I could not scent anything but sewage through the flowing sewage, but Rebecca's course seemed straightforward. The sewer channel did not split off in any significant way.

Plus, the Ss'sik'chtokiwij all seemed intent on hatching their larva in the warmth of those heat exchangers or other radioactive machinery the processing station had to offer.

The station had more plumbing than I realized. Restrooms, water fixtures, perhaps a shower for an executive or two. The channel ran the entire length of the underground tunnel, from the base to the station.

It seemed the Ss'sik'chtokiwij had figured this out a long time before most humans had. After traveling a fair distance, I discovered a large hole in the wall, leading into a dark chamber of non-human design.

When I climbed through, I found the severed head of the Mara unit.

I cautiously poked it with a claw, and its eyes came open, staring absently at the wall as she spoke in a slurred voice. "It's the shape of a square. Can you find it anywhere? Can you find...it?"

And then, "Daughter, I am very proud of you."

The head ceased speaking, perhaps due to running out of power.

Suppressing a cough, I set Mara aside, creeping further up the passage.

"How are you even going to get that to work?" A Ss'sik'chtokiwij voice growled. "The creature is much too short. What's more, its internal organs are not developed enough to sustain a decent larva. You'll have to squat down to cocoon it."

I thought about Sarah, and how Maria hatched from that small body just fine. I kept quiet about it, not wanting to give them ideas.

"Forget it, Lisconu," another voice replied, clearly Anjonssud. "Go find your own prey and leave me alone!"

The Ss'sik'chtokiwij congregated a few yards up ahead. I passed through a chamber lined with broken Pale One sleeping pods, climbing a ramp into the labyrinth of animal-machine wall segments that served as Grandma's foyer.

The girl stood against one of these mutant structures, staring upward into the face of Anjonssud. Her expression made me think of Joan of Arc, rather than a frightened child.

Lisconu watched from one side, whether preparing to intervene or choke under pressure, it was difficult to say.

Anjonssud tore the green tracker band from Rebecca's arm, examining it. "What is this? It seems highly inefficient as a body covering."

"It is for luck."

Rebecca had said this in Ss'sik'chtokiwij. Her proficiency with our language continued to astonish me.

"How is it that you speak Ss'sik'chtokiwij?"

Rebecca shook her head. "I do not know."

Anjonssud grabbed the girl by the neck, turning her head to the side.

Rebecca showed no fear. "Do not touch me. I belong to Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. I am her prey, not yours."

Anjonssud spat on her claw, etching a burning squiggle down the side of Rebecca's face. I winced, but the girl didn't flinch or cry out at all. "Now you are mine."

At this precise moment, I approached her, cracking my knuckles. "I beg to differ."

I leapt upon Anjonssud, knocking her to the floor, pounding upon her with my fists.

"Take the girl away from here," I commanded Lisconu in English.

"But where do I take her? There are Ss'sik'chtokiwij everywhere!"

Anjonssud reached up and grabbed my throat. It took a considerable amount of effort to push her claws back. "I don't know! Just find somewhere safe and stay there!"

"Right away, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!"

I couldn't observe her departing, for at that very moment, Anjonssud extended her scimitar weapon, thrusting it at my head.

I grabbed her arm, attempting to force the weapon away.

I glanced up for a split second, noticed, to my satisfaction, that Lisconu and the girl had fled. Good.

Anjonssud took advantage of my distraction, retracting her weapon and extending it in quick succession like a jackhammer.

I flinched, leaping back just seconds before getting impaled.

The cobra-headed Ss'sik'chtokiwij lunged forward, gouging me across the rib cage.

I looked about, but could find no weapons, or weapon-like objects, just seamless...biomechanical stuff. I didn't know how this situation would resolve itself. The weapon could easily cut through steel and make Julienne fries.

She swung the blade at my neck, but I ducked, narrowly avoiding decapitation.

"Anjonssud! Don't hurt my mother!" a voice shouted.

"She's stealing my prey!" Anjonssud cried angrily.

My daughter shook her head at me like I were some disobedient child. "Mother, is this true?"

"The lamb she desires, used to eat of my morsel, drink from my cup, and lie in my bosom. Let her get another from her flocks and herds, and leave mine alone."

I thought this a very clever reference to the story of King David and Uriah the Hittite, but Shauqauzjarruba just stared at me. "You say some very strange things, mother." Her frown indicated an understanding. "You speak of the one you declared my sister."

"Yes."

My daughter turned toward my attacker. "There are larger humans approaching, much more suitable for uwberssud. A male and female. Come, Anjonssud. Let us go after them instead."

Anjonssud growled at me. "This isn't over, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."

She departed with my daughter.

A moment afterwards, a dark shape crept around the wall. "Grandmother wants to see you, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."

Hissandra. Unsurprising for her to be lurking here.

"I do not have much time."

"I know. I still do not understand this `Thermine Ewe Killer' thing of which you speak. Perhaps if you shared minds with me, it would clarify things."

"I do not think we have enough time to do that. Suffice to say, it will make everything go boom and kill us all, if we stay where we are."

"Please, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. Share your mind. Just for a few seconds, so you can demonstrate the concept."

After thinking about it for a bit, I decided I would never get an opportunity to witness to Hissandra like this again. Even if we both died in the process, we would be alive together in heaven. What a blessed transition to our heavenly home!

I pressed my lips to hers, connecting our worms.

Grandmother's house vanished, and we stood in the back alleyway of Rosedale Square, next to Ss'sik'chtokiwij Gretchen Goose's nest. The large creature stopped her sewing to wave to us.

"What is this place, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik?" Hissandra asked.

"It's just a construct. So I can establish that you are here enough for me to show you this."

I switched on Gretchen's little beat-up television showing her archival footage of B-52 Bombers dropping atomic warheads.

And then came the mushroom clouds at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the footage of buildings being blown to dust, the recordings of the aftermath, the radiation burned people, the blistered corpses, the destroyed buildings.

"That's...going to happen here?"

I nodded sadly.

"Isn't there some way to stop it?"

"I don't think so."

"You seem...untroubled by all this."

"There is a chance that I, my daughter, and maybe you, could come aboard the humans' ship. They promised to take us to the other side of the planet, so we would not be destroyed."

"There is no food there."

"I know, but the Lord will provide."

Hissandra sighed. "We're already here, so teach me about this God and Jesus thing. I still do not understand why you are so obsessed about it."

[0000]

I showed her some significant events in my life where the Lord changed me.

I didn't get to finish. Someone kept shoving me, and shaking me, shouting, "Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

I disengaged my worms from Hissandra to find Rebecca staring at me.

"Get out of here!" I yelled. "Go find some place safe and hide there and don't come out!"

The girl swallowed. "This is the only safe place."

Lisconu still accompanied her. "I tried to get her to safety, but she kept wiggling on the floor and foaming at the mouth. I thought I'd bring her to you right away."

Rebecca looked proud. "I scared them. They thought I was xulrubdan."

"You...faked all that?"

She staggered back, blinking several times. "Where am I?" Then, as she stared at me, "What are you?"

No time to explain, even if it would do any good. "You're in my house. My name is Ernie, and you're going to have to stay here a few minutes."

I shoved her into a little alcove, spreading a cocoon around the stalagmites I found there.

"Wait!" she cried in alarm. "What are you doing!"

"You're having seizures." I layered more cocoon over the initial layer. "This will keep you safe and out of the way until I can find your friends."

"No! Wait! Don't leave me here!"

I made no reply. I just cocooned some more.

"Ripley!" she screamed. "Help!"

"Rebecca, you stay put and shut your mouth, or one of my relatives is going to find you and you won't be safe anymore!"

That quieted her.

"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik," she whispered in Ss'sik'chtokiwij. "I love you."

I had never heard Rebecca say anything like that to me before. It came so unexpectedly that I started crying.

An angry shriek. A dark cobra striped body threw me to the floor. "This prey is mine, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. I dragged it all the way down here, I marked it, and if you think you and your brainwashed follower can just steal it out from under my face, you're dead!"

She clenched her fist, baring the deadly scimitar.

"She is not prey! She is my daughter!"

"You are sick, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. And if you do not let this one go, I will kill you."

I pushed her off me. "I refuse!" And then, straightening, I placed myself between her and Rebecca's cocoon. "Here I stand, I can do no other."

"When I am finished with you, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, I swear you will never stand again!"

An intense, brutal conflict, me fighting to bash Anjonssud's head and weapon claw against various blunt objects, Anjonssud repeatedly making stab moves with her weapon.

We rolled over and over each other like armadillos, then I'd jump away as she slashed and jabbed.

We fought our way into the `basement'.

Anjonssud swung her blade at my head. I dodged out of the way, and her blade struck a drum that had, for some reason or another, been untouched by hungry Ss'sik'chtokiwij.

A long white snake beast burst from its interior, blindly seeking a skull to bore through.

With alarming speed, the thing reared up, attempting to ram through my dome in the fashion of sperm penetrating ovum. I grabbed it by its middle, beating it against a wall like a dirty rug.

I rolled sideways just in time to avoid a stabbing scimitar.

The weapon's end pinned the worm beast to the projecting lip a wall, and for a few moments Anjonssud reeled backwards, struggling to dislodge the vicious creature from her blade.

I took this opportunity to make my escape, backtracking a couple feet down the tunnel to check on Rebecca.

I bumped into Lisconu.

"Your prey is gone! Someone took her!"

I growled, clenching my fists. "Who took her?"

"It was the female! The one with the curly hair and the gun!"

Breathing a sigh of relief, I stared down the tunnel. "Where is the woman now?"

"I do not know. She fired many bullets at me. I was afraid."

I glanced around the basement. My attacker had vanished. "Where is Anjonssud?"

"I don't know. She disappeared down a tunnel. I saw her wrestling a worm."

I decided it best to stop by the armory and see what kind of weapon I could find with which to defend myself, perhaps my friends if they needed the protection.

I found the selection of weaponry no less bewildering as it had been the last couple times I'd visited, nothing clearly labeled. For all I knew, any one of them could be a laser, a nuclear missile launcher, or an automatic cake mixer. I only had familiarity with the rack of harpoon things along the back wall.

Hoping I'd stumble across something good, I grabbed an unidentified item, allowing it to pierce my shell as I tried it out.

No apparent use. An experimental clench of my fist made my whole body vibrate, and a loud screeching noise came out. I threw it aside.

"What is that?" Lisconu asked.

"Something...unhelpful."

"What do the others do?"

As I reached for another one, Lisconu stiffened as a blade exploded from her rib cage.

The curving piece of metal ripped upwards through her vital organs. She collapsed on the floor, dead.

"Lisconu! No!"

Anjonssud stepped over the corpse, gritting her teeth. "Don't bother getting a weapon, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."

My foe retracted her blade. "I've heard that you've been longing to be with your god." She clenched her fist, and the blade flashed out again. "Why wait?"