Part 12 (2/2)

On reconsideration, she realized that a colony of mushroomlike fungi lay before her, fat and round and cl.u.s.tered in such a way that they resembled the coils of a gathered serpent.

”It was the size of a round loaf of bread when I first saw it,” Derek said. ”That was hardly an hour ago, and already it's half again as big.”

The fungus was black overall, as s.h.i.+ny black as oiled rubber, with bright yellow ameboid spots edged in orange. That she could have mistaken it for a snake was no surprise, because it looked poisonous and evil.

”The rain isn't a weapon,” Derek said, stooping beside the fungus. ”It's an instrument of radical environmental change.”

Crouching behind him, peering over his shoulder, Molly said, ”I'm not sure I follow you.”

”The water is drawn out of the ocean and processed...somewhere, I don't know, maybe in hovering s.h.i.+ps more immense than we're able to comprehend. The salt must be removed because the rain isn't salty. And seeds are added.”

”Seeds?” Neil asked.

”Thousands of millions of tiny seeds,” Derek said, ”microscopic seeds and spoors, plus the nutrients necessary to nourish them and the beneficial bacteria needed to sustain them-all was.h.i.+ng down across the world, on every continent, every mountain and valley, into every river, lake, and sea.”

In a near whisper, his voice thickened by a fearful awe, Neil said, ”The entire spectrum of vegetation from another world.”

”Trees and algae,” Derek speculated, ”ferns and flowers, gra.s.ses and grains, fungi and mosses, herbs, vines, weeds-none of them ever before seen by any human eye, seeded now ineradicably in our soil, in our oceans.”

s.h.i.+ny black with yellow spots. Glistening. Fecund. Infinitely strange.

Had this unwholesome thing indeed grown from a spoor transported with much planning and purpose through the dark cold and the empty desolation of interstellar s.p.a.ce?

The chill that spread through Molly was different from any that she had experienced previously. It was not a quivery thing localized along the spine or the nape of the neck, did not s.h.i.+ver through her like a vagrant breath of eternity, but lingered. A coldness seemed to be sp.a.w.ned in the very cavities of her bones, in the red-and-yellow mush of marrow, from which it spread outward to every cell in every extremity.

Derek said, ”If these extraterrestrial plants are aggressive-and judging by this creepy specimen, I suspect they're going to be relentlessly incursive-then they will sooner than later crowd out and perhaps even feed upon every species of flora that's native to Earth.”

”This beautiful world,” Molly murmured as the chill spreading through her carried with it a piercing grief, a sense of loss that she dared not contemplate.

”All of it will vanish,” Derek said. ”Everything we love, from roses to oaks, elms and evergreens-eradicated.”

Black and yellow, the plump fungi coiled upon one another, tubular mushrooms nestled in the form of an eyeless snake. Smooth, glistening with an exuded film of oil. Luxuriant. Proliferous and merciless.

”If by some miracle,” Derek continued, ”some of us were to survive the initial phase of alien occupation, if we were able to live in primitive communities, furtively, in the secret corners where the world's ruthless new masters wouldn't see us, how soon would we be left without any familiar food?”

Neil said, ”The vegetables and fruits and grains of another world wouldn't necessarily be poisonous to us.”

”Not necessarily all of them,” Derek agreed, ”but surely some would be.”

”And if they weren't poisonous,” Molly wondered, ”would we find them palatable?”

”Bitter,” Derek guessed. ”Or intolerably sour, or so acidic they would sicken us. Even if palatable, would they nourish us? Would the nutrients be in chains of molecules that our digestive systems could break down and utilize? Or would we fill our stomachs with food...and nevertheless starve to death?”

Derek Sawtelle's cultured voice, reverberant by nature, rich with dramatic technique polished by decades in the cla.s.sroom and on the lecture-hall stage, had half mesmerized Molly. She shook herself to shed the bleak spell that his grim words had cast upon her.

”d.a.m.n,” he said, ”I talked myself sober, and I don't like it on this side of the gin curtain. Too scary.”

Desperate to refute Derek's vision of their future, Molly said, ”We're a.s.suming that this thing, this fungus, is from another world, but we don't really know that. I'll admit I've never seen anything like it...but so what? There are lots of exotic funguses I've never seen, some probably stranger-looking than this.”

”I've another thing to show you,” Derek said, ”something much more disturbing-and unfortunately more sobering-than what you've seen so far.”

22.

ON ONE KNEE IN THE JANITORIAL CLOSET, with Molly crouching more at his side now than behind him, and with Neil standing over him, Derek withdrew a Swiss Army knife from a pocket of his tweed sports jacket.

Molly could think of no one less likely to be carrying a Swiss Army knife than this bow-tied academic. Then she realized that among the tools included in that clever instrument were a corkscrew and a bottle opener.

Derek employed neither of those devices but instead extracted the spear blade. He hesitated with the point of the knife above one of the cl.u.s.tered fungi.

His hand shook. These tremors weren't the consequence of either intoxication or alcohol withdrawal.

”When I did this before,” he said, ”I was pleasantly soused, full of the giddy curiosity that makes dipsomania such an adventure. Now I'm sober, and I know what I'm going to find-and I'm astonished that I had the courage to do this the first time.”

Having steeled himself, he poked the blade into the tubular cap of one of the fattest of the fungi.

The entire colony, not just the pierced specimen, quivered like gelatin.

From the wound, a puff of pale vapor escaped with an audible wheeze, suggesting that the interior of the mushroomlike structure had been pressurized. The malodorous vapor reeked like a concoction of rotten eggs, vomit, and decomposing flesh.

Molly gagged, and Derek said, ”I should have warned you. But it dissipates quickly.”

He slit the membrane that he had already punctured, revealing the inner structure of the fungus.

The interior was not solidly meaty, like that of an ordinary mushroom, but a hollow chamber. A graceful architecture of spongy struts supported the surface membrane that Derek had slit.

A wet ma.s.s, the size of a hen's egg, lay at the center of this chamber. At first glimpse, Molly thought of intestines because these looked, in miniature, like ropey human guts, but gray and mottled as if corrupted, infected, cancerous.

Then she saw that these coils and loops were slowly moving, sliding lazily over and around one another. The better comparison was to a knot of copulating earthworms.

The reeking vapor lost, the black-and-yellow membrane slit, these worm forms continued their sensuous writhing for only three or four seconds-and abruptly disengaged, bristled to every curve of the chamber. They became a dozen questing tentacles much quicker than worms, connected to something unseen at the bottom of the hollow, as quick and jittery as spider legs, frenziedly probing the knife-torn edges of the ruined canopy.

Molly tensed, shrank back, certain that the repulsive resident of the fungus would spring out of its lair and, loose, would prove to be faster than a c.o.c.kroach.

”It's all right,” Derek a.s.sured her.

Neil said, ”The fungus is a home to something, like the sh.e.l.l of a conch.”

”No, I don't think so.” Derek wiped the blade of his knife on his display handkerchief. ”You can strain for earthly comparisons, but there really isn't one. From what I can tell, this squirmy little creepshow is part of the fungus itself.”

The frenetic las.h.i.+ng of the small tentacles subsided. They continued to move quickly, but now in a more calculated manner.

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