The Fungus

display her emotions that way, no matter what she might have witnessed. Carter began to get an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He went through the door marked “Contagious Diseases” in big red letters. Beyond, in a short passageway, sat a nurse at a desk. There was another nurse with her, talking in a low voice. They both looked up at him as he entered. Their eyes had the same expression of dull shock as the nurse he’d passed outside. His feeling of foreboding increased.

He gave them his name and one of them took him along into a small room. She handed him a plastic anti- contamination suit and told him to put it on. He stared at the suit with surprise. He’d worn such clothing before, but only rarely, in extreme situations. The last time had been during the investigation of a suspected escape of smallpox bacillus from a research lab.

He gestured at the suit’s self-contained oxygen supply and said to the nurse, “Rather drastic this, isn’t it? Isn’t your patient in an isolation unit?”

Tersely she said, “There’s more than one of them and, yes, they are in isolation units, but Dr. Mason advises the use of the suit just the same.”

He said nothing more as he climbed into the suit. When he was ready she checked the seals then indicated another door. “Go through there. You’ll find a door at the end of the passageway. Dr. Mason will be waiting to meet you beyond it.”

“What’s the problem?” he asked her, his voice distorted by the plastic helmet.

“I think you’d better let Dr. Mason explain the situation,” she said and then left the room.

Carter paused for a while, then went to the door she’d indicated. He was positive now he was not going to enjoy what lay at the end of the passage.

Dr. Mason, similarly attired like an extra from Star Wars, met him as he stepped into a small ward that was all pristine whiteness and glittering medical equipment. Carter had met Dr. Mason once before at an emergency meeting to discuss the AIDS problem about a year and a half ago but knew him mainly by reputation. And that was very impressive indeed.

“Ah, Dr. Carter, I’m glad you made it here so quickly,” said Mason. “I’m afraid we have quite a serious problem on our hands—quite a serious problem.”

Behind the plastic of his helmet Mason’s round, sweat-covered face was haggard with strain. Carter glanced past him at the six beds the ward contained. Each bed was covered by a plastic tent. In four of the tents he could make out vague shapes.

He peered hard at the nearest bed/tent. The patient within it seemed to be entirely covered in thick bandages. Yellow bandages. He went nearer. Mason followed.

“What happened to him? Or is it a her? Those bandages make it impossible to tell.”

“It’s a ‘he.’ And those aren’t bandages.”

Carter turned to Mason, thinking he was making some sort of odd joke, but the look in Mason’s eyes told him it was no joke. Carter felt himself go very cold and his testicles seemed to be shrinking up into his crotch as if trying to hide.

He turned back to the figure on the bed and bent his helmet close to the plastic tent. What he’d thought was a bandage was instead a thick yellow growth that covered the whole body, even the face.

“Jesus,” he groaned. “What the hell is that? It looks like a mold.”

“It is.”

Carter was confused. “I’ve seen a fair few corpses in my time but never one in a state like that. And why have you got it up here instead of in the morgue?”

“It’s not a corpse.” Mason’s voice was bleak.

“What!” He stared at Mason in astonishment then back at the form on the bed. He now saw that the fluff-covered chest rose and fell perceptibly. He was glad he hadn’t had time for breakfast before he’d left home.

“Yes, he’s still alive,” said Mason. “I suppose you could say he’s one of the lucky ones.” He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Unlike this patient.”

Mason led Carter to the adjacent bed. The naked body beneath the plastic was that of a man. Carter judged him to be in his mid-twenties. He couldn’t tell for sure because from the neck up there was nothing but a lump of gray, featureless fungus. It was like a dirty cauliflower.

“Mercifully dead, but I don’t dare transfer him to the morgue. The risk of contagion is too great. The man may be dead but that growth is still alive, I fear.”

“But what is it?” demanded Carter. “Where did these people get infected with this stuff?”

“The answer to both your questions is, ‘I don’t know,’ “said Mason. He pointed back at the first bed. “That one was picked up by the police less than two hours ago. He was spotted by the driver of a newspaper delivery van staggering along the Euston Road. The two policemen who answered the call had the good sense to bring him straight here. And this victim—” He indicated the body in front of them. “—was brought in by ambulance from Ladbroke Grove about an hour ago. Neighbors heard his girlfriend screaming at around 5 a.m. She was completely hysterical. She’d woken up in bed and found him like this—beside her.” Mason swallowed dryly and led Carter to the next bed.

Carter reluctantly stared through the plastic. It was almost as bad as he had feared. The body was covered with pulpy white growths. Like toadstools, the puff-ball variety.

He remembered the unusually large toadstools growing in the gutter outside the hospital and a horrible suspicion began to form in the back of his mind.

“This one’s s alive too,” said Mason. “Staggered into the casualty department of Guy’s Hospital at 4 a.m.”

“It is some kind of fungus, isn’t it,” said Carter, peering at the growths.

“It looks like it. But I’ve tried massive doses of both nystatin and griseofulvin without any noticeable effect.”

Carter nodded. Those were the two antibiotics most effective against fungal infections. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Neither have I. I’m no expert on fungal infections but I thought I was familiar with most of the ones that can affect human beings, even the ones we don’t tend to get in Britain, like histoplasmosis and coccidioidomycosis, but this—this is outside my experience completely.”

An idea occurred to Carter. “It could be some new tropical strain that a visitor from, say, Africa or India has brought in. You'd better get in touch with the Institute of Tropical Medicine, they might be able to identify this.”

“I’ve already thought of that. My staff are making the calls now. They’re also trying to contact the head of the Mycology Department at London University so that we can have stuff analyzed by experts as soon as possible. But the most pressing problem—and the reason I called you—is to stop this stuff from spreading any further. This last victim was brought in from as far away as Hackney—” He indicated the final occupied bed.

Carter looked and saw a large, middle-aged black woman lying there. At first she seemed free of any fungal growths but then he noticed the long slits running down her limbs and torso. He looked at her face. Her eyes were open but the surface of the eyeballs was covered with a gray mold. He could see the same gray mold within the fissures in her skin. Fortunately she wasn’t breathing.

“Her whole body is riddled with fungus. There’s probably more of it than her now. One of the disturbing factors is that each of the four victims here appears to have been afflicted by a different type of fungus. I just don’t understand it.”

Carter said tonelessly, “Ladbroke Grove, Hackney, Borough—that’s a wide area already. Have there been any more reported cases?”

“I’m afraid so. So far we’ve had calls from the West Middlesex Hospital, the London Hospital and the Springfield Hospital. they’ve all got cases by the sound of it.”

“Springfield—that’s Upper Tooting.” The red area on Carter’s mental map of London grew even bigger. “And you say it’s very contagious, but exactly how contagious?”

“Extremely contagious,” answered Mason. “The two policemen who brought in the Euston Road victim are