Paul McEuen - Spiral

THEY’D BURIED LIAM CONNOR AT A LITTLE GRAVEYARD IN Ellis Hollow, laid him to rest beside his beloved Edith in a quiet ceremony with no press. Life slowly returned to normal but with a few changes. Jake still taught at Cornell, still built microbots, but he had started a side project creating custom prosthetic limbs for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He would visit the soldiers, listen to their stories, fit them with their new limbs. It was therapeutic for him. Jake came back from the sessions at the Syracuse VA shaken but somehow more alive. Maybe one day Dylan would join him. He was calmer by the day, the panic attacks almost gone.

Maggie had started her own project, using the almost eighty million dollars that Liam had left her. On the site of the old Seneca Army Depot, she’d started construction on a living herbarium, a gigantic garden of decay, going after the entire fungal kingdom. Fungi were among the most remarkable, versatile, and powerful forms of life, yet they were also among the most mysterious. Ninety-five percent of all fungal species remained to be identified, their genetic makeup and their morphological variations still to be classified. She was going to change that. By the time they put her in the ground, the Kingdom of Fungi would no longer be a mystery.

There had been other changes, too.

JUST BEFORE DUSK, THE LITTLE EXPEDITION SET OUT TO SEE the colors.

Dylan and Turtle led the way, Maggie behind them. Jake was happy to bring up the rear. The best spot for viewing came at the end of a long walk through Treman State Park that had been one of Liam and Edith’s favorites, a stretch of the Finger Lakes Trail that ran above Lucifer Falls.

They stopped at a spot on a small bluff. Turtle sniffed the earth. Around them was a stand of tall trees, leaves shimmering in daylight’s last rays. “Poplulus tremula,” Dylan said, the budding taxonomist. “Pop-pop always liked them.”

Jake reached his hand to Maggie’s, their fingers intertwining. They’d married the month before, in a big outdoor celebration in the backyard of Rivendell. For a time, she’d resisted his proposals—but she never really had a chance after realizing that what had kept them apart for way too long was fear. Fear exposed is the weakest of emotions; love is so much stronger.

Jake had often wondered about himself. After the war, his marriage had fallen apart, and he’d never really been able to put himself back together. No one seemed to be able to touch him. Now he knew why. He was waiting for these two people. Maggie and Dylan had brought him back to the land of the living.

Together they looked out over the cornfield, waiting for the peak of the colors. At dusk, the sight was unbelievably beautiful. As the last sunlight faded, they began: a million little fungi, all flashing in reds, yellows, and greens, like multicolored stars. The cure had spread around the world, Liam Connor’s fungal creation. As if the old man had taken one last, great breath and exhaled it all over the world.

Jake mussed Dylan’s hair. “I wish Liam was alive to see this.”

“He is alive,” Dylan replied.

An old Irish saying came to Jake, one of Liam’s favorites: “The smallest of things outlives the human being.”

There were tears in Maggie’s eyes. “Come on,” she said to her son. “Count it down.”

Dylan nodded. “Ready? Three, two, one…”

Together they all took a big breath, drawing in the memory of Liam Connor. They held on as long as they could, then exhaled Liam back into the world, ready for another go.

My editors, Susan Kamil and Dana Isaacson, were brilliant—I cannot thank them enough for their patience, wisdom, and skill. Jane Gelfman made everything possible; she has been a steadfast advocate and all-around miracle worker. Also thanks to the rest of the team at Random House and Gelfman Schneider, especially Noah Eaker and Cathy Gleason, as well as Katie McGowan at Curtis Brown.

Kathie Hodge, professor of mycology at Cornell and curator of the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium, provided inspiration and endlessly fascinating facts about fungi. Paul Griswold gave an enlightening tour of the now-shuttered Seneca Army Depot, and Cornell Chief of Police Curtis Ostrander answered my questions about what would happen if a world-famous faculty member jumped off a campus bridge. Nina Shishkoff, Ph.D., of the USDA at Fort Detrick provided many helpful insights and facts. Captain Larry Olsen, U.S. Navy, assisted with matters nautical. Ed Stacker was a wonderful early editor.

My parents, Joe and Mary Lu McEuen, and parents-in-law, Robert and Judy Wiser, have been great readers and cheerleaders, as have been the rest of the McEuen/Arnevik/Wiser clan. My grandparents Buddy and Mary Jane Lorince, both sadly now deceased, were inspirations. Thanks to Cornell University for the freedom to pursue this quixotic quest, and to all my graduate students, post-docs, and colleagues who read early drafts. Many others have read, commented, encouraged, and criticized over the years, including Jessica Shurberg, Jayne Miller, Barb Parish, Debbie Lev, Rob Costello, Elan Prystowsky, Lesley Yorke, Josh Waterfall, Kim Harrington, and the wonderful crowd at Backspace. Thanks to all.

Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife, Susan Wiser—devoted psychologist, enthusiastic editor, and dog rescuer extraordinaire (visit www.cayugadogrescue.org). Occasionally critical, always supportive, forever mine.

PAUL MCEUEN is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Physics at Cornell University. He has received numerous awards for his research, including the Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize, a Packard Fellowship, and a Presidential Young Investigator Award. He lives with his wife and five dogs in Ithaca, New York.

Spiral is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Paul McEuen

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by The Dial Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DIAL PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

McEuen, Paul.

Spiral / by Paul McEuen.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-679-60435-8

1. Biotechnology—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.C428S65 2010

813′.6—dc22

2010009768

www.dialpress.com

Jacket design and illustration: Will Staehle

v3.1