“Change over a million or a hundred thousand years, in some cases maybe as little as ten thousand years,” Mitch said. “Not overnight. The implications are damned scary to any scientist. But the markers don’t lie. And the baby’s parents had SHEVA in their tissues.”
“Um,” Kaye said. Again, the howler monkeys let loose with continuous musical whoops, filling the night air.
“The female was injured by something sharp, perhaps a spear point,” Dicken said.
“Right,” Mitch said. “Causing the late-term infant to be born either dead or very near death. The mother died shortly after, and the father . . .” His voice hitched. “Sorry. I don’t find it easy to talk about.”
“You sympathize with them,” Kaye said.
Mitch nodded. “I’ve been having weird dreams about them.”
“ESP?” Kaye asked.
“I doubt it,” Mitch said. “It’s just the way my mind works, putting things together.”
“You think they were pushed out of their tribe?” Dicken asked. “Persecuted?”
“Someone wanted to kill the woman,” Mitch said. “The man stayed with her, tried to save her. They were different. They had something wrong with their faces. Little flaps of skin around their eyes and nose, like masks.”
“They were shedding skin? I mean, when they were alive?” Kaye asked, and her shoulders shuddered.
“Around the eyes, the face.”
“The bodies near Gordi,” Kaye said.
“What about them?” Dicken asked.
“Some of them had little leathery masks. I thought it might have been . . . some bizarre product of decay. But I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Dicken said. “Let’s focus on Mitch’s evidence.”
“That’s all I have,” Mitch said. “Physiological changes substantial enough to place the infant in a different subspecies, all at once. In one generation.”
“This sort of thing had to have been going on for over a hundred thousand years before your mummies,” Dicken said. “So populations of Neandertals were living with or around populations of modern humans.”
“I think so,” Mitch said.
“Do you think the birth was an aberration?” Kaye asked.
Mitch regarded her for several seconds before saying “No.”
“It’s reasonable to conclude that you found something representative, not singular?”
“Possibly.”
Kaye lifted her hands in exasperation.
“Look,” Mitch said. “My instincts are conservative. I feel for the guys in Innsbruck, I really do! This is weird, totally unexpected.”
“Do we have a smooth, gradual fossil record leading from Neandertals to Cro-Magnons?” Dicken asked.
“No, but we do have different stages. The fossil record is usually far from smooth.”
“And . . . that’s blamed on the fact that we can’t find all the necessary specimens, right?”
“Right,” Mitch said. “But some paleontologists have been at loggerheads with the gradualists for a long time now.”
“Because they keep finding leaps, not gradual progression,” Kaye said. “Even when the fossil record is better than it is for humans or other large animals.”
They sipped from their glasses reflectively.
“What are we going to do?” Mitch asked. “The mummies had SHEVA. We have SHEVA.”
“This is very complicated,” Kaye said. “Who’s going to go first?”
“Let’s all write down what we believe is actually happening.” Mitch reached into his satchel and brought out three legal pads and three ballpoint pens. He spread them out on the table.
“Like schoolkids?” Dicken asked.
“Mitch is right. Let’s do it,” Kaye said.
Dicken pulled a second bottle of wine from the gift shop bag and uncorked it.
Kaye held the cap of her pen between her lips. They had been writing for ten or fifteen minutes, switching pads and asking questions. The air was getting chilly.
“The party will be over soon,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Mitch said. “We’ll protect you.”
She smiled ruefully. “Two half-drunk men dizzy with theories?”
“Exactly,” Mitch said.
Kaye had been trying to avoid looking at him. What she was feeling was hardly scientific or professional. Writing down her thoughts was not easy. She had never worked this way before, not even with Saul; they had shared notebooks, but had never looked at each other’s notes in progress, as they were being written.
The wine relaxed her, took away some of the tension, but did not clarify her thinking. She was hitting a block. She had written:
Populations as giant networks of units that both compete and cooperate, sometimes at the same time. Every evidence of communication between individuals in populations. Trees communicate with chemicals. Humans use pheromones. Bacteria exchange plasmids and lysogenic phages.
Kaye looked at Dicken, writing steadily, crossing out entire paragraphs. Plump, yes, but obviously strong and motivated, accomplished; attractive features.
She now wrote:
Ecosystems are networks of species cooperating and competing. Pheromones and other chemicals can cross species. Networks can have the same qualities as brains; human brains are networks of neurons. Creative thinking is possible in any sufficiently complicated functional neural network.
“Let’s take a look at what we’ve got,” Mitch suggested. They exchanged notebooks. Kaye read Mitch’s page:
Signaling molecules and viruses carry information between people. The information is gathered by the individual human in life experience; but is this Lamarckian evolution?
“I think this networking stuff confuses the issue,” Mitch said.
Kaye was reading Dicken’s paper. “It’s how all things in nature work,” she said. Dicken had scratched out most of his page. What remained was:
Chase disease all my life; SHEVA causes complex biological changes, unlike any disease ever seen. Why? What does it gain? What is it trying to do? What is the end result? If it pops up once every ten thousand or hundred thousand years, how can we defend that it is, in any sense, a separate organic concern, a purely pathogenic particle?
“Who’s going to buy that all things in nature function like neurons in a brain?” Mitch asked.
“It answers your question,” Kaye said. “Is this Lamarckian evolution, inheritance of traits acquired by an individual? No. It’s the result of complex interactions of a network, with emergent thoughtlike properties.”
Mitch shook his head. “Emergent properties confuse me.”
Kaye glared at him for a moment, both challenged and exasperated. “We don’t have to posit self-awareness, conscious thought, to have an organized network that responds to its environment and issues judgments about what its individual nodes should look like,” Kaye said.
“Still sounds like the ghost in the machine to me,” Mitch said, making a sour face.
“Look, trees send out chemical signals when they’re attacked. The signals attract insects that prey on the bugs that attack them. Call the Orkin man. The concept works at all levels, in the ecosystem, in a species, even in a society. All individual creatures are networks of cells. All species are networks of individuals. All ecosystems are networks of species. All interact and communicate with one another to one degree or another, through competition, predation, cooperation. All these interactions are similar to neurotransmitters crossing synapses in the brain, or ants communicating in a colony. The colony changes its overall behavior based on ant interactions. So do we, based on how our neurons talk to each other. And so does all of nature, from top to bottom. It’s all connected.”
But she could see Mitch still wasn’t buying it.
“We have to describe a method,” Dicken said. He looked at Kaye with a small, knowing smile. “Make it simple. You’re the thinker on this one.”
“What packs the pun
ch in punctuated equilibrium?” she asked, still irritated at Mitch’s density.
“All right. If there’s a mind of some sort, where’s the memory?” Mitch asked. “Something that stores up the information on the next model of human being, before it’s turned loose on the reproductive system.”
“Based on what stimulus?” Dicken asked. “Why acquire information at all? What starts it? What mechanism triggers it?”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Kaye said, sighing. “First, I don’t like the word mechanism.”
“All right, then . . . organ, organon, magic architect,” Mitch said. “We know what we’re talking about here. Some sort of memory storage in the genome. All the messages have to be kept there until they’re activated.”
“Would it be in the germ-line cells? The sex cells, sperm and egg?” Dicken asked.
“You tell me,” Mitch said.
“I don’t think so,” Kaye said. “Something modifies a single egg in each mother, so it produces an interim daughter, but it’s what’s in the daughter’s ovary that may produce a new phenotype. The other eggs in the mother are out of the loop. Protected, not modified.”
“In case the new design, the new phenotype is a bust,” Dicken said, nodding agreement. “Okay. A set-aside memory, updated over thousands of years by . . . hypothetical modifications, somehow tailored by . . .” He shook his head. “Now I’m confused.”
“Every individual organism is aware of its environment and reacts to it,” Kaye said. “The chemicals and other signals exchanged by individuals cause fluctuations in internal chemistry that affect the genome, specifically, movable elements in a genetic memory that stores and updates sets of hypothetical changes.” Her hands waved back and forth, as if they could clarify or persuade. “This is so clear to me, guys. Why can’t you see it? Here’s the complete feedback loop: the environment changes, causing stress on organisms—in this case, on humans. The types of stress alter balances of stress-related chemicals in our bodies. The set-aside memory reacts and movable elements shift based on an evolutionary algorithm established over millions, even billions of years. A genetic computer decides what might be the best phenotype for the new conditions that cause the stress. We see small changes in individuals as a result, prototypes, and if the stress levels are reduced, if the offspring are healthy and many, the changes are kept. But every now and then, when a problem in the environment is intractable . . . long-term social stress in humans, for example . . . there’s a major shift. Endogenous retroviruses express, carry a signal, coordinate the activation of specific elements in the genetic memory storage. Voilà. Punctuation.”
Mitch pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lord,” he said.
Dicken frowned deeply. “That’s too radical for me to swallow all at once.”
“We have evidence for every step along the way,” Kaye said hoarsely. She took another long swallow of merlot.
“But how does it get passed along? It has to be in the sex cells. Something has to be passed along from parent to child for hundreds, thousands of generations before it gets activated.”
“Maybe it’s zipped, compacted, in shorthand code,” Mitch said.
Kaye was startled by this. She looked at Mitch with a little chill of wonder. “That’s so crazy it’s brilliant. Like overlapping genes, only more devious. Buried in the repeats.”
“It doesn’t have to carry the whole instruction set for the new phenotype . . .” Dicken said.
“Just the parts that are going to be changed,” Kaye said. “Look, we know that between a chimp and humans, there’s maybe a two percent difference in the genome.”
“And different numbers of chromosomes,” Mitch said. “That makes a big difference ultimately.”
Dicken frowned and held his head. “God, this is getting deep.”
“It’s ten o’clock,” Mitch said. He pointed to a security guard walking down the middle of the road through the canyon, clearly heading in their direction.
Dicken threw the empty bottles into a trash can and returned to the table. “We can’t afford to stop now. Who knows when we’ll be able to get together again?”
Mitch studied Kaye’s notes. “I see your point about change in the environment causing stress on individual humans. Let’s get back to Christopher’s question. What triggers the signal, the change? Disease? Predators?”
“In our case, crowding,” Kaye said.
“Complex social conditions. Competition for jobs,” Dicken added.
“Folks,” the guard called out as he drew close. His voice echoed in the canyon. “Are you with the Americol party?”
“How’d you guess?” Dicken asked.
“You’re not supposed to be out here.”
As they walked back, Mitch shook his head dubiously. He wasn’t going to give either of them any breaks: a real hard case. “Change usually occurs at the edge of a population, where resources are scarce and competition is tough. Not in the center, where everything’s cushy.”
“There are no ‘edges,’ no boundaries for humans anymore,” Kaye said. “We cover the planet. But we’re under stress all the time just to keep up with the Joneses.”
“There’s always war,” Dicken said, suddenly thoughtful. “The early Herod’s outbreaks might have occurred just after World War II. Stress of a social cataclysm, society going horribly wrong. Humans must change or else.”
“Says who? Says what?” Mitch asked, slapping his hip with his hand.
“Our species-level biological computer,” Kaye said.
“There we go again—a computer network,” Mitch said dubiously.
“THE MIGHTY WIZARD IN OUR GENES,” Kaye intoned in a deep, fruity announcer’s voice. Then, marking the air with her finger, “The Master of the Genome.”
Mitch grinned and jabbed his finger back at her. “That’s what they’re going to say, and then they’ll laugh us out of town.”
“Out of the whole damned zoo,” Dicken said.
“That’ll cause stress,” Kaye said primly.
“Focus, focus,” Dicken insisted.
“Screw that,” Kaye said. “Let’s go back to the hotel and open the next bottle.” She swung her arms out and pirouetted. Damn, she thought. I’m showing off. Hey, guys, I’m available, look at me.
“Only as a reward,” Dicken said. “We’ll have to take a cab if the bus is gone. Kaye . . . what’s wrong with the center? What’s wrong with being in the middle of the human population?”
She dropped her arms. “Every year more and more people . . .” She stopped herself and her expression hardened. “The competition is so intense.” Saul’s face. Bad Saul, losing and not accepting it, and good Saul, enthusiastic as a child, but still painted with that indelible marker that said, You’re going to lose. There are tougher, smarter wolves than you.
The two men waited for her to finish.
They walked toward the gate. Kaye wiped her eyes quickly and said, in as steady a voice as she could manage, “Used to be one or two or three people would come up with a brilliant, world-shaking idea or invention.” Her voice grew stronger; now she felt resentment and even anger, on behalf of Saul. “Darwin and Wallace. Einstein. Now, there’s a hundred geniuses for every challenge, a thousand people competing to topple the castle walls. If it’s that bad in the sciences, up in the stratosphere, what’s it like down in the trenches? Endless nasty competition. Too much to learn. Too much bandwidth crowding the channels of communication. We can’t listen fast enough. We’re left standing on our tiptoes all the time.”
“How is that any different from fighting a cave bear or a mammoth?” Mitch asked. “Or from watching your kids die of plague?”
“They result in different sorts of stress, affecting different chemicals, maybe. We’ve long since given up on growing new claws or fangs. We’re social. All our major changes are pointed in the direction of communication and social adaptation.”
“Too much change,” Mitch said thoughtfully. “Everyone hates it, but we have
to compete or we end up out on the streets.”
They stood in front of the gate and listened to the crickets. Back in the zoo, a macaw squawked. The sound carried all over Balboa Park.
“Diversity,” Kaye murmured. “Too much stress could be a sign of impending catastrophe. The twentieth century has been one long, frenetic, extended catastrophe. Let loose with a major change, something stored up in the genome, before the human race fails.”
“Not a disease, but an upgrade,” Mitch said.
Kaye looked at him again with the same brief chill. “Precisely,” she said. “Everyone travels everywhere in just hours or days. What gets triggered in a neighborhood is suddenly spread all over the world. The Wizard is overwhelmed with signals.” She stretched out her arms again, more restrained, but hardly sober. She knew Mitch was looking at her, and Dicken was watching them both.
Dicken peered up the drive beside the broad zoo parking lot, trying to find a cab. He saw one making a U-turn several hundred feet away and thrust out his hand. The cab pulled up at the loading zone.
They climbed in. Dicken took the front seat. As they drove, he turned to say, “All right, so some stretch of DNA in our genome is patiently building up a model of the next type of human. Where is it getting its ideas, its suggestions? Who’s whispering, ‘Longer legs, bigger brain case, brown eyes are best this year?’ Who’s telling us what’s handsome and what’s ugly?”
Kaye spoke rapidly. “The chromosomes use a biological grammar, built into the DNA, a kind of high-level species blueprint. The Wizard knows what it can say that will make sense for an organism’s phenotype. The Wizard includes a genetic editor, a grammar checker. It stops most nonsense mutations before they ever get included.”
“We’re off into the wild blue yonder here,” Mitch said, “and they’ll shoot us down in the first minute of any dogfight.” He whipped his hands through the air like two airplanes, making the cabby nervous, then dramatically plunged his left hand into his knee, crumpling his fingers. “Scrunch,” he said.
The cabby regarded them curiously. “You folks biologists?” he asked.