The Sand Men
First published 2015 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
ISBN: 978-1-84997-909-2
Copyright © 2015 Christopher Fowler
Cover art by Pye Parr
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
PART ONE
The ultimate gated community is a human being with a closed mind.
– JG Ballard
Chapter One
The Beach
A
SKY SO
blue it looked like the atmosphere had evaporated into space.
Mandhatri Sahonta stared into the infinity, then lowered his blue NYC baseball cap over his eyes, adjusting his hardhat on top of it. He was unimpressed by the sky. It was always this blue here, always this bright.
Mandhatri dressed as if he was expecting the weather to suddenly turn cold. When he saw the crimson-faced, fat-bellied holidaymakers waddling past in their Vilebrequin shorts and Diesel tanktops like oversized toddlers, he thought of them as ghosts. He was an engineer. His world did not touch theirs. Tightly wrapped in a vest, shirt, scarf and workboots, he passed their oiled bodies roasting in the sun and assumed they were living proof of what happened when you ate pork.
At noon, with the temperature hitting 38°C, even the mad English had abandoned their beach chairs, heading back to air-conditioned buffet lunches beside sun-fractured swimming pools.
Mandhatri stopped the Jeep on scrubland at the edge of the lot. Grabbing his steel toolbox, he set off across the sand. The landscape was bare and unforgiving, a table-flat geometry of grey and yellow patches bordered by piles of breezeblocks. In the distance he could hear the rumbling of the gravel trucks that never stopped, swerving past each other on the peninsula like tin toys on a track.
The date palms had been transported fully grown and impatiently planted into the unfinished esplanade, where many of them promptly died. As he walked, he thought about his father and wondered if he was still alive.
Mandhatri and his daughter Sakari had abandoned their village in the South Kanara coastal district of Karnataka and moved to Delhi, because their father’s house had burned down in mysterious circumstances. Not for the first time, the old man had made enemies from unpaid debts. After arguing with him Mandhatri had moved north, where he’d heard they were recruiting. He spoke perfect English and had found employment in Dubai on a two-year contract. He transferred money and called home every month, and when he spoke to his wife she avoided any mention of the father who had brought them low.
Mandhatri tightened his checked scarf and consulted his handheld tracking system. The GPS device overlaid an installation grid on the landscape, enabling him to pinpoint work locations. The problem was somewhere around here, but even the foreman hadn’t been sure of the exact spot.
To his left, the high wall of a hotel screened guests from the ugliness of the site. The tourists had been lured by pictures of unspoilt beaches. They did not want to look up from their sunbeds and see tractors and diggers.
He set down the toolbox and checked inside, but found nothing that could help him. Kits were leased from the company and repaid with loans. Specialist equipment was extra, so his mates clubbed together and time-shared items. During busy hours, the foremen charged extra rental fees on certain wrenches and drill attachments. Lately, some of the crew members had started refusing to pay the bribes. Instead, they altered their shifts around times when the tools were available. There was talk of starting a union but nothing ever happened.
Mandhatri reached the broken end of the esplanade, walked beyond stacks of white plastic beach loungers and found himself standing on a plain where hot breezes scrawled their signatures across ridges of loose sand.
He knew at once that something was wrong.
Fine diamond granules lifted from the peaks of the dunes and swept around his bare ankles. He studied the sand carefully, trying to make sense of what he saw. The patterns were wrong.
He knew that the barchan dunes were carved by winds that struck the sand from a consistent direction. They should only appear as wavy crescents until they reached the sea-table. After that, the beach was flattened out by water. But just ahead, the curving lines broke and ran in a wide concentric circle.
If there was one thing Mandhatri had come to understand since he arrived here, it was the movement of the sand.
He walked out into the circle’s centre and set down his toolbox. Kneeling, he removed a small spade and an oscilloscope to pick up any sounds beneath the faint rustling of migrant silica. Digging into the scorching granules, he inserted the device’s metal probe and waited for the reading to settle.
The beach was radiating fearsome heat. He placed his palms down and lay as close as he could to the surface, listening intently.
Now he could actually hear it—a bad sign. He had no equipment to deal with this. Feeling for his mobile, he speed-dialled his foreman. The line was engaged.
My body weight,
he thought suddenly, trying to rise. The faint hiss grew louder, turning into a roar, then a blast.
He realised what it was and forced himself to move, but the sand suddenly burst upwards and air began to condense around him. His face and hands were hit and immediately started turning numb. The crystallisation spread across his bare arms, down through his torso and into his thighs like the brumal deadness of dental Novocaine. It thickened the blood in his veins until he was no longer able to move. A thin, stinging craquelure of iridescent frost formed over his skin, sheening the backs of his hands with tiny diamonds.
My fault,
he thought dimly.
I knew the signs to watch for and ignored them. My clothes…
But the material had already stuck to his skin and hardened so that he could not tell flesh from fabric. The fissures beneath him grew. He knew that if he suffered serious injury, his wife would not be sent her monthly money. If he died, she would be destitute.
He remembered what had happened to his daughter, and wanted to cry with the unfairness of it all. Even now he tried to hold Sakari’s face in his mind, but her features grew dark and were lost, until all that remained were the lights in her brown eyes.
At 11:47am on the burning beach of Dream World, at the edge of the shimmering Arabian sea, Mandhatri Sahonta froze to death, the wavering rolls of heat dancing around his ice-ferned body.
Chapter Two
The Arrival
‘M
Y
G
OD.
’
The aircraft door opened. The rectangle of light was a blazing revelation, hard, hot and even. Mobile phones flashed on. As Lea disentangled her hand luggage ready for disembarkation, a fine sweat broke out on her forehead. She had changed into a floral summer dress but the light fabric already felt as constricting as bandages.
She looked across at Roy, fanning her hand at him and blowing upwards at a loose curl. He smiled back:
Warned you.
The noon shadow beneath the Emirates A380 was so sharply delineated that it could have been painted onto the ground. The outside air was fan-oven fierce. She stopped at the bottom of the steps. At first she saw nothing but baking flat concrete. As her eyes adjusted, the rippling heat-mist revealed a collection of distant silvered towers whose heights were impossible to gauge. She might have been looking at Xanadu or the Emerald City of Oz.
‘Like a science fiction movie,’ said Cara, shielding her eyes. ‘Like special effects or something.’
‘The business district,’ said Roy, pleased that his daughter had been provoked into a response. These days any reaction was welcome. ‘You’ll see it better on the way to the house. We can drive right through the city centre.’
Still craning her head back to stare at the glistening mirage, Cara stepped into the refrigerated terminal. The vaulted steel sepulchre instantly banished memories of Heathrow’s chaotic, claustrophobic crowds. Lea looked about, amazed. Everything was so bright and pristine that it appeared unused.
They were fast-tracked through the electronic customs system and met at the baggage carousel by a tall Arab. Disappointingly, he wore a modest Armani business suit, a freshly-pressed white shirt and a thin black tie. He was so slender that his jacket hung loose at his waist. He gravely introduced himself as Tahir Mansour, the compound’s general manager. He nodded to each of them in turn. ‘
Salaam aleikum.
I hope your flight was not arduous.’ He had very white, sharp teeth.
Lea raised an eyebrow at Roy, who smiled back. Mr Mansour shook hands with Lea first, perhaps to dispel the idea that more devout Muslims preferred not to shake hands with a woman. ‘Please, leave everything here. I will have your bags brought to the villa at once. We can go on ahead. I understand this is your first time in Dubai, Mrs Brook.’
‘I was hoping to visit before Roy accepted the position,’ Lea replied. ‘A wife should have a say in these things. Everything happened so fast.’
‘Your husband tells me you are a magazine writer.’ There was no disapproval in Mr Mansour’s voice. ‘I hope you will be able to continue here. Of course, this is not London. We do not have so many media outlets. But the state encourages the creative arts. We wish for writers to visit, unlike India or China, where you must acquire additional letters of authority before being issued with a visa.’
Roy shot her a look.
Don’t say anything smart.
Lea had read him online articles about censorship.
‘Thank you, Mr Mansour,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I’m going to like it here.’
The formal courtesies over, Mr Mansour turned away and spoke with Roy.
Outside, the heat was furnace-like, fiery and desiccating. It seemed to Lea that she could actually see the sunlight falling. The air itself was a solid thing. They walked through carefully arranged areas of shade, led by a smiling, silent Indian chauffeur.
An avenue of transplanted palms looked Riviera-fake, the spiked emerald foliage immaculately clipped, as glossy as PVC. Mr Mansour strode ahead with her husband, Lea and Cara trailing behind in unconscious simulation of the Arabic family order. She was dying for a cigarette. There was a packet of Davidoffs in her bag. She wondered if she had time to surreptitiously smoke one before they reached the car.
Her daughter blinked at the all-encompassing heat.
‘You okay?’
‘Surprised,’ said Cara. ‘You think it gets cold at night?’
‘Apparently it drops by twenty degrees. Still warmer than an average summer’s day in London. You going to cope with that?’
‘Does it make any difference if I can’t?’
‘Not for two years, young lady.’
The darkness of the garage danced green spots before their eyes. They reached the first of two immense black Mercedes saloons. ‘Why have we got two?’ Cara whispered, peering over her shades.
‘I thought it would be more comfortable for you, after your flight,’ said Mr Mansour, clearly blessed with powerful hearing. He ushered Roy into the first car and indicated that Lea and Cara should enter the second. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Mrs Brook. I need to take your husband out to the site. Your driver will take you directly to your new home.’
Disappointed by the arrangement, Lea seated herself in the back of the freezing Mercedes. It seemed as if Mr Mansour had deliberately separated them. She had not expected Roy to be put straight to work. The chauffeur offered bottles of iced water.