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into
his bones.
"The seal's something like a dark concrete," he muttered as if to himself.
"Smoothed even with the stone. Which means they must have come outside to
finish
it, though they didn't bother to clean up the debris from the blast." He
shrugged and gripped the wheel. "I guess it means they're though with us."
Mondragon climbed into the bubble, watching the tower as Cruzet backed away
and
started down the slope to the frozen beach. Before they had gone a kilometer,
he
felt a sharp jolt. Cruzet stopped the scout and climbed into the bubble.
"What did you see?"
"Nada, Senor."
"Too many quakes." Cruzet's iron control gave way to a shiver. "On a planet
too
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old to quake. I don't like it, but we've got to try again."
He returned to the controls. Before they had rolled a dozen meters, another
quake rocked them.
FIVE
They were sitting in the bubble, watching the tower and alert for anything,
when
Andersen came limping back around the rubble mountain. He stopped, staring as
if
the darkness confused him, and stumbled on toward them.
"!Gracias!" Mondragon breathed. "Gracias a todo de los santos."
He was waiting to help Andersen out of the lock.
"?Senor? ?Como 'sta?"
Swaying unsteadily, Andersen looked pale and drawn. He stood frowning through
the stubble of red beard as blankly as if Mondragon had been a stranger, but
the
clumsy stiffness of la maquina male was gone.
"Senor," Mondragon whispered. "!Somos amigos!"
"Thank God!" he murmured at last. "Thank God you waited."
"Andy?" Cruzet came down from the wheel. "What did they do to you?"
"Nothing." He shrugged and stumbled toward his berth. "But we had a
conversation."
"How --" Cruzet searched for words. "Tell us."
"Dead on my feet." He sank down to his berth. "Too groggy to talk, but they're
letting us go. We can start back now."
Mondragon saw his haggard eyes fix on the syncafe machine and filled a mug for
him. He gulped it down, held the mug out for more, and dropped it, asleep
where
he sat. Mondragon eased him down to the berth, pulled his boots off and spread
a
blanket over him.
"You heard him?" Cruzet whispered. "He said we can go?"
"Si," Mondragon murmured uncertainly. "I think."
"We'll try."
He turned the scout and drove cautiously away. No quake stopped them. Driving
faster, he crossed the old beach and followed their track back toward the
ship.
Mondragon stood a long time over Andersen. His breathing was heavy. Once he
stiffened and shouted incoherently in that dead voice, but seemed to relax
when
Mondragon spoke.
The tower was lost in the starlight behind when Mondragon went forward for his
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turn at the wheel. All he could see was stars and frost and their track, a
thin
dark scar stretched across the starlit flat infinity to the flat horizon. He
watched the track and watched the stars and wondered what Andersen would say
of
los demonios del hielo.
A sudden jolt rocked the him.
"Carlos?" Cruzet shouted from the cabin. "Another quake?"
Frowning into the starlight, he found a dark and jagged mark across the track
just ahead. He stopped the scout.
"Un otto terremoto, yo creo." Climbing down the steps, he found Andersen
sitting
up on the side of his berth. "I think they want to keep us till they kill us.
Like they killed Senor Hinch."
"Not so." Andersen stood up, yawning and stretching. "They promised not to
harm
us." He shuffled into the toilet to relieve himself and wash his face. He came
back grinning at a water bottle and a dish of omninute wafers that Cruzet had
set on the shelf at the end of the berth. "Though I thought they were going to
starve me."
"Senor, there was another quake," Mondragon protested. "I see a split in the
ice
ahead of us."
"But not to stop us." He gulped water and sat back on the berth. "They were
closing that crevasse that caught Hinch, so that we can leave. They're with us
now."
"If you're that sure--" Cruzet squinted sharply at him. "What are they? What
do
they want?"
"I'm famished." He picked up a wafer and laid it back. "But their story won't
take long to tell. They is the wrong word, really. We were dealing with a
single
mind that has survived. A singular mind. Our scales of time never quite
meshed,
but it chills you through to know how old the planet is. I believe the last of
them died before our Earth was born."
He stopped, staring at the bulkhead.
"So?" Cruzet urged him. "If they're all dead --"
"You can imagine the problem they faced at the end." He hunched his shoulders
and pulled his arms against him, as if a cold wind had struck him. "Their sun
and their planet were dying young. They'd hoped and worked to survive, but
events conspired against them. They knew other worlds existed, but they'd
failed
to invent wavecraft or anything equivalent. What they did was to create an Al.
An artificial intelligence designed to preserve the best of their
civilization,
a culture that must have been as advanced as our own--"
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