by Moulton, CD
"This could have been your world. It's a pleasant place. I simply don't understand why you feel the need to expand in such a manner."
"That is not true," came whispering in reply. "You expand. Your empire expands constantly. You seize power on world after world. By this time you will have taken over Grandish. It is a universal drive."
"You've been in the minds of several members of the empire so you know full well that isn't true," Tab replied. "We have outgrown the desire to conquer. Any race not past that primitive stage isn't considered for membership in the Maitan Empire. The Grandish want to know other peoples and to trade with them. That's all the empire is. It's a big trading guild. The Grandish will bring craftsmanship and beauty to the empire and the empire will bring knowledge and sharing to them.
"The Klaft were working on an experiment to aid all of the empire without thought of personal gain when they created you. The Feach student you killed is from a race that has many times come to the aid of others even at great personal expense. The same is true of the Mord and the Sampth races. The Zulians are the most loved and respected race in the empire, yet they disdain any power or control over others.
"There would be much you could offer to the empire and as much it could offer you."
"I will give power over myself to no one!" the fungoid snapped. "I see you do not respond to my power because you have tricked me! You are a machine! You are no more than one of these servos! So! Here is my answer to your empire! I know a way to get beyond anything your puny little empire can do. In two cycles I will be emperor. You will all bow to my power. HERE is my answer!"
The little circuit board containing the psy talent flew into component pieces.
"That was stupid," Tab said aloud. "Now I'm still here and you can't communicate with me. You don't even know I exist. As far as the two cycle thing goes you're not going to be able to get any spores off this world so that plan's finished!
"I wonder if you're really insane or if you merely think in a very different way than I do. I guess I'll never know."
He noticed there were two of the fungoids that were beginning to develop a grainy look and a darkening color around the fringes, denoting they would begin sporing in two days or a little more, depending on how much psy programming they would have to undergo. They would then be ready to be encased and sent into space. Tab didn't doubt that was the thing that would destroy the empire in "two cycles" and was to place the fungoid in the position of emperor.
Tab went back out where he called the floaters in. The hill was reduced to a hole that was eight meters deep and forty across. There was no molecule of the fungoid left intact. He then called TR, who reported Volich was aboard and was just then finishing the detoxification process.
"I'll come in to get you in a few minutes," TR said. "Maybe you can find something to occupy your time until I arrive. I'll also send floaters to search out and destroy any fungoids that are growing there. They'll all be fairly close. There were no indications many got far away from the labs."
"Are you completely crazy!?" Tab demanded, aghast. "Have you forgotten those balloons?"
"To tell you the truth, yes," TR replied. "Volich said we could trace the data back to determine how many were launched. The spores were in vials designed to break open when the balloons touched down. We found all of them and treated the areas for kilometers around them with the bioform. We've also burned any that were already sprouting at the time the bioform was released. There ARE no fungoids anywhere on that planet except in your immediate area.
"You might want to find something to keep your little mind busy for an hour or so."
"I'll repair Givzoo's ship," Tab replied. "I'll ... Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"So! Find them already!" TR snapped. "Rather obvious when you think of it."
Tab trotted back to Givzoo's ship, went inside and began a microscopic search of it. The spores that were exposed on open surfaces and so forth weren't enough to bother with as he'd sterilize the ship in space. After awhile Kit came in to join him in the search.
"What makes you so sure there are any spores on this ship and who would ever release them if there are?" Kit asked.
"It's the kind of thing the fungoid wouldn't miss," Tab replied. "We can bet Zantoo was made to bring some spores on board. The probe originally showed that Givzoo, Volich and Nortich hadn't brought any in.
"Did you probe them again, TR?"
"Yo!" TR answered. "They were given the purgatives again. It wouldn't miss an opportunity, either. They didn't take anything aboard, but we did find a nagging suspicion in Nortich's mind about something that came to her on the psy broadcast. There were two large spores hidden in another cave. They were fully programmed."
"That would be part of the pattern," Tab agreed. "It would make those and a few intermediate ones as a matter of instinct. Did you find those intermediate ones?"
"No," TR said.
"Then that's probably what we're looking for," Kit replied. "They'll be somewhere aboard this ship or they're somewhere on Kuhlicht. We have to find them."
"You know, I have an idea," Tab said.
"Oh? Treat it kindly, it's in a very strange place," TR quipped.
"Surely Zantoo checked to see if the ship could leave here," Tab continued, ignoring the barb. "The moder was removed. The power fuses were removed. Volich put them behind the TTH coil housings. She told us that."
"The spores wouldn't be put that close to so much energy," Kit said. "It would ... be perfect!"
Kit and Tab went to the main console where Kit turned out the fuse panel, looked with microscopic vision (Though that wasn't necessary. They were there in plain sight) and nodded to Tab, who rolled the moder casement down. He looked behind it and grinned.
"Twelve of them here so there'll be twelve of them there," Kit said. "Neat arrangement!"
The spores were in little plastic boxes with springs on the lids – springs that the robots could see with their specialized visions, but that a repairman couldn't.
"Worker turns this out to tune the moder, finds some little jewelry cases, opens the lids, gets nothing but dust. It would be natural to open them all just to see if there was a jewel left in any of them," Tab agreed. "What's a little dust? It'll blow away on the wind!"
"There's a small wire in back of the fuses," Kit said. "Exactly enough to cause the instruments to say there's a problem so there would be a repair check of the fuse box. Same scenario, same result."
They repaired the ship, called TR to meet them in low orbit, took the ship into near space and thoroughly sterilized it. TR sent a microwave generator it used to cover every centimeter of the ship, then Givzoo, Volich and Nortich were transferred aboard while TR sterilized itself. Givzoo would take his own craft to Grandish with Kit and the other Klaft aboard as passengers while TR would take Tab to land on the jetty near the now-famous glass plant. They would spend some time there before finishing their plans on Grandish.
"So you see," Tab was explaining, " Fel was as much an inspiration to us as Mar was. We've destroyed the fungoid on Kuhlicht and will destroy what there is left of it here. It is defeated. We animal forms of intelligence have triumphed over the plant form.
"These amazing people, the Klaft scientists, have repeatedly risked their own lives and their sanity to defeat the fungoid. They've been in the power of the thing.
"Fel (For Kit had never shed that disguise so the Klaft didn't know he was anything but a Grandish. They agreed the stories of Klist Mar were essentially true as stated. It was a small bit of a subterfuge that Tab was an agent of the empire in disguise as a Grandish) has saved their lives again, much as Mar did. It was Fel who thought of those spores hidden on Givzoo's ship. He found part of them.
"Now we'll make a new facility right here on Grandish to do further research into controlling these types of lifeforms when they again appear as they inevitably must. It'll be the first use of the facilities Fel has proposed. Fel financed Givzoo and his crew since first we were
here in the name of all Grandish so the first project was a rousing success. That's something noted by the emperor himself.
"The Zeenans, who incidentally are VERY impressed with the quality of products produced here, are building a ship to specifications for the group, which will be called the Grandish Project, or Project Grandish. The Zeenans were so impressed, as a matter of fact, that they're contracting designs of parts to be used in their ships. Those parts are to be produced here on Grandish.
"People of Grandish, you are now partners with the Zeenans! Only the Mord, the Freenz and the Zulians share such a lofty distinction!"
"Another thing is the Feach have expressed a desire we allow them to send researchers to aid in the Grandish Project!" Kit announced proudly. "We're partners not only with the Zeenans, but with the Feach! AND with the Parf!"
"All in all I'd say it's a rather auspicious start," Looph continued. "I don't think there is any other race – except the Zulians, of course – who are partners in ventures with the Zeenans, the Feach, the Freenz AND the Parf! There aren't that many races with all the various necessary qualities in so many different areas.
"I have designed many more items for the vacation worlds while waiting for TR to come back to take me to EC with these magnificent blocks given to me by the workers here at the plant. Though I enjoy this place and love the people I AM an artist, thus I'm a slave to such things as the texture of the light on EC. I have explained the three differently colored suns to you. I wish you the fondest good fortunes. Rest assured I will return here from time to time."
Tab and Kit took Looph and the Klaft to Koosd that evening where they all traded stories with the people at Veen's, then returned to the plant the following morning. Kit informed them he had decided to go into the mountains to work with the Klaft scientists for a year or so. He told the people the same thing at the plant when they returned there.
Tab took Looph and was soon gone. The Klaft waited with Kit at the plant for several more days until a message came from T6 that the research center was ready, then they left, leaving Djin and the two engineers in charge of the plant.
Givzoo and Volich gave out various stories from time to time about the research and about Jarj Fel's part in it. Nortich left Grandish to teach at University after another halfyear, but there were several Feach working by then at the facility. Givzoo and Volich decided Grandish was a perfect place to raise a family – and did. Klaft and Feach came regularly to the facility as did many other races.
It was nine years later the work was completed there. The Grandish Project moved to Hummolt to stop the mutation in the dingysmeller weed that was threatening to devastate the agriculture of that world and to destroy its economy. They then moved to more and more things, added several ships and crews and became affiliated with Hospital and University, though the funding was always from Grandish, which prospered as had Feach and Zeena. The reputation of the Grandish was as good as those races, too.
Kit returned several times in the guise of Jarj Fel, called on the plant, stayed a few days, then moved on. The last anyone ever heard of him he was taking a special ship out to a world where a plague was killing off the population. The stories of his heroism that came back to Grandish were the motivating force behind the making of the statue that Looph designed to stand beside that of Klist Mar at the number one plant.
Tab/TR and Kit/T6 meanwhile had any number of adventures together as well as with Maita and crew, the first priority of which was constantly rechecking for the regrowth of that fungoid, though that was done in six years. There was no further trouble from it. The techniques learned in working with it were to serve many hundreds of years later to save many other cultures. There are almost no instances of anything happening only once in the empire. That was, perhaps, true in other galaxies in other times. It was, perhaps, that very same research that saved many other cultures. Information that was stored in Library, another of those worlds whose name denoted exactly what they were, was never lost.
Who is to say that Tab, TR, Kit, T6 and Maita weren't then the agents who saved those cultures? Who is to say that Z, Thing and even Kurk, the newest and most terrible in aspect of the emperor's crew, weren't also there and active?
All we can say is for all the rest of the recorded history of the galaxy it was under the aegis of the Maitan Empire – and there was always an Emperor Maita.
And the Zulians, of course.
Mannerless Clod Meeting
Tab and Kit stepped from the transmat onto the Terran, Z's, terrace. They had kept it secret they had returned from their little adventure while they spoke with Maita in the caves where Maita and the other ships, TRD-60 and T6, stayed while on EC. Z was sitting on a cozy comfortable chair by the waterfall reading an old murder mystery from Earth taken not long after he was abducted from that world more than three hundred years past. Tab could see the title, Florida Quartet, and the line saying it was a CD Grimes mystery.
Z was abducted from a place called Sarasota, Florida.
The two robots crept up carefully behind Z where they were about to scare a few centimeters from his growth when there was a [ Whoop! ] from behind them and the tentacles of the little Mentan, Thing, wrapped around both of them.
That startled Z, who dropped the book and turned over his glass of Nictian Blue Wine. He sprung up to grab onto the robots in a bear hug.
There was a coughing sound behind them so the two turned to be startled themselves. If robots could be scared out of their growth, as the old expression went, that would have done it!
The soft bell tone that indicated Maita was about to speak sounded from the speakers built into the place. Maita used them, Thing, who had no direct speech, used them and TR and T6 used them.
TR and T6 had their own "voices," but Thing had a tuning fork sound to indicate it was speaking while Maita used the bell. This form wasn't necessary anymore, but was habit of the past few hundred years so it wouldn't likely change.
*As Z and Thing are clods when it comes to manners, I will introduce you to Kurk, our newest member of the crew. The one in the form of a Kheth is Kit and the Swaz is Tab. The ships are here with me. TR, who you've met, and T Six.*
The two robots studied the strange "demon" from Tlorg openly, extending their arms for the customary greeting contact. Thing moved onto Kit's shoulder.
[ Kurk joined us during the Tlorg thing. He's from another plane, but prefers it here. ]
"I hear you saved the universe while we were merely saving the empire," Kit said with a grin.
[ OMniverse, you twit! That's OMniverse! We don't have the time to fool around with mere UNiverses! ]
Thing wrapped its tentacles around Kit's head, blocking off the vision receptors, one of its favorite tricks. The whole crew played tricks and jokes on one another constantly, most of which were childish, but fun.
"What was that thing you were up against?" Z asked. "Maita said it was an intelligent fungus, but you never know what the hell Maita's talking about."
*What I'M talking about?! YOU'RE the one who's famous for not making any sense! Besides, it WAS an intelligent fungus! Ask Looph!*
"Is Looph still here?" TR asked. "I brought her the blocks she wanted."
"She's the Parf?" Kurk asked. "Yes. She's down by the ocean painting. She's a fantastic talent. All of the Parf I've met are. She's told us all about it so don't let these clowns draw you into anything.
"I would've sorta liked to have seen and talked to an intelligent fungus, myself."
"Take it from me, you wouldn't!" Tab replied. "It was a very nasty customer."
[ That's one of Z's idioms. We get in the habit of using them. Nobody quite knows what they mean, but what the hell. ]
"I know," Kurk said, grinning around the long sharp teeth. "I've had quite a bit of experience with his misuse of several languages."
"So has TR!" T6 threw in. "You should've heard the mixture of French and Spanish we were all subjected to on Grandish!"
"Don't you ever stop with the i
nsults?" Looph asked, coming from the path onto the terrace. "Oh! Thank you, TR!"
A tug floater came from the transmat with twenty variously colored blocks of Grandishian glass.
*Looph presented us with a set of originals, all signed, of the kinds of things she's doing for the Grandish. We're getting to be major collectors of fine art!*
"The emperor should have the best collection in the empire," Looph chided. "Why else bother being emperor?"
Tab, who was looking at the blocks closely, suddenly let out an explosive little noise and grabbed one.
"Huh! Great exploding galaxies! That's a fungoid spore!" he cried.
[ Hah! Got you! ]
*Really, Tab. You don't think we'd bring that stuff right here on Empire Center without first checking it over, do you? You sterilized the whole ship, didn't you, TR?*
"Er, that is, I think I did," TR stammered. "Uh, it's just that, uh, maybe I forgot – but only with the glass!"
"Oh, no!" Tab cried. "You can't fake it with me you pile of reject diodes! You overdid it!"
"I think the whole bunch of you are lost somewhere between the planes!" Kurk said. "It's the quality I find most endearing about you.
"Do you have any more of that wine – or did you manage to spill all of it, Z?"
They joked and played on into the "night" (When the red sun was up). It was good to be able to relax and to not worry about the end of the omniverse or intelligent fungoids that wanted to rule this universe for awhile.
They all knew it wouldn't last.
C. D. Moulton’s works are available on most major outlets as printed or e-books. CD writes the CD Grimes, PI, mysteries, the Det. Lt. Nick Storie mysteries, the Clint Faraday mysteries, the Flight of the Maita science fiction series, books on orchid culture and many others of many types. Mystery, adventure, intrigue, science fiction, humor, fantasy, paranormal, mild erotica, and factual.
