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64.
Louise Trost was tied up in a major conference at City Hall. This was now a regular show called the Daily Circus. It started with a closed meeting for one to two hours, and then became more of an informative meeting for the public. Only in the second half were news media allowed in. At the moment it was still Part I.
Professor Shaun Nolan, the mycology expert from UCSD Medical Center, was at her side. Present in the small amphitheater were the Mayor and several City Council members; fire and police authorities; National Guard and other Federal representatives; the state's Lieutenant Governor and his assistants, who had all flown down from Sacramento overnight; and a mix of journalists (sworn to silence for the moment, but documenting the proceedings for history) and expert witnesses.
A dominant figure was the four-star general commanding the California National Guard. General Reginald Quentin Stark seemed to be on the verge of declaring martial law and taking charge of the entire theater of operations. The Governor had already empowered him to do so if he and the Lieutenant Governor felt the situation warranted it, but the top Federal military officer in San Diego, a very senior Navy four-star, Navy Admiral Edgardo Malayan, was not ready to put his atomic submarines and aircraft carriers and other heavy weight vessels under Malayan's command. When Stark huffily suggested Malayan move the ships out to sea, the admiral retorted "on whose budget, with what safety procedures, and with what resources given that every available sailor and Marine is out on shore duty protecting stores, helping refugees, and so forth."
Louise knew she was outgunned and kept her head low. Had there been a Congressman present, her position in this elbowing match for power might have been stronger—unless it was Collwood's boy, Metrick. Rumor had it Metrick was about to be subpoenaed if not actually indicted on various corruption charges resulting from four separate investigations here and in Washington, D.C. In that atmosphere, she merely offered the council of her associate, Dr. Nolan, in conjunction with the testimony of several Army biological warfare experts present.
Nolan told them: "The city is effectively under a full frontal biological warfare attack. I am not suggesting one way or another that there may be a human enemy. My suspicion is that perhaps one or more humans tipped a delicate balance somewhere, and unleashed forces that have been kept at bay for eons. The good news in that is that, if there is a counter-force, we know we should locate that counter-force and use it to combat this horror that has seized our city."
General Stark said: "That's the first encouraging word I have heard so far. And the most intelligent. Professor Nolan, thank you for offering a candle in this terrible darkness. Have you any idea where this counter-force lies?"
Nolan said: "I have associates—a growing number of mycologists from UCSD and from all over the country and in fact around the world—testing every hypothesis they can think of. By now it's clear that, for reasons yet to be fathomed but probably having to do with greed, the owner of Anaconda Chemicals tried to smuggle in a shipment of some deadly fungus. We know the Lima Voyager traveled from here to Asia, then to several Latin American countries before returning to San Diego. On the return trip, disaster struck as this malignancy took over the ship."
"What is this malignancy, Professor?" the Mayor asked.
"Your Honor, I believe some very complicated symbiosis is at work. You should know that there are at least 60,000 fungus species of all types in the world. They are very variegated, ranging across a broad spectrum of adaptations to every climate zone conceivable. It is highly likely that this species has had human contact in the past. Somehow, in ways I do not understand yet, it has formed a kind of bypass in its reproductive procedure. That is to say, fungi have evolved with capabilities to reproduce either sexually (with a male and female gene set converging to form a new stem cell, if you will) or asexually, with a spore that carries the entire gene set, the entire DNA map, from source to target. If my surmise is correct, what we are dealing with is a mimic. Somehow, a transitional form of it attaches itself to a human, and robs that human of not only life, but also of its DNA. In effect, the gene pool of this species is constantly enriching itself. It may have started as a typical saprophytic species, feeding on the decaying residue from living matter that has died, like a fallen tree or a rotting fruit; or it may have started as a parasitic species that feeds on a living host, like a fruit that hasn't fallen yet—that's the rotten spot in your apple, for example, or the athlete's foot between your toes. In a third case, it may have started as a symbiote, a fungus that enjoys a mutually helpful relationship—lichens, for example, which are composed of two life forms—a fungus, with algae embedded."
He strode back and forth, hands in pockets, as if lecturing in a university classroom. "Whatever its origins, at some point it interacted with humans and was already predisposed to predating upon our flesh and our DNA. My guess is that the victim becomes a spore, a carrier."
"Why are they picking on us?" a woman asked, followed by a rumble of tired, scared laughter."
"The fact that many mushrooms are deadly poisonous to some species and yet can be eaten with great zest by other species suggests some evolutionary defense mechanisms over time. If you are a mushroom and want to have your spores carried around by some animal, you'll want to taste good to that animal. If there is another animal that likes you so much it will eat you into extinction, you'll want to be poisonous and smelly and distasteful to that animal. That's a silly way of saying it, of course, because I'm not sure plants and fungi actually think about things" —he paused, hoping for laughter that didn't come, which reminded him how creepy this whole situation was, and made his spine crawl—"more likely, only those mushrooms survive that happen to have just the right characteristics for that environment. But that's a discussion for another day, if you ever want to take one of my courses at UCSD."
"How can mushrooms walk around?" someone asked.
"Good question. I wouldn't have believed any of this myself unless I had seen it. Sometimes I still think this is all a bad dream. Basically, most fungi are a bunch of cells strung together with very fine threads called hyphae. Individually, hyphae are practically invisible. Together, they make up a foofy, dry looking mass called a mycelium, which is the thing you see, that you call a mushroom or a fungus. Moreover, hyphae are known to gather into tough strands. That's what makes a stem able to support the weight of the cap, for example. In some symbiotic species that live underground together with tree roots, the hyphae develop into long, tough, rubbery black tubes that intertwine with tree roots in a mycorrhyzal relationship. I might also point out that many plants have xylem tissue, which conducts water, nutrients, and useful compounds through the plant's body. Taken all in all, without boring you with endless technical terms, I would merely point out that nature is endlessly inventive. All the basic ingredients for functionality are already present in most species. Remember also that almost the entire palette of life on earth, from the polar regions to the deserts, from the bottom of the sea to the deepest jungles and to the birds flying everywhere, rests on the DNA map and its million ways of propagating itself. Thus, is it really that far-fetched to think that a DNA-driven fungus might be compelled to have a symbiotic or parasitic relationship with a DNA-driven human being? In a parasitic relationship, the host eventually perishes, as in this case, I fear."
Admiral Edgardo Malayan said: "Doctor Nolan, how close are your people to giving us a weapon to fight this plague?"
Nolan shook his head. "All I can tell you is that we are proceeding on the assumption that the organism attacking mankind is what we call the Offensor, and that somewhere on this earth it has been held in check somehow by a rival we are calling the Defensor. If we can find and employ the Defensor in time, there may be hope."
"Or else?" Stark said.
"Or else," Nolan replied, "soon the entire earth will resemble the harbor front of San Diego—a fungal paradise in which no human can survive."
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