Haze embraced the creature. Rusty rubbed his feathered head against Haze’s chin with a very undoglike chirring sound. “Glad to see you too,” Haze murmured.
Bipedal footfalls echoed in the passageway. Two beams of light spilled toward where Haze sat. Mercury ran to him with Tai right behind her.
Mercury took a good look at Haze. “He’s shivering!”
Tai handed Mercury a coat. Mercury flung it over Haze’s shoulders, pushing him away from the cold stone wall to get the coat around his shoulders.
He bowed his head. Past chattering teeth, he got out, “Caused trouble. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Even forgot about you. Don’t know how I could do that.”
“You were triggered by the meteor fall,” Mercury said softly.
“I’m a coward.” Shame flamed up in him.
“You aren’t,” she said emphatically.
“You aren’t ashamed of me?” His voice sounded tentative, even to him.
Suddenly she just embraced him. Her warmth—around the cooler area occupied by Rusty—made his will to live return.
“Eat this.” She kneaded a foil packet, tore it open, and pressed the survival ration into his hand. He took a bite. It was salty, warm and good. He devoured it.
A mechanical whirr filled the passageway. It was a drone. It briskly pulled up and hovered, its camera eye glowing faintly. Mercury waved at it.
Haze said, “Thank you for coming after me, all of you. I don’t deserve it.”
Tai said, “You told me you’d been in Strata, I guessed you were having flashbacks and I underestimated the force of them. I’m sorry about that.”
She really was a good expedition leader, the kind that wouldn’t go back home without everyone, who could admit to an error in judgement. The kind who deserved the truth. He told her, “It’s not true that I was there and slept through it.”
“Oh?” Tai’s voice developed an edge.
“I remember now. I came down the transit tower just before the terrorists broke it. I was in the streets of Strata. I saw the tower fall. I shouldn’t be alive.”
“Oh, Haze.” Mercury held him tighter.
Tai let out a long breath, probably recalibrating just what a burden he was likely to be. “We’ll get you out of here and fly you to help.”
“I don’t need that even though I don’t understand why.”
“We do.” Mercury said. “Rusty is a telepathic robot service animal. On the way down here we passed a wall with a whole row of low square doors about Rusty’s size. One of the doors was open. It looked like a cryogenic chamber inside. The Old Tellans were cryogenicists too, preserving equipment in supercold conditions. Rusty came out to help you because he telepathically knew that you needed that kind of help.”
Haze blinked. Incredible as it was, it made sense—it all felt true to him.
“I’ll assume that this creature wishes you well and I’ll not interfere,” said Tai.
Rusty made a contented chirr.
“Why would the Old Tellans make cryogenic storage for service animals?” Haze asked.
“They planned to come back?” Mercury suggested.
“War wrecks plans,” Tai said grimly.
He wouldn’t know, Haze thought, since he’d never been in any military. Then he reconsidered. He had once seen a battlefield. Now he remembered that too, the scene of an undeclared war against the Faxen park, Tetra.
Mercury could see Tai weighing the options available if she didn’t have a psychiatric emergency on her hands. Tai said, “You’ve got your luck. Haze has this creature to calm and, I think, protect him. Since we’re here, why don’t we explore?”
Mercury didn’t feel like exploring, but she wasn’t surprised that Tai did.
Haze got up, gently putting Rusty down.
Tai continued, “This passage just ends, maybe they hit a less stable geological formation, but there was a fork back there and two other ways besides this one continued down.”
At the place with three branches, Mercury pointed out a long low row of square doors. There were ten of those. One stood open. Rusty stood in front of it looking in then wheeled to face Haze. It was clear to Mercury where the creature’s loyalty lay now: bonded to Haze.
Where does that leave me? In frustrated tension, Mercury thought there was no way this situation could possibly get more complicated or fraught or, in a word, worse. Then she hastily squelched that thought lest she tempt the god to demonstrate otherwise.
As they took the right fork, starting down again, Mercury felt her misgivings increase. “Is this excavation sealed against water, against the river flood?”
Tai answered, “The first of the flood should be a trickle. The idea was to crack the dam and let the water do the rest, making for a gradually escalating flood that cleans out the old river channels that are choked with sand. A wall of water isn’t ideal. They want to recreate the river, not just drop the Rift floor with catastrophic erosion.”
Haze said, “That’s exactly the plan. I remember the briefings, now, and a lot else.” His voice sounded bleak. Mercury squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, but his fingers were still very cold.
Rusty had one long ear swiveled forward, one tilted back, and he padded in front of them, with his rear talons clicking on the floor. Suddenly Rusty turned in front of Haze, blocking his steps.
“If your group includes a service animal, better pay attention to it.” Tai shone her light ahead. The beam found a chasm like the one in the stairs above, narrower, but still too wide to jump. “Rusty has keener senses than us, and wants to protect you,” Tai told Haze.
Taking in a deep breath and slowly letting it out, Haze nodded.
“With breaks like that in the bedrock, the odds are that water will find a way down here,” Tai said.
They turned around to try the last remaining passageway. It sloped down to a long narrow hall with a flat floor. Tai said, “This may be as deep as it goes—which is gaudy deep for a site thought to consist of three bare rooms.”
“Is it a temple basement?” Haze asked.
Tai snorted. Mercury translated. “In her professional opinion, it is not.”
Tai shone her light around. She found a smooth wall with a faint square outline on it, twice as tall as any of them. Tai’s light traced the outline. The drone followed the light. If the drone’s transmissions were reaching the Pastfinders in Site A, Mercury could imagine their excitement at what looked like yet another closed door here—the biggest of them all.
“Why don’t you stand by the door?” Tai told Mercury.
“I can’t just make luck intentionally,” Mercury reminded her.
“If there’s any luck around, there’s no point making it wave to get our attention. If I’d known this was down here, I’d have brought Quit and his soundmaker.”
It had taken Quit a long time and a lucky accident to open the door to the stairs, Mercury thought. They didn’t have a long time now.
Haze ran his fingernails along the outline of the door, testing for a gap.
Rusty had been sitting on his haunches, with his head cocked, watching them. Now Rusty let out a long high warble. The humans and the drone all turned their attention to Rusty, until a scraping sound pulled their attention back to the door. It was moving, opening. Cold air flowed out. Tai and Mercury shone their lights through the widening gap. There was something on the other side, blocking the light.