The Fuentes should have anticipated that… and in their elevated purple-jelly form, they should have taken steps to deal with the problem. If they now had godlike powers, why couldn’t they just teleport inside any ship approaching the Muta system and telepathically explain why the planet was dangerous? Wasn’t that basic courtesy? More important, wasn’t that what the League of Peoples might demand? Surely the Fuentes were required to stop people dying from the effects of the Stage One microbes.
Unless…
"Ohpa," I said, "how long can people survive in Stage One? Do the clouds eventually dissipate?"
"No," the alien said. "They absorb energy from light and nutrients from the atmosphere. I don’t know their maximum life span, but they can certainly remain alive for millions of years."
"Millions?"
"Till the sun begins to fail and renders this planet uninhabitable." Ohpa’s mandibles bent in a way that might have been a smile. "In cloud form, my people are quite resilient. So are the others who’ve undergone Stage One. They may be insane, but they are definitely alive."
"Bloody hell," Festina murmured.
"Not bloody," Ohpa replied, "but most assuredly hell. Even with my meager awareness, I hear their screams of agony. To those with greater perception, the shrieks must be shrill indeed. But the enlightened beings of this galaxy must be inured to the sounds of suffering — they hear so much of it."
Ohpa’s words left the rest of us silent… but the silence seemed to howl.
It was Tut who finally spoke. "Okay," he said to Ohpa, "how do we set things right?"
The Fuentes shrugged. The movement didn’t suit his alien musculature, but his Balrog-inspired knowledge of human body language seemed to think it was necessary. "I don’t know what you can do. I wasn’t a scientist — merely a test subject. I have no idea how to reverse the effects of Stage One."
"We don’t want to reverse Stage One," said Festina. "That might get us in trouble with the League of Peoples." She rolled her eyes. "I hate trying to guess how the League thinks… but if we take a bunch of smoke clouds with the potential for living millions of years, and we force them back into short-lived bodies, the League might consider that the moral equivalent of murder. Doesn’t matter if the clouds are in never-ending torment; we can’t cut their lives short without their prior approval. On the other hand" — she looked at Ohpa-"if we could stop Stage One before we get turned to smoke…"
Ohpa shook his head. "The Stage One microbes are autonomous. There’s no switch to turn them off. In a way, the microbes form their own crude hive mind — not sentient or even very intelligent, but fully capable of carrying out their purpose without outside direction."
"Crap," Festina growled. "What kind of idiot builds an uncontrollable rip-you-to-shit system? Haven’t they heard of fail-safes?"
"The project leaders feared someone might tamper with the process," Ohpa said. "They devoted much effort to making it unstoppable."
"And since you’re only slightly wise, you didn’t tell them they were imbeciles?"
"I told them not to mistake paranoia for prudence. But when you tell paranoids to be more prudent, they believe you are counseling them to be more paranoid."
"You didn’t spell it out for them in words of one syllable? Make… a… way… to… shut… it… off."
Ohpa replied with something in a language I didn’t recognize — presumably the Fuentes’ ancient tongue. His intonation was the same as Festina’s: short single syllables with brief spaces between. Then he switched back to English. "I told them exactly that. But they refused to listen. ‘The fool knows not the wisdom he hears, as the spoon knows not the taste of the soup.’ "
I glared at him. His words came from the Dharmapada, an important Buddhist scripture. Ohpa could only have learned that passage by plucking it from my brain… and it irritated me how easily my thoughts could be plundered. "So that’s it?" I asked. "You’ve waited sixty-five hundred years to tell us there’s nothing we can do?"
"Mom," Tut said, "there’s gotta be something. We wouldn’t have picked up your fuzzy red hitchhiker if our chances were nil. The Balrog must think there’s some way we can shake up the status quo."
"We can change the status quo just by telling the outside world what’s going on. We’ve got a working comm; we’ve got Ohpa’s explanation. Maybe that’s all the Balrog intended — we come and find out what’s what. Now we tell Pistachio, and they pass word to the rest of the galaxy why Muta’s so lethal."
"At which point," Festina said, "every treasure hunter in the universe rushes here to grab Fuentes tech. Then they all turn into pissed-off ghosts."
"What else can we do?" I asked.
"Simple," Festina answered. "Figure out a way to kick-start Stage Two."
Tut turned to Ohpa. "Is that possible?"
"I don’t know," the alien replied. "I don’t know why Stage Two failed." His mandibles worked briefly — maybe a mannerism to show he was thinking. "It might be something simple, like a burned-out fuse. Perhaps Stage Two is ready to go, and you just need to fix some tiny thing. But the malfunction could be more serious. Perhaps it can only be repaired by persons with special expertise. And that assumes it can be repaired at all. I’ve been in stasis a long, long time. By now, the Stage Two equipment may have degraded too much to salvage."
"Those are all possibilities," Festina admitted, "but unless someone has a better idea, I don’t see we have much choice. We can’t leave Muta by Sperm-tail for fear the EMP clouds will attack Pistachio. But if we activate Stage Two, the clouds will go transcendental, after which they’ll likely leave us alone. Then we can go back to the ship and get decontaminated before we turn smoky." She looked at Tut and me. "Is that a plan?"
"I’m all for starting Stage Two," Tut said, "but why leave afterward? If Stage Two works, we can stay on Muta and turn into demigods, right?"
"Not quite," Festina told him. "If you stay on Muta, eventually you’ll undergo a process created by alien scientists with a proven record of fuck-ups: a process that might work on Fuentes but was never intended for Homo sapiens. Sounds more like a recipe for disaster than a golden invitation to climb Mount Olympus."
"Auntie, you’re such a spoilsport. Isn’t becoming godlike worth a little risk?"
"I’ve met godlike beings. As far as I can tell, they do nothing with their lives… except occasionally manipulate mine."
"That doesn’t mean you’d have to act that way. You could do good things for people who need it."
"I can do that now," Festina said. "Aren’t I a fabulous hero of the Technocracy?"
"Seriously," Tut said. "Seriously, Auntie. What’s wrong with being a god?"
"Seriously?" Festina sighed. "Deep in my bones, something cries out that gods are something you defy, not something you become. Humans should be standing on mountaintops, screaming challenges at the divine rather than coveting divinity ourselves. We should admire Prometheus, not Zeus… Job, not Jehovah. Becoming a god, or a godlike being, is selling out to the enemy. From the Greeks to the Norse to the Garden of Eden, gods are capricious assholes with impulse control problems. Joining their ranks would be a step down."