Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (198 page)

Very Bad News

There was a
knock on the door. Tab, who was feigning sleep in his room at
Veen's, heard the approach in the hall so called out to enter. It
was Kit, back in the guise of Jarj Fel. Veen was back along the
hall a ways with a large grin on his face so Tab hugged Kit and
swung him around. He welcomed him back, called for Veen to have
some cool brew waiting as soon as he could get some fresh clothes
on, introduced Kaer Peld who was sharing the bed and invited Kit
inside. He put on clothes at the foot of the bed, chattering all
the while about finding a good place for the glassware factory near
the beach a kilometer to the north, then he and Kit went down the
stairs to the public room. Veen joined them at the table where they
told tales, Kit about fictitious travels farther along the coast
(Checked by floaters so the descriptions would be accurate) and Tab
about the strange fungi he found growing all along Flint Creek on
rotting logs.

"There was a
lot of it around the lower end of Milk Lake," he explained. "Into
Flint Creek to about halfway from the swamp – you remember the one
where we found those funny frogs? – to Lope's farm there didn't
seem to be any, but from there on down to the sea there were quite
a few of them. What was interesting was that the cattle and other
animals seemed to find them a thing to avoid. Even I was disgusted
for some reason and wanted to stay away, but you know me!

"I tore one of
them off of a stump. The smell or some gas or something almost
knocked me out! It DID knock out Kail Free, the farmer who was with
me.

"We have to
find some way to stop those things from spreading. If they take
over too much area there won't be anyplace where the cattle will
feed. It's bad enough the stock won't drink the water in Flint
Creek without something running them away from their pastures, too!
I think maybe it's some kind of stuff the fungus releases that
causes the water to smell so bad. They're certainly repulsive
enough things. Animals can smell a lot of things we can't."

"I saw what
must be the mother of all of those things!" Kit cried. "It was all
of four or five meters high! I think maybe we could find what the
fungus lives on and get rid of all of that kind of food supply.
That would help control it. If certain specific things aren't there
fungi won't ever germinate. I learned that back in biology classes
at school."

"Mar says it
always grows on old rotten wood, like old stumps," Veen said. "Its
what he called a common type of bract fungus. We sort of thought
maybe we could get rid of all the rotting tree stumps and logs
laying on the ground near the pastures and keep the stuff out that
way. It only grows where it can have shade when it's small, too, so
that shouldn't be too much of a problem."

"Is it all just
along Flint Creek?" Kit asked.

"Seems to be,"
Tab replied.

"Then why don't
we get a bunch of people together to remove all the stumps and logs
within, say, ten meters of the banks? If it's some kind of fungus
that's gotten a start near Milk Lake that should get rid of it
pretty effectively," Kit suggested. "Everybody knows the best way
to get rid of a pest is to starve it out. If it isn't in the swamps
with all that rotten wood there it could be because it can't stand
too much water when its young or maybe the swamps are too acid. Or
something. Too stagnant. Maybe there's some sort of bugs in the
swamps and bogs that eats the spores or seeds or whatever."

"Now, that's
true!" Veen agreed. "The mate showed me a long time ago we wouldn't
have any bugs or mold if we took care and saw to it there was never
garbage of any kind inside overnight. We wash everything down
before bedding at night. Have for twelve years and for twelve years
we ain't had any bugs. Starve 'em out! It works!

"This here
fungus eats rotted wood so if there won't be no rotted wood for it
to feed on then there won't be no fungus. Stands to reason and I
learned the same thing in school."

"The spores
won't die for years, but if someone goes up and down Flint Creek
and around Milk Lake once a year it should control it," Tab
suggested. "If it'll guarantee the cattle will graze I'd think the
farmers'd say it's well worth the little effort."

"Make it a
project for the kids," Kit suggested. "After the first time, of
course. They can do it a couple of times a year. All the farmers
have children old enough to make a good job of it."

They agreed
such a thing would be easily worked out, then everyone went back to
their rooms and to bed. Kit was given an adjoining room to Tab's so
when everyone else was sleeping soundly they were able to attach
the shielded information lead to share each other's experiences
since they last were together. They communicated silently when the
information was exchanged.

"I don't like
it!" Tab argued. "That thing has some plan. It's going to act very
soon, I think."

"We'll have to
wait until it does whatever," Kit replied. "I don't have any idea
what it'll do now, but it's going to try something against what it
considers my weaknesses. The problem with that is I'm not at all
sure what it considers to BE weaknesses. Note it attacked me with
the pain thing at a time that didn't make any sense to me. The fact
I was openly going to try to destroy it wasn't reason enough, but
the fact that I seemed to demand – in its estimation – that it
think in a certain way was considered an intolerable insult."

"We knew from
the start we couldn't hope to understand the thing," Tab agreed.
"The good thing is it doesn't understand us any better. In the
morning we'll go together to the labs. We'll take a floater and
some better weapons and have an old-fashioned face-off showdown.
It'll know by now that its spores, the ones that were growing, are
gone. It may have to wait years for any more to sprout. It's been
two days now, three in the morning, since we've demonstrated we can
at least hold our own against it."

"It'll
definitely force the issue," Kit said. "You'd better get back to
bed. Peld is stirring."

They
disconnected and Tab climbed carefully into the bed. Peld turned
over into his arms and gripped tightly around him. He wouldn't get
out of that bed before morning without waking her!

In the morning
the two took a good meal with them, saying they were going to take
Lope's skiff up the creek to see exactly how much of a job it would
be to move all the rotten wood along the waterway. If it wouldn't
be too bad they could get started right away, but the farmers
should begin immediately to move all the wood from their own
lands.

"The fungus
grows from spores," Kit explained to the few who were there. "It
grows fast. The sooner you get its food supply taken out of there
the sooner your cattle will come in to eat the grass. If it gets
started again it could get really out of control in very little
time."

The farmers
agreed to spread the word to everyone along Flint Creek.

Tab and Kit
took the cart with a few supplies to Lope's farm, loaded the skiff
and headed up the creek. They took the time as they went to scan
the banks with their telescopic vision for any of the fungi Tab may
have missed earlier. They found two small patches getting started
over the past couple of days so knew they'd have to check regularly
for awhile, at least.

Something was
different about Milk Lake. The algae wasn't so prominent as before
and the water was clearer. The floater was right there with some
heavier lasers and a couple of small phase shifters so Kit dropped
some of the lake water onto the analysis plate.

"It's almost
back to normal lake water," he reported to Tab when the readout
flashed. "I don't like this analysis at all. The machinery that
controlled the food supply to that thing was automatic and was the
best that can be made. That's why Givzoo couldn't disrupt the
supply. The fungus – by the way, it calls itself ‘You’ – had
complete control of that."

"You?" Tab
asked. "Oh, I see. Visualize the word 'you' when addressing it and
it'll respond. The machinery's turned off, which is something that
can have several meanings, none of them good."

They went into
the creek where the labs were located, noted that none of the
sensors were operational and walked the path to the lab. The door
was still hanging open, though they could see the steel doors at
the end of the hall were closed. Those doors weren't locked. Tab
pushed one and it slid easily out of the way.

"You, we're
coming in to talk with you," Kit said as they entered. There was no
reply.

The fungus
looked quite different. The gold veining was gone and the entire
upper part of the "fronds" were black and cracked.

"Holy novas!"
Kit cried. "The damned thing's spored! It's dead!"

"And look at
that!" Tab added, pointing to the plastic pipes sticking up through
holes in the roof. "That thing could control exactly when it
spored. It used the food supply line.... No, the drainage pumps!
Let's check this out. I think we're in big trouble here. Very big
trouble!"

The fungus had
used its psy powers to control the robotic maintenance servos. They
had twisted the plastic drainage pipes upward from where they
entered the ducts to the neutralizer tanks, knocked holes in the
roof to stick the exhaust ends of the pipes out and anchored the
ends outside pointing straight up.

"It flooded the
retention area below itself, turned off the food supply, dropped
all the spores into the retention pond, then pumped the spores and
food at very high pressure out and up," Kit said after studying the
system. "The pressure readout gauge has a highest/lowest pressure
level indicator that says the pressure was one hundred forty six
kilos. That would throw the spores more than a hundred thirty
meters high, which would be in the wind stream coming inland from
the sea. These spores sticking to the sides of this tank, if
they're average, could be blown outward for hundreds of kilometers
along that wind stream. If there were thermals or strong updrafts
those things could cover this entire continent. If they reached the
jet streams they could be all over the entire planet in a few
days."

"The fungus has
very definitely won rounds one and two," Tab said. "It was able to
propagate itself successfully here and to spread itself all over
this planet. Now we'll have to stop it, but I don't think we have
the knowledge or the tools.

"Gather a few
liters of the spores from various areas around the pool, then we'll
laser the place clean of the rest of them. We'll burn the husk of
the fungus because there are bound to be millions of spores still
sticking to it in various places. Let's get it done!"

They managed to
finish decontaminating the facility before nightfall, burning the
husk to ashes. They then went back to the skiff, put the spores on
the floater and went to the lakeshore before making their further
plans. They both considered the situation very carefully. TR came
in to sit on the lake and they went aboard to attach to the main
console.

"Well, I'll
have the easiest part for awhile," TR decided. "I'll take these
spores to Givzoo and his crew then we can take them all to some
world like PUR thirty two six seven fifty four M. Maita designated
four worlds where the spores can be released for study. The psy
grids are built into Givzoo's crew to guard against the thing. They
can begin immediate research into workable ways of combating it
here. This world is doomed, I'm afraid. I don't see how we can stop
this thing here. Those spores DID reach the jet stream. I've put up
interceptors at all levels and find they're spread more than
halfway around the planet already and will be falling for most of a
year."

"The important
ones will be too big for that," Tab said.

"No, they
won't!" Kit warned. "I see what it did! It programmed the
information in bits and pieces into the spores. To depend on a few
large spores would be too chancy. It would go along with its
evolution, which would be to produce millions of copies of each set
of memories to ensure that a few of each would survive.

"Pulling those
fronds showed me they definitely DO communicate among themselves so
could grow the RNA for all the stored memories in billions of
individuals. We would be sure to miss some of them. It would be
attrition from this point on. It WILL be if we can't come up with
something."

"I'll get Maita
to send us a few hundred specialized search floaters to locate them
as they reach a certain size," TR agreed. "We can't defeat it that
way, but maybe we can keep the problem to a smaller scale. We can
buy some time to find a cure or whatever. What are your plans?"

"We'll go back
into Koosd as Klist Mar and Jarj Fel," Tab replied. "We'll open a
glassware plant in the area we selected, we'll have the farmers
remove the rotting wood as planned and we'll hope we can come up
with something effective against this thing before it can go
through another cycle."

"The best
method is to note signs of the fungus through any differences in
the way people act," Kit suggested. "It'll instinctively begin to
control people as soon as it's large enough. I believe a major part
of that control will be directed at one Clohk Nate. I'll definitely
be perceived as the most important of the fungus's enemies. I got
the idea it felt that to defeat me was to win over all of the
empire. I don't get the logic in that, but the feeling was
there."

"The logic
system is that of the plant," T6 replied over the system (It was
listening in from the first. There was no longer any point to
hiding the radio). "It felt the competition was between you and it.
If it was able to spore before you found a way to stop it it won.
If you stopped it you won. There won't be any directives against
you now, I think. You're defeated and are no longer of any
importance. It might want to gloat, but plants might not be that
petty.