While the computer hums in his lap, running analytics, his eyes wander the sanctuary. He can’t remember the last time he was in a church, but there is a hush to it he appreciates—the same calming stillness he used to experience in a laboratory and now finds in the forest. This is where you come to think hard and figure things out. He studies the alcoves set into the walls of the chapel. Here is Mary in one, Jesus in another. Saints are tucked into the others. Some he cannot name, but here is Julian. His mother’s favorite. Saint Julian, who listened to the stag’s prophecy, who tried to run but still ended up killing his parents. The other day Isaac read a magazine article about how religion is dying, and he wonders what new saints and gods will rise up instead.

A half an hour passes before the SPLICER program completes. The air pressure in the chapel shifts as the door opens and heel-driven footsteps click along the aisle, approaching him. “Well?” Director Ricketts says.

“Most mushrooms decompose other things. And contribute to and feed off the decomposition. They’re called saprophytes. Or necrotrophs.”

“And that’s obviously what we’re seeing here.”

“Yes. That’s the very definition of it. These people are rotting alive.” He pauses at the memory of Augustino Chives coughing violently and something blackish muddying his chin and splattering the window. “There is a fungus in northern Oregon, in the Malheur National Forest. Genus Armillaria. It’s perhaps the largest organism on Earth, spread out over several hundred miles. And it’s a killer of fir trees. It moves from host to host, and they die off.”

“Host to host, body to body.”

“Our immediate reaction is to feel fear, of course. But there are other perspectives. Dead trees are good habitat for beetles and grubs, for instance. There’s one. More larches can grow when fir trees die. There’s another. The presence of the fungus is bad—to use a rather simple word—only if you’re a fir tree.”

“Or a human, in this case.”

“Or a human, in this case,” he says, nodding.

“But what about the girl?”

“Some say there are over five million species of fungus. Who knows how many times over that number has expanded since the meteor strike.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying there’s a garden growing. A rich, abundant, unfamiliar garden. I’m one thing that’s grown out of it. The girl is another. Augustino Chives is another.”

“Keep talking.”