Shapiro spent the afternoon carefully bottling all of the ship’s water. He used a porta-vac to suck up that which had run out of the ruptured veins in the ship’s supply system and puddled on the floor. He got the small bit left in the bottom of the shattered hydraulic system’s water tank.
He did not overlook even the small cylinder in the guts of the air-purification system which circulated ah- in the storage areas.
Finally, he went into Grimes’s cabin.
Grimes had kept goldfish in a circular tank constructed especially for weightless conditions. The tank was built of impact-resistant clear-polymer plastic, and had survived the crash easily. The goldfish—like their owner—had not been impact-resistant. They floated in a dull orange clump at the top of the ball, which had come to rest under Grimes’s bunk, along with three pairs of very dirty underwear and half a dozen porno holograph-cubes.
He held the globe aquarium for a moment, looking fixedly into it. “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well,” he said suddenly, and laughed a screaming, distracted laugh. Then he got the net Grimes kept in his lockbin and dipped it into the tank. He removed the fish and then wondered what to do with them. After a moment he took them to Grimes’s bed and raised his pillow.
There was sand underneath.
He put the fish there regardless, then carefully poured the water into the jemcan he was using as a catcher. It would all have to be purified, but even if the purifiers hadn’t been working, he thought that in another couple of days he wouldn’t balk at drinking aquarium water just because it might have a few loose scales and a little goldfish shit in it.
He purified the water, divided it, and took Rand’s share back up the side of the dune.
Rand was right where he had been, as if he had never moved.
“Rand. I brought you your share of the water.” He unzipped the pouch on the front of Rand’s EP suit and slipped the flat plastic flask inside. He was about to press the zip-strip closed with his thumbnail when Rand brushed his hand away. He took the flask out. Stenciled on the front was ASM/CLASS SHIP’S SUPPLIES STORAGE FLASK CL. #23196755 STERILE WHEN SEAL is UNBROKEN The seal was broken now, of course; Shapiro had had to fill the bottle up.
“I purified—” Rand opened his fingers. The flask fell into the sand with a soft plop. “Don’t want it.”
“Don’t… Rand, what’s wrong with you? Jesus Christ, will you stop it?” Rand did not reply.
Shapiro bent over and picked up storage flask #23196755. He brushed off the grains of sand clinging to the sides as if they were huge, swollen germs.
“What’s wrong with you?” Shapiro repeated. “Is it shock?
Do you think that’s what it is? Because I can give you a pill …or a shot. But it’s getting to me, I don’t mind telling you. You just standing out here looking at the next forty miles of nothing! It’s sand! Just sand!”
“It’s a beach,” Rand said dreamily. “Want to make a sand castle?”
“Okay, good,” Shapiro said. “I’m going to go get a needle and an amp of Yellowback. If you want to act like a goddam dronehead, I’ll treat you like one.”
“If you try to inject me with something, you better be quiet when you sneak up behind me,” Rand said mildly. “Otherwise, I’ll break your arm.” He could do it, too. Shapiro, the astrogator, weighed a hundred and forty pounds and stood five-five. Physical combat was not his specialty. He grunted an oath and turned away, back to the ship, holding Rand’s flask.
“I think it’s alive,” Rand said. “I’m actually pretty sure of it.” Shapiro looked back at him and then out at the dunes. The sunset had given them a gold filigree at their smooth, sweeping caps, a filigree that shaded delicately down to the blackest ebony in the troughs; on the next dune, ebony shaded back to gold. Gold to black. Black to gold.
Gold to black and black to gold and gold to—Shapiro blinked his eyes rapidly, and rubbed a hand over them.
“I have several times felt this particular dune move under my feet,” Rand told Shapiro. “It moves very gracefully. It is like feeling the tide. I can smell its smell on the air, and the smell is like salt.”
“You’re crazy,” Shapiro said. He was so terrified that he felt as if his brains had turned to glass.
Rand did not reply. Rand’s eyes searched the dunes, which went from gold to black to gold to black in the sunset.
Shapiro went back to the ship.
Rand stayed on the dune all night, and all the next day.
Shapiro looked out and saw him. Rand had taken off his EP suit, and the sand had almost covered it. Only one sleeve stuck out, forlorn and supplicating. The sand above and below it reminded Shapiro of a pair of lips sucking with a toothless greed at a tender morsel. Shapiro felt a crazy desire to pelt up the side of the dune and rescue Rand’s EP suit.
He did not.
He sat in his cabin and waited for the rescue ship. The smell of Freon had dissipated. It was replaced by the even less desirable smell of Grimes decaying.
The rescue ship did not come that day or that night or on the third day.
Sand somehow appeared in Shapiro’s cabin, although the hatchway was closed and the seal still appeared perfectly tight. He sucked the little puddles of sand up with the porta-vac as he had sucked up puddles of spilled water on that first day. He was very thirsty all the time. His flask was nearly empty already.
He thought he had begun to smell salt on the air; in his sleep he heard the sound of gulls.
And he could hear the sand.
The steady wind was moving the first dune closer to the ship. His cabin was still okay—thanks to the porta-vac—but the sand was already taking over the rest. Mini-dunes had reached through the blown locks and laid hold of ASN/29. It sifted in tendrils and membranes through the vents. There was a drift in one of the blown tanks.
Shapiro’s face grew gaunt and pebbly with beard shadow. Near sunset of the third day, he climbed up the dune to check on Rand. He thought about taking a hypodermic, then rejected it. It was a lot more than shock; he knew that now. Rand was insane. It would be best if he died quickly. And it looked as if that was exactly what was going to happen.
Shapiro was gaunt; Rand was emaciated. His body was a scrawny stick. His legs, formerly rich and thick with iron-pumper’s muscle, were now slack and droopy. The skin hung on them like loose socks that keep falling down. He was wearing only his undershorts, and they were red nylon, and they looked absurdly like a ball-hugger bathing suit. A light beard had begun to grow on his face, fuzzing his hollow cheeks and chin. His beard was the color of beach sand.
His hair, formerly a listless brown shade, had bleached out to a near blond. It hung over his forehead. Only his eyes, peering through the fringe of his hair with bright blue intensity, still lived fully. They studied the beach (the dunes goddammit the DUNES) relentlessly.
Now Shapiro saw a bad thing. It was a very bad thing indeed. He saw that Rand’s face was turning into a sand dune. His beard and his hair were choking his skin.
“You,” Shapiro said, “are going to die. If you don’t come down to the ship and drink, you are going to die.” Rand said nothing.
“Is that what you want?” Nothing. There was the vacuous snuffle of the wind, but no more. Shapiro observed that the creases of Rand’s neck were filling up with sand.
“The only thing I want,” Rand said in a faint, faraway voice like the wind, “is my Beach Boys tapes. They’re in my cabin.”
“Fuck you!” Shapiro said furiously. “But do you know what I hope? I hope a ship comes before you die. I want to see you holler and scream when they pull you away from your precious goddam beach. I want to see what happens then!”
“Beach’ll get you, too,” Rand said. His voice was empty and rattling, like wind inside a split gourd—a gourd which has been left in a field at the end of October’s last harvest. “Take a listen, Bill. Listen to the wave.” Rand cocked his head. His mouth, half-open, revealed his tongue. It was as shriveled as a dry sponge.
Shapiro heard something.
He heard the dunes. They sang songs of Sunday afternoon at the beach—naps on the beach with no dreams. Long naps. Mindless peace. The sound of crying gulls. Shifting, thoughtless particles. Walking dunes. He heard… and was drawn. Drawn toward the dunes.