The Merlin Effect

  “Hard to tell. He dove out of sight as soon as he could.”

  “I don’t blame him.”

  Hesitantly, Kate asked, “Do you think he survived?”

  Isabella frowned. “No way to know. It’s possible. It’s also possible that he bled to death, or wound up as food for sharks.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “One thing is certain, though. If you hadn’t come along, he would have surely died. You gave him a chance, albeit a small one.”

  “A lot of good that does for Dad’s project.”

  “You did what you had to do, Kate.” She replaced the petri dish on the table. “And who knows? Perhaps what you did had some hidden virtue to it.”

  “What could be good about destroying the buoy?”

  The woman drew in her breath. “For one thing, you made close contact with one of the gray whales who stay here year round. In fact, it may be the first time that’s happened since the whalers came here and nearly wiped them out a century ago. The grays who migrate to the Arctic seem to have forgiven, or at least forgotten, those days, but the year-round group has avoided human contact entirely. And since they never seem to stray from the whirlpool, it’s been impossible to observe them. All anyone has been able to do is photograph them from a distance and, sometimes, record their mournful songs.”

  “He did sound awfully sad. But I thought that was because he was dying.”

  “No, they’re always like that. I’ve never heard anything like it. So sad, beyond what words can explain.”

  Biting her lip, Kate said, “The worst part is, I really wanted to help Dad on this trip. More than just cooking and doing dishes. I wanted . . . to be his assistant or something. He’s always pulling me out of trouble, like he did at the whirlpool. And look what I’ve done! I’ve ruined everything.”

  “That remains to be seen,” answered Isabella, examining the collection of petri dishes. “What feels like an ending might turn into a beginning.”

  “That sounds nice, but life doesn’t really work that way.”

  Isabella’s mind seemed to drift somewhere else for a moment. After a while she said, “Maybe you’re right. Our sorrows and our joys do stick with us. Especially our sorrows, it seems.” She shook her head, as if trying to banish some unwanted memory.

  Then, motioning for Kate to come nearer, she pointed to one of the petri dishes. “There is another side, though. Do you see this little dish? Only yesterday, I put a single cell in it. Now look at it. Multiplied into thousands of new cells already. All from that first microscopic dot.”

  With a shrug, Kate said, “I don’t get it.”

  Isabella pondered the petri dish for a moment, then tried again. “Something that has always fascinated me about evolutionary biology is that the process never ends. Life keeps growing, changing. Every spiral of DNA is part of the greater spiral of life, a spiral that goes on and on forever. Have you ever thought about that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, to put it another way, you might say all the future lies within the present. In other words, the very first single-celled creatures that appeared in the ocean held in themselves all the possibilities of evolution. They were the simplest life you could imagine, more water than organism. I call them water spirits. And yet they contained the seeds of fish, dinosaurs, and even humans. Small as they were, they had all the power of creation.”

  Kate waved at the little wooden altar. “I thought you believed God created everything.”

  “I do,” she replied. “Like a good Catholic. And I believe in evolution, too. It’s just one of God’s tools to keep life from getting stagnant. Creation is an ongoing process, as I said. And the best part is, you and I are part of it. You still have in yourself all the possibilities of the water spirit.”

  Kate stared at her blankly, then moved to the window.

  “You’re not ready yet to hear this, are you?”

  “I’m ready,” she responded. “I just don’t believe you, that’s all.”

  Isabella moved to the microscope and began sorting through some slides. Finally she came to one that she studied for some time. At length, she exhaled wistfully.

  “What is it?” asked Kate, her curiosity aroused.

  “Come see.”

  Kate peered into the lens, adjusted the focus. “Stars!” she exclaimed. “Stars in a night sky.”

  “Remarkable, isn’t it?” grinned the scientist. “They’re microbes, found in a single drop of seawater. Yet from this perspective, they look as big as a galaxy.”

  Raising her head, Kate said quietly, “You know what I like best about looking at the stars?”

  “Hmmm. How many stars there are?”

  “No. How many spaces there are. All those empty spaces between the stars. That’s where I can imagine traveling for ever and ever. That’s where I can imagine infinity.”

  Isabella gazed thoughtfully at the microscope. “Just as every star is part of creation, so are all the empty spaces between the stars.”

  With a nod, Kate turned toward the window flap. She looked beyond the main tent and the wind generator, to the slate blue bay beyond. Numberless rows of gray waves crisscrossed the expanse, broken only by the occasional burst of white where currents collided. “I’ll never forget the sight of that whale’s tail, all ripped and bloody.” She watched the water again. “I read someplace that the whalers used to harpoon baby whales, but not kill them, so their screams would bring their parents close enough to get harpooned. Is that true?”

  “I’m afraid so. That’s when some gray whales would go wild and try to sink the ships. So whalers called them devilfish and the slaughter began. It was a sorry end to a friendship that started out so nicely.”

  “Nicely?”

  “When the first sailors arrived here on the galleons, the whales were still friendly. Not frightened. The crew of the Resurreccíon was even saved, according to legend, by whales who were swimming nearby.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “That’s the legend. There’s the old ballad that I translated for your father. It talks about that, and a few other things just as strange.”

  Kate moved closer. “Isabella, would you sing it for me? The whole thing?”

  She glanced at the timer on the incubator. “I suppose so. We still have a few minutes left, eh?” She waved away some rebellious hairs. “It goes on forever, but lucky for you, I can’t remember it all.”

  An ancient ship, the pride of Spain, she began, her lilting voice describing the ship’s fateful journey. Only occasionally did she pause, muttering a few Spanish phrases to herself before continuing. All the while Kate listened, engrossed.

  As the tale concluded, Isabella intoned:

  And so today the ship’s at rest,

  Removed from ocean gales,

  Surrounded by a circle strange

  Of ever-singing whales.

  A prophesy clings to the ship

  Like barnacles to wood.

  Its origins remain unknown,

  Its words not understood:

  One day the sun will fail to rise,

  The dead will die,

  And then

  For Merlin’s Horn to find its home,

  The ship must sail again.

  “Magnifico!” Kate clapped heartily. “Magnifico!”

  Isabella bowed in return.

  “Can you do that last part again? The part with the prophesy.”

  She obliged.

  One day the sun will fail to rise,

  The dead will die,

  And then

  For Merlin’s Horn to find its home,

  The ship must sail again.

  “Thanks,” said Kate. “Leaves you wondering, doesn’t it?”

  “A good ballad can do that.” Isabella turned to the incubator. “Time to check on our little Christmas present.”

  “It couldn’t look any worse than that fish itself.”

  On went the sterilized masks and rubber gloves. Carefully removing the petri dish from the in
cubator, Isabella took a small sample and heated it in a water solution. She then carefully mixed it with a substance labeled radioactive precursor. Allowing the mixture to cool, she started draining it through a glass column, injecting new chemicals from time to time.

  Seeing Kate’s puzzled expression, Isabella explained, “Controlling the ion concentration.”

  “That helps a lot.”

  At last, she connected a small meter attached to a photoelectric cell to the glass column. Instantly, the arm of the meter began to quiver, pulsing with a subtle rhythm.

  “What does that mean?” asked Kate through her mask.

  Isabella did not answer. Seemingly oblivious to everything else, she drew a diagram of a spiraling strand of DNA in her journal, making several notations beside it. Then, meticulously, she cleaned and sterilized her equipment. After that she repeated the entire procedure.

  When the meter began bouncing again, recording its invisible quarry, Isabella inspected it closely. Shaking her head, she declared, “This can’t be right.”

  As Kate looked on, the woman cleaned every piece of equipment once more. Methodically, she retraced her steps. For the third time, she connected the meter.

  It bounced again.

  Isabella grabbed her journal and moved to the computer. There she started entering data until the screen filled with letters, numbers, and symbols Kate could not recognize. Her concentration unshakable, Isabella manipulated the information for some time.

  At length, she turned an expressionless face toward Kate. Her voice as calm as the lagoon at dawn, she said simply, “That fish is even more amazing than I thought.”

  VIII: One Out of Three Billion

  Can’t this wait, Isabella?” Jim rubbed his unshaven cheek. “We’re almost ready to try another picture. With any luck at all—”

  “Luck has nothing to do with it,” interrupted Terry, standing in a wilderness of cables sprouting from the back of his computer terminal. He glanced toward the tent flap and pushed his thick glasses higher on his nose. “But we’ll never finish if people insist on interrupting us.”

  Undaunted, Isabella raised the flap to the tent. “If you won’t come to the meeting, the meeting comes to you,” she declared. She strode inside, followed by Kate, who avoided her father’s gaze.

  Terry ignored them. “You talk to her, Jim, while I keep working.” He continued to tinker with the circuitry.

  “Isabella,” pleaded Jim, waving a sheaf of printouts in his hand. “Can’t you save it for later?”

  “No,” she replied firmly. “This could be a lot more important than your picture. Believe me, Jim, it’s worth your time.” She cocked her head at Terry. “And if he wants to miss out on something this big, well, that’s his business.”

  The young geologist looked at her doubtfully. “How big?”

  “Big.”

  “All right,” he grumbled, setting down a pair of tweezers holding a microchip. “This better be good.”

  “Five minutes, no more.” Jim stretched his stiff back, dropped the printouts on his desk, and fell into his chair. Leaning back, he propped one foot on the desk, knocking off a barnacle-encrusted shell that had served as a paperweight.

  As Isabella started to speak, Kate heard the crash of a wave on the shore and the grinding of sand being sucked down into the lagoon. She would miss this place, its many sounds and smells.

  “You know that fish I’ve been looking for? Well, today I found one, a good adult specimen.”

  “So?” demanded Terry impatiently.

  Isabella paid him no heed. “I did a genetic analysis. Did it three times to make sure there was no error. And I found something truly bizarre.”

  She sucked in her breath, weighing her words. “The fish has found a kind of eternal life.”

  Kate glanced at her father, but his eyes were fixed on Isabella.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean . . . it would never have died of old age. Sure, it could still be killed, as it was when it was taken out of the water. But that’s different.”

  “Wait a minute,” protested Terry. “You said it was an adult. How could it have grown to be an adult without growing old?”

  Isabella blew some dangling hairs out of her eyes. “It’s rather strange, I admit. The fish looks like an adult . . . except at the genetic level. I can’t explain it, but something must have happened to make its genetic structure stop deteriorating. Its DNA shows none of the normal decay that occurs over a lifetime. On top of that, it looks exactly like DNA from fish that lived in this area long ago. It’s almost as if the fish . . . became young somehow. And stayed that way.”

  Like the villagers, thought Kate, though she dared not say it aloud.

  “That’s hard to believe,” said Jim.

  “It’s absurd,” declared Terry.

  Isabella faced him. “Any more absurd than gene splicing was before somebody did it? Or X rays? Or television?”

  “Or continental drift,” added Kate.

  “Give me a break,” snarled the young man. “I don’t need geology lessons from you.”

  “Maybe you need something else, then.”

  Jim raised his hand. “Quiet, you two.” He turned to Isabella. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that this fish of yours is not just a modern-day descendant of some ancient species. You’re saying that it’s ancient as an individual. That it has found some way to live on and on, perhaps forever. Is that right?”

  Isabella nodded, as a pair of gulls passed over the tent, screeching loudly. “It’s more than that. This fish is not just frozen in time, stretching its life across centuries without decay. It seems to be constantly renewed. Recreated. Reborn.”

  “But how could that be?” demanded Jim.

  “We’re all ears,” said Terry, fingering a cable.

  “Let me give you a theory. It’s nothing more than a guess at this stage, mind you, but maybe it will help. Have you ever heard of a disease called progeria?”

  No one responded.

  “All right, then. Progeria is a rare genetic disorder that causes premature aging in children. It’s horrible to see. Kids grow old so fast that by the time they’re nine or ten years old, they look like they’re eighty. They develop arthritis, hair loss, bone deterioration, everything. By the time they reach eleven or twelve, they die. And all this happens because one tiny little gene on Chromosome Eight—that’s one gene out of three billion—happens to be in the wrong position.”

  Terry checked his watch. “What’s this got to do with your fish?”

  “Now, it’s been proven that some viruses can carry a gene that can change the regulatory system of the host being. So it’s possible there is some sort of virus or other substance in the water that can rearrange the genetic material of the sea life around here.”

  “In the water?” asked Jim.

  “Why not?” Isabella replied. “We’re only beginning to learn about the strange things that inhabit the sea. You’ve heard about the undersea volcanic vents—smokers. They breed forms of life that can exist at temperatures above three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, that can live off of sulphur instead of light and air. Like nothing else on Earth.”

  “So you’re saying,” pressed Jim, “that something in the water here is altering the genes, causing the aging process to slow down.”

  “Or even stop.”

  “But that would mean that creatures could go on living . . . indefinitely.”

  “That’s right,” said Isabella calmly. “Think about it logically. Germ cells and cancer cells can reproduce endlessly, making them practically immortal. So might it not be possible, just possible, that the right genetic formula could do the same for us?”

  Terry frowned skeptically. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Is it? In some ways, the fish I examined is not so different from you or me. Our own bodies are constantly replacing themselves, aren’t they? Over a seven-year period, every cell in our bodies is replaced. So I suppose you c
ould say that we have some of the same power of renewal. Maybe we just have to learn how to use it better.”

  Jim considered the notion, like a gourmet savoring a rare delicacy. “You know, legend has it that Merlin somehow learned how to stay the same age. He even figured out how to live backwards, growing younger instead of older with time. The bards called him oldest at birth, youngest at death.”

  “Hey,” piped Kate. “Maybe you should call this thing the Merlin effect.”

  For the first time in two days, Jim Gordon smiled at his daughter. He then asked Isabella, “Could this—this Merlin effect of yours also slow down the deterioration of things that aren’t alive, things like wood and cloth and rope?”

  “Perhaps, if they’re made of organic materials.”

  “Now look here,” said Terry, his normally pallid skin flushed with color. “I’ve had about enough of this. Are we talking about science—or hocus-pocus?”

  Isabella studied him with something like pity in her eyes. “For some of us, the more we learn the less we know.”

  “Come on, Isabella! You’re a scientist. This doesn’t stand to reason.”

  “Reason isn’t always enough,” she answered. “As a scientist named Einstein once said, Subtle is the Lord.”

  “Let’s get back to the facts,” insisted Terry. “Couldn’t this fish be just some kind of mutant? A random, isolated case that will never happen again?”

  “Sure,” answered Isabella. “But it’s possible something more is going on here.” She scanned the faces inside the tent, listening to the sloshing and splashing of waves in the lagoon. “Have you ever wondered why this area is so rich in species found nowhere else, or thought to be extinct? Not just fish but crustaceans and porpoises and other things, too. No one, as far as I know, has analyzed their DNA structures, but there is no question now that we should.”

  Kate stopped twirling her braid. “Are you saying,” she asked hesitantly, “that the whales who stay here year round might have been here for ages?”

  “Could be. That whale you saved might even have been around when the Resurreccíon went down.”