The feeder scraped at the slit behind me.
I moved deeper into the channel.
The blue light from the entrance narrowed until it only traced the walls around me. Stone pressed close on both sides of my shell. The floor remained almost flat, with shallow grooves crossing it at regular intervals.
One groove.
Then another.
Almost the same distance apart.
A natural crack could run straight.
Repeating the same shape was harder to dismiss.
Drainage channel. Ventilation. A conduit for something else.
I had no way to choose between them.
Behind me, the feeder struck the entrance.
Tak
The vibration travelled through the channel and into my foot.
I kept moving.
My mouth still hurt from opening the fungal plug. The altered radula worked, but one side caught whenever I scraped too quickly. The injured section of my foot had improved enough to stop burning while still.
Movement brought the pain back.
The channel was damp, which helped.
Not enough to rest.
Cool air touched my face from farther ahead. Thin roots had entered through cracks in the walls, and gray fungal threads followed them along the seams. Some were dry and peeling. Others were swollen with moisture.
The feeder ate fungus.
That gave me an idea.
A loose sheet hung from the left wall. I bit through the fibers holding it and pulled until it tore free.
The sheet folded over my face.
I dragged it toward the next groove and packed it across the floor. Then I scraped more loose tissue from both walls and added it to the pile.
It was not much of a trap.
It was food placed in an inconvenient location.
At my current level of engineering, that counted.
I had already finished before I noticed I had not once imagined using my hands.
Mouth to cut.
Foot to push.
Shell against the wall for leverage.
The plan had formed around the body I had instead of the body I had lost.
I stayed still for a moment.
That should have felt like progress.
It felt like something I was not ready to examine.
The feeder scraped again.
Good timing.
I moved.
Farther ahead, a pale bulge covered a crack along the right wall. It stretched when I touched it. Clear fluid shifted behind the surface, carrying pale particles.
Water, probably.
The particles could have been spores, sediment, eggs, or poison.
My senses offered no useful opinion.
I touched the lower edge.
No burning.
I scraped the smallest opening I could manage.
A clear bead pushed through and clung to the wall.
I drank it.
Cool.
Bitter.
No immediate pain.
I waited through several contractions of my gut.
Nothing changed except my body wanting another drop.
I widened the opening.
The bead became a thin leak. It ran down the right wall, crossed the channel floor, and followed the slope ahead.
The membrane pushed outward around the damaged point.
More pressure than I expected.
If the whole layer tore, the water would burst across the channel and then run downhill.
Toward me.
I had already learned what moving water could do to a snail.
The lesson had involved rolling toward a crack.
I did not need a review.
I drank from the leak until my body felt properly wet again. Then I scraped upward along one edge, thinning the membrane without opening it.
The tissue became almost transparent.
One more hard pull would tear it.
I moved downhill and checked the position.
The membrane sat behind me on the right wall. The floor beneath it contained one of the transverse grooves. A living fungal seam ran along the same wall, passed below the bulge, and continued down the channel.
If the feeder followed the seam, it would move directly beside the membrane.
If it followed anything else, I had prepared a water hazard for myself.
A hard scrape sounded from the entrance.
The blue line widened.
The feeder pushed through.
Its pale head entered first. Curved mouthparts cut through the remaining plug. Its thicker body compressed behind it while the hooked structures underneath gripped the floor.
It fit.
I had hoped the slit would solve the problem for me.
Apparently the universe expected effort.
I moved downhill until the fungal pile remained between us.
The feeder advanced along the right wall.
Bite.
Pull.
Bite.
Pull.
It reached the pile.
Its mouthparts closed on the loose gray tissue.
One bite removed the upper layer.
Two more exposed the groove beneath it.
The feeder stopped.
I stayed pressed against the wall.
The pile was thicker than the growth surrounding it. More material in one place should have kept a feeding organism there longer.
That had been the theory.
The feeder cleared the final loose fibers, lowered its head, and returned to the living seam along the right wall.
It continued forward.
The delay had lasted several seconds.
I had not made bait.
I had provided an appetizer.
More importantly, it had ignored loose tissue after reaching the connected growth again.
The feeder might have preferred living material.
It might have followed moisture or chemicals passing through the seam.
Whatever the exact cause, quantity was not controlling its route.
Connection was.
The seam reached the membrane.
I needed the feeder to stop beneath it.
I moved back uphill along the opposite wall, staying outside the direct line between the feeder and the living growth.
Near the membrane, the seam thickened into a dark green ridge. The surface looked wet but tightened when touched.
I pressed one lower tentacle against it.
A sharp sting ran through the tip.
Chemically defended.
Of course.
The feeder ate it without hesitation.
I could digest material outside a normal snail's diet.
That did not protect my mouth.
Still, I did not need to eat much.
I lowered my radula to the ridge several body lengths before the membrane.
One scrape removed almost nothing.
The tissue stretched and clung to my mouth.
I scraped again.
Bitterness spread across my radula. The outer tissue burned where it touched me, but the fragment passed down without the heat following it into my gut.
Omnivore.
Useful at last.
Painful, but useful.
I kept cutting.
The feeder crossed the abandoned pile behind me.
Closer.
I scraped through the swollen ridge until pale stone showed beneath it.
The living seam was now divided by a gap slightly wider than my head.
Not enough.
The feeder might bridge it without slowing.
I widened the gap.
My mouth burned.
The radula caught and pulled free.
A bitter strip entered my gut.
No internal pain.
Another scrape.
The ridge separated completely.
I moved downhill.
The living seam resumed on the far side of the gap, directly beneath the water-filled membrane.
The feeder reached the cut.
It stopped.
Its head moved over the exposed stone. Mouthparts opened and closed against the bare surface.
No food.
It shifted left.
Then right.
The front hooks tapped inside the groove.
It was not following me.
It was searching for the path I had broken.
The feeder stretched forward.
Its mouthparts touched the continuation beneath the membrane.
There.
I positioned myself several body lengths downhill against the left wall. The weakened section of membrane sat diagonally behind me across the narrow passage.
The feeder pulled its head over the gap.
Its front half entered the groove below the bulge.
I stretched back toward the thin strip holding the membrane closed.
Too far.
I moved one contraction uphill.
The feeder bit into the living seam.
Its body followed.
I caught the transparent edge with my radula.
The tissue stretched.
I pulled.
Nothing.
The feeder advanced another fraction.
Its mouthparts were directly below the fluid pocket now.
I braced the side of my shell against the wall and pulled again.
The strip tore.
Water burst from the right wall.
The first jet struck the feeder across the head and drove it into the opposite side of the channel.
Its hooked underside caught in the transverse groove.
The rest of its body folded behind it.
Pale particles and torn membrane covered its mouthparts. It twisted, scraping its head against the wall.
The broken living seam had placed it exactly where I needed it.
The plan worked.
Then the water reached me.
I spread my foot into the next groove and pressed down.
The flow hit the side of my shell.
I held.
The torn membrane slapped over my back.
Water caught beneath it.
My foot peeled from the stone.
I struck the left wall, spun, and slid downhill.
The first groove passed beneath me.
Then the second.
My shell hit the right wall hard enough to send pain through the spiral.
I extended the front of my foot toward the third groove.
The water filled it before I could grip.
Nothing caught.
Behind me, the feeder thrashed.
Its hooks scraped stone, slipped, then caught again.
The water had not killed it.
That had never been the plan.
I only needed distance.
The channel narrowed ahead.
A dark fungal mat covered the floor from wall to wall. Water rushed beneath its edges and lifted the center.
There was no stone underneath.
A hole.
I reached toward the wall.
One lower tentacle touched it and folded as the current carried me past.
My body slid onto the fungal mat.
It sagged.
I flattened my foot and spread my weight without thinking.
The fungus tore anyway.
My head and the front half of my body dropped through.
The shell caught across the opening.
Water poured over my back.
For a moment, I hung above empty space while the wet fungal edge stretched beneath my shell.
I tried to pull upward.
The growth crumbled.
My body dropped lower.
Wrong.
I stopped.
The pressure from behind weakened as the fluid pocket emptied. Torn membrane and loose fungus collected in the grooves above me.
The feeder's scraping became muffled.
Still moving.
I pressed the right side of my foot against the remaining edge and rotated.
The shell shifted.
Its widest curve passed through the opening.
I slid onto a narrow stone slope below and pressed down before the last of the water could carry me farther.
The channel above was blocked by folded membrane, fungal debris, and trapped water.
A scrape came from inside it.
The feeder was still alive.
Good for it.
I extended one eyestalk.
Then the other.
The space below was far larger than the channel. Stone disappeared beyond my poor vision. A faint blue glow climbed the walls from fungi somewhere farther down.
Cold air rose across my face.
The floor beneath me sloped into the blue haze.
I had severed a living fungal path, used my shell as a brace, and released the water with my mouth.
Christopher Aspen would have called that inadequate equipment.
Crypto Asper had survived with it.
I did not know how I felt about that.
Behind me, the feeder scraped again.
I looked down.
'Down it is.'