Paul McEuen - Spiral

And there was something else about Brazil that she remembered. São Paolo had more than a million residents of Japanese descent. She remembered especially one neighborhood, called Liberdade, where she suddenly felt as though she had been transported to the Far East. Liam had explained why: the Japanese and Brazilians had signed a treaty in 1907 to encourage the immigration of poor Japanese peasants to Brazil to work the coffee crops. These were the descendants of those workers, the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan.

The entry that had grabbed Maggie’s attention was on page thirty-two of Liam’s 1953 field notebook. Her grandfather’s handwriting was controlled and confident, showing none of the shakiness that would come to him in later years. She felt a knot growing in her stomach as she read the description of her grandfather’s find:

8/28/53

Swirl-like morphology, attacks during Oct./Nov., taking root on the corn stubble left in the field after harvest. Farmers fear it. Say it causes spirits to come inside. “Spirits?” I ask. They explain: hallucinations, madness.

This must be it. Tentative name: Fusarium spiralis .

She read on, skimming her grandfather’s careful phenotype description and attempt at taxonomy, placing it in the proper place in the fungal kingdom. Then came a section of text that tied it all together.

I asked about Japanese. Had they been here? An old man from a small village outside Porto Alegre said that a small Japanese contingent had come there in 1939. They circulated among the Japanese migrant community, offered money for unusual or dangerous organisms, particularly crop pests. They claimed to be from the Japanese agricultural ministry, but no one believed them. The villager said the Japanese knew nothing about maize or farming. Nor were they interested in techniques for growing. Only in whether people got sick.

The rumor was they were military. I asked, “Did they take samples of the fungus?” He nodded. They left with an enormous chest full of samples. Hundreds of species. They seemed pleased. He said, “I hated them. They were cruel, heartless men.”

Maggie was completely immersed, her universe reduced to the page of the notebook before her. She nearly jumped out of her skin when her cell rang.

It was Jake.

She told him what she found. He said that Harpo and Vlad were working on the sequence and should have it in about an hour. He said he’d check back in later.

MAGGIE TURNED TO THE FUNGAL REGISTRY DATABASE, TYPING the specimen name, Fusarium spiralis , into the computer in the prep room. She found nothing: the database had no record of a species by that name. Liam always said that one of his greatest joys was the discovery of an interesting new species, the fun of sharing it with the rest of the fungus community.

But he’d kept this one a secret.

She took a different tack, looking to see if it had been listed by anyone else. It didn’t take long. She found it listed under Fusarium spirale . The fungus was registered in 2002 by a Brazilian scientist, Dr. Alberto Chagas of the University of São Paolo, along with Dr. Sadie Toloff of the USDA.

Sadie Toloff?

Maggie wouldn’t call Sadie a close friend, but the two women knew and respected each other. They had consulted each other on both scientific and bureaucratic issues that had arisen over the years. Toloff had never gone in for species chasing, an obsession among some mycologists. So what was she doing in Brazil searching out obscure fungi?

The answer was obvious. She was looking for the same thing Liam had been looking for.

She heard a sound, practically jumped out of her skin, then realized it was the heater starting up. She didn’t know if it was the adrenaline or the fear, but she was sure someone was watching her. She picked up Vlad’s gun, then set it back down.

Come on, girl. You’ve got work to do .

Maggie read the descriptor for Fusarium spirale . It was native to northern Brazil and infected corn and cereal substrates. It produced a pair of nasty mycotoxins, a common fumonisin called B1, a nephrotoxin that affected kidneys, and another one similar to the LSA compound found in Claviceps , aka ergot. If ingested, these mycotoxins caused symptoms ranging from mania and hallucinations to constricted blood flow in exterior appendages that led to gangrene. From what she read, all the local farmers had a mantra: stay away from the spiral.

It was a nasty fungus but no worse than dozens of other mycotoxin-producing species. What was special about this one? According to what Jake had told her a few hours before, Liam maintained that the Uzumaki was the most dangerous biological pathogen he’d ever seen. So how did it get that way? How had the Japanese changed it when they knew next to nothing about genetics at that time?

A few more clicks gave her the first clue. Fusarium spirale was an unusual bugger: it was dimorphic. Dimorphic fungi could exist in two completely different morphological states, with utterly different phenotypes—like a caterpillar and a butterfly. You’d never know by looking at them that they were the same species.

Depending on its environment, Fusarium spirale could be the spiral that attacked and devoured corn in the fields. This form produced toxins discouraging predators and reproduced sexually, sending billions of spores skyward to be spread by the wind and rain.

The second form was much simpler, a single-celled yeastlike organism. It grew in hot, moist conditions, such as inside the bodies of warm-blooded mammals. It would take up residence in the digestive tract of either humans or birds, reproducing asexually, by simple division. It would grow quickly but was relatively harmless, producing none of the poisonous toxins that were present in the spiral form. Its goal was simple—to ride along with the mammal, not causing it too much discomfort, until it dropped out in the fecal matter of the host and would begin life again in its spiral form.

Maggie struggled to piece it all together. She stared down at the pictures of the little spiral growths. So how had the Japanese turned fungus into a weapon?

Dimorph. Two forms. One kills you, the other doesn’t . She was beginning to get an inkling about how it would go. How you could turn this fungus into a killing machine.

Maggie decided to take a risk and call Sadie Toloff. She looked up the number in the old, beaten address book she still kept. She hadn’t talked to Sadie in a couple of years, since a conference in Toronto. But she thought she could trust her.

Maggie opened her cellphone and dialed the number. It rang once, then went dead.

She hung up, tried again. The result was the same. What was wrong with the damn lines? Maybe the circuits were overloaded because of the events at Bellevue.

She decided to try the landline in the reception area. She dialed Toloff’s cell. This time it rang four times, then clicked to voice mail.

Maggie kept it short. “It’s Maggie Connor. I’m okay. In shock about Liam. I need to talk to you about Fusarium spirale . Give a call and I’ll explain everything.”

She hung up the phone.

The heater chugged, turned itself off. The room was deathly quiet.

All of a sudden, she felt very alone. She wished to hell Jake would get back.

HARPO’S NEAT AND ORDERLY LAB WAS A WRECK. USED PIPETTE tips littered the countertops, and gels were everywhere. Vlad and Harpo had finished the PCR, and now they were running a Sanger gel, counting off bands. They were doing it retro, using two-decade-old technology. Jake knew the basics of what they were doing, but it was another thing to watch them going at it. Like sitting in the corner of an old-time editing room in Hollywood, bits of film taped to the walls, the director and his assistant trying to piece together the story hidden in the images.