Unlimited Roquefort

Illustration by Kelly Freas

The room was somberly but richly furnished. The Permanent Secretary studied it with unabashed fascination. A Persian rug lay on the floor and a cheerful fire crackled in the hearth. Several thousand books lined one wall, while an up-to-date computer system occupied the opposite corner. The Permanent Secretary raised his glass of whiskey-soda and sketched a toast to the tall, gray-haired man who stood considering him.

“To being a free man, Colonel Christie.”

“Twenty years to the day.” The Colonel’s voice was thick with emotion. He raised his own glass and drank deeply. “I thought I’d been left here to rot.”

“No, no, my dear chap. That was never the intention. And it was as much for your own safety as for anything else.”

Outside, the muted tones of Big Ben tolled mournfully through the late afternoon fog. “Safety? From angry mobs deprived of their cuppas? I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.” The Colonel gestured at his books and computer and uttered a weary sigh. “At least I had twenty years of uninterrupted calm to educate myself about all sorts of interesting things. Most, most interesting. Someday I’ll have to tell you about them.”

The Permanent Secretary nodded absently. “Yes, amazing what sort of information and courses one can get off the computer these days, isn’t it? Oxford, Cambridge, even Harvard, I believe.”

“But not the Sorbonne,” said Colonel Christie with a hint of asperity to his clipped tones.

“No, not the Sorbonne,” agreed the Permanent Secretary. “Things haven’t changed that much.” He set down his cut-crystal glass. “Well, my dear chap, shall we be on our way?”

“You have another tenant you’re anxious to move in?”

“Into here? The Tower of London?” The Permanent Secretary raised an astonished eyebrow. “My dear chap, you’ve been the only guest the Tower has seen in the last forty years!”

“How on earth did you track me down here?” marvelled the other occupant of the pub’s beer-ringed table.

“Amazing what information one can find on computers these days,” murmured Colonel Christie.

“Particularly if one used to be head of Intelligence.”

“Not head. Just… highly placed.”

“Discreet to the very end,” said Henry Hollilockes with unconcealed bitterness. “Even after what they did to you—and to me. And to me, Colonel Christie, to me! Working on your orders!” His mild brown eyes flashed with long-smoldering passions.

The Colonel nodded sympathetically. “I admit things didn’t work out quite as one had anticipated. And that innocent bystanders inadvertently got hurt.”

“Hurt, ha! How would you like to have spent twenty years of your life testing mayonnaise formulas for a chain of supermarkets out here in deepest Wales? Me, a biochemist with not one but two Chittering Prizes—and the offer of a professorship at Cambridge!” Small and round-shouldered, Henry Hollilockes gulped his beer and slammed the mug to the slimy table. He gestured at the mean surroundings of the squalid Welsh pub as if to encompass the last two decades of his life. “How do you like this, Colonel Christie?”

“Not too much, my dear fellow. And that, in fact, is precisely the reason I’ve gone to some considerable effort to track you down.” The Colonel leaned closer, lowered his voice. “How would you like to help me take a measure of… shall we say, justly merited retribution upon those responsible for our sufferings of the last twenty years?”

“Retribution?” Henry Hollilockes blinked at the Colonel wonderingly.

“Yes. I’ve spent the better part of two decades educating myself about all sorts of things, some of them in your own field of expertise. I am now, I think I may honestly say, the functional equivalent of a Ph.D in microbiology, with a specialty in molds and fungi. Nothing to equal your own learning and experience, of course, but enough to give me the basis for a few most interesting ideas. Most interesting indeed, my dear Hollilockes.” Colonel Christie’s gray eyes suddenly glittered with an intensity that his acquaintances of an earlier life would have found both unfamiliar and deeply disturbing. “The most interesting of these ideas center upon a microorganism with which you yourself might be familiar from your dinner table—the Penicillium roquefortii.”

“France,” muttered Colonel Christie, turning a disdainful eye to the rocky wastelands that stretched away in every direction, “La belle bloody France!” Forty-five miles to the northwest of the Mediterranean city of Montpellier, here la belle France was distinctly unFrancelike, an unexpected vista of arid mountains and mesas that the Colonel thought could easily have been imported from the American Far West. A pitiless Sun burned down from a cloudless blue sky. Colonel Christie tugged uncomfortably at the neckline of his ancient tweed jacket and brushed an errant drop of sweat from his bony nose. “Damned Froggies, why can’t they do things like everyone else?”

The Colonel had ample cause for discontent.

Two decades earlier, his Minister had indicated by a discreet series of hints and murmurs over afternoon tea that England’s obstreperous Gallic neighbor was becoming entirely too big for its breeches and might usefully be taken down a peg or two.

Colonel Christie had attacked the project with his usual imagination and elan. What, he had asked himself, was the very soul of the French nation? Sex, food, rudeness?

The answer, of course, was wine.

Two months later a highly mutated variation of the fearsome phylloxera louse had been unleased upon France’s vineyards, thereby destroying that country’s single most important industry. The chaos in France had been immediate and absolute—and wholly predictable.

For a few short months Colonel Christie had basked in the glow of his Minister’s approbation. Then the French had—as usual with them—fought back by totally unfair means.

Even now, twenty years later, the Colonel still shuddered at the monstrousness of the unexpected riposte. Using a mutated fungus of their own, the French intelligence service had overnight destroyed the world’s tea supply. Bereft of its life-sustaining beverage, English society had been rent to its very core. Colonel Christie had been removed to his luxurious accommodations in the Tower—and a startlingly reinvigorated France had battled back to its former glory as the greatest power in the world.

No, reflected Colonel Christie, things didn’t always work out as one planned them to. “But this one will,” he muttered aloud, tugging again at his collar and taking a resolute step forward. The entrance to the rocky fortress of Mount Combalou lay just ahead, an enormous doorway through which the largest of lorries could pass with ease. Heart beating noticeably faster, the Englishman quickened his pace.

In the visitor’s reception room the Colonel was given a thick woolen blanket by an amiable Frenchwoman with an impenetrable southern accent. He wrapped it around his shoulders and, with twelve other assorted tourists, began the descent into the four miles of caves and passageways in which the world’s entire supply of Roquefort cheese was produced.

The air was cold and damp as it rose from the depths of the mountain’s subterranean lake through hundreds of fissures and cracks, bearing with it the unique Penicillium roquefortii microorganisms responsible for creating the unmatched perfection of “the cheese of kings and the king of cheeses.” Colonel Christie shivered as the group made its way slowly down through raw limestone walls and rocky grottos, deeper and deeper into the mountain. Eventually they came to an enormous cavern in which hundreds of thousands of plain white cheeses, produced by the farmers of the neighboring wastelands, had been brought to ripen. Stout oak planks stretched up to a ceiling a hundred feet above; here were cheeses in every stage of development, from the creamiest white to the most elaborately veined. Half a dozen silent workers appraised them with loving eyes, individually testing and turning them by hand.

Colonel Christie permitted himself a wintry smile. He had long since realized that he had been absolutely mistaken about that wine business. It was here, deep in the mountains of southern France, that he had found the very soul of this disagreeable nation; it was here that he would take his justly merited revenge.

The Colonel stepped forward as if to examine a particularly choice round of ripening Roquefort. As he did so, he activated the aerosol dispersal system so cunningly concealed within his trousers and walking boots. With an imperceptible hiss, millions of spores of the mutated Penicillium roquefortii created by Henry Hollilockes began to circulate in the air around him. A faint, abstracted smile on his lips, the Colonel moved slowly down the ranks of ripening cheeses, a tiny hissing noise accompanying him as he went.

“You do yourself well here,” observed Henry Hollilockes with even more of his usual bitterness as his eyes ran over the high-ceilinged salon with its stunning view of Green Park.

Colonel Christie shrugged indifferently. “They never stopped paying my salary, you know. Compounded over twenty years, it came to a surprisingly tidy little sum.”

“More than I ever made fabricating new and nastier mayonnaises.”

“I dare say. But that isn’t why I asked you to drop by. Come.” The Colonel led Hollilockes to a gleaming kitchen lined with Italian tile and marble. He opened a restaurant-sized refrigerator. “Look.” Hundreds of pieces of richly veined Roquefort filled the shelves. A loaf of bread and a scattering of fruits and vegetables occupied what little room was left. “I’ve been buying two or three pieces a day all over London for the last two months, ever since we calculated the first of the affected cheeses ought to be reaching the market.”

“Yes,” muttered the biochemist. “I still don’t understand why we haven’t heard anything yet. It ought—”

“Look. There and there and there.”

Henry Hollilockes bent forward to scrutinize a head of lettuce. “Ahhh,” he murmured with profound satisfaction, “so it’s begun at last.”

“You did design it so there’d be a delay, you know, to ensure they’d be distributed all over the world.”

“Yes.” A beatific smile suffused the biochemist’s pinched features. “It’s definitely on the lettuce.”

“And on the orange.”

“And on the grapes.”

“And on the loaf of bread. Where, I wonder,” mused Colonel Christie dreamily, “will it end?”

“Where will it end?” shouted the Prime Minister, his normally ruddy face now a dangerously mottled crimson.

Colonel Christie shrugged. “I see on the telly that it’s already spread across all of southern France and is beginning to work its way north up through the Rhone and Garonne valleys. Anywhere, in fact, where there’s something organic for it to grow on.”

“You mean the whole damned country is about to turn into a piece of bloody Roquefort cheese?”

“Not cheese actually, just a countryside covered with a remarkably nasty blue and green slime.”

“And it grows on everything?”

“Almost everything that’s organic. Though not on human beings, or inside their lungs, for instance. That would have been a trifle near the knuckle to inflict even on Froggies.” Colonel Christie smiled his wintry smile.

“Ah—so even Froggies are human beings: an interesting point of view.” The Prime Minister took a deep breath, as if trying to keep his emotions under control. “But you do realize, my dear fellow, that this… this Roquefort slime of yours has also been found in England!”

“Yes.”

“And in the United States. And South Africa. And Singapore. And Australia. And… and everywhere!”

“Yes. Roquefort has a peculiarly worldwide audience, it appears.” The Colonel pursed his lips austerely. “Never understood its appeal, myself. Always preferred a sound English cheddar.”

“But that’s just the point, you lunatic!” screamed the Prime Minister, unable to restrain himself any longer. “It’s already growing on every cheese in England, even the Cheddars! It is, not to put too fine a point upon it, growing on everything!”

“Yes,” agreed Colonel Christie. “That was the intention.”

“Your intention? To cover the entire world in green Roquefort mold?” The Prime Minister’s eyes bulged.

“Only temporarily, Prime Minister.” Colonel Christie cocked his head like an inquisitive bird. “You don’t think I’d destroy the entire planet just to gain retribution for whatever paltry slights might have been paid me in the past?”

The Prime Minister sank bonelessly into the embrace of a deep leather chair. “I don’t know,” he murmured helplessly, “I simply don’t know.”

“Of course not, man,” snapped the Colonel. “I’m not a monster, for heaven’s sake. I simply want what is my due.”

“And what is that?”

“A full pardon for any events that may have transpired twenty years ago, a baronetcy, and, of course, first and foremost, the restoration of our beloved England to her rightful place in the world. The restoration of British manhood to its finest flower, you might say.”

“Of course, of course. What could be easier?” The Prime Minister shook his head in exasperation, certain now that he was harboring a madman. His finger moved toward the button that would summon his guards.

“Exactly. What could be easier? Nothing.” Colonel Christie sighed. “Come, come, Prime Minister, I’m disappointed in you. Do you really think I’d come to waste your time unless I had a specific remedy?”

“A remedy?” The Prime Minister looked up, his mouth sagging. “You mean—”

“Certainly, Prime Minister. The mutated Penicillium roquefortii that is now running rampant around the world was only half out little bag of microbiological tricks. Already we see France reeling under the opprobrium of having released this genocidal mold upon the world. Soon it will be time for—”

“—The other half?” The Prime Minister allowed a desperate hope to take a tentative foothold.

“Exactly: the antidote. One that can easily be disseminated by aerial spraying. It takes effect almost immediately by breaking down the protein in the walls of the cells that constitute the mold. Within three days at the most, all that lovely green slime will dry up and wither away. And life will be back to normal.”

“But—”

Colonel Christie raised a knobby finger and his voice hardened. “Life will be back to normal, I say, for those countries wise enough to have purchased the formulation for the antidote from the world’s sole source.”

“You mean—”

“Exactly: Her Majesty’s government.” Colonel Christie’s eyes narrowed. “It will be interesting to see exactly what concessions you extract from Paris, Prime Minister, in return for preventing that miserable country across the Channel from turning into the world’s largest piece of penicillin mold.”

“The goal, I believe you said, was to strike a blow for British manhood?” The Permanent Secretary pursed his lips.

“Yes,” agreed Colonel Christie. He swirled the remains of his sherry thoughtfully around the bottom of his glass.

“And to regain its rightful place in the world.”

“Yes, that too,” muttered the Prime Minister. of course, did everything I could, went before the United Nations to offer the formula for the most modest royalties, even flew to Paris to negotiate under a flag of truce. Shocking behavior that, even for Froggies.”

“Yes, an outright rejection. Said they’d found their own antidote.”

“Muttered something about being the country of Pasteur and Curie, blast ’em.” The Prime Minister scowled darkly at his empty glass, thrust it out to be refilled by Colonel Christie. “A cheeky lot, even when they’re up to their necks in Roquefort.”

“Were up to their necks, I’m afraid,” said the Permanent Secretary. He sighed. “Their antidote worked even better than they said it would; it not only destroyed Colonel Christie’s surprise de Roquefort, but, as a useful by-product of its withering away, it also seems to be regenerating the ozone depletion in the Earth’s atmosphere.”

“And now it’s all been completely eradicated?” asked Colonel Christie. “Even here in the British Isles?”

“Oh, yes, everywhere. After cleaning up the rest of the world, the French were kind enough to send an entire flotilla of aeroplanes to every last cranny of this sceptered isle. They billed us, of course, in Swiss francs. But Penicillium roquefortii christii is now entirely a thing of the past, even here.”

The Colonel sighed. “Ah, well, such are the vicissitudes of war.”

“Vicissitudes!” The Prime Minister’s scowl deepened. “That’s all you have to say about it, man, about… about the greatest disaster in the history of England?”

Colonel Christie shrugged minutely. “Our antidote did work—at least when we tested it out.” He shrugged again, sipped listlessly at his sherry. “Only, only—”

“Only it sterilized every male in the British Isles when we sprayed it on your say-so, you lunatic!” The Prime Minister’s voice rose to a scream.

“Yes, that was unfortunate, I do admit. Something devilishly subtle about affecting the protein structure of developing spermatozoa, I believe. How was I or Hollilockes to possibly know?”

“No child has been born in the British Isles in the past three and a half months,” said the Permanent Secretary between gritted teeth, “except those conceived overseas. Already the nation’s sperm banks have been completely depleted. France, I believe, has offered to send as much as we need from similar institutions of their own.” He turned cold blue eyes to Colonel Christie. “And, I believe, I saw on this morning’s telly six aeroplane loads of hearty young French volunteers—all of them male—arriving at Heathrow in order to help out with what one of them called ‘la maladie anglaise’.” His stare intensified. “Do you realize, Colonel Christie, that singlehandedly you have wiped out the English race?”

“Ah, yes,” murmured the Colonel, his gaze moving absently around the Tower room he shared with the Prime Minister. Finally it settled on the small teak dining table, “Ah, yes. A pity, that. Tell me, Secretary, do you think you could possibly ask the warder on your way out to send us up a nice piece of Stilton for dinner? Its veins are always so much bluer and tastier than a Roquefort’s, don’t you agree?”

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can read the prior history of this situation in the author’s “Unlimited Warfare,” in our November 1974 issue.