Free After the Collapse by Paul di Filippo

was fabbed from spartina fed into the now separated UPD’s (the same method by which the voyagers would sustain themselves at sea; the proseity units could desalinate seawater as well), and everyone settled down around the flames on UPD-fabbed cushions laid over mattresses of dried seaweed. Conversation was casual, and Storm mainly listened. He soon deduced that the ten wardens all hailed from up and down the Pacific Coast, and knew each other to varying degrees.
    When all had finished eating, Pankey stood, and the others, including Storm, snapped to attention.
    “I will endeavor to bring our newest member up to speed,” said the tall warden, grooming his muzzle somewhat self-consciously. “But this is a good time for anyone else to ask questions as well, if you’re unsure of anything.
    “We ten—excuse me, we eleven—have been constituted an ERT—an Emergency Response Team—by the tropospheric mind—Old Tropo, if he’ll permit the familiarity—and given the assignment of straightening out the mess in Hawaii. All the wardens in that chain of islands have perished, assassinated by Mauna Loa, sister to Tropo, who wishes to enslave all the mobile entities of that biosphere.
    “We are all familiar, I believe, with the phenomenon of ‘rogue lobes,’ isolated colonies of virgula and sublimula which descend to the ground as star jelly. Usually, their lifetimes are extremely short and erratic, given their separation from the main currents of the weather mind. But in the case of Mauna Loa, we have an intelligent and self-sustaining organism, unfortunately quite deranged and exhibiting no signs of possessing any ethical constraints.
    “As near as Tropo can determine, a rogue lobe hybridized with two types of extremophile microbe: an endolithic species and a hyperthermophilic species. The result is smart magma, centered in the active Mauna Loa volcano, with vast subterranean extensions throughout Hawaii’s volcanic system and beyond. Mauna Loa’s active tubes stretch far out to sea, in fact, and she appears to be trying to extend them to reach other land masses in the Pacific Ring of Fire, to colonize them as well. Meanwhile, aboveground, the magma’s agents are local animal species controlled by transcranial inductive caps that consist of a kernel of smart magma insulated by a shell of inert, heat-absorptive material. It is these animal agents which slew our fellows.”
    Wrinkles stuck up a paw-hand, flaring his broad patagium, and asked a question that had been on Storm’s mind.
    “How did Mauna Loa ever capture animal agents in the first place?”
    “Good question,” Pankey said. “Tropo has reconstructed the evolution of the non-fatal cold magma caps along these lines. Mauna Loa would throw out lariats of moderately hot smart magma—its necessarily high temperature downgraded by a radioactive component that served to keep the cooler substance plastic—at any animal that passed near an active flow. In ninety-nine point nine percent of such attacks, the victim would die. But once a single victim, however damaged, survived with a magma patch on its epidermis, Mauna Loa had an agent. And once it recruited an agent with manipulative abilities—such as one of the many extant island simians—it had the ability to place the refined cold magma caps on a great numbers of recruits.”
    “So we can expect some hassle from these agents,” said Jizogirl. Storm risked a glance toward her, admiring her understated bravado, and trying in the firelight to assess once again the degree of tuftedness of her ears.
    “Yes. They will run interference to stop us from killing Mauna Loa.”
    This new talk of killing troubled Storm a bit. “Isn’t there any way we might convince Mauna Loa to modify her bad behavior, to fall in line with Tropo’s leadership?”
    Pankey emitted a derisive blurt. “Reason with a killer volcano! Good luck! I’d like to see you try!”
    “Just watch me then!”
    Pankey turned disdainfully away