Relic

= 37 =

An explosive sneeze rattled beakers and dislodged dried plant specimens in the Museum’s auxiliary botanical lab.

“Sorry,” Kawakita apologized, sniffling. “Allergies.”

“Here’s a tissue,” Margo said, reaching into her carryall. She’d been listening to Kawakita’s description of his genetic Extrapolator program. It’s brilliant, she thought. But I’ll bet Frock supplied most of the theory behind it.

“Anyway,” Kawakita said, “you start with gene sequences from two animals or plants. That’s the input. What you get is an extrapolation—a guess from the computer of what the evolutionary link is between the two species. The program automatically matches up pieces of DNA, compares like sequences, then figures out what the extrapolated form might be. As an example, I’ll do a test run with chimp and human DNA. What we should get is a description of some intermediate form.”

[261] “The Missing Link,” Margo nodded. “Don’t tell me it draws a picture of the animal, too?”

“No!” Kawakita laughed. “I’d get a Nobel Prize if it could do that. What it does instead is give you a list of morphological and behavioral features the animal or plant might possess. Not definite, but probable. And not a complete list, of course. You’ll see when we finish this run.”

He typed a series of instructions, and data began flowing across the computer screen: a rapid, undulating progression of zeros and ones. “You can turn this off,” said Kawakita. “But I like to watch the data download from the gene sequencer. It’s as beautiful as watching a river. A trout stream, preferably.”

In about five minutes the data stopped and the screen went blank, glowing a soft blue. Then the face of Moe, from the Three Stooges, appeared, saying through the computer’s speaker: “I’m thinking, I’m thinking, but nothing’s happening!”

“That means the program’s running,” Kawakita said, chuckling at his joke. “It can take up to an hour, depending on how far apart the two species are.”

A message popped on the screen:

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 3.03.40 min.

“Chimps and humans are so close—they share ninety-eight percent of the same genes—that this one should be fairly quick.”

A light bulb suddenly popped on the screen over Moe’s head.

“Done!” said Kawakita. “Now for the results.”

He pressed a key. The computer screen read:

FIRST SPECIES:

Species: Pan troglodytes

Genus: Pan

[262] Family: Pongidae

Order: Primata

Class: Mammalia

Phylum: Chordata

Kingdom: Animalia

SECOND SPECIES:

Species: Homo sapiens

Genus: Homo

Family: Hominidae

Order: Primata

Class: Mammalia

Phylum: Chordata

Kingdom: Animalia

Overall Genetic Match: 98.4%

“Believe it or not,” said Kawakita, “the identification of these two species was made solely on the genes. I didn’t tell the computer what these two organisms were. That’s a good way to show unbelievers that the Extrapolator isn’t just a gimmick or a kludge. Anyway, now we get a description of the intermediate species. In this case, as you said, the Missing Link.”

Intermediate form morphological characteristics:

Gracile

Brain capacity: 750cc

Bipedal, erect posture

Opposable thumb

Loss of opposability in toes

Below average sexual dimorphism

Weight, male, full grown: 55 kg

[263] Weight, female, full grown: 45 kg

Gestation period: eight months

Aggressiveness: low to moderate

Estrus cycle in female: suppressed

The list went on and on, growing more and more obscure. Under “osteology,” Margo could make out almost nothing.

Atavistic parietal foramina process

Greatly reduced iliac crest

10-12 thoracic vertebrae

Partially rotated greater trochanter

Prominent rim of orbit

Atavistic frontal process with prominent zygomatic process

That must mean beetle browed, thought Margo to herself.

Diurnal

Partially or serially monogamous

Lives in cooperative social groups

“Come on. How can your program tell something like this?” Margo asked, pointing to monogamous.

“Hormones,” said Kawakita. “There’s a gene that codes for a hormone seen in monogamous mammal species, but not in promiscuous species. In humans, this hormone has something to do with pair bonding. It isn’t present in chimps, who are notoriously promiscuous animals. And the fact that the female’s estrus cycle is suppressed—you also see that only in relatively monogamous species. The program uses a whole arsenal of tools—subtle AI algorithms, fuzzy logic—to interpret [264] the effect of whole suites of genes on the behavior and look of a proposed organism.”

“AI algorithms? Fuzzy logic? You’re losing me,” Margo said.

“Well, it really doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know all the secrets, anyway. What it boils down to is making the program think more like a person than a normal computer would. It makes educated guesses, uses intuition. That one trait, ‘cooperative,’ for example, is extrapolated from the presence or absence of some eighty different genes.”

“That’s all?” Margo said jokingly.

“No,” Kawakita replied. “You can also use the program to guess at a single organism’s size, shape, and behavior by entering the DNA for one creature instead of two, and disabling the extrapolation logic. And assuming the funding holds up, I plan to add two other modules for this program. The first will extrapolate back in time from a single species, and the second will extrapolate forward. In other words, we’ll be able to learn more about extinct creatures of the past, and guess at beings of the future.” He grinned. “Not bad, huh?”

“It’s amazing,” said Margo. She feared her own research project seemed puny by comparison. “How did you develop it?”

Kawakita hesitated, staring at her a little suspiciously. “When I first started working with Frock, he told me he was frustrated by the spottiness of the fossil record. He said he wanted to fill in the gaps, learn what the intermediate forms were. So I wrote this program. He gave me most of the rule tables. We started testing it with various species. Chimps and humans, as well as various bacteria for which we had a lot of genetic data. Then an incredible thing happened. Frock, the old devil, was expecting it, but I wasn’t. We compared the domesticated dog with the hyena, and what we got was not a smoothly intermediate species, but a bizarre life form, totally different from either dog or hyena. This happened with a [265] couple of other species pairs, too. You know what Frock said to that?”

Margo shook her head.

“He just smiled and said, ‘Now you see the true value of this program.’ ” Kawakita shrugged. “You see, my program vindicated Frock’s theory of the Callisto Effect by showing that small changes in DNA can sometimes produce extreme changes in an organism. I was a little miffed, but that’s the way Frock works.”

“No wonder Frock was so anxious that I use this program,” Margo said. “This can revolutionize the study of evolution.”

“Yeah, except nobody is paying any attention to it,” said Kawakita bitterly. “Anything connected with Frock these days is like the kiss of death. It’s really frustrating to pour your heart and soul into something, and then just get ignored by the scientific community. You know, Margo, between you and me, I’m thinking of dumping Frock as an adviser and joining Cuthbert’s group. I think I’d be able to carry much of my work over with me. You might want to consider it yourself.”

“Thanks, but I’ll stick with Frock,” Margo said, offended. “I wouldn’t have even gone into genetics if it weren’t for him. I owe him a lot.”

“Suit yourself,” said Kawakita. “But then, you might not even stay at the Museum, right? At least, that’s what Bill Smithback tells me. But I’ve invested everything in this place. My philosophy is, you don’t owe anyone but yourself. Look around the Museum: look at Wright, Cuthbert, the whole lot. Are they out for anyone but themselves? We’re scientists, you and I. We know about survival of the fittest and ‘nature red in tooth and claw.’ And survival applies to scientists, too.”

Margo looked at Kawakita’s glittering eyes. He was right in a way. But at the same time, Margo felt that human beings, having figured out the brutal laws of nature, could perhaps transcend some of them.

[266] She changed the subject. “So the G.S.E. works the same way with plant DNA as with animal DNA?” “Exactly the same,” Kawakita replied, returning to his businesslike manner. “You run the DNA sequencer on two plant species, and then download the data into the Extrapolator. It’ll tell you how closely the plants are related, and then describe the intermediate form. Don’t be surprised if the program asks questions or makes comments. I added a lot of little bells and whistles here and there while I was developing my artificial intelligence chops.”

“I think I’ve got the idea,” said Margo. “Thanks. You’ve done some amazing work.”

Kawakita winked and leaned over. “You owe me one now, kid.”

“Anytime,” said Margo. Kid. Owing him one. She disliked people who talked like that. And when Kawakita said it, he meant it.

Kawakita stretched, sneezed again. “I’m off. Gotta grab some lunch, then go home and pick up my tux for the party tonight. I wonder why I even bothered to come in today—everybody else is home preparing for tonight. I mean, look at this lab. It’s deserted.”

“Tux, eh?” said Margo. “I brought my dress with me this morning. It’s nice, but it’s not a Nipon original or anything.”

Kawakita leaned toward her. “Dress for success, Margo. The powers that be take a look at some guy wearing a T-shirt, and even though he’s a genius they can’t visualize him as Director of the Museum.”

“And you want to be Director?”

“Of course,” said Kawakita, surprised. “Don’t you?”

“What about just doing good science?”

“Anybody can do good science. But someday I’d like a larger role. As Director, you can do a lot more for science than some researcher fiddling in a dingy lab like this. Today it’s just not enough to do outstanding [267] research.” He patted her on the back. “Have fun. And don’t break anything.”

He left, and the lab settled into silence.

Margo sat for a moment, motionless. Then she opened up the folder with the Kiribitu plant specimens. But she couldn’t help thinking there were more important things to be done. When she’d finally reached Frock on the phone, and told him about what little she’d found in the crate, he had grown very quiet. It was as if, suddenly, all the fight had gone out of him. He’d sounded so depressed, she hadn’t bothered to tell him about the journal and its lack of new information.

She looked at her watch: after one o’clock. The DNA sequencing of each Kiribitu plant specimen was going to be time-consuming, and she had to complete the sequencing before she could use Kawakita’s Extrapolator. But as Frock had reminded her, this was the first attempt to do a systematic study of a primitive plant classification system. With this program, she could confirm that the Kiribitu, with their extraordinary knowledge of plants, had actually classified them biologically. The program would allow her to come up with intermediate plants, hypothetical species whose real counterparts might still be found in the Kiribitu rain forest. At least, that was Frock’s intention.

To sequence DNA from a plant, Margo had to remove part of each specimen. After a lengthy exchange of electronic mail that morning, she had finally been given permission to take 0.1 gram from each specimen. It was just barely enough.

She stared at the delicate specimens, smelling faintly of spice and grass. Some of them were powerful hallucinogens, used by the Kiribitu for sacred ceremonies; others were medicinal and quite possibly of great value to modern science.

She picked up the first plant with tweezers, slicing off the top portion of the leaf with an X-Acto knife. In a mortar and pestle, she ground it up with a mild enzyme [268] that would dissolve the cellulose and lyse the cells’ nuclei, releasing the DNA. She worked swiftly but meticulously, adding the appropriate enzymes, centrifuging the result and performing a titration, then repeating the process with other plants.

The final centrifuging took ten minutes, and while the centrifuge vibrated in its gray metal case, Margo sat back, her mind wandering. She wondered what Smithback was doing in his new role as Museum pariah. She wondered, with a small thrill of fear, whether Mrs. Rickman had discovered the missing journal. She thought about what Jörgensen had said, and about Whittlesey’s own description of his last days on earth. She imagined the old woman pointing a withered finger at the figurine in the box, warning Whittlesey about the curse. She imagined the setting: the ruined but overgrown by vines, the flies droning in the sunlight. Where had the woman come from? Why had she run off? Then she imagined Whittlesey taking a deep breath, entering that dark hut of mystery for the first time ...

Wait a minute, she thought. The journal had said they encountered the old woman before entering the deserted hut. And yet, the letter she found wedged in the lid of the crate clearly stated that Whittlesey discovered the figurine inside the hut. He didn’t enter the but until after the old woman ran away.

The old woman was not looking at the figurine when she cried out that Mbwun was in the crate! She must have been looking at something else in the crate and calling it Mbwun! But nobody had realized that, because they hadn’t found Whittlesey’s letter. They’d only had the journal for evidence, so they’d assumed Mbwun was the figurine.

But they were wrong.

Mbwun, the real Mbwun, wasn’t the figurine at all. What had the woman said? Now white man come and take Mbwun away. Beware, Mbwun curse will destroy you! You bring death to your people!

[269] And that’s just what had happened. Death had come to the Museum. But what inside the crate could she have been referring to?

Grabbing the notebook from her carryall, she quickly reconstructed a list of what she had found in Whittlesey’s crate the day before:

Plant press with plants

Blow darts with tube Incised disk (found in the hut)

Lip plugs

Five or six jars with preserved frogs and salamanders (I think?)

Bird skins

Flint arrowheads and spear points

Shaman’s rattle

Manta

What else? She rummaged in her handbag. The plant press, disc, and shaman’s rattle were still there. She laid them on the table.

The damaged shaman’s rattle was interesting, but far from unusual. She’d seen several more exotic specimens in the Superstition exhibition.

The disk was obscure. It showed some kind of ceremony, people standing in a shallow lake, bending over, some with plants in their hands, baskets on their backs. Very odd. But it certainly didn’t seem to be an object of veneration.

The list wasn’t helpful. Nothing inside the crate had looked remotely like a devil, or whatever else could inspire such terror in an old woman.

Margo carefully unscrewed the small, rusty plant press, its screws and plywood holding the blotter paper in place. She eased it open and lifted off the first sheet.

It held a plant stem and several small flowers. Nothing she had ever seen before, but not particularly interesting at first glance.

[270] The next sheets in the press contained flowers and leaves. It was not, Margo thought, a collection made by a professional botanist. Whittlesey was an anthropologist, and he had probably just picked these specimens because they looked showy and unusual. But why would he collect them at all? She went through all the specimens, and in the back found the note she was looking for.

“Selection of plants found in overgrown abandoned garden near hut (Kothoga?) on September 16, 1987. May be cultivated species, some may also be invasive after abandonment.” There was a little drawing of the overgrown plot, showing the location of the various plants. Anthropology, thought Margo, not botany. Still, she respected Whittlesey’s interest in the relationship the Kothoga had to their plants.

She continued her inspection. One plant caught her eye: it had a long fibrous stem, with a single round leaf at the top. Margo realized it was some kind of aquatic plant, similar to a lily pad. Probably lived in an area of floods, she thought.

Then she realized that the incised disk found in the but showed the very same plant. She looked at the disk more closely: it depicted people harvesting these very plants from the swamp in a ceremony of sorts. The faces on the figures were twisted, full of sorrow. Very strange. But she felt satisfied to have made the connection; it might make a nice little paper for the Journal of Ethnobotany.

Putting the disk aside, she reassembled the press and screwed it down tight. A loud beeping sounded: the centrifuge was finished, the material prepared.

She opened the centrifuge and slid a glass rod into the thin layer of material at the bottom of the test tube. She carefully applied it to the waiting gel, then eased the gel tray into the electrophoresis machine. Her finger moved to the power switch. Now for another half-hour wait, she thought.

[271] She paused, her finger still on the switch. Her thoughts kept returning to the old woman and the mystery of Mbwun. Could she have been referring to the seed pods—the ones that resembled eggs? No, Maxwell had taken those back himself. They weren’t in Whittlesey’s crate. Was it one of the frogs or salamanders in jars, or one of the bird skins? That seemed an unlikely locus for the son of the devil himself. And it couldn’t have been the garden plants, because they were hidden in the plant press.

So what was it? Was the crazy old woman ranting about nothing?

With a sigh, Margo switched on the machine and sat back. She replaced the plant press and the incised disk in her carryall, brushing away a few packing fibers clinging to the press, packing fibers from the crate. There were additional traces inside her handbag. Yet another reason to clean the damn thing out.

The packing fibers.

Curious, she picked one up with the tweezers, laid it on a slide, and placed it under the stereo-zoom. It was long and irregular, like the fibrous vein of a tough-stemmed plant. Perhaps it had been pounded flat by Kothoga women for household uses. Through the microscope, she could see the individual cells gleaming dully, their nuclei brighter than the surrounding ectoplasm.

She thought back to Whittlesey’s journal. Hadn’t Whittlesey mentioned specimen jars being broken, and his need to repack the crate? So, in the area of the deserted hut, they must have thrown out the old packing material, which had become soaked in formaldehyde, and repacked the crate with material found lying near the abandoned hut. Fibers prepared by the Kothoga, perhaps; probably for weaving into coarse cloth or for the production of rope.

Could the fibers have been what the woman was referring to? It seemed impossible. And yet, Margo [272] couldn’t help a little professional curiosity about it. Had the Kothoga actually cultivated the plant?

She plucked out a few fibers and dropped them in another mortar, added a few drops of enzyme, and ground them up. If she sequenced the DNA, she could use Kawakita’s program to at least identify the plant’s genus or family.

Soon, the centrifuged DNA from the fibers was ready for the electrophoresis machine. She followed her usual procedure, then switched on the current. Slowly, the dark bands began forming along the electrified gel.

A half hour later, the red light on the electrophoresis machine winked out. Margo removed the gel tray and began recording the position of the dots and bands of migrated nucleotides, typing her results into the computer.

She punched in the last position, instructed Kawakita’s program to search for matches with known organisms, directed the output to the printer, and waited. Finally, the pages began scrolling out.

At the top of the first sheet, the computer had printed:

Species: Unknown. 10% randomized genetic matches with known species.

Genus: Unknown

Family: Unknown

Order: Unknown

Class: Unknown

Phylum: Unknown

Kingdom: Unknown

Cripes, Margo! What did you put in here? I don’t even know if this is an animal or plant. And you won’t believe how much CPU time it took to figure that out!

Margo had to smile. So this was how Kawakita’s sophisticated experiment in artificial intelligence communicated with the outside world. And the results were ridiculous. Kingdom unknown? The damn program couldn’t even tell if it were a plant or an animal. Margo suddenly felt she knew why Kawakita had been reluctant to show her the program in the first place, why it took a call from Frock to get things in motion. Once you strayed out of its known provinces, the program grew flaky.

She scanned the printout. The computer had identified very few genes from the specimen. There were the usual ones common to almost all life: a few respiration cycle proteins, cytochrome Z, various other universal genes. And there were also some genes linked to cellulose, chlorophylls, and sugars, which Margo knew were specific plant genes.

At the waiting prompt, she typed:

How come you don’t even know if it is an animal or plant? I see lots of plant genes in here.

There was a pause.

Didn’t you notice the animal genes in there, too? Run the data through GenLab.

Good point, thought Margo. She dialed up GenLab on the modem and soon the familiar blue logo popped up on the screen. She uploaded the DNA data from the fibers and ran it against their botanical sub-bank. Same results: almost nothing. A few matches with common sugars and chlorophylls.

On an impulse she ran the DNA data through the entire databank.

There was a long pause, and then a flood of information filled the screen. Margo quickly hit a series of [274] keys, instructing the terminal to capture the data. There were numerous matches with a variety of genes she had never heard of.

Logging off GenLab, she fed the data she’d captured into Kawakita’s program, instructing it to tell her what proteins the genes coded for.

A complicated list of the specific proteins created by each gene started to scroll down the screen.

Glycotetraglycine collagenoid

Suckno’s thyrotropic hormone, 2,6 adenosine [gram positive]

1,2,3, oxytocin 4-monoxytocin supressin hormone

2,4 diglyceride diethylglobulin ring-alanine

Gammaglobulin A, x-y, left positive

Hypothalamic corticotropic hormone, left negative

1-1-1 sulphagen (2,3 murine) connective keratinoid, III-IV involution

Hexagonal ambyloid reovirus protein coat

Reverse transcriptase enzyme

The list went on and on. A lot of these seem to be hormones, she thought. But what kind of hormones?

She located a copy of Encyclopedia of Biochemistry that was busily gathering dust on a shelf, dragged it down and looked up glycotetraglycine collagenoid:

A protein common to most vertebrate life. It is the protein that bonds muscle tissue to cartilage.

She flipped through to Suckno’s thyrotropic hormone.

A hypothalamic hormone present in mammals which acts on the pituitary gland.

A terrible thought began to form inside her head. She looked up the next, 1,2,3 oxytocin 4-monoxytocin supressin hormone:

A hormone secreted by the human hypothalamus gland. Its function is not clearly understood. Recent studies have shown that it might regulate levels of testosterone in the bloodstream during periods of high stress. (Bouchard, 1992; Dennison, 1991).

Margo sat back with a start, the book dropping to the floor with a hollow thud. As she picked up the phone, she glanced at the clock. It was three-thirty.