The Long Sleep

XXIV

Illusion?

He had been through so many illusions in the last few days that he could not help but doubt the reality of what he saw before him. Surely it was another of Galing's programs, no more real than the dungeon or the honeymoon suite. This was a fungus, nothing more than that, plant life. It could not possess the quick mobility of an animal!

The fungus flowed toward the tank in a many-fingered amoeboid mass. As it came nearer, it rose higher and higher until it seemed that the tips of those fingers must brush the polluted sky. A thin yellowish fluid oozed from it continually and sheeted down the columns of muck, was reabsorbed by the mother body before it spilled onto the ground. The hideous creature writhed and pulsed, roiled and churned within itself. It was gray the color of dead flesh and brown the color of feces. Pustules as large as basketballs punctuated it, split open and issued a disgusting, syrupy ichor.

Beneath the tank, the wriggling carpet of moss surged up for the fourth time, shook, tilted, fell back, rocking them violently from side to side.

“Joel! Galing said.

“We're under attack,” he said.

“We'll be out to help.”

“No! Stay there.”

“But—”

“You can't do anything. It's too damned big. It's the whole world!”

This was no Disorientation Therapy Puzzle, no clever illusion; this, by God, was real!

Joel touched the solid-state control spot label reverse and felt the machine change gears smoothly. He gripped the wheel with both sweat-slicked hands and, as the tread churned backwards, he turned the tank to the right as hard and fast as he could.

“Move, you big bastard!” he said, pulling harder than he had to pull, as if he could muscle it around faster than it would go on its own.

He had to get out from under the falling wave of amorphous fungus, had to get back to the tunnel that led into the subterranean pyramid from which they had “escaped” only minutes ago. This was no time to kid himself; if he didn't get into the pyramid, he and Allison were dead. Even in the tank they couldn't stand for long against the fungus.

One finger of the glistening, wet mass of vegetable matter fell noiselessly across the place where the tank had been only a moment ago. It curled back, bunched up on itself, was absorbed into the mother body. The rest of the creature, an endless hulking thing, came closer, forming a new finger to replace the old one.

Joel completed the turn and put the machine in top gear, stood on the wide accelerator plate and jammed it all the way down to the floorboards. The tank lurched, whined, and surged forward. “Come on baby,” he said, as if it could hear him. “Move your big steel ass!”

A mammoth pseudopod of fungus fell on his right, a ridge of muck that must have weighed thousands upon thousands of tons. It oozed towards him, and the tip of it curled out in front of the tank, blocking his escape route.

“Damn!”

He wheeled to the left.

Another pseudopod fell on that side. It was at least twenty feet high, glimmering with yellow fluid, pustules bursting as it pressed itself in his direction.

“Pincered,” he said.

He hit the brake pedal, brought the tank to a full stop. He could not go forward or backward or to either side without encountering the fungus.

“Whatever the hell you are,” he said as he watched it move in on him, “you're more than a little bit intelligent. Or you've got damned good instincts.”

The stuff lapped at the tank tread.

“It's got me surrounded,” he told Galing.

“Then we must come out.”

“Give me a chance to use some of the weaponry on this thing,” Joel said. “I think I can make it pull back.”

The fungus slapped over the knobby, armored hood and pushed against the hologram cameras which gave Joel a remote view of the ground behind him. It sheathed his foreward view windows, ebbed and flowed across the machine like a sea of dark gelatin tugging at a wrecked and sunken ship. It probed at the tank with what seemed like curiosity.

A light suddenly flashed on the control panel, and the tank's foot-square computer display screen in the middle of the dash was blinking an ominous, stark warning:

Glancing quickly at the weapons panel, Joel punched control spots and fought back.

Nothing happened.

He stared at the words flashing on the display screen, and he knew that they were not true. And he suddenly realized that the first message had not been true either. The armor couldn't possibly be corroding. If the fungus could dissolve steel, it would have eaten through the entrance to the pyramid a long time ago.

But why was the computer lying? This was no mere malfunction. If it were not operating properly, it would either remain blank or would check its own circuits and tell him that something was wrong with it. This was not erroneous information; it was an outright deception!

He thought he knew what was causing it.

He touched a control spot labeled first gear — forward.

Nothing happened.

The engine continued to idle.

“This damned stuff is intelligent,” Joel told Galing. “I don't know how… But it's taken control of the tank's computer. I can't fight against it.”

Beside him, the lock lever popped out on the entrance hatch.

“Oh, no you don't!” he said. He hit it hard and held his hand on it to keep it depressed.

“Joel?”

“It just tried to unlock the door,” he said. “Almost had me there.”

“Listen,” Galing said, “there's a manual override for the weapons panel.”

“I know,” Joel said.

“Sure,” he told it. “Sure.” He sprung open a panel on his left and examined the two dozen toggle switches of the weapons override system. He pushed on a few of them.

He felt the flamethrowers come on this time, and he heard the roar of the fire on all four sides. The temperature within the tank climbed almost at once and was recorded on a lighted circled overhead: temperature: 72,73,74,75,76,77,78…

“Manual system's okay,” he told Gating.

“What are you using?”

“Flamethrowers.”

“That's best”

The battle was a silent one. The pulpy fungus flowed in and tried to put out the flames. It trembled as the fire ticked at it. Bursting like grenades in the intense heat, the pustules became pockmarks in the mother body. The gray-brown muck blackened, smoked, withered, and fell away from the four nozzles as well as from the view windows and the hologram cameras which were positioned near the flames. Yet it kept its grip on the tank, and it persisted, returning to the nozzles with more force than before.

Joel was sweating like a horse at the end of the race. He wiped his face with his sleeve, glanced at Allison to see how she was making out. She seemed sound asleep; the heat had apparently complemented the drugs to put her under once more. Perspiration rolled from her face and dampened her long hair, but otherwise she seemed fine.

Joel had taken his hand from the door lock beside him. Now, it popped open with the noise of a gunshot, and he barely had time to slam it back into place.

Five minutes later, the walls of the tank were too hot to touch. The view windows in front of him were steamed over. The temperature seemed to have stabilized at a hundred degrees, although it was many times higher than that outside.

Then the computer display screen flashed a warning that was really — coming from the fungus, as it did — a nasty threat:

Joel could not find a manual switch that would override the computer's control of the air conditioning. He looked at the overhead temperature gauge which had begun to wink on and off once more: 101,102,103… 104… 105…

“You can't sweat us out,” Joel said. “We're going to burn you first.”

“What did you say?” Galing asked.

“I'm not talking to you.”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine!”

“Joel—”

“Don't bother me!”

106… 107…

The lock lever on the door was burning his hand. He unhooked his safety harness, swiveled on the seat, and held the lever down with the sole of his boot.

108… 109… 110…

He rolled his tongue around in his mouth, tried to make some saliva. He had no luck.

111… 112…

The display screen wiped itself clear and then flashed another message at him:

How much air would the cab contain? How long could the two of them survive on it if the computer had really sealed off the supply of fresh air? Allison was asleep, so she wouldn't be using as much as he was. And if he remained perfectly still, didn't move around and waste energy, kept his breathing shallow, maybe they could last ten minutes.

113… 114…

The perspiration ran from him like fat melting from a roasting fowl. His clothes were soaked through, and the leatherette seat around him glistened. His head ached. Behind his eyes two mules were kicking their way out. His mouth was as dry as dust, his lips cracked and bleeding. Each breath burned his throat and flared in his lungs like a torch.

115… 116… 117…

Allison moaned, turned in her harness. Her slender hands were curled like claws at her sides.

How much more air?

Five minutes worth?

Less. Surely, they had been suffering more than five minutes since the air supply had been shut down. The air was thick, ammoniac, too hot to breathe. They must have been here ten minutes now. It must be near the end.

118… 119… 120… 120… 120… 120.

When he saw the temperature stabilize again, he knew that they were going to win. Their air supply was rapidly running out, and the heat was already too much to endure. Yet he knew that the battle was won now; the moral superiority was theirs and the physical challenge would be met as well.

You're raving, he thought, as he realized that he was laughing and that he had vocalized most of those thoughts.

120… 120… 120…

Outside, the fungus shriveled in the fire. It writhed and pitched, rose up and fell down, formed and re-formed in what could only be called a fit of rage. Gradually, grudgingly, it drew back from the superheated tank.

“I knew it,” Joel said weakly.

The display screen went blank.

The vents brought the sound of highspeed fans. Cool air rushed out into his face.

120… 119… 119… 118…

“We beat it,” he told Galing. But he realized that his voice was a faint croak, unintelligible. He cleared his throat, tried to make some saliva, had more luck this time. “We're free of it,” he said softly.

He took his foot off the door lock, swung around, hooked into his harness again. Without switching off the flamethrowers, he put the machine in gear and accelerated toward the entrance to the pyramid.

“We're coming back!” he told Galing. “Open up the gates!”

Behind, the fungus rushed after him, keeping a safe distance from the flames but bulking higher and higher every second.

Galing's voice crackled on the radio, but it was drowned out by the clatter of tank tread as the ground beneath them heaved again and the moss tried to overturn them.

“Open up!”

The tunnel door irised in front of them.

Joel cut the flamethrowers at the last minute and glanced at the rearview screen.

The fungus roared down on them like an express train.

The door was opening so damned slowly!

Joel tramped the accelerator all the way down and took the tank through the entrance even as it was growing wider. The tank made a clean pass. The tread struck the sloping concrete approach to the tunnel, then rumbled over shiny steel as the door irised all the way open.

“Shut it! Shut it!” He was screaming. He didn't care.

The fungus gushed through the entrance, but it was not able to jam the door open. The steel sphincter cycled shut with a loud clang! that reverberated hollowly down the metal tube, and the muck was sliced through cleanly.

Two or three hundred pounds of the main growth was severed and isolated in the tunnel behind the tank. It curled and twisted, utterly shapeless but as if it were seeking a shape. It pressed at the door, trying to get out and rejoin the mother body. Frustrated, it pulled back, pulsed obscenely for a moment, and began to slither along the tunnel toward the tank and the inner door.

Before Joel was halfway to the inner door, another barrier slammed out of the ceiling, sealing him in the first fifty yards of the passageway.

“What's this. I have company out here, you know.”

“We know,” Galing said. “This is decontamination.”

“You can kill it?”

“In airtight quarters like this, yes.”

A thin white gas hissed out of the walls and filled the tube until the hologram cameras showed nothing but blank, white vapor.

Joel looked at the temperature guage on the ceiling of the cab: 106… 106… 106… 105… It was cooling off much more slowly than it had heated. “How long?” he asked Galing.

“Another minute.”

105… 105… 105… 106…

The gas began to clear around them. When it was gone altogether, he looked at the rearview screen. The hologram cameras were focused on a slimy patch on the tunnel floor, all that remained of the two-hundred-pound chunk of fungus.

“The gas did all that?” he asked Galing.

“The gas — and a mist of acid.”

When the air was as clear as a spring day, the barrier went up in front of him.

He drove down the last length of the tunnel toward the last door as it irised out of his way.