The Girl with All the Gifts

14

Monday has come and gone, and the list that Dr Caldwell requested has not been forthcoming. Justineau has not spoken to her, or sent a memo. She has not explained the delay, or requested additional time.

Clearly, Caldwell thinks, her initial assessment was correct. Justineau’s emotional identification with the subjects is interfering with the proper performance of her duties. And since her duties are owed to Caldwell, are factored into Caldwell’s clinical plans, Caldwell has to take that dereliction seriously.

She calls up her own database on the test subjects. Where to start? She’s looking for reasons why Ophiocordyceps has shown such unlikely mercy in this tiny handful of cases. Most people infected with the pathogen experience its full effect almost instantaneously. Within minutes, or hours at most, sentience and self-awareness shut down permanently and irrevocably. This happens even before the threads of the fungus penetrate the tissue of the brain; its secretions, mimicking the brain’s own neurotransmitters, do most of the dirty work. Tiny chemical wrecking balls pounding away at the edifice of self until it cracks and crumbles, falls apart. What’s left is a clockwork toy, that only moves when Cordyceps turns the key.

These children were infected years ago, and they can still think and talk. Even learn. And their brains are mostly in a reasonably sound condition; mycelial threads are widely dispersed through the nerve tissue, but they don’t seem able to feed on it. There’s something in the children’s body chemistry which is retarding both the spread of the fungus and the virulence of its effects.

Partial immunity.

If she could find the reason why, Caldwell would be halfway – at least halfway – to a full cure.

When she thinks of it like that, the decision is made for her. She needs to start with the child who shows least impairment of all. The child who, despite having as high a concentration of fungal matter in her blood and tissue as any of the others, and more than most, somehow retains a genius-level IQ.

She needs to start with Melanie.