The Best of Science Fiction 12

Luana Gilbert Thomas

After a day of Mycology — my specialty — I would turn to painting, to sculpture. Cutting women out of my life — I had been hurt enough. Art, life's shadow, is not a good substitute, but it would have to do. I'd begun by painting water colours of fungi. Nothing is so lovely as spring lichen spreading across the face of crisp rock, cracking it into sand. Fungi shattering the Parthenon into chips of marble has never failed to amaze me with its power. Thus does beauty become soil. It was after losing my first wife that I turned to sculpture.

Although I had captured the loveliness of Monascus purpureas on canvas, and my shaggymanes in tempera — guarded against decay by infusions of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, without which life cannot exist — had been purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for their files.

I wanted to get my hands on something big. Although my first wife had not been large, nor my second. Little women in fact, docile as the gentle morel, delicious fried in butter or added to soups. Evidently they found me more docile still, interested only in my work. That the lowly ubiquitous Penicillium had saved millions and blues cheese gave them no cause to rejoice. They didn't care that man's journey into the expanding universe of the mind is powered by diethylamide tartrate of D-lysergic acid — LSD-25 — rooted in ergot, fungus.

My first wife screwed up her courage to the point of calling me moldy. "You moldy bastard," she said one morning over coffee and figs. I had taken to eating fruit for breakfast after my latest trip to Europe and found it suited my system. "Moldy fig!" our daughter Priscilla shot from the next room — she'd been put up to it, a fat little girl, clinically speaking. Then Elva had gone to the cookie jar and pulled out a sack of glazed doughnuts; and defiantly dumping them on the table was about to eat one when she noted — may God strike me dead — they were moldly. Bursting into tears she ran from the room screaming: "You did it — you did it!" I hadn't, of course. The fact is: spore is all around us, ready to feed on anything. Basidiomycetes will feed on solid plastic, changing it into sugar. Elva had waited too long to make her move and the hyphae had taken over.

Picasso is a good sculptor. (A man must have his heroes — particularly when depressed.) I've always enjoyed his goat created at Vallauris in the 50s, using a multiplicity of materials. Whatever came to hand. Wire, plaster, fruit crates. Finished, he discovered something was missing: the genitalia. His remedy — take an old tin can, flatten it and double it back on itself, then insert it in the moist plaster just below the stiff upturned tail and protruding gaspipe. Daring. I like to think I model myself on that Picasso.

My second wife, the Greek, was dark and dainty but she turned up one morning black and blue. She had taken to staying out overnight without my permission and I had noticed bruises and what appeared to be the marks of teeth on her from time to time. These occurred most usually about the throat with some finding their way down to the breast. Pressed for an explanation she would say she refused to wear glasses and had run into something. When I said it was more likely something had run into her, she asked for a divorce. I didn't remember her as being near-sighted. At the little quayside café at Piraeus she had seen well enough. Well enough to come over and ask: "Aren't you Doctor Raymond Kelpe, the famous mycologist from the United States?" When I said I was, she blushed, saying she was interested in molds herself, was in fact an advanced student specialising in torula as it pertains to cracking oil into food — petro-proteins — at the University of Athens; had actually seen me in lecture and knew I was in town to help save the Parthenon. Which still may be possible; often of a morning I've joined the little workman there on the Acropolis, his cup of cement helping us restore the chips to their historic position.

Pallas became my assistant, warning me to beware of the "I love you, kiss — ing" girls of Athens; and to make sure that I did, seduced me. It was simple in the laboratory, for I often work late. We were among the trays of saprophytes, which had just hatched — you could actually see the little champignons rise from their beds of crushed acorn, dead leaves, and coffee grounds lightly laced with merde. There in the moist scented air — for the little tan fruit has a delicious odour — she reached for a retort and fainted. Falling on a soft bed of mushrooms six feet long. Her laboratory dress, buttoned down the front, was somewhat askew, and as I bent to lend mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, she moaned.

We were married; and it was soon after arriving back in the United States that I noticed she was spending more and more time away from me — in the company of Dr. Gilroy Mannfried, doing research in parasurgery in Building 29. I am in Building 28. Although still my assistant, Pallas said she was sick of it and wanted to go back to Greece where the light was right, that she was only 18 and fungi had been a passing thing of youth. That she was now more interested in parasurgery, and stuck her tongue out at me. Until now she had been docile, kind — I didn't like to see my wife chewed up. I couldn't help thinking Dr. Mannfried had given her something — dexamyl or the like. And I found myself getting sleepy too early in the evening — 8 or 9 — sleeping like the dead at 10 or 11. I wouldn't have put it past them to be slipping me a little chloral hydrate. Love will find a way. No one knows better than a doctor that the Oath of Hippocrates is as outdated as the general practitioner. Once I thought I heard her scream but couldn't rouse myself from my stupor; it was possible they had invaded my bedroom for added thrills.

I returned to sculpture, experimenting after the manner of Picasso, using bread as the basic material; malleable, sprayed with plastic, a variety of textures and colours was possible, whole wheat to white to rye and pumpernickel, the whole allowed to overrun with algae to give a patina of age. I was invited to display in the patio of the Los Angeles Country Art Museum, drawing much good comment among the works of Giacometti, Rueben Nakian and Peter Voulkos. My work was impervious to the weather and this being a modern era no one found fault with my using bread as the basis for a work of art. Tempera, after all, being egg.

And I still had to do my job. Gemini 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Trickier and more complex every year. One of these bitches was going to cause me to blow a gasket.

Pallas showed up one Wednesday morning bleeding about the cheek. She now had enough of all Americans and was returning to Greece immediately via — so help me — the Far East where she hoped to gain some peace of mind through an examination of their religions. I was to give her passage. And, oddly, she now used Elva's nasty remark, exactly. If fungi is my jugular, Greece was hers. I called her a name and was immediately sorry; I believe in integration. That's Italian, she said, and stuck out her tongue. What a beauty, crying, bleeding, her clothes torn and her tongue sticking out. My last young girl. I had to give her her freedom, but not before talking to Dr. Mannfried. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, licking his lips. He was a big bastard, like lots of them are with the knife. They look like butchers but can thread a needle with their thumbs. "I hardly know your wife," he said, "but I'll say this for her — I admire your taste, she's delicious."

I wanted to hit the big son-of-a-bitch, but what would that prove. I needed my hands for my work as much as he needed his.

"Yes, isn't she," I said, and went to the market to buy all their second-day bread. I'd have to keep busy, now that I would be alone.

Oddly, Dr. Mannfried seemed drawn to me after Pallas left for Hong Kong. He enjoyed talking about her, the bastard; even mentioning my first wife made his mouth water, although he hadn't made a pass at her because that was before his son had graduated from college and he said he'd taken a solemn oath in his youth not to screw up his life until his boy was 21. I'm not much of a talker, but I'm a good listener — and I listened as I patted sandwich loaf into patterns of desire. I kept sculpting women; it was a compulsion.

What happened next was magnificent, and almost cleared my mind. Man's first walk in space. (Actually the second, after the USSR.) As usual, I had been called to the Cape to head the decontamination and sterilisation crew, getting Gemini 4 ready for space. The planets must not be a dumping ground for human waste. This was drill — preparation for our coming flight to the moon. After Gemini 4 all my space flights would be etc. — all my systems were go. But I didn't know it then.

The microorganisms carried by a single astronaut — any man — total approximately 10¹², 10 followed by 12 zeros. I cleaned up our boys, using ethylene oxide gas on the capsule to spare the components. Everything shipshape and clean as a whistle. But when they opened the hatch in stellar space ... something was coming the other way.

I found spore. There was no doubt about it, and only one. It was impossible at that height — it couldn't be one of ours. It had been sucked into the capsule vacuum-cleaner in space, after the hatch had been re-secured. That space is filled with more than nothing — anti-matter matter and the like — this we know: but spore.

I took it to my laboratory — home — by jet toward an optimum environment; and perhaps selfishly told no one about it.

I had no idea what food it would take. I gave it a loaf of bread and stood back to wait. Was it alive?

It had withstood the all but absolute temperatures of space; it had withstood the devastating effects of radiation — it might prove a mutation of its original form on another planet.

I confess, I fell asleep watching the loaf of rye bread on its emulsion of fungi-free earth. I'd been up since the discovery — and sleep is a protective device against sustained excitement. Perhaps it hadn't been chloral hydrate. It was quiet in the laboratory, a single overhead light on the experiment. I had even cut off the Muzak the President feels will ease our progress. It must have been ten o'clock; it was dawn when I awoke.

My God, it was huge! I'd never seen anything like it. At first I thought it was a tree, the trunk was three feet through. It was six feet tall, of a perfect symmetry, a ruff under its chin and the most beautiful mushroom I had ever seen. A creamy off-white, its cap a brilliant orange flecked with chaste white dots. The bread was gone and it was feeding on earth and the wood surrounding it. I ran to my quarters off the laboratory, where I do my sculpture, returning to bank loaves of bread around the trunk. It rejected them, having taken its full growth. Such texture! What tournedos aux champignons it would make! This mushroom would make me famous! But now I couldn't reveal my secret; we're supposed to tell NASA everything; to hell with NASA. This was one triumph I could enjoy privately. I didn't need the roll of drums and a wire from Stockholm. I touched its flesh. That it might eat me crossed my mind, but where work is concerned I am not passive. I squeezed it. It was warm, soft and giving, like a girl's trunk. I put my arms around it — what a baby! I kissed it and the odour was sweet and sophisticated as some mushrooms. Even here on earth. Now this one was on earth and it was mine. But would it spore? Go inky or blow away as so much of our dew-raised fungi spores to blow away sight unseen in some forgotten pasture? No. The second and even the third day found it standing firm but undulating slightly in the morning air. I had taken the mushroom across campus to my home, for the sake of privacy and experiment. It was surprisingly light, no heavier than a girl. But then the world's record yield of mushrooms per square foot is only 7.35 pounds.

Its flesh seemed alive, palpitant — I'm no pantheist, yet I've often felt that plants, trees, flowers, have a life we know nothing of. I left the window open to let it breathe. The curtains moved gently with the breeze and my mushroom would softly sway.

Where in hell had it come from? That there was some form of life on other planets, now we knew. I knew. Well, others would find out in time. Now the experiments could begin. Had to begin. I was a scientist, after all, and had to do it. I had to cut. I didn't know what to expect, so gingerly, gingerly, I approached it, knife in hand, waited, then slipped it in.

It seemed to sigh, but perhaps it was my imagination. It cut nicely. What lovely texture I Like a young girl's thighs. Soft and perfectly grained.

I took a leave of absence from the university; and as the days went by carved more deeply into Lulu. I had now given her a name, after the manner of weather bureaus with hurricanes. Lulu. It seemed a good name for a tanned girl, perhaps a fine mulatto, a girl from the islands, Polynesia — what skin! Luana. Goodbye, Lulu — you are Luana! Aloha — which also means Hello. I couldn't place her in the known world of mushrooms, but that didn't surprise me — and then I left off experimenting, removing my sculpturing tools from Building 28, bringing them home to really go to work. What a figure! It was no trouble at all, she almost carved herself, orange giving way to pale pink-and-gold making flowers in her hair. I swear it was as though she was there, although she never spoke — I hadn't gone that far — nor did I speak to her: there are limits. I didn't know whether to leave clothes on her. Or not. But I was never one to go along with that misguided Pope painting diapers on Michelangelo's cupids. I carved her whole and I carved her nude. No abstraction — who wants the portrait of a loved one in abstraction? I'd rather have a photograph. Take my word for it, I'm a good sculptor — the Venus de Milo: that's my sort of thing. Only lighter, more slender, more docile. I knew Luana was docile — perhaps she was Japanese, a sweet Japanese girl lisping syllables I would never understand, little Miss Suke, and that was the day Dr. Mannfried walked in unannounced.

The dirty bastard just stood there, sucking in his breath and staring at Luana. He was stricken. I'd done better than I knew. But then, I was inspired. "My God," he said, "what is it?"

"Just a statue," I said.

"I'd swear it was alive."

"Don't stand too close."

"Why not?"

"She might bite you."

He had the grace to blush; I never thought I'd ever see a surgeon blush. He wanted to touch Luana, but I led him into the patio, rubbing mushroom off my hands. I even had her in my hair. I stopped wiping her off; somehow it seemed a sacrilege. Her flesh was only slightly moist, pleasantly taut, excellent for subtlety with the knife. Dr. Mannfried picked a piece from my hair and stupidly said, " ... it's springy."

"Yes," I said. "isn't it."

"What is it?"

"What's what?"

"What material are you using?"

"A new plastic"

"Oh."

But I could see he didn't believe me. And then I made the mistake of saying:

"I'd prefer you didn't tell anyone about this."

He smiled that rapacious smile; he had something on his mind. I knew I shouldn't have trusted the big bastard.

"You can trust me," said Dr. Mannfried.

He came every day to see Luana. And oddly enough, to my knowledge, he did keep his word — no one mentioned Luana or asked what I was doing on holiday.

When there was no breeze I would turn on the fans, two oscillating twelve inchers I had bought for the purpose, placing one on each side of her. I would play 'Sweet Leilani' on the hi-fi, 'Bali H'ai', and watch her move to the music — a lovely nymph from some lost planet, perhaps now gone from the universe, a billion years ago, for spore is immortal. Almost. Raise the temperature of earth but a few degrees and she would take over the world. My beautiful dancing mushroom, Luana.

I kept her shored with cupcakes in case she wanted to eat; it was impossible to know at what moment she might die. I thought of covering her with moist cloth, but she seemed moist enough and I didn't want to run the risk of fungi forming, fungi on fungi, it would only seem humourous to someone who had never seen Luana. And yet something was missing and I knew what it was. Being shy, I just couldn't do it. But Dr. Mannfried could. Earthy bastard.

"She hasn't got that thing," said Dr. Mannfried. He'd been observing her closely for some minutes. He moved one of the fans and changed the record. We were both sharing her now, there was no way to shut him out, persistent swine.

"No, my friend," said Dr. Mannfried, "you are a great sculptor, but she hasn't got that thing."

I still hadn't allowed him to touch her.

"That's my department," said Dr. Mannfried.

Remembering Picasso and the goat, I felt an inadequacy that goes beyond belief. That full-blooded Spaniard could do it but not me. I had even considered draping her with a pareu, a little one, about the hips. Dr. Mannfried was right. I had to let him have his way.

"I've taken a lot of them out," he said, "but this is the first time I've ever put one in," and he was sweating, even with the fans on, his eyes beady.

"Now?" I asked.

"Now," he said.

"Can ... I watch?"

"No, it'll be better if you wait outside."

"You'll be careful ... "

"Please, I know my business."

"How long will it be, Doctor?"

"I'll let you know when it's over. There's nothing to worry about." And taking my smallest, sharpest knife, he started for Luana. His eyes never left her and his hand was snaking.

I must have walked the floor for 10 — 15 minutes, smoking cigarette after cigarette, which isn't like me — up and down outside that door — letting Dr. Mannfried do what I should have done. It was his sudden scream that sent me hurtling into the room of my beloved. Dr. Mannfried was hanging on her, torn by ecstasy, his teeth buried deep in her neck.

I'll never know how I got through the next few hours. I tried patching her throat with brown bread, but it wasn't the same. I didn't turn on the fans or play the music that night.

It was sometime after midnight when I received the call from my colleague Dr. Shih. He told me to come over to Dr. Mannfried's house at once, that this was an emergency. Oddly, I still believe in Hippocrates, and so I went, to be met at the door by a wide-eyed Dr. Shih with the contents of a stomach in his hands.

"Raymond, Raymond," he said, "Mannfried is dying ... "

"Is that so," I said.

A ripping yell filled the house, as if all the voices of the damned were being forced through the throat of one man. I ran to the bedroom — what had been Dr. Mannfried lay stretched on the mattress. One look at his face and I knew what was wrong. I had seen that look on the faces of a family of seven who had died in the 15th century — mummified in the catacombs of France — the look of unendurable pain persisting through the centuries. Only one thing could put that look on a man's face — a look he would carry to his grave under his cosmetics — poisoning by the Amanita.

Luana was a toadstool.

I was afraid of that.