VISIT FUNGOSIA

by David A. Riley

            Harry Nealson III was that most envied and despised of travellers, a fabulously wealthy interstellar tourist. A considerable legacy left by his parents had enabled him to sample the delights of many of the more interesting planets. He forwent Ballam 5 because of the boredom of its flat landscape of grey seas and wind-scoured plains, while New Caledonia 3 was too hot for comfort, with an average temperature, even at its poles, of 55C, and a land mass of incredibly dull, igneous rock, as drab as a skyline-to-skyline cow pat baked in the sun. Aubarch 6 was too damn cold -- during its year-long winters at least -- and filled with dangerous beasts when it wasn’t.

            Now, after an exhaustive -- if not exhausting -- decade of non-stop travel, Harry had begun to hunger for something more exotic -- or at least more exciting and certainly more unusual than the over-civilized planets scheduled by the main tour companies. Other systems deemed too hazardous for tourism, by these anyway, fearful of lawsuits if things went wrong, were left to the independents, who specialised in catering for travellers who wanted something different -- something off the beaten track of most tourist destinations. Operating on a shoestring, they offered trips to out-of-the-way systems and wonderfully weird experiences.

            It was one such trip that caught Harry's eyes. Printed in three-dimensional psychedelic colours, the poster was fixed to a wall in Bellarium City on Queldon 4. As he staggered from a beer-bar onto the street, the poster hurt his eyes in the harsh sunlight

 

VISIT FUNGOSIA

Watch Warring Plains of Fungoid Armies

CLASH!

Watch Rivals Fight for Survival

on the

ONLY

Planet of

SENTIENT FUNGI!

In

Vivid Colours!

MUST BE SEEN TO BE BELIEVED!

Trips arranged by

Terrestrial & Interstellar Tours Inc.

           

            Now that would be something, Harry thought, narrowing his eyes at the poster and wondering if the glaring print was subliminal. That was illegal, of course. But half the operations carried out by groups like Terrestrial & Interstellar Tours Inc., contravened most of the safety standards ever written.

            Harry returned to his hotel, where he called the tour group. A pale-featured, overweight man, with sagging jowls and a flat, doughy lump of a nose, appeared in 3D in front of him. The unprepossessing face disconcerted Harry, who was fastidious about his own appearance, using mood-reactive skin dyes, jewellery, and subtle perfumes to enhance his weak, if angular, face and unathletic body to its best effect.

            "Fungosia?" Harry asked.

            The man's lips moved into a heavy smile, not mirrored by his eyes.

            "A delightful planet, sir. Unlike anywhere found in the known universe. Unique."

            So was virtually every planet, Harry thought, ignoring the rhetoric. No two worlds with any kind of life forms on them were ever alike. However boring it could be at times, nature was too diverse for that.

            After enquiring about details, Harry was finally satisfied enough to make a booking for the next flight there.

            "That will be in five Queldonian days, sir. First class accommodation, of course."

Which was probably the only class too, Harry thought, knowing the size of craft they’d likely use, a dozen passengers and a handful of crew cooped inside an old ex-Navy Scout-class Deep Space Explorer, no more than a few years left in its drive. But it would make a welcome change to the humdrum luxury of the opulent cruisers he'd travelled in for too many years. At least this once, anyway, what reservations he retained about his decision shelved for the moment as he dwelt on the expectant excitement of it all, spiced with the suggestion of danger of going to an unscheduled system.

            Fungosia. God, what a name, he thought, amused. Hardly inspiring. But its description sounded strange enough to satisfy even his jaded tastes. Unless, of course, it was overblown hype.

            Hey, look at this sentient fungus. It's all of two millimetres tall. If you take a closer look at it through a high-powered magnifier, it looks just great...

            Though he sincerely hoped not; what he hoped for was something grander than that.

            Much grander, in fact.

###

            His expectations of the flight, at least, were fulfilled. Instead of an ex-Navy Explorer, though, they travelled in a worn-out Destroyer, a leftover from the last G'narllian War, disarmed and refitted to accommodate more than eighteen passengers in something approaching comfort. Though nothing could rid the old rust bucket of the stench of laser burns. Harry wondered if it had seen hand-to-hand combat. Some of the scorch marks on the corridor panels had the distinct look of personal blasters.

            The overweight booking agent who arranged the flight for him turned out to be their courier too. No doubt he was also one of Terrestrial & Interstellar Tours' owners, Harry thought. As he welcomed the passengers on board, the man introduced himself as Carl Kasdan.

            Even though he seemed to go out of his way to make their trip as pleasant as possible Harry instinctively disliked the man. There was something too obsequious about his "sirs" and "madams" and the heavy smiles he beamed to Harry, used as he was to the controlled politeness of professional couriers on the major spacelines.

            Fortunately, Harry found more amenable company amongst his fellow passengers. Apart from two families (parents and six teenage "children") there was a retired holo-journalist whose itchy feet still hadn't stopped itching; a deceptively frail old lady of 120, who claimed to have been everywhere twice and had only booked this trip to see somewhere new; a business executive and his wife, probably here to impress his colleagues with the novelty of Fungosia on his return; a couple of middle-aged heiresses, more interested in each other than anyone else; and a biologist. Since the females on board were either married, too old, or in love with each other, only the latter, the biologist, thirty, fair-haired, and square-faced though she was, was available to Harry for the kind of companionship a six-week trip like this called for.

            The crew kept to themselves. Dour, probably underpaid third-raters, too old or incompetent for the main tour groups, only Carl Kasdan had any contact with them, though Harry noticed that one of the crew was a G'narllian. The alien's flattened, figure-eight shape, short stature, not to mention his jointless, multi-directional limbs, were unmistakable. Like an ill-made garden gnome grown too large, the cross-featured alien was glimpsed only briefly in the crew quarters as Kasdan entered them. Although a decade had passed since the last G'narllian war ended with a crushing victory for Earth, it was nevertheless disconcerting to Harry. This was the first G'narllian he had seen in the flesh. Their prowess in the martial arts was so widely known he felt intimidated by the creature's presence. It was far from pleasant and disturbed him.

            Still, he was only crew, Harry consoled himself over a beer in the cramped, utilitarian bar as he sized up Lisa d'Elmar. The biologist sat sipping a Bolgar juice, non-fattening, non-alcoholic, and non-hallucinogenic. It was also bland, insipid, and utterly boring.

            Harry, nevertheless, persisted in his attempts to interest her. Persistence was his middle name.

            Ignoring his small talk, Lisa launched into a series of vague queries about Fungosia.

            "Before I booked this trip, I spoke to some of my colleagues about it," she told him. “None of them has ever heard of it."

            Harry shrugged. "So, it's new," he told her.

            "New? How new?" Lisa shook her head, her eyes troubled, "No matter how new Fungosia might be, I can't see how it could have escaped being investigated by a scientific-survey team, whose results would have been published long before Terrestrial and Interstellar Tours started organising trips to it -- or been allowed to. It doesn't make sense."

            "Do you think the company cares if it’s allowed to make trips there or not?" Harry asked, amused.

            "Perhaps. But I can't understand why no one has ever heard about a planet of sentient fungi. That doesn't make sense."

            For all Lisa's suspicions, though, the trip out was as uneventful as any commercial flight Harry had ever been on.

###

And it was with considerable relief when he finally heard their arrival at Fungosia announced over the speakers.

            Harry rushed to the holographic viewscreen. Already most of the other passengers were grouped around it, heads craned as they stared at the streak-smeared sphere in the top left-hand corner, reddish-browns, fluorescent greens, and sickly yellows interlooped and merged across its cloudy surface.

            The voice of Carl Kasdan spoke through the speakers.

            "This is Fungosia. The coloured areas are the dominant life forms. Their edges are where fighting for pre-eminence is still taking place."

            Lisa looked at Harry and shook her head.

            She moved towards him.  

            "There's something wrong with all of this," she whispered. "If all those fungi evolved on Fungosia, one dominant strain would have taken over long before they reached true sentience."

            "If they have achieved it yet," Harry said, with a seasoned traveller's lack of faith. "We've only what we've been told to go off," he reminded her. "Let's wait and see how sentient they really are."

            They hadn't much longer to wait. Kasdan had left it till they were almost on top of Fungosia before telling them its proximity. The eighteen passengers had hardly time to study its surface before they were told to make their way to the planetary shuttle and strap themselves into their seats.

            With a hum from its massive engines, the shuttle parted company from its parent vessel and began its descent to the planet’s surface, gliding through its dense atmosphere.

            It was a descent that ended with the roar of jets and a final shudder from its landing frame.

            Equipped with one-piece environment suits, the passengers were herded by Kasdan down the ramp to the bluish-grey ground beneath. Harry shuddered to himself with a pleasurable thrill of excitement at the sheer oddity of everything, from the dust motes that speckled the cloudy "air" to the large, eccentrically shaped hummocks, cactus-like extrusions, and limbs of fungi that heaved around the hissing spacecraft cooling behind them. He felt Lisa sidle up to him.

            Kasdan waddled on ahead of them, pointing out the various fungi.

            "Beautiful, aren't they," Harry whispered to Lisa.

            "Beautiful, yes, but sentient?"

            The stocky figure of the G'narllian crew member moved past them. For a moment, Harry was disconcerted at the sight of a chunky, personal blaster tucked beneath one arm. After a moment's reflection, however, he decided it was probably to protect them against any dangerous fungi. When the G'narllian raised his gun towards them, though, he quickly decided that he was wrong.

            "What the frig--" began the business executive, Walther Scithers, till instinctive caution made him shut his mouth abruptly.

            Harry felt Lisa press tighter to his side.

            At any other time, he would have welcomed it. After all, he had been struggling unsuccessfully to get this far with her ever since they set off. But not with an armed G'narllian yards away from him with a blaster capable of blowing his atoms into dust with a pull of its trigger.

            Carl Kasdan smiled. Even through his transparent face mask it was unpleasant. It became even more unpleasant when he pulled the mask off and breathed in the atmosphere. It was then his features slipped from his face, sliding apart into new, even uglier formations, no longer human.

            Unnecessarily, Harry gasped: "He's fungi," as the courier shed the last of what remained of his human form and towered above them. "He’s friggin' fungi!"

            Lisa produced a palm-sized, miniaturised blaster, hidden in her fist. In one move, she turned, aimed and fired at the G'narllian. A hole belched open in the alien's chest big enough to thrust a fist through. Knocked off his feet, the G'narllian's gun landed on the ground, where a surge of fungus from the surrounding shapes swept to engulf it. Lisa fired at the fungus as well, but the effect was negligible. The gun was too small to have any effect against something so incredibly vast other than kicking up spurts of burnt matter.

            "Get back to the shuttle," Harry shouted, quaking at the knees. Already the threat from the rest of the fungi was too close for comfort.

            "Not yet," Lisa grated, as she waved the passengers ahead of her back to the vessel. “I’ve something to do first.” She turned towards Kasdan. Unlike the other fungi, he was small enough to be vulnerable to the gun. Either that or he had not had time to merge with others of his kind. In any event, Harry could tell that Lisa was not going to give him the opportunity to thwart her.

            "You," she snapped to the courier, "will come to the shuttle with the rest of us. Or join your G'narllian ally." She aimed the blaster at what was left of Kasdan's head.

            To Harry's surprise, the courier quivered in what looked like supplication -- or something so similar as to be irrelevant. A slit-like, somehow serviceable mouth appeared in the remains of his head.

            "No need to shoot."

            "Then move," Lisa told him. "And fast."

            Quickly, they retreated to the shuttle; the doors of its airlock slid shut behind them with a reassuringly solid thud as everyone stripped off their face masks. Harry glanced at his fellow passengers, wondering if his face looked as frightened as theirs. He suspected it did.     

Harry stared at her, bewildered by the calm on her face. "You expected this," he said to Lisa.

            Lisa smiled firmly, with no more mirth than Kasdan earlier.

            "Let's say we suspected something was wrong with the set-up."

            "We?"

            Lisa flashed a warrant disc at him; a copy of her face shimmered above a metallic shield. "Interstellar Bureau of Investigations. We suspected a G'narllian plot. Fungosia was one of their colonies before their war with Earth. Its position was conveniently lost when the G'narllian home world was captured."

            "But why? What reason could they have for concealing it?"

            "The information we have of Fungosia shows that when the G'narllians first tried to colonise it, the natives' ability to infest the bodies of their enemies allowed them to retaliate by infiltrating the G'narllian Empire. It was so effective it brought the G'narllians closer to the brink of defeat than at any other time before Earth beat them."

            Harry stared at the fungoid courier.

            "And the G'narllians hoped the same would happen to us?"

            Lisa nodded. "The Fungosians would have infested our bodies, seeding inside us till their growths took over. We would have returned to Terrestrial Space, superficially human but internally Fungosian. This," she pointed at the courier, "could never have passed as human. He’s just a simulacrum. Good enough to fool you or me, but he would never have got past closer scrutiny. What they needed were humans. Like us. Once seeded, we would have spread the contagion to others of our kind throughout known space."

            "And in the disruption that followed, the G'narllians would have rebelled?"

            "And tried to win their next war against us." Lisa strode to the control cabin. "Strap yourselves into your seats," she called over the speakers. "We're heading back to the ship."

            It was at this moment that she sneezed.

            "Dust" motes danced about the air in front of her.

            Harry felt a sudden dread.

            The word spores shot like headlines to the front of his mind.

            He glanced at Kasdan. For all that the courier's features were no more human than a lump of ill-shaped clay, Harry could see that he knew. He was certain about that. Deadly certain.

            Lisa's eyes met his.

            Once they'd returned to the orbiting spacecraft, she wasted no time in broadcasting a message to the nearest authorities on Queldonia about what had happened.

###

Sitting beside her, Harry felt sick as the infestation spread through his system. The term tourist trap chattered idiotically through his mind as he listened to her, recognising its irony. Once she'd finished, he knew what their next step would be. Too late for them to be saved, as spores spread through their bodies, there was only one thing to be done. In fact, Lisa had already started it, overriding the automatic controls on the ship's guidance system to send them on a one-way trip to the Fungosian sun. Long before impact, its heat would explode their vessel and destroy everything inside it.

            Harry stared solemnly at the view screen as the growing brilliance ahead of them began to dominate its surface. His last trip anywhere, it was at least to somewhere unvisited by anyone before him. What more could a lifelong tourist wish for?

A return ticket maybe?

            Harry stared at his hands. Already more dough-like than human, he wondered if Lisa's plan would work. Somehow, he felt sure that long before the ship reached destruction point, she would change its course as alien thoughts overcame her mind.

            Just as they were spreading through his.

            Strange.

            Seductive.

            And strong...

 

THE END