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To More Quickly Impart Vital and Fearsome Information

In a novel of deep mystery and strangeness, informational conversations between the good guys and the bad guys nearly always come near the end of the story. They must be written in such a way that they don’t bring the narrative to a stop, have entertainment value of their own, and avoid just shoveling revelations at the reader. This is often achieved by disclosing surprising and yet logical new facets to the characters (as with Britta’s lustful nature), by maintaining an atmosphere of imminent violence, by dialogue that alarms or amuses, and by additional techniques that will not be revealed here, where no one is paying to learn them. However, there comes a point at which our desire to know how the hell it all ends becomes paramount. Who lives, who dies, and what kind of mess do they leave behind? This can be especially true when the author has used foreshadowing to warn that at least one of the good guys (Bobby) is very likely to perish. Consequently, a change in tactics of narration becomes essential. Remaining revelations must be made, but succinctly, dwelling less on atmosphere, trimming descriptions of characters’ actions, and thus thrusting us on toward the terror, violence, and destruction that we all enjoy so much. Let’s see if this works:

To Rebecca, in the parlor of the rectory, Britta and Larry appeared arrogant and self-assured, as if this confrontation must be a matter of life and death and as if the amigos were already doomed. “Beta killed Aldous Blomhoff? What is Beta?”

“Another intelligent fungus,” said Britta.

Pastor Larry said, “Praise Beta.”

“It’s only nine thousand years old,” Britta continued, “not eleven like Alpha. It weighs about forty-eight thousand tons, not sixty thousand. It lives under the portion of Maple Grove that Alpha doesn’t occupy, and in acreage north of town.”

Nervously adjusting his hat, Spencer said, “Two immense intelligent funguses in the same small town. Is there something special about the soil, something in the water? Do you have any theories about this?”

“The current theory,” Britta said, “is that twelve thousand years ago or so, a large meteor impacted here, shattering its way deep into the earth, bearing the spores of two intelligent fungi from elsewhere in the galaxy. One developed faster than the other.”

“Or,” said Larry, “it was one fungus. Some spores went to the light and some to the darkness, figuratively speaking.”

“So Alpha is good, and Beta is evil,” Rebecca said.

Pastor Larry’s glare was venomous. “You will wish you’d never said that.”

Britta’s expression was merely smug. “Alpha loves humanity. Beta hates it. From our perspective, Alpha is the evil one. Beta wants to eradicate ninety percent of humankind to save the Earth. It loves the planet. So do Larry and I. Genocide is noble in the right cause.”

“It’s because of the bigotry of people like you,” Larry said, “that Beta won’t cooperate with the institute like Alpha does.”

Bobby gave Rebecca a look that said, They’re about to spring a trap on us. They wouldn’t be revealing all this if they thought there was any chance of us getting out of here alive. Stay alert!

That was a lot to convey in just a look, but so tight with one another were the amigos that she understood and nodded once.

Larry said, “Beta dared to try infecting the top officials at the institute and destroy the Alpha Project. It almost worked. It taught my hateful half brother a thing or two. Unfortunately, Alpha has already come up with a cure. Jim James and Butch Fossbocker will be well and out of the hospital tomorrow, the bastards.”

Spencer said, “Sixty thousand tons, forty-eight thousand tons—what do they feed on?”

“The Armillaria in Oregon feeds on trees,” said Britta. “It destroys forests. That doesn’t happen here. Maybe Alpha and Beta draw nutrients from the soil. They won’t say what they feed on.”

“Why not?”

“We think they might be embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed funguses?”

“Embarrassed intelligent funguses. Maybe part of what they feed on is worms, termites, other insects, rotting roots, bodies in the graveyard, and mole shit. If that’s part of what you ate, would you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Spencer admitted.

“Who wiped from our memories all that weird stuff that happened when we were fourteen?” Bobby asked.

“Alpha,” said Pastor Larry. “You’d seen things you were never meant to see, including Hornfly in my library. Beta would not have allowed you to go on living. Alpha went to all that trouble to save you, an effort certainly not worth its time and energy.”

Britta said, “As I’ve been trying to convey to you, Alpha is a sentimental Goody Two-Shoes. But as usual you have proved slow on the uptake.”

“And I guess Alpha restored our memories. But why?”

“I suspect,” said Britta, “it wanted you to come back to Maple Grove and take Ernest away. It’s just the kind of nosy do-gooder who would think I’ve been a bad mother. Which is a scurrilous lie.”

“That night we were lying on the gurneys in the institute,” Rebecca said. “Those ... tentacles.”

“Alpha can semi-liquefy its tissue, creating appendages to manipulate and study things.”

Pastor Larry managed to rise from his armchair and throw back his shoulders to brag about Beta with ideological passion. “Our Beta is a brilliant sculptor of avatars. Hornfly is a manifestation made of fungus. When the day comes that Beta can fashion creations that are perfectly realistic, it will form an army that can pass among you without notice—until suddenly they attack and eat billions of human beings alive. That’ll be the day.” He shivered with delight, as though the day, if it came, would be an orgasmic experience. “I’m not going to tell you when that day will be upon you. Just know that it’s soon, very soon, with most people gone and the planet saved.”

Being a writer with a deep understanding of human psychology, which some writers have but not others, Bobby the Sham taunted the reverend with a cunning purpose. “It’s nine thousand years old, and it still hasn’t learned how to create truly convincing replicas of people? What—is it an intelligent fungus with a low IQ?”

Pastor Larry was incensed. “Funguses are nearly immortal. Their sense of time isn’t like yours. A thousand years is but a month to them. Beta is smarter than ten thousand of you, but it will work to its own timetable. It won’t be told how or when to act. You and your friends are as impertinent as you are foolish.”

“Yeah? Well, I bet Alpha can make replicas that don’t have wriggling hair, orange eyes, green teeth. I bet it can make replicas whose heads aren’t weirdly shaped like Hornfly’s stupid head.”

Pastor Larry was shaking with anger. He probably would have thrown a few punches if he had known how. “Alpha is two thousand years older. Give Beta a month, and it’ll be able to do everything better than Alpha.”

“Ha! A month. You mean a thousand years. As I thought—Alpha can already make perfect replicas.”

Britta shoved Pastor Larry back into his armchair and came face-to-face with Bobby. “Have you any inkling what is about to happen to you, Mr. Sham? Can we agree that indeed you have no inkling? Or is it your position that you aren’t a fool? What do you say? Are you confident enough to take the position that you aren’t a fool? It would be interesting to hear you defend that position in a debate. It would be most instructive.”

Rebecca said, “Before whatever happens that is going to happen, I have a few more questions.”

“‘Before whatever happens that is going to happen.’ I wonder, Ms. Crane, when filming a scene written even in puerile English, how many takes are required for you to deliver the needed words in any coherent fashion? How often do your despairing director and fellow thespians have to be persuaded not to commit suicide on the set?”

Ignoring the insult, Rebecca said, “What are all the comatose people about?”

“I will answer your question, Ms. Crane, in the compassionate spirit of—and for the same reason as—a guard in a prison would bring you a meal shortly before escorting you to a room containing nothing more than a single metal chair and a long electric cord. The fungus known as Alpha inexplicably loves humanity so much that it wants to know everything it can possibly learn about our ridiculous and tedious species. Because everyone’s experiences and perceptions of events are different, Alpha regards each of us as an enthralling novel, and it feels the need to ‘read’ as many of us as possible. When it puts a person into suspended animation, it can leaf through our millions of memories as easily as we turn the pages of a book. In one to four days, even the most complex and richly experienced of lives can be read in detail, whereupon the subject is released from suspended animation. Why Alpha wishes to read the petty lives of individuals such as yourselves, lives as shallow and clichéd and poorly written as the average novel created as a movie tie-in, I cannot explain. Not when an elegant life, a life rich in stirring drama and accomplishment, a life of passion and keen perception, such as mine, remains on the shelf.”

“The damn, damn thing,” Pastor Larry cursed from the depths of the chair into which he had been shoved.

Exhibiting the dogged analytic curiosity with which an actress seeks to understand a character—in this case a fungus—Rebecca said, “But how ? How does Alpha put people into suspended animation? How does it read memories as if they’re pages in a book?”

Britta Hernishen sighed wearily and covered her ears with her hands, as though she lacked the patience to continue talking to zoo animals with the hope they would understand what she told them in response to their gibbering and hooting. With another sigh, this one of the long-suffering variety, she lowered her hands and said, “Ms. Crane, I’m sure you saw a pair of pretty shoes in a shop window and can’t stop thinking about them, saw some ripped dude on the street who tickled your excitable libido, but I would be most grateful if you would put aside all such distractions and try your very best to think about what I tell you. Is that a possibility? Do you sincerely believe you can summon the concentration and possess the potential for comprehension to do such a thing?”

“I’ll try,” Rebecca said.

“You precious child, that’s all I ask of you—that you try. I am aware that the effort alone will exhaust you. If it develops that you are unable to grasp the implications of what I tell you, I will not be angry or even impatient. I will simply extend my best wishes to you and get on with my life.”

“Okay.”

“Very well. Here it is. I do not know how Alpha puts people in suspended animation or how it reads their memories. No one possesses an answer to those questions. No one. This is a world of mysteries. There are many things about the world that no one understands. You must accept the existence of the unknown—and even the unknowable—and just get on with wasting your life in foolish pursuits. As I have already told you, Alpha’s brain weighs as much as two and a half tons. It is therefore forty thousand times larger than your brain. Over thousands of years, a brain that large will have evolved powers beyond our ability to imagine. And now that I have patiently endured questioning alike to the incessant badgering of a three-year-old, I have only one question of my own. What have you done with my son? ”

To Rebecca, Spencer said, “She just implied that your brain weighs only two ounces.”

Britta said, “I am amazed and astonished—the first a condition of the mind, the latter of the heart—that any of you possesses the math skills just demonstrated. Now what have you done with my son? ”

Even if there had been time to take offense, Rebecca wouldn’t have done so. What was the point? Anyhow, time had run out. Heavy footsteps sounded from the rear of the house, hobnail boots crashing against the floor. There could be no doubt who had arrived either through the back door or out of the kitchen-sink drain.

Bobby glanced at Rebecca. The look he gave her said, If I die here in the next few minutes or even an hour from now, maybe two hours, whenever, I want you to know that I love you like a friend, always have and always will, but recently I’ve realized that I also love you in the most profound romantic sense that a man can love a woman, and I will die for you if it comes to that.

This was considerably more information than the earlier glance had been meant to impart, but the amigos were so simpatico that Rebecca understood everything Bobby meant to convey, not just in a broad sense, but in every particular and nuance. Because the feeling was mutual, she almost teared up. However, when a monster is coming, the last thing one ought to do is tear up, for the creature might take satisfaction in the mistaken apprehension that you’re shedding tears of dread. By a nod and a small smile and a wink, Rebecca let Bobby know she felt toward him the very thing he felt toward her.

Hornfly hove into sight with all the drama of a sea monster suddenly rising out of the waves to tower over a ship. He appeared to be bigger, stronger, uglier, and even more fierce than he had been while holding a severed head in the Liberty Park pavilion. He seemed to fill the archway between the hall and the parlor. Clearly, he had taken time to refine and practice his entrance.

“Praise Beta,” declared Pastor Larry, thrusting out of the armchair. “Praise Hornfly.”

“Isn’t he a handsome boy?” Britta said. “Isn’t he the most handsome boy you’ve ever seen?”

“Hail Beta!” the reverend cried. “Hail Hornfly!”

The amigos were chilled head to foot and back to front.

If Hornfly had not been standing there, if he’d been lying in a huge black bassinet that was skirted with black taffeta, hooded and flounced with black organza, this moment would have been like the end of the last chapter of Rosemary’s Baby , except absurd.

“Hail Beta! Hail Hornfly!”

At least from this side of the publishing process, it seems to have worked well to minimize the number of words devoted to setting, atmosphere, and the thoughts of the characters in order to provide answers to the many remaining questions without losing momentum, as would have been the case if the bones of the chapter had been fully fleshed with another four thousand words. One hopes it worked well from your side of the publishing process.

“Hail Beta! Hail Hornfly!”