The Fungus

1

By the time Norman Layne arrived home he’d long forgotten the embarrassing collision with the attractive woman in Tottenham Court Road. There were other things preying on his mind now, ranging from the sweaty itch caused by the nylon shirt that Nora insisted was all they could afford, to the lingering fury he still felt towards the black youth who’d played his huge radio as though he owned the train. And there had been the humiliation of being called back to the ticket collector so that his pass could be checked even though he was always scrupulously honest about paying. But most of all he seethed at having wasted a whole afternoon in that cesspit of London’s West End. He had been specifically told over the phone that Bradford and Simpkins had a forester-bit brace tang which he urgently needed to continue his carpentry work. But when he got there they then told him they didn’t have it. He couldn’t understand it. He’d stood there speechless in front of the young and arrogant sales assistant and then realized he was suffering yet another of life’s endless, nasty tricks.

Outside he had spat on the pavement in disgust, but then, to his amazement and indignation, he’d got a reprimand from a passing police constable who looked even younger than the sales assistant. Furious, he’d stalked off down Tottenham Court Road, reflecting bitterly that he’d almost been arrested for such a trivial thing while all around him the blacks were fouling up the streets with their noise, their dangerous roller skates, their bikes on the sidewalks and their strutting, swaggering dirty-mouthed ways.

It was then that he’d collided with the tall, blonde woman. It was entirely his fault, he hadn’t been looking where he was going. And to add to his humiliation it was he who was knocked off his feet by the impact. He’d fallen hard on his backside and had sat there, the center of attention, for several moments while people had stepped around him with big smirks on their faces. Then the blonde woman had helped him up and apologized but he knew that behind her concerned expression and kind words she was laughing at him too. So he had given her one of his fiercest glares and hurried off down the street without saying anything to her.

And now, finally, he was home. Not that that was much better, but at least it contained a haven where he could escape from all burdens that were his lot. He could even escape from the biggest burden of all—his wife Nora. She had done nothing less than ruin his life. That’s all there was to it. He could have been somebody now if she hadn’t always been dragging him back.

To avoid her he went round to the rear of the house. At the back door he warily listened for sounds of activity in the kitchen; hearing none he quickly entered and scuttled on through into his workshop. He gave a deep sigh as he switched on the light and closed the door behind him. What meager enjoyment he got out of life was almost all in this room: the cared-for tools, the books of woodwork designs, the finished and half-finished projects, and the lengths of untouched timbers with their distinctive aroma.

He felt a momentary spasm of annoyance that he could not continue with his main job, but there was so much else to do that the room soon exerted its uplifting magic on him and he found an equally satisfying alternate task: the extra-fine sanding of an unfinished cabinet.

He began to caress the already smooth wood with the fine paper. It was a soothing, almost sensual, feeling. He would never have made any sexual association with what he was doing—sex, in fact, had always been low on his list of priorities—but to any objective observer it would have been obvious that he was making love to the wood.

As he rubbed, stroked, and caressed, the tensions of the day began to drain out of him…

Nora Layne lay in bed wondering what on earth could have happened to her husband. She had dozed off very early the previous night, having treated herself to perhaps one sherry too many that afternoon while the old bastard had been out, and she’d slept right through the night. Yet she was positive Norman hadn’t been to bed at all—the covers weren’t in their usual tangle caused by his perpetual tossing and turning.

This was odd because even though their relationship was one of mutual detestation, for some reason Norman still insisted on sleeping in the same bed with her. She guessed it was because he wanted to keep up appearances for the sake of the neighbors. Or God. Maybe it was God he was worried about. For years she’d had no idea what was going on in his head except that she played no part in it. Nor did she want to.

So where had he spent the night? On the couch in the living room perhaps? But that was so horribly uncomfortable. He wouldn’t have got a wink of sleep.

She smiled to herself at the thought. And now he was probably already up and in his precious workroom waiting for her to get up and make breakfast. Well, she’d be damned if she’d rush to do that today. She was going to make the most of having the bed to herself for a change.

The tension that she usually felt in the mornings was gone, and she was enjoying this momentary rebellion against the dead routine of so many years. A memory seeped into her mind of moments shared with Norman in weekend beds long ago, but it seemed so unlikely and so detached from reality that it soon seeped out again. Small bitter thoughts about her wasted life took its place and she relished the self-pity that accompanied them.

After an hour or so she got up, put on the light-blue, once-fluffy slippers and her faded green dressing gown, and went down to the kitchen. It was empty and there was no sign of the filth that he left on the rare occasions he made his own breakfast. He hadn’t even made a cup of coffee.

Puzzled now, she put a glass against the wall and pressed her ear to it. No sound came from the workroom on the other side. Had something happened to him?

The idea didn’t alarm her. Life without Norm would be ideal as long as the finances were all right. She wasn’t sure about the finances. But if something had happened to him—if he’d had a stroke or a heart attack—she ought to find out as soon as possible. The sooner he was taken away the better. Before he started smelling. She’d heard that the smell of dead bodies was the hardest of all to get rid of in a room, even with the strongest air fresheners.

Tentatively she touched the workroom door with her knuckles, harder when there was no reply. She had to go in then, there was nothing else for it. She hadn’t been in there since the time she tidied it and put his tools back in the wrong positions. How long ago had that been? She couldn’t remember.

As she opened the door she tensed, ready to retreat at the slightest sound. But she heard nothing. There was, however, a strong musty smell. Emboldened, she stepped inside—and almost screamed.

One entire side of the workroom was covered in a thick mold.

Dry rot, she thought as she stared at it with horror. She loathed the stuff. It had been so expensive to put right in their first home. Norm had shown her the furry yellow and white fungus that had eaten up the floor supports and had then pushed her hand into it as a joke. She shuddered at the memory.

But this growth was much bigger and thicker than the one she remembered. It must have been growing in here for years! The floor, walls and ceiling were coated with the soft, disgusting stuff. It had also grown over what must have been shelves and cupboards but were now shapeless forms under the mold. And the smell. It was so bad it almost made her gag.

Why had Norm let it grow? Especially in here, his precious inner sanctum? Then it occurred to her that it might have grown very quickly. In fact it seemed the only likely explanation. Perhaps it had been growing under the floor boards or behind the wall for ages and had just suddenly broken through during the night. Yes, that would explain why Norm wasn’t here—he must have gone to get some stuff to deal with it. Some of that fluid that caught in the back of your throat and stank the house out for days.

Well, this was his responsibility, she told herself, and the sooner he got rid of it the better. It was disgusting.

She picked up a length of wood and thrust it angrily into one of the bigger mounds of fungus. Unexpectedly, a ripple ran through the growth, then the whole mound moved.

Even worse, it spoke to her.

“Nora,” it said in a thick, muffled voice. “Nora. It’s me!”

And before she could react Norm reached out with two soft, slightly sticky arms and hugged her for the first time in years.

2

Barbara had thoroughly enjoyed the movie and was sorry it had come to an end. She sat through the credits and was still sitting there when the lights came on, wondering where to go from the theater. She was just about to get up when a tall, attractive blonde woman sat down one seat away from her. Barbara immediately settled back into her own seat.

Very tasty, she thought, very tasty indeed. She waited to see if the woman was on her own or if there was a man with her who’d paused to buy popcorn or something. But when the intermission ended she was still on her own, to Barbara’s relief.

Throughout the intermission Barbara had kept her under discreet observation. Several times she’d been on the verge of speaking to her, but her usual shackles of anxiety held her back. She never could make the first move in these situations, no matter how much she wanted to. Her fear of rejection was too strong.

So instead she fantasized as to how such a conversation might go, what delights it might lead to—not just for that night but for other nights to come. She desperately needed to get involved with someone else. It would give her the necessary strength to break up with Shirley. Things couldn’t go on the way they were for much longer. Yet she couldn’t just leave Shirley unless there was someone else to go to. She couldn’t stand being alone. Even life with Shirley was better than being alone.

She glanced again at the blonde woman, admiring her fine profile. She looked a proud, strong-willed person. Barbara needed those qualities in a partner. Shirley had them, it was true, but she was also cruel. This woman wouldn’t be like that, she was sure.

By the time the lights dimmed, Barbara had decided to sit through the program again. After all, the main feature, a comedy starring Richard Pryor, was very funny and, who knows, something might develop.

During the coming attractions Barbara got up to go to the toilet. As she went past the blonde woman she prolonged the moment of contact with her knees for as long as she could, muttering a soft, ‘Sorry.’ In her mind she had inflated that one word into a blatant invitation dripping with tonal suggestiveness, but the other woman said <“It’s all right”>.

On the way back, after some heart-racing moments of anticipation in the toilet, she deliberately stumbled as she passed by. Pretending to lose her balance she tipped towards the woman and for a delicious few seconds found herself embracing her. “I’m dreadfully sorry,” she said in a loud whisper as the woman took hold of her arm to assist her. “It’s quite all right,” said the woman in a cool, well-educated voice.

Barbara continued on to her own seat. She’d wanted to sit in one of the empty seats on either side of the woman but that would have been too obvious in such a sparsely populated cinema. So instead, as the film progressed, she kept giving the woman long, lingering glances in the hope that she would catch a reciprocal one. She could still feel the touch of the woman’s strong fingers on her upper arm where she’d briefly held her.

But to Barbara’s intense disappointment the woman’s attention remained fixed firmly on the screen for the whole time. And when the lights came on she was up and gone before Barbara could even think.

Barbara watched her disappear through an exit and sighed. Then, smiling sadly to herself, she got up and slowly left the theater. The evening’s fun and fantasies, she realized, were over. She now faced the prospect of going back to Shirley. Normally that would be bad enough but tonight it would be doubly worse because not only was she late but she was also wearing Shirley’s red silk blouse without permission.

Shirley was absolutely impossible when it came to things like that. She was so possessive about her clothes and her belongings. And about Barbara, too.

Barbara’s steps slowed as she pictured the scene when she got home. Oh shit, she thought, it’s almost as bad as living with a man.

When she tried to open the front door to their Chiswick flat it stopped at the end of the safety chain. Damn, she thought, but then shouted as pleasantly as she could, “Shirley, darling! It’s me!”

Shirley’s voice came out of the hall. “Who’s that?”

“Me, of course!” answered Barbara, letting just a little irritation creep in.

“Who’s me?”

Barbara took a deep breath and forced herself to keep her tone light. “Come on, Shirl, stop playing games and let me in.”

Shirley came to the door and peered at her through the gap with an expression of mock surprise. “It is you. I could have sworn you were in bed. It’s where you should be.”

“Open the bloody door, Shirley.”

“You can’t imagine how concerned I was when I got back late and found you weren’t here. I almost called the police.” She gave a laugh that was brittle around the edges. Then she unchained the door.

“I’m sorry, Shirl,” said Barbara as she stepped inside. “I went to the movies. “

“When you go to the movies you always go to the late afternoon shows. It’s past nine o’clock—so where have you been?”

“It was a good movie so I sat through it again,” said Barbara, walking into the living room. She could feel herself blushing as she thought of the blonde woman. She could never hide anything from Shirley.

“That’s very unlike you, darling,” said Shirley sweetly. “And why are you blushing all of a sudden? I can’t see where my blouse ends and your neck begins.”

Barbara’s hand flew to her mouth as she remembered the blouse. “Oh, Shirl, I borrowed your—”

“Yes, I can see that, darling.” Shirley gave a light laugh. “Now are you going to tell me where you’ve been all this time? And who with? Before I get very angry with you, Barbara darling.”

“I wasn’t with anyone, I swear it!” protested Barbara anxiously. “I did sit through the movie again. It’s the new one with Richard Pryor and you know what a big fan I am of his. It’s the truth—you’ve got to believe me!”

Shirley regarded her thoughtfully for a while, then seemed to accept her story because she smiled and said, “Oh let’s just forget all about it. Give us a kiss.”

Their lips touched, Barbara’s hesitantly but Shirley pressed hard with hers and then thrust her tongue fiercely into Barbara’s mouth. Barbara relaxed into the strength of Shirley’s passion, and thought that maybe she wasn’t so angry after all.

They parted. Barbara grinned, feeling a little foolish. “How was your day then?”

“So-so. I went to the doctors. Some good news, some bad.”

“Oh.” Barbara paused. She never knew how to handle bad news from doctors. “The good news?”

“I’m not pregnant.”

Barbara laughed. Whatever the bad news was it couldn’t be serious. “And the bad?”

“I’ve got an oral fungus infection.”

“Oh, you poor—” began Barbara and then her face curled up with disgust. She spat on the floor, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of Barbara’s blouse. “You bitch! What a dirty trick to play on me!”

Shirley grinned maliciously. “Serves you right. Teach you not to play around behind my back, and take my clothes without asking.”

Furious, Barbara cried, “Here’s what I think of your goddamn precious blouse—!“ She grabbed the front of it with both hands and yanked hard. There was a ripping sound.

Barbara regretted the action as soon as she’d done it. “Oh, Shirl, I’m sorry—”

“You little bitch,” breathed Shirley hoarsely, her eyes bright with anger. Then suddenly she lunged at Barbara.

Barbara shrieked and tried to dodge out of her way but Shirley was too fast for her. The impact of their bodies knocked Barbara off-balance and she fell backward onto the floor. Shirley landed on top of her, forcing the air out of her lungs. Barbara struggled hard but Shirley had at least 15 pounds advantage over her and as usual Barbara was quickly reduced to complete helplessness.

Shirley sat straddling Barbara’s hips and succeeded in pinning both her arms to the floor, then she reached down and ripped open the red blouse the rest of the way. Barbara struggled even harder, bucking and twisting in a vain attempt to dislodge Shirley. She saw Shirley bend her head down towards her exposed breasts then screamed shrilly as she felt Shirley’s teeth bite into her left nipple.

“Oh, you bitch!” she yelled, drumming her heels on the floor as Shirley continued to bite hard into her nipple. “Stop it! Stop it!”

There came a loud thumping from the ceiling above them. It was so violent it made the lamp shade jiggle. Shirley immediately stopped biting her and sat up. In unison they shouted: “Go fuck yourself, you sexist scumbag!”

The thumping increased in volume then abruptly ceased. Their upstairs neighbor, a retired civil servant called Mr. Pickersgill, had made his point for the evening, as usual.

Barbara looked up into Shirley’s face which was flushed and damp with sweat. She was breathing hard and her eyes glittered with both excitement and the familiar look of desire. Barbara was feeling very aroused herself and once again she realized why she would find it hard ever to leave Shirley no matter what the provocation. The simple truth was that Shirley was one hell of a lover. No one could ever excite her as much as Shirley did. Certainly no one ever had in the past.

Shirley stood up and then pulled Barbara to her feet. Docilely, Barbara allowed herself to be led into the bedroom. She fell limply onto the bed, rolled onto her back and let Shirley finish undressing her. She enjoyed the roughness of her lover’s actions as first her jeans were yanked off and then the rest of her clothes. There was the sound of another rip while the red blouse was coming off but neither of them could have cared less.

When she was finally naked she spread her legs wide in eager anticipation. Shirley stood there for a time looking down at her and Barbara savored the thrill of being so completely exposed to Shirley’s hungry, cruel gaze.

Then Shirley was quickly getting out of her own clothes, revealing the long, white, muscular body that Barbara knew almost as well as her own. Of course, in some ways she knew it better than her own….

Barbara closed her eyes as Shirley knelt on the bed between her splayed legs. Then she gasped with pleasure as she felt the warm wetness of Shirley’s tongue probing the lips of her vagina. The tip of the tongue then moved up to her clitoris and she gave a low, shuddering moan, arching her back as the first pulse of pure ecstasy throbbed through her body.

All thought of the attractive blonde woman in the movie theater had fled from her mind.

Much later, sated and exhausted, they fell asleep in each other’s arms. But during the night Barbara had a horrible dream that she was choking. She struggled into semi consciousness but the choking sensation was still there. Her mouth and throat seemed to be filled with a soft, furry substance. She tried to come fully awake, to cry out, but found herself falling back into unconscious again—an unconsciousness that led to a much deeper oblivion than mere sleep.

When dawn arrived she was still lying there in Shirley’s arms. They were joined at their mouths by a pale yellow pulpy mass.

Neither of them was breathing. The venereal fungus which had grown at an accelerated rate throughout both their bodies during the night, and killing them in the process, was visible at their other orifices too. It grew between their legs to form furry yellow diapers and covered their ears like huge, fluffy ear muffs. And though they were both dead, the fungus grew on.

3

The tall attractive woman with the long blonde hair paid her bill and left the small Indian restaurant in Goodge Street. Naseem the waiter had taken the dishes out into the kitchen and scraped the remains of her meal into a small bin which would later be emptied into the large, round container that sat out in the alley behind the restaurant. The big container would be collected by the pig feed company that had the edible waste franchise for the Goodge Street area.

Naseem was just re-covering the table with another paper table cloth when Derrick Lang and Philip Bell entered. They were laughing loudly and Naseem flinched inwardly. He knew this type of customer only too well.

“Hi, Panjit, old pal,” said Derrick Lang, a grossly overweight man of about 30, as he sat down at the table. Lang always called waiters in Indian restaurants Panjit. It was one of his favorite jokes.

“I don’t know how you get away with it,” said Philip Bell, after Naseem had handed them each a menu and retreated to the small bar at the end of the restaurant.

“They don’t mind. Shows them you’re not racially prejudiced.”

Bell nodded in agreement though he hadn’t quite grasped the logic of Lang’s theory.

“Watcha’avin?” asked Lang, frowning over the menu.

“Lager, to start with,” said Bell, “then I might have a lager and maybe after that a lager.”

Lang shook with laughter. Then he called out to Naseem, “Two lagers pronto, Panjit!” He paused for effect then said, “And my friend here’ll have two as well!”

They both laughed some more.

“Only kiddin’ Panjie boy. A pint each.”

Naseem, who was already on his way to their table with two pints, deposited the glasses in front of them and left without a word.

Lang said, “I’m having a vegetable biriani.”

“Vegetable!” Bell made it sound as if Lang had made a homosexual pass at him. “You’ll be telling me you eat nut cutlets next.”

“I read where vegetables help you lose weight,” said Lang, a shade defensively. “And because I’m large-boned, meat makes me put on weight quicker than most people.”

Bell looked at him. Rolls of fat creased his shirt as if he had a dozen salamis strapped around his body. His buttons were straining to keep the fabric together and several chins sat on top of his neck like a series of miniature stomachs. “Well, yeah, you do have large bones, Dekker,” he said tactfully.

“Yeah, and the fact is if you eat a lot of vegetables you can also eat as much meat as you like and still lose weight.”

“Gerroff.”

“No, straight up. I read it in The Sun, I think. Or maybe The Daily Mail. It’s something to do with the vitamins in the vegetables. They make the meat fat burn up without you having to do any exercise.”

“How about that.”

“You should try it yourself, Phil. You could do with losing a few pounds too.”

“Well, maybe,” said Bell, even though he knew he wasn’t over-weight in the slightest.

“You don’t have to go all the way at once. You can have, say, a meat madras with a cauliflower bhajee. Cauliflower must have lots of those vitamins.”

Bell nodded thoughtfully. Lang took it for agreement and called Naseem over. He ordered food for both of them and another pint of lager each. “You’ll thank me for this,” he said.

“I will if you pay,” said Bell and laughed uproariously.

The evening went quickly as they swapped jokes and solved the various social and political issues of the day. Bell even enjoyed his cauliflower bhajee, but Lang hadn’t been so keen on his vegetable biriani this time and consoled himself with the thought of having a doner kebab on the way home.

When they finally lurched, belching and laughing, out of the restaurant it was after 11 p.m. They had each consumed seven pints of lager by then and had reached the stage when everything they said was even more devastatingly funny than usual.

Naseem bore their lengthy farewell routine with the stoicism that any Indian waiter working in Britain must quickly acquire and breathed a silent prayer of thanks when, after a final volley of “Panjits,” the two men staggered away.

They walked up to Warren Street station where they went their separate ways, Lang catching the Victoria Line and Bell the Northern.

Lang changed onto the Piccadilly Line at Kings Cross. He got out at Bounds Green and went straight to his studio flat, having decided he was too full of lager for a kebab after all. And anyway there was something he had to take care of rather urgently. All the walking had made his feet noticeably sweaty, and he was worried about his athlete’s foot.

He’d suffered from it badly on a few occasions—toes cracking apart, pain like his flesh was being split with a knife—so now he always kept his socks filled with Preparation AF and every morning and night carefully smeared the powder and cream between his toes.

It had always been a matter of some pride to him that he suffered from athlete’s foot. It confirmed his belief that within his bulky frame a potential athlete was waiting to get out. And when he succeeded in finally getting his weight down he fully intended taking up some athletic activity. Like squash or badminton. Or maybe sky-diving. Sky-diving didn’t involve much running about.

After the nightly foot ritual Lang crawled into bed and switched off the lamp. He was too tired to see if there was anything on TV. He fell asleep almost immediately but slept badly. He tossed and turned in the grip of horrific dreams for several hours and then came fully awake to discover he was suffering an appalling attack of indigestion. “Goddam vegetable biriani! he muttered. Never again!”

And on top of that he was itchy all over, his feet especially. Had the Indian food aggravated his athlete’s foot? It never had before.

He lay there for a time hoping the itching would fade, but if anything it got worse. He had no choice but to apply more Preparation AF.

With a sigh he sat up and switched on the light. He pushed back the covers and frowned. Then he laughed. No wonder his feet were itching—he was still wearing his socks.

Then he frowned again. He had taken them off. He distinctly remembered doing so. In fact he didn’t even recognize these socks. He was positive he didn’t own a pair this color—gray with a red pattern.

He reached down to take them off and his fingers sank into the fluffy pulp that was now his right foot.

His heart gave a massive thump, paused and carried on. His flesh crawled with revulsion and his insides seemed to shrink. His fingers, shaking now, fumbled at the other foot. It felt the same—soft and yielding as if it was boneless.

His scream came out as a croak. Then, as he became more aware of the general itchiness all over his body, he tore furiously at his pajama jacket.

“Oh God,” he whimpered.

His lower belly was covered in the same gray, red-streaked substance. He managed to undo his pajama pants and, terrified at what he expected to see, looked at his groin and thighs. It was as he feared—from his waist down it was as if he’d been coated in some kind of furry paint that had started to crack. He reached tentatively to touch the mound that now concealed his genitals. It felt like velvet-pattern wallpaper.

“Christ,” he moaned, “I’ve been poisoned—that bloody Indian restaurant—”

He had to get help, he decided. He got quickly out of bed and took two steps towards the phone before his left leg, riddled with the athlete’s foot fungus, snapped at the shin with a sound like a piece of celery being broken.

He fell on his face with a crash that shook the floor and lay there in a state of shock for over a minute. Then, with painful slowness, he started to drag himself toward the phone. His lower left leg remained on the floor beside the bed. And as he crawled he left a trail of crumbling gray powder behind him on the carpet.

4

The landlord of the One Tun, Eric Gifford, decided to check the Lounge Bar on his way back up from the men’s room in the basement. It was, he saw, almost empty except for a few of the regulars. No matter, he’d had a good night’s take in the Public Bar, he told himself.

It was then he noticed the tall, blonde woman drinking a red wine by herself at a table near the door. Odd to see a woman drinking alone in this pub, but she looked too well bred to be a whore. Then again, he reflected, you got some unusual types of women on the game these days. He blamed the recession.

He looked at her more closely and then decided he’d seen her before. She wasn’t a regular but she was definitely familiar. Maybe she’d only been in the pub once before, but he remembered her face. It wasn’t the sort of face a man was likely to forget. She was a looker, all right, and from what he could see of her body it made a good match with her face.

He whistled as he headed back to the Public Bar. Looking at beautiful women always cheered him up. Even at times like this when his bowels were playing up.

It was all the fault of the Yard of Ale competition he’d organized earlier in the evening. He hadn’t actually taken part in it, because he was too good, but as usual he’d given a demonstration of how it should be done just to impress the young’uns. Oh, he knew they wouldn’t be impressed to begin with but later when they were pouring beer all over themselves or choking or giving up halfway it would dawn on them they’d seen a master of the art in action. And then he’d really rub it in when it was all over by casually downing a second yard of ale, which is what he’d done tonight as usual. He’d managed it okay but it had been a struggle at the end, he had to admit. His guts had been giving him hell all day and this had been his fifth trip to the toilet, without success. He was so constipated he felt like a pregnant elephant. Perhaps he’d better do what his damned doctor kept advising and cut down on the drink. One of these days.

Despite his acute discomfort he pulled himself together as he entered the public bar and began the task of getting people to drink up with his customary diplomacy:

“Come on, you drunken buggers! Haven’t you got homes to go to?” he bellowed.

He loved to play the tough landlord and, although the regulars knew it was all a game, the tourists and other drop-ins always looked satisfyingly alarmed when his red-faced, pot-bellied form appeared suddenly in their midst breathing fumes and yelling insults at them. It was always a great way to end the day.

And as a point of principle, when everyone was gone he always helped to clean up. He knew he was often more of a hindrance than a help by that stage of the night but the staff didn’t mind. He was quite a good employer as landlords go. Even the girls didn’t get too upset when he rubbed his belly against them “accidentally on purpose-like,” as he told his friends. They knew he was just having some harmless fun, that there was nothing more to it.

Tonight, however, he didn’t feel like rubbing his painfully distended belly against anyone, no matter how young, soft and female they might be. In fact he didn’t even feel up to helping the staff, he just wanted to collapse. And so, after a brief clear-up in the Lounge, which consisted mainly of wiping the table where the attractive blonde had been sitting and picking up her glass, which still contained several mouthfuls of wine, he said goodnight to his staff and headed upstairs to bed.

As he climbed the stairs his belly rumbled and he let out a tremendous fart. He was already regretting not being able to resist swallowing the remains of the blonde’s red wine before washing the glass. On top of the dozen or so pints of Bottom Draught he’d consumed that evening the small amount of wine could turn out to be the alcoholic straw that broke the camel’s back.

He sat down heavily on the big, sagging double-bed, tugged off his shoes then collapsed backward, not bothering to undress. As he drifted quickly off to sleep he thought briefly of Marianne, as he always did at this time, even though it had been eight years since his late wife had shared the double-bed with him. There had been no one else since then.

During the night, as he slept, the live yeasts in the beer that filled his stomach and intestine underwent a remarkable molecular change.

Yeast, the only fungus that grows by budding rather than by producing the long tendrils called hyphae, is also the fastest growing fungus with the theoretical ability to increase a thousand fold in 24 hours. The transformed yeasts in Eric’s stomach, however, were now capable of growing at a hundred times that rate.

Which is what they were proceeding to do.

Feeding first on the sugar in the contents of Eric’s stomach the yeasts budded and grew at a phenomenal speed, producing more alcohol as a waste product as well as a considerable amount of carbon dioxide gas.

Then, when the transformed yeast fungi had exhausted the supply of sugar within his stomach they began to break down the cells of the stomach wall and the intestinal linings. If Eric had been awake it would have felt as if his internal organs were on fire but, mercifully for him, the large amount of extra alcohol created by the yeast had already put him into deep unconsciousness.

Then, slowly at first but then much more quickly, Eric Gifford began to ferment.

And as he fermented his body expanded.

Just after 4 a.m. Eric’s staff were woken by a muffled but powerful explosion which seemed to come from their employer’s bedroom. All five of them gathered in the passageway outside his room. They banged on the door and called out his name but there was no response. Finally the bravest among them opened the door. Immediately a horrifically strong yeasty stench poured out of the room, making them gag.

Choking, two of them reluctantly entered the room and switched on the light. The others crowded around the doorway.

To begin with none of them could comprehend what they were looking at. Then one of the girls screamed and ran down the passageway.

Eric Gifford’s head, one of his arms, and both of his legs still lay on the bed but the rest of him was spread fairly thickly over the ceiling, walls and floors.

And in the depression in the bed created by his 250-pound bulk over the years lay a bubbling and seething white mass.

Naseem and his brother Dinesh had managed to clear the last customer out of the restaurant by 2.00 a.m. and were now helping Maheed, their uncle, clean up in the kitchen.

Naseem was exhausted. He disliked working these long hours but it was the only way he’d be able to save enough money to return to Delhi for good. His other uncle, Makund, who owned the restaurant, as well as two others, was not an easy man to work for but he paid well if you worked hard.

His brother Dinesh was humming a new Indian pop song as he finished scouring the stove. Naseem regarded him wearily, envying him his energy and his continual high spirits.

Dinesh was a mystery to him in many ways. For one thing he seemed quite content to stay on in England and had hopes of opening up a restaurant of his own. To Naseem the idea of spending the rest of his working life in this depressing, gray country and waiting on its increasingly surly and ill-mannered inhabitants was profoundly depressing.

He remembered the two men he’d served earlier that night, the fat one and the thin one, and scowled. “Pigs,” he muttered. “Why do we get so many pigs in this place?”

Dinesh laughed. “Because it is place that makes pig food.” He gestured at the food scrap container which was full up again. Naseem sighed and went and picked it up. “The pigs that eat this are probably better behaved than the ones who sit in the restaurant.”

He carried the bin out the back door and into the alley. He was just about to empty the smaller bin into the bigger one when he paused and blinked several times. But the apparition refused to go away.

The big cylindrical bin was covered with huge growths that looked like giant toadstools. They were about 18 inches high and a foot wide. They were sprouting out of the top of the bin and down its side like frozen beer foam.

Naseem stared at them in amazement. They hadn’t been there when he’d last emptied the kitchen scraps—when? Less than three hours ago?

He called to the others. The tone of his voice brought them out at a run. They reacted to the sight in the same way he did.

After a long pause Dinesh said, “What is that stuff? Where did it all come from?”

Naseem shook his head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t here before. It’s grown very suddenly.”

They both looked to the older man for enlightment, hoping that their uncle had encountered something like this in the past. But he seemed as astonished as they were. “They’re like mushrooms. Like giant mushrooms,” he said slowly.

“More like toadstools,” said Naseem doubtfully. “Toadstools can grow this big, can’t they?”

Dinesh disappeared into the kitchen and returned wielding a broom. “We must destroy them.”

“No, wait,” said Naseem, stepping in front of him. “Perhaps we should call the Health men. Those things are not normal.”

“The Health men would close us down,” said their uncle. “And my brother would have our skins. We cannot tell anyone about this.” He nodded to Dinesh. “Go on, get rid of them.”

Dinesh pushed past Naseem and began to energetically attack the growths with the broom. As the broom struck them the larger fungi burst with a dry popping sound, releasing a faintly luminous cloud of green powder. Very soon the whole alley was filled with the dust and all three men were covered with it.

Dinesh continued with his flailing until all the growths were gone and only powder remained. This he swept up and dumped into the big container. By 3.00 a.m. no visible trace of the fungi remained, either on the ground or in the air. A breeze had sprung up and the cloud of tiny fungi fragments had been carried away.

By 3.30 a.m. the billions of particles were spreading over the West End of London—and beyond.

5

How it began.

It was the happiest day of Jane Wilson’s life. As she stood there in the laboratory cradling the organism in her arms she couldn’t remember ever feeling this elated before, even at the birth of her son Simon.

She was holding a specimen of agaricus bisporus, a species of fungus more commonly known as a “cultivated” mushroom. But it was no ordinary specimen. For one thing its pileus, or cap—which was resting against her left breast—was over a foot in diameter, and the stipe, or stalk was over two feet long and seven inches thick. Altogether it weighed nearly four pounds.

It differed in another more important way from an ordinary agaricus bisporus—this mushroom was protein rich, yielding almost as much usable protein per gram as poultry flesh.

It was the result of seven years hard work and research but at last she’d succeeded. Two hours ago the giant mushroom she was now hugging to her breast had been a tiny spore of almost microscopic size sitting in its tray of nutrient jelly. And now, just a short time later, it was big and protein rich enough to provide one person with enough food for a day.

Jane felt tears rolling down her face. No one had a right to be this happy, she told herself. “Oh baby, baby,” she whispered to the fungus, hugging it harder, “You are beautiful, and you’re mine—all mine.”

Then she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass wall that sealed off this section of the laboratory and felt momentarily embarrassed. “Hell, I look like the Madonna with Child,” she muttered to herself, “positively downright beatific.”

It was time to stop acting like an emotional fool, she decided, and start behaving like a scientist again. The self-congratulations could come later. There was still work to do.

She took the mushroom to a nearby table and laid it out, almost reverently, in a large enamel tray. Then, with a scalpel, she cut a small section out from the edge of the cap. It wasn’t an easy thing for her to do—to mutilate her perfect creation in this way—but it had to be done.

She turned the section over in her hands and examined the gills on the underside of the cap. Her heart sank a little. The section was enlarged enough for her to see with the naked eye the hymenium covering the surface of the gills. The hymenium is the substance from which the basidium grow—the basidium being the micro-organisms that form the mushroom spores. An ordinary mushroom can eject spores at the rate of half a million a minute during the two or three days of its active life but Jane could see that the hymenium on this super-sized specimen was under-developed.

Nervously, she sliced a small sliver from the gill section and placed it under a microscope. Her heart sank still further. The microscope confirmed her fear. The hymenium was not forming any spore cells. She sighed and rested her chin on her hands. So her triumph was not yet 100 % successful. She, and her small team of assistants, had succeeded in creating a giant, fast-growing, protein rich mushroom but the genetically engineered organism that produced these traits obviously inhibited the mushroom’s reproductive cycle.

Originally Jane and her team had attempted to reach their goal by genetically altering the mushroom spore cell itself but nearly four years of effort produced no worthwhile results. Unraveling the genetic code of an organism even as simple as the agaricus bisporius fungus was a monumental task that Jane finally realized they lacked the resources to successfully accomplish. Unless she was given an extra 20 people and unlimited funds—both of which she knew were out of the question—they might still be trying to crack the code in 10 years’ time.

So Jane had decided to try another approach. Instead of trying to alter the whole organism genetically she instructed her assistants that from then on they would approach the problem from a different angle and concentrate on only one aspect of the mushroom’s metabolism. They would isolate the enzymes that helped to control the mushroom’s size, growth rate, and protein retention level, and then try and modify them accordingly.

Isolating the specific enzymes—and fortunately there were only two—took a further 12 months. Jane and her team then began to try and build an artificial enzyme that would supersede the functions of the two existing ones within the a. bisporus cells and accelerate the relevant processes at least a hundred-fold.

It had been a long and painstaking job recombining the DNA strands of the enzymes in an attempt to create the desired chemical structure that would in turn act like a super-catalyst within the mushroom. Enzymes, however, are extremely unstable; their crucial three-dimensional structures often falling apart in only a few hours.

To overcome this problem Jane and her team were obliged to build, finally, a micro-organism that was more like a virus in structure than an ordinary enzyme. But even when they’d succeeded in creating this unusually stable macro-enzyme they had yet to hit upon the precise chemical combination of the four basic chemical sub-units of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, that would produce the desired effects in the mushroom.

So the last 18 months had been spent in testing different versions of the enzyme on the a. bisporus spore cells. Each manufactured enzyme had differed from the others in only the smallest and subtlest ways in their atomic structure but when introduced to the spores they produced widely differing changes in the mushrooms, many of them drastic but none of them the required ones. Until now.

Now, with Enzyme Batch CT-UTE-8471 they’d hit the jackpot. Or almost.

Jane regarded the giant mushroom thoughtfully. Eventhough the enlarged specimen’s reproduction system had been retarded in some way by the accelerated growth process it was still a considerable and historic achievement. And it was possible that the reproductive system had merely been slowed down by the modified catalyst. Tomorrow she would grow another specimen but leave it attached to the mycelium—the fungoid equivalent of roots—for a longer period.

Even if reproduction had been completely inhibited by the new enzyme it was possible that further modification to the enzyme structure would solve the problem. And even if it didn’t it wouldn’t seriously effect her achievement in the long term, she now realized. If the enzyme could be manufactured in large quantities cheaply—and she saw no reason why it couldn’t be—then it would simply be a case of applying it to the mushroom cultivation trays containing ordinary a. bisporus spores, perhaps in the form of a spray, in order to grow any number of the giant variety.

She leaned back on the stool, straightened her back and stretched her arms above her head. She grinned, her feeling of elation returning. Okay, so she hadn’t been 100 % successful but she was so close it didn’t matter. She had created a new and plentiful source of cheap protein that would greatly alleviate the world food shortage. And—who knows?—might lead to a Nobel Prize.

Of course she would have to share the award with her three assistants, Rachel, Tod and Hilary. what a shame for them they hadn’t been in the lab to witness the actual moment of success but she had sent them all home at lunchtime. They had been working around the clock for the previous 24 hours testing a new series of enzyme batches. All had proved negative and it was only on a whim that Jane, by then alone, decided to try just one more variation before going home herself.

She stood up and smiled at the mushroom. She would leave it there on the tray for them to see when they arrived in the morning. The expressions on their faces would be something to remember.

In the meantime she was going to savor her triumph all by herself. It would be exclusively hers for the next 18 hours or so.

She felt a momentary pang that she couldn’t share it with Barry but all that was finished now, probably for good. True, it was supposed to be a ‘trial’ separation but she couldn’t see them ever getting back together again. The last year before the break-up had been hell. She knew she was partly to blame—her involvement with her research had become obsessive—but Barry could have been more supportive instead of acting like a spoiled brat. He knew how important her work was, not just for her but possibly for the whole of mankind, yet he persisted with his ridiculous behavior.

The real problem, she now realized, was that he deeply resented the success she had made of her career. Mycology, after all, had been his field too but it was she who had attracted all the attention, right from the start, with her Ph.D. paper The Relationship Between Fungi and Mankind: Areas of Potential Exploitation in Agriculture and Industry, and subsequently received the research grants and a department of her own while he had just plodded on doing basic research.

Well, perhaps he was happier now writing his childish thrillers over in Ireland. She knew his books were beginning to enjoy a popularity of sorts—but what a waste! Imagine spending your time producing escapist fantasies for emotionally retarded adults when you could be doing something useful with your life.

She gave the mushroom one last lingering look then went to the door. It slid open at the touch of a button. She stepped through into a small room enclosed by frosted glass. As the door slid shut behind her there was a hissing sound from above. A harmless but powerful anti-bacteria gas was being fed into the room. She began to strip off her clothes—the rubber gloves, the plastic cap, the face mask, the long white gown, the paper briefs and then finally the plastic overshoes and slippers. The reusable items went into the sterilizer, the non-reusable into a small electric incinerator.

Then she stepped into a shower cubicle and turned on the water, which also contained anti-bacteria agents.

As she soaped herself thoroughly she gave her body an indifferent inspection. Despite her 31 years and two children it was still a good body with long, well-shaped legs, firm stomach and large but equally firm breasts. Once she had been proud of her body but now her looks, and even her sexuality, rarely impinged on her consciousness.

This had been another point of contention with Barry. “Making love to you is like making love to the mattress,” he had accused her. “And you know why? Because you’re sublimating your sex drive in your damn work! Your body may leave the lab occasionally but your mind stays in there 24 hours a day. All you’re ever really thinking about are your precious fungi. Hell, the only way now I could turn you on would be to dress up as a fucking fungus myself, phallus impudicus preferably.”

She had told him he was talking nonsense but deep down knew there was some justification in what he’d said. But it couldn’t be helped—the work had to be continued at that fast pace. She promised herself that once she achieved her goal and the pressure lessened she would try and make it up to Barry. But, of course, the marriage had collapsed well before that had happened.

By the time she’d finished showering her thoughts had left Barry and returned to the fungus lying on the lab table. As she walked naked to a second glass door and then stepped through into a small changing room she was thinking that tomorrow she would try the enzyme on a specimen of agaricus campestris, the ordinary field mushroom which was very similar to the cultivated variety but actually a different species. It was possible that the reproduction-inhibiting factor might be only present in a bisporus….

The thought cheered her up still further as she dressed and began to dry her long, blonde hair with a portable drier.

It was then she noticed the cut on her right forefinger. It was a small incision on the very tip of her finger, extending at right angles from the end of her fingernail for just over a quarter of an inch. As she held it up for a closer look a small drop of blood oozed out. Automatically she put the end of her finger in her mouth and sucked.

Frowning, she wondered how she could have cut herself. Then she remembered removing that sliver from the gill segment for the microscope. She must have nicked herself with the scalpel. Oh well, it didn’t matter; the cut would have been well and truly cleaned by both the antiseptic gas and water. Not that there was any chance of picking up a dangerous infection from anything in her lab. Despite all the elaborate safety precautions, which were imposed on all the Institute’s genetic engineering facilities no matter what the nature of their work, she knew that there was nothing potentially harmful among any of the artificial micro-organisms that she and her team had created over the years.

Or so she believed.

Unknown to her, several thousand microscopic mushroom cells still remained in the cut and under her fingernail. They were dead or dying but the virus-like enzyme, which had been designed to survive for as long as possible, was still active within all the cells.

And while the enzyme wasn’t directly harmful to human life its indirect effects were to prove, very swiftly, catastrophic.

Humming to herself Dr. Jane Wilson finished dressing and made her plans for the night. Though she hadn’t slept for the last 36 hours she was too excited to go home to bed. No, she wanted to celebrate, and she’d celebrate by having her first self-indulgent night out in years. She would go to a movie, perhaps—preferably a comedy—then have an Indian meal and after that go to a pub and get quietly drunk. She would do all the things that she and Barry used to enjoy doing when they first met.

Damn, she was thinking about him again. She wondered if she should give him a call when she got home and break the wonderful news. No, he’d probably be typing away over there in Ireland even at that late hour—wearing his stupid ear-plugs—and would accuse her of interrupting his “flow.” That was if he even bothered to answer the phone.

No, she decided, she wouldn’t call him. He could read about it in the papers.

She left the Institute of Tropical Biology at 5.18 p.m. and a short time later was walking down Tottenham Court Road. At 5.22 p.m. she bought a newspaper to check the cinema listings. She was looking at the paper when she collided with Norman Layne.

6

Dr. Bruce Carter swore when he saw what time it was. A phone call before 6 a.m. meant two things: trouble, and not enough sleep to cope with it.

He reached out for the phone on the bedside table and picked it up. “Emergency,” said the familiar voice of the Duty Officer, confirming his fears. “Get to the Middlesex Hospital as quickly as you can.”

Carter didn’t bother asking what had come up. Even if the Duty Officer had the details he would be reluctant to give them over the phone. Security in the civil service was continually getting tighter under the Thatcher regime and a whole new set of regulations governing what it was permissible to discuss by telephone had recently been issued. The weather was about the only safe subject left.

He forced himself out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. The sight of his face in the mirror was enough to jolt him into full wakefulness. He looked like his father. Or rather what his father had looked like at 50. The trouble was that he was only 43.

I’m working too hard, he told himself as he threw cold water on his face and then began to clean his teeth. At this rate I’ll be dead of a heart attack long before I reach retirement age. Just like Dad.

And yet he enjoyed his job, in spite of the long, unsocial hours, and the pressures, and certainly didn’t want to be transferred into a less strenuous department. He knew he’d be bored doing anything else.

Dr. Bruce Carter was a medical investigator for the Home Office. His duties ranged over a wide area, dealing with everything from rabies control to tracking down the origins of outbreaks of communicable diseases like typhoid, TB and the like. He was also an expert on toxins and was often called in on suspected murder cases. All in all it was a fairly exciting and challenging job that didn’t follow any particular routine. He hated routine but he loved challenges.

He parked his car in Goodge Street at 6.25 a.m., pleased with himself at how quickly he’d made it into town. As be got out of the car he was aware of how quiet it was at this time of the morning. If only it was always like this, he thought, as he hurried toward the entrance of the Middlesex Hospital.

On the way he noticed something odd; growing out of a drain next to the footpath was a clump of the biggest toad-stools he’d ever seen. They were white, spherical things almost the size of footballs. He was tempted to examine them more closely but there wasn’t time. Later perhaps.

Inside the building he gave his name to the receptionist who, predictably, couldn’t find it on her list. Carter was patient. “Try looking under ‘C’,” he suggested politely.

She eventually found a Dr. Bruce “Cowper” on the list and agreed, a shade reluctantly, that it was probably him. “You’re to go to the Contagious Diseases Ward, Block C, Level two and ask for a Dr. Mason. Take that lift there and press the button marked two. Then. “

But Carter was already running for the lift. “Thanks,” he called over his shoulder. “I know the way.”

On the second floor he encountered a nurse heading toward him from the direction of the Contagious Diseases Ward. The look on her face disturbed him. Her expression was one of shock. It was rare for a nurse to display her emotions that way, no matter what she might have witnessed. Carter began to get an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He went through the door marked “Contagious Diseases” in big red letters. Beyond, in a short passageway, sat a nurse at a desk. There was another nurse with her, talking in a low voice. They both looked up at him as he entered. Their eyes had the same expression of dull shock as the nurse he’d passed outside. His feeling of foreboding increased.

He gave them his name and one of them took him along into a small room. She handed him a plastic anti-contamination suit and told him to put it on. He stared at the suit with surprise. He’d worn such clothing before, but only rarely, in extreme situations. The last time had been during the investigation of a suspected escape of smallpox bacillus from a research lab.

He gestured at the suit’s self-contained oxygen supply and said to the nurse, “Rather drastic this, isn’t it? Isn’t your patient in an isolation unit?”

Tersely she said, “There’s more than one of them and, yes, they are in isolation units, but Dr. Mason advises the use of the suit just the same.”

He said nothing more as he climbed into the suit. When he was ready she checked the seals then indicated another door. “Go through there. You’ll find a door at the end of the passageway. Dr. Mason will be waiting to meet you beyond it.”

“What’s the problem?” he asked her, his voice distorted by the plastic helmet.

“I think you’d better let Dr. Mason explain the situation,” she said and then left the room.

Carter paused for a while, then went to the door she’d indicated. He was positive now he was not going to enjoy what lay at the end of the passage.

Dr. Mason, similarly attired like an extra from Star Wars, met him as he stepped into a small ward that was all pristine whiteness and glittering medical equipment. Carter had met Dr. Mason once before at an emergency meeting to discuss the AIDS problem about a year and a half ago but knew him mainly by reputation. And that was very impressive indeed.

“Ah, Dr. Carter, I’m glad you made it here so quickly,” said Mason. “I’m afraid we have quite a serious problem on our hands—quite a serious problem.”

Behind the plastic of his helmet Mason’s round, sweat-covered face was haggard with strain. Carter glanced past him at the six beds the ward contained. Each bed was covered by a plastic tent. In four of the tents he could make out vague shapes.

He peered hard at the nearest bed/tent. The patient within it seemed to be entirely covered in thick bandages. Yellow bandages. He went nearer. Mason followed.

“What happened to him? Or is it a her? Those bandages make it impossible to tell.”

“It’s a ‘he.’ And those aren’t bandages.”

Carter turned to Mason, thinking he was making some sort of odd joke, but the look in Mason’s eyes told him it was no joke. Carter felt himself go very cold and his testicles seemed to be shrinking up into his crotch as if trying to hide.

He turned back to the figure on the bed and bent his helmet close to the plastic tent. What he’d thought was a bandage was instead a thick yellow growth that covered the whole body, even the face.

“Jesus,” he groaned. “What the hell is that? It looks like a mold.”

“It is.”

Carter was confused. “I’ve seen a fair few corpses in my time but never one in a state like that. And why have you got it up here instead of in the morgue?”

“It’s not a corpse.” Mason’s voice was bleak.

“What!” He stared at Mason in astonishment then back at the form on the bed. He now saw that the fluff-covered chest rose and fell perceptibly. He was glad he hadn’t had time for breakfast before he’d left home.

“Yes, he’s still alive,” said Mason. “I suppose you could say he’s one of the lucky ones.” He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Unlike this patient.”

Mason led Carter to the adjacent bed. The naked body beneath the plastic was that of a man. Carter judged him to be in his mid-twenties. He couldn’t tell for sure because from the neck up there was nothing but a lump of gray, featureless fungus. It was like a dirty cauliflower.

“Mercifully dead, but I don’t dare transfer him to the morgue. The risk of contagion is too great. The man may be dead but that growth is still alive, I fear.”

“But what is it?” demanded Carter. “Where did these people get infected with this stuff?”

“The answer to both your questions is, ‘I don’t know,’ “said Mason. He pointed back at the first bed. “That one was picked up by the police less than two hours ago. He was spotted by the driver of a newspaper delivery van staggering along the Euston Road. The two policemen who answered the call had the good sense to bring him straight here. And this victim—” He indicated the body in front of them. “—was brought in by ambulance from Ladbroke Grove about an hour ago. Neighbors heard his girlfriend screaming at around 5 a.m. She was completely hysterical. She’d woken up in bed and found him like this—beside her.” Mason swallowed dryly and led Carter to the next bed.

Carter reluctantly stared through the plastic. It was almost as bad as he had feared. The body was covered with pulpy white growths. Like toadstools, the puff-ball variety.

He remembered the unusually large toadstools growing in the gutter outside the hospital and a horrible suspicion began to form in the back of his mind.

“This one’s s alive too,” said Mason. “Staggered into the casualty department of Guy’s Hospital at 4 a.m.”

“It is some kind of fungus, isn’t it,” said Carter, peering at the growths.

“It looks like it. But I’ve tried massive doses of both nystatin and griseofulvin without any noticeable effect.”

Carter nodded. Those were the two antibiotics most effective against fungal infections. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Neither have I. I’m no expert on fungal infections but I thought I was familiar with most of the ones that can affect human beings, even the ones we don’t tend to get in Britain, like histoplasmosis and coccidioidomycosis, but this—this is outside my experience completely.”

An idea occurred to Carter. “It could be some new tropical strain that a visitor from, say, Africa or India has brought in. You'd better get in touch with the Institute of Tropical Medicine, they might be able to identify this.”

“I’ve already thought of that. My staff are making the calls now. They’re also trying to contact the head of the Mycology Department at London University so that we can have stuff analyzed by experts as soon as possible. But the most pressing problem—and the reason I called you—is to stop this stuff from spreading any further. This last victim was brought in from as far away as Hackney—” He indicated the final occupied bed.

Carter looked and saw a large, middle-aged black woman lying there. At first she seemed free of any fungal growths but then he noticed the long slits running down her limbs and torso. He looked at her face. Her eyes were open but the surface of the eyeballs was covered with a gray mold. He could see the same gray mold within the fissures in her skin. Fortunately she wasn’t breathing.

“Her whole body is riddled with fungus. There’s probably more of it than her now. One of the disturbing factors is that each of the four victims here appears to have been afflicted by a different type of fungus. I just don’t understand it.”

Carter said tonelessly, “Ladbroke Grove, Hackney, Borough—that’s a wide area already. Have there been any more reported cases?”

“I’m afraid so. So far we’ve had calls from the West Middlesex Hospital, the London Hospital and the Springfield Hospital. they’ve all got cases by the sound of it.”

“Springfield—that’s Upper Tooting.” The red area on Carter’s mental map of London grew even bigger. “And you say it’s very contagious, but exactly how contagious?”

“Extremely contagious,” answered Mason. “The two policemen who brought in the Euston Road victim are in another ward nearby. They’re both infected. The stuff is covering about twenty percent of their bodies and is spreading fast, despite all our attempts to kill it. Three ambulance men have also been stricken so far—and there’s this.”

Mason held up his right hand and opened the seals on the plastic glove. He pulled off the glove and Carter saw, on the back of Mason’s hand, a patch of yellow mold.