Dust and Diamonds

Tomas Fuentes had spent eleven years walking across the Atacama, so when his company sent him to the far north of Western Australia, he assumed the desert would hold few surprises. Red rock, white sky, no water: he had seen it all before. He was wrong, and it took the land less than a week to prove it.

The survey team that morning consisted of three people in one vehicle. There was Tomas, with his hammer and his notebooks; there was Gary Hollis, a mining engineer from Perth who trusted satellites more than people; and there was Marlene Bidjara, a ranger from the local land council, whose job was to make sure the company did not drive straight through places that mattered. Gary had made it clear, more than once, that he considered her presence a formality.

By early afternoon the wind had changed. Marlene looked at the horizon, where a low brown wall was rising, and said quietly, "We should turn back now. That storm is bound to reach us within the hour." Gary checked the forecast on his tablet. "It says a ten percent chance of strong winds," he replied. "We've got plenty of time." Tomas, who knew nothing about Australian weather, said nothing, and he would regret that for the rest of the day.

The storm arrived forty minutes later. In a matter of seconds the world turned the color of rust. The windshield disappeared, the track disappeared, and then the engine, choked with fine dust, coughed twice and died. The satellite phone showed no signal. "It's just interference," Gary insisted. "It's bound to come back once this clears." It did not.

When the wind finally dropped, it was nearly dark, and nothing around them looked familiar. The vehicle would not start. They had four liters of water between them. Gary wanted to stay put and wait for a rescue team. "There's every chance they'll find us by morning," he said. "The company knows our route." Marlene shook her head. "They know the route we planned. We left it two hours ago. In all likelihood they'll search the wrong valley."

Tomas found himself caught between them. His training told him that people lost in deserts should usually stay with the vehicle; his instinct told him that Marlene knew something neither of them did. "What would you do?" he asked her. She pointed at a line of small birds crossing the darkening sky, all flying in the same direction. "Finches," she said. "They drink at dusk. Chances are there's water within a few kilometers, that way. My grandmother used to bring us to a rockhole out here. If I'm reading this country right, it can't be far."

Gary laughed, not unkindly. "You're going to bet our lives on some birds?" "No," said Marlene. "I'm going to bet them on the birds, the termite mounds, the shape of that ridge and forty years of listening to old people. You're welcome to bet yours on a tablet with a flat battery." Gary opened his mouth, closed it again, and picked up his backpack.

They walked for an hour by the light of their headlamps. Marlene stopped every few minutes to look at the ground, at the slope of the land, at the pale trunks of the trees, which, she explained, were far more likely to grow along a hidden creek bed than anywhere else. Just as Tomas was beginning to doubt her, the ground dipped into a narrow gully, and at the bottom, cupped in dark stone, lay a pool of still, cold water.

Gary drank, then sat down heavily on a rock. "All right," he said at last. "I owe you an apology. Possibly several." Marlene smiled. "Write it in your report. That's bound to make an impression."

While the others rested, Tomas did what geologists cannot help doing: he looked at the gravel. In the beam of his flashlight, among the pale sand, he saw tiny grains of deep red and glassy green. He picked some up and his heart began to race. Garnets and chrome diopside: the minerals that geologists hope to find, because they are often carried to the surface by the same ancient rocks that carry diamonds. Their presence did not guarantee anything, but the odds of a significant find had just improved dramatically.

He showed Marlene. She looked at the stones for a long time and then at the pool. "This place is important," she said. "Not because of what you've just found." Tomas understood. He thought of the company, of the drills and trucks that would follow any announcement, and of the water they had just drunk. "Then I'll write down exactly how we got here," he said. "Including who brought us. Whatever happens next, your council will have to be part of the decision. There's no way I'm leaving that out."

The rescue helicopter found them at dawn, guided by the thin line of smoke from Marlene's fire. As they lifted off, Tomas looked down at the red land, which from above seemed empty and silent. He knew now that it was neither. The night before, lying awake by the waterhole, he had looked up at a sky so crowded with stars that it seemed to have been scattered with diamond dust. Whatever the samples proved, he was fairly sure that was the most valuable thing he had seen.