There was something different about the wall, Fisher realized. Unlike the rest of the cave and the crevice above, this wall was not mottled with brownish gray lichen but covered from top to bottom in a scabrous red growth.
Fisher felt the skin on his arms and on the back of his neck tingle with goose bumps. And then, for reasons he’d never quite be able to explain, four words from Peter’s mystery note popped into his head: “Red… tri… my… cota.”
34
Fisher sat sipping coffee in one of the leather club chairs beneath the windows and watched as the attendees, looking frustrated and haggard, wandered back into the room one by one and retook their seats at the conference table. The first hour of the meeting had been little more than a circuitous debate, going nowhere and revealing nothing, so the DCI (Director, Central Intelligence) had called for a break.
The others present were Lambert, three biologists from the CMLS (Chemicals, Materials, and Life Sciences) Directorate of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Department of Energy’s undersecretary for science and two of her deputies, one from the office of Biological and Environmental Research, the other from High Energy Physics.
“Okay, let’s get back to it,” the DCI called, and everyone took their seats.
Round two, Fisher thought, his mind drifting back to that cold, dark cave…
Against his every instinct, after staring at the red growth for five solid minutes, he’d waded across the pool, which he found was only knee-deep, and walked up the beach to the wall. He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen, but of course the growth hadn’t leapt off the wall at him, nor did it explode into a lethal powder when he’d taken the tip of his Applegate and gently pried loose a quarter-size chunk of it from the wall and deposited it in an empty trail mix baggie he’d found in the bottom of his waist pack.
He’d then reversed his course, climbing back through the fissure and then up the crevice and hiked back to the Highlander, where he’d called Grimsdottir and had her conference in Lambert.
“Remember Peter’s words, ‘Red… tri… my… cota’?” Fisher asked.
“I remember,” Lambert said.
“It’s just a gut feeling on my part, but I think it’s a biological reference. A fungus of some kind, I’m guessing.” He explained what he’d found in the cave. “And I’m willing to bet this stuff — whatever it is — is what’s inside the canister I found aboard Wondrash’s plane.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Grimsdottir said. Fisher could hear her tapping her keyboard. “We’ve got a compiled biological database here somewhere…” she muttered. “Yeah, here it is… Okay, I’m doing a fuzzy search using those key words. Hang on…” Thirty seconds later she was back. “Whoa, give that man a gold star.”
“What?” Lambert asked.
“It’s called Chytridiomycota—tri… my… cota. Peter was close; he had most of it, right down to the color, with just a few letters transposed. Chytridiomycota is a kind of fungus. Comes from the Greek chytridion, which means ‘little pot’—or a structure that contains dormant spores. Approximately a thousand species in a hundred twenty or so genera, distributed among—”
“Bottom line it, Grim,” Lambert said. “What is it?”
“A fungus. A motile, spore-producing fungus.”
“And it does what?”
“Specifically? I don’t know. That’s over my head,” Grimsdottir replied. “According to what’s in front of me, there are about seventy thousand known species of fungi in the world, but that’s estimated to be only about five percent of what’s likely out there. So, we’re talking about maybe two million species of fungi — most of which we haven’t even found.”
“Give me a comparison,” Fisher said.
“Birds: five thousand species in the world. Insects: There are about nine hundred thousand different types. Compared to those, they know nothing — absolutely nothing—about fungi or what they can do. In fact, I just read a CDC report last month: Fungal-based diseases are on the rise, and a lot of the medical community think it’s the next big, bad epidemiological nightmare.”
“Christ,” said Lambert.
The scourge of Manas, Fisher thought.
The second half of the meeting picked up where it had left off: an argument between the biologists over what exactly Chytridiomycota was, its classification, its cellular makeup, and so on. Fisher noticed one of the biologists, a woman named Shirley Russo from the CMLS, wasn’t partaking in the debate but rather jotting notes, grimacing, and shaking her head.
As had most of Washington’s elite, Fisher had heard of Russo. The sole heiress to an old-money Connecticut family fortune, Russo had broken the mold and instead of letting herself ease into the role of überrich benefactor-socialite, had at the age of fifty gotten her Ph.D. in biology. Rumor had it she donated every penny of her salary to the International Dragon Boat League, which sponsored fund-raising dragon boat races for breast cancer survivors. Looking at her slim frame, Fisher guessed Russo had spent a fair amount of time at the oars herself.
He caught Lambert’s gaze and gestured with his eyes toward Russo.
Lambert broke in. “Dr. Russo, you look like you have something to say.”
Russo looked up from her pad and cleared her throat. “I have a theory,” she said.
“A fringe theory,” one of her fellow biologists said.
The DCI gave him a hard stare. “Why don’t you let us worry about that. Dr. Russo.”
She hesitated, then said, “One of the areas I study is called petro-parasitology. I think this fungus you — or whoever — found is a petro-parasitic organism. I agree with the others: I think it belongs to Chytridiomycota, but that’s like saying birds and bees are alike because they both have wings.”
“Petro-parasitic,” Lambert said. “I assume that means what I think it means?”
Russo nodded. “That it eats petroleum-based substances? Yes, that’s exactly what it does.”
Fisher and Lambert exchanged worried looks.
The other biologists began talking, arguing back and forth across the table. Russo simply folded her hands on her legal pad and waited. The DCI brought the meeting back under control and then said to Russo, “Go on, Doctor.”
“The problem is,” she said, “that we’ve never seen a fungi that does this. Technically, there’s no reason why it couldn’t exist. There are enzymes we use to clean up oil spills all the time. They feed on the oil, neutralize it, then die and degrade and become part of the food chain.”
“But you’re not talking about that, are you?” said Lambert.
“No. I’m talking about a self-sustaining organism that feeds on petroleum-based substances — from crude oil, to kerosene, to the gas we put in our cars — then replicates and spreads, just like a fungal colony would. See, the thing about fungus is that it’s hearty, tenacious stuff. It’s hard to kill and harder still to make sure you’ve killed it all. It can lie dormant for years — for millennia—then just flip itself back on and pick up where it left off.”
“Okay,” the DCI said, “clearly the rest of you have concerns about Dr. Russo’s theory. Am I correct?” There were emphatic nods around the table. “But let me ask you this — and I want to hear it straight — is her theory plausible? Could there be something to it?”