Gray eyed Tyende, remembering the man’s warning. If you are found wanting, you will not leave here. Apparently, he meant that literally.
With no other choice, Gray continued down the last of the tunnel. The glow grew ahead of him, not blinding, more like the soft luminosity of dawn. He wondered if the cast of this light contained some photosynthesizing energy that fueled the thick growth around them, like a tiny sun buried in this dark jungle.
Gray finally reached the end. He gaped as the view opened ahead of him. A vast wonderland, dotted with ponds, spread for hundreds of acres, encircled by those denser woods, roofed by a canopy as equally dark.
Benjie gasped, stumbling alongside Gray and Tyende. His gaze swept everywhere. “It’s like a forest inside a forest.”
Gray agreed. Preserved within the impenetrable dark emerald pocket, another forest abided. Countless trunks, all a snowy white, rose a hundred feet into the air. They could be mistaken for a spread of giant birches, only with barks less papery and more fleshy, like the skin on mushroom stalks. Their branches formed perfect domes of gold-green fronds, none touching another, as if this groove had been groomed or planted purposefully.
The glow here rose from the forest floor. The rolling landscape was festooned with phosphorescent fungi and swaths of shining mushrooms. Tiny ponds also cast forth a shimmering sheen, their waters radiant with some bioluminescent algae.
The air reinforced this conceit, smelling of mold and decay, along with a heavy fecund sweetness, like rotting fruits. At the same time, the scent felt old, as if it had seeped into every pore of this place over untold ages.
“What now?” Benjie whispered, hushed in awe.
“We go on,” Gray answered.
He got a confirming nod from Tyende, who also added a warning. “Do not stray from the path.”
The road led across this undulating terrain, wending this way and that to pass through the forest. Gray set off again, leading the others with Tyende. The road was only wide enough for two to walk abreast.
The odor grew stronger as they progressed, as the grove surrounded them. The strange forest also noted their passage. The hillocks of mushrooms stirred as roots tunneled through the soil, churning and occasionally revealing their pale woody lengths. One thigh-thick rhizome kneed out of the ground to the right of the path. As it did, sharp spines lifted from its surface, then flattened as it dove away again.
Kowalski stared after it. “Yeah, I’m definitely sticking to the road.”
Benjie didn’t seem to note this eruption and threat. His gaze remained on the forest. “I don’t think this place is made up of individual trees. They’re all too uniform. It reminds me of Pando.”
“Who’s Pando?” Kowalski asked.
“It’s not a who, but a what,” Benjie answered absently, still staring all around. “It’s a forest. In Utah. Also dubbed the Trembling Giant. It’s a stand of Populus tremuloides, or quaking aspens. While it outwardly looks like a forest of forty thousand trunks spread over miles, it’s actually all one organism, a single tree connected by its roots that casts off clones of itself. It’s believed to be eighty thousand years old, maybe as old as a million.”
“You think we’re looking at something like that here?” Gray pressed him.
“Maybe. Especially as I think I recognize these trees.”
“You do?”
“Maybe. But only from the fossil record. Their wide bases, their tapering trunks. I’m almost certain their akin to prehistoric Cladoxylopsids, a class of giant trees related to ferns. They’re considered to be the first true trees, appearing nearly four hundred million years ago. See those splits in their skins. I spotted a big tear back a ways, big enough to show the trunk was hollow inside. And notice how those splits are refilling with fresh xylem, repairing itself. It’s how early trees once grew.”
Benjie glanced over to Gray. “Remember when I told you about the oldest fungi found in the Congo, how it’s believed to have prepared the primordial soil for future trees to root?” He waved to one of the trees. “This is what grew first. While it’s definitely a tree, it still bears characteristics of mushrooms and fungi. That’s why I think these woods are all one clonal complex, similar to many mushroom species. In fact, this forest, its composition, it should really be considered half tree, half fungus.”
Gray swallowed, gazing at the forest with new eyes. The trees’ domed tops even looked like mushroom caps, only formed of giant fern-like fronds instead of frilly gills.
Benji pointed higher up a neighboring trunk, clearly not quite done making his case. “And look at those rounded protrusions. They’re primitive spore sacs, like those puffballs we saw earlier.” He shifted to one that appeared to be smoking from a score of tiny holes across its surface. “Look, that one’s already expelling spores out of its ostioles.”
Gray grimaced at the sight. “So, half tree, half fungus . . .”
Kowalski looked no happier. “I think these buggers are more than that.” He shied from another eruption of a spiky root. “I think it’s got some animal in there, too.”
“It might,” Benjie conceded with a shrug. “Something is definitely playing a game of mix and match along evolution’s pathway.”
Gray pondered this. Could the virus have altered everything here, even this primitive life-form?
He searched ahead, seeking answers. The cobbled road wended deeper into this strange grove, clearly heading to the heart of the forest.
But what awaits us there?
8:53 A.M.
Benjie lagged behind the others, focused on the mystery at hand. Ahead, Gray plied Tyende with questions, but the old man merely pointed down the path, refusing to say more. Kowalski followed with them, looking none too happy.
Benjie tuned out the others, more interested in what lay around him. By now, the tiny shimmering ponds at the outer edges of the forest had grown steadily larger. Arched bridges spanned a couple of them.
As Benjie forded a third one, he stared down into the water’s depths, fascinated by its rusty, yellowish sheen. He had already discerned that all these ponds were fringed by an ochre-colored slime mold, the source of the luminosity. The phosphorescent growth stained the waters the same color, like a weak tea that glowed.
He studied those depths, careful to keep a wary distance from the bridge’s edge as there were no rails. From this height, he discovered something new. The bottom of the pond looked like a pale white net had been strewn across its bottom. He squinted, studying the pattern. He noted the tiny nodules that held the threadlike net together. With a sharp inhalation, he realized what he could be looking at.
“Hyphae,” he mumbled.
If he was right, it further supported his theory.
Hyphae were the branching, vegetative filaments that composed the mycelium—the veiny structure—of a fungus. They connected everything into a whole. He didn’t know if this hyphae network was part of the organism here, or in some symbiotic relationship with it. Many trees formed a mutual beneficial relationship with soil fungi. Some even considered such mycorrhizal networks to be the brains of a forest, mimicking a neural network. They even flowed with neurotransmitters, including glutamate, one of the main transmitters in human brains.
Benjie stared to the pond’s shore and beyond, imagining that same net spreading underground, traveling everywhere, forming a vast complex that spanned hundreds of acres. He shivered at the thought of some cold, vast intelligence staring back at him.
He hurried after the others, wanting to share his theories.
But one of their group remained on the bridge, staring down at the pond.
Benjie crossed to Faraji. “C’mon. We should catch up.”
When Benjie tried to pass, Faraji remained rooted in place, with a hand clutched at his throat.
“What’s wrong?” Benjie asked.