The ground must be a mile deep. Don’t see an end.
I see something. More of these.
Palmer wished he had Hap’s visor. His own was digging into his face, pushing on his forehead and cheekbones like it might smash right through his skull. He worked his jaw to lessen the pain, strained downward, and then he saw something too. Bright blues down there, more square shafts, and another to the side a little deeper, just a purple outline. And was that the ground down there? Maybe another three hundred meters down?
I’m getting a sample, Hap said. His words came in loud. The sand was dense, the visor bands transmitting the words from throat to jawbone louder than usual. Palmer remembered Vic telling him about this. He tried to remember what else he’d heard about the deep sand. He was sucking so hard to get a breath now that it felt like his tank was empty, but the gauge was still in the green. It was just the tightness around his chest, which was growing unbearable. It felt like a rib might snap. He’d seen divers taped up before. Seen them come up with blood trailing from their noses and ears. He concentrated. Told the sand to flow. He followed Hap, when his every impulse was to get out of there, to turn and find his beacon, to push the sand up as hard and as fast as he could, pile of coin be damned.
Hap reached the structure. The walls appeared perfectly smooth. A building. Palmer could see it now—an impossibly tall building with small details on the roof, some so hard and bright that they must be solid metal. A fortune in metal. Machines and gizmos. Something that looked like ducting, like the building used to breathe. This was not built by man, not by any man Palmer knew. This was Danvar of legends. Danvar of old. The mile-deep city, found by a bunch of smelly pirates, Palmer thought. And discovered by him.
6 • Danvar
Hap reached the building before Palmer. It was a sandscraper that put all the sandscrapers of Springston to shame, could swallow all of them at once the way a snake could eat a fistful of worms. The top was studded with goodies, bright blooming flashes of metal untouched by scavengers: threads of pipe and wire and who knew what else. Palmer could feel his skin crawl, even with the sand pressing him so tight.
I’m taking a sample, Hap said.
Normally they would grab something loose from the ground, an artifact or scrap of metal, and rise up with it. Palmer pushed deeper and watched Hap scan the vast landscape of the building’s roof. The adrenaline and the sight of such riches made it a little easier to move the sand—the sudden rush of willpower and desire helped as well—but breathing had become an effort.
Nothing loose, Hap complained, exploring the roof. The top of the building had to be as large as four blocks of Springston.
I’ll break something free,Palmer said. He was now as low as Hap. Lower. His competitive spirit had driven him down past the edge of the building, dipping well past three hundred meters. The concept of breaking a personal record was lost in the rush of such a discovery. Such a monumental discovery. He worried no one would believe them, but of course their goggles would record everything. They would store the entire dive, would map the shapes beneath them, those great pillars reaching up like the fingers of a deity long buried.
And now the palm of this great god, the ground between the scrapers, was dimly visible. It was studded with bright metal boulders that Palmer recognized as cars, all preserved in great shape, judging by the signal bounce. But it was hard to read the colors this deep. He was in unfamiliar territory. As if to highlight this, the air indicator in his visor went from green to yellow. One of his tanks had gone dry, a dull click as a valve switched over. Not a problem. They weren’t going any deeper. This was halfway. And he would use less air going up. Fuck, they were going to get out of here. They were going to do this. Just needed to look for something to break loose, a souvenir.
He probed for any sand that might be inside the building, sand he could grab and flow toward himself in order to breach the scraper and grab some small artifact. The flat wall before him had the signal bounce and the wavering shimmer of colors that screamed glass . Hollow,he told Hap. I’m ramming it.
Palmer formed a sandram with his mind, pictured a hardening of the sand in front of him and a loosening of the sand around that. His left hand twisted and turned inward the way it did when he concentrated, and he could feel himself sweating inside his suit despite the coolness of the deep sand. The ram was there. He made himself knowthe ram was there. And then he threw it forward, flowing the sand around it, losing control of the sand around his body for a moment, feeling it tighten everywhere at once like a coffin, his throat held fast by two great palms on his neck, chest wrapped with a wet and shrinking blanket, arms and legs tingling as the blood was cut off, and then the ram hit the building and dissipated, and Palmer had the sand flowing around him once again.
He took a deep breath. Another. It felt like pulling air through a narrow straw. But the flashes of light in his vision stopped their blinking. Palmer sank a little, but finally he righted himself. The view before him had changed. There was sand inside the building now. He had shattered the glass. A wavering patch of purple told him that there was air in there. A hollow. Artifacts.
I’m going in,he told Hap.
I’m going in, he told himself.
And then the sandscraper swallowed him.
7 • A Burial
For as long Palmer could remember, he’d dreamed of being a diver, dreamed of entering the sand—but he had since learned that it was the exitingthat took practice. A diver quickly learns a dozen flashy ways to get into a dune, each more spectacular than the last, from falling face first into the sand and having it softly claim him, to jumping backward with his arms over his head and disappearing with the slightest of splashes, to having the sand grab his boots and spin him wildly on the way down. Gravity and the welcoming embrace of flowing sand made many a glorious entry possible.
Exiting required finesse. Palmer had seen many a diver come sputtering out of a dune, sand in their mouth and gasping for air, clamoring with their arms as they lost concentration and got stuck up to their hips. He had seen many more come flying out with such velocity that they broke an arm or smashed a nose as they came spinning back to earth. Boys at school tried flipping out of dunes to disastrous and often hilarious results. Palmer, on the other hand, tried always to aim for a calm and unspectacular arrival, just like his sister. She told him the calm looked braver than the boast. Look like a pro. Pretend that one of those ruined sandscraper lifts still worked and was depositing him on the topmost floor. That’s what he aimed for. But that was not how he arrived just now.
This exit was more like being belched out from the sand’s unhappy maw. He was spat sideways through the small avalanche that had slid inside the building and was ejected into the open air.
Palmer landed with a thud and a crunch, first on his shoulder, then sprawling painfully to his back, his tanks jolting his spine. The swimming purples vanished as his visor was knocked from his eyes. There was sand in his mouth, his regulator half out, his lungs emptied by the impact.
Palmer removed the mouthpiece and coughed and spat until he could breathe again.
Breathe again.
The air was foul and musty. It smelled like dirty laundry and rotting wood. But Palmer sat in the utter and complete dark of eyelids squeezed tight on moonless nights, and he took another cautious sip. There’s air in here, he told Hap, speaking with throat whispers, but of course his friend couldn’t hear him. His visor band had been knocked askew, and anyway he was no longer buried in sand, had no way of projecting his voice.