The train passes. Ears splitting, heads hurting, they regroup with Crank, crouched into a ball, her ears under a cushion of tiny hands and long hair.
"Crank!"
She jumps. "Oh! Fuse!" She hugs the life out of him, and the other guys in turn. "Is that...?"
Fuse rubs his eyes again. "Yes, Haskins and Parks. It would appear we're mostly here, wherever here is."
"Motherville." Crank loses color in an already white face saying it to her compatriots. "It brought us to her."
The men consider the conclusion as what is now clearly the form of ragged Milkman, and a one-armed Lawman march up to join ranks. They moan and groan with every step.
"You guys look beat to all hell." Thurman puts out the good news.
Benny stands to stretch. "No kidding? What's with all the yellow gunk, or is my visor foggy?"
"No, Traveler Haskins," Fuse advises, "we all see it. An overdose of something in the atmosphere, perhaps a pigment?"
"Or sulfur," Crank offers. "No. Then it would have a rank odor and we'd all be gagging. Perhaps the sun, or what passes for them in Motherville emits different wavelengths of light."
"Say what now?" Parks is up, helmet off, giving the scenery a double shot of evil eye.
Benny leans on his ride. "You can't be serious! I knew the peri-dimensional thingie would work some kind of wonder but...nah! Are you saying you blew a hole clean through the universe to the one she's from?"
"It makes sense. We were at Pea Patch, which seems to be near the epicenter of where she first entered years before. The engine didn't make the opening--"
Roy ends the tale, "It expanded it."
They pause. The road creaks and groans with a gargantuan force.
"WHY?" echoes with the vibrations. A hard word to discern, as it is muffled by the groaning, clashing, seismic enlargement of the local crystal girders. More crystals bloom from the ground.
"What the Devil?" Goldman is about out of sanity and patience. No one hears him. He can't hear anyone else. Reason and speech are rendered obsolete.
The crystals expand. Up and up in dangerous, breaking shards. Out from their bases, pushing into buildings, rending foundations. The road splits. Bolts fly off as shot. This small world gets even smaller.
No reason. No communication. Instinct empowers the ragtag band.
Run!
Blocked.
Every route is blocked by the crystals. The ST gang make it a dozen yards in any direction before being routed right back to each other. Only the caged sky has yet to become a crystalline disaster. Haskins and Parks think alike. Propellers on! Tilt down. Wings extended. They wave arms in a flurry for their compatriots to climb aboard.
Thurman is last to grab Milkman's bird leg leaking motor oil. Up. Up they go, and just in time. The parched road on which they stood now hemorrhages crystalline cysts. Those crystals birth more out of their sides. The ascent is at an improbable angle. Parks pulls up easier despite wobbling. He was situated at center. Haskins, closest to a crystalline mound, scrapes the arrow feet along the mound, sparking, chipping. He skates more than he flies. Milkman trembles, the stick taut in Benny's arthritic hands. Teeth gnashing. He knows Crank and Thurman are down there, terrified, completely dependent on his every move.
"C'mon, Milk!"
Rumble. Sputter. Too steep. Too close!
"C'mon!"
Scrape! Ching!
Milkman scours the top edge. The weightless feeling of flight is better than a happy day.
"Traveler?" Parks, farther ahead, plays maternal.
"We're good, Parks," Haskins sighs his biggest sigh, a world record. "Good. See that long clearing? Beyond the crystal range? Bunch of people, I think. Let's drop there and see what's--"
"WHYYYYYYYYYYY!"
The cry is deafening, reverberating out of the trembling crystal legion.
"I already know what's what. We finally cut the queen, and she's pissed!"
Panic. Fear. A ghastly new world. A lot to take in. But it doesn't stop our heroes from using their brains as the fighter planes hop/land in the midst of a crowd of folks.
"Are they...duochromatic?" Crank hollers to the rest over the din of dwindling engines. She isn't sure it's a real word, but it fits.
Roy is first to stop gripping a leg and approach the ragged group, who back away. "It's okay. We are not your enemy. Yes, Crank. They are all black and white. Clothing. Their skin, eyes." He gasps, "My God."
Despite the apparent European, African and Asiatic features, these people are the whitest white in skin tone. Their clothing, tatterdemalion and from scattered eras, are blacker than tar. It's hard to discern features; where hairlines begin, if they have eyebrows or lips. Irises and pupils are black holes. They express fear, though.
"Motherville!" They point and cower. "Machines are Mother! Mother is the Machine!"
Roy stretches out his hands. His wife and daughter spring to mind. How scared are they slaving back at Seabrook? "My name is Roy. I'm from Earth. We use machines there. They do not use--"
First contact ends in an ear bashing rant of WHY. The scream returns. The people scatter. Crystals just out of the gears, levers.
"WHY? WHY CAN'T I GROW? WHY DOZZZZZZZZZZ----- YOU ZZZZZZSTUNT MY D/D/D/D/DEVELOPMENT? I HAD CH/CH/CHILDREN! BEAUTIFUL F/F/FAMILY!"
"Motherville!" Crank rolls up her sleeves and grabs an errant scrap of metal. "Are you mad, you stupid cow? We hurt you, didn't we? The engine!"
Benny readies his finger on the trigger, only to recall he's out of ammo. "Shoot! Crank! Wait a minute!"
The crystals form eyes, the vacant kind found on marble statues. Crank sets to shattering them. More form for every one she breaks. Thurman joins in, as does Goldman. They hammer away at her. If she's trapped them in her lair, Motherville will live to regret it.
"MILKMAN! SUCCUMB TO ME! WHY WON'T YOU LIVE IN ME SO WE CAN GROW AS ONE? MOTHER AND FATHER. PARENTS OF A NEW UNIVERSE!"
"Shutup!" Crank adds boot stomping to the beatdown.
"Doesn't add up," Parks removes his helmet. "She drunk, crazy or what? Better be worried about fallin' apart! How would you bond to a machine anyway? Heh! Why would you want to?"
Benny sees the answer, or so he thinks. Parks just showed it. Maybe...
"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle!" He keeps his helmet on, but detaches the wiring, and climbs out of Milkman. "Don't worry girl. I see every scratch. We'll get you patched up. Let Daddy go to work first." He marches on.
The march seems eternal. Warfare. Motherville. Growth. Marriage. Women. He's been born from woman, raised by them, healed by them. Violated by one of them. Is in love with one. He's not sure where the thoughts are going. There are bigger meanings in them as a whole. Crank slows down her assault as she witnesses her guy come into view.
"Fine, Motherville. I'm here. Milkman, in the flesh. You wanna get hitched? Bring your darling face here, the real one, and let's get to it!"
Crank drops the weapon, rubs her nose. "Wait. What now?"
"You heard it right, kid. We hurt her, but we can't go home without her. So, marriage it is." He winks. He waits for her to catch on.
And...she doesn't. "B-but, you love me!" Her heart crinkles up.
"Freddi, that's not what--"
The ground rumbles again. Crystals coalesce before Benny's boots. They crack, collide, turn orange and heat to blush. An image forms. A woman, in form but twisted into a mockery any Cubist painter would be proud of. Huge thighs. Sharpened chin. Left eye huge. Right eye a tiny triangle. Uneven breasts lacking detail. Fingers trailing down as stalactites. She moves in chunky, animated steps, a flip book female.
"HERE." The mouth doesn't move. It hangs in a devolved fashion, a drooling invalid way. "ZZZZZZZZZLET THE ZZZZUNION BEGINZZZZZZZ!"
"Sure, gal, sure." Benny looks at Roy, who appears to be up to speed. He watches Crank. Still heartbroken, soon to cry. Ah well. "But first, I have to show you the real me." He removed the helmet.
"WHATZZZZZZZZZ?" Motherville walks back,
by growing new crystals behind her, snapping the upper body off the current supports in order to burn onto the new set. Loud. Awkward. Primitive.
"She's fallen back on her original form." Roy gets the boys up to date. "The per-dimensional engine seems to have severed much of her machine connections. All she's left with are..."
Thurman gets it. "Temper tantrums?"
Roy gives a thumbs up.
"You see, Motherville," Benny approaches the bench, "back where we're from, machines didn't make the world. We made them." He holds the bug helmet out in front.
"HOW? ZZZZZZCONFLICT UNRESOLVED ZZZZZZERRORZZZZZZNON-FUNCTIONZZZZZ"
"You mean you didn't know? How could you not? The global travels, studying us for years." Benny laughs, uproarious egotism. "You had to have seen me with it off, right? Or, like most fatheaded conquerors, you assume too much?"
"Benny, what are you doing?" Crank's beautiful heart is in the way of her gorgeous mind. Shoulders slouched.
He gives her another wink. "She doesn't get it? Funny, ain't it? All the computations, the growth yakkity-yak. Here, nothing could be without her control. She can't fathom it being any different any place else. Hubris."
"This is true." One of the black-and-white dares to speak. "We were lost here, long ago, encased in Her. The Spiders freed us. With the base and the ball, they did. Their win, our freedom. Their demise."
Roy gets near them. The one who spoke gestures to the others not to run. "Are you saying the Delaware Spiders baseball club set you free, by playing a game? And, Motherville later killed them for it?"
Three nod yes. One, a girl, lifts up a tattered Edwardian day dress. Beneath it's blackness, a white shirt with pencil thin blue lines. At the left breast, an image in faded blue. A spider resting over a capital 'D'. "What remains. Heroes," she whispers it while crouching down, eyes on Mother. "They died for us without ever knowing us."
"Fascinating." Roy loses his breath. It's like he was a kid again, hearing an adventure story for the first time.
"SLICKS NOTZZZZZZZZZ MADE ZZZZZFOR SPORZZZZZZ..."
"I bet they're not." Benny puts on the helmet. "Listen, sister, we're not the brightest bulbs in the universe, but we're not stupid enough to let our machines run us either. Milkman and I are not one. It's just a fancier tool than most. No spiritual bond. No conjoined whatever. So, you can't get what you want, because it never was. Got it?"
Motherville shivers. Her still life body suffers fits.
"Oh! So you played her!" Score one for Miss Musa!
"Yeah, kid. In her drunk, power mad state, I don't think it ever dawned on her to think things on Earth run different than what she's used to. Thanks, Parks. I owe you one."
"Okay," He has yet to figure out how he inspired.
"Alright, Motherville, since you can't bond with a tool and me, 'cuz Mother Haskins boy is a one-woman man, you be smart and send us back through the hole. Or, we take our last breaths to crack you wide open." He let's the outside display a massive cockstrong zeal. Inside, Benny prays this bluff holds out, that he's right and God's on their side.
Creak. Shudder. Snap!
"NEVZZZZZZZZZZER!"
The ground rumbles more. The black-and-whites make maddened gestures.
Roy moves with them. "I believe they want us to follow. Maybe they know where the door is!" He runs.
Benny climbs aboard Milkman. "Any day now, sister. Face it! You're gonna have to spend all that growth you've acquired healing up. Let us go! Get some sleep. We'll talk later." Cocky? Yes, for again Benny got it before the brains did, and he's given a bad woman what for for once in his life. Licked 'em clean. The circle is complete. He hooks back into the plane. Engine in an uproar.
"ZZZZNO!" Her crystalline form cracks, moves to block the path.
"Oh, no you don't!" Crank gets madder, and grabs a bigger hunk of metal as the house of cards comes tumbling down. Whack! She takes a great, Lou Gehrig swing at the Cubist head, knocking its burning lights out. Encore. Encore! She wears her arms out on Motherville's failing bottom.
"Crank! We gotta go!"
She gets to going, people and clamoring planes running for their lives down a narrow corridor of giant levers and insane pistons. Hit by hot air. Pushed about by spewing hot petroleum. Dodging falling masses of wrangled iron. Down a rabbit hole to an unknown destination, the only way out. If there is an out.
Behind them, Motherville. A shattered visage. Unable to pull up further crystals, she is motionless. Crumbling form. Half a face. Not growing, no longer living the dream. Worse, shrinking. Collapse of civilization. Ruined. Survive!
"GETZZZZZZZ SLEEP ZZZZZ TALK ZZZZ LAY ZZZZTER ZZZZZZZ--"
The cage high above falters. One of the artificial suns careens off course and down a hanging track, a falling star.
It strikes the Mother's body. An orb the size of a stadium makes impact. The boom is catastrophic.
"There!" The people yell in triumph while quivering at the sight before them.
Bolts and robotic mice scurry without a definable pattern at their feet. Some flip upside down and die outright. Everyone dodges falling junk as much as they stare.
"This is the hole?" Roy sees it. At least, he supposes he does. Their sole escape route has led them to a wall. A non-reflective, blank, eye-deadening wall.
"I was expecting a swirling vortex or something more...exotic." Crank's disappointment is audible even over the din of the world crashing down.
"It was bigger before!" The day dress girl touches the wall. "It is shrinking now!" For a few seconds after the touch...ripples.
"Like water?"
Roy touches it too. "The river! The hole was formed in the Delaware River, right!" Touch. Ripples. Pluck. Ripples. Slap. Larger ripples. He smacks his hands together and holds his breath. "One, two..." He punches the wall with everything he's got left. His fist enters, holds fast inside, and comes out cold, soaking wet. Roy giggles. "Mammoth surface tension. Applies to dimensional apertures as well!"
Larger bolts bang against Jack's fuselage. "Everybody get behind me and Milkman! We break the tension, should make it easier for y'all to get through!"
A willing army stands behind them, trusting in the work of men using machinery. A rush of heat, accompanied by a ground thunder, comes up behind them.
"We gotta go!"
Milkman and Jack take off, maximum gallop. The others storm behind.
Engines snarl at the wall. Machines strike their target as the sun's explosive might reaches out.
BLACK
Chapter Thirty-Three: Gasoline Whirlpool
Good thing they held their collective breaths first. Leap! Plunge.
White.
Black.
Brown.
War paint.
Benny takes a chance. After all, he's wearing the insect helmet, so why not chance opening his eyes? Brown swirls go on forever, cut off by intermittent motions, passing white waves, wisps of human hair. The space he occupies spins up and left as one. He feels Milkman tugging away from him, the straps on the seat pulling him back. No, sucking him down. His uniform is a sack of bricks on clammy skin.
Underwater.
Air!
He panics as it sets in. He can't hold it in any longer and seizes control of his machine. Stick is sluggish. Go. Go! He doesn't know which way is up. Below is an abyss. Above, more of the same. He opts for up. Death either way maybe. Death for certain if he stays put. Objects ram against the plane, hard forms that bang, soft forms that usher in quizzical rumblings. The water is filthy, a muck of primordial swamp pulled up from the earliest days of the riverbed's formation, coffee waterspouts, petroleum in the mix.
Big metal arms arc up and down. The propeller is jammed. Come on, baby! Sputter. Something rocks her back and forth. The inside of the helmet fills with nasty water. Ice cold. Hypothermia. Can't breathe. His damaged leg seizes up with the mother of all cramps. Nothing's working. Nothing--
"I got you!" Water recedes in waterfalls. Air filters in, sweet, glorious, reekin
g of gas. Metal bangs on metal. Benny sees, but not with clarity. He hears better. "Traveler Haskins!"
"Parks!" Benny spits out more grit than liquid. "Thank God you made it! You saved my--" Waves pound both fighters, eliminating communication. Benny thinks they made it. Hard to tell. Impossible, really. A storm is over their heads. White lightning strikes again and again. Like a lit trumpet player doing a solo set in the Grand Canyon, power unleashed in syncopation. Benny is truly scared straight. He can sort of see it in Parks as well, even through the blinding rain, the pounding waves. They're in the midst of a river, the worst storm they'd ever seen, and in metal tubs sinking as much as they're treading water.
"I can't hold both of us up! We gotta move!" He has his propeller running to a slightly better degree, enough for forward momentum. Benny is splashed over and over with gas tainted liquid. He's shivering. He feels like his toes are missing. Milkman’s mighty engine begins to sputter.
"Hey!" He swallows water and chokes. "Can you see anyone else?"
Heck, he barely sees Parks right in front of him. Lightning strikes something nearby. A building, stone by the heavy crash into the water, topples. "Fort Delaware?"
"Can't say! Look!" Parks waves behind Benny. Someone, some people, take hold of Milkman. It's two of the black-and-whites. They wash up with dead perch by the dozen on the plane's riveted shoreline.
"You two see anyone?"
They shake their heads. The lightning strikes, and they come close to jumping off of the plane. Waves increase, battering the machines.
"I think...I think we're close to shore!" Benny feels the drag of Milkman's feet on what he prays is sand.
"Crank! Crank!"
"Thurman! Goldman! Fuse!"
They yell into the maelstrom, hoping that, after all they've endured, they'll find their allies on a beach, alive. They cry out. No one cries back but the lightning.
A light shines on them. An unsteady, but luminous, beam of hope. "Haskins and Parks!"
Benny can't believe his ears. "Traveler Gray!"
A second light hits them. The black-and-whites cower. An object bangs against Lawman.
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