“It sure looks like fungus from a distance.”

“From a distance.” She lays her hand on the head of the microscope. “What are you seeing up close?”

“Take a peek.”

She brings her eyes to the lenses and adjusts the diopter a touch. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to see, but . . . it looks like a landscape.”

“That’s actually a perfect description. When you’re at a vista, right? You’re looking at mountains or a canyon, you can see strata. Different layers of time stacked up. In the same way here.” He taps the stage for the slide. “There are different zones in this. Both flesh and fungus.”

She lifts her gaze to meet his. “What are you saying?”

“We’re dealing with something more like lichen.”

“Lichen? But isn’t that furry and leafy?”

“I’m not saying it’s lichen. I’m saying it has similar properties in that it’s a symbiote. A combination of algae and fungi. They work together.”

“Why?”

“Because they each get something out of the relationship.”

“Explain.”

He explains how a common characteristic of fungus is that it forms beneficial and mutualistic relationships with other organisms. “So think of algae as the spoon and fungus as the hammer. Fungus gets food from the algae and algae gets structure from the fungus.”

“What’s the spoon and hammer of it all in this case?” Nora says. “What’s this thing getting out of our daughter?”

“Intelligence for one. Human intelligence. Hypothetically, of course. But if it’s accessing her, it’s also accessing an understanding of this alien world.”

“Hold on. We’re the alien world?”

“To this stuff we are. Yeah.”

“What else?”

“Mobility,” he says and paces in a quick circle as an illustration. “She can run the same way that the wind can carry a spore.”

“I don’t even know what to say.”

He’s trying not to be heartbroken. He’s trying to find hope and possibility in this discovery. His daughter is still here. His daughter is still alive. She’s just changed. She’s just more. Is that any more frightening than a teenager who vapes and drinks, who texts and drives? Yes. Okay. Maybe it’s a lot more frightening. But he needs not to feel despair anymore.

He can see that he’s losing Nora, so he puts his hands gently on her shoulders and says, “Stay with me here, okay? Let’s focus on the good. She’s here. She’s not gone. She’s different, but we can work with different.”

Nora nods her head with some difficulty, fighting back tears.