Hominids

“Ponter!” he called again once the wind had died down, but although the room was large, the register tanks, arrayed in a vast grid, were all narrow columns; there was no way Ponter could be concealed behind one of them.

What could have happened? If a rock wall elsewhere in the mine had collapsed, and behind it had been an area of low pressure, maybe …

But there were seismic sensors throughout the mining complex, and they’d have triggered the release of warning smells here in the computing lab if there had been any such disturbance.

Adikor hurried across the granite floor. “Ponter!” he called again. “Ponter?”

There was no fissure in the flooring; he couldn’t have been swallowed up by the ground. Adikor could see register tank 69, the one Ponter had been working on, at the far end of the room. Ponter obviously wasn’t there, but Adikor ran over to the register, anyway, looking for any clue, and—

Gristle!

Adikor found his feet going out from under him, and he came slamming down on his back on the granite floor. The surface was covered with water—lots of water. Where had it come from? Ponter had been drinking from a tube earlier, but Adikor was sure he’d finished it upstairs. And besides, there was much more here than could have fit in a tube; there were buckets of it, spreading out in a wide puddle.

The water—if that’s what it was—looked clean, clear. Adikor brought his wet palm up to his face, sniffed. No odor.

A tentative lick.

No taste at all.

It was pure, apparently. Pure, clean water.

Heart pounding, head racing, Adikor went to get some containers to collect it in; it was the only clue he had.

Where had the water possibly come from?

And where on Earth had Ponter gone?

Chapter 5

What the—?

Absolute blackness.

And—water! Ponter Boddit’s legs were wet, and—

And he was sinking, water up to his waist, his chest, the bottom of his jaw.

Ponter kicked violently.

His eyes were indeed wide open, but there was nothing—absolutely nothing—to be seen.

He flailed with his arms while treading water. He gulped in air.

What had happened? Where could he be?

One moment he’d been standing in the quantum-computing facility, and the next—

Darkness—so unrelentingly dark, Ponter thought perhaps he was blind. An explosion could have done that; rock bursts were always a danger this far underground, and—

And an influx of subterranean water was possible. He swung his arms some more, then stretched out his toes, trying to feel for the bottom, but—

But there was nothing, nothing at all. Just more water. He could be a handspan from the bottom, or a thousand times that much. He thought about diving down to find out, but in the dark, floating freely, with no light at all, he might lose track of which way was up and not make it back to the surface in time.

He’d taken in a mouthful of water as he’d felt for the bottom. It was utterly free of taste; he’d have expected a subterranean river to be brackish, but this seemed as pure as meltwater.

He continued to gulp air. His heart was racing, and—

And he wanted to swim toward the edge, wherever that—

A groaning sound, low, deep, from all around him.

Again, like an animal awakening, like …

Like something under great stress?

He finally had enough air in his lungs to manage a shout. “Help!” Ponter called. “Help!”

The sound echoed weirdly, as if he were in an enclosed space. Could he still be in the computing room? But, if he were, why wasn’t Adikor responding to his calls?

He couldn’t just stay there. Although he wasn’t exhausted yet, he soon would be. He needed to find a surface to clamber onto, or something in the water with him that he could use as a flotation aid, and—

The groaning again, louder, more insistent.

Ponter started to dog paddle. If only there were some light—any light. He swam for what seemed a short distance, and—

Agony! Ponter banged his head into something hard. He switched back to treading water, his limbs begi

Another groan, coming from—

His heart fluttered; he felt his eyes go wide, but they saw nothing at all in the blackness.

–coming from the hard wall in front of him.

He began to swim in the opposite direction, the noise now growing to earsplitting proportions.

Where was he? Where was he?

The volume continued to increase. He swam farther and—

Ouch! That hurt!

He’d slammed into another hard, smooth wall. These certainly weren’t the walls in the quantum-computing chamber; those were covered with soft sound-deadening fabric.

Whooooooshhhh!

Suddenly, the water around Ponter was moving, rushing, roaring, and he was caught up in it, as if he were in a raging river. Ponter took a huge breath, drawing some water in with the air, and then—

And then he felt something hard smash into the side of his head, and, for the first time since this madness began, he saw light: stars before his eyes.

And then, the blackness again, and silence, and—

Nothing more.

Adikor Huld walked back up to the control room, shaking his head in astonishment, in disbelief.

Ponter and he had been friends for ages; they were both 145s, and had first met as students at the Science Academy. But in all that time, he’d never known Ponter to be given to practical jokes. And, besides, there was no place he could be hiding. Fire safety required multiple exits from a room on the surface, but down here practicality made that impossible. The only way out was by walking through the control room. Some computing facilities had false floors to conceal cabling, but here the cabling was out in the open, and the floor was ancient granite, polished smooth.

Adikor had been watching the controls; he hadn’t been looking out the window at the computing chamber. Still, there had been no flash of light to catch his eye. If Ponter had been—well, what? Vaporized? If he’d been vaporized, surely there should have been a smell of smoke or a tinge of ozone in the air. But there was nothing. He was simply gone.

Adikor collapsed into a chair—Ponter’s chair—stu

He didn’t know what to do next; he literally had no idea. It took several beats for him to focus his thoughts. He should notify the town’s administrative office that Ponter was missing; get them to organize a search. It was conceivable—barely—that the ground had opened up, and Ponter had fallen through, maybe into another drift, another level of the mine. In which case he might be injured.

Adikor got to his feet.

Dr. Reuben Montego, the two ambulance attendants, and the injured man entered through the sliding glass doors to Emergency Admitting at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, part of the Sudbury Regional Hospital.

The E.R.’s casualty officer turned out to be a Sikh in his midfifties with a jade green turban. “What is it that is wrong?” he asked.

Reuben glanced down at the man’s nametag, which read N. SINGH, M.D. “Dr. Singh,” he said, “I’m Reuben Montego, the site doctor at the Creighton Mine. This man here almost drowned in a tank of heavy water, and, as you can see, he’s suffered a cranial trauma.”

“Heavy water?” said Singh. “Where would you—”

“At the neutrino observatory,” said Reuben.