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After the hunt, Cleve looks for Mariah. He finds the younger man heading down the corridor towards Roze’s office with that scrawny kid from the medical center, Takuto. “Hey, you want to go over to Tenoch’s garage?” Cleve asks. The two of them are supposed to help Tenoch relocate the robots today.
Mariah pauses, leaning heavily on his cane, eyes closed and brow furrowed as he considers his response. Takuto looks up at him nervously. “Ugh, I don’t think I’m up for that today,” Mariah finally answers, voice strained.
Cleve gives a swift nod of the head. When they were out in the field, he asked Mariah to recognize his limits, and clearly he is doing so right now. “Okay, that’s fair,” he says.
On his own, Cleve heads to Tenoch’s lab to make sure this is a good time. The hardware hacker is in a good mood and ready to go. They need the robots taken to their garage to contribute to a project they’ve been tinkering at for a while. “Yes, I have a, mmmm, Unity rover. It came on the ship. Perhaps you are familiar with the specifications of this sort of jeep-like device?”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re familiar with a jeep, yes? It’s like that. But not.”
“Does it have four wheels?” Cleve asks.
“Yes. Four wheels. Room for four passengers, some cargo.”
Whatever its actual shape, that device definitely sounds useful, and Cleve is quite willing to help, but more hands are needed. Tenoch is probably the oldest person here, white-haired and somewhat bent-framed. Cleve decides to recruit Cor. She should be happy to spend a bit more time with the robots. The functional one has had a full night to recharge, so it will be able to drag the other one once they get it set up with the litter again.
Cleve tracks her down in the galley, where she is nursing a cup of coffee. “Hey, Cor, do you want to go see Tenoch’s garage?”
She looks up at him, dark smudges under her eyes. “Roze never went to bed. They were just looking at data all night long,” she marvels, sounding exhausted. “I don’t know how they can do that! I’m like thirty years younger, and I cannot keep up with this person. It’s like I wasn’t even there, to them.”
“But it’s only been one night,” Cleve replies, unimpressed. “I’ve seen Roze go for days.” Cor shakes her head at the thought. “We’ll keep an eye on Roze,” he assures her. “After about three or four days they get a little squirrelly.” Although Roze hasn’t left their roller chair, Cor did at least get them to eat a ration pack, so there’s nothing to be concerned about from Cleve’s perspective. He’ll just make sure to check in on Roze later that day.
Cor accompanies Cleve back to Tenoch’s workshop. She has never heard of a jeep before, but there were trucks in the Morgan domes. She herself never worked for a repo squad, so she had no opportunity to learn how to drive. She can, however, work with robots. When Tenoch sees her and Cleve, they say, “If you can command or drag or otherwise get those bots moving… We need those bots at my workshop. However they get there, I don’t care.”
“Robot!” Cor calls out. The fully functional one whirrs and hums as it comes to life. “Down the hall!” It rolls out of the room, with Cleve and Cor pushing the other one after it. Up on the surface, Cleve clears damp wind-blown fungus caps from his litter and hooks it to the working robot again. Once the broken one is in place, Cor keeps an eye on the trundling bot brigade while Cleve clears the path ahead as much as he can. Tenoch leads the way out of the plains-like lowlands near Data Haven and deeper into the wet mushroom forest. They are all glad that today’s storm has already rolled through. No miasma patches linger around to catch them.
In a little over an hour, they reach an old chunk of Unity protruding from the side of a hill. Tenoch brushes vines to the side, revealing an entrance the size of a garage door. They begin typing in the passcode. And continue typing. And continue.
Cleve looks back at the path they all took and figures it can’t have been more than two miles. “All you need is one siege worm to make a tunnel,” he mutters.
Cor snorts. “Are you crazy, Cleve? Summoning a siege worm? Those things will eat your leg—if you’re lucky!”
“Well, but a tunnel would be nice. Not with a siege worm in it!”
Tenoch does not pause their typing, but asks, “Are you interested in tunneling equipment?” Cleve certainly thinks some would be useful. “I have some excavation equipment,” Tenoch shares. Cleve grows pensive, imagining a network of tunnels connecting all of Data Haven’s little outposts. Tenoch knows there are a few others, but their garage is the only one they visit. They tamp down Cleve’s enthusiasm for the tunneling project, though. Tenoch doubts their excavator would be sufficient to construct a mile-long underground tunnel. “Unless you propose some sort of cut-and-cover approach to your tunneling… but even that would be a major construction project.”
Cleve counters with the idea of just making a long enclosure to reduce exposure to miasma and the elements. Unlike Cleve, Tenoch has worked on tunnels before, just not on this planet. They consider it to be a fraught endeavor. “You don’t think it could happen?” Cleve prods.
Tenoch sighs. “It would take a lot of time and a lot of effort. A lot of time and effort outside. If your robots can somehow be commanded to do this, perhaps.”
“The more time I spend working on these bots, the more I’ll be able to get them to do,” Cor says confidently. “Certainly more than just roll. Once I see the excavation equipment, I’ll know if it could get attached.”
“Well, perhaps then one day we will have a tunnel,” Tenoch replies. They enter the final digits of their excessively long passcode, and the large door in the hillside opens with a hiss.
///