Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  “It took me several hours, but the more I uncovered, the less I liked what I had found. There are several legends from widespread places around the world that deal with these fungi, and none of them have much, if anything, good to say about them. The details vary considerably, but on one thing there is perfect agreement. On no account should they be cultivated, or allowed to sporulate, for they are voracious in their appetite, and devious in their methods.

  “Now, this would be jolly bad news even if that were all that was involved. But the old texts told more, of a spiritual dimension to the fungi, and of even older tales of their origin millennia ago on the high plains of Leng. All of this will sound arcane, if not ridiculous, to your modern sensibilities, Malone. But, trust me, I learned enough this afternoon to put me in an awful funk. I came to realize that the singing you found so melodious was merely a precursor to the main event. The fungi were preparing to sporulate, and if allowed to do so, an apocalypse of biblical proportions would quickly engulf this city, this country, perhaps even the whole planet.”

  “Steady on, old chap,” I said. “Isn’t that rather melodramatic?”

  He laughed. “An affliction I am somewhat prone to, I will admit as much,” he said. “It comes of telling too many tales to old friends over drinks. One tends to emphasize some things more than others for a dramatic effect. But not this time. The things I learned in my books did indeed have me in a blue funk. And I was at somewhat at a loss over how to proceed at first, until I found a fragment of a chant hidden in The Concordances of the Red Serpent which alluded to manipulation and control of the sporulation process. I saw a way in which it might be achieved by a judicious combination of chanting and upsetting the innate rhythm of their singing with light and sound. In effect, I had devised a means to put the fungi to sleep; a lullaby if you’d like to think of it in those terms.

  “I quickly gathered my defensive materials and called a carriage to take me to Kew. On the way the driver took some delight in relating the story of the comatose people who were taken away to the hospital, and I knew that speed was now of an essence. I went to the groundskeeper’s house and, for the cost of a five-pound note, gained the use of the greenhouse key for the evening.

  “I don’t believe I have to tell you much more, Mr. Malone, for you were yourself present for the dénouement. I am firmly of the opinion that I was successful in my task, and that the psychic influence of the fungi has been quelled. It will only remain for me to ensure that the organic material itself is disposed of, and the matter should be closed.”

  He sat back, clearly a contented man, puffing on his pipe and sipping ale. I did not know what to make of the story at all.

  “You were right,” I said. “I can see that you believe in what you are saying. But I’m also ruddy well convinced that McGuire would laugh me out of the newsroom should I place a piece like that in front of him. I do believe I will keep it to myself, if you don’t mind?”

  “Oh, I don’t mind at all,” Carnacki replied. “Anonymity is often for the best in my line of work. But, just in case you need me …”

  He handed me an engraved business card. I put it away in my jacket without looking at it. The last I saw of Thomas Carnacki, he was heading off into the night in search of a carriage, still carrying his suitcase.

  The comatose patients woke up at the same time; I calculated later that it was at the exact moment when Carnacki gave out his climactic shout in the greenhouse. The morning after our meeting I had a telegram. It merely read as follows:

  THE GARDENER HAS CLEARED THE GROUND. CARNACKI.

  I took that to be the end of the matter, and promptly forgot all about it, until one morning a fortnight later McGuire decided to send me on another assignment.

  “Fairy rings?” I said. “You must be joking.”

  “Do I look like a bloody comedian?” he said. “There’s an epidemic of some kind. Reports are coming in from all over the city. Gardeners in the suburbs are up in arms … and that’s our readership, in case you had forgotten? I want a thousand words by the end of the day.”

  I’m nothing if not obedient. I may, once again, have muttered under my breath about the dashed readership, but I went out into the city in search of the aforesaid “fairy rings.” I did not have to look very far.

  Summer had just started to turn into autumn, and the trees showed early signs of yellowing. That was the first thing I noticed on walking through Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The second thing I saw were the bare patches on the normally pristine grass, light brown where it should have still looked lush and green. A severely disgruntled-looking groundskeeper leaned on a spade having a smoke. I went over to join him. He acknowledged my arrival with a tip of his cap.

  “Morning,” he said. “Although there ain’t much good in it if truth be told.”

  “So what’s the story here?” I asked, and passed him a cigarette that he put behind his ear for later. He waved his hand to indicate the whole area of the Fields.

  “It’s the same all over, guv’nor,” he said. “The grass ain’t growing proper. Just withered and died since yesterday.”

  I looked down. We stood in the center of what seemed to be an almost perfect circle of dead grass some ten feet in diameter. I saw several others nearby, and more brown patches over toward the Holborn exit from the grounds.

  “What’s causing it?” I asked.

  He shook his head and looked as sad as any man I’ve ever met. “I’ve heard tell it’s happening all over the city, guv’nor,” he said. “And I’ll be damned if I know what they expect me to do about it.”

  I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of grass does not extend far beyond the fact that it is a plant, and it is mostly green. To do my story justice I would need a quote from an expert.

  And I knew just the man for the job.

  I finally tracked Professor Challenger down in the Natural History Museum. I heard him long before I saw him, his booming bellow echoing through the Great Hall, so loud that I heard it while still at the main entrance.

  “I’m telling you,” he shouted, “you’ve got it all wrong. It should be more upright, not bent over like a geriatric squirrel.”

  I followed the voice and found him haranguing a wide-eyed technician, a poor lad who was only doing his job and had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Malone,” Challenger bellowed on seeing me approach. “You’ve seen one of these. Tell this idiot what’s wrong with it.”

  Challenger pointed at the skeleton that dominated the center of the hall. In truth, I agreed with him; the beast did indeed look badly put together. The lizards we encountered on the plateau had stood tall on two legs. This one appeared to have been designed by a committee of men who couldn’t agree on the matter. But I had long since realized that the Royal Society would go its own way, and there was little I, or Challenger, for that matter, could do to change that. I dragged the Professor away, much to the relief of the technician, who scurried off as soon as our backs were turned.

  “Come away, old man,” I said as I led him by the arm. “You know this is fruitless.”

  Challenger wasn’t in the mood to be placated. “It shouldn’t be allowed,” he shouted. “Willful displays of ignorance have no place in a house of science.”

  I do believe he might have stood there shouting all day if I had not distracted him.

  “How about some lunch?” I said. “And an ale or two? I’m on the expense account.”

  Ten minutes later we were in a quiet bar off the main thoroughfare in Knightsbridge. Challenger finally deigned to listen when I put a flagon of ale in front of him. I told him about the bare patches in grass; how they were widespread over the city, and how some people were intimating some kind of supernatural agent to be at work.

  “Fairy circles?” he said, and laughed loudly. Heads turned throughout the bar, but Challenger paid them little heed; he wasn’t one to worry overmuch about making a public spectacle. “Stuff and nonsense. These rings are
a simple product of mycology.”

  “And what might that be when it’s at home?”

  He laughed again. “Fungi, Malone. A spore lands, grows, and sends out tendrils.” He illustrated by dripping some beer on the table and moving it around with his finger. “These tendrils grow at an equal rate in every direction, and they eat into grass roots as they go, killing the plants above ground. After a certain period of time, the tendrils have all reached an equally distant point from the central, original, spore. Thus leaving a dead circle of grass. Do you see?”

  I did indeed see. I was starting to see only too well.

  “These spores. Am I right in thinking they are carried on the wind from fruiting bodies?”

  Challenger nodded. “In most cases, yes. You don’t need me, old man,” he said. “Seems that you already know all that you need to know.”

  “I seriously doubt it,” I replied. I was starting to think I didn’t know nearly enough, and that I was going to be learning fast.

  I told Challenger my story of what happened at Kew. Of course he scoffed, and at great length, at the idea of any supernatural element, but he became very interested on hearing of how Carnacki had the gardener clear up the organic material.

  “There’s nothing else for it, Malone,” he said, downed his beer in one draught, and stood. “We must head for Kew and find out what that gardener did, or didn’t, do with the fungi.”

  I knew better than to argue. Once Challenger has made his mind up on a course of action he becomes a force of nature that cannot be stopped. I gulped down what was left of my beer and followed him as he strode out of the bar. He was already hailing a cab even as I got out the door.

  We arrived in Kew twenty minutes later, got left off at the gates, and strode through what should have been gardens that were the pride and joy of the capital. It was immediately apparent that whatever was affecting the foliage across the city was much worse here than elsewhere. The park was a dead brown wasteland. And it was not just the grass. The trees and shrubbery, which had been so vibrant on my visit just two weeks before, seemed to have succumbed to an early winter, being bereft of leaves or flowers. The slightest breeze sent rotted branches tumbling to the ground where they fell apart on impact to little more than dust and splinters. The circular patches in the grass had joined up in most places, and as we walked the dead stems were crushed to a fine dust underfoot. It was almost as if someone had dumped weed-killer over the whole area from a great height.

  The area around the showpiece greenhouses had fared no better and indeed was even more dry and barren than elsewhere. We did not have to find the gardener to be able to have an informed opinion on what had happened to the discarded fungi. A copse of young birch behind the greenhouses housed the groundskeeper’s sheds and what had obviously been a dumping area for refuse from the park. Both birch and sheds were rotting in situ, the decaying remains completely overshadowed by three tall mushrooms, each of them over ten feet high, parasols open wide to the wind. There was no sign of any sound as a fresh gust of wind blew across the surface of the gills, for which I was thankful, for any singing in this place under these new circumstances would feel completely out of place.

  Challenger strode straight toward the tall mushrooms and stood under the canopy looking up.

  “Come away, man,” I shouted. “If you fall into a coma, I won’t be able to drag you out.”

  He ignored my entreaties, just kept staring up for long seconds. Finally he turned away and strode back to stand beside me.

  “They’re starting to rot,” he said. “All the spores have long since dissipated.”

  “Well, that’s good news,” I started, then saw the look in Challenger’s eyes, and returned to worrying once again. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “I’m beginning to think it already has,” Challenger replied. “And we may be far too late to do much about it.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon in Whitehall, being shuttled between a number of officials, none of whom showed any willingness to take responsibility. In the meantime Challenger became increasingly irate and grew ever louder and more strident in his demands that immediate action had to be taken. In the end we were forcibly shown from the premises, and it was all I could do to keep the Professor from doing physical harm to the officers given the task of escorting us out.

  “Blithering idiots,” Challenger shouted as we were left outside on the street. Then, as quickly as it had come, his rage was gone. He turned to me, and spoke softly. “What about your paper, Malone? If we get something in print on the streets, then the Home Office will have to take notice.”

  I agreed on the sentiment, but was unsure if McGuire would agree, given his low opinion of me. But even I could see that something had to be done, otherwise all of London’s green spaces would soon be little more than fine, brown, dust.

  “And who knows what lies underground?” Challenger muttered as we walked briskly along the Strand toward Fleet Street. “It could be spreading underfoot even now, just waiting for the right conditions to reproduce. The worst may indeed be yet to come.”

  As it turned out, McGuire was more receptive than I had imagined. I had to tone down some of Challenger’s more alarmist predictions of impending doom, and McGuire made me simplify the science almost to the point of it scarcely being worth mentioning. But overall I considered the final product to be a balanced piece, containing a reasoned explanation of what was considered the problem, and what measures might be taken to prevent further spread of the infection. We ran the story the very next morning, advising gardeners to keep a watchful eye for any outbreak, and to report any new growths to the authorities.

  It had no discernible effect. Over the next two days the brown patches grew and spread, with reports coming in from across a large swathe of the city. People complained, mostly about the unsightly nature of the outbreak, but there seemed to be no threat to public safety, and the men in Whitehall continued to do nothing. After all, as the Home Secretary pronounced, rather more sarcastically than necessary, trees going brown in autumn is hardly rare. The population on the whole went back to talking about football and the price of tea, and life went on much as before.

  That all changed a week later.

  I was woken just after midnight by the sound of rain pattering heavily on my bedroom window. It fell in rather a downpour, but that was not unusual at this time of year in London. I thought little of it, rolled over and went back to sleep.

  The next thing I knew it was morning. A pounding on my front door woke me from a dreamless sleep. I threw on a dressing gown as whoever it was threatened to knock the door down.

  “Hold your horses, I’m coming,” I shouted, but the pounding didn’t stop.

  I threw the door open, ready to give whoever stood there a stern lecture on the etiquette of waking a chap from his sleep, but stopped as soon as I saw my visitor.

  It wasn’t the men from the Yard this time. It was Challenger. He seemed red in the face as if he might have been running, and, stranger still, he had wads of rough cotton stuffed in his ears.

  “No time to explain,” he shouted. “There was indeed worse underground. Get something in your ears and follow me.”

  I knew better than to argue. No matter how ridiculous his request might seem the Professor never did anything without good reason. I trusted to his judgement and dressed as quickly as I was able. It was as I stood in the bathroom tearing up a handkerchief to plug my ears that I heard a strange, but immediately familiar, sound … a high, almost musical chorus I had last heard in the new greenhouse in Kew.

  I opened the bathroom window to hear it more clearly. The song seemed to ring out across the rooftops. Somewhere nearby there was a fruiting body. And it was singing.

  I stopped what I was doing to listen … and I might have still been there to this day had Challenger not grabbed the strips of cotton from my hands and started to plug my ears. From somewhere deep inside me, I found enough resolve to help him, and very quickl
y, the music was deadened. The wadding was not enough to cut out the sound completely, but it sufficed to allow me to break my fascination with it and let me function normally.

  Challenger looked me in the eye and bellowed again. I could hear him just fine. I believe they might have been able to hear him in Scotland.

  “It’s some kind of enhanced mesmeric technique,” he roared. “Keep the plugs in.”

  “How bad is it?” I shouted back.

  “Pretty dashed calamitous,” he replied. “The rain brought them up. But you can see for yourself.”

  I saw what he meant as soon as we stepped out into the road. There wasn’t just one fruiting body nearby. There was a forest of them. Everywhere that had been greenery mere days before now sported tall parasol mushrooms ranging in height from two feet to well over six, all swaying gently in a stiff breeze. The singing was louder out in the open, and I felt an almost overwhelming urge to stop and listen; to lie down and let the lullaby rock me into a gentle sleep.

  Challenger slapped me, hard, across the cheek. “Stuff that cotton in harder,” he shouted. “And try not to listen.”

  “Shouldn’t we get back inside?”

  “No time for that,” he said. “Things are falling apart fast. Something has to be done.”

  That’s when I saw the first body. An elderly lady lay in the road on her back. I ran to her side. Her eyes were open, she was breathing regularly, but she did not recognize the fact that I was beside her, and the smile on her face widened as the music swelled to a crescendo. I’d seen a stage magician at the Aldwych reduce people to this kind of almost-catatonic state, but it’s one thing seeing it in the Music Hall, and quite another finding it in the street outside your house on a Friday morning. I knelt at her side for long seconds, quite at a loss as to what aid I could provide.