The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories (19 page)

The view from the hoops was staggering. I could see the sloping vanishing point of the sand in all directions, as if someone had gently pressured the horizon into a rounded dome that didn’t so much meet the sky as push into it. The sound from engines below didn’t reach our ears; their churning presence was apparent only in the vibration carried on the stilts between our legs. Everywhere I turned, the granulated vista appeared both limitless and small. In my happiness to find myself where I was, I reached for my notes and accidentally dropped my binoculars. They fell to the deck like a shot-down plane.

“Good Lord,” Renaldo said. “Is there anything you
can’t
do?”

august 18

S
ighted over the last two weeks: fourteen spent lance casings; two sliding holes in the sand, which were speckled and strewn with sun-hardened biological matter; one burned-out buggy that after brief inspection was determined to belong to the Firsties; three discarded sun-suits; various instruments used to measure deep-sand activity; and a collapsible reflective tent.

We are now treading in a straight line to the west, following the coordinates we’ve been given, and moving well away from what could be called even substandard hunting conditions. The sand sits atop a stratum of irregular rock formations, glacier-cut a millennium ago, which in segments have been exposed and balded by the wind, the presence of which is in itself a novelty, considering the overall stillness of the Gulf. Two days ago we woke to a silent engine and a sound like waves crashing on the hull only to be told we were in the middle of a windstorm; when it was over, and the engines were fired once more, the sand-drift had climbed to the portholes on the starboard side. The extra care we are taking with our navigation has made our progress feel incremental.

If not for the evidence so plain in front of us, we would surely be demoralized. But it seems that every time one of us is ready to admit that we perhaps have been led astray by some cruel practical joke played on one captain by another, a call comes in from the hoops or the buggies that points undeniably to the aftermath of a successful hunt as well as a confrontation between shipper-tanks. All crew on deck have been ordered to remain within spitting distance of a loaded bomb-lance at all times.

Bushard’s mood has soured dramatically since our encounter with
Homeward Bound
. This morning he asked me if he was alone in thinking that what we were doing was, perhaps when all was said and done, a bad idea. When I asked him what he meant, he said: the whole picture—the pursuit of finite resources, the Firsties, the families hoarding their wealth in the southern biospheres, the burning wheel of industry, our participation in it. I told him that as long as I could remember I’d been too busy regretting what hadn’t happened to think much about what might. From where I was standing, at least we were going
somewhere
. He looked at me as if I’d missed the point. I asked him: try again.

“Never mind,” he said, and walked away.

august 20

T
his morning, we sighted two desiccated and partially blown-open dirwhal carcasses. In their state of decomposition, we were unable to tell their genus. Everyone, as we’ve pushed farther on, has grown antsy, agitated. The sand is waffled with deep and veering tread-tracks. It’s increasingly clear that whatever went on here was less a deliberate lancing and more of an indiscriminate unleashing of explosives. We’ve been sent out in buggies for exploratory pronging, but none of those trips have turned anything to the surface.

“It’s a dead end,” Tom said at lunch. He was pushing the food on his plate into little mounds. “They’ve bombed everything out of the sand.”

“Everything they could
see
out of the sand,” someone said back.

After dinner, Captain Tonker called for an all-hands assembly at the stern to tell us that within four days we would reach our destination, and in order to be fully prepared he would be pulling down the high-hoops and clearing the deck of all debris not directly related to rendering. In addition, all but two of the buggies would be lashed to the interior rail until further notice. For those of us who didn’t follow, it was explained to us that all lancing would occur from the deck of the
Halcyon
. What the captain of
Homeward Bound
had shared with him was that less than twenty-five miles away from where we stood now was a naturally occurring cove in the sand, ringed by tall ridges of rock. It would be there, if anywhere, that we would find what we were looking for, and our plan is a simple one: park ourselves in the mouth of the cove, juice the prongs, and fire as the beasts revealed themselves trying to escape.

“Easy as that?” someone behind me said.

“Easy as that,” was Captain Tonker’s reply.

august 29

T
uva: it brings me no pleasure to write that either the information provided by
Homeward Bound
was faulty, or we have, somewhere, somehow, veered off course. After four days, we saw nothing but hard sand in all directions. On the fifth day, Tonker ordered all buggies to resume patrols to the west and south of our current position. This morning, one of the engineers reported that the injectors had slipped their casing, and were now chafing against the lug-valves, which, considering those valves had already been sheered from continuous use, spelled a problem if we were at all interested in getting home. When asked how large a problem, he shrugged and spread his arms, as if measuring a large box he couldn’t quite reach around. One of the mates asked him if he was sure. “I
might
be,” he replied, then disappeared back into the engine room.

Further complication: while on a short recon patrol, one of the buggy crews has had a run-in with a group of Firsties, the first we’ve seen in months. As I write, they are on their way back to the ship with two of them. Either the Firsties had been on foot, or had left their own buggy camouflaged somewhere in the sand. The good news: we’re convinced they can tell us something we don’t know about the location of this cove, and their encounter with
Homeward Bound
. The bad news: lurking somewhere close is the rest of their crew.

Renaldo was on a different buggy, which, in light of the contact made, was called back. He reported there was nothing, absolutely nothing on the surface to see. The buggy carrying the captured Firsties is expected to arrive two hours from now.

Our engines have been shut off for an undetermined amount of time, and we’re sitting deep in the sand. The silence, though shot through with expectation bordering on panic, is a relief. Bushard has just reminded me that yesterday, August 28, was your twentieth birthday. When I asked him how
he’d
remembered, he reminded me I’d asked him to do so, five days ago. I am losing the thread of our expedition. I feel I have lost the thread of everything. But what should I have done? No messages go through from here, of that I am certain.

august 29; evening

A
t first the boys—there are two of them—told us they were alone on the sand. Then they said that just beyond the ridgeline, there was an entire fleet of repurposed shipper-tanks, which would be coming for us shortly. Then they stopped talking altogether. We’d hauled them on deck as soon as the buggy docked. They were raggedly dressed, but wore matching boots and outdated sun-visors, dark green jackets that even in their threadbare state lent a military impression to their overall appearance. Neither looked to be older than eighteen. One of them, the smaller one, didn’t have much English, and apparently stuttered when under duress. The larger looked even more frightened. One of the coopers had zip-tied them together at the wrists, so they were back-to-back with each other. Captain Tonker approached and asked if they’d been mistreated. When they said no, he punched the little one in the sternum. “Not yet, you mean,” he said.

They were separated for questioning. We were told to hold the tall one, and not let him out of our sight until Captain Tonker called for him. The other guy, still catching his breath, was pushed below deck with Captain Tonker on his heels. Bushard called for water. When no one moved, he went to get it himself.

While he was gone, no one said a word. Eventually the kid slumped over, and sat cross-legged with his back against the rail. His hair was cut short, and a small scar wound around his chin like a piece of white thread I kept wanting to wipe away. At some point Bushard returned with the water. The kid politely held up his hand and waved it off.

“I’ve got a question,” Renaldo finally said. “And that question is: what are you even doing out here in the first place, protecting these things?”

The kid looked down at his lap, adjusted his hands. “Someone has to,” he said. “They’re on the verge of extinction. They’ve got nothing else.”

Renaldo asked him to look around. He said: this whole basin is the embodiment of nothing else. It touches nothing at all. “That is where we part ways, philosophically,” the kid said.

“So how many shipper-tanks have you destroyed?” Tom said.

“That’s just a small part of what we do,” the kid said back.

“From where I’m sitting, that’s
all
you do,” someone behind me said.

The kid closed his eyes, as if no matter what came next we’d simply agree to disagree. “This is illegal, you know,” the kid finally said. “This ends it for you.”

Renaldo grabbed the cup of water from Bushard, set it down, and told him we had him on that one. Legal or illegal; teeming or desolate sands: our hold was empty. This expedition had never even started for us. So he could save his industrio-accountability speech for someone on the winning end of that particular stick. The kid reached for the water, and said he’d keep it in mind.

Suddenly there was a scramble middeck. Word got passed that we were to take our temporary guest to the galley, zip him to a table-bolt, and suit up. As we made our way below, the engines roared with an unholy and squealing intensity, then settled into chugging life. Later we heard what everyone else apparently already knew: that Captain Tonker had squeezed some knowledge out of the stuttering Firstie, and that the cove we were looking for was less than seventy miles away. “Birthing grounds,” one of the mates said as he inspected our lances. “A hotbed.”

“Heavenly days,” I said, and slapped Bushard on the back.

“Imagine that,” he replied.

august 31

T
uva, it took two days on our full-throttled engines before we spotted the walls of the cove. At first these walls were a speck on the horizon; as we pulled closer, their sheer size became more plain. They rose darkly out of the sand; smooth, deep red and sun-baked rock formations high enough to cast long shadows across the dunes. A fortress rising out of the basin, glacier cut millennia ago. They must have formed a ring four miles around. If we hadn’t seen it ourselves, we wouldn’t have believed such a thing existed.

During the night, we’d run through our equipment, checking and rechecking cartridges, sharpening cutting tools. Captain Tonker had informed us that we would most likely meet resistance in the cove. He asked us if we were prepared to face this Firstie opposition like the men he knew we were. We nodded. We trial-fired our lances off the rail in unison, enjoying the sand-muffled concussion. Someone asked if the whole point was to
not
draw attention to ourselves, and as a thank-you for expressing concern he was sent below to mop the latrines. As the sun broke over the sand, though, we spotted two shipper-tanks in the far distance. They were dots off the stern, half a day behind us. Captain Tonker gave the engineers permission to try harder in the grease room, and ordered Bushard and me to bring the two Firsties on deck so their presence aboard would be more visible. As we zipped them to the rail, the smaller one saw where we were headed an instant before his friend did, and became inconsolable. Renaldo stuffed a face towel down his throat.

As we neared the mouth of the cove, one of the mates called for positions. I hitched my leg over the rail, next to Bushard, and eased my finger over the trigger-guard on my lance. The sun was merciless; we felt no different. The glare and heat off the sand shimmered a water-mirage on my visor. I felt one of my ears pop, and then the
Halcyon
made a sharp, arcing turn, moving us into the shadow of the high stone, and we came to rest perpendicular with the mouth of the cove, using our ship to block the opening.

Set up near where rock-base met the sand was a ring of small tents. I counted four or five unmanned buggies, parked in the shade next to what looked like a copse of monitoring equipment. Half of the large cove was gridded with wire, which divided the calm sand into rectangular segments measuring roughly fifty by one hundred yards. The other half appeared untouched, even by wind: not a tread mark, not a divot, not a single rake stroke. We stood at the rail for what felt like a small drop of eternity, expecting something to happen. Nothing did.

Bushard cleared his throat. “Would I be forgiven,” he said, “for saying this feels just about right?”

Before I could answer, a man appeared through the flaps of one of the tents. Carefully, with his hands raised and with some evident discomfort, he began limping toward us. Without his sun-suit, wearing only a vest and some sort of wrap around his waist, he looked like a lost shaman, comically out of place. “That your dad?” someone said to one of the Firsties, and got no response. When the man was within shouting distance, he stopped, and pointed. We followed the line of his finger. Scattered along the top of the rock walls were groupings of other men, who looked just like him, also unarmed. As if by witness alone they could prevent us from doing what we came here to do.

Bushard put his hand on my shoulder, and nodded in the direction of the tents. A small dirwhal, the size of a buggy and lighter in color than the one we’d lanced, had surfaced and was winding its way toward our ship. It didn’t know enough not to.