***
The two attacking divers reached Peary at about the same time. One grabbed at his regulator, yanking out his mouthpiece, as the other stabbed at him with a dive knife. The sand whipped around, confused by commands and pressures from competing sources. Peary felt a sharp pain in the upper part of his left shoulder, and instinctively he kicked backward to put some sand between himself and his attackers. Then everything seemed to slow down, as if his life had been switched into slow motion by some unseen hand working up top in the dunes, or perhaps way up in the heavens.
The two orange figures, outlined in green and shimmering from the sand moving around them, jumped toward him again, but just as they did so they were struck from behind by another figure. From Peary’s point of view, the three orange shapes grappled in a confused blend of colors and shapes, and it took him a moment to realize that the old man had attacked the invaders from the rear. In that moment one of the strangers kicked at the Poet, and then used the sand to push him deeper. And then Peary saw something that chilled his blood like nothing he’d ever witnessed. He saw a cube of sand harden and then glow the brightest of yellows, the unmistakable sign of stonesand trapping the Old Poet as if he’d been frozen in a block of ice.
Without any conscious application of his will, Peary seized the moment—that slowed-down, crawling window of time—and let his outrage flow out from him like a windstorm whipping the sand into tiny knives out in the Thousand Dunes. He thrust his fists forward, focusing his wrath in an explosive outpouring toward every wrong and every crime he’d ever heard of or witnessed in his life. The environment obeyed him, and a razor-thin shelf of sand sliced outward from his hands, splitting the ocean of silica like a knife through hardened fat. He watched as the shelf cut through the two brigands without slowing in the slightest, and he could see the orange and then green show through in the place where the two men had been sawn in twain by his rage.
He didn’t pause to gape at what he’d done. He flowed the sand around himself and reached out toward the glowing yellow cube that encased the old Poet. When he reached the impossible block of yellow, his hands struck the stonesand as if punching rock. Solid, impermeable rock. A tomb that had no intention of releasing its hold on the Poet. A glowing grave that, like the whole world of the sand, didn’t care.
----------------------
Knot 3: Sand Hawk.
Relics
Chapter Sixteen
This is what it feels like to die in the sand, he thought. Like a distant star blinking out to nothing while everyone sleeps so no one notices. Or like a lonely old lizard who never fell prey to a bigger predator but grew old and one day fell asleep and just got covered by the drift, so the surviving didn’t end up meaning much anyway.
The Poet was dying, buried beneath uncountable grains of crystalline nothingness, exiled from the breathing world of the up top. The world of the living. Dying like the lowest species of man—a diver—something he’d never thought would happen to him.
“Only fools and the low kinds end their lives down deep, son,” his daddy would say. “Not even the God of the before cares who dies under the sand.”
Strangely enough, despite his predicament, the Poet’s thoughts were now crystal clear. Maybe clearer than they’d been in a very long time. He could almost make them out—as if they were soldiers in a line, or cards laid out on a table. He picked up a single thought and examined it.
Move and breathe. That was a thought.
The Poet willed himself to move. But a will alone is impotent without ability. This thought he saw clearly too. A will is nothing without freedom and the power to do. He was being squeezed by the sand with such force that he couldn’t even draw a breath from his tank. He focused his mind, tried to loosen the hardpack around his chest—but the stonesand had him and there was no moving it.
That was that.
This is the problem with most of the religious folk.
That was another thought tumbling around in his mind. Those who worshipped the gods of the world of sand; those who prayed to the old gods who walked the earth from the time of Danvar and built towers to the sky; even those few who still worshipped the One True. Always telling people to believe in this or believe in that, as if man has the power to believe in whatever he likes. Believe in unicorns if you don’t, or don’t believe in ’em if you do. Just try that. Just choose to believe something. You can’t. Unless you lie to yourself. Tell a blind man to just will to see, and let me know how far that gets you.
He heard a moan escape his body, a primal craving for air made audible in his ears or in his mind—he couldn’t tell which. And another thought: he imagined that primal breath from long ago, that first breath, when he’d wiggled free of the womb—and his father, or maybe some whore (who knows who it was?) cleared his mouth and nose, and by instinct or by a smack he’d sucked in air for the first time. He didn’t remember that, but he knew it must have happened—and now he could see it like he was there watching it. But then his mind cleared again and what he was seeing wasn’t his own birth. It was something else.
He could see the orange form of another diver, shimmering through the yellows of the stonesand, and the diver was beating against the Poet’s silica prison with his hands, but the walls didn’t move. The old man’s brain screamed for oxygen, but even that screaming began to fade as the seconds ticked by like hours—like in a timeglass he’d seen once in Springston back when his daddy had gone up to talk coin with the people who decided things one way or another.
The orange form pushed away from the stonesand and floated in the middle distance, staring at him, and then he heard a voice in his head. It was Peary, he was sure of it, and the vibrations that made up the voice trembled into his ear in a mixture of anger and fear.
“I won’t let you die!”
The Poet wanted to answer. Sincerely wanted to tell Peary to save himself and to get to the surface, but he couldn’t even manage to move his jaw. The only thing that escaped him was a ghostly moan that carried no force. Another embryonic yelp. A barely audible wince, it was, and more impotent than his will to move anything.
“I don’t know if this will work, Poet,” Peary said, “and if it doesn’t, I might just kill you doing it.”
Better off quick-dead, the Poet thought, than slow-dead. He wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t, because he knew that what he was seeing now would likely be the last image to ever process in his mind. He nodded his head. Not that his head moved, because it didn’t. But he hoped that his acquiescence to his fate might be transmitted some other way. Then he saw the impotence of his will again, and wanted to entertain that thought further, but the notion faded into grays and disappeared into smoke.
“Hold tight, old man,” Peary said.
I don’t have any other choice, do I? the Poet thought.
The orange figure moved slightly. “Not like you have any other choice.”
Then the old man saw Peary move. Mostly with his hands thrusting forward like he was shoving a wagon or a sarfer down a dune. That motion was followed by a split-second of nothing, and then there was an impact, like a bomb going off nearby, and the sand gave way and—like the womb had done so long ago—it lost its hold. The Poet was shoved backward and his consciousness struggled to hold on, but it gave way too, and there was only blackness and no pain—like sleep, but deeper, and dreamless.
***
When he opened his eyes again, it seemed like hours—or maybe days—had passed, but immediately he realized that the truth was even stranger. He was lying on the sand, and he looked over and saw that Peary was talking with Marisa in the shallow valley between the dunes. The young diver was comforting his woman, and took the pistol from her hand and rubbed her back to calm her as she sobbed. With the thumb of his free hand, he flicked the safety on the gun to make sure it didn’t accidentally fire. The Poet saw that the sandal hop named Reggie was lying prone on top of the sand, and there were other men there too, obviously dead, obviously pirates, trapped in stonesand wi
th only their heads sticking up above the surface. Necks broken. Life gone out of their eyes. Temporary monuments to lives lived in violence.
Reggie groaned and rolled over onto his side, and when Peary heard the sound of the sandal hop moving, he walked over to him and pointed the pistol at the moaning man’s head. His finger tightened on the trigger and his thumb released the safety.
“No!” Marisa shouted, climbing to her feet. “Don’t do it, Peary!”
The Poet watched the drama unfold, trying to piece together from the evidence what had happened after the wall of sand knocked him unconscious. Peary had saved his life. Again. Not much to think or say about that. It was the way the boy lived, and Peary was a young man who didn’t think of himself first in every situation. The old man still couldn’t put a finger on the why of what made the diver tick. Self-sacrifice was as foreign to the Poet as an ocean of water, or the tears of the gods falling from the sky. The old man knew only that for the first time in a very long time, he was really glad to be alive. All of these things made his own ways harder to figure. Like his life was a sand globe, shaken hard and slammed down, with particles of stories and lies floating in the viscous liquid, obscuring some seminal truth he was meant to understand.
“He tried to kill you,” Peary shouted at Marisa. He pushed the pistol firmly against Reggie’s head, and the sandal hop grimaced, unable to determine if he should speak on his own behalf or not.
“He hit me and knocked me to the ground,” Marisa said. “That much is true. But I think he was trying to save me.”
Peary turned to Marisa and threw his free hand into the air, as if to clear awy some imaginary smoke. “Save you? By knocking you down and trying to take away your gun?”
“She’s right,” Reggie said through a wince. “The lady is right. Although I can see where it looks bad from your point of view.”
“Shut up!” Peary snarled.
“Trigger discipline, sir,” Reggie sputtered. “If you haven’t made up your mind, don’t let your finger make it for you.”
“Shut up, I said!” Peary shouted. “I’ll deal with you in a minute, but shut up or I’ll shoot you right now just to be safe.”
“Right!” Reggie said. He waved his hands in surrender. “Don’t need to be shot again, I tell you.”
“Shut up!” Peary snapped.
“Shutting up now,” Reggie said.
The Poet rolled to his side, pushed himself against the sand until he was seated. “What’s all this about?” he said, just loud enough to be heard. The air was sweet to his lungs, but it was playing hard to get, and the strain made him weak all over.
“Sit there and recover, old man,” Peary said. “We’re just getting some things sorted.”
The Poet smiled. Maybe it was the first time he’d ever smiled. He couldn’t recall. He wasn’t a man given to levity. “From where I sit, it looks like the sandal hop saved her, Peary.”
Peary glared at him and then pointed. “I don’t need to hear from you, Poet. You were out cold, and would be dead and coffined if I hadn’t pulled you up.”
“…And thanks for that,” the Poet said. “But that is immaterial, really. I am here now. I have a brain that still mostly works, and I can see, too. I’m not blind yet, you know? I can see what happened here, and it looks like maybe the rascal saved Marisa from those pirates.”
The Poet could see that Peary strained against the revelation. The diver’s finger was still tight against the trigger, and the Poet could see that pulling that trigger would release something in Peary. Whether that something was good or bad, the Poet didn’t know, but it seemed like Peary needed to take his frustrations out on someone. He’d just killed a handful of men, and here he was almost anxious to kill another. Peary’s finger loosened, but only a bit. “Just be quiet, please, and let us figure this out,” Peary said.
The old man pushed himself up until he was standing. The gear weighed heavy on him, so he released the tank from his back and lowered it to the sand. He’d forgotten he was wearing it. “Diver… think about it. If he was working with these men, he’d have just let them kill her. No need to risk himself.”
“She had a gun,” Peary said. He waved the gun in the air as if he were emphasizing the obvious.
“And for that—if they’d seen it—they would have killed her first,” the Poet said. “Take it from me. I’ve run with pirates.” The Poet crouched down again, resting on his heels. “They are not the kind of people that will let a woman with a gun slow them down.”
Peary didn’t move. It was obvious to the Poet that the younger man was considering what he’d been told.
“Work it out, diver,” the Poet said. “Looks to me like he did the same kind of thing I tried to do when I stole your sarfer and your salvage. Tried to keep someone from making a mistake that would cost them their life.”
Peary didn’t blink. His finger was still on the trigger. Not exactly tensed, but still ready. He was unconvinced.
The Poet continued. “Put yourself in his place, Peary. If you’re him, and you’re with them, why do anything at all? You wouldn’t. You’d wait until they killed her—which they would have done right quickly—and after they did, you’d claim your reward, whatever that would have been. Hard to know something like that.” The Poet picked up a handful of sand and let it slide out of his hand, like water pouring from a canteen. “Instead, he’s shot and she’s alive. Just work through it, diver—like maybe it’s your job to think things out. Can you come up with any other scenario that ends up with her alive? You don’t have time to save me down deep and then get up top to save her if she’s waving a gun around when they show up.”
Peary took his finger off the trigger and moved his head until he was looking at Reggie face to face.
“Looks to me like he saved her,” the Poet went on, “and just as I have you to thank for my life, you have Reggie to thank for hers.”
Peary lowered the weapon, took his finger off the trigger, and stared down at Reggie.
“Glad you thought it out,” the Poet said. The old man stood and walked over to where Reggie lay on the ground, wounded. He waved a hand at the sandal hop—a wave of derision, as if to say this man isn’t bright enough to be dangerous. The Poet knelt down until he was able to look Reggie in the eye. “He’s a low-life sandal hop, living on the fringes of life. Getting by on scraps and playing all sides against the middle. Why risk his miserable life for strangers?” The Poet stood again. “He wouldn’t.” Even as he said it, the Poet had to wonder if maybe he wasn’t talking more about himself than about Reggie. Hard to know a thing like that, too.
Reggie pressed the palm of his hand against the wound in his side, winced again, and looked over at the old man. “Thanks for that, by the way,” he said. “Glad to know I’ve made such an impression.”
“Shut up!” Peary and the Poet shouted in unison.
“Shutting up,” Reggie said.
Marisa moved to check Reggie’s wound, and Peary let her.
The diver’s thumb once again found the safety and re-engaged it. He waved the gun at Reggie. “Get him patched and ready, and we’ll load up and get out of here before someone starts looking for these pirates.”
Marisa looked up and smiled. “So you’re convinced?”
“Not convinced of anything, yet,” Peary said. “But if he saved your life, I’ll be thankful later. For now, we need to move.”
Trade Town
Chapter Seventeen
Peary directed the work as the mess was cleaned up and the sarfers reloaded. He kept the pistol at the ready, just in case the old man had been wrong about Reggie. “Use the visor and your suit to unbury the pirates and take them down deeper,” Peary said to the Poet. “Just sink ’em down. Can’t leave a trace here in case we ever need to come back and get your treasure.”
“Come back?” the Poet said. “We’re leaving it here?”
Peary nodded. “We can’t get it now, and we don’t need it.” He pointed the pistol at the sand, i
ndicating the down deep. “The salvage from Danvar—along with information about its location—is going to make us all richer than we’ve ever imagined.”
The Poet cut his eyes from the sand up to Peary. “You obviously don’t know my imagination, diver.”
“Don’t care,” Peary said. “It’ll be here if we need it, but I don’t think we will. Let’s sell what we have to Marisa’s uncle and just head west. We’ll have enough coin to take care of us for the rest of our lives.”
“That’s if her uncle—or his men… or some other brigands… or pretty much anyone else in this world of sand—doesn’t kill us first.”
Peary laughed. “You’re already dead, Poet. Dead and coffined down there in the deep. Every minute up here is just bonus for you.”
“Here’s to old men and bonus minutes,” the old man said as he activated his suit and began to loosen the sand around one of the dead pirates. “I suppose you have a point,” he added, before biting down on his mouthpiece and pushing the dead man down. Both poet and pirate disappeared, and Peary walked over to where Marisa was finishing up her work on Reggie’s wound.
“He gonna make it?” he asked.
Reggie looked up and smiled, “Oh, I’m right as rain, diver. Nothing but a scratch, really.”
“Shut up, sandal man,” Peary said. “I was talking to the lady.”
“Will there ever be a time, no matter whose life I save, that someone won’t be telling me to shut up?” Reggie asked.
“Shut up!” Marisa and Peary said in unison.
“Gotcha,” Reggie said and rolled his eyes.
Marisa pulled down the man’s shirt and then rubbed her hands with sand. “He should be fine if infection doesn’t set in. Enough other things out here to kill a man. The infection—if he gets it—might kill him last.”
“We go to your uncle’s place and do the deal,” Peary said. He looked off into the middle distance, trying to calculate unknowns that were piling up like the sand. “Can you get us there from here?”
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