Free Dune Time by Jack Nicholls Page A

whatever.”
    â€œDoes it have a Bluetooth connection?”
    â€œYes, back to the house. We can check the photos on the laptop they gave me.”
    â€œSo this is the big job you told us about? You watch a camera watch the desert? I can see why you needed a man of my talent. This is heavy stuff, Hasan.” As he spoke, Tariq drew his phone out to check his messages. One bar, no Internet coverage. He frowned at it, feeling the familiar tightness in his temples that came on whenever he was cut off from the world.
    â€œHey!”
    Hasan’s irritated clap was like a gunshot. “You think I needed you down here? Mum begged me to look after you, to get you out of the city. This is a serious job, all right? This is going to be on international TV. We’re working for Mr. Attenborough! And it means more money in nine months than Dad could make in five years—unless they fire me because they find out that my little brother is in trouble with the police.”
    â€œSo you think I’m a criminal, then? I suppose the independence fighters were all criminals too? Do you care that the government is snatching people off the street and torturing them? Do you care about freedom? Do you even vote?”
    Hasan turned to stare out across the sand, debating something with himself. Then he laughed softly. “You’re a clueless donkey.”
    Before Tariq could retort, Hasan’s phone beeped. He glanced at it, then relaxed.
    â€œPrayer time,” he said, unscrewing the top of his water bottle. He poured a little into his hands and splashed himself, then offered the bottle to Tariq. He unrolled his simple tan mat and laid it on the sand, checking the angle to Mecca on a plastic compass he drew from his pocket. Hasan was always on top of that kind of detail.
    He spread his arms and looked out toward the cobalt horizon. “Allahu Akbar,” he intoned.
    â€œAllahu Akbar,” Tariq repeated sulkily. The desert swallowed the ritual words, made them seem small. Hasan fell to his hands and knees and, after a self-conscious moment loitering above him, Tariq knelt and pressed his forehead to the hot sand. The sun beat down mercilessly on his back.
    â€œGlory to God,” Tariq whispered. The grains were hot and coarse against his nose and forehead and they stuck to his lips. With his face pressed against the sand he could feel faint vibrations, like a tiny earthquake beneath his fingers or a vast one, hundreds of miles away. The singing of the sand.
    *   *   *
    â€œTariq.”
    He opened his eyes. Hasan stood above him, wrapped in shadow. The air was bitterly cold.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThere’s someone outside.”
    Tariq half-rose, bunching the sheets around him. Out the window the darkness was smeared with cold stars. Hasan had taken up the rifle and moved to the doorway. All Tariq could hear was the distant desert hum, like the sound of the surf. Voomvoomvoom.
    â€œI don’t hear…” he began, but Hasan bolted out the door.
    Tariq groggily fumbled out of his blankets. There was a flashlight somewhere, but he couldn’t find it, so he snatched his phone and ran outside shining its screen ahead of him like a lantern.
    The stars overhead were disorienting in their brightness, but their light sank without a trace into black desert. Tariq strained to pinpoint his brother’s form. He directed his phone at his bare feet, terrified of scorpions emerging into the tiny circumference of blue light it gave off.
    â€œCome on!” shouted Hasan, chasing shadows into the dunes.
    â€œWait!” called Tariq, but the wind snatched at his words and bore them away into the darkness. Moments later, he heard his own cry distantly repeated from upwind, as if his voice were spinning around him like an eddy of fluttering paper.
    Tariq struggled after Hasan. The sand that had seemed as smooth as glass by day now flowed beneath his bare feet like a river. He dug