The Wild Robot Protects: Chapters 22–44

The creature had a small head and long flippers and a large, streamlined shell.

The migratory sea creatures disappeared back down into the abyss.

The fish were twisting and turning together, as if they shared the same mind. Roz had seen flocks of birds flying through the sky in a similar manner. Then, as now, she couldn’t stop watching the undulating group of animals.

At the back end, its propellers fizzed through the water and left a trail of frothy waves in its wake.

Their shiny bodies thrashed as they tried to break free, but the net was too strong.

Roz waded through the mid-ocean shallows until the road sloped downward and she descended beneath the surface, where she found more signs of civilization.
Old mailboxes, crusted with barnacles.
An abandoned automobile, draped with seaweed.

Some of its walls had collapsed, and its flimsy roof rocked side to side with the waves, but it was still standing.

Electricity had overwhelmed her circuits, but then her recovery program activated, and after a moment, she was fully functional again.

There wasn’t much to see besides junk and shadows. The flooded grocery store was a dreary, dismal place.

It was just a field of shrubs and grass and a few scraggly trees.

Mushrooms are fascinating things. They’re not plants or animals—they’re fungus. Surprisingly, the fungal growths were surviving in that harsh environment. The robot’s computer brain went to work and found that certain kinds of mushrooms were capable of healing the land by absorbing toxic substances.

Roz was an amazingly durable machine, but if she went too deep, she’d be crushed by the immense water pressure.

Some creatures were transparent, some had spiky teeth jutting from their jaws, and some wriggled down into the muck.

From the top of each tower spewed scalding-hot water that had bubbled up from deep underground. The warmth attracted a wide array of living things.

Gardens of corals and sponges and flowery sea anemones clung to the rocks and danced in the whirling currents.

Hungry fish floated nearby and eyed the assortment of tasty creatures.

Certain deep-sea fish had glowing fins, while others had glowing teeth, and still others had spindly glowing lures that dangled from their heads.

When the whale’s laughter subsided, he said, “You think you can stop the poison tide? You must be joking. The poison tide is vast, and it spreads farther every day! I’m a giant, and even I couldn’t stop the poison tide. A puny creature like you has no chance.”

The robot searched through her computer brain and found words like plankton and bioluminescence. Tiny plants and animals floated throughout the world’s oceans, and many of them glowed softly.

As her long ocean journey continued, Roz passed the time by sharpening her skills of echolocation. With practice, she identified an underwater mountain range, and a sleeping whale, and a piece of driftwood, long before she saw them.

The dolphins crowded Roz, studying her and prodding her and chattering to themselves.

All at once, the dolphins blew air from their blowholes, and a dense layer of bubbles carried the fish up to the surface, where they thrashed through the waves, and soon flocks of hungry seabirds were flying toward the scene.

And just like forests on land, this underwater forest was teeming with wildlife.

Our robot had arrived at the tundra, where cold temperatures and short growing seasons made it impossible for trees to take root.

They were burly beasts, with long fur and short tempers.

She crossed windswept fields and leaped over thickets of shrubs and passed hot springs that sent steam floating into the sky.

And then the aurora appeared. Curtains of colorful light shimmered and billowed through the night sky.

Roz stood on a rocky outcrop and scanned the desolate landscape.

Roz stood on a rocky outcrop and scanned the desolate landscape. There were cliffs and canyons and fields of boulders, and in the middle of it all was the glacier.

The glacier was covered with slick ice and sweeping snowdrifts and deep crevasses. A single slip, and she might never be seen again.

Streams of meltwater rushed through furrows in the surface.

She chopped her hand into the wall like an axe—hack!—and pulled herself up.

The front edge of the glacier was made up of frozen cliffs that towered above the waves, and high up, on one of those cliffs, was Roz. A lone dark shape against an immense wall of white.

The air was thick with pungent smells and with steam rising up from the herd.

Then he clambered atop an actual boulder for comparison. The likeness was remarkable.