Episode 8 - Symbiosis

  Chapter 72 - Cabbage Soup

  Pooka dances beneath me. It feels strange to have material between us. When we ride together, we move as one body. My flesh feels as if it melts into his, his edges softening and embracing me where we touch. There is no delay in how we shift, no hesitation as we try to anticipate the other. Collectively, we adjust body weight and shift muscle.

  I do not think the Bosun’s concern that I would get sore is true. If anything, this saddle will make it worse. I never realized how Pooka’s ephemeral form was so important in cushioning me. Our awareness of each other remains the same, just without the connection of the body; we’ll get used to it.

  He refused the reins. This is close enough. I wrap my wounded hand in his mane and with the second I hold loosely to the pommel of the saddle that Addie was able to find in a trailer loaded with parts that would make Junk back at Aquila equally excited and apoplectic at its disorder. We hopefully look close enough to a normal Equus and rider, although it is unusual for humans to ride Equus. They are so strong I think most riders would fall off. Every Equus I’ve ever seen pulled the Intertrain carriages in teams of six, accelerating to hundreds of kilometers an hour as magnetic serpents full of people and cargo followed. Larger teams can move trains hundreds of carriages long.

  I really have no idea what Aquila would ever do with an Equus, so I’ll probably have to come up with a suitable lie at some point. And maybe keep away from the Captains’ symbionts.

  You think the sister could smell me on you?

  I’m certain she could smell you. Captain Moreau knew something wasn’t right. He’d have to be a powerful conduit to attract another cryptid, even if she doesn’t really look like one.

  I have a memory of another man from Adrian’s mind, a man with curled hands like claws and black fur, and pointed teeth like a beast. Lupus lycanthropus was what Adrian had called that Lupus. Without really thinking, I run my tongue along my own teeth to feel their flat edges as I reflect on the memory.

  In an effort to focus my thoughts, I study the map on the tablet in front of me, and with a careful hand and stylus sketch my best estimate of the contours of the rock formations we trot alongside. The haze is heavy at the moment. I can neither hear nor see the rest of the convoy travelling somewhere behind us.

  I glance at the map again, zooming out to review the waypoints that were loaded by the Navigator and marked on my map before we left the convoy.

  “Davidson?” I call out loud.

  “Over here!” returns a female voice.

  Pooka turns without my prompting, trotting towards the sound. Each hoofbeat stirs up the friable dust beneath us in a cloud. It isn’t red, like it was a Catakalan’s mineral operations - still full of iron and other metals. It isn’t black, like potting mix used for Rhett’s potted plants - still full of valuable organic carbon. It’s brown, a brown like faded bones and empty husks. The soil here contains nothing of value.

  I pause as Pooka steps over a small curled object on the ground. The first thing we’ve seen that doesn’t look like a rock. I pause, and slip down from the saddle to inspect the tiny thing.

  It looks like crumpled paper - pastel green edges curled up upon itself with an overlapping series of fleshy, flattened leaf-like structures. It lies loose upon the surface of the soil, and trembles slightly as a gust of wind blows by. When I poke it with my gloved hand, it does not move.

  “Watcha found?” asks Davidson, trotting up on her Tragelaphus that I had admired back in camp. The bovid has elegant white spots on its dark facial mask, and thin white markings down its sides and along the flanks. A gorgeous beard of black hair runs down the midline of the neck and chest, and delicate buff socks come up to the hocks and knees.

  “Is it a plant?” I ask, picking up the tiny thing and holding it in my gloved palm for Davidson to see.

  “Oh, bring it back to camp. It’s a lichen, Carol will tell you all about it.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Little one like that? Yeah, it’s fine. Just don’t let it get wet,” she adds.

  “What happens when it gets wet?” I ask apprehensively.

  “Wakes up. Lots of things out here go wrong when it rains. The roaming holobionts are the least of our concerns.”

  “What else happens when it gets wet?” I repeat.

  Davidson looks stern. “Flash flooding. Doesn’t even need to be raining on top of you. Could be raining dozens of kilometers away, and the water just comes rushing by. Soil doesn’t soak it up that well.”

  I slip the tiny lichen in a saddlebag on Pooka’s side, and he curls back a forefoot to act as a step so I can mount again. As I settle back into the saddle, Davidson looks on impressed. Pooka is larger than any other herbivore symbiont in their teams. The only cervid I can think of that would be larger might be an Alces, or Blake’s Bison, and I didn’t see one with them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Alces in person. I shouldn’t have thought of Blake, it gives my stomach a guilty twist.

  “We should head back to the convoy, should be reaching waypoint Gamma soonish, and they’ll want to stop for lunch,” suggests Davidson.

  “Did I mark this right?” I ask, leaning down from my saddle to hand Davidson the tablet for her to inspect.

  “Yep, looks good. C’mon.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Carol withdraws a pair of tweezers and takes the lichen sample from my grip when I return.

  The convoy is not disassembled like it was when I arrived. The trailers all remain hitched to symbionts, and the crews are taking turns entering the confines of the habitats to eat. Morale is very high, everyone is excited for the fresh cabbage, and someone has a large pot of soup going. When the sun sets, the convoy keeps on moving apparently, even in the dark. The scouts all take shifts, forging ahead to make sure the path is clear. The landscape out here changes with the rains, I’ve been told.

  We’ve not seen anything alive in my entire first day, not even the strange twisting objects I’d sometimes see shadows of on the trains. I’m not sure what there is to scavenge out here. I push back my environmental suit’s hood to rub my brow, scratching at the seal of my respirator. The sun is amazing, warm and oppressive in equal measure. It feels like I imagined it might feel from its bright light within the domes.

  “It’s a fruticose-form lichen,” explains Carol, bringing my attention back from my thoughts as he picks it up and turns it around to inspect. Addie comes close to see what has the older man’s attention, sitting at the collapsible table we’re gathered at.

  “Is it alive?” I ask.

  “Oh yes. They are tolerant of complete desiccation. When the rains come, it’ll spring back to life, no worries,” explains Carol.

  “Someone told me they’re not plants?” I ask.

  “Correct. They are a symbiotic partnership between mycobionts - fungi - and a photosynthetic photobiont - usually algal in origin. They exist in a mutualistic parasitic partnership, so dependent on each other they cannot live without the partner anymore.”

  Pooka’s ears twist, and I can feel him listening.

  “It is a symbiont and host?” I ask with ?breathless curiosity. The labs at Murasaki studied nothing like this.

  “Indeed,” replies Carol, his wrinkled eyes brightening for an eager listener. “The mycobiont is perhaps the host, as we are. They provide the body structure, reproductive organs and are capable of ingesting most organic material when the body comes across it. The photobiont is the partner, and can provide photosynthesis to fuel them when there is nothing else to eat. Together, we call them holobionts - not free-living organisms, and not eusocial colonies either. They are creatures that exist as complex assemblages of organisms now incapable of living independently of each other. They are the dominant lifeform out here in these barrens.”

  “How? Did they choose to form these partnerships?”

  Carol grins. “Documentation pre-scarcity is rare, but I believe they have existed for a very long time, though likely not once as common as they are today, and maybe not as advanced. There is no choice though, it is a reality thrust upon them by biology and the necessities of survival. Nothing exists post-scarcity that is not symbiotic anymore. The world has become too cruel and harsh for any of us to live alone. There is something of a pretty poetry to it, I think. We think we are alone in the world, but that is never the case - we live as complex creatures reliant upon our symbionts and each other - each of us specialized. Even the bubblers in the dome are not exempt, it is a complex orchestration for survival of the whole - birth and death and resources for all the parts, so that the greater may continue.”

  “It is absurd,” says Addie suddenly.

  “Like silly?” I ask.

  “Sort of,” she shrugs, her symbiont on her shoulder slipping off with one scaled coil as she does so. “We think we are alone, but we are not - tied together in mutual servitude to our survival - as symbionts and as companies. We exist as individuals, thinking and feeling, and yet we are also part of a greater whole that does not think at all. Yet the unfeeling greater must ruthlessly manage the smaller feeling parts - balancing resource distribution and culling the unneeded, or be poisoned by its mismanagement for the collective to fail and all to suffer worser fates. The absurdity is in the relationship between the two - that we think and feel and suffer, and the whole does not, yet it comes first…” she pauses, “or maybe it does feel? Every company has its own policy and operations, each a personality - are they the only things alive and we individuals nothing but blood and skin and kidneys?”

  I blink; she doesn’t seem to expect an answer to her odd thoughts. I will admit there is a strange temptation in the bleak freedom Addie’s thoughts provide… If I were a simple cell in a body, maybe I could stop feeling guilt and discontent and sadness. And yet, potentially I’d be the cell given a programmed apoptosis command to ensure the survival of the whole, and I keep on refusing to die… I guess I’m a tumor growing unwanted. In some ways… I’m kind of proud of that thought.

  And yet, there remains a missing element. Maybe they don't see it living out here in their small crews, I don't know how they interact with their buyers. I dislike that the executives are the only ones who get ferns in their lobbies. It is wrong that the upper management at Apex decorated their lounges with fountains made from stone that represents the world we no longer have as a species. I get the natural things that remain are rare and precious, and that plants are delicate... But, I cannot help my yearning for those textures, and spiteful jealousy that they were so closely guarded. And I have seen darker corruption than just hoarding things we cannot have, access to currency or resources you would never know existed unless you were close to it. I have felt how easy it is to normalize being given more as you get closer to power. Aquila has walked that delicate line with all its agents and its luxurious headquarters.

  I look at the small lichen on the foldable table between us all, curled and crisp like the dead leaves Rhett would trim from his pot plants. I reach for Pooka’s thoughts, but he is pensive. This is too complex for him, too many contradictory feelings created by the absurd tension Addie described. “I’ve never heard it phrased that way,” I say to reassure them I'm still listening. “Are even plants this way?”

  Carol seems to ignore Addie’s musing, perhaps used to her abstract thoughts. “Oh yes, even plants. Many harbor symbiotic bacteria in their roots or tissues, extracting nitrogen and other scarce nutrients in exchange for protection.”

  “It seems cruel,” I mutter.

  “To give the individual for the collective?” clarifies Carol.

  “Maybe.”

  Carol nods, humming. “It is true that suffering hurts. But you know, I used to be a bubbler once, and I still miss my apartment and hot, filling meals that never left me hungry. But I would give them all up again to come out here. And it is not that I don't suffer here. In some ways, it is a harder life. But as a smaller company, we can see the scope of the whole easier, and my days are less bleak. But, ask me that question again sometime when the fresh vegetables run out and we’re on our tenth day straight of meal cakes and cleaning ourselves with wet rags.” He picks up the lichen, tucking it between a plastic casing he withdraws from his pocket and sealing it shut inside with a click.

  “Davidson says they wake up when it rains?” I say, watching his hands.

  “What?” asks Carol blinking.

  “The lichen…”

  “Oh yes,” interrupts Addie excitedly. “The little ones aren’t much to worry about. They don’t move much. But the big ones get all fleshy and start roaming when it’s wet.”

  “Do I need to be worried?” I ask.

  “They are slow moving, using a sort of pulsating contraction-like process with the peripherals of their body among other mechanisms. But they will consume anything organic they come across, so do be careful, yes. Deeply unpleasant to watch,” concludes Carol.

  “The Bosun said your last scout got eaten?” I ask nervously.

  Carol laughs dryly. “He likes to scare the new crew members. We left her body out for them, too much burden for us to carry and nowhere to keep it cold. Her mask cracked when she fell from her symbiont one day, breathed a few too many spores. Passed in her sleep from a nasty fever as the mold rotted her from inside out. We had to quarantine her in one of the storage trailers, poor girl died alone. We unfortunately could not get her to town fast enough for medical treatment. The team's been short until you arrived to help us.”

  “Well, that’s fucked,” I mutter.

  “It is not all positives living out here, that is true,” says Carol carefully. “But cheer up, it’s cabbage soup I hear!”