Weed

by Peter Ponzo

  Chapter 9

  We had removed most of the smooth skin with scissors and washed away the fluff under a strong jet of water from the shower head. Charles has demonstrated his proficiency at this task and I left him to rub the last of the fluff from her naked body. Now, Josey was crying softly, curled in a heavy blanket in front of a low fire in the living room.

  "It was so sudden," she cried. "First my hands, turning white, covered in that ... that terrible stuff. Then it just grew, all over my body. I tried to wash it off. It kept growing. It moved up my neck, to my mouth. I got sleepy. Oh lordy, it was awful."

  I leaned forward and caressed Josey's wet hair. Now was the time for solace and soothing words.

  "It's okay, kid. We've got it all off." I paused, looked at Charles sitting concerned in a chair. "The Dermafix. I don't understand, Charles," I continued. "It's sometimes a smooth membrane and it stays put, or maybe it grows, or maybe it bubbles and foams and falls off in strands."

  I paused. A foam, a fuzz. Where the hell had I seen it before? Like soap suds, dried and shredded.

  "It suffocated my dog," I continued. "The poor mutt was covered in that shit. Yet …" I looked at the back of my hand. Barely any sign remained of my scar, and the skin had returned to almost my normal color. In fact, once hairless, the hair on my hand had now returned, but darker and more dense than before.

  "I need to look at that foam, carefully," I muttered, mostly to myself. "There's lots of it on the towel, the one we used on Josey. I'll cover the towel in plastic wrap. Tomorrow I'll bring it to the lab. The foam, the fluff, it's different somehow from the original smooth skin, transformed. What the hell is it?"

  "Miss Fleetsmith?" Charles whispered. "I suggest you destroy the towel and all the leaves left in the vase." Charles looked concerned. "It has done sufficient damage, the weed. It doesn't belong here. It's ... it's alive."

  "We'll see," I muttered with less than copius confidence. "In the meantime, Josey stays here, in the spare bedroom. Charles, get her some clothes from my closet. Make her comfortable." I stroked Josey who sobbed quietly before the fire. "We'll see," I said. "We'll see."

  When Charles awoke the next morning, I had already left, but he told me later of his fear of the devil weed. He told me that he had made a pot of coffee, scrambled several eggs, that Josey had apparently slept soundly and Penny had stayed in her room, but they would need a good breakfast to start the day. So he had added ham and cheddar cheese and a dash of oregano. Oregano. I had said the weed smelled of oregano and that had made Charles shudder. He had dumped the mixture into a pan of foaming butter and watched it bubble, then turn fluffy ... like Dermafix. He had turned off the stove, carried the pan to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. Perhaps toast and jam would better suit the girls.

  In the meantime, I spent most of the morning in my lab. Several days ago, a memo from the Board had circulated among the other technical staff. They were told the Dermafix project had come to an end, so I was alone. I had smeared some of the foam from Josey's towel onto a glass slide and was now inspecting the sample under the microscope. This was the tenth time I had inspected such a sample, sometimes stained with a dye, sometimes washed in formaldehyde, sometimes just the straight foam. There had been nothing unusual, much like tiny bubbles. But this sample seemed different. The foam appeared like single, differentiated cells. I stared at the image for some time, making a sketch on a pad next to the microscope. Then, while I watched, the most remarkable thing happened.

  The cells divided!

  "Christ," I said softly. Then, loudly, "Jesus Christ! Charles was right. It is alive!"

  I swung the Polaroid camera into place and took several pictures. When developed, they showed quite clearly the stages in cell mitosis, the chromatin separation, the migration to each pole of the spindle, the final division into daughter cells. I walked quickly to a cage and removed a mouse. While it struggled I peeled some of the Dermafix membrane from its belly, then returned the grateful mouse to its cage. Beneath the microscope the membrane was just that: a smooth, pale membrane without detail, much like plastic wrap. I switched to higher magnification. No. Absolutely no cell structure.

  "Shit! How are the cells introduced? Is it the same stuff? Is there some kind of spontaneous regeneration, from an inert, inanimate membrane to living cells?" I sat abruptly on a chair. "Dass ist ein gut problem," I mumbled to myself. "Ya, ya, ein gut problem." It seemed a familiar phrase. I looked up. It was too familiar - it rang a bell. Ein gut problem. Where had I heard that before?

  "Unger! He'll know. Shit, he knows everything."

  Professor Ludwig Unger had been with the University of Toronto for seventeen years, since immigrating from Austria. He was short and rotund, his lectures were boring, his classes were small, he read from microscopic, hand written notes and he spoke softly. He normally slipped into the classroom unnoticed, opened his sheaf of notes and began whispering to the blackboard. It was often several minutes before the class noticed his presence. But his reputation was international: he was perhaps the foremost microbiologist on the continent.

  He was reading and eating a sandwich of dark rye and liverwurst when I barged into his office. Professor Unger slipped his reading glasses down his nose and peered up at me.

  "Vell, young lady," he said, "did you make an appointment?"

  "No, but I must speak to you. It's really quite urgent. A question. I have a question in need of answers."

  "One qvestion? Several answers?" he said quietly, putting down his book.

  "Who knows," I groaned. I laid the box on his desk and pointed. "In that box are several slides. One is of some sort of smooth, featureless membrane. Another is a colony of cells. Several others show a frothy accumulation of ... bubbles."

  "Bubbles?" Unger said. He pronounced it boobles.

  "Who knows? That's why I'm here. I need to know what's the connection between these materials. I suspect that the membrane, although inanimate, can turn into a colony of dividing cells which in turn can grow into a froth of ... of bubbles. I need to know—"

  "Miss?"

  "Miss Fleetsmith. I attended your class in microbiology ... uh, several times."

  "You enrolled in several of my courses?" He smiled, a spectacular set of teeth for the old codger. "Or, perhaps, you vent to classes in just one course ... several times."

  "Yes," I said. "And I know how interested you are in cell division and I'm certain you'll be able to answer these questions."

  Professor Unger slid the box across his desk, knocking several pencils and assorted papers onto the floor. "Qvestions ... about boobles."

  "Yes."

  "I tink you can find dee answers in das book. Ask vun off my schtudents." Unger stared across the top of his glasses. "Let me see, you are a recent graduate, ya?"

  "Well, not that recent."

  "Ya, ya, Feetsmith ... I remember your father. A very, very schmart man. Interested in herbal medicine, ya?"

  "Right!" I was amazed. Was my father that well known? It made it that much easier to gain this man's interest. "And that's why these questions are so important. It was my father who first came across this substance ... the stuff on the slides. I believe his death was somehow connected with its curious behavior."

  Unger looked at me, then at the box of slides.

  "I am afraid I have little time for qvestions. Ask one of my schtudents. You will find dem ..." Unger looked at his watch. "Ya, dey will be playing bridge in dee lounge—end of dee hall. Dey vill not be schtudying and not reading and not vatching dee expeerments. Dey vill be playing dee bridge game."

  The box moved.

  "Did you see that!" I cried.

  Unger looked at the box. A white froth was oozing from under the lid. He slid his glasses up his nose and with a pencil gingerly knocked the lid from the box. It was filled with a white fluff.

  "Ya, ya ... boobles," he muttered. "Dass ist ein gut problem."

  When I got home I wa
s met at the door by a perturbed Charles.

  "She's gone, Miss Fleetsmith," he said.

  "Who?"

  "Pelvis ... Penny, she's gone."

  "And Josey?"

  "She's resting in the living room. But Penny, she is not in her room."

  I walked past Charles and skipped up the stairs two at a time. Sure enough, Penny's room was empty, but the closet seemed to have its full complement of pink and lavender clothes. The colors were Charles' idea of femininity.

  "Wherever she went, she didn't seem to pack anything," I said.

  Charles shook his head.

  "Indeed, Miss Fleetsmith, she went as she was ... and she knows little of this world."

  "Except what she sees on TV," I added. "But don't worry Charlie boy, the police will find her soon enough."

  Charles gazed uneasily out the bedroom window and I ran downstairs and slipped into a chair. Josey was sleeping on the sofa.

  "Got a question for you," I said. Josey opened her eyes and managed a weak smile. "It's about Hans, " I continued. "When did you first notice any changes?"

  Josey sat up, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

  "Well, he seemed mad, more'n usual ... upset. Kept bitchin about the cost of runnin' a business these days and—"

  "No, I mean changes in his appearance. Did you notice changes in his skin color."

  "Well, sort of," Josey said slowly. "He was always pale, never got much sun, but he was even whiter than usual that last week. White, from head to toe."

  "You were rubbing him down with Dermafix."

  "That's a lie! Who told you that?" Josey said, leaning forward.

  "You did."

  "Oh. Well, it was 'cause he asked me. I mean, rub that stuff on him. Then it got on my hands. Then it started to get all over my body ..." Josey broke into tears.

  "Look kid," I said, in what I thought was a comforting voice, "just try to remember what Hans looked like the last time you saw him. His skin, was it shiny and smooth? Was it kind of bubbly? Frothy?"

  "No, no. Smooth, like my hands. My hands were smooth and white. He said it would make us young again. Then my hands started to change. Lordy—"

  "Okay Josey, you should get some rest." I got up and Josey wiped the sleeve of her nightgown across her cheek, drying the tears, then lay back on the sofa and promptly fell asleep once more. I left the room.

  Charles had been watching. He followed me to the kitchen. I pulled a plate of cold chicken from the fridge, sat at the table and began chewing on a leg.

  "Miss Penny," he said. "What would you advise concerning her departure?"

  "Who are we talking about, Charlie?"

  "Miss Penny," he said.

  "Mmm … yes, call the police, " I said between swallows. "She can't be that hard to spot. You have called the police, right?"

  "Well ... not exactly—"

  "Well, do it!"

  I was somewhat surprised that Charles hadn't called the police. In fact, for some reason, he didn't even seem particularly concerned about Penny's departure.

  "Miss Fleetsmith, let me make up a hot fricassee with that chicken, on toast with—"

  Mmm. Now he changes the subject. Curious.

  "Chuck, sit down. I need to talk to somebody and you're it." Charles sat. "I may have to go back to Brazil, to the Chokli village—" Charles stood up, concerned. "Chuck, sit down. You can stay here, look after things. But I need some answers and I think that somehow the answers are tied up with that village, the lack of older females, the ceremony with the Mother and Child, the purple weed, the natives who turn white when they use the weed, then turn dark, normal, again."

  I stared at Charles, my eyes suddenly opening wide.

  "Wait a minute. I don't have to ask the Chokli along the Amazon. I just have to ask the Chokli, right here, in good ol' TO." I jumped to my feet, elated. "Shit! Why didn't I think of that before." Then I leaned on the table and glared at Charles. "How're the English lessons coming? Will she understand me?"

  "She?" he whispered.

  "Yes, she. Pelvis. Miss Boobs. Penny."

  Charles looked pained.

  "Chuck, go and get her. Let's see how well she's learned the language."

  "But Miss Fleetsmith, the girl is no longer with us. She has gone. I don't know where she is."

  There was silence in the room. I groaned and slumped into a chair.

  "Shit."

  "Your use of that word is excessive, Miss Fleetsmith."

  "Shit."