Page 46

46

Alpha

The amigos had much to think about, and in spite of what Britta said, they were intelligent enough to know the following: (1) the professor was as insane as she was arrogant; (2) Pastor Larry was a pig; (3) they would never align with Beta because Ernie’s mother was hooked up with it and because Hornfly was as well; (4) whatever else Beta might be, it was evil; (5) they were going to have to endure one of those tiresome talking-head scenes in order to learn what Alpha and Beta were; (6) the talking head would be Britta; (7) they were in deep doo-doo.

So when the murderous, lusting professor told them to sit down and pay attention, the three perched side by side on the mohair sofa as a statement of solidarity.

Knowing that she had a captive audience and relishing her hold on their attention, Britta swanned around the room as she made her revelations, forcing the amigos to turn their heads and crane their necks to follow her.

Pastor Larry also kept his eyes on her, smiling that creepy smile. Because he was likely to be thinking about his paramour’s “charms,” none of the amigos could stand to look at him without being overcome by nausea, acid reflux, and a death wish.

“Most people know nothing about anything worth knowing about,” said the professor. “These ignorant bores resemble cud-chewing cows more than they do people, and I would vote to have them put out to pasture, by which I do not mean ‘pasture’ or merely ‘put out.’ Of the people who know something, at least half the information they possess is incorrect, and they are just a different kind of fool from the ignorant bores.”

Pastor Larry said, “Which is one good reason to exterminate ninety percent of humanity.”

Britta continued, “Ignorant scientists of numerous disciplines believe they have identified the world’s largest organism and its location. They claim it is a fungus called Armillaria ostoyae , in the Malheur National Forest of Oregon. It produces amber-colored honey mushrooms in the autumn, but that is all it reveals of itself aboveground. It covers over twenty-four hundred acres, might weigh thirty-five thousand tons, and is said by some to be as much as eight thousand years old. By comparison to our fungus in Maple Grove, the Armillaria in Oregon is pindling.”

“Pindling?” Bobby asked.

The professor fixed him with her Medusa stare. “It means ‘tiny.’ It is a colloquial word, yes, and of older use, but it remains a legitimate descriptive.”

“I like it. I’ll use it in one of my novels.”

“One of the laborious works you insist on calling novels. Now, Mr. Sham—”

“Shamrock.”

“—I will thank you not to interrupt me again.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Britta’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Why are you thanking me?”

“ You thanked me , which is something I never thought I’d hear from you, so I’m thanking you for thanking me.”

“I didn’t thank you. I never would,” she said acidly.

“I distinctly heard you.”

“My clear implication was that if you could shut up, I might at some future date be of a mind to thank you. But you are a talkative moron, so I will never be required to thank you for your silence or anything else.”

Bobby shrugged. The professor was incapable of believing that anyone would mock her. The effort to do so was fun but unproductive.

“Now attend me carefully,” she said, “while I explain to you what you have thrust yourselves into and what will happen to you. Our fungus is of a species never found anywhere but here. It has not been properly named—they simply call it Alpha—and its existence has not been revealed to any scientists except those who are employed by the Keppelwhite Institute. They are so highly paid that they will keep secrets—although in one sense or another, the institute also has them by the scrotum and will make them cry like babies if they even think about betraying the project. And what they’re thinking is at all times known.”

The joyful, rebellious spirit that had animated the amigos when they were fourteen now returned like a tide. Spencer raised a hand.

Britta glared at him, wordlessly demanding silence. However, when he waved his hand vigorously, she relented. “Yes, yes. What is it?”

“Are there no female scientists on the project?”

“Of course there are. Perhaps a quarter of them are women.”

“Women don’t have scrotums,” Spencer said, “so what part of the female anatomy does the institute have them by?”

“That is a ridiculous question.”

“Ah, so you don’t have an answer.”

“Mr. Truelove—”

“It’s dove. Truedove.”

Approaching the sofa, Britta said, “I have a different name for you, and it’s not as stupid and syrupy as your real one. Now, if you do not remain quiet, I will summon Wayne Louis Hornfly and have him eat you alive, starting with your hands.”

The threat alarmed the amigos. They shrank back on the sofa.

Their alarm amused Pastor Larry. Something that was apparently laughter issued from him, a sound like a chicken being strangled. “We’ll exterminate all the artists, not just ninety percent of them. Painters, writers, actors, people who do origami. All of them, every last one. We will save the planet by greatly diminishing the plague of humanity and completely eradicating the disease of the arts.”

Britta began to stalk through the parlor once more, her silk robe swirling around her. “The fungus we call Alpha is the largest organism in the world. It extends under forty-two-hundred acres, almost twice as much as the pindling Armillaria in Oregon. It weighs in the neighborhood of sixty thousand tons.”

“Obese,” said Bobby.

“And it is eleven thousand years old. This mass lies beneath a large part of Maple Grove and surrounding land. It was discovered thirty-seven years ago by researchers from Keppelwhite Algae and Fungi, which later merged with Keppelwhite Essential Substances.”

“A division of Keppelwhite Urine and Feces,” said Rebecca.

Britta would not dignify their interjections by admitting she had heard them. “It was at once recognized that there existed an immense potential for a new generation of powerful antibiotics and other drugs in the secretions of Alpha. Soon something more exciting was discovered.”

“A way to make you shut up?” Bobby asked.

“In any other species of fungi, every cell is identical to every other cell. The individual grows larger by a kind of cloning. In Alpha, however, there are many profoundly integrated smaller structures within the greater mass, and in every substructure, the genotype is unique, with far more genes and more complex proteins than in any other known fungus. Yet, amazingly, these individuals that make up Alpha operate as a single organism.”

At that moment, Britta was behind Pastor Larry. She reached over the back of his armchair and pulled at his shoulders. “Don’t slump.” Larry sat up straighter, but not straight enough to please her. She took hold of his ears. “Up, up. Stiffen your spine.” The reverend’s expression suggested that this pulling-on-the-ears business did not in the least embarrass or annoy him. In fact, he appeared to take pleasure in it, as if it were related to some more stimulating practice in which they engaged when alone.

Like substructures of an Alpha fungus, the amigos responded in perfect harmony; they kept their mouths shut, avoided looking at one another, and decided never to speak—or even think about—what ears might have to do with the couple’s lusty relationship.

Now that Larry was smiling like a degenerate in a schoolyard and sitting up in the chair as stiff-spined as any prisoner in an electric chair anticipating the thrill of the current, his demon lover once more slinked around the parlor, expounding on the many wonders of Alpha.

“Some scientists on the Keppelwhite team feel Alpha shouldn’t be called a fungus, that an entire new genus should be founded if it’s to be properly categorized. However, to accomplish that, the existence of it would have to be made public. Given the astonishing truth of Alpha—which I’ve yet to reveal—the whistleblower would most likely not be believed. In any case, his intentions would be known before he could act, whereupon his life expectancy would be eleven minutes. The relationship between Alpha and the Keppelwhite family is the most valuable relationship in the history of the world, and they will do anything to protect it.”

“Relationship?” Bobby asked.

Rebecca said, “This doesn’t sound much like the family history of the altruistic Keppelwhites that every kid in Maple Grove is taught from first grade through twelfth.”

Britta’s sneer, expressing her intellectual contempt, would have made Einstein so doubt his theory of relativity that he might have hung himself in mortification. “Ms. Crane, do not play naive with me. You are not a bright bulb, but after a fifteen-year career in TV and film, you are not so stupid as to have any illusions left. Who do you think runs this country? The family’s vaunted charitable work is accomplished through the Keppelwhite Foundation. The board of directors includes nine hundred and sixty-five men and women, all relatives of politicians or major media figures, each paid a six-figure salary to show up once a year for a meeting. Keppelwhite Financial holds the mortgages on the homes of seven hundred key bureaucrats and provides under-the-table rebates of half of each monthly mortgage payment. Keppelwhite this and Keppelwhite that—they’re more ubiquitous than McDonald’s. And by the way, they have gained total control of the pickle market and are trying to become the sole source in the world for ketchup.”

Spencer shook his head in amazement. “I had no idea of their reach and power.”

“Mr. Truelove, for a visual artist of your talent, I have no expectation you would know anything significant about anything.”

“All this from an 1891 patent on the hinge,” Bobby marveled. “Does a patent last forever?”

“That one does,” Britta said. “In 1920, Senator Guenther Ohlendorf and Congressman Gottfried Himmelfurter—affectionately known to their constituents as ‘Gunny’ and ‘Frank’—shepherded through the legislature a bill making that patent eternal and expanding it to include the piano hinge and the whisk broom.”

“I guess maybe all of this puts Alpha in some useful context,” Rebecca admitted. “But you told us the truth of the fungus was astonishing. Can we get back to that? What truth?”

Britta sat on the arm of Pastor Larry’s chair and stroked his head as if he were a beloved cat. Both looked smug, as if they knew something earthshaking. Then she said, “Alpha has a brain.”

“Whose brain?” Spencer asked.

“Its own brain, of course. Keppelwhite scientists estimate that of its sixty thousand tons, its brain accounts for two point five tons.”

“Quite a large brain,” said Larry. “It’s very smart. Smarter than you, of course. Smarter than all of you combined. Far smarter than any artificial intelligence ever likely to be developed in this century.”

This news did not sit well with the amigos. They looked at one another as if they had just heard how the world would end.

“Alpha supplies the Keppelwhites with concepts, designs, and formulae that make them ever richer,” said Britta. “Larry and I don’t care about that. We are not envious. We know who we are and like who we are, for we are at the very top of the evolutionary ladder. But ...”

As Britta seemed about to choke on what she needed to say next, Pastor Larry picked up the narrative. “Alpha—the damn thing’s noble intentions are what infuriate us. The Keppelwhites found the damn thing thirty-seven years ago. They needed a year to figure out what the damn thing was they found. They built the Keppelwhite Institute, and it took them three more years to establish contact with the damn thing. Then two more years to convince the damn thing to use its big brain for more than just dreaming and philosophizing, as it had been doing ever since it became self-aware nine thousand years ago. With some coaxing, the damn thing eventually helped the Keppelwhites in ways that also helped humanity—cures for diseases, technological breakthroughs. Over the years, the crazy damn thing decided it loved humanity and would dedicate itself to the slow improvement of the human condition.”

Britta rose from the arm of the chair and clenched her fists and shook them at the heavens or at least at the ceiling. “It does not understand humanity at all. The potential of that huge brain wasted. Wasted! Two point five tons of stupidity. It has the power to devise a thousand ways to wipe humanity off the Earth, but it wants to serve humanity. For millennia, it was indifferent to—in fact oblivious of—humanity. Then in a few short years, it morphed into a sanctimonious do-gooder sixty-thousand-ton pile of shit.”

“The damn thing. The damn, damn thing,” Pastor Larry raged, no longer sitting up straight, shrinking back in his chair, becoming a black hole of bitterness and hatred.

“Alpha possesses a form of telepathy,” Britta revealed. “It is able to radiate thought waves that can make people happier if they happen to be receptive, and most of the idiots in this town are receptive. Happy and happier—that is all they want. They are, the lot of them, perpetual infants sucking at the tit of happiness. And Alpha also can produce thought waves that make people feel guilt and remorse about doing something wrong or even thinking about doing the wrong thing. It doesn’t control them—I’ll grant you that—but it encourages what it believes to be the right behavior. Now Maple Grove has become virtually crime-free. We can only hope that this despicable condition never takes hold beyond Maple Grove. What kind of world would it be if no one ever committed a crime? It wouldn’t be a world where a sane person would want to live. Without contempt and hatred and violence and murderous envy, life would have no flavor .”

“ The damn, damn, damn thing! ” roared Pastor Larry. He struggled to get up from his armchair, but his hatred and rage were so intense that they robbed him of all physical coordination. He floundered and slapped at the leather arms, at the cushion, until he collapsed once more into what now seemed less like a chair than like a huge Venus flytrap determined to swallow him.

Much more needed to be explained and understood, but before Britta Hernishen could launch into another of her stupefying performances, Rebecca asked, “Larry, I understand your late half brother, Aldous Blomhoff, was a high executive at the institute.”

At the mention of his brother, Pastor Larry twitched, and his empurpled face emptied of color as if a drain plug had been pulled open in his neck. Even before the reverend spoke, any observer alert to the emotions of others would have known that his sudden pallor had nothing to do with grief. “ That sonofabitch,” said Larry. “That preening, people-loving, Pollyanna phony. If you counted all the time he spent virtue signaling and polishing his image, there was maybe one hour in the day when he wasn’t thinking about himself and how wonderful he was. Maybe forty minutes. Oh, how I despised that insufferable bastard. But I hid it well. He never knew. He was the head of the Alpha Project, and he brought me into the inner circle as adviser on the ethical and spiritual issues related to Alpha and the exploitation of its abilities, which is why I know everything about their research.”

Spencer held his hat on his head as if they were in such a pit of evil that someone would snatch it from him.

Britta felt it necessary to add, “Fungi, Alpha, and the hope that the creature would commit genocide and wipe out humanity—for months, that was our pillow talk.”

Favoring her with a lecherous smile, Pastor Larry said, “That was such an exciting time.”

“Such a fulfilling time,” Britta agreed.

“So tender.”

“So passionate.”

Rebecca said, “I wish I had that talking card.” Before either the reverend or the professor could ask what she meant, she posed another question. “Is what I heard correct—that your brother died earlier today of toe fungus?”

The reverend’s ashen face acquired the soft pink radiance of unseemly delight. “It began on the big toe of the right foot. Then it spread to the other four. Across the foot, up the leg, across the abdomen, down the other leg, then back up into the chest, the heart, and all the way to the top of the head. The best part was that it kept him alive and cognizant until it had thoroughly infected him. Only when he was paralyzed head to foot and unable to speak, only when he realized he had no hope of a cure, only then did it slowly collapse his lungs and suffocate him.”

Britta took his hand. He stared longingly at her. Obviously, they wanted to fly up the stairs on wings of love.

“What a horrible way to die,” Rebecca said.

“Yesss,” Pastor Larry replied with enthusiasm.

“I thought this was a benign fungus, if it’s a fungus at all.”

Britta said, “Alpha is everything you would expect of a benign intelligent fungus, if you have the wit to expect anything at all. It is optimistic, caring, understanding, forgiving, reassuring, and disgustingly sentimental. Alpha is exactly the kind of intelligent fungus that the hoi polloi would hope for if they were hoping for a fungus. The all-too-common men and women who live dull lives of no importance would open their hearts to a fungus like Alpha and feel their relationship with it gave meaning to their existence at last, and Alpha would love them in return. As a movie that you starred in, it would be intolerably middlebrow and sweet enough to kill every diabetic in the country. It was not Alpha that murdered the fatuous, people-loving Mr. Blomhoff. It was Beta.”

“Praise Beta,” said Pastor Larry.