Help! Help! Cried the Dog by Glen Seeber

Author:Glen Seeber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: talking dog, symbiont, government secrets, mushrooms
Publisher: Glen Seeber
Published: 2020-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17: Symbiosis

Meanwhile, at the lab ...

“You know what I think happened, Carter?” Ross said, suddenly, setting aside a stack of papers.

I looked at him and he just looked back, waiting for my response. If he did that around his mentor, I could think of more than one reason why they might have gone their separate ways. I knew what he’d been reading — the report Julie had filed just before she and Fred caught the flight back to this top secret location.

I had read the same report and finished it about 15 minutes before Ross did. Like him, I knew now about the Quivira Indians and the fate of the town of Quivira. But then I’d known about the ghost town long before, since I’m the one who had bought it and visited it first.

I sighed and bit the bullet. “No, Ross, I don’t know what you think happened.”

“Think about it, Carter. The American Indian, surviving off the fruit of the land for millennia, making use of everything and leaving very little to waste. They would kill a buffalo and besides the nourishment they got from its meat, they used its bones for tools and its skin for clothing and blankets.

“They knew all the plants that were good to eat and cultivated some of them, like beans and squash and maize. They knew which mushrooms were tasty and which were poisonous and which would be valuable for use during religious celebrations.

“Here’s what I think happened ...”

“Finally,” I muttered. My good mood from earlier, gained from the walk in the woods overnight, seemed to have disappeared the longer I spent time with this man.

It’s like listening to a comedian tell a joke, which is funny, but then he explains the joke, breaking it down into its component parts, and now the joke isn’t funny at all. You can’t tear something apart and put it back together and see it the same way again as when you first saw it — unless we’re talking about a classic Ford Mustang. But that’s beside the point.

“The Indians came across a new fungus. New to us, anyway, perhaps old hat for them. And they cultivated it over time. The shamans, probably, since they would have had the accumulated training and experience through the generations to be able to make changes, to select a better strain for further propagation and use,” Ross said.

“Like taking wheat from just another type of grass and breeding it until it becomes something that can be ground into flour, with all the uses that can be found there,” Penny said.

I’d forgotten she was in the room, she’d been so quiet, and behind me, while Ross still had the floor.

“Exactly!” Ross said. “We wouldn’t have popcorn today if the Indians hadn’t bred and crossbred strains of corn to come up with a type that pops when exposed to enough heat. And so it is with this mystery fungus. The medicine men of the tribes developed a strain of fungus that benefits its symbiont —”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted.

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