She stood up and smiled at the mushroom. She would leave it there on the tray for them to see when they arrived in the morning. The expressions on their faces would be something to remember.
In the meantime she was going to savor her triumph all by herself. It would be exclusively hers for the next 18 hours or so.
She felt a momentary pang that she couldn’t share it with Barry but all that was finished now, probably for good. True, it was supposed to be a ‘trial’ separation but she couldn’t see them ever getting back together again. The last year before the break-up had been hell. She knew she was partly to blame—her involvement with her research had become obsessive—but Barry could have been more supportive instead of acting like a spoiled brat. He knew how important her work was, not just for her but possibly for the whole of mankind, yet he persisted with his ridiculous behavior.
The real problem, she now realized, was that he deeply resented the success she had made of her career. Mycology, after all, had been his field too but it was she who had attracted all the attention, right from the start, with her Ph.D. paper The Relationship Between Fungi and Mankind: Areas of Potential Exploitation in Agriculture and Industry, and subsequently received the research grants and a department of her own while he had just plodded on doing basic research.
Well, perhaps he was happier now writing his childish thrillers over in Ireland. She knew his books were beginning to enjoy a popularity of sorts—but what a waste! Imagine spending your time producing escapist fantasies for emotionally retarded adults when you could be doing something useful with your life.
She gave the mushroom one last lingering look then went to the door. It slid open at the touch of a button. She stepped through into a small room enclosed by frosted glass. As the door slid shut behind her there was a hissing sound from above. A harmless but powerful anti-bacteria gas was being fed into the room. She began to strip off her clothes—the rubber gloves, the plastic cap, the face mask, the long white gown, the paper briefs and then finally the plastic overshoes and slippers. The reusable items went into the sterilizer, the non-reusable into a small electric incinerator.
Then she stepped into a shower cubicle and turned on the water, which also contained anti-bacteria agents.
As she soaped herself thoroughly she gave her body an indifferent inspection. Despite her 31 years and two children it was still a good body with long, well-shaped legs, firm stomach and large but equally firm breasts. Once she had been proud of her body but now her looks, and even her sexuality, rarely impinged on her consciousness.
This had been another point of contention with Barry. “Making love to you is like making love to the mattress,” he had accused her. “And you know why? Because you’re sublimating your sex drive in your damn work! Your body may leave the lab occasionally but your mind stays in there 24 hours a day. All you’re ever really thinking about are your precious fungi. Hell, the only way now I could turn you on would be to dress up as a fucking fungus myself, phallus impudicus preferably.”
She had told him he was talking nonsense but deep down knew there was some justification in what he’d said. But it couldn’t be helped—the work had to be continued at that fast pace. She promised herself that once she achieved her goal and the pressure lessened she would try and make it up to Barry. But, of course, the marriage had collapsed well before that had happened.
By the time she’d finished showering her thoughts had left Barry and returned to the fungus lying on the lab table. As she walked naked to a second glass door and then stepped through into a small changing room she was thinking that tomorrow she would try the enzyme on a specimen of agaricus campestris, the ordinary field mushroom which was very similar to the cultivated variety but actually a different species. It was possible that the reproduction-inhibiting factor might be only present in a bisporus….
The thought cheered her up still further as she dressed and began to dry her long, blonde hair with a portable drier.
It was then she noticed the cut on her right forefinger. It was a small incision on the very tip of her finger, extending at right angles from the end of her fingernail for just over a quarter of an inch. As she held it up for a closer look a small drop of blood oozed out. Automatically she put the end of her finger in her mouth and sucked.
Frowning, she wondered how she could have cut herself. Then she remembered removing that sliver from the gill segment for the microscope. She must have nicked herself with the scalpel. Oh well, it didn’t matter; the cut would have been well and truly cleaned by both the antiseptic gas and water. Not that there was any chance of picking up a dangerous infection from anything in her lab. Despite all the elaborate safety precautions, which were imposed on all the Institute’s genetic engineering facilities no matter what the nature of their work, she knew that there was nothing potentially harmful among any of the artificial micro-organisms that she and her team had created over the years.
Or so she believed.
Unknown to her, several thousand microscopic mushroom cells still remained in the cut and under her fingernail. They were dead or dying but the virus-like enzyme, which had been designed to survive for as long as possible, was still active within all the cells.
And while the enzyme wasn’t directly harmful to human life its indirect effects were to prove, very swiftly, catastrophic.
Humming to herself Dr. Jane Wilson finished dressing and made her plans for the night. Though she hadn’t slept for the last 36 hours she was too excited to go home to bed. No, she wanted to celebrate, and she’d celebrate by having her first self-indulgent night out in years. She would go to a movie, perhaps—preferably a comedy—then have an Indian meal and after that go to a pub and get quietly drunk. She would do all the things that she and Barry used to enjoy doing when they first met.
Damn, she was thinking about him again. She wondered if she should give him a call when she got home and break the wonderful news. No, he’d probably be typing away over there in Ireland even at that late hour—wearing his stupid ear-plugs—and would accuse her of interrupting his “flow.” That was if he even bothered to answer the phone.
No, she decided, she wouldn’t call him. He could read about it in the papers.
She left the Institute of Tropical Biology at 5.18 p.m. and a short time later was walking down Tottenham Court Road. At 5.22 p.m. she bought a newspaper to check the cinema listings. She was looking at the paper when she collided with Norman Layne.
6
Dr. Bruce Carter swore when he saw what time it was. A phone call before 6 a.m. meant two things: trouble, and not enough sleep to cope with it.
He reached out for the phone on the bedside table and picked it up. “Emergency,” said the familiar voice of the Duty Officer, confirming his fears. “Get to the Middlesex Hospital as quickly as you can.”
Carter didn’t bother asking what had come up. Even if the Duty Officer had the details he would be reluctant to give them over the phone. Security in the civil service was continually getting tighter under the Thatcher regime and a whole new set of regulations governing what it was permissible to discuss by telephone had recently been issued. The weather was about the only safe subject left.