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29.
The Muellers brought was-Maria into their home. "We're old and slow," he said jovially, "but we still get the job done." He spoke in an old man's high-pitched, wheezing voice.
"You have to put up with our slow pace," Mrs. Mueller said in an old woman's tremorous voice. They shake like autumn leaves, these two old humans, was-Maria thought. It was not a sentimental thought but a tactical assessment.
While the Muellers fussed over her in the parlor, was-Maria picked up the telephone and dialed. Soon, was-Richard answered. Richard Bloomstrom had been a sailor aboard Lima Voyager. The voice at the other end was not quite his. "Yes?"
"This is was-Mendez. Are you prepared?"
"Do you have a host?"
"Yes."
"Where is it?"
She told him, and he hung up.
Mueller hovered before it. "My wife has gone to lie down for a while. That's all we do all day, lie down and take naps, then dodder around. Can I offer you a drink of something?"
"I am not thirsty. A friend of mine is coming to pick me up."
"Okay. I hope you find your little boy."
The thing that had been Maria stepped up close to him.
His features changed, grew confused. His eyes widened, seeing the form of her body, and hungering for its shape. His lips grew dry and he licked them. "Is this friend of yours coming soon?" he asked and for the first time there was a hint of alarm or even fear in his voice as he saw the flat, black naked animus of her eyes. "Wait a minute!" he cried in his thin, whistling voice full of old man's chalk and phlegm and bad-smelling breath. His eyes grew wide in alarm.
The being that had been Maria formed its lips into a circle and blew out a cloud of slightly dark air.
Mueller ceased being afraid and relaxed as the natural poisons entered his lungs and started the process of shutting them down. Was-Maria took him by the hand and led him past the bedroom where his wife lay on her side, stirring fitfully in half-sleep. They walked down a hallway and came to a bedroom that seemed to function more as a storage place than anything else. There were pictures of a young man in blue graduation gown. They were old pictures, indicating their child had left home years ago. There was still a bed in the room, and on this was-Maria made Mueller lie down. He was old and slow, and it had to lift his legs for him. He was half-oblivious from the drug it had blown into his lungs, so he moved all the slower. But he ended up on his back the way it wanted him to be, and it crawled up onto the bed and lay with one arm and one leg over him. It found the spot in his neck where it was best to bite, and then it snaked a tube into him. It lowered its face so that its forehead rested against his cheek, and its mouth was round with the slimy black hose that came out and entered his neck. This was a process its kind had learned from spiders in the jungle—numbing the victim by subtle but powerful poisons, so the extraction of DNA and the exchange of cellular instructions went painlessly.
Bess Mueller was in pain with her arthritis and other ailments, but she still had a sharp mind. As she lay on her side on the bed, trying to nap, she saw that woman lead her husband by the bedroom, and instantly her feminine wiles snapped into focus. Something was terribly wrong here.
Slowly she fumbled for the walker by the bedside. When she grew agitated, it was harder for her to walk properly and she needed this dreadful gadget to get around. Still, it was better than being bed-bound. She wung slowly erect, and eased behind the walker. Step for step, like a snail, she made her way from the bedroom into the hall way. She wished these damn things weren't so long. What did elderly people need with long hallways? She went down to Chris' old bedroom—he was a successful 30-something real estate developer in Chicago these days, and didn't keep half as much in touch as he should. Bess got down the hall, took one look into Chris' room, and saw all she needed to see. It was all she could do to keep from shrieking.
That woman had her husband in bed with her. All she saw was that woman's sweet young behind, and her bare legs, wrapped around her husband's old stiff gams. The old fool looked like he was her prisoner, the way she was wrapped around him and her head was bent down over his neck.
Bess turned slowly and inched down the hall with her walker. She reached the livingroom and started for the phone. Now she grew confused. Had she called the police already?
Someone was knocking at the door. Was the phone ringing? She listened carefully, but it seemed not to be making any noise. Someone was ringing the doorbell and banging on the door. Bess turned in that direction and made her way toward the door. "Hang on, officer, I'm coming!"
She opened the door, and there stood a stranger in a combination of jeans and leather. He had a head of curly hair and black eyes. "Yes?" she said.
"I am Richard Bloomstrom."
"Who?" she cried out in a high, quavering voice full of fear and suspicion. She felt the onset of panic.
Mr. Bloomstrom formed his mouth into an 'o' shape and blew something at her. Air. A stream of dark air. She felt herself relax. Now this wasn't bad at all, was it?
The being who had been Richard Bloomstrom got the old woman on the couch and had his extractor tube in her neck before she had any idea what had happened. Soon, was-Richard lifted her and put her against the baseboard. Then it pressed against her, pinning her against the wall low down, and started the extraction process. In the exchange, was-Richard would become was-woman—but not the old feeble crone. The new Gestalt would be of a fresh, vibrant young spore containing the aggregate DNA of all the persons was-Richard had already killed. The old woman's body would morph into a bracket fungus, still containing much of her remains. It would in a few weeks begin generating billions of new bracket spores.
In the bedroom, was-Maria was changing into was-Mueller. As it extracted Mueller's DNA, the genetic instructions flowing across from him to it changed the being's cellular makeup, and it began resembling Mueller. At the same time, Mueller began resembling a Peruvian bracket fungus as was-Mueller began to be set up as a spore generator for a whole new generation of Offensor fungi. The war of the mushroom people against the humans was off to an auspicious start.
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