Rising on unsure legs, he peered up that slope of sand from the bottom of the great pit Brock’s men had dug. There was no generator running; the sand was no longer loose; the metal platform had been taken away. He could see the sand rolling down in the darkness to fill that great dip in the desert floor. Dreading the climb, he took one step at a time. The night wind would mask his departure. His bootprints would be erased by morning. He could put the breeze on his left cheek, keep the pole star at his back, and head due south until he reached Springston. But he knew he would never make it that far. He was starving—only had a few swallows of water sloshing around in his dead friend’s canteen—he wouldn’t make it two days’ march, much less five.
At the top of the arduous hike out of the bowl, he faced the wind. Palmer tried to remember the route he’d taken to get to the dive site from the brigand encampment. And oddly, strangely, crazily, he prayed that Brock’s men were right where he’d last seen them. They would be the only ones with food and water for miles around. On weary legs and with little conviction, he marched off toward the men who in all likelihood wanted him very much dead.
31 ? A Bounty
There was a glow beyond the dunes. Voices mixed and carried on the wind. Palmer used the tall sand for cover and worked his way toward the light. When the voices seemed too near to dare march any farther, he snuck up a sloping dune, crouching as he got higher, then crawling on his hands and knees before finally squirming on his belly to the wind-blown peak. He peered over the lip and down into the camp where he’d spent his last night above the sand.
The encampment had shrunk. Palmer had expected an explosion of activity—the rest of Brock’s men descending on the site of the find—but many of the tents from earlier were gone. The large tent where he and Hap had been shown the map was still there, throbbing with the light of a lantern inside. Beyond this tent, the embers of a fire glowed and sparked, a column of smoke dulling a patch of stars. There were two men around the fire, animated silhouettes. The smell of food cooking made Palmer’s empty stomach knot up. His belly tried to convince his brain that these people didn’t want him dead, that Hap’s mangled body was an accident, that he could just stroll into camp and be hailed a hero, the discoverer of a lost land, with coin and a feast for his efforts.
There was laughter in the darkness—one of the men around the fire—but it was almost as if someone were mocking his belly’s wild thoughts, someone daring him to come down and announce himself.
Palmer lay still behind the crest of that dune, his ker over his nose and mouth, his goggles pelted with sand, just watching and thinking. The sun would come up soon. The stars were already dim over the horizon. He was wasting time. He needed to eat. There were several dark tents he might try to surface inside of, to scrounge for food or water, but the danger of waking someone was too great.
An hour passed, the stars marching the width of a hand, the horizon faintly glowing, Palmer unsure. He finally chose a tent to raid. He removed his hiking goggles and fumbled for his dive visor, got the band around his forehead, when a commotion erupted in the distance—and Palmer thought he’d been spotted.
He ducked down and began to scoot back, then watched as the two men by the fire rushed off, casting long shadows. There were voices, shouts. Palmer looked in the direction the men were running and saw swinging flashlights between the dunes. A marching party. A nearby tent filled with a brightening glow as someone woke. Several silhouettes left the larger tent where the lantern was burning. Everyone was moving away from Palmer and toward this arriving party.
Now, his belly commanded. Now, goddamn you.
Palmer obeyed. He scampered over the crest of the dune and glissaded down the other side on his back, the loose sand following him. He found himself half in the lee of a smaller dune, the sand no longer pelting his face. The large tent stood nearby, the fabric flapping noisily. Palmer remembered the barrels of supplies in this tent. There had been a table in the middle. He could go down and pop up under the table, have a look around.
Hurry, his belly told him. The marching party was approaching. How long would they sit around the fire and swig liquor and smoke tobacco before returning to their tents?
Palmer took a chance by creeping around the dune and hurrying in a crouch toward the back of the large tent. He needed to get close. There was danger in entering the sand with the charge in his suit low. The only thing a diver feared more than running out of air was running out of charge and feeling the sand stiffen around their body. Movement was life in a way no lungful of air could match. If you could move, you could get to the surface and win a breath. A full lung and an empty cell were what nightmares were made of. This gave a diver time to die and space to do it in. And so Palmer ran in a crouch as far as he could, hoping he had enough juice for a quick dip.