Seeing what was happening, Jemunu-jah’s pupils expanded and he started to reach for his gun. Hasa was quick to wave him off.
“Leave them alone! They’re not hurting me. They’re just—” It was hard to voice the words that seemed simultaneously appropriate and impossible. “—checking me out.” He indicated the dead herbivore. “They killed that small browser. Look at its mouth. It’s the same stuff that killed the mokusinga.”
Keeping wary eyes on the swaying, probing rhizomorphs, Jemunu-jah knelt and Masurathoo folded himself to inspect the deceased herbivore.
“Never know pannula to do such a thing before,” Jemunu-jah finally commented.
“Different species, maybe,” was Hasa’s response. “I’ve certainly never seen a macromycete quite like it.”
When Masurathoo looked up, both of his trunks were half-retracted. “Coincidence,” the Deyzara insisted. “You not saying, human, that we were deliberately saved from mokusinga by a fungus?”
“I am saying that we were saved by one. By this particular species.” Hasa sat quietly as tendrils now swayed back and forth in front of him like waltzing eels while dozens of others that had emerged from the rotting log continued to poke and prod his seated form. Their touch was incredibly gentle. “Whether it was deliberate or coincidental is what I don’t know.” He chuckled. It was, Masurathoo noted, a sound most uncharacteristic of the human.
“Saved by a mushroom.” Hasa glanced back and up at Jemunu-jah. “Do the Sakuntala have a name for this type of growth?”
His lanky companion moved nearer. “Pannula. We do not eat them. They have bitter taste. They hardly ever encountered near towns.”