village. Most of the citizens appeared friendly, although some exhibited irritation or a muted hostility at the queries of the wardens. Pertinax and Chellapilla paused only a few minutes to bolt down some cold food around mid- afternoon before continuing their so-far fruitless search.
Eventually they found themselves down by some primitive docks, watching the small fishing fleet of “Chicago” tie up for the evening. The fishermen, shouldering their day’s bounty in woven baskets, moved warily past the weary wardens.
“Well, I’m stumped,” confessed Pertinax. “If they’re hiding something, they’ve concealed it well.”
Chellapilla said, “Maybe we’re going about this wrong. Let’s ask what could harm the virgula and sublimula, instead of just expecting to recognize the agent when we see it.”
“Well, really only other virgula and sublimula, which of course the humans have no way of fashioning.”
“Ah, but what of rogue lobes?”
The natural precipitation cycles brought infinite numbers of virgula and sublimula down from their habitats in the clouds to ground level. When separated from the tropospheric mind in this way, the components of the mind were programmed for apoptosis. But occasionally a colony of virgula and sublimula would fail to self-destruct, instead clumping together into a rogue lobe. Isolated from the parent mind, the lobes frequently went insane before eventually succumbing to environmental stresses. Sometimes, though, a lobe could live a surprisingly long time if it found the right conditions.
“Do you think local factors in the lake here might encourage lobe formations?”
“There’s one way to find out,” answered Chellapilla.
It took only another half hour of prowling the lakeshore, scrambling over slippery rocks and across pebbled strands, to discover a small lobe.
Thick intelligent slime latticed with various organic elements—pondweeds, zebra mussels, a disintegrating bird carcass—lay draped across a boulder, a mucosal sac with the processing power of a non-autonomous twenty- second-century AI. The slime was liquescently displaying its mad internal thoughts just as a mail cloud did: fractured images of the natural world, blazes of equations, shards of old human culture ante-Upflowering, elaborate mathematical constructions. A steady whisper of jagged sounds, a schizophrenic monologue, accompanied the display.
Pertinax stared horrified. “Uploading this fragment of chaos to the tropospheric mind would engender destabilizing waves of disinformation across the skies. The humans don’t even need to explode their balloons. Simply letting the mind automatically read the slime would be enough.”
“We can’t allow this to happen.”
“Let’s hurry back to the others.”
“You damned toothy ratdogs aren’t going anywhere.”
A squad of humans had come stealthily upon Pertinax and Chellapilla while their attentions were engaged by the lobe. With rifles leveled at their heads, the wardens had no recourse but to raise their hands in surrender.
Two men came to bind the wardens. The one dealing with Chellapilla twisted her arms cruelly behind her, causing her to squeal. Maddened by the sound, Pertinax broke free and hurled himself at one of the gun-bearers. But a rifle stock connected with his skull, and he knew only blackness.
When Pertinax awoke, night had fallen. He found himself with limbs bound, lying in a cage improvised from thick branches rammed deep into the soil and lashed together. He struggled to rise, and thus attracted the attentions of his fellow captives.
Similarly bound, Chellapilla squirmed across the grass to her mate. “Oh, Perty, I’m so glad you’re awake! We were afraid you had a concussion.”
“No, I’m fine. And you?”
“Just sore. Once you were knocked out, they didn’t really hurt me further.”
Sylvanus’s sad voice reached Pertinax as well. “Welcome back, my lad. We’re in a fine mess now, and it’s all my fault for underestimating the harmful intentions of these savages.”
Firelight flared up some meters away, accompanied by the roar of a human crowd. “Where are we?”
“We’re on the town green,” said Chellapilla. “The humans are celebrating their victory over us. They slaughtered our Kangemu and are roasting them for a feast.”
“Barbarians!”
Tanselle spoke. “Cimabue and I are here as well, Pertinax, but he did not escape so easily as you. They clubbed him viciously when he fought back. Now his breathing is erratic, and he won’t respond.”
“We have to do something!”
“But what?” inquired Sylvanus.
“The least we can do,” said Chellapilla, “is inform the tropospheric mind of our troubles and the threat from rogue lobe infection. Maybe the mind will know what to do.”
Pertinax considered this proposal. “That’s a sound idea, Chell. But I suspect our pigeons have already served as appetizers.” He paused as an idea struck him. “But I know a way to reach the mind. First I need to be free. You three will have to chew my ropes off.”
Shielded by darkness, without any guards to note their activities and interfere (how helpless the humans must have deemed them!), his three fellows quickly chewed through Pertinax’s bonds with their sturdy teeth and powerful jaws. His first action after massaging his limbs back into a semblance of strength was to take off his robe and stuff it with dirt and grass into a rough recumbent dummy that would satisfy a cursory headcount. Then, employing his own untaxed jaw muscles, he beavered his way out of the cage.
“Be careful, Perty!” whispered Chellapilla, but Pertinax did not pause to reply.
Naked, dashing low across the yard from shadow to shadow, Pertinax reached one of the tethered balloons without being detected. Nearby stood a giant ceramic pot with a poorly fitting lid. Shards of light and sound escaped from the pot, betokening the presence of a malignant rogue lobe within. Plainly, infection of the tropospheric mind was imminent. This realization hastened Pertinax’s actions.
First he kicked up the feed on one balloon’s colony of methanogens. That vehicle began to tug even more heartily at its tethers. Moving among the other balloons, Pertinax disabled them by snapping their nutrient feed lines. At the very least, this would delay the assault on the mind.
Pertinax leaped onboard the lone functional balloon and cast off. He rose swiftly to the height of several meters before he was spotted. Shouts filled the night. Something whizzed by Pertinax’s head, and he ducked. A barbed projectile from one of the compressed-air guns. Pertinax doubted the weapons possessed enough force to harm him or the balloon at this altitude, but he remained hunkered down for a few more minutes nonetheless.
Would the humans take revenge on their remaining captives? Pertinax couldn’t spare the energy for worry. He had a mission to complete.
Within the space of fifteen minutes, Pertinax floated among the lowest clouds, the nearest gauzy interface to the tropospheric mind. Their dampness subtly enwrapped him, until he was soaked and shivering. His head seemed to attract a thicker constellation of fog….
A small auroral screen opened up in the sky not four meters from Pertinax. He could smell the scorched molecules associated with the display.
Don Corleone appeared on the screen: one or more of the resident AIs taking a form deemed familiar from Pertinax’s recent past viewing records.
“You have done well to bring us this information, steward. We will now enforce our justice on the humans.”
Pertinax’s teeth chattered. “Puh-please try to spare my companions.”
The representative of the tropospheric mind did not deign to reply, and the screen winked out in a frazzle of sparks.
The nighted sky grew darker, if such was possible. Ominous rumbles sounded from the west. Winds began to rise.
The mind was marshalling a storm. A lightning storm. And Pertinax was riding a bomb.
Pertinax frantically shut off the feeder line to the methanogens. The balloon began to descend, but all too slowly for Pertinax’s peace of mind.
The first lightning strike impacted the ground far below, after seeming to sizzle right past Pertinax’s nose. He knew the bolt must have been farther off than that, but anywhere closer than the next bioregion was
