was out looking for Danvar.

  “Uh-oh,” she heard Reggie say, and then she felt a sharp crack across her wrist and she almost dropped the gun. She turned just as Reggie swung at her with all of his might. She ducked—just barely—and the blow glanced off the top of her head. She pulled her gun hand free and brought the weapon up as the sandal hop pounced on her. She squeezed and felt the pistol kick just as Reggie landed on top of her with all of his weight and crushed her into the sand.