Palmer strained with his other senses. He listened for the sound of sand tumbling across sand, little tiny rocks the size of pinpricks whispering in diminutive avalanche. He searched for that noise of his life, of his entire goddamn existence: sand on sand.
He heard a sigh. A hush. Barely more than a rustle, maybe the sound of him breathing or his heart thrumming or the brush of fabric between his trembling knees.
But no—it was sand moving. Sliding toward him.
Palmer slid toward it in return.
He crawled through the desks, straining to remember the layout of the room, where the tanks had been, where in relation to the drift. There were chairs and desks everywhere. There were tangles of wires and a keyboard. Palmer considered trying his visor, using it to navigate, trying to see by the pulsing purples of open air, but the dead dive light around his neck was a reminder to not waste his charge. His suit had held enough juice to get him down to that building and back to the surface, and he was only halfway through that dive. This is what he told himself as he fumbled around in the darkness: he was only halfway through this dive. He had stopped for a few days, a few hours, who knew how long? He had starved at the bottom of his plummet, had scrounged longer than any living soul ever had, and he wasn’t through. Weak and exhausted and terrified, he wasn’t through.
Palmer felt sand beneath his palms. He nearly bent and kissed the stuff, those cool granules that reminded him of home. He turned to the side and kept one hand in touch with the slope of drift, the other waving out in space, shuffled along on his knees, when his fingers hit that cool metal.
The tears came. Palmer cried out in relief. But he dared not hope, dared not hope, not until he knew. He felt around the dive tanks for the valves—everything in a different place, a strange arrangement, a different model, three damn tanks to lug, to flow around. No way he could lift all three. He cracked the valve at the top of one tank and felt down the hose to the regulator. With his heart pounding, unable to breathe or think or swallow, he touched the purge button in the center of the regulator.
Nothing. Empty tank. He tried the next. Prayed. Really fucking prayed to the old gods, the ones he didn’t believe in, but he promised them now that he would. He would. He would believe. Just give him some air.
But the regulator made no sound. He tried sucking on the mouthpiece to make sure. All he got was dizzy.
Last tank. There was no hope now. No promises to the gods. Nothing but weariness and despair. Anger and fear. And then—a blast of air.
A blast of air, goddamn you. He thought this to Hap, to his friend who had left him for dead, who had promised to come back for him, to save him. Well, Palmer would get out of there and he would find Hap, would return to him like a vengeful ghost. He would kill that motherfucker. That’s what he would do. And this gave him the courage to go. To go. Palmer fumbled for the webbing straps and the buckles that held the tanks in place. He removed the two empties, shoved them aside with clanks and bangs, set them off to roll into invisible furniture and warn away the ghosts.
He slipped his arms through the webbing straps on the harness, the single tank lopsided on his back. His visor wouldn’t be able to interface with the regulator and tell him how much air he had, but that didn’t matter, did it? There was enough or there wasn’t. The dead diver would’ve turned back if he had gotten too low. Palmer told himself this. He told himself this. Pulling his visor down and powering both it and his suit on, he bit down on someone else’s regulator, took a long pull of someone else’s air, and he crawled up that slope of drift. He told his suit to vibrate outward against the world, against the hard pack, shiver it until it moved like water, and then he sank down, was enveloped by the deep dunes, the purples becoming oranges and reds, and he could see again.
25 ? The Risk of Believing
Vic
Vic found Marco back at the marina, loading his tanks into the haul rack. His was the last sarfer in sight. There were sails and masts out across the dunes, but all were heading away. Everyone was looking for Danvar. Vic wondered how to explain to Marco that they needed to use his sarfer to look for her brother instead.
“You heading out alone?” she asked.
Marco turned from his sarfer and smiled. He moved his goggles up to his forehead. “Thought you needed a nap.”
“Naw. When I need beauty rest, I just blink.” She batted her eyes to demonstrate.
“Prettier by the moment.” He helped her with her gear bag and lashed it down with the tanks. “So I thought we’d head south. One of the rumors floating around is that Danvar is in a line with Springston and Low-Pub. A lot of people are going west where the sand isn’t so deep. I think that’s a mistake.”
“I think we need to go north,” Vic said.
“You would.” Marco studied the wind generator at the aft end of the sarfer. It howled as it spun in the breeze. He checked the charge on the batteries. “If I’d said north, you would’ve told me we needed to go south.”