“How far’d you get?” Moguhn asked, his dark eyes flashing. “What’d you see?”
Hap realized he was still out of breath from the excitement, the adrenaline. “Danvar,” he wheezed, beaming with triumph. “Sandscrapers like nobody’s ever seen.” He looked to Brock, whose eyes shined bright. “Sandscrapers everywhere, hundreds of meters tall, like twenty or thirty Springstons put together. Artifacts all over the place—”
“You were down a long time on two tanks,” the dive master said. “We’d almost given you up.”
“We found a pocket of air in one of the tallest scrapers, so we looked around a bit.” He tried to make it sound matter-of-course. “We wanted to get you your money’s worth.” Hap beamed up at Brock. All of this would go in his stories, all would be embellished over the years.
“Did you record it all?” Brock asked in that deep and guttural accent of his. “Did you get a map of the area? Precise coordinates? Everything has to be precise.”
“It’s all stored in my visor.” Hap tapped the band pushed up on his head.
“Let’s have it,” Brock said, holding out his hand. Two of the other men were behind Hap, holding that large metal hatch open. Hap was about to say that he’d want to see the coin first when he felt his visor tugged off his head and handed over. It took him a pause to realize that Brock’s command hadn’t been directed at him at all.
“Thank you,” Brock said. He smiled at Hap. “And now, I trust you can keep a secret.”
Hap was about to answer, to tell him that he damn sure could, but he quickly realized that this wasn’t directed at him either. This flash of understanding came right before Moguhn shoved him in the chest and Hap felt himself go backwards. He windmilled his arms, stirring the air, a grunt and a helpless squeak escaping his lungs, his heels rocking back dangerously, before he tumbled into the dark.
He hit the hard wall of that deep shaft and spun down, the air whistling past his ears, his stomach up in his throat and choking off his screams. He fell swiftly. Felt a dangling rope, and the wild swinging of his arms caught a wrap. A wrap on his wrist, catching tight, and then the sting, the burn, as it caught his weight and he slid down and down, the rope whistling as it rubbed his flesh, biting, on fire, cutting through his skin and sinking to the bone, tumbling and tumbling until he hit in an explosion of agony.
His leg, his back, the tanks, and then his head, so fast it was almost at once. He couldn’t feel his body. He couldn’t feel his body. His arm was in the air, hung up in the rope. By his dive light, he could see the rope buried deep in his flesh, squeezing bone, blood racing down to his elbow.
Hap tried to move, but he couldn’t. Turning his head, he saw his boot near his shoulder. His boot was near his shoulder. And Hap realized, numbly and sickeningly, that his foot was still in it.
Oh fuck, oh fuck. His body was ruined. His mind was still aware, could see what had happened to him, and he knew it wasn’t something he would ever recover from. He was an unnatural heap, but still alive.
Far above, shadows bent over the small disk of light. Hap tried to scream up at them, yell for help, yell a curse on them for all their days, but all that leaked out of him was a whimper, a rattle. One of the shadows moved, an arm waving, and some receding part of Hap’s mind thought they were waving down at him. But they were waving beyond the rise of that great crater at whoever was holding the walls of that shaft open—because the power was killed, a connection severed, and those walls collapsed suddenly and all at once. And Hap’s mouth, locked open in quiet agony, filled with sand. And the earth sat upon his broken chest.
Part 2:
A Visitor
9 • The Brief Hiss of Life
“You’re letting the sand in,” Conner warned, as Rob returned from his piss.
His little brother fell into the tent and onto his ass, remembered to knock his boots together before swinging his feet inside, then wrestled with the canvas flap. “If we aimed the door to the west, the wind wouldn’t get in,” Rob complained.
“We always do it this way. Just don’t dally when you go in and out.”
Rob sulked while Conner readied the lantern. Outside, the world pulsed red from the dying fire. The wind rocked the tent and sand hissed against the canvas. “Did you go?” Conner asked.
“Yeah.”
“Will you need to go again?”
“Not until morning.”
“Good. Let’s begin.”
Rob situated himself on the other side of the tent. Conner adjusted the wick. He pinched the top to feel that it was wet with oil, held his flint and striker above it and scraped them together until the fuel caught. He turned off his dive light, and the tent was filled with the more primitive and inconsistent glow of a beating flame. It was the light of childhood and nostalgia. The ephemeral light. That which does not last.
Both boys stared at the living flame for a long while, drawn back in time to simpler days, family days, when the concern for light meant another jar of rendered fat and not some rechargeable battery.
“This was Dad’s lantern,” Conner said. “He left it for us the night he departed so that we could find our way home.”
This was how Conner began the yearly ritual. It was how he always began it. His older brother Palmer had said these lines before him and their eldest sister Vic had spoken them before that.
Conner looked up from the lantern, breaking the spell, and realized suddenly that Rob would never have a reason to speak these words. There would be no one to listen. No one to care. Rob coughed into his tiny fist, almost as if to say Let’s get on with it.
“Dad left us… twelve years ago today. We will never know why. All that remains is our memory of him, and that is what we honor. This tent… our father’s tent… was the last place we saw him. It was less crowded in the morning when we woke. You were sleeping in mother’s womb. Palmer used to say that I kicked him all night and stole the blankets. Vic says she awoke as Father made ready to go, saw him in the moonlight when he flapped the tent, and that his face told her everything. In the morning, we all knew. I was six. Palmer was little older than you are now. Mother was young and beautiful. And breaking down the tent that morning was the first thing we ever did without him.”
Conner fumbled with the canteen. His hands were shaking. His convictions, too. He poured water from the vessel and into the lid, rationing as was proper. He handed the cap across to his brother, who drank it down in a gulp. Conner poured a cap for himself. “The last night we were together, Father shared his canteen, and he told us stories. Mom was given two caps that night, one for you.” Conner tipped the water into his mouth and swallowed. He poured another.
“The first time Father brought Palmer and Vic here, it was before I was born. He and Mother spoke of their parents, their past, the need to remember. After he left us, we made a vow to come back once a year so that we wouldn’t forget.”
Conner caught Rob looking to the side where Palmer would normally be. Gone, just like Vic. So much for promises. Conner dipped a finger into the cap and held it over the open flame, ashamed of his plans, of growing up to be like his dad. “This is the hiss of life,” he said. The flame ducked and sputtered as the water hit, and then it leapt back up. “Our lives are the sweat on the desert floor. We go to the sky, over the jagged ridge, and we fall in the heavens where it rains and floods.”