Haze’s tent had been relocated to the observation deck even though the new river was just a sheen on the plain so far. In front of tent, Rusty looked up and gave her a quick wag of the tuft at the end of his tail. She could imagine getting to know Haze without Rusty—a simpler situation that wouldn’t evoke jealousy in her! But it would have had to be Haze without the Fall: the Fall had marked him for life. Could she protect him from the memory of the Fall better than Rusty did? Not a chance. “Good boy,” she told Rusty softly, and slipped into the tent.
Haze was sound asleep. He’d left the tent’s dome light on. Afraid of the dark, the flood, the Fall? In response to the light, the tent was opaque, not letting the photons out, and not showing the disinterested stars—or interested Pastfinders—what anyone in the tent was doing.
He snapped awake with his eyes wide and staring. Mercury recognized hypervigilance. Haze noted the slight bulge that was Rusty against the tent, though, and the tension drained out of him. Almost relaxed, he crossed his legs and took his water bottle when she handed it to him, saying, “Don’t get dehydrated.”
His throat moved above his chest, which was bare, the shoulder bruise obvious. His bones were clad with neatly packed muscle. “Thank you.”
“Can I stay?”
His eyes widened again, but this time not with hypervigilance. “Always.”
She reached up to put Skance in the tent’s keeper net.
“What’s that?”
“This is our god, the lesser god I mentioned to you.” She showed him the figurine of the slender, androgynous human with a wry face. The wide collar of Skance’s robe was a Möbius strip, the surface with only one side, like her bracelet.
Haze chuckled. “I recognize that one. It’s St. Chance from the gallery of saints on Goya.”
Really? “Do you mind him being here?”
“No. The Goyans say Chance was blinded in an accident and now has stars for eyes. He sees atoms, but not corporeal bodies.”
That was what her uncle said about Skance. Maybe her people, in retreating from exploitation, had forgotten quite how much long history they shared with the rest of humanity. She tucked Skance into the netting.
“Can I see you?” Haze asked.
She slipped out of her shoes and clothes until all she wore was her silver bracelet. She wanted him out of his clothes too. By the time they were both naked, he was ready to find his place inside her. She was more than ready to have him inside her body. After a kind of fumbling that verged on wrestling, their bodies found the fit that she craved. He was tightly wound up for love, and it went on and on, punctuated by his delight and hers. At some point he tapped off the light. Sight turned into sound and touch and taste, the tent decided to turn transparent, and the river of stars flowed above them. They fell asleep still coupled with each other.
She woke up under a pale predawn sky. Made of smart material as it was, the tent had concluded that a long night’s occupation by bodies that had finally turned off the light and been still for a long time meant they’d want its transparency at first light. It was predawn cool, but they were in the sleeping bag, warm enough. Haze lay asleep beside her, his face unlined, pain erased while he slept.
She knew the shape of him now. She knew some of his responses and he knew some of hers. She didn’t yet know if he’d changed her body even as he began to know it. Genetically, as an old Tellan, he was standard human. So was she except for the Chancer gene, which was compatible with the standard genome. And old Tellan and a Chancer could reproduce. Had he made that singular, vital difference in her during the night?
She had to find out.
Slipping on her clothing, she went downstairs to the refresher unit. None of the Pastfinders seemed to be in the station. They were missing a pure dawn with the sky like a bowl of pale blue glass. Undoubtably they were deep underground in the dark, trying to save that statue.
Saving the Tellan statue was what she hoped to make happen, with a wild unlikely hope. Her heart pounded, not knowing what she had done and what she could do, just how much her luck could change things now. If the answer was not so much, she’d be disappointed. She wanted to save the statue for the Pastfinders. Still, she’d be glad of how she’d spent the night. The statue was the perfect prize for the Pastfinders. Haze was a perfect prize for her.
The station’s main room was deserted. The cracked mirror on its stick lay on one end of the table. She touched the mirror, ran a fingertip over the cracks. Metal and glass flowed under her skin, making the mirror feel warm. She held up the mirror in light that came through the window. The image it showed her of herself revealed no cracks.
She had healed the mirror.
The realization made her tremble.
Haze had slept deeply, almost dreamlessly. Bad dreams tested the perimeter of his mind, but Dusty patrolled, and he sank back into restorative sleep.
He wakened with Mercury gone. She’d probably headed for the refresher unit. Her god was still where she’d left him, in the netting. Presumably St. Chance had enjoyed an uneventful night.
Opening the tent flap, he looked down at Rusty. Rusty met his look with strange compassionate eyes, and Haze felt whole. He’d lived with a hollow hole in him for years and not even known it but now he was whole again. With memories that would trap him on Tellus, if not bring him to a bad end. But probably not today.
Rusty followed him into the station. He found Mercury in the station’s so-called clean room—not microscopically clean, but more so than the station generally. It was where sweepings were analyzed and artifacts were dusted, the dust analyzed. Mercury was sitting very still at the table, holding the rod from underground.
Now he knew well what she looked like. Yet seeing her again, the curve of her cheek bones and the shape of her shoulders, was a surprise and delight. “Busy?”
She turned around with her eyes wide. “I wanted to take another look at this. I got lucky!”
Haze remembered the rod being discolored, visibly corroded. Now it had the brightness of cleaned metal.
When she pressed one of the buttons, Rusty let out a little yip, getting their attention. Then Rusty stood still as though frozen in place.
Haze felt alarmed. “What’s wrong, boy?”
Rusty wagged his tail tuft very slightly.
“What does that mean?”
Mercury said slowly, “A researcher named Askalen hypothesized that the Tellans had sound-based mechanisms, responding to sound that ranged into ultrasound. To Rusty, if he hears it, maybe it could be—not compulsion to him—but explanation for us?”
“He could be telling us that the sound it just made means stay? Freeze?”
Rusty’s ears both stood up. Rusty—the name Haze had given him automatically, but was so ironic for a robot that it felt just right—was far from being an inanimate, insensate, unthinking machine. That had become clear in only a day. What kind of thinking, feeling and intelligence Rusty would show in days or months ahead, Haze could not even imagine. He was an incredible creation. Which they were hastily experimenting with. Haze felt trepidation as Mercury tried the second button.
Rusty gave himself a little shake, swung his head, and shuffled his legs.
“Wake?!” Haze hazarded. “Good boy! Good boy!”
At the third button, Rusty walked across the room in a straight line.