Hugh Howey - Sand

“I’m guessing he’s long gone,” Vic said. “The guys who give the orders never get what’s coming to them. They’re the Lords in their towers, the brigands back in their tents while someone else blows themselves to pieces.”

“And that was the bomb?” He nodded to the spot in the sand where she’d buried it. Vic guided him toward the spot, an arm around his waist, letting him lean on her.

“How long before it goes off?”

“I don’t think it will,” Vic said. “Damien said it has to be squeezed to go off. Like making marbles for a child.”

Conner thought of how some divers could force sand together so fast that a tiny perfect sphere of glass would be formed. “Seems like a weird way to set off a bomb,” he said.

“Yeah,” Vic agreed.

“We can’t just leave it here.”

“No,” she said. “We’ll have to take it with us.”

“And bury it as deep as we possibly can,” Conner suggested.

His sister shook her head. She looked at the people coming out from their stalls and homes to see what the commotion had been about. She turned and squinted into the wind, gazing out toward the east.

“We’ve got to do something with it,” she said. “We’ve got to do something.”

The heavy sphere sat in the depression it made up there in the sarfer’s trampoline. Vic had lashed it down with seizings of rope to that great net that spanned the sarfer’s twin bows. Conner lost himself in that bomb from his helm seat. He held his tender arm in his lap, his shoulder throbbing, feeling the gentle sway of his body side to side as gusts puffed variably between the dunes to the east.

There were things that could not be contemplated, he realized. There were potential truths too costly to bear. It wasn’t until after the body was scarred by a brush with danger that it learned fear. Conner thought of all the untouched places on his soul yet to teach him something. All the unblemished parts of him waiting for that razor of truth.

Sons of whores had existed before him. This was a fact, just not one he’d ever lived with. And so it wasn’t a pain he felt for others. Not until it was his mom coming home with bruises lurking beneath her makeup. Not until it was his mom that the fathers of friends boasted of. There had been others like him before. He’d just never thought of them.

The same was true for the leveling of a town. Witnessing Springston in the aftermath of its destruction made the danger to Low-Pub real. Fear required precedents. The newborn reaches for the hot poker— look how red and bright!

That silver sphere might’ve been a harmless thing in his mind, resting gently there in that trampoline, were it not for Springston. And the threat Vic had made after lashing the bomb down—this idea that she would deliver Brock’s gift to him—might be a joke to ignore, had Conner’s father not disappeared across the Bull’s gash all those years ago.

“What about Mom?” Conner asked. He tore his eyes away from the bomb and gazed off to the west, toward the tall peaks and the setting sun.

“What about her?” Vic asked. “You think she cares if I disappear? You know how many years we went without talking?”

Conner thought he knew. But he also saw their mother differently now. Had seen her tend to Violet, had seen her save Rob’s life. She wasn’t defined by what she had to do in order to survive. None of them were.

“It’s a damn miracle,” Vic said, “that I didn’t leave years ago.”

Conner turned toward his sister. Sand hissed against his goggles. He adjusted his ker to keep the sand out of his mouth. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

His sister stared over the bow for a long while. When her ker flapped up, he could see that she was biting her lower lip.

“You want to know why I don’t go camping with you boys?” she asked.

Fuck yeah, he did. “Why?” Conner asked.

“Because any step in that direction, and I’m not turning back.” She turned toward him, unreadable behind dark goggles and ker. “I feel what Dad must’ve felt. There’s something bigger than us out there, stomping around. It’s either better than this place or it’s an end to me. I contemplate both.”

“If you go, I’m going with you.”

Vic laughed. “No. You’re not.”

“That’s bullshit.” Conner felt tears of anger well up in his eyes. “You can dive, but I can’t. You can move off to Low-Pub, but it’s too dangerous for me. You can date whoever you want, but Palmer is an idiot for hanging out with Hap.” Conner pointed up the mast with his good arm. “Flying over the dunes with red sails and a Legion ker and you’re gonna tell me what I can’t do because it’s too dangerous? But it’s okay for you? You’re a fucking hypocrite, Vic!”

His sister raised a hand in defeat, and Conner calmed himself. Vic turned toward him and lowered her ker so she could be heard without shouting. “I’m not a hypocrite,” she said. “I’d be a hypocrite if I cared about myself as much as I care about you. But I don’t. I think parents know this. Older siblings know it as well.”

Conner scratched where his bandage was itching his neck. He thought of things he’d said to Rob that he’d be angry to hear himself. “I just don’t want you to go,” he said. The sarfer went over a smooth rise and sank back down, making his queasy stomach feel worse. “You can say all you want that you’ll come back, but we both know you won’t. Nobody ever does.”

“Nobody?” She pulled her ker back over the bridge of her nose. They sailed in silence for a dune, only the slithering taunt of vipers against those red sails.

“I lied about the night she came into camp,” Conner said. “Violet didn’t make it to our tent. I was out there.”

Vic was adjusting a line, but she stopped and stared at him. “Out where?” she asked.

“Across the gash. With three canteens and a pack of supplies.”

“Bullshit.”

But he could tell she believed him. That she knew. Conner fixated again on that silver sphere.

“Palmer didn’t show up, so I was going to leave Rob there by himself. I did leave Rob there. I snuck out in the middle of the night, was across the gash and a hundred paces on when I found her.” He turned and lowered his own ker, didn’t care about the grit getting into his mouth. “So when you tell me, or you tell Palmer, or you tell Rob that you’re gonna go out there and give ’em hell or get Dad back or that you’re gonna return with him, just know that I’ve been where you are, making that decision, and I know what it’s like to lie to myself and know that I’m never coming back.”

Vic turned away from him and lifted her goggles. Wiped at her eyes.

“I know you think you’ll try, but so did Dad. If you do this, you’re leaving us for good. And I’m gonna hate you for it.”

Vic turned back to him. She was smiling and crying at the same time. “But you can leave Rob in that tent? Fucking hypocrite,” she said.

And in that way that often happens between siblings, cruel words were followed by laughter. Tears dripped into smiles. A flaming sun dipped behind cool mountains, and a harmless-looking silver sphere rode serenely at the bow.

They thought they were making it easy on her, that they were supporting her, but accompanying her to the gash just made it worse. As did the sight of her family erecting a tent together, just like olden times. All the water and food and supplies they’d hauled, every backbreaking ounce of their hope over her return, but Conner had been right. She could lie to each and every one of them and promise that she’d be back, but she knew. Her father had known. Everyone who crosses that gash knows.