The brown Gliksin looked at the newcomer. The newcomer was shaking his head vigorously—but not at the brown one. No, he was looking directly up into the robot’s glass lens, and making a wild motion with his arms, holding both hands flat out, palms down, and swiping them back and forth in front of his chest. And he kept shouting a single syllable over and over again: “Wayt! Wayt! Wayt!”
Of course, thought Adikor, they, too, were anxious to have an artifact to prove what they’d seen; doubtless they didn’t want to give up the robot. He turned his head and shouted out to Dern. “Keep hoisting!”
Mary Vaughan finally caught up with Ponter at the far end of the elevator building, past the area where miners changed into their work clothes. Ponter was standing on the ramp leading down to the lift entrance—but the metal grating over the lift shaft was closed; the cage could have been anywhere, even down at the lowest drift, 7,400 feet below. Still, Ponter had evidently persuaded the operator to bring it up now—but it could be several minutes before it reached the surface.
Neither Ponter nor Mary had any authority here, and the mine’s safety rules were posted everywhere; Inco had an enviable record for accident prevention. Ponter had already put on safety boots and a hardhat. Mary walked away from the ramp and put on a hardhat and boots, as well, selected from a vast rack of such supplies. She then moved back to stand next to Ponter, who was tapping his left foot in impatience.
At last the lift cage arrived, and the door was hoisted. There was no one inside. Ponter and Mary entered, the operator here at the top sounded the buzzer five times—express descent with no stops—and the cab lurched into motion.
Now that they were going down, there was no way to communicate with the SNO control room—or anyone else, except the lift operator, and he could only be signaled with a buzzer. Mary had said little to Ponter on the hair-raising drive over, partly because she’d been trying to concentrate on keeping the vehicle under control, and party because her heart had been racing at least as fast as her car’s engine.
But now—
Now she had an extended time with nothing to do while the elevator dropped a mile and a quarter straight down. Ponter would probably run off as soon as the cage reached the 6,800-foot level, and she couldn’t blame him. Slowing so she could keep up would delay him by crucial minutes as he covered the three-quarters of a mile to the SNO cavity.
Mary watched as level after level flashed by. It was, after all, a fascinating spectacle that she’d never seen before, but …
But this might well be her final chance to talk to Ponter. On the one hand, the trip down seemed to be taking an enormous amount of time. On the other, hours, days—or maybe even years—wouldn’t be enough to say all the things Mary wanted to say.
She didn’t know where to begin, but she was sure she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t tell him now, didn’t make him understand. It wasn’t as if he were disappearing into prehistoric time, after all; he’d be going sideways, not backwards. Tomorrow would be tomorrow for him, too, and the tenth anniversary of the day they’d met would be simultaneous on both versions of Earth—although he’d probably note it on the hundredth month, or some such date. Still, Mary had no doubt that he would reflect and wonder and feel sad, trying to piece together his emotions, and hers—trying to understand what had transpired, and, just as importantly, what had failed to transpire between them.
“Ponter,” she said. The word was soft, and the clattering of the lift was loud. Perhaps he didn’t hear. He was looking out the cage door, absently watching the dark rock speeding by as they plummeted farther and farther.
“Ponter,” Mary said again, more loudly.
He turned to her, and his eyebrow rolled up. Mary smiled. She’d found his quizzical expression so disconcerting when she’d first seen it, but now she was used to it. The differences between them were so much less than the similarities.
But, still, all along, all this time, there had been a gulf between them—a gulf caused not by his being a member of a different species, but rather by the simple fact of his sex. And more than that. It wasn’t just that he was male, but that he was so overwhelmingly male: muscled like Arnold Schwarzenegger; hairy all over; bearded; powerful, rough, and clumsy all at the same time.
“Ponter,” she said, uttering his name for a third time now. “There’s—there’s something I have to tell you.” She paused. Part of her thought it would be better not to give voice to this, to leave it, as she had so many other things, unspoken, unsaid. And, of course, there was a chance that by the time they reached the SNO chamber—still many minutes away, by lift and by foot—that whatever portal had magically appeared between his world and hers would be closed, and she would continue to see Ponter day in and day out, but with her having laid bare her soul, that ethereal essence that she believed they both had and that he was sure neither of them possessed.
“Yes?” said Ponter.
“You’d assumed,” said Mary, “and I’d assumed, that whatever fluke of physics had deposited you here was irreproducible—that you were stranded here forever.”
He nodded slightly, his large face moving up and down in the semidarkness.
“We thought there was no way you could get back to Jasmel and Megameg,” said Mary. “No way to get back to Adikor. And though I know your heart belonged to him, to them, and always would, I also knew that you were resigning yourself to making a life in this world, on this Earth.”
Ponter nodded again, but his eyes shifted away from her. Perhaps he saw where this was going; perhaps he felt nothing more needed to be said.
But it had to be said. She had to make him understand—make him understand that it wasn’t him. It was her.
No, no, no. That was wrong. It wasn’t her, either. It was that faceless, evil man, that monster, that demon. That’s who had come between them.
“Just before we met,” said Mary, “on the day you arrived here in Sudbury, I was …”
She stopped. Her heart was pounding; she could feel it—but all she could hear was the clattering rumble of the lift.
The elevator passed the 1,200-foot level. She could see a miner out in the drift, waiting for a ride up, his harsh headlight beam lancing into the cage, no doubt briefly playing across her face and Ponter’s, a stranger intruding from outside.
Ponter said nothing; he just waited quietly for her to go on. And, at last, she did; “That night,” Mary said, “I was …”
She’d intended to say the word baldly, to pronounce it dispassionately, but she couldn’t even give it voice. “I was … hurt,” she said.
Ponter tilted his head, puzzled. “An injury? I am sorry.”
“No. I mean I was hurt–by a man.” She took a deep breath. “I was attacked, at York, on the campus, after dark”—pointless details delaying the word she knew she’d have to say. She dropped her gaze to the lift’s mud-covered metal floor. “I was raped.”
Hak bleeped—the Companion had the sense to do so at a great volume so that the sound could be heard over the noise of the elevator. Mary tried again. “I was assaulted. Sexually assaulted.”
She heard Ponter suck in air—even over the rumble of the lift, she heard his gasp. Mary lifted her head and sought out his golden eyes in the semidarkness. Her gaze flickered back and forth, left and right, from one of his eyes to the other, looking for his reaction, trying to gauge his thoughts.
“I am very sorry,” said Ponter, gently.
Mary assumed he—or Hak—meant “sorry” in the sense of sympathy, not contrition, but she said, because it was all that occurred to her to say, “It wasn’t your fault.”
“No,” said Ponter. It was now his turn to be at a loss for words. Finally, he said, “Were you hurt—physically, I mean?”