Chapter 17 — The Star Growers

On the second day after V-21 descended, sand began to crawl across the school's soccer field. It does not fly into curtains, nor does it hit people's faces like the big winds mentioned in old books. The sand goes low, quietly, thin streaks creeping through the foot of the fence and then lying on the white lines. A child used the toe of his shoe to draw a picture of a fish, but when he turned around, the picture had disappeared.

Mien looked at the field surface through the glass door of the equipment room. She placed two fingers on the vibration box, where data from six ground stations was being converted into different rhythms. The span is thick in the northwest. Sparse rhythm in the old wharf area. Double beats appear on the station next to the seed warehouse.

“The wind is falling,” Mien wrote.

Lam stood next to her. “Where to?”

Mien did not answer immediately. The girl took a piece of tracing paper, placed it on the topographic map, and marked the salty road according to three possibilities. In the first scenario, the wind changes direction after two hours. In the second scenario, it goes along the sand dike and flows into the low area. The third scenario is unknown, because station V-03 has lost power since last night.

“I need someone to bring batteries to V-03,” Lam said.

“I'll go,” Kha replied from the door. “But the road towards the salt fields is covered with sand.”

"Go with Cu. Don't go alone."

“Cu is at the seed warehouse.”

Lam looked up. “What's going on there?”

Kha shrugged. “It's about having two places that need to be saved at the same time.”

Van Suong's seed warehouse is located in a low brick house, roofed with composite panels salvaged from an old power station. Inside were more than four hundred boxes of seeds: salt-tolerant rice, green beans, sea spinach, native tomatoes, and small bags of seeds sent back by each family. The villagers call it seed storage, but Thao Nhi calls it memory that can sprout.

The northwest wind was not enough to destroy the warehouse roof. The worrying thing is that it brings in salt vapor and fine sand. If it gets into the ventilation slots, it will cover the packaging, moisten and damage the seeds that need to be kept dry. Phuong wants to move the warehouse to the attic of the cultural house. Residents objected because the cultural house was located close to an area that could be flooded if the low sand dike overflowed.

“If the wind just passes by, we will carry four hundred boxes of seeds up and down in vain,” Phuong said in an emergency meeting.

“If the wind doesn't pass, we will carry them after the water has come in,” Cu replied.

“There is also no evacuation order yet.”

"I didn't say evacuate. I said move the warehouse."

Bach stood in front of the map, not intervening in the debate. He used a pen to draw two colored lines. "Central data forecasts a decrease in wind for six hours. Van Suong data shows that the low level also increases salinity in the northwest. The two things do not negate each other. It is possible that the upper level is decreasing, while the ground level is being held back by the terrain."

“So which model is correct?” one person asked.

“That question doesn't help us choose where to put the seeds,” Bach said. “The more useful question is: if each scenario occurs, how long would it take for something to become unsalvageable?”

Ha immediately took the paper. Seeds left in storage for an additional hour can be tolerated. Moving upstairs takes two hours if using a cart, but it will take all day if the elderly have to avoid the sand. Building a higher barrier around the warehouse took three hours and required sandbags. Moving the culture house's dryer takes an hour, but the culture house only has one closed room.

“The seed warehouse is not the only thing that needs to be moved,” Ha said. "The medical station's medicine is on the lower floor. If the salty wind causes a power outage, the backup air conditioner can only run for four hours."

The meeting turned into a math problem with no single answer. No one can play the hero, because every good plan in one place takes away a hand in another. People need to make decisions while lacking both data and people.

Mien stood up. The girl took the small vibrating board and placed it in the middle of the table. A long beat signals high winds. Two overlapping beats indicate a low floor. Three consecutive beats is a signal that needs to be checked directly. She connected the device to V-21's data, then replayed the nineteen minutes.

Double spans appear, thicker near the seed warehouse but thinner before the embankment. Mien took a flashlight, shined it on the map and wrote: "It's not a wall. It's a low blade."

Thao Nhi understood immediately. “The wind is whistling along the old drainage ditch.”

Cu spread out the cadastral map in 1998. That ditch was partially filled when the infield road was opened, but the remaining section was located between the seed warehouse and the sand dike. If the wind blade follows that, the warehouse will not be hit directly. It will be dehumidified from behind, where people pay little attention.

“I choose sand dikes,” Cu said. "Block the mouth of the ditch to prevent sand from flowing into the field."

Phuong shook her head. “If you block it, the water won't drain in the future.”

“Temporarily block it with an empty bag, let one person open it when needed.”

“How many people are needed?”

"Twelve."

“The warehouse needs ten people.”

Ha tapped the tip of his pen on the table. “Eight people give medicine and air conditioning.”

No one spoke anymore.

Bach looked at the data and then asked Mien by tapping lightly on the table, trying to imitate her communication rhythm. He typed incorrectly twice. Constantly adjusting his fingers, slowly. His question was: “If you choose only one, which sign is decisive?”

Mien put her hand on the vibrating box. Station V-03 is still silent. The girl pointed to that empty space, then pointed to the water on the map. Then she picked up a pen and wrote: “Check where there is no data.”

Kha and Cu went to get the battery. Lam divides groups by time, not by position: fifteen-minute team, thirty-minute team, one-hour team. Each team has someone who can hear well, someone who can read the screen, someone who knows the terrain, and at least one person who can carry a load. An elderly man was assigned to the team that recorded wind direction with colored cloth. She refused to stay home because "my eyes still see sand flying".

The seed warehouse team moves the perishable boxes first, according to the list Thao Nhi wrote in large letters. Box number 07 is early season rice. Box number 12 is the school's green beans. Box number 21 is a vegetable variety left by Mien's mother. The girl saw her mother's name on the list, but didn't stop. She checked the "transferred" column and then passed the box to the next person.

Outside the dike, Cu's team placed sandbags in a low section, leaving a regulating gate as wide as a person's shoulder. Kha crawled through the sand to station V-03. The sand grains burned his skin, but he still found the power cord. Old batteries swell, not because of the wind. He took it apart, replaced it with a spare, and called back.

V-03 signal turns on.

Mien felt the first beat and turned to Lam. “Wind from behind the warehouse.”

Lam asked again: "Are you strong?"

Mien pointed to the graph. "Not strong yet. But the humidity is increasing quickly."

Ha immediately requested that the medicine be transferred to a private room. Phuong ordered people to open the ditch gates every ten minutes so as not to turn the barrier into a water trap. Cu didn't argue anymore, he ran to check the sandbags. The things that need to be done have created their own order.

By noon, the sand stopped crawling into the school yard. There was no big wind, no sound of the roof exploding. A thin area of moisture accumulates on the outside of the seed warehouse door, then gradually dries. In the first scenario, they did too much. In Second scenario, they are just enough. No one knows where they stood in those two scenarios.

A young woman holding a bag of seeds came and asked Lam: "If nothing happens, what will you answer about the sandbags tomorrow?"

“I would say we used sandbags to protect something fragile from data that wasn't solid enough.”

“That doesn't sound very convincing.”

“The weather is under no obligation to make our decisions look smart.”

The woman was silent for a moment, then laughed. “Then write that sentence in the report.”

Late in the afternoon, Bach sat in the warehouse checking the sealed samples. He took out small pieces of paper from three boxes, with the name of the sender and the year of harvest written on them. Some letters are blurred, some words are only recognizable thanks to their abbreviations.

“At the center, we often call local data supplementary data,” he said.

Thao Nhi folded a bag of beans. “Here, it is data that has been eaten for many seasons.”

"I know."

“Knowing by the head is different from knowing by the hand, having to decide which bag is saved first.”

Bach nodded, not trying to show that he understood everything.

That night, Van Suong did not issue an evacuation order. Ha sent short instructions: close the northwest ventilation door, keep drinking water off the floor, check if the elderly have difficulty breathing, do not go out to check the wind. Van Suong Rhythm is broadcast on three channels, with images and large text. There is no “everyone calm down”. Ha believes that people do not need to be told to calm down; they need to know the next step.

Mien sat on the roof of the cultural house, looking at the temporary barrier. The sandbags lay like a low row of letters on the ground. The girl thought about Bach's question: which sign is decisive? Perhaps there is no sign capable of deciding for humans. Data can only clarify the cost of each choice.

Lam sat next to her.

“Are you angry because you have to move the same box as Mom's first?”

Mien shook her head. She wrote in the notebook: "No. But I don't want one day people will use my mother's name to tell me to listen."

Lam read, then erased the next question in his mind. She just gave Mien a new pen.

Towards the sea, a strip of low clouds drifted across, neither bright nor dark. On the vibration box, the wind beat slows down. The low blade has withdrawn from the ditch, but the sand bank is still there, the seed warehouse is still in a closed room, and the central data center has not yet chosen a name for the phenomenon that just passed by.

The next morning, Phuong proposed to keep part of the barrier, turning it into a removable regulating door. Cu told me to make more wooden pegs. Ha wants to hang an instruction board. Thao Nhi wrote everything on the map and did not call it a storm-resistant structure. It's just a way to remember that there are dangers that don't come through sound.

Mien marked the return of station V-03 to operation. She added a line below the map: “Blank space is also a kind of news.”

Lam read that sentence and felt a little lighter in his heart. In these days of lack of satellites, lack of permits, lack of answers, they can still recognize places they don't know. That's probably the first step in not turning a guess into an order.