“Get to the point, will you? Or let’s go.”
“Irrigation outlets. This valley has to have them in some form. If we turn them on, they’ll eliminate our heat trail.”
“Well…” She knelt down beside him. “They could be anywhere. And it’s dark. Besides, Derec, this is a high-altitude valley. Maybe the natural fog and rain take care of all that.”
“That would be leaving too much to chance. We have to figure this out.”
“How?”
He sat back and looked at her. His legs no longer hurt; they were nearly numb. “All right. Instead of looking at random, we have to work it out logically, like the robots would. Where would you place irrigation outlets for the greatest efficiency?”
“How do I know?”
“Well, I can hardly think at all!”
“All right, all right. Concentrate. We’re on a slope… Derec, come on. This way.”
He nodded and forced himself after her, stumbling on feet he could hardly feel.
After a walk that seemed much longer than it could possibly have been, they stopped along a row between the trees that ran horizontally along the slope. Now Derec was the one looking all around for Hunters that could come from any direction.
“They must use these furrows as a kind of terracing,” said Ariel. “I think we’re right in the middle of the vertical rows. If they put the irrigation spigots near here, they would lose the least amount to runoff down the slope. The same with fire control.”
“It sounds good to me,” said Derec, collapsing to the ground again. “Let’s find it.”
“If it’s here,” she added, joining him on the ground.
“I got something.” Derec’s hand had come across a small cylinder sticking up perhaps fifteen centimeters from the surface of the ground. He got down low to look at it in the faint light.
“Now what?” Ariel whispered, moving next to him. “It doesn’t have any controls or anything. What if the sensors are somewhere else?”
“It’s possible,” said Derec slowly. “But look how high it is. Why would they do that? They don’t do anything sloppily here, or without a reason. They don’t waste material, either.”
“Derec, we can’t just sit here and try to outguess them. Who knows?” She shook her head. “Maybe we should just keep running, huh?”
He shook his head. “This is the only real chance we have left. Come on, help me bury it.”
“What?”
“Hurry! Why else would it be so tall? This whole thing is its own sensor. It probably judges air moisture and precipitation and who knows what.”
“How do you know?”
“I think they designed it at this height so it wouldn’t be covered by minor shifts in the soil during hoeing and other care. If we cover it with dirt, it’ll stop sensing. Come on!” He was already scraping up the soft black soil, which the function robots seemed to keep turned constantly, and began packing it around the cylinder.
She joined him without further argument. They found the soil damp enough to stick to the cylinder if they packed it hard, and before long it was covered. Derec wiped the dirt off his hands on some leaves.
“Now what?” She asked, wiping off her own hands. “Nothing’s happening.”
Chapter 18. Down Ahole
At the far end of the valley, Wolruf sat quivering in the chilly air. She was huddled high in the mountains in a vertical crevice of rock. This was the compromise she had reached for her conundrum: she was in the valley where she could try to observe the humans or even Mandelbrot if they were here when day broke. At the same time, she would not lead the Hunters following her directly to them.
Now she could not see any of them in the faint light down in the valley. In the nearer regions below her, function robots were visible doing their regular chores among the crops. Her physiology kept her just warm enough at this altitude to remain for a while, but she was not comfortable. Nor did she have the energy left to run farther.
She waited patiently, reviewing the moves she had made to break her trail. None of them could avoid a systematic search by the Hunters if they were close enough to detect her heat. Also, the Hunters probably had checked the pass at some point, because it was a bottleneck that could quickly tell them if she was inside the valley or out.
If her heat trail had faded before they had reached it, they still had physical signs to rely on. She had been as careful as possible, but the robotic vision of the Hunters could detect extreme detail. The rest was up to them.
Her ears perked up at the sound of footsteps on the rock fall below her. With no more energy left for fleeing, she waited patiently. The giant shape of a Hunter emerged from the darkness, thrown into silhouette by the distant glow emanating from the crops below. She knew it would not harm her, but it would take her prisoner and possibly deliver her to Dr. Avery, who could certainly harm her if he wished. She shivered as the Hunter reached down to pick her up.
Derec was staring disconsolately at the dirt-covered sensor when it suddenly erupted in an uneven spray, knocking loose some of the dirt. Ariel and he both flinched. All around them, other spigots were also spraying jets of fine mist into the air.
“That’s it!” Derec lifted his arms toward her. “Let’s go. Can you help me up?”
Ariel took his arms and pulled. His legs gave out under him. She wasn’t strong enough to lift him.
She started to pull again.
“I can’t walk any more.” His lower legs and feet had lost all feeling.
“You can’t walk at all?” Her shoulders slumped.
“But I can crawl. Let’s go.”
“Derec…?”
“Come on!” He started crawling through the soft earth, which was quickly turning to mud.
She stood and walked alongside him. “This is crazy. We’re hardly getting anywhere.”
“We have a lot more time now. The Hunters can’t follow our heat trail so they’ll have to start a pattern search. And at least one of them will have to carry Mandelbrot after they’ve shut him down.”
“Derec, you’ve only gone two meters!”
He stopped, sighing, and looked ahead. She was right. He could barely move. “Hey-what’s that thing?”
“What?” She looked, too.
Some kind of large rectangular shape, at least a cubic meter in size, was emerging from the ground below the trees.
“That…thing, there. We haven’t seen one of those before.” He started crawling again.
“There’s one behind us, too,” she said. “And beyond that one. They’re coming up all over. They were completely hidden before.”
“We must have triggered them along with the irrigation. Go see what it is.”
She hurried ahead and stopped in front of the object, bending low in front of it. After a moment, she came back and knelt down. “I think we can get inside it. It looks like a ventilation duct or something.”
Derec nodded. He had stopped crawling to get his breath again. His head was spinning dizzily.
When she got down on all fours and moved under him, he let her. She gathered his arms around her neck and maneuvered under him. Then, supporting his weight, she began to crawl much faster than he had, carrying as much of his weight as she could.
He hung on with his arms and closed his eyes against the spray of water.
“Here,” she said, after a few moments.
He opened his eyes into a gaping black opening with no other features. As she eased out from under him, he reached inside and felt for the shape of the object.
“It’s not a straight drop.” She helped him climb inside. “You can feel a gradual incline.”
Derec hesitated, too disoriented to speak but still reluctant to throw himself into an unknown hole.
“Go on, get in before the Hunters see us.”
He was losing all sense of his surroundings. Following directions was easier than arguing. He worked his way inside the opening and then suddenly was sliding downward and accelerating.
All was in darkness. He felt a rushing of air, the smooth pressure of the surface against his back as he slid, and Ariel bumping against him from above as she slid with him. Vaguely, he realized he was too exhausted to feel any fear.