His mind was playing tricks on him. Palmer held the object into the light. Explosives. He’d seen bombs like these once before, when a sandscraper in Springston had to be demolished before a dune pushed it into its neighbor. He checked the crate and saw that it was full of white loaves like that. He had seen the aftereffects of rebel bombs. Everyone who grew up in Springston had. The red stains on the sand, the trails of gore, the boots with bloody stumps, men and women and children unrecognizable. He felt the same fear holding that loaf, that tingling up the back of his neck, that he felt at any funeral or wedding or celebration where there might be reprisals, where a loud roar was the last thing you’d ever hear.

Palmer scanned the tent. Brock and his men were losing the look of scroungers and pirates out for a score. Something else was going on.

His belly told him to focus. Food, it said. The loaf went back with the others and the burlap was put back as he found it. There were barrels on the other side of the table. The metal hook of a ladle gleamed over the lip of one barrel. Palmer’s mouth ached for a drink. He shuffled toward the barrel, shaking the sand loose from his canteen, and peered over the side to see a dim, murky, but glorious reflection at the bottom. His gaunt face wavered in the inky puddle. Palmer uncapped the canteen and leaned over the lip, plunging the vessel beneath the surface, the water on his arm cool and invigorating. The canteen gurgled twice, pockets of air bursting through the surface, and then a shout erupted just outside the tent. Laughter. Voices approaching.

Palmer yanked his hand out and whirled around. His limbs and organs desired to go all directions at once, which left him rooted to the spot. The laughter grew near. He fell to the ground as the tent flapped open. Wiggling on his belly, he got under the table, dribbling water, pairs of boots kicking their way inside.

“Fucking hell!” someone roared. “This thing’s heavy.”

There was the thud of a palm slapping someone’s back. The smell of cooked meat, a hot meal in someone’s hand. Palmer powered his suit on and sank his knees and feet into the earth, pivoting his legs down while keeping his shoulders and arms clear. He worked the cap back onto the canteen, didn’t risk taking a sip, could feel water dripping off his right hand. He pressed his wet palm to his mouth and sucked what moisture he could without making a sound. Seeing the tracks he had left behind from crawling under the table, he used his suit to flow the ground level, careful as a man tucking in a sleeping baby. Something heavy thudded down right beside the table, a large metal cylinder, and there was a shout to be careful. Packs and other gear knocked overhead. Someone brushed the sand off the surface of the table, and it rained down around Palmer, a veil in the lamplight.

Palmer started to sink himself beneath the sand to get out of there, to wait and come back later when everyone was asleep, but a fragment of a sentence caught his ear.

“—any sign of the other diver?”

The laughter and noise died down. Palmer held his breath, certain that his heartbeat could be heard.

“No, sir.” It was Moguhn speaking. Palmer recognized his quiet but commanding voice. “We scanned down two hundred meters, as far as we could, and there’s no body but the one.”

“And no chance he surfaced?” This was Brock again, the one who had asked about the diver. There was no mistaking his strange accent. He must’ve been away from camp. Just returned with the hiking party. But from where? Palmer listened.

“No chance at all.” This time it was Yegery, Palmer was sure of it. “One diver out of four can go that deep, and that’s what we’ve got. One in four of them made it. The sand down there makes it impossible to breathe and move at the same time. Besides, it’s been four days. He’s gone.”

Four days, Palmer thought.

I tried to tell you, his belly said.

“So is this heavy-ass thing what we were after?” someone asked. They sounded doubtful. Disappointed. Palmer couldn’t see what it was they were referencing.

“This is it,” Brock said.

“Does that mean we can break camp?” someone else asked.

“Yes. First light, and then we head south. We leave no trace.”

“You sure this thing does what you say it does?”

“Let’s see it,” someone said.

“Set it on the table,” Brock ordered.

Two sets of hands drifted down right in front of Palmer to grasp the large metal cylinder. Palmer took a deep breath to expand the sand around his chest, then powered his suit down. He couldn’t have more than a trickle of a charge left. He was buried up to his armpits, but he could still breathe.

“You sure the table will hold it?”

“It’ll hold.”

Above Palmer, the metal table creaked and strained from the weight of the thing. He had only gotten a glimpse of the object in the lamplight, but it looked like old tech, something scavenged, a cylinder with wires and small pipes, made with precision and expensive-looking. Expensive and old.

“Damn thing’s heavy,” someone said, as the table somehow didn’t buckle. Palmer kept a hand on his chest, ready to dive at any moment. He could feel that object overhead like a dark thought.

“Looks busted to me. Wiring’s fucked. And look at this here. Ain’t no fixing that.”

“Ignore that,” Brock said. “It’s what’s inside that matters. The rest of this is for setting it off, but we don’t need that.”

The men grew quiet as they studied the object. The scavenger in Palmer grew intensely curious.

“It’s a thing of beauty,” Yegery whispered.

“But how does it work?” Moguhn asked.

“I don’t know,” Yegery admitted.

There was an uncomfortable shuffling of heavy boots.

“I mean, I don’t understand the principle, the science. But the book says one of these can level an entire town—”

“An entire town,” someone scoffed.

“Shaddup,” Brock ordered. He told Yegery to go on.

“It’s just a little sphere in there. That’s all the stuff on the inside is. It’s inert enough. The book says it stays good for hundreds of thousands of years. All you do is tighten that little ball real quick, like turning a fistful of sand into a child’s marble, and everything goes boom. This thing will send dunes to the heavens and turn the desert to glass.”

“And you’re sure about that?” someone asked.

“Yeah, but it’s fucked,” another said.

“It’ll work,” Brock said. “Trust me. We could level all of Low-Pub with one of these.”

“What about Springston?” someone asked.

“We stick with the original plan for Springston,” Brock said. “We blow the wall, and then we hit Low-Pub. If there’s anything left of either of them, we’ll go back for another of these. Now that we’ve got a reference point for the map, we can grab as many as we like. Before long, there won’t be a structure standing south of our dunes, and the Lords can rule over the flat sand we leave behind.”

There was chuckling at this, which grew into laughter. Someone bumped into the table, and there was the clink of a jar tipping on its side. “Fucking idiot,” someone grumbled. There was a rush to remove gear, the scrape and slide of bags and swords and guns. “Get the map,” Moguhn said. A rustle of paper and boots stomping into action. Palmer wondered when the fuck they were going to get out of there so he could grab something to eat, and then an object hit the sand in front of him, a dagger, plunging blade-first. A hand dropped down to retrieve it and gripped the hilt. And then a stooped head. Eyes flashed in the darkness.

“What the fuck?” the man said.

And then an angry roar as the pirate pounced toward Palmer.

32 • Run

Palmer barely got his suit powered on as the man scrambled under the table after him. There was a blow to his head, the swipe of a hand and sharp nails, and his visor was knocked off. He reached for it, got a hold of the headband, felt the visor snap off, lost. Dazed, he took a quick breath and pulled the band on, flowed the sand in order to sink down, and got his eyes closed just in time. He was blind and weak and on a sliver of a charge and barely a lungful of breath. In a burst of inspiration, he dropped the sand in the tent a meter and hardened it. It was a killing offense to use the sand against men, but these men wanted him dead anyway.