Mary rotated her head slightly. “Louise, there should be a square light above the door in front of you. Do you see it?”
“Yes. Oh, it’s green! Good.” She shifted slightly, as if making to exit.
“Freeze!” snapped Mary. “Green is the Neanderthal color for ‘halt’—green meat is rotten meat. When it turns red, that means it’s okay to proceed. Let us know as soon as it does.”
Louise nodded; Mary could feel the back of the younger woman’s head going up and down. Maybe it had been a mistake to bring along two people who had had no preparation for the Neanderthal world. After all, it could be—
“Red!” exclaimed Louise. “The light is red!”
“All right,” said Mary. “Push the door open. The handle looks like a starfish—see it? It slides up to unlatch the door.”
Mary could feel Louise squirming some more, and then suddenly the pressure was off Mary’s back as Louise stepped out of the chamber. Mary took a backward step, turned around, and hurried out of the chamber as well. “This way!” she shouted.
They entered a room whose walls were covered with cubic cubbyholes, each containing a set of Neanderthal clothes. “Those should fit you, Reuben,” said Mary, pointing at one set. “And those should do for you,” she said, indicating another.
Mary was an old hand now at getting into Barast garments, but Louise and Reuben were clearly baffled. Mary shouted instructions at Reuben, and bent down next to Louise, who was having trouble with the footwear built into the Neanderthal pants. Mary did up her instep and ankle ties for her.
They then hurried out into the drift. Mary had hoped there would be a vehicle of some sort waiting there, but, of course, if there had been one, Jock himself would have taken it.
A three-kilometer-long run, thought Mary. Sweet Jesus, she hadn’t done anything like that since her undergrad days, and even then she’d been terrible. But adrenaline was pumping through her like there was no tomorrow—which, she knew, might very well be the case for the Barasts. She ran off down the tunnel, its floor covered with flat wooden boards.
There was much less illumination in this tunnel than in the corresponding one on the Gliksin side. The Neanderthals used robots for mining that didn’t need much light. For that matter, neither did Neanderthals, whose sense of smell gave them an excellent mental picture of what was going on around them.
“How…far…is…it?” called Louise from behind.
Despite the urgency of the situation, Mary was pleased to hear the young woman sounding winded already. “Three thousand meters,” Mary shouted back.
Something suddenly cut across the path in front of Mary. If her heart hadn’t already been pounding, it probably would have started then. But it was just a mining robot. She called out that fact so that Reuben and Louise wouldn’t be startled, then she found herself shouting to the robot, “Wait! Come back here!”
Christine obliged with a translation, and a moment later the robot reappeared. Mary got a good look at it now: a low, flat, six-legged contraption, like a two-meter-long crab, with conical bores and hemispherical scoops projecting forward on articulated arms. The thing was built for hauling rock, for Christ’s sake. It hadto be strong enough. “Can you carry us?” asked Mary.
Her Companion translated the words, and a red light winked on the robot’s shell. “This model is incapable of speech,” added Christine, “but the answer is yes.”
Mary clambered up onto the machine’s silver carapace, severely banging her right shin as she did so. She turned back to Reuben and Louise, who had come to a stop behind her. “All aboard!”
Louise and Reuben exchanged astonished looks but they soon hauled themselves onto the robot’s back, as well. Mary slapped the thing’s side. “Giddyup!”
Her Companion probably didn’t know that word, but surely understood Mary’s intention and conveyed it to the robot. Its six legs flexed once, as if to gauge how much weight it was now carrying, and then it set off in the direction they’d been heading, moving fast enough that Mary felt hot wind on her face. There were puddles of muddy water at various points, and every time one of the robot’s splayed feet came down into one, Mary and the others got splashed with dirty liquid.
“Hold on!” Mary called out repeatedly, although she doubted Reuben and Louise really needed any urging to do just that. Still, Mary herself felt as though she was going to be bounced right off the carapace a few times, and her bladder was objecting strenuously to the abuse.
They passed another mining robot—a spindly, upright model that reminded Mary a bit of a praying mantis—and then, about 600 meters farther along, they passed a pair of male Neanderthals going in the other direction, who leaped out of the way of the charging robot just in time.
Finally, they made it to the elevator station. Thank God those two Neanderthals had just come down: the lift was still at the bottom. Mary scrambled off the robotic crab and dashed over to the elevator. Louise and Reuben followed, and as soon as they were all in the cylindrical car, Mary stomped on the floor-mounted switch that started the upward journey.
Mary took a moment to see how the others were doing; everything had a slightly greenish cast under the luciferin lights. For once, Louise looked nothing like a fashion modeclass="underline" sweat was running down her face, her hair was matted with mud, and her Neanderthal clothing was absolutely filthy with mud and what, after a second, Mary realized was grease, or something akin to it, from the robot.
Reuben was in even worse shape. The robot had bounded along, and at some point Reuben’s bald head must have hit the mine’s roof. He had a nasty gash running along his pate, and was gingerly probing it with his fingers, wincing while he did so.
“All right,” said Mary. “We’ve got a few minutes until the elevator reaches the surface. There will be an attendant or two there, and they won’t let you pass without having temporary Companions strapped on. You might as well allow that—it’ll take less time than to convince those guys that it’s an emergency. And, besides, Companions let us communicate with each other, and with any other Neanderthals we need to speak to. All the ones stored here at the mine have the translation database.”
Mary knew the elevator cab was gently corkscrewing through 180 degrees as it rose up the shaft, but she doubted Louise and Reuben could tell. She lifted her forearm and spoke to it. “Have you reacquired the planetary information network yet, Christine?”
“No,” said the voice coming from Mary’s cochlear implants. “I probably won’t be able to reconnect until we are only a short distance beneath the surface, but I will keep—wait, wait. Yes, I’ve got it. I am on the network.”
“Great!” said Mary. “Get me Ponter.”
“Calling,” said the implant. “No answer yet.”
“Come on, Ponter,” urged Mary. “Come on…”
“Mare!” came Ponter’s voice, as translated and imitated by Christine. “What are you doing back on this side? “Two don’t become One until the day after tomorrow, and—”
“Ponter, shush!” said Mary. “Jock Krieger has made it over here. We have to find him and stop him.”
“He will be wearing a strap-on Companion,” said Ponter. “I saw the arguments in the High Gray Council on my Voyeur after Gliksins were let through before without them. Trust me: that is never going to happen again.”
Mary shook her head. “He’s no idiot. It’s certainly worth getting an order to triangulate on his Companion, but I bet he’s removed it somehow.”
“He can’t have,” said Ponter. “That would have set off numerous alarms. And he certainly can’t be just wandering around on his own. He’s probably with Bedros or some other official. No, we should be able to locate him. Where are you?”
The elevator cab shuddered to a halt, and Mary gestured for Reuben and Louise to hurry out. “We’ve just exited into the equipment room above the Debral nickel mine. Louise and Reuben are with me.”
“I’m at home,” said Ponter. “Hak, call for travel cubes for Mare and for me, and contact an adjudicator.” Mary heard Hak acknowledge the command, then Ponter continued: “Any idea where Krieger might be?”