I coughed and rubbed my face. “Think, think, think,” I muttered. But there was nothing. We had nothing. Nothing but my bottle of water. Nothing but ourselves. We were going to die. As if to confirm this, the anti-aejej beeped again, and this time a number appeared on its small screen. Fifteen. We had fifteen minutes. We grasped each other’s hands and looked deep into each other’s eyes.
“You were great back there,” he said. “I don’t think the company will ever be viewed the same way.”
I smiled. “We’ve exposed them.”
He nodded. “Long overdue. For the herdsman, nomad culture, the people of the Hour Glass, and all those the company has crippled, including you.” He reached out and took my good hand and drew me close. As we embraced and I lay my head on his shoulder and he lay his on mine. Two minutes later, the forcefield grew smaller with us.
“They own everything,” I said.
“So they thought.”
I laughed. “Until I started glitching.” And I swear in that moment, if all of them could laugh, they did. I pressed my body to him, and smelled his sweaty dusty skin, and it was then that I had an idea. It wouldn’t save our lives. We were going to die. But that was okay if this idea worked. It would be more than worth it. I reached out and there I was before the pomegranate of eyes. Millions of them. Attentive. They started looking the moment I had the thought. And then I had my answer. I stood back from DNA and took his hand with my flesh and bone hand. “Come on. We have to move fast.”
“Where?” But he let me lead him.
“We’re close and we have just enough time if we move now.”
We put our heads down and we shuffled. Paying close attention to the border of the anti-aejej. As its strength weakened, it shrunk and our feet got closer and closer to stepping over the edge. We could see nothing with our eyes, but they showed me by other means and I could see it clearly. We were so close. One of the turbines. A Noor.
* * *
—
When I was a small child, I thought a lot about dying. What it would feel like. The last thing I would say. The last thing I would think. Where I would be when it happened. I knew I didn’t want to be in a hospital room or in the bedroom where I’d spent so much of my miserable life in pain. I wanted to be in the light, basking in the cleansing spirit of the sun. To be in sunlight was to dance. I couldn’t dance now, and the sun above was blocked by a chaos of roiling dust and sand and wind. I’d never see the sun again.
I wanted to sit down and wallow in this fact before the anti-aejej quit. Instead, I focused everything I had left on putting one foot in front of the next while holding DNA’s hand so tightly it had probably gone numb. “Hurry,” I said. We were shuffling now, the dome of the anti-aejej so close that this was all we could do. The tips of DNA’s feet were bloody from stepping the tiniest bit into the storm. Not for the first time I was glad to be made of metal in parts that counted.
DNA never asked where we were going. I didn’t have the breath to explain. Let him understand if there was time and reason to understand. The anti-aejej was beeping three minutes when we reached the base of the Noor. The end of the great horizontal helix, where it blasted out accelerated wind and harnessed the power, was not far to the left. But we were at a safe distance. If we’d walked a tenth of a mile to the left, we’d have walked right into the near silent stream and been gloriously obliterated.
We sat with our backs to it. I turned around and touched its surface. Sand-colored and smooth, and cool. I knocked at it with my knuckles. “So solid,” I breathed. Even in the noise, I could feel more than hear it, a deep hum.
“Had to be or it would blow away,” DNA said, leaning his head back. His face was wet with sweat. The closeness of the dome left the air dusty and hot.
“Why do you think you weren’t shot?” I asked. The question had suddenly popped into my mind. When DNA’s cattle and friends had been killed in that farmer town, he’d stood there out in the open, in shock, yet no bullet reached him.
“I have wondered, AO,” he said. “It was all happening around me, and I willed it and, maybe, something gave my will power.”
“Maybe,” I said. If there was something I had learned, it was that sometimes, will could be very very powerful. “Two minutes,” I whispered. We were still holding hands and I squeezed his tighter.
“AO,” he said, looking hard at me. “Do what you came here to do. I won’t die until I’ve seen it done.”