The mirage of his sister. A hallucination. His sister, the red flapping sail of a rebel sarfer behind her. His sister, tugging her gloves off, wiping the sand from his cheek, the mud from his crying. She was crying as well. Fumbling with her canteen, hands shaking, a mask of horror on her face from the sight of him, Palmer unable to speak.
She lifted his chin, crying, “Palm. Oh, Palm.” Precious water was tipped over blistered lips and around his fat tongue. Palmer’s throat was a clenched fist. There was no swallowing. No swallowing. He felt the water evaporate in his mouth, slip inside his tongue, become absorbed. Vic poured more. Her hand shook, canteen and eyes leaking, whispered his name. Had come looking for him.
The water sat in his mouth until it disappeared. Another cap, and something like a swallow, a loud and painful gulp, a body remembering how.
“Danvar,” he croaked. “I found it.”
“I know you did,” Vic said. She rocked him back and forth. “I know you did.”
“Might be trouble,” Palmer hissed. He needed to tell her about Brock, about the bombs, about getting out of there.
“Save your strength,” Vic said. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
She wiped her cheeks, and Palmer watched as more tears spilled from her eyes. The loose sail flapped nearby, the crows watching to see what would happen, Vic telling him over and over that everything would be okay, even as she started sobbing. Even as she clutched him in her arms, whispering it would all be all right, but Palmer knew this was just a story, just a story told over a sputtering lantern in a family tent, and that it wasn’t true.
Part 4:
Thunder Due East
35 ? Oasis
Vic
The sarfer crunched across the sand and slowed to a stop. Sand hissed against the bright red sail and spilled over the edge of the boom in a veil. Vic lowered the sail and studied the depression between the dunes. A handful of stumps poked feebly toward the sky, but whatever tall trees had lived there had long ago been butchered. Between the stumps there was a dark spot of sand, almost if the sun were casting a shadow. It was no oasis, but it would do.
She jumped down to the sand and helped her brother out of the haul rack. The small bimini she’d made to keep him in the shade was already tattered and threadbare from the half day of sailing due south. Part of her wanted to press on to Springston and get there before dark. The rest of her felt sure her brother wouldn’t make it that far without water.
His head listed from side to side as Vic gathered him in her arms. He weighed little more than a tank and a gear bag. Vic lowered him to the line of shaded sand by the sarfer’s hull and grabbed Marco’s dive suit from the gear she’d crammed into his helm chair. She folded the suit several times, lifted Palmer’s head, and slid the pillow between him and the sand.
Palmer asked for water. Vic slung her canteen around from her back and shook it. Empty. “Hang in there,” she said. “I’m getting you some.”
She left him in the shade. Back at the helm, her own dive suit was plugged into the small wind generator that poked up from the aft of the sarfer. She unplugged this, stripped down in the hot sun, grabbed scoops of sand and rubbed it over her armpits and her sweaty chest, then brushed herself off as best she could. She tugged on the dive suit, which was hot and smelled like melting rubber. Tears wetted her cheeks. She cursed these and wiped them away. Her brother was dying. Her brother was a pile of chapped and sunburnt bones. It horrified her to see him that way. Horrified her to think of Marco, her lover, dead. Killed right in front of her. And now she was going to lose a brother, too.
She dug her visor out of her gear bag, wiped her cheeks again, and promised herself that it wouldn’t happen. Not Palmer. Through clenched teeth, she promised. No one else would die that day. No one. She slung Marco’s canteen over her head. It rattled emptily against hers and Palmer’s. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She scanned the horizon for sarfer masts, had seen dozens in the distance on the sail south, but none right then. Supine on the sand by the sarfer’s hull, Palmer looked peaceably asleep. This is what she told herself as she powered on her suit and disappeared beneath the sand.
????
Palmer lay alone on the warm sand and stared at the dark patch his sister had vanished into. The minutes ticked by like hours. The crows that’d followed them as they’d sailed south circled overhead. His sister had taken his canteen. Hap’s canteen, the one with his name etched into the side. Palmer remembered the dive they’d been on when Hap had carved his name there with his dive knife. They’d left their gear buried in the sand. Hap had been worried they might get their canteens mixed up. Same models. Both new. So young then. Worried about whose was what. Worried about sharing. Tenuous friends. A lifetime ago.