I was in an earthquake once, in Santa Barbara; I didn’t need a booster shot to remember what every Californian knows and others learn in one lesson: when the ground does a jig, get outdoors!
Only I couldn’t.
I spent two minutes checking whether adrenalin had given me the strength to jump eighteen feet instead of twelve. It hadn’t. That was all I did for a half-hour, if you don’t count nail biting.
Then I heard my name! “Kip! Oh, Kip!”
“Peewee!” I screamed. “Here! Peewee!”
Silence for an eternity of three heartbeats- “Kip?”
“Down HERE!”
“Kip? Are you down this hole?”
“Yes! Can’t you see me?” I saw her head against the light above.
“Uh, I can now. Oh, Kip, I’m so glad!”
“Then why are you crying? So am I!”
“I’m not crying,” she blubbered. “Oh Kip … Kip.”
“Can you get me out?”
“Uh-” She surveyed that drop. “Stay where you are.”
“Don’t go ‘way!” She already had.
She wasn’t gone two minutes; it merely seemed like a week. Then she was back and the darling had a nylon rope!
“Grab on!” she shrilled.
“Wait a sec. How is it fastened?”
“I’ll pull you up.”
“No, you won’t-or we’ll both be down here. Find somewhere to belay it.”
“I can lift you.”
“Belay it! Hurry!”
She left again, leaving an end in my hands. Shortly I heard very faintly:
“On belay!”
I shouted, “Testing!” and took up the slack. I put my weight on it-it held. “Climbing!” I yelled, and followed the final “g” up the hole and caught it.
She flung herself on me, an arm around my neck, one around Madame Pompadour, and both of mine around her. She was even smaller and skinnier than I remembered. “Oh, Kip, it’s been just awful.”
I patted her bony shoulder blades. “Yeah, I know. What do we do now? Where’s W-”
I started to say, “Where’s Wormface?” but she burst into tears.
“Kip-I think she’s dead!”
My mind skidded-I was a bit stir-crazy anyhow. “Huh? Who?”
She looked as amazed as I was confused. “Why, the Mother Thing.”
“Oh.” I felt a flood of sorrow. “But, honey, are you sure? She was talking to me all right up to the last-and I didn’t die.”
“What in the world are you talk- Oh. I don’t mean then. Kip; I mean now.”
“Huh? She was here?”
“Of course. Where else?”
Now that’s a silly question, it’s a big universe. I had decided long ago that the Mother Thing couldn’t be here-because Jock had brushed off the subject. I reasoned that Jock would either have said that she was here or have invented an elaborate lie, for the pleasure of lying. Therefore she wasn’t on his list-perhaps he had never seen her save as a bulge under my suit.
I was so sure of my “logic” that it took a long moment to throw off prejudice and accept fact. “Peewee,” I said, gulping, “I feel like I’d lost my own mother. Are you sure?”
” ‘Feel as if,’ ” she said automatically. “I’m not sure sure … but she’s outside-so she must be dead.”
“Wait a minute. If she’s outside, she’s wearing a space suit? Isn’t she?”
“No, no! She hasn’t had one-not since they destroyed her ship.”
I was getting more confused. “How did they bring her in here?”
“They just sacked her and sealed her and carried her in. Kip-what do we do now?”
I knew several answers, all of them wrong-I had already considered them during my stretch in jail. “Where is Wormface? Where are all the wormfaces?”
“Oh. All dead. I think.”
“I hope you’re right.” I looked around for a weapon and never saw a hallway so bare. My toy dagger was only eighteen feet away but I didn’t feel like going back down for it. “What makes you think so?”
Peewee had reason to think so. The Mother Thing didn’t look strong enough to tear paper but what she lacked in beef she made up in brains. She had done what I had tried to do: reasoned out a way to take them all on. She had not been able to hurry because her plan had many factors all of which had to mesh at once and many of them she could not influence; she had to wait for the breaks.