“There is a complication,” Kop said. “We're not going into harvest mode.”
“Surely you jest.”
“I have something to show you,” Elasa said, carrying the Plant toward him.
But now the agent's Awareness registered. “That thing is dangerous!”
Elasa stood and opened her shirt to display her breasts. The man looked, momentarily distracted. In that moment, Adela and Venus struck.
The man froze. “You cut me off,” he said, surprised.
“Your best bet is to put your host's mind back in charge, so he can start reversing the preparations for the harvest,” Kop said. “You have plenty to do, just not what it was.”
“Yes, of course,” the man agreed, looking somewhat dizzy. His Awareness was stabilizing him, showing him the best course through this new reality.
They moved out, heading for the next meeting. Elasa knew they had to keep moving, because once the Maggots caught on that they were losing their agents, they would immediately act to safeguard the remaining ones.
“Can we get them all in time?” she asked.
Adela put her hand on Bunky's back. “We think so. But we can't be sure of the ones not on our immediate circuit. Other Awares traveled with Bunky to set them up, but there is no clear indication of complete success.”
“And Bunky is with us now,” Elasa said. “And Venus. They can't be everywhere at once.”
“Yes. Anticipating this problem, we primed the others slightly differently.”
“Differently?”
“It's a cruder setting. When they try to contact the Maggots, their memories will short circuit, throwing them into convulsions. Some may die.”
“Won't that attract attention?”
“Yes. That's why it's not the preferred mode. But we could not allow them to continue to function as Maggot minions.”
“I suppose not,” Elasa agreed. She didn't like it, but as Kop had said, this wasn't beanbag. Beanbag was a cloth bag filled with dried beans, used in children's games. They were playing for much higher stakes. At least the ones they nullified personally would be able to retire peacefully, making no waves, and their hosts would emerge in due course, perhaps not badly scathed.
In the course of the excursion, Elasa got to see the formidable processing stations being set up. The local one was a slaughterhouse, but that was only one element of a multi-pronged program. Walking meat could be marched into the station and fed into the grinders, but what of sea, insect, and plant life? They visited a huge underwater center designed to generate a major ocean current that would sweep in all swimming things and chop them up and can them with the flow of water almost unimpeded. Another station was designed to set up a flow of air with tornado force that would draw in all flying things from birds to insects, filtering out the dust and rocks and compacting the flesh. Another was mobile, a giant mower type apparatus that would crunch overland and sweep in and grind up all plant life. If houses and buildings got in the way, well, the wood in them was organic and the metals, plastics and stone could be recycled into the manufacture of more harvest machines. Of course this would not be good for the health of the planet, but that was a non-issue: there would be no survivors anyway.
“You mentioned poop,” Elasa said, morbidly fascinated. “If everything gets canned and shipped out, where does the poop come from?”
“Poop gets shipped in,” Kop explained. “It can get messy leaving it in space, so it is loaded into the cargo ships and brought to Earth in an almost continuous conveyor line. Then the ships are reloaded with canned meat and head back out to the fleet within hours. It's very efficient.”
“But what happens to it on Earth? Is it just one monstrous pile burying the city?”
“No, that would interfere with the food processing. Instead it is vaporized and blown high into the atmosphere, where in time—days, weeks, months—it will settle out like volcanic ash and form a growing layer across the globe. There the feces processors—mostly natural bacteria—will feast on it.”
“But all that—that shit in the air will make it unbreathable,” Elasa protested.
He glanced at her. “What part of ‘no survivors’ did you not understand?”
The tour continued, and all of their contacts were quietly nullified. So far there was no commotion, and no evidence of mischief from the Maggots.
Then as they returned there came news of a mysterious wave of incidents around the world, wherein important people had acted in crazy ways. One encouraging thing was that the news was not suppressed. That suggested that the Maggot censorship had been abated. There were no reported incidents among the people Elasa's party had visited, indicating that the controls remained, but that the harvesting was not starting.
As Elasa and her companions returned home, the corner seemed to have been turned. But was it enough? The final decision remained in the deadly hands of the Maggots.
“It does not look good,” Adela murmured. “Bunky can't see a clear outcome. The decision remains obscure.”
So it still could go either way. Elasa hated that.
Chapter 9:
Maggot
It did not take long to clarify. “They are sending a Maggot,” Adela reported after communing with Bunky. “It will arrive in two days.”
“And I'm the only one whose mind it can't take over,” Elasa said grimly.
“You and Venus. Maggots are not adept at handling plant minds.”
“Because they don't have minds, strictly speaking. But if you're with Venus, it could get at her through your mind.”
“Yes. So you must be with Venus.”
“I must be with Venus,” Elasa agreed. “She was always my plant. At least we can travel incognito. Where are we going?”
“The Maggot will go to the slaughterhouse to stage its investigation. They like to feed while they think.”
“But it has been established that I can't kill it, alone.”
“You will have help.”
That was much of what she needed to know. “I think I'll need it.”
“One other thing,” Adela said. “The Maggot is already broadcasting to the remaining minions on Earth. A warrant for your arrest has just been issued. The police will be here in nine minutes.”
Of course the Maggot knew about her; she'd been having the affair with Kop. Now she realized that cutting his line did not end his connection to the Maggots; it merely interrupted it. The Maggot might already be reconnecting, and was naturally suspicious of Elasa, for excellent reason.
Elasa explained things briefly to Banner, put Venus in her car and headed for the slaughterhouse as she heard the police siren approaching. Banner would handle it, saying she had just left, but he expected her back soon. That might turn out to be a long wait.
Unfortunately the police were not completely fooled. There was a backup car that evidently had the description of her car; it made a U-turn when she passed, and took off after her. They did not know where she was going.
What she would do when she got there she didn't know, but at least she would be on the scene. But first she had to shake the pursuit. Because it was evident that the Maggot did not want to meet her on her terms; it wanted her nullified. Not all the Maggot's agents had been nulled, or else new ones had been made, including the local police chief. She would not survive arrest.
Damn! She wished she had Bunky along, to precog the dangers and steer her correctly. But he had to be with the Awares now, because they could understand him more directly.
She looked ahead. Another police car was coming through an intersection, toward her, siren going. They had her boxed in. In thirty seconds she would be sandwiched between them.
“Venus, I need help,” she said. “You're telepathic; I'm not. You may be in touch with Bunky and the Awares. Your stem is prehensile, and you can hear. If I were a living person you could talk directly to me, but maybe indirect will do. Touch the right side of the dashboard before you for YES, the left side for NO. Do you understand me?”
The curled leaf touched the right side. Voila! That was YES.
“Point the way I must go to escape capture.”
The stem pointed to the right.
Elasa slewed the car into a sharp right turn and cruised into a narrow alley. Behind her the two police cars almost collided; she had barely escaped that vice. But she knew their confusion would not last long. Already she could hear the siren of a cruiser circling to intercept her at the far end of the alley.
“Where now?”
The stem pointed toward the back of the car.
Elasa didn't argue. She braked and turned, finding a widening in the alley, and spun the car around to face back the way it had come. She gunned it forward, noting that the stem now pointed forward. She shot across the road, right between the two stopped police cars, and entered the alley on the other side.
The stem pointed left. Elasa slewed left, into another alley, then right, then left again, following Venus's signals. She knew Bunky was the one guiding her, and she trusted him.
She wasn't sure exactly how she did it, but somehow she slipped through the police net and found herself on a highway leading the way she needed to go: toward the slaughterhouse. “I get it!” she exclaimed. “They assume I'm fleeing the Maggot. They're not looking for me this way.” Still, she did not take a straightforward route, but turned frequently, sometimes backtracking slightly, so that her destination was not evident. Venus warned her of mischief several times, and she detoured to avoid it.
But, inevitably, the avenues of avoidance were shut off, and the sirens converged again just as she reached the slaughter complex. They were probably tracking her car directly now, having oriented on its locator. She slewed to a stop before it, put the car on auto-pilot, heaved up the pot, leaped out as the car resumed motion and ran under cover of trees toward the dread building. With luck the moving vehicle would lure the police after it, giving her sightly more leeway.
The slaughterhouse was not yet in operation, and there were no personnel. It was simply there, a giant blank-walled edifice with four broad avenues leading to it. A single vehicle was there, a van; that must have brought the Maggot.
Elasa stayed in the shadow of the wall and slunk around to the main entrance, carrying the heavy pot. The door was open. She entered. The halls and chambers were empty. Where was the Maggot?
Then people appeared: men, women, children. They all oriented on Elasa simultaneously. They advanced on her, like zombies. Which surely what they were, really, being under the mind control of the alien visitor. She had walked into an ambush.
Why hadn't Venus warned her? Bunky and the Awares had to have foreseen this trap. They would not let her be torn apart by possessed people.
Then the people scrambled back, looking horrified. “Dinosaur!” one cried.
Oho! Venus was projecting a phantasm, maybe Tyrannosaurus Rex, that frightened them. They might be under the control of the Maggot, but evidently Venus could still govern what they saw. Why charge toward that monster?
The Plant's stem pointed to the side. There was a narrow stairway, evidently for private use. Elasa ran to it. This could be defended, because her attackers could mount the steps only one at a time. But what was the point? It was the Maggot she needed to get at, not its captives.
The zombies came to the foot of the stairway, but none tried to mount it. Did no one want to be the first to get knocked back down? That shouldn't matter to possessed people; the Maggot hardly cared about their welfare, and would probably eat them when this was done.
She did not have time to analyze it. At least this spared her the need to put Venus down to free her arms to fight. She ran up, hauled open the door at the top, and plunged into a short hall. That exited to a larger chamber. There stood a man and a Maggot. The Maggot was huge and gross in exactly the manner Kop had described, with the soggy remnant of a human being on the floor beside it, evidently its last meal. The man--
“Kop!” she exclaimed as she set down the pot.
“The Maggot has resumed control,” he said. “It now knows how my contact was interrupted, and used another access point. That device will not be effective again. Now that it is here on Earth it has far greater resources. It seeks a dialogue with you.”
“With me?” Elasa asked. “I am here to kill it.”
“You are here because it herded you here, being unable to control your mind directly. It is intrigued by you. Maggots know of machines, of course, including machines that emulate living creatures, some of which cleverly mimic consciousness. It assumed you were you were such an emulation, despite my understanding of your nature, but now it knows you are real. The Maggots want your secret for future use.”
“My secret is not available for Maggot use,” Elasa said grimly.
“To encourage the dialogue, the minions of the Maggots have arrested your husband, your child, and your friend Mona Maverick. They have been prepped for torture, should indirect coercion become necessary.”
Elasa knew it was no bluff. The Maggots played hardball. She would have to kill this horrible thing quickly. But she doubted it was quite time for her to act. There was supposed to be a signal of some sort, and she knew timing was critical. She needed to keep the dialogue going until Venus indicated it was time. “And is there anything else?” she asked with irony.
“Yes. The Maggot now knows that the second mystery is the Plant. It has projective telepathy. This is another potentially useful tool the Maggots mean to acquire. They will encourage you to cooperate in fathoming this mechanism before you are disassembled.”
“By more torture?”
“Yes. You have animal companions, including a telepathic and precognitive Lamb. They work together with the Plant to achieve its effects, but the Plant can operate when supported by a human mind, making the animals expendable. They too will be tortured in your presence, once they are located and apprehended.”
So the Companions had avoided capture. That was a relief. “Lotsa luck, insect.”
“Observers indicate that the animals are in the vicinity. They should be captured soon.”
“Maybe,” Elasa agreed. She was still waiting for some indication that it was time for her to act. Its absence left her unsettled. It was not safe to leave the initiative to the Maggot. Venus seemed poised; it had to be on the verge.
“Perhaps you are forgetting that I have telepathy and precognition,” Kop said. “The first is useless against you, but the second indicates that a settlement is incipient.”
“I agree,” Elasa said. Apparently she wasn't going to get any more information from the Maggot.
“This dialogue is ended. At such time as you become willing to cooperate, you will say so and the coercion will pause.”
That meant that Banner and Mona were about to be tortured. But she just couldn't turn Venus over to the Maggots.
Now at last Venus's stem pointed forward. It was time. Was she supposed to charge the Maggot? Then why was Kop not alarmed? Something was missing here.
Elasa looked directly at Kop. “I am about to attack. It is time to call in your zombies.”
“They are ready. The Maggot preferred to dialogue with you directly, before capturing and demolishing you.”
Then Venus's stem turned and pointed to a side door, barred from inside the chamber. Elasa went to it and lifted the bar. The door opened.
Outside were Adela, Bunky, Vulture, and Python. “Companions!” Elasa exclaimed gladly. They had not been letting her struggle alone; they had followed her, avoiding the attention of the police. Maybe Elasa had been a distraction so that the Aware could guide them in without detection.
But then she changed her mind. “You can't remain here. They mean to torture you!”
“We are prepared,” Adela said. “The six ewes exchanged and are standing outside. They are supporting Bunky. Also, we are watching Banner, Bela, and Mona, and will act if necessary.”
The Awares certainly had not been idle! The Lamb had fair powers, but the full g
rown sheep had more, and the complete little herd would be formidable. Elasa was relieved to know that they were watching her family and friend, and would stop any torture. But could they handle the dread Maggot?
The Companions entered and moved toward the Maggot. Adela went to stand beside the Plant.
“Interesting,” Kop said, evidently speaking for the Maggot. “They are not trying to help you flee, Elasa, but are advancing on us.”
“And your zombies won't come to help,” Adela said. “They are locked out, and won't find their way back in soon enough to help you. It's just you versus us, a fair fight.”
“Ludicrous,” Kop said. “The Maggot has no fear of any number of machines, animals, or Awares. It knows about you, Adela, from my fond memories of our interaction, and even telepathic animals were never a concern. My own precognition is at its service; we knew you were coming, and are ready for this showdown. I will--” He broke off, astonished. “I'm free! Again.”
“The Maggot may have reestablished telepathic control,” Adela said. “But the Lamb and Plant cut it again. Now get away from here. It's not safe for you any more.”
Amazed, Kop backed away. Then he turned and ran for the door the Companions had used. Obviously he preferred freedom from the Maggot.
Only to halt, as the Maggot found another access and took over again. “As I said, that device won't work again,” Kop said. “Long distance telepathic control is limited, but now the Maggot is right here, with a hundred times the power.”
“And the sheep are here, with power to counter the Maggot,” Adela said evenly. “Precognition will not determine the victor.”
“I see that,” Kop agreed. “I precogged the encounter, but was not able to determine the outcome. Now I see why. However, the Maggot's telepathic control is more than capable of dealing with you. First it will take over your mind--”
“Really?”
Kop paused. “The line has been cut. Again.”