The Sand Men

by Christopher Fowler

  First published 2015 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  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

  ‘MY GOD.’

  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.’

&
nbsp; ‘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.

  ‘It would have been nice if we could have entered the house together,’ she said to no-one in particular. ‘His contract doesn’t start until the first.’

  ‘That’s only the day after tomorrow.’ Cara checked the view as they drove off. ‘Very flat, Dubai,’ she said in her Noel Coward voice. She could be perversely old-fashioned when she chose. It usually meant she was happy. Lea sometimes had to remind herself that Cara was clever; playing dumb was part of her public persona, like the dour, unsmiling Facebook shots she posted.

  ‘It looks like a building site,’ said Lea.

  ‘That thing wasn’t there on Google Earth.’ Cara pointed to the half-finished steel exoskeleton of a tower looming from the soft pink mist. The traffic was heavy and slow. It appeared that nobody drove a car more than three years old. A brand-new Lexus and a Lamborghini Aventador rolled at a stately pace on either side of them, their powerful engines wasted.

  The Mercedes saloon coasted along a broad avenue of construction zones, then switched lanes onto a curving flyover. An immense chasm of steel and glass opened up before them.

  ‘I think we just went into the future.’ Cara stretched her neck back but could not see to the tops of the buildings. A uniform row of cranes appeared along the horizon like the raised drumsticks of a distant marching band. There was a glitter of water between the bases of the tower blocks. The streets were deserted. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘I guess they’re all inside,’ Lea replied. ‘It’s too hot to be out in the open.’

  ‘It kind of looks like Los Angeles. I mean, what Los Angeles looks like in movies.’

  ‘No honey, this is bigger and newer. There’s supposed to be an older area near the creek. Look over there.’ They passed a wide man-made river that meandered between the glassine offices. ‘Maybe we can hire a boat, take a trip around the place to get our bearings.’

  ‘Cool train.’ Cara pointed to a curving armadillo-hood of polished steel, one of the stations on the monorail line leading out to the Palm Jumeirah, the great man-made palm tree island that jutted from the coastline. Its concrete fronds were supposedly visible from space.

  ‘The Palm Atlantis monorail,’ said Lea, reading from her guide-book. ‘You’ll be able to get about until you pass your driving test.’

  They reached a T-junction, where the first Mercedes took the filter and turned off, to be eclipsed by soaring steel cliffs. They were alone now. Lea was bothered by the ease with which Roy had been spirited away. She reached for her phone.

  ‘Don’t embarrass Dad on his first day,’ said Cara without looking over. ‘We’ve only just left him. We can manage.’

  She wanted to protest, but reluctantly returned the phone to her pocket. She could feel the edge of the cigarette packet.

  They passed beneath a gigantic electronic poster featuring a beautiful girl tossing glossy brown hair, smiling as if she had just discovered a secret reason for living. The slogan read: Live a bespoke lifestyle—Dubai Pearl. The billboard’s pixels shone brighter than any cinema screen.

  So that’s what we’re getting, a bespoke lifestyle, Lea thought. Men come out here with their families, fulfil their contracts, bank their cheques and head home. It’s all mapped out for us. It’ll be good to have a system for once.

  The journey took almost an hour. They emerged from the cliffs of grey steel and silvered glass. The chauffeur did not speak, but tapped on the windscreen with a manicured fingernail.

  ‘Look, Cara.’ Lea pointed.

  The compound was surrounded with date palms and high walls of yellow English brick. Its houses were invisible from the main highway. A slip-road brought them to the perimeter.

  At the main entrance, a metal barrier rolled back. Its folksy wrought-iron design was unable to disguise its real purpose. Dream Ranches. The name was stencilled in gold pokerwork on a slab of laminated teak, and underneath, A Division of DWG Estates.

  The company had constructed the compound to house the families of Dream World’s engineers, architects and technicians. The resort’s designers were known as imagineers, a Disney term that felt infantilising, consideri
ng the pressures they faced; Dream World had been scheduled to open in February but was already four months late.

  The chauffeur stopped at the gate house and nodded to a pair of young guards in crisp khaki uniforms. The boys ran pole mirrors beneath the Mercedes. The gatekeepers wore spotless white kanduras and guthras.

  ‘They’ve got string ties,’ said Cara.

  ‘It’s called a kerkusha. You can soak it in scent.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I read, my dear.’ One guard promptly dropped to his knees and checked behind the tyres. ‘I think they’re looking for explosives.’ The country was on a medium-level security alert, but so was everywhere these days. If you followed the Foreign Office advice on travel you’d never go outside again, especially not in London.

  The chauffeur finished chatting to the gatekeepers, and the saloon rolled inside. After fields of ochre sand and gravel, the sudden mouth-watering burst of greenery came as a shock. Behind the acacia trees stood identical beige ranch-style homes. They were arranged in pairs, low and wide, with shallow red-tiled roofs and spotless garage bays.

  The roads were uniform and identically matched, from the colour of their fences to their regiments of kerbside eco-bins. The houses were constructed close enough to each other to suggest that a subtle point was being made; they were for executive employees, but employees nonetheless.

  ‘Welcome, please,’ said the unsmiling driver, pulling to a stop. ‘This is your new home.’

  ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE you packed teabags. We’re not on holiday. You’ve finally turned into Nan.’ Cara was impatient to explore. She roved fractiously from room to room, anxious to see over the dense green hedges that surrounded the property. The street outside was deserted and silent.