The carriage house opened for them and they glided inside. They were quick to disembark, and Ktheg!lik sent the carriage back with instructions to push the omnibus as best it could until the omnibus was unable to get closer to the carriage house. She hoped that that wording was sufficient.

  Meanwhile, Geh!aoa was closely inspecting everything in sight, feeling how smooth the walls and floor were, and how the lights were arrayed around the room. “It's amazing,” she murmured.

  “Odaual carried the radio all over to give everyone a tour of the base. I know you watched it.”

  “It's not the same thing as being here,” the younger woman insisted.

  “I understand,” Ktheg!lik conceded. “What would you like to see first?”

  “The indoor shower!” Geh!aoa shouted at once. Without waiting for Ktheg!lik, Geh!aoa dashed into the tunnel leading to Level 4.

  “(Something) found,” Petra announced.

  “I don't understand.”

  “Automata go.”

  Ktheg!lik frowned. “Where?”

  “Automata stop (something).”

  Uh-oh. “Show me where.” The closest light board lit up showing Level 4, with a mark that was presumably Geh!aoa, and several other marks rapidly converging on her. “Petra, stop those automata!”

  I thought I had fixed this! How did I fix this with Odaual? Ktheg!lik's thoughts raced. “Geh!aoa is a friend! Geh!aoa is the person in the toilet now!”

  “Where Geh!aoa go? Where Geh!aoa not go?” the golem demanded.

  “Geh!aoa not go arboretum! Geh!aoa go all places if place is not arboretum!”

  “Understood. Geh!aoa is a friend.” On the display, the automata reversed course, and Geh!aoa was probably none the wiser. Ktheg!lik breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently Petra was not keen on giving blanket permissions to an entire category of people.

  Taking a breath, she began reciting the names of everyone on the omnibus, and carefully giving each the same permissions she had given Geh!aoa and Odaual, one by one. I have to remember to be here to identify them as they come out of the omnibus, too. Hopefully that will be enough.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  * *

  Predictably, Geh!aoa's next stop was the pool. Ktheg!lik left her to it while she talked Odaual and Petra through the steps of giving the omnibus a steady push. It was good that they were making steady progress, since the spare engine was still a couple of kozegs from completion. Well, hopefully this won't be the last trip for the omnibus. Perhaps we should name it as a rescue vehicle.

  She taught Petra the Kthufu words for “search and rescue” and discovered as an aside that Petra knew them in Eengrizz already. Thank you, Nik!eh, she murmured in her thoughts. He wasn't even a fauk!a, but he had jumped right into the effort to save her people.

  She sat in the workroom for a while. It had been a dozen days, but she still found herself short of breath at times. If she understood Petra correctly, she had had two illnesses, not one. One of them was a “virus that jumped species”—whatever that meant—and other was an allergic reaction. The first she had defeated, but the second one was continuing to give her some trouble. It was common knowledge that vanadium was essential to health, and was used somehow in fighting illness. Eventually they would need to secure more, as they only had enough to take care of everyone for a season or so.

  “Ktheg? What do you use to dry off?” The younger fuak!a's voice echoed off the stone from the other end of the level.

  Ktheg!lik flapped her ears a moment and sighed. Right. We're going to need a lot more towels. And nesting materials. And clothes. And who knows what else.

  Time enough to deal with that after the omnibus arrives and everyone is safely inside.

  * *

  It took more than a kozeg before the omnibus's engines finally gave up at the base of the hill holding Petra's underground complex. What followed was a headache, but Ktheg!lik gladly made use of Geh!aoa's youthful excess energy and put her to work on the problem. Together, they created a sunshield big enough to cover the space between the two vehicles when alongside each other.

  After that, they tediously ferried people up the hill in the flying carriage, two at a time. Now that they didn't have to worry about saving energy for the engines, Odaual was able to divert power from the sun catchers to the mysterious cooling system, and conditions aboard the omnibus got a lot more tolerable. Geh!aoa would load two people into the carriage, then Ktheg!lik would meet them as they arrived, and made sure Petra considered them friendly.

  The hardest part came towards the end. They decided to wait for nightfall to bring Kek!ooa up the hill on the stretcher. Sun exposure was nothing to trifle with, and the planned transfer was awkward enough that they couldn't rule out someone falling down in the light and getting badly burned.

  Ktheg!lik received a pleasant surprise during this process. She wasn't sure whether Petra had interpreted some old command from Nik!eh, or one of hers, or just decided on her own, but the golem had started to prepare living quarters for the new residents down on Level 6, carving several additional rooms out of the hill and even adding a toilet at the end of the hall.

  Petra informed her of the development as soon as someone stumbled across the work in progress. Ktheg!lik was probably imagining it, but it almost seemed to her that the golem was looking for praise for showing initiative, which she gave gladly.

  I can't pat you on the head, or scratch you behind the ears, but...good job, Petra. Good job.