Fermenter 45

An account of one of the recorded attacks on the work of Ilya Mechnikov and Maria Rui da Rocha, probably orchestrated by the Republic of the South.

An invitation for tea saved her from death on a grey March morning.

Lurdes had prepared a generous batch of queijadas. The marvellous scent, combined with the rain lashing down on the high windows of the Pasteur Institute, persuaded Maria to put down the fermenters for a few hours.

Her ‘office’, as Lurdes called it, was little more than a broom cupboard, with shelves crammed with books and a table capable of accommodating a teapot and two porcelain cups, decorated with floral motifs that reminded Maria of the long, cosy winters in Trás-os-Montes.

Maria held the cup with both hands. The cold of Porto had the familiar talent of burrowing into the flesh and nestling in the bones with a greed that only hot water seemed to stave off. Her fingers tingled after the first sip. She leaned back in the precarious wooden chair and, for a moment, closed her eyes, letting herself relax.

And then the screams began.

Shock pierced through her. Before she could think, her feet were already moving with the dread of losing all the progress she and Ilya had made.

In the corridor she was greeted by a chorus of coughing and choking. Her colleagues, who had welcomed her so dryly, were writhing on the floor, attacked by an invisible enemy. Determined to cross the distance that separated her from the laboratory, Maria plunged into the chaos.

‘Hold on!’ Lurdes shouted, stopping Maria with a hand on her shoulder.

Maria shook her, desperate, but her feet betrayed her, taken by a sudden lightness. When she realised what was happening, it was too late. Lurdes, her assistant and companion, the only soul she trusted in that Institute, wrapped her in a suffocating embrace, dragging her away from the screams.

‘Let go of me!’

The abrupt closing of the door woke her up to reality. They were back in the office; Lurdes had forced her to sit down. Before Maria could get up, something had already fallen into her hands. She picked up the rag while her assistant hurried to open the windows. Upon closer inspection, Maria realised what she was holding.

‘Gas masks?’ she asked, confused.

Lurdes nodded, already adjusting her own. Her moon face and serene expression disappeared, swallowed up by a monster with bulging eyes and a grotesque snout. Maria had to take a deep breath to stop herself from screaming.

‘Mr Mechnikoff has entrusted your protection to me’, said Lurdes. ‘If you really want to save the fermenters, you have to trust me.’

The corridor had fallen into a sepulchral silence.

The invisible enemy had swept through the Institute, leaving behind a trail of panic and destruction. To Maria’s relief, the researchers seemed to have escaped. All that remained was shattered glass and a track of scientific papers and notebooks abandoned on the floor. Despite the apparent calm, she and Lurdes advanced slowly, hands clenched into fists, gazes vigilant.

A few steps from the laboratory, a muted laugh ran through Maria like a shiver. What use would her fists be if the culprit appeared in front of her? What had years of work at the bench earned her, apart from dexterity and calluses on her fingers?

The scientist came to her senses when Lurdes grabbed her by the shoulders. But instead of comfort, Maria saw her own panic, distorted by the lenses of the mask. She shook her head, chasing away the ghosts that had stuck to her skin; she grabbed her assistant’s hands and walked through the doorway.

Together, they entered the laboratory she had built with Ilya, a high-ceilinged cave permeated by the sweet smell of must.

To Maria’s surprise, the laboratory remained as she had left it that morning. The shelves, full of agar plates and flasks with culture media, surrounded the chirping army of fermenters.

With a quick nod, Maria showed Lurdes the glass tubes and sterilised cotton wool. She would start with the fermenters supplemented with a high concentration of ethanol, part of Ilya’s strategy to select only the most resistant yeasts.

She went to fermenter 45 and stopped. Perhaps it was the lenses blurring her vision, but something seemed… different. A faint, almost imperceptible turbidity rippled through the liquid. Maria was sure it hadn’t been there that morning.

For an instant, everything disappeared: the gas, the screams, the threat that still hung in the air. She whistled softly, marvelling. Her hands trembling, she switched on the Bunsen burner, slid a glass pipette into the fermenter and started the collection. The world was now all about that instant and the promise of something truly new.

Perhaps that was why she didn’t realise that Lurdes was no longer by her side.

A sharp pain imploded in her left temple. The scientist staggered, struggling not to fall over the fermenter.

When Maria regained consciousness, a black figure was leaning over her. Hands as hard as shackles clutched her throat. Maria grabbed his fists, trying to scream, but the sounds were muted.

In a remote corner of her mind, something her grandfather had taught her came back in fragments. Maria planted her feet on the ground and thrusted her hips, hard. The figure destabilised and the grip loosened. Maria was able to think with some clarity. She took advantage of the momentary distraction to look for something she could use; she groped around until her fingers found the cold glass of the pipette. Without thinking, she directed it at her attacker’s eyes.

The attacker grabbed the pipette, shattering it. With a muted grunt, he grabbed Maria by the neck, and it was as if a garrotte choked her. She thought of Ilya, of Trás-os-Montes, of all the white winters she would miss.

A spark stirred up the fog her mind had become. The smell of must mixed with ethanol seeped into the air. The lightness took her by surprise, as a staggering Lurdes pushed the intruder against fermenter 45, using a burning rag. Maria closed her eyes against the ensuing swarm of flames and glass.

When the screams stopped, all that was left was the delicate sound of an intact glass tube rolling across the floor.