Haze managed to say, “I’ve gotten back some memories that Faxe doesn’t want me to have. So I asked Tai if I could join your team.”
“I see.” Hopper sounded calm as ever. “I’ve got a few of those myself. Bad memories. The Faxen military trains good pilots for expeditions with bad purposes.”
The copter sped along, almost hitting a spine in the wall, instead gaining altitude where the wind against the spine heaved upward. Haze realized that they needed the additional altitude. Past the spine, the Rift widened and shallowed. The wave would subside. So would the air they were riding. But they were getting close enough to E-Prime to glide down to land somewhere in the city, or near it.
Approaching E-Prime from the east, meant—Haze scanned the valley floor ahead. Yes, there was the desert terraforming site. It fell under Planetary Protection’s Terran biota division. They’d been assured that the restored river wouldn’t inundate it.
“Problem down there?”
“A Planetary Protection site is being flooded. It’s near a copper mine with veins that extend under the site. It won’t slow the expansion of the mine now.”
Hopper just nodded.
Beneath his fear for his life and Mercury’s, under his desperation to stay alive and keep all of his restored memories but not be destroyed by them—he held Rusty with both arms—Haze found a kernel of determination to protect this planet somehow. Just not from within a puppet bureaucracy, a government hollowed out like Tetra.
E-Prime was a very Tellan city with dusty streets sprawled across a lot of land. Water licked its suburbs. Air traffic buzzed like bees in a disturbed hive. Some of the air traffic might be evacuations. Hopper reported the copter’s presence to the Air Control, saying that there were no passengers on board.
Haze looked down at Rusty, wondering how one Tellan bureaucrat and an Old Tellan robot could equate to no passengers. Unfazed, Hopper threaded his way through the other air traffic toward a warehouse roof. “This building is ours,” he said, delicately placing the crate on the roof before landing the copter beside it.
Haze looked up.
From the center of Tellus, the transit tower reached up through the sky. Oddly, it didn’t terrify Haze. It was no thread; it was a colossal highway to space. One closed to Boerdelim Tel-Hazon, he felt absolutely certain. “You should have stayed with Mercury, boy,” he muttered to Rusty.
No one took a deep breath until they saw the copter climb above the wall of water, pivot, and start downstream, riding on the air pushed by the wave.
Silk said, “I think they’ll make it.”
Mercury stammered, “Did I really see Rusty fly to Haze?”
“Yes. It can morph.”
Tai heard that. “That is one gaudy magical robot. Getting it and Haze off this world will cost me dearly but it’s worth it.”
Mikal yelled, “The wave’s mounting higher! We’re not safe here!”
Tai gave a peremptory wave toward the east end of the observation deck, where a path was carved out of the wall of the Rift. “Grab what you can carry but don’t stop!”
The path went up the Rift wall. It had handholds where they were most needed and metal railings beside precipitous drops. Tai was last onto the path. Behind her, water washed over the top of the deck. It got her wet to the chin when she dived to snatch a floating piece of gear. Then she ran up after the rest of them. “Let’s get out of here.”
They climbed up. Below, water poured over the observation deck, taking their stacked things with it. “There goes the body bag, looter leader and all,” Jud observed.
“That was a fluttering expensive piece of equipment!” Tai said.
The path led up to deep stone shelf, almost a cave, in the Rift Wall. There was a rock-colored screen in front of it. They’d not wanted the looters snooping in here. Taking the screen away revealed a small jet parked on the shelf. To get it here, the jet had been lifted by the copter and grappled onto the shelf, with fuel subsequently delivered the same way. It would leave much more straightforwardly.
“All aboard!” Quit said cheerfully.
It was a tight fit for eight Pastfinders and some salvaged materials. Silk started the jet. It hovered while the engine built power. Then the jet bolted off the shelf. It fell, but falling, it gained speed. With the engine at full thrust, Silk inflected its course back up over the flood that now filled the Rift from wall to wall. She was a superb air pilot. The jet streaked westward, climbing to smoother air above the Rift.
The flood had touched the edges of E-Prime. It wasn’t supposed to do that, not according to the models that had been disseminated ahead of time. Mercury hoped no one was in danger down there. Fortunately, the Port stood on higher ground. It wasn’t a seaport—it was a starport. Above the Port, the transit tower stretched toward the stars on the other side of the day-blue sky.
When they saw the copter on the roof of the warehouse, with the Great Crate resting beside it, everyone cheered. Silk put the jet down vertically, beside the copter. That section of the warehouse roof, with the crate and the aircraft clustered on it, smoothly dropped down into the warehouse.
They stepped out in the big dim space between the storage racks and the office. Quit ran into the office and started turning everything on.
Mercury ran to Haze. They held each other. Mercury told him, “I was afraid you wouldn’t make it. I want us together.”
“So do I. Always.” He looked over her shoulder, his face doubtful. “But I don’t know how they can get me off this world.”
In the center of the warehouse, the Pastfinders packed the Great Crate with padding. The Museum of Antiquities in Wendis would ostensibly be getting a section of wall with a hole in it. There would be great joy when the Museum saw what was really in the crate.
But Mercury felt sure that Tai would find a way to get the warhorse back.
In the office, various transmission channels came on. Haze was invisible in any of the video. He and Mercury had found a dusty corner where an opaque window let in sunlight. Rusty might need to recharge his batteries. Haze and Mercury sat on a stack of building materials while Rusty basked in the light. Haze glanced around. “If this building belongs to the Pastfinders, with everything that’s in it, they didn’t lose everything they have on Tellus.”
“Oh, no. In the end, it may be net gain for the Pastfinders.”
“What about for you?” He looked into her eyes.
“Nothing but gain,” she said softly, with complete conviction.
Rusty chirred approvingly.
Tai was busy in the office. They heard her contacting a) the Planetary Government’s branch for off-world relations, b) an insurance entity, c) a legal entity, d) the Wendisan Embassy, e) the Planetary History Division, and f) the Department of Planetary Protection. With visibly wet clothes and disarrayed hair, she indignantly reported the flood exceeding its modeled parameters, necessitating an evacuation of her team with great risk to all personnel and resulting in the loss of equipment, provisions, and collected artifacts—presumably meaning the sandbox.
“She’s laying down suppressing fire.” Silk handed them both cups of fresh hot kavva. “A wet, mad Wendisan with diplomatic immunity, insurance, legal representation on Tellus, and an unconscionable loss of goods and intellectual property isn’t what the authorities want on their hands. They’ll let us go now and deal with this disaster later, and remotely.”