I will try.
Simoz moved to the mouth of the alley and studied the crowds. On the other side of the flattened pipe of a street he saw the choudapt woman walking her choud. It showed no reaction to him, so his body must now be emitting the pheromone. As he stood there watching the people of the Wrack, and trying to decide who to go for and how, a young choudapt woman walked past him and turned into the mouth of the alley. He nodded to her, but she did not acknowledge his presence. He silently turned and followed her. Halfway into the alley she realized he was behind her and abruptly turned, opening her mouth, perhaps to say something, perhaps to scream. He slammed his hand over it, tripped her and forced her back against the ground. Mike went in.
Parasitic fungus primitive form again. I try to…
Come on Mike — just do it gently.
Fungal form, dead.
Oh for chrissake.
It would seem that the fungus is unable to achieve adult form in humans and in juvenile form cannot survive my… inspection. I would suggest that we take an actual choud next.
Oh great idea.
Simoz removed his hand and the woman abruptly opened her eyes.
‘You all right?’ he asked. ‘You just keeled over.’
‘It’s dead. You killed it,’ she said.
‘You got me there,’ said Simoz, reaching into his pocket for a shock stick.
‘How did you do it?’
The woman sat upright. She was a choudapt without evident augmentations. Her hands and feet were two-toed and her skin a bluey green with the angular hardness of exoskeleton. She had retained her hair, which was long and anaemic blonde and spilled all the way down the plastimail slip she wore. She had used iridescent paint on her mouth palps so that they looked like some curious item of jewellery.
‘I have a doctor mycelium inside me,’ Simoz replied.
‘Then you must be ECS.’
She is showing surprising acuity in the circumstances.
Not surprising.
Mike’s reply had a hint of dry sarcasm behind it.
I suggest you elaborate.
She is Earth Central Security as well. She is a Monitor. Her boosted immune system must have resisted infection for a long time and it is helping her recover very quickly now.
Simoz left the shock stick in his pocket and helped the woman to her feet.
‘Simoz,’ he said.
‘Haline,’ the woman replied.
What a gas.
Simoz frowned. It was very unlike the mycelium to make jokes. Perhaps it was feeling the strain.
‘What’s happening here?’ Haline asked.
Nodding to the mouth of the alley and heading in that direction, Simoz said, ‘I’ll tell you while you lead me somewhere I can, without interference, get hold of a choud.’
Haline stared at him then turned to the left as they departed the alley.
‘Something was controlling me,’ she said.
‘A parasitic fungus,’ said Simoz. ‘It was here when only chouds lived in the bladders of the wracks. Fairly simple vector: it lives in the choud’s body and drives the creature to climb into a bladder and cut it free. That bladder drifts to another wrack where there are uninfected chouds.
There it makes the choud find a secure place to encyst. . cocoon itself. It then feeds on the choud’s body and produces spores which spread through the wrack and infect other chouds. The set-up in the wrack is then something like that of social insects on Earth — the main fungus has a primitive mind and it controls the others by means of pheromonal messages. Those other chouds, once infected for a number of years, then act like new queens leaving a bee’s nest; they climb into a bladder and cut it away to start the cycle all over again. They start their own colonies. Only the fact that infected and uninfected chouds can detect each other has prevented a complete takeover by the fungus, but then that’s evolution for you.’
‘But. . us?’ said Haline.
‘Come on, you’re a choudapt. Ninety per cent human and ten per cent choud. It’s why you like the horrible things as pets.’
‘Oh yes, of course, but. . how is it I don’t know about this. . this fungus?’
‘It was supposedly wiped out two centuries ago by a manufactured retrovirus.’
‘Then how has this happened?’
‘That’s one of the things I’m here to find out,’ said Simoz as he gazed around, ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the centre. You can buy a choud there.’
‘I see.’
‘What else do you need to know?’
‘I need to know where the encysted choud is hidden. That’s why I need to lay hands on another one. Mike can winkle the location of the “mother” fungus from one of its mature kin. We tried it with you but the fungal form apparently doesn’t mature in human hosts and is a bit delicate.’
And while I’m thinking about it, Mike, how the hell am I going to put my hand over a choud’s mouth.
Unfortunately there is not enough seal in such mouth parts.
What?
You will not have to put your hand over its mouth, but in its mouth.
Oh great.
As they walked down the flattened artery of a causeway, beyond whose translucent walls bubble houses clustered like giant eyeballs, Simoz watched the folk around him. Many of them had obviously been having problems with their augmentations — the cyber implants and links that joined living human to his technology. None of the humans showed any reaction to him, but the few chouds he saw turned and fought their leashes, foam dripping from mouth parts like slime-coated cutlery sets.
How long will she hold out?
Her immune system is boosted but not as efficient as myself. She has been reinfected already, but the fungus will not be well established for an hour or so.
Efficient as yourself?
Mere fact.
Okay, what about the pheromonal signature?
She is giving it off.
So she can go buy us a choud and bring it to a suitable location.
Very practical of you.
Improvisation my friend. Improvisation.
The centre was the point from which branched all the main causeways of the Wrack.
Those causeways ran down the sepals of the giant pseudo-flower of the plant, which was also the city. Here the bubble buildings were stacked in profusion like berries heaped over a spread hand. Myriad tubeways connected these separate bubbles, some of which were houses and some of them offices, shops, restaurants — all the usual paraphernalia of that entity called a city.
By way of these tubes and through some of the bubbles, Haline led Simoz to her home. Then she went alone to make the required purchase. Simoz made himself comfortable in a chair fashioned from the scales of a giant fish and scanned his surroundings. He noted the veins in the ceiling at which a couple of biolights were feeding, and on the floor the slow traverse of a tile-cleaning slime mould. He saw that she had a food plant of old biofacture and one he recognized as producing a fruit that in its ancestry had both apples and pigs. He only gradually became aware of how dim it was in the place and how few biolights Haline seemed to have. The sudden simultaneous agony at his shoulder and calf told him abruptly where the other biolights had gone.