5

Tuesday, 5.20 p.m.

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. Unravelling the genetic code of an organism even as simple as the agaricus bisporus 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 supercatalyst 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. Even though 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 affect 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 . . .