by Moulton, CD
"It'll use the natives as tools to get to us," Kit warned. "Remember – it very quickly learned it could control me to an extent by threatening Givzoo and his fellow researchers. It even told me such a thing was a weakness in me it wouldn't hesitate to exploit."
"We WILL find a way out of this," Tab replied confidently. "We've had problems as bad as this before!"
"You have," Kit replied. "But you were with Maita at the time. Zule and certain of the Immins' sordid little exploits that could have destroyed a people – I guess you did handle some of them alone, but those were against animal life. We can understand animals fairly well because of the probe, but how would we use a probe on a plant?"
"THAT is one of the kinds of things we come up with that make us winners!" Tab cried. "One part of the research Givzoo MUST do is to try to find a way to use a probe on these things. Maybe Maita can develop some kind of machine for them alone."
"Surely Maita will be finished with whatever they're doing in plenty of time," Kit agreed. "For the first time I have a glimmering of hope we can come out of this one ahead. I like the Grandish and damned well don't want to see this world under the control of those things!"
Lope was waiting for them when they returned a few hours past dawn the following morning. He had piled up all the wood that was down and was digging out all the old stumps in his nearby pasture. There were several adolescent boys and girls helping.
"We done decided the kids can start right here, then go to Liek's place, then to Map's and so on. Clean 'em all up right up to Milk Lake. They's doin the same b'low the main road to the ocean. Got more kids down that side so's it'll go faster," Lope reported. "You'uns is got good ideas fer citybreds!"
"Misd is a town just a little bigger than Koosd," Tab said. "Veen's been there. It's mostly farms. There're far too many in our families to stay with farming so some of us've got to get into business. We know glass and this area has some of the best raw materials on the planet. We've decided where we want to build the glass plant. That point south of where Flint Creek goes into Keystone Bay. Lots of good sand and the slag can be dumped in that old sink below the old castle where it won't ever hurt anything. I think we can buy the castle to use for a home while we're here."
They talked awhile longer, then Kit and Tab headed for Koosd. They were unusually silent along the way, each wondering what would happen to these people if they couldn't stop that fungus from spreading. There had to be some way. They both were hopeful the fact the thing was in many small pieces for practical purposes would allow some form of attack. If some didn't have the necessary memories programmed in to protect themselves there was always a chance something vital could be eliminated.
Possible, but unlikely. With millions of spores the combination of a certain few with hundreds of thousands of copies appeared to be inevitable.
They took up permanent residence at Veen's, leasing the adjoining rooms for a year at the time, then concentrated on buying the land at Flint Creek and Keystone Bay. That meant a good deal of travel, which covered the continuing search for the fungal growths and the research updates they were getting from Givzoo. They were finally able to purchase the land with its large sink and its old abandoned castle, then to hire labor crews to renovate the castle and to build the processing plant for the glass. The sand they had on the bay would supply their needs for centuries as it was mostly in another sink that had filled in over the millennia. It was more than a hundred meters deep and a quarter kilometer in diameter. It had some of the rarer qualities that they had noticed in the native glass that made them decide on the plant as a business base.
The ovens weren't hard to construct from excellent quality firebrick that was already a standard item being manufactured up the coast a few kilometers so could be brought in by barge.
Kaer Peld began getting a bit too serious about Tab so he contrived to begin doing little things that irritated her. They were seemingly habits he couldn't – or that he wouldn't (which added to the irritation) – break. Finally she quit trying to change him and began looking around at others. They had long serious talks and decided things weren't working out between them and that they'd better break it off while they could still remain good friends. Kit learned from it enough that he would do little things to make the girls consider him a great one for a good time, but not the kind who would make a good lifemate so they'd better not allow themselves to get too emotionally involved.
The fungus still dominated their thoughts. Nothing would change that. It was why they were on this world. It was still the one threat to a good, sound, developing culture and a good, sound, honest people.
Tab's penchant for getting far too involved with his female "friends" on a world where he would have to stay for any time was working overtime here so he had to stay on his guard, but Kit's established "playboy" mentality kept him from those involvements.
"Wouldn't it have been better for Maita to have made one of us female?" Kit had asked at one time. "I really don't see the disadvantage if we kept our involvement only with each other."
"No. We're too much alike," Tab replied. "I would know I couldn't hurt you so I couldn't return any tenderness. That's also true about you. Besides, we've been in any number of situations on worlds where homosexuality was a culturally accepted practice. You've never appealed to me at all!"
"That's something I've been able to avoid," Kit said. "I don't think I could respond to it. Maita didn't program me for it."
"Your reptilian and amphibian models don't have so much of it as do mammals and some of the unclassifiable types," TR put in. "Maita and us ships will program it in where it's needed."
Tab grinned, but Kit wasn't at all sure he could be programmed into that.
"Besides which you two can't work efficiently if you're supposed to be emotionally involved," TR had continued. "Regardless of the basis of the involvement, an emotional attachment of that type would always be a danger to both of you. Maita doesn't really understand emotions of those kinds anymore than I do, but it knows anger, which isn't so strong. It knows what that can do. You've seen Maita lose its temper. We'll stay away from strong emotional attachments with those possessive overtones, thank you. You're hard enough to live with just being such close friends!"
There was a true and very deep love among all the members of Maita's crew, but it was based on respect and affection. Maita decided long ago that sexual attachments would probably cause more problems than they would resolve. Besides, Maita didn't really have any understanding of the sexual urge.
The glass plant was finished before the castle, which wasn't a problem as Tab and Kit were comfortable staying at Veen's. They had to hire permanent help for the plant and to train them for the job. This would be the first plant to use the particular molding process on the continent, though it was true the process was used on Klormedt. The process for making the tempered glass and ovenproof glass was also imported from Klormedt. The empire's operatives never brought new technology onto these worlds as they could be strongly disrupting influences to a culture. They did sometimes combine things already invented to make something new, but not until it was fairly determined the item would soon be invented in any case. There would be need of this facility on the continent of Sendedt for the foreseeable future so it wasn't only a make-work place to be used for cover for the two robots. It would be owned and run by the people of Grandish when they left. The great advantage to the world was that while pollution was not yet of any great concern to the Grandish it likely would be some day. This facility would be a striking example of a plant that didn't produce anything detrimental while it did produce something useful. It would be a thing for the people of the area to point to with pride in another fifty to one hundred years, solid proof that business and the ecology could coexist comfortably with a little more planning and a little less greed. Fuel for it was natural gas, which was free for the taking in the area and was already in use in some coastal areas.
It took most of a year to finish the plant and
it also took most of a year for the first reports of the fungus's effects to begin to filter in. The plant was finished nine days after the first reports were received, which TR and T6 immediately sent floaters to investigate. The growths were located near a small village in the mountains toward the southern tip of the continent. The spores had fallen into a wooded area devastated by fire, then by insects which killed the trees by boring into the wood where the bark was burned off. There were more than a hundred fungal growths for the floaters to burn off.
"There were reports that the people in the town were acting like they were sleepwalking most of the time," TR reported to the two robots after all the growths were destroyed. "I think we've learned another little thing that should be of great value to us in this. The thing, when it's young at least, can't reach a mind to control it very quickly. The things had to learn control over a period of twenty days or more. That let several people who were visiting the town to sell kitchen supplies see something was very wrong and to get out to tell others. In at least the fungi that were there the ability to immediately control wasn't YET programmed in. I believe that means there will be serious lacks in all the spores. If enough RNA was grown into the spores to store much of it they would've been too heavy to drift far. There's a good chance those closer to Koosd will have a more complete program grown in."
"We can hope," Kit answered. "Our problem being that a more likely scenario is there'll be large groups of the things, each with its own memories to trade with the others. That's the basic idea, isn't it?"
"I personally think there are a few of the types of spores we were afraid of – big ones with everything," Tab said. "If so we're really going to have a problem sooner or later."
"I would think such a spore would still consider us to be its main enemies," Kit suggested. "Me in particular. It will have the encounters in its memory and will have identifications, whatever they are to that thing, along with them. It should direct its attacks at us personally.
"Remember: that original fungus didn't consider any other there or the people on this planet to be a part of the challenge."
"It would actually BE the original in a sense," TR agreed. "I wonder how it would sort out what memories to save and which ones to exclude. Our logic would come up with very different answers than the fungus would. You can be sure of that."
"It might be...." Kit began, then was thoughtful for a few minutes. "TR, send a floater back to that facility," he said after awhile. "I want to know exactly how far a spore of a certain size and weight would be thrown by that pressure. We know the specific gravity of the thing so we can figure ... do you think it could grow spores of any shape it chooses?"
"No, but I think it will eventually learn how to do so," T6 said. "I can see how even the logic of the plant would decide a gliding shape would take a heavier spore much farther than a globe. It will then occur to it that it can direct the flight of the spore. Givzoo said he didn't determine if the thing is actually intelligent or if it's programmed by evolution. I think it's shown that intelligence is the answer to that one! It was able to figure how to get those spores all over this planet using the few artificial means at its disposal. The research of those people on those spores on that world is becoming more important by the minute. That thing is going to be very hard to effectively attack, much less to get rid of permanently."
"We have to find some way to probe the fungus," Kit insisted. "That's the only way we'll know what is and isn't programmed into the individual spores. It doesn't seem possible to do anything! We can't burn the whole surface of the planet to get those spores. We don't have enough floaters in the empire to find them all. We can't poison them, we can't use a bacteria or virus. This is unbelievable!"
"It's also the sort of thing we do," Tab pointed out. "I think I have a little idea. I think we've found one little detail that can give us a hope. It's something we found when we were first looking for the spores."
"It is?" TR asked. "Clue me!"
"There weren't any spores growing in the swamp!" Tab cried. "None at all, yet there was rotting wood at every step. At first I figured it must simply be because of the water drowning the spores, but there hasn't been any high water since the things were deposited on the banks of the creek so a lot of that wood is just about perfect, yet there are NO spores germinating in that swamp! None! Zero! I shouldn't have to tell you that there has to be something there so I want to get back to that swamp immediately if not day before yesterday!
"Kit, you go to the lakeshore and along Flint Creek where we did find spores growing. Take samples of everything and I do mean everything. There's still a mark on that stump where I tore one of the first growths off so take samples of that one in particular. I'm going to make the closest damned examination of that swamp that's ever been made of any swamp. If we find any spores growing in any swamp, anywhere, I'll want to go there to see what's different, then I'll have to make a trip to see Givzoo and crew.
"Let's get at it! It might not be much, but we can do what that thing did to spread its spores: use what we do have!"
Critical Conditions
Kit moved along the creek carefully taking samples of the wood from rotting stumps, soil samples and samples of the other types of plants in the areas close to anyplace where they'd found the fungi growing earlier. He found two small patches where new ones were coming up so was able to get very fresh data. He knew TR and T6 both had floaters traveling all over Grandish finding any growths they could and taking the same kinds of samples. TR suggested they also study the insects, birds, rodents, bacteria and virus populations in those areas so it took quite some time before he could feel he had everything he might need. He then went back to the glass plant to run things. TR and T6 would process all the samples, missing not one single factor.
His nights were spent both in Koosd and at the castle, which was now ready for occupancy and in which they spent most of their nights since the glass factory was finally in operation if only on an experimental basis.
A large part of the work force at the plant also stayed at the castle except for those who were living with a lifemate and had children. Those stayed in private homes in the nearby settlement.
TR and T6 each made detailed reports about what was happening around the planet with the search for the fungus growths as the data became available. There were occasional spots of the plant discovered on a regular basis, then a sudden increase on Framedt, a smaller continent to the south.
"I've been keeping very close tabs on the weather patterns," T6 reported after explaining about the find. "It turns out we have something of a small break. There was rain, not excessive, but steady for several days, then supplemental rains every third day on average for nine additional days while the night temperatures stayed above the normal thirty four degrees MS (Maitan Standard). That's about three and a half degrees higher, which isn't much, but which seems critical.
"I'm checking with Nortich at the research world. She'll look up what they have on this."
Later T6 reported the fungus spores would grow at anything over thirty one degrees night temperature with sufficient water, but thirty five was the point where the growth really seemed to more than double. The spores wouldn't sprout at all under thirty one degrees of minimum night temperature. This kind of information could prove to be critical as it would allow the floaters to be concentrated in areas where likelihood was highest of development of the spores.
Kit had the glass plant operating smoothly after a short period of learning and adjustment. It was at last past the time of experimentation when everyone was finding the best way to do his individual job. Kit personally trained a crew to sell the wares and to take orders for specialized items complete with engineering plans. They could also take orders for everyday wares. They had done so already and were in limited production.
After the trial runs and the learning mistakes the product was finally coming out of the line. Kit insisted on the most stringent quality control. "If there's anything at all wron
g with a piece we'll melt it down and make it again – and again – and again!" he lectured. "When it leaves this plant it will be RIGHT! If it isn't right it won't pass the gates! We will never allow our reputation to become less than the producers of the finest wares on this planet! Everyone who is in any least way connected with Grandish Consolidated Glasswares will be forever PROUD to have known that their name is associated with this plant! I DEMAND it! I EXPECT it! If it's good for GCD it's good for all Grandish! That will be our motto, but we must never forget the other side of that picture!
"If it's not good for Grandish it WILL NOT be a part of GCD!
"We must never forget for one single second that our responsibility isn't to a nation or to a world. Neither is it to the past. Our responsibility is to the FUTURE! It is to our children and to their children! May the gods forgive you if you ever forget that fact because I WON'T!
"Now let's show all Grandish we aren't ordinary factory workers here, we're ARTISTS!
"Hell, let's make this place known to the aliens at A Port! Just think what it will mean to our children to know that a product produced here on little old restricted backward Grandish is of sufficient quality to be sold to another world! THAT is the dream! THAT will prove our worth to ourselves as well as to the aliens!
"THAT we WILL do!"
Kit fully meant that, too. If he could drive these people to produce things of surpassing quality there would be a market for it on other worlds. It would also give the Grandish a strong sense of accomplishment they couldn't get otherwise. Self-respect is one commodity that can NOT be bought with money. The speech was shamelessly designed to stimulate emotions. It did that. It gave the workers a goal to strive for.
Another part of it was that the contracts were set up in such a way that anyone who worked for a period of one year for the company owned stock in it. It was also arranged in such a way that should anything happen to the owners of record, Klist Mar and Jarj Fel, the entire company would revert directly to the workers. The plan was to stage something to leave the plant in the ownership of the Grandish who worked there when this was finished.