“If this thing isn’t dangerous, prove it quick!” Mercury hissed.
Haze mentally reviewed the long-familiar Theorems and Tests of xenobiology. Endothermic? No. Apparent role in the ecosystem? No. Respiration? Rusty’s chest was motionless. No. Others of its kind in any stage of growth observed? No. He quickly reached a verdict. “Listen, everybody,” he said firmly, “This is not an animal. It’s a machine. An animatron or a robot.”
Tai insisted that the creature be caged, which struck Mercury as reasonable. Haze, pale but calmer than he’d been all night, insisted that it be where it could feel the sun, after he ran his fingers through the rust-brown fur and concluded that the fur was artificial and photovoltaic. He further insisted that the creature not be harmed, or else he’d reverse his assessment that it was a robot, declare it an endangered native species, and invoke every Planetary Protection protocol in the book to throw at the Pastfinders.
With a curt nod, Tai told her people to build a cage in the sun. They brought out some scraps of fencing and went to work.
The creature seemed content to sit beside Haze. What a stack of improbabilities it was! Robot. Alien. Animal.
Still aiming her gun—ready to shoot the creature with Haze in the line of fire, Mercury thought worriedly—Tai asked, “Where did it come from?”
Haze shrugged. “I was asleep until it came to my tent. At first it was extremely cold. It’s now ambient temperature.”
“Cold?” Tai went alert. “As cold as underground?”
“The stairs behind the door!” Mercury said. “But there’s the chasm in the stairs. How far could it jump?”
“Did you jump the chasm in the stairs?” Haze asked it.
It put its head to the side and seemed to listen attentively.
And Haze mirrored its gesture. That was eerie, Mercury thought. He was tuning into it somehow. Which instantly made her both jealous of the creature and frightened for Haze.
He said, “Most animals in near-Earth gravity can jump two or three times their body length. Some dogs can do better, but this doesn’t have that kind of build.”
Tai lowered her gun. “Some fossilized debris traces in ancient battlefields have made researchers think the Old Tellans were master roboticists.”
Mercury felt a surge of excitement. If this was an Old Tellan robot—but an intact one, that still functioned—it was an incredible find. Oh my stars and suns! She saw the same line of reasoning making the wheels in Tai’s mind spin faster.
Quit stood beside Tai looking fascinated. Tai asked him, “How far can a robot jump?”
“Depending on the tech, the motors, the energy storage—twenty times its length,” said Quit. “And that’s just with our tech. The Old Tellans were lightyears past us in robotics, according to Thrashker.”
“Thrashker is a lightweight, funded by TARC, flutter it all.” Tai snapped. “But this could prove Thrashker’s thesis and claim jump it all in one. I like that idea.”
Mercury let out some of the breath she’d unconsciously been holding. The chances of the creature—OK, Rusty—being summarily executed had just plummeted. That was good because Haze liked it. She just hoped there was a good reason for that.
“All ready!” Jud called out.
Haze picked Rusty up and carried it toward the cage.
Mercury shivered to see Haze’s face so close to that pointed beak, with the creature’s taloned rear feet folded up against Haze’s stomach. The creature had a kind of soft baby look about it, she thought. But it had a kind of feet that could grow up to disembowel prey.
Haze put Rusty down, his reluctance showing. Rusty stood in the makeshift cage.
“It should be safe and us safe from it,” Tai said.
“It’s harmless.” Haze insisted.
“It has two-inch talons on those rear feet, and a pointed beak.” Tai made an abrupt gesture at Haze. “Finish bonding with it later. Right now we need you to help to move things to the top deck.” Then she made a peremptory follow-me gesture to Mercury.
Mercury had a wild welter of feelings. Excitement to have found a Tellan robot. Intense jealousy of the robot bonding with Haze. And possessiveness of him.
She paused long enough to kiss Haze on the lips.
6 The Fall
Mercury’s sweet kiss made Haze’s head spin. Away from Rusty, the sense of a comforting bond was weaker. Haze now had enough mental bandwidth to wonder what the hell was going on with that. Something psychochemical had happened to Haze in response to Rusty. He did not know if it could be trusted.
Unlike Mercury. He did know what was going on with his reactions to her: he was in love, dopamine dancing in the streets of his nervous system. It had been a long time since the last time that had happened. Had he been fully alive the last few years?
He joined a detachment of Pastfinders—Hopper, Jud, and Silk with a levitating pallet—handing stores and possessions up onto the top deck of the station. Silk explained that there were at least three models, not in agreement, of how the river would rise once the comet-filled lake’s dam was breached. One of those models predicted a wall of water roaring down the Rift.
Haze knew how much force flowing water could bring to bear on anything in its way. “The station can withstand that?”
“Yes,” Silk said with conviction. “But we’re not sure the dirt under the station wouldn’t be undermined. Rising water and tilting floors are no time to move goods. When it comes, we’ll ride out the flood up here.”
Rusty included, Haze thought to himself. He didn’t know if Rusty could feel fear. But he wouldn’t leave Rusty out during the flood. He glanced toward the cage. Rusty sat on its hindquarters unblinkingly watching him. One of Rusty’s long ears tilted back toward the muffled rattles coming from the Site as the Pastfinders did whatever they were doing in their excitement about that discovered door of theirs. He hadn’t seen the door or the passageway it had revealed. The Pastfinders didn’t want his bureaucratic eyes falling there. He wasn’t going to press the issue. There was enough else for him to be concerned about.
He suddenly remembered his second dream last night, the heart-pounding nightmare that ended with Dusty/Rusty leading him through a square doorway to stairs going down into the ground where it was cool and safe. Square? The underground dormitory where he’d slept through the Fall had a stairway. Although he didn’t remember seeing it that fateful day, he remembered the stairway having a human-proportioned door and treads sized for human feet. Very unlike the stairs in the strange, comforting ending of the nightmare last night.
The steps leading up to the top of the station certainly were human-proportioned, which helped the effort to carry stuff up. The toil made Haze feel better, burning down the adrenaline simmering in his system. Between one step and the next, though, a realization came to Haze that startled him so much that he almost stumbled. He carefully put down the box of gear he was carrying onto the growing pile on the upper deck. Then he sat down on a box to think.
He felt at home out here in the field and among these people. They were as various a group as he’d ever known, but competent in science and technology, and brave. Not defenseless—which could be an important consideration out in the field. Not academic lightweights either.