by Rick Wayne
“We talked to the owner. Rep from the company met us here this morning. He says the place will be demolished by the end of the week anyway.”
“End of the week . . .”
“Yeah. So, just letting you know. Have a good one.”
He hung up and I sat back.
By the end of the week.
I dropped the stack of paperwork on the floor and plugged my phone into my laptop. I downloaded the pictures and used a graphics editor to isolate the symbols on a white background. Then I did a reverse image search. I got millions of results, of course, which the search site proudly told me it had delivered in 0.64ms. And yet, there was almost nothing of relevance. The very top results were stone carvings from some place in Ireland called Newgrange. Neolithic tomb. 5,200 years old, apparently—give or take. That’s older than the pyramids, by the way. Carved on the rocks were swirls and circular labyrinths similar to the ones I saw, but also simpler, like half-remembered copies. The next-closest result was ancient cuneiform, specifically the Sumerian dingir, which was the sign for (little g) god. After that, the valknut, the knotlike symbol of the Norse god Odin. And on and on.
I traded the open web for an online database of scholarly papers. It was expensive, of course, as knowledge always seems to be, but my access was paid for by the government. I wasn’t familiar with anthropological journals, and just like the web, there was such a flood irrelevant results that I wasn’t able to find anything. I gave up and went back to work.
It was another 20 minutes before it hit me.
“I’m acting like a scientist,” I said suddenly to myself.
“That’s a good thing,” one of my colleagues quipped as she passed my cubicle.
I had approached the problem like a question of natural science, where there’s a right answer, or at least a demonstrably more correct one. But the “right” answer didn’t matter. What those symbols originally meant, if anything, didn’t matter. All that mattered was what the people who made them today thought they believed. I began searching esoteric sites, arcane databases, book listings, whatever I could find. I even slummed it on the deep web, which is where I found an old archive. It was defunct, an early attempt to catalog and preserve the internet. The original page was long gone. The copy was dated 1997. It was titled “The Lost Language of the Gods.” There were a handful of broken image links and some text.
From the sound of it, the symbols were part of a much larger set. It didn’t seem to be a written language. In fact, it predated the earliest writing by at least a thousand years. But it was clearly structured. There was a whole organized system, which suggested it was more than decorative. The symbols meant something—only nobody knew what anymore.
I right-clicked on all the broken image blocks and followed them to their source, one by one. Almost everything was dead. But I did eventually find a second piece which explicitly mentioned a book, supposedly penned by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, circa 600 BC. The word “semi-mythical” was used, implying that there might have been a real book, but that much of what we know about it was probably wrong. Supposedly, it was rediscovered as a palimpsest, a work on vellum that had been scraped away in the Middle Ages to make room for something else. Such works are only recoverable with modern technology, typically UV light. In that way, book detectives reveal hidden words much the same way that real detectives use luminol to reveal hidden blood.
The site reassured me that contrary to popular myth, the vellum was not in fact made from human skin, that the volume in question had been discovered in Germany in the 19th century, and that it was hidden underneath the “Zakynthite Atlas.” And that was it.
My phone dinged. I got a single-word text from my wife.
PLEASE
Mom must have phoned the house again. I imagine Marlene wasn’t happy with that. It looked for sure like I was ducking her now. I sent a reply from the bathroom. When I got back to my desk, the red voicemail light on my desk phone was lit. I listened to the message from the medical examiner’s office. I grabbed my cell and called Dr. Pratt. He even answered.
“What’s the good word?”
“We were about to try you again.” They were on speaker. I heard him talking to someone in the background. “Are you sitting down?”
“What?”
“Stomach contents were inconclusive. But all five of your vics were suffering a raging infection.”
“Yeah, it was hard to miss.”
“Any idea what it was?”
“Aren’t you supposed to tell me?”
“It wasn’t something we could culture, but since you were so nice and patient, I took micrographs and emailed them to a colleague of mine at Columbia, who about shit himself.” I heard laughing. “Ray Milhoun. He’s here with me now. Had to see it for himself.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “See what?”
“Are you sitting down?” he repeated.
“Yes.” I wasn’t.
“Mycena lucifera. It’s a fungus. Grows on animal tissue. Highly luminescent when flowering, and extremely toxic.”
“Luminescent?” I sat down. “As in bioluminescent?”
“Exactly.”
Some kinds of mushrooms glow in the dark, similar to fireflies and angler fish. There’s even a couple species native to North America, although their light is very faint.
“This one’s exceedingly rare,” he said. “Discovered in 2003. Big mycology hunt in Venezuela.”
There was a long silence. I didn’t know what to say.
“You there?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“It flowers from the corpses of dead animals and emits a sweet stench, not unlike rot.”
“To attract scavengers,” I said.
“To attract wasps,” he corrected.
I stood again.
“The wasps walk on the flowering bodies where the tiny hairs on their legs trap spores. Then they fly away. Sooner or later one of them stings an animal, depositing the spores under the skin, where the toxin inhibits the animal’s local immune response and allows the organism to get a foothold.”
“Wait. You’re saying this is a predatory fungus.”
“That’s the theory.” I heard him talking to his colleague again. “BUT . . . I’ll be damned if I could find any wasp stings on your dead illegals.”
“So how’d it get in in their system?”
“They appear to have eaten it.”
“Eaten?” I was scowling. Deeply.
“Their GI tracts were swollen all the way through.”
“Why would Chinese immigrants have eaten a rare Venezuelan fungus? Where would they even have gotten it?”
“Aren’t you supposed to tell us?” he asked with a chortle. “After the mycology came back, I reexamined the stomach contents. The mushrooms had been cut and cooked before being chewed and swallowed, so they looked completely ordinary. They were mixed with bread and carrots and peas. The toxin would have kicked in quickly. No more than a few hours. After that, they would’ve been in unspeakable pain. Nausea. Cramps. The works.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I said.
“Scotch.”
“Excuse me?”
“We drink Scotch. Single malt.”
“Well, have one for me,” I said.
The two men laughed and that was it.
I immediately hit the academic portal again and found everything written on the species in a single search. It wasn’t much.
What we call a mushroom in everyday life is really just the fruiting body of the organism. The mushrooms on your lawn, for example, erupt from the filamentous network of fungal strands that grow in a wide area under the soil, breaking down and feeding on dead organic matter. The fruiting bodies erupt to spread the powdery spores through the air, similar to how dandelion seeds disperse on the wind. But if the mycologists were right, this fungus actually evolved a symbiotic relationship with an aggressive species of tropical wasp. I’d never heard of anything like it. Just one more way the jungle can kil
l you, I guess. Along with piranhas and malaria.
Half an hour later later, after I’d read everything there was on the species, I grabbed my computer and barged into Ollie’s windowless office.
“Hang up,” I said as I opened up my computer on his desk and took out my little USB projector.
He looked at me like I was crazy. He hit the mute button on the phone but kept the receiver at his ear so he could listen.
“The press conference is in an hour.”
“We got it,” I said.
He looked at me like I was full of shit. “Folks from the mayor’s office are on this call,” he whispered, as if the phone weren’t muted.
I projected my laptop’s screen on his bare wall. It was on an odd angle at first.
Oliver stared at the image for a minute before his mouth fell open. Then he unmuted his phone.
“Yeah, I’m gonna have to catch you all later.”
He set the phone in the cradle. I could hear the overlapping exclamations right before the line went dead.
“Okay.” I got excited. “It gets a little weird.”
“It’s already weird.”
I brought up one of the web pages I had found. He read the title.
“A mushroom?” he said, scowling. “You want me to tell the mayor’s office that he should go on TV and say we’re looking for a killer mushroom?”
“Well . . . Not exactly.”
“The story on the evening news is about a seven-year-old boy,” he said. “My 16-year-old won’t even eat mushrooms on pizza.” He thought for a moment. “Although if they glowed in the dark she might.”
“You can’t believe this is a coincidence,” I said, pointing.
“Maybe not. But if you take this upstairs, with only the illegals, the first question you’re gonna get is how your theory applies to the kid, who—just being honest—is the only one anyone cares about right now. And your answer is: Dunno. You need confirmation, Alex. A second case, at least.” He sighed. “Come on. You know this. It’s textbook.”
I nodded. He was right, of course. I rubbed my beard, then my eyes under my glasses.
“You look tired,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I dunno.”
“Jesus, man. You gotta step back. Take a break. You can’t move a whole city by yourself. Everybody’s gotta do their bit.”
I leaned against the wall. “At some point, that becomes an excuse.”
He snort-laughed. “Maybe. But insulting the rest of us won’t change anything. The hospital pumped the kid’s stomach, right? Go see if they found something similar. Then we can talk to Chalmers.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Come on. Don’t take it so hard.” He scowled at the projection. “Jesus. Carnivorous mushrooms. Where the hell does something like that come from anyway?”
I switched the screen again. A single picture in a scientific paper of an odd-shaped mushroom erupting from the deflated, furry corpse of a half-submerged capybara.
He read the summary out loud like it was his own obituary. “ . . . native to the Amazon.”
“Is that significant?”
He stared. “Native to the Amazon,” he repeated.
“Ollie?”
He sat up. “Call the hospital. Ask them—”
“You already said that.”
“Right. Then go write up a short summary. Right now.” He dug in his desk for his keys. “Don’t say you cracked it. Say you got a lead or a hypothesis or something. Email it out to the team. Let’s make sure your name is all over this one.” He stood.
“What about you?”
“It’s your theory. I’m not taking credit—”
“No,” I interrupted. “I meant where are you going?”
“I gotta run out. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Run out? Five minutes ago I couldn’t pry your hands from the phone.”
Oliver grabbed his coat from the rack and scowled at me. “Just write the damned summary.”
“Aren’t you gonna need that?” I asked, pointing to the briefcase he had left on the other side of his desk. I bent over and lifted it, showing him.
“Thanks,” he said. “I can’t remember the glasses on top of my head anymore.”
I held it out and he took it. “You don’t wear glasses.” I looked at him skeptically.
He saw my face. “What?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothin’.”
He stopped in the hall. “Good job, by the way. You’re getting the hang of field work. It’s more about the personalities than the science.” And then he was gone.
I walked to my desk and grabbed my tablet—gift from my wife when I got the post-doc appointment. I brought up the Find My Phone app. I watched on the screen as a blue dot in front of the Department of Health building pulled away.
He must have taken a taxi.
I paid the cabbie and stepped out. Ollie was standing on the curb, waiting for me. I walked toward him and he held up my phone, which I had slipped into the side pocket of his briefcase.
“Clever,” he grumbled.
I stopped ten yards away.
“You’re straight as an arrow all right. Through the back.”
He pointed. “You’re the first one to come through that stupid program that’s had half a brain. Don’t screw it up.”
“Why does everybody keep saying that?”
I took my phone from him and turned to see where we’d stopped. There was a wide-windowed corner bistro on the bottom floor of a roughly three-story building. It was difficult to say because the upper floors weren’t demarcated. They were lined in giant panes of glass covered in faint reflective film. You couldn’t see inside. Which was weird enough. But on top of that, the newer parts of the building had been added to the remnants of a much older brick structure, but they weren’t so much built onto as inside it, as if the newer building were wearing the old like a turtle’s shell.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“Look . . .” Ollie began. He was so skittish, like an abused dog pacing around a free handout. “It’s better if I do all the talking.”
I nodded. “All right.”
“And if this doesn’t work out, it’s better if no one even knows we came. Just trust me on that. Please?”
I looked up at the sign over the door. It said “Bistro Indigenes” in fancy script lettering. It was certainly a nice place—modestly decorated but definitely upscale, set on a busy street corner opposite a small park. There was a dentist’s office across the side street.
He turned for the door. “Glowing Amazonian mushrooms. It’s just too fucking big of a coincidence. He might know something.” He corrected himself as he walked in. “He will know something. Whether or not he’ll tell us . . .”
“Who?” I asked.
Ollie strode through the little waiting area as if he’d been there before, many times, but I got stuck when a server passed holding—I couldn’t believe it—a plate of flayed salamander on a bed of greens, belly up, its sizzling skin pinned open like a frog in a dissection tray. I did a double-take when I caught a whiff—like a musky grilled fish. It was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, but all but a few of the twenty or so linen-covered tables were occupied. A curved counter serving a single row of diners arced halfway around the open kitchen, which looked like a cross between a greenhouse and an assembly line. A round brick oven filled the center and rose from floor to ceiling. A bevy of chefs in black aprons and matching bandannas ran around it and yelled to each other as they pulled spiked husks from strange vegetables and pulverized bone in heavy mortars. It was loud.
“Oliver.”
Female voice.
I turned and saw a short-haired woman approach the empty hostess stand from the interior of a glass-walled wine closet. The legs of her sheer black slacks swung back and forth with casual grace. She wore a white silk top that didn’t hug a single curve and yet managed to let you know t
hey all were there. She had little makeup—she didn’t need it—and a walnut-sized gem dangling from a long necklace. It was clear but not a diamond. But it didn’t look like costume jewelry either. It refracted a rainbow, like high-quality crystal, and it was cut with a very peculiar geometry, so much so that I did a double-take. My brain didn’t want to accept that shape was possible.
Ollie shook her hand with a grumble and asked for the chef. The woman politely ignored the question and turned to me.
“Milan.” She extended her hand and I took it. She spoke like a woman who had been born somewhere else but had been speaking American English for so long that you almost couldn’t tell.
Oliver jumped in. “This is an associate of mine. From the CDC. It’s important,” he stressed.
“The CDC?” She turned back to me in surprise. “Have we graduated to national health hazard now?”
“Excuse me?”
“Look—” Oliver started.
“No court order this time?” Milan scanned his hands.
Ollie responded with half-closed eyes, as if he was tired of repeating himself.
“You were warned. Repeatedly. Keeping vermin in a kitchen that serves the public is a violation of—”
“The cockroaches were imported,” the women explained to me softly. “From Kazakhstan.”
“Is he here or not?”
“I’m sorry. You just missed him.”
Ollie was skeptical. He lifted a finger. But before he could speak, Milan rested a hand on his shoulder, gently, as if to show him the door.
“But it’s always nice to see you, Oliver. Please come for dinner sometime. I’m sure we could comp you a glass of wine.”
He made a face.
A young server presented the hostess with a covered tray. A bit of steam escaped from one corner. Whatever was inside was hot. Milan motioned silently for the kid to leave it on the hostess station as she waited politely to see us out.
Waxman eyed it. “That’s for him, isn’t it?”
The graceful woman gave my colleague a look that, had she given it to me, would have melted my reformed Southern sensibilities and made me slink out the door. But Ollie was Brooklyn through and through.
