Although Brice had demolished a tunnel with explosives, it still would have been safer to take the underground route. However, when I mentioned this, Brice said, "No offense, Bernie, but I'd rather have my other eye gouged out than smell your ass again. It's like someone tried to brew beer with cat piss and old Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. Plus I'm carrying all this shit. I'd rather take the elevator."
I stared in surprise. "Elevator?"
He swallowed and didn't reply. I guess he had only temporarily forgotten my earlier act of betrayal.
In silence, I followed he and Mrs. Hansen outside, passing through a miniature forest of small oak and maple trees. Both children made it a point to stay by my side.
I saw nor heard any sign of Sydjea anywhere, which seemed like a good sign.
"You know," Brice said to Mara as we continued on. "It was a boyhood fantasy of mine to be a pirate. Of course, this wasn't quite what I had in mind."
As we walked, irrigation machines produced a rainstorm, the precipitation draining, to my surprise and delight, into a wonderful little fountain, a structure of concrete carefully molded to resemble a cluster of frolicking dragons.
I had glimpsed the thing before, in the distance, shrouded by clusters of oat plants, but hadn't seen it up close until now. Amazing how humans could dig ordinary substances like limestone, clay and gypsum out of the ground on an alien planet and mix it together to make something so charming.
Mr. Pittman with his missing eye, kept grumbling under his breath about the drizzle.
With surprising haste, he hobbled through the oats and low lying peanut plants, leading us to a small freight elevator.
The machine stood beneath a massive concrete shelf (the `upper floor' in this `double decker farm' - they used mirrors and fluorescents on the lower).
The elevator, not designed for passengers, offered little safety equipment, only a few bars of railing and a cage-like shaft that corrected objects with wayward wheels and the sudden hops of poorly weighted bins.
Brice shoved a giant green bin aside, settling into a hunting chair in the rear of the car.
He waved Mrs. Hansen away. "You got working legs. Go up top and check if the coast is clear. My grandmother moves faster than this thing, and she's dead."
The woman nodded.
"No!" Sarah cried, grabbing the woman. "Mom! Don't go!"
"Chill, kid. She's just going up top to meet us. Your mom's not an idiot. If there's heavy shit going on up there, she'll get the hell out of dodge, maybe find a flamethrower and get us out of this can. You're the Terminator, aren't you, Mara?"
"I'll be bock," she said in a passable Schwarzenegger impression.
Mrs. Hansen gave Sarah a comforting wave, walking up the staircase.
The elevator had been modified, as humans weren't meant to travel in the machine, an Iron Man action figure wired to the cage to serve as the up and down button. Brice pushed its glowing chest. "Up we go."
As the elevator started up, a garbled voice came out of the toy. "Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?"
A slow and incredibly noisy ride . As the car rose with its angry whine, I decided we'd lost any gain we'd made from the ridiculous Dalek machine. Sending Mrs. Hansen ahead had been a good plan.
Aside from the roar of the machinery, a tense, silent ride, and understandably so. You didn't easily forget losing an eye, and the girls...not sure they understood what I did, either.
The sun cast moving crosshatched shadows through the scaffolding as we rose, the turning wheels of the machinery creating hypnotic patterns in the light.
"You wouldn't hurt us, would you, Ernie?" Rebecca asked.
"No."
"He'll just let his family do it for him," Brice said. "Won't you, Bernie?"
I only sighed in response.
"It's not fair for you to say that," said Sarah. "Ernie risked his life to save us. He fought the other aliens. He's not their friend anymore."
Pittman rolled his eyes. "Right. He just likes putting adults and the handicapped out to pasture."
I growled at the insult, but he only laughed. "What's wrong, Bernie? Did I touch a nerve?"
I nearly wept, fighting back the anger. "(Perfect). Have you ever sliced your sister's head open and watched her die?"
He swallowed. "I don't have a sister."
I sneezed. "Well I did. Her name (angel), name was Kiarsshkoy."
He silently stared as I coughed in remorse.
"He's crying," said Rebecca.
"Ernie is a she," Sarah corrected. "I heard her say it."
The girl remembered! Even in the face of my pain, the thought made my heart thump with happiness. I wagged my tail in response.
"That would make him, I mean, her, Ernestine, wouldn't it?"
"I guess."
We found Mrs. Hansen waiting before the elevator on the upper floor.
The moment the platform stopped, she flung the safety gate open with haste. "Hurry! We have to go now!"
Mara's eyes widened in shocked puzzlement as a pair of claws tore through her stomach.
Instead of reacting with a terrified scream, the expression on her face said `Well! This is new!'
The claws dug deeper, and she vomited white fluid, face still calm, but now saying, `Uh-oh. This is very inconvenient.'
The girls screamed as Mara's body got ripped in half, upper torso flying left in a milky white spray, lower body landing in a plot of peanut plants.
"Disgusting!" my mother said. "It's nothing but chemicals and preservatives!"
The elevator had been too noisy and slow, and seemed someone had forgotten to close the second floor entrance to Hydroponics. A big Ss'sik'chtokiwij like mother could easily jump the staircase landings from the lower floor and run through an open door to the source of the noise. Not the first time I'd seen her perform such gymnastics.
"Mom!" Sarah burst into tears. "Mommy! No! Mom!"
Father and mother, both lost within hours of each other. Sarah now had no one.
My heart sank as the little girl's body trembled with sobs.
Brice gripped her arm, shaking her into sanity. "Cool it, kid! She's a robot! We can rebuild her! We have the technology!"
Mara Hansen squirmed on the ground. Despite having been dismembered with her intestines strewn every which way, she was still alive.
The strange scent, her unusual strength and intelligence.
A machine! I thought. It all makes sense!
Mr. Pittman's confusing comments.
She was so nice to me, too.
"Mommy's not a robot," Sarah moaned in a disbelieving wail.
"I don't think a human would survive that," Rebecca whispered.
Sarah ignored her.
"She bleeds coolant," said Brice. "The thing ripped her in half and she didn't scream. What more proof do you want?"
"She's not a robot!" Sarah screamed.
"Honey," Mrs. Hansen called from the ground. "You need to go."
Sarah laughed, then wept.
"I love you," Mara said, spitting up coolant. "I'm sorry."
What was my mother doing all this time? Shopping, like a child trying to decide between nougat creme and cherry vanilla at a chocolatier. Who would she eat first?
I thought about taking the elevator back down the way we came, but that would involve closing the gates, not an easy task with mother already looming inside. Plus, with the slow machinery we'd only create a giant human version of those rotating pie displays they have in restaurants.
"Bernie," Mr. Pittman said. "If our pathetic non-alien lives have any meaning to you at all, you need to kill that thing, and you need to kill it right now!"
A sob crept into my voice. "But that's my mother!"
Grouchsticks sighed. "Fine. Don't kill her. Just do us a favor and knock her ass in the dirt. Give us a chance to get out of this can. Can you at least do that much?"
I swallowed, gave him a nod.
Glancing back at Sarah, I yelled "Go!" turning my attention to mother.
I leapt.
Mother stood about seven feet tall, weighing more than three hundred pounds, and I barely half that.
Needless to say, I did not succeed in "knocking her ass in the dirt."
Up until this point, I had not been acquainted with the concept of the `bitch slap,' but in one swift motion, mother familiarized me with the subject, leaving me sprawled in a patch of peanut plants.
"Great job, Bernie!" Pittman yelled. "That was real helpful!"
Something made a rapid mechanical putting sound. My mother shrieked.
"Mom!" I gasped, leaping to my feet.
False alarm. Mom's chest wound was only superficial.
Brice brandished his automatic drilling device threateningly as mother stared him down like a lion facing a tamer's chair.
The acid damaged blade spun and jabbed. Mom didn't know what to make of it.
One false move and Brice would dislodge a crutch and end up flat on the elevator floor. I had to do something, and fast.
I jumped, latching onto mom's back like a monkey teasing the King of Beasts, clawing her exoskeleton and swinging my weight back and forth to unbalance her.
As mom ineffectually reached back in attempts to dislodge me, Brice stabbed her with the drill.
She shrieked, slamming the man against the elevator wall, and on his face.
Mr. Pittman swore as glass shattered and amber liquid dampened his satchel and gushed on the floor of the elevator car. It hadn't been the best idea to bring beer.
To my disappointment, the girls had not fled, apparently too paralyzed with fear to move. "Get out of here! Go! Before (yes) she gets you too!"
"You heard Bernie!" Brice moaned as he fought to get back up. "Move before I kick your little asses!"
I rocked back and forth on mother, dodging her claws.
Before the girls could move, a blistered black shape limped in front of the elevator, looking like a pincushion with all those darts stuck in its body.
"Sydjea!" I gasped.
The girls sucked in their breath, backing to the rear of the car.
This was it. With Brice groaning on the floor, the children were essentially meat in a can. Unless the man could somehow get up and dig something clever out of that satchel, our luck had run out. Even with me distracting mom, Sarah and Rebecca didn't have a prayer.
Well, they had my prayers, but that hadn't helped Brice very much, so it left me wondering how much they got heeded.
Unlike a movie where a guy could just jump into the air, do a triple back flip and knock all his enemies out with well placed Kung Fu kicks. If I jumped off mom to attack Sydjea, mom would toss me into the `lower floor' before I could land the first punch, claw, or other attack. Even in the unlikely event of me successfully jumping off mom and landing on Sydjea's back, mom could just step around us and eat my friends.
All my hope evaporated as my sister loped past that safety gate.
But then the unbelievable happened.
Instead of attacking, Sydjea pointed into a plot of oats, screaming one word: "Go!"
What!
Sydjea? Telling the children to flee?
I glanced into the surrounding farm, but I could detect no signs of ambush.
To my utter astonishment, Sydjea leapt at mother, destabilizing her balance even further.
"Run!" I shouted to the girls. "(Hello)!"
Then Mrs. Hansen reached up from the ground, pulling my mother's leg out from under her.
All three of us went thundering down the spiral staircase.