hospital in Vilhena.
'They're treating us like lepers!' the TL complained, noting that the sullen medics had roped their cots off at the far edge of the station, that they wouldn't come near them without rubber gloves and face masks.
The TL looked like death already in his netted cot. Nevertheless he managed the energy to rail at Howard.
'You goddamn idiot! We were breathing those spores for over a day! You and your rare fucking thallophyte. We're going to die, you asshole! Do you realize that?'
Howard ignored him. It was a whole lot better and perhaps, even more profitable, to lie there thinking about Clara, to let her memory caress him like a sweet breeze from home. He remembered all the sweet things she'd said to him, the times she'd said she loved him, her promises of fidelity, their affectionate way of making love. In Clara he had something to live for — something real and strong. Providence would not allow him to die.
It only remained to try to reassure the white-haired TL. He was obviously suffering.
'Try to relax,' Howard said. 'Most spore infections are no different from any foreign bacterial invasion. Simple antibiotics will knock them out. We'll be fit as fiddles and back in the States in no time. Guaranteed.'
'Goddamn you, you goddamn asshole,' the TL sputtered.
And gurgled and died. Coughing up a gossamer mist of fine white spores.
Clara felt kinda bad.
Just because Howard was a dufus, she didn't suppose he deserved this.
She sighed. The poor blind sap. Sick, lonely, holed up in some awful South American hospital — and still thinking she loved him.
Well, her own letter would finally cure that.
It made her feel a bit shitty, knowing he'd receive it bedridden, sick, a thousand miles away. All those pictures. All those positions.
Her most recent pickup stirred beside her on the bed. Young, muscular, and very enduring. Nickname 'Cucumber,' and for a reason that was more than understandable. His eyes slitted open, his face half buried in the pillows. The monumental turgidity against Clara's thigh reassured her.
'A little more cream for your kitty?' Cucumber inquired.
Clara brazenly spread her legs.
'Meow,' she replied.
The doctor's voice sounded muffled behind the baby-blue surgical mask. He was American, one of the last U.N. Assessment Group members, so at least he spoke English. At least Howard could understand the words, however grim.
'I regret to say, Mr. Moley, that the blood tests don't look promising. The spores…'
Howard coughed white dust, his throat aching like a strep infection even as he interrupted.
'I don't get it. The spores are a simple unicellular gamete! Even the weakest antibiotics will kill them.'
The doctor's eyes were small and hard above the blue mask. 'The blood-born mechanism of these particular spores, Mr. Moley, seems to be functioning identically to that of a lipid-aggregating virus. Once in the bloodstream they encloak themselves with medium- and low-density serum triglycerides, so they're able to protect themselves from all immune-system response and antibiotic therapy. In other words, Mr. Moley…'
Howard waved him off. He didn't need to finish. Already Howard's body had fully broken out in the bright red ridges of the fungal shelf. Some were quite large, the size of coffee saucers cut in half. Because of the tough, fibrous mycelium which had grown through his body like a web of wires, they couldn't be removed. He could feel smaller ones growing in his mouth, in his nostrils, even at the edges of his eyelids.
Yesterday he'd lifted his hospital gown to check his groin. No penis remained visible. Just a sharp red nest of glistening fungal ridges.
'Here's a letter for you, by the way. If you like, I'll open it and read it to you. If that's easier.'
A letter!
'No!' He reached out a fungus-chipped hand. 'Please. Leave.'
The lovely florid script was Clara's. His pulse rose. Suddenly, in spite of the terminal prognosis, he felt blazing with light.
The light of love, he realized.
And Clara had at last written back to him, to verify her own love.
His scaled fingers fumbled. His ridged face drew up in the brightest smile.
Out dropped a stack of Polaroids.
He looked at the letter. It contained one line.
His eyes felt held open by fish hooks. His heart slugged in his chest as his blood reverted to sludge.
His scale-encrusted fingers flipped through the deck of photos one by one. Each picture, once its image registered, felt like a shovel of grave dirt dropped into his face.
It was a bright, wickedly hot Saturday afternoon when Clara learned of Howard's death. She'd been walking back to her dorm from the quadrangle where she sunned herself every day in a white Bill Blass string bikini. A good tan was top priority. She was surprised how few women strove to be appreciated; Clara's most personal goal was to turn every male head she passed, and it was a goal she'd long since achieved. It particularly tickled her to know that the two campus day-shift cops went out of their way to scope her on the quad with binoculars every day. She'd always give them a show, to tease them up.
But—
She'd stopped at the Student Union for a campus paper. And there it was in boldface.
ASSISTANT BOTANY PROFESSOR DIES IN RAIN FOREST
Poor Howard. The genus of shelf-fungus that was going to make him famous had also killed him. A 'blood- born spore infection,' the article reported. 'Antibiotic resistant.'
A heavy grief settled over Clara like a weighted net.
It lasted for all of two minutes.
Because suddenly there were Barney and David, coming through the lobby, smiling. David in his tight jeans, Barney in his more fashionable khaki baggies. Muscles straining their tank tops, and something else straining at their groins.
