Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  “What will we find there?” I asked, but Challenger merely smiled.

  “A solution to our problem, I hope,” he said. “But I fear we must move quickly if it is to be done at all. The parasols could reach full maturity at any time.”

  I thought of the dangers that would await us on a return trip through the city, considered the many things that could go wrong on such an expedition, and the terror that faced us if the fungi should reach maturity. Then I looked at Challenger, as obdurate and determined as ever, and I knew that I would follow him to the gates of Hell if he asked.

  “Lay on, MacDuff. And don’t spare the horses.”

  Carnacki had to switch off the Graphophones before he could record his chant on a new wax cylinder, so Challenger and I were forced once again to stuff the cotton wadding in our ears. We sat quietly, each in an armchair, smoking yet another of Carnacki’s fine cheroots and sipping on a last stiffener of his Scotch. It was a strangely serene scene given the chaos and disruption that was befalling the city around us.

  “It was a good idea of yours, Malone,” Challenger said at one point when Carnacki was out of the room. “This Carnacki cove seems to know his business. I might not agree with his methods, but there is no doubt he can get results.”

  That was as close to a compliment I’d heard from the Professor. I knew what he meant, though. In Carnacki I sensed we had met a fellow traveler, someone fighting against the tethers of our society, looking for something more adventurous. In different circumstances I believed we might all even become friends.

  We had to fall quiet again on Carnacki’s return as he recorded his chant on the wax cylinders. Outside the protection as we were, the chant had lost most of its earlier power, but even still I felt a tingling in my bones, and when I closed my eyes I saw mountains, and a purple sky. A decent slug of Scotch, which was enough to have me starting to feel quite mellow, quickly dispersed my feelings of dread.

  All too soon it was time to leave. Carnacki shepherded us out. He carried a small case containing one of the Graphophones. We stood on the doorstep, looking to Challenger for guidance. It was his show now.

  “We make for Piccadilly. We’ll be moving fast,” Challenger shouted. “And we won’t be stopping for any distractions. Agreed?”

  Given that I had found it quite a struggle just to get up out of Carnacki’s chair, I knew that I was going to be concentrating just to put one foot ahead of the other. But what choice did I have? I nodded my agreement, and we set off at a brisk pace along the embankment.

  Carnacki’s ritual had obviously worked to some extent. Dazed people, just woken from their coma, wandered in the street. All of the parasols within a quarter mile of Carnacki’s residence rotted where they stood, dripping with a noxious black fluid that stung in my throat and threatened to make me gag. There was no sign of any spores, and I started to hope that Carnacki might have been more successful than we feared.

  But once we headed out of Chelsea and back toward the city center we started to see healthier specimens, and the singing from the fungi became louder again. Comatose and dead bodies lay everywhere, a scene of such utter devastation the like of which I hope never to see again.

  We gave the Victoria area a wider berth this time, for which I was grateful, remembering my previous funk. Although we saw several groups of people, some intent on robbery and mayhem, we managed to avoid being seen by the simple expedient of keeping to the shadows and moving fast.

  We had intended to take the northerly route round Buckingham Palace, but as we approached we smelled smoke in the air and turned a corner to see that a large part of the city in that area was well aflame. We turned south and east where the way was easier and approached the palace itself from Birdcage Walk, only to find that the building was burned almost entirely to the ground. Nothing much remained of it but blackened stone and smoldering timbers. There was no sign that any attempt had been made to quell the conflagration. I believe it was only then that I came to realize the full severity of our situation. There was no authority left in the city, nobody fighting back. Except we three, armed only with a Graphophone, and our wits.

  The long walk up the Mall was the stuff of nightmares.

  The mature fungi grew even taller here than any we had previously seen, their growth fueled by the lush foliage of the parks on either side of the Mall. Many of the parasols were over twenty feet tall, and the stalks so tightly packed together that the canopy encroached almost to the point where it covered the whole of the wide road ahead. We walked in shadow under singing gills. Even through the cotton wadding the singing sounded loud, intoxicating and most calming. It was all I could do to keep upright. But one look to either side soon stiffened my resolve, for then I saw that it was not only lush foliage that had fed these monstrosities; each tall stalk grew out of a mound of horribly familiar shapes … arms, legs, torsos, all deflated and misshapen, all undeniably human. We quickly learned to keep our eyes solely on the road ahead. Even so I regretted ever leaving the comfort of Carnacki’s library.

  As we walked the long stretch of the Mall, Challenger looked up every so often and frowned. Finally, somewhere past the halfway point, he seemed to come to a decision.

  “We must hurry,” he shouted. “They are very near maturity. We have little time left.”

  We broke into a run. In my own case it was more of a barely controlled stumble, and I lagged several yards behind the other two. The fungi seemed somehow to sense the threat that we posed. The tall stalks swayed and thrashed, and white, snake-like tendrils pushed out of the ground and ran across the road, threatening to block our path. They rose in the air, as if tasting the slight breeze, and several of the longer strands came forward toward us.

  “This way,” Challenger shouted, and headed off to our left. At first I thought he was merely leading us directly into a thick part of the fungal forest, but all we had to do was push through a layer two or three yards deep. A tendril wrapped itself around my ankle and tugged. I felt a flare of pain and pulled hard against it. Something tore; I lost a six-inch-square patch from my trousers, and felt fresh blood pool in my sock. But I was free, and the jolt of fear helped me lose any lethargy I had felt. I caught up quickly with the others as we emerged from the clump of fungi into daylight.

  Once clear, we stood at the foot of a long stone staircase leading up and away from the Mall. Another white tendril made an attempt to snare my ankle, but I easily danced away from this one and followed Carnacki and Challenger up the stairs to relative safety.

  The steps nearly proved to be the end of me. By the time we reached the top I was drenched in sweat and barely able to move. My wounded ankle bled inside my sock and my foot squelched moistly with every step. But there was no time to inspect the severity of the wound.

  “Nearly there, old man,” Challenger said, but didn’t slow down.

  I followed behind the other two as we approached Piccadilly Circus. The rise in the noise level quickly alerted us to the fact that something else was amiss. A riot was underway, a rolling moil of civilians and policeman in a street fight of epic proportions. Even as we arrived, shots were fired from the Regent Street end, and a platoon of soldiers, all wearing protective headgear, marched in formation into the area.

  “Whatever we’re going to do, we’d best make it quick,” I shouted.

  Challenger pointed off to our right. “In here.”

  We made our way past a pile of prone, smiling people and inside the large vaulted hall of Burlington House. We seemed to have the building to ourselves. Challenger immediately led us down a long flight of stairs into a basement storage area where he proceeded to barrel his way through, opening boxes, knocking over others, and smashing his way into glass-fronted crates.

  “What are you looking for, old man?” I shouted.

  He let out a cry of triumph at almost the same instant. “This,” he said. “Give me a hand. We need to get it on the roof.”

  This proved to be a disc around six feet in diameter, sitting
atop a cube some four feet on a side. I had no idea what its function might be, but I knew one thing. Getting it up to the roof was going to be a bit of a struggle.

  I had forgotten Challenger’s almost boundless strength, enthusiasm and sheer force of will. He did most of the hard work, with Carnacki and me supporting where we could. With much sweat and more than a few oaths, we finally emerged out into the rooftop space.

  The sound of gunfire came from below. I peered over the edge. The recently arrived soldiers had given up firing warning shots and were strafing the rioting crowd, wounding, even killing civilians and police officers alike. I found I did not even have the strength to be outraged.

  Instead I spent some time examining the thing we had brought with us from the basement. The large disk was made of some material I did not recognize, like thin cotton but with a slightly metallic sheen to it. The box below was mahogany with brass fittings, with a cranking handle on the right, and an aperture on the left. I walked around it, examining it from all angles.

  I still had no idea of its function.

  “Get the Graphophone ready, Carnacki,” Challenger shouted. “I’ll crank this thing up.” He started to wind the cranking handle.

  “I wished I knew what the deuce we were doing,” I replied.

  “As I understand it, this cranking serves to compress a column of air inside the contraption which, when released, vibrates against the material of the disc. It’s a Parsons’ loud-speaker,” Challenger replied. “Charles demonstrated it last year at the Society. Blew out three windows and near deafened poor old Summerlee. But if it works as well now as it did then, we shall have a good chance of achieving our goal.”

  “What do I do now?” Carnacki asked. “The Graphophone is running.”

  “Put it carefully inside the aperture,” Challenger shouted. “And don’t drop it, whatever you do.”

  It took a bit of maneuvering, but in a matter of seconds Carnacki accomplished the task, and we had to stand back as the harsh chant seemed to fill the air around us. Even despite the wadding in my ears I was sure I was going to be deaf in short order.

  The fungi responded in kind. The chorus swelled and roared in response to our attack and the whole city rang like a bell. Carnacki’s recorded chant rose to a climax.

  “Dhumna Ort!”

  The call echoed across the rooftops of the city and suddenly all of London fell quiet.

  “We did it,” Challenger shouted, and bellowed out a huge laugh.

  Carnacki stepped to the lip of the roof and looked over the city. When he turned back to us and I saw despair etched on his face. “No. We were too late.”

  Challenger and I joined him at the edge. A thin black cloud rose over the roofs and started to disperse.

  “Don’t you see?” Carnacki said. “It’s the spores. They’re free, and in the wind.”

  “Then we’re doomed,” Challenger replied after several seconds. “It was all in vain.”

  “Maybe not,” Carnacki said. “Crank that thing up again, Challenger. I have something that might work.”

  Challenger started cranking without further ado. Carnacki bent, put his mouth to the aperture, and started shouting into it. The contraption picked up the sound and broadcast it all over the city. It was another chant, different in tone to anything I had heard him use previously, a sing-song, almost poetic cadence that rose and fell, swelling ever louder. The air crackled around us. The hairs on the back of my hand rose straight up. Blue sparks ran across the surface of the loud speaker.

  The sky darkened, clouds building out of nowhere, thickening and darkening until they hung menacingly directly overhead. Lightning flashed, the crack knocking me to my knees and the following thunder deafening me even more than the roar of Carnacki’s voice.

  I did, however, hear Challenger’s bellowing laughter as rain started to fall in torrents.

  We were quickly drenched to the skin, but none of us minded greatly for we could see that the rain washed the spore cloud out of the sky, and within seconds there was no sight of it.

  Challenger removed his earplugs, and Carnacki and I followed suit.

  “Won’t they just grow again?” I asked.

  “That they will,” Challenger replied. “But we know what to do now to stop them. A judicious program of eradication should see us free and clear soon enough.”

  It turned out that Challenger’s “judicious program” took rather longer than expected, given that the Home Office, with all the associated waste and nitpicking they could muster, were given the job. But by the time November came around, assurances of safety had been given and London started the process of returning to her old self. McGuire even mellowed somewhat toward me after seeing my write-up of the manner in which the fungal menace had been defeated.

  We celebrated with a return trip to Carnacki’s home in Chelsea. We ate a most sumptuous meal, smoked more of his cheroots, and drank his fine Scotch while he regaled a group of his friends with the tale. Challenger kept his temper enough not to disrupt the telling of the story, and merely harumphed at some of Carnacki’s more esoteric explanations for the rise, and fall, of the fungal attack. But all present agreedthat it had been a jolly good show all around, and Carnacki and Challenger shook hands on this, and any possible future collaborations.

  All in all, it was a most pleasant evening, and I was sad when it came to an end.

  “Out you go,” Carnacki said, and we wended our way home contentedly through the damp London night.

  The Petrified Forest

  It was the spring after the affair of the Kew Growths. Matters botanical were still newsworthy in a way they never would have been had that calamity not been so closely averted. That’s the only reason I could think of for McGuire to send me, on expenses, down to Weymouth for a weekend, to report on a new find of fossils on the Jurassic coast.

  “The word on the wire is that it’s something big, something worth getting excited about,” the editor said. “You’re on the first train in the morning.”

  Of course Challenger, on hearing of the trip, invited himself along on the spot.

  “You’ll need an expert, my boy,” he said over a beer in the George that night. “And who better than myself?”

  Who better indeed? Challenger had become more than an expert to me in recent years. It was not exactly a father-and-son relationship, more one of a benevolent uncle and an unruly nephew. Our adventures in the Amazon, then more lately the business at Kew, had brought us close. I enjoyed his company, in the main, and I had to admit he was indeed an expert, the likes of which the other papers did not have access to. All of the above is to say that I was more than happy of his company the next morning on the trip down to the South West coastline.

  The journey itself was most convivial. We had a train carriage to ourselves all the way down and smoked to our heart’s content. Challenger had had the foresight to bring a hip flask of brandy. We sat sipping it and swapping anecdotes in a pleasant fug, and after a time, talk eventually turned to the purpose of our visit.

  “Do you have any idea what manner of fossils have been found?” Challenger asked.

  “Some kind of petrified forest; that’s what McGuire said, anyway,” I said.

  “It’ll be gymnosperms again,” Challenger replied. “Like the one in Glasgow a few years back. We can only hope the specimens are as fine as those.” He saw my quizzical look. “Tree ferns,” he said. “Big ones if we’re lucky, the size and shape of small barrels. In life they would have had huge umbrellas of fronds. Most of what remains in the fossil record are these same fronds flattened in strata of coal. But sometimes the main bodies become fossilized in place, in the right conditions. And if we’re very lucky, a clump of them turns up … making your petrified forest.”

  “Sounds rather dull to me, old chap,” I said.

  Challenger laughed. “Cheer up, Malone. At the very least, it might remind you of our Amazon adventure.”

  The weather in Weymouth was far from Amazonian. There was
the requisite amount of rainfall, but one that was accompanied by a stiff breeze off the sea. It brought with it a chill that I felt deep in my bones, and I gave serious consideration to finding a local hostelry and sitting it out. Challenger was having none of it and, despite my protestations, arranged for a carriage to take us along the shore to where the find was situated.

  “You’re after a story, aren’t you?” he said. “You wouldn’t want someone else to get there before you, would you?”

  I bit my tongue and resisted the urge to tell him how much he sounded like McGuire. Now was not the time to get into a shouting match. Besides, I rarely won where Challenger was involved. I gave in to the inevitability of a soaking and took to the carriage.

  It was an older model, open to the elements rather than being fully enclosed, and despite hunkering down inside as far I was able and holding my overnight bag over my head, I still got a dashed good soaking on the trip along the cliffs out of town. When we came to a halt I expected to be faced with an afternoon spent up to my ankles in mud and standing in lashing rain and wind. Although we had indeed been brought to a windy cliff top, I was most pleased to see a cluster of five tents clustered around a much larger stretch of canvas in the center. We disembarked hastily from the carriage and, huddled against the wind, quickly made our way inside the central tent.

  Once inside I was again surprised to find the place was well protected against the elements due to the baffles and folds inherent in the structure. The canvas had been erected over a ten-yard-square area of clifftop; one that was in the process of being scoured clean to expose the clumps of stone that I took to be the aforementioned forest. To be honest, they looked less like the remnants of trees and more like stunted skittles from a poorly maintained traveling fair stall.

  Four very serious youths were hard at work brushing loose gravel and earth from the rocks and carting it away in wheelbarrows to be dumped in a pile at the far side of the tent. The whole affair seemed to be being overseen by a short, rather stout, woman, whose face lit up in a broad grin at our approach.