Runaway Heart

TWENTY-EIGHT

Dr. Carolyn Adjemenian was a tall woman in her mid-thirties with a pockmarked, narrow face and a spectacular body. Her muscles were etched on tight skin like lines on an anatomy chart. She had blondish hair, grayish eyes, and wore her reading glasses up on her head like a geek tiara.

"Come in," she said after Zimmy did the introductions. The house was a two-bedroom duplex in Santa Monica. Neat lawn, white shutters, a carport.

She led the three of them to her computer room in the guest bedroom. As they were walking down the hall, Herman caught a glimpse of the master. She had turned it into a full gym: free weights, a pull-down lat bar, stacks of heavy plates and pulleys. He wondered where she slept- maybe on the flat bench.

"Sit down," she said as if she were ordering sprinters onto their marks. She sat in front of her computer, booted up, and found a Web site called basic alignment search tool:

BLAST

"We use this Web site in genetics research to identify any unknown DNA sequence," she said. "It has the gene maps for all plant and animal species that scientists have catalogued to date."

While she waited for it to load she turned toward Herman. "Zimmy gave me your decoded encryption. As you may or may not know, DNA is made up of thousands of base-pair genes. There are only four different kinds of proteins that make up a gene. Each protein has its own designated letter: A, C, G, or T. The combination and sequence of these base pairs determine our genetic makeup." She reached behind her and grabbed the printout of what Roland had died for. It contained pages and pages of the same four letters in varying chains and sequences.

ACACACACCAG TGTACCACA TTGATCAG TTCAAGTA

CCAAGGTAT GGATTCAGTCC ACCATGGATTA TTAGAACCTA

CCTTAGC ACCAACCAAG ACACACAGTATA TATCCG

"When I first saw it I knew it had to be a DNA sequence for some animal or plant, so I fed it into the BLAST program to compare this sequence of yours with all the gene maps of species already stored in its databank. It gives you a percentage of homology."

"It does what?" Herman asked.

"It takes your DNA sample and matches it to all others, then tells you what percentage one is to the other." She turned back to her computer and clicked on two icons. "For example, if you put in a chimp and ask BLAST to match its DNA to the gene map of Homo sapiens, this is what you'll get." The BLAST program displayed a percentage: "98.4 percent homology. She pointed to the percentage printed on the screen. "That's how close human DNA is to a chimpanzee's. A chimp is closer to a human genetically than the African elephant is to the Indian elephant. It's hard to believe, but chimps are closer to humans than they are to their ape cousins, like bonobos, or gorillas, or orangutans. So, despite outward appearances, the chimpanzee's closest relative is not any ape species, but us. Some geneticists believe humans are nothing more than a third more developed species of chimpanzee. You with me?"

"Yes," all four of them said at once.

"What comes up on a typical BLAST search is a list from the most homolistic to the least," Dr. Adjemenian continued. "Then if you want to narrow it you can set your search to focus on particular irregularities between species. Those irregularities can also be determined by percentile. A single gene can be a gene-to-gene perfect match between two species, or it can differ by a percentage. Okay?"

"Okay." This time only Herman answered. "We are usually trying to determine the identity of the animal in question," Carolyn went on. "If we recover a DNA sample and we want to know what animal left it, we might run a BLAST search comparing it to a human. If we find that it is 98.4 percent human we know it's a chimp. If it's only 96.4 percent we know it's an orangutan. Still with me?"

"Yeah, I guess," Herman said.

"So… once I got my basic DNA comparison, I set BLAST to asterisk any gene in this map that doesn't match on the over forty thousand genes in this particular base-pair string. I ran a BLAST search on your sample, but it doesn't correspond to any exact species we have here on earth… at least not as far as I can determine."

She looked at them and let this sink in. "It's close, very close. But this genome does not represent any species now in existence."

Jack rubbed his eyes. He hated this more than he hated gang violence or checks bouncing. More than just hating it, he was also terrified of it. Jack didn't mind facing off some murderous asshole like Matasareanu outside a bank in North Hollywood, because at least Emil wore pants and pissed standing up. But aliens? Space monsters? No way. That was not in his emotional zip code.

"Are you saying that this animal, whatever it is, is from somewhere else?" Herman said, creeping up on his next thought like an Apache in the dark. "Are you saying that it's perhaps from some other world… like… well… like from outer space?" He'd finally said it.

Jack shuddered, but Carolyn Adjemenian shook her head, sending her geek tiara flying. She got up and retrieved her glasses. "For God's sake, no!" she laughed.

Herman actually slumped, but Jack was sure as hell relieved.

"No, no," she went on. "It's definitely from this planet, but it's not a pure breed. It's some kind of mixture of species, and since separate species can't interbreed, that means this animal has more than likely been engineered."

That remark hung over them like ripe fruit.

"Basically, it is very close to a chimpanzee, but with some interesting upgrades."

"Upgrades?" Herman leaned in, looking at the gene map on her computer screen, studying it intently.

"To answer the question of what it is exactly, I had to try and isolate the asterisked base pairs… the genes that were different from normal chimp DNA. Then I tried to determine how those genes differed from a chimpanzee's normal DNA and what parts of its body were affected by the change.

"As I said, a chimpanzee is our closest living relative… 98.4 percent of human DNA. We know now that chimps and Homo sapiens basically split into two separate species only about four million years ago. Gorillas, for example, split from us nine million years ago, orangutans split fifteen million years ago. Since the chimpanzee's split with Homo sapiens is so recent, you can see why chimps and humans are almost identical on the DNA scale. In some sequences they are perfectly parallel, in others they differ only slightly."

"Which ones differ?" Herman seemed energized by this new idea.

"Well, chimps don't have the same communication abilities as humans. They have less-developed fine-motor dexterity. They have an opposing thumb like us, but their fingers are longer, designed to walk on their knuckles, so they're less adept with tools. However, chimps are the only animals besides humans who use tools. For instance, a chimp will use a pole to knock down a banana."

"But he can't change the transmission on a Chevy," Jack countered. Susan turned and glared at him, so he decided he'd better keep quiet.

Dr. Adjemenian continued. "Chimps have a different intelligence. They score about like a three-year-old human child on a standard IQ test. But that doesn't mean they're less intelligent than us. It's just that their intelligence is different. If you took the smartest human-Einstein, let's say-and you dropped him in a chimpanzee's natural habitat deep in the Congo, poor old Albert would last about two days." She paused. "So, intelligence is a relative concept. Chimps are stronger than humans and can run much faster over short distances. They have a better sense of smell, but, beyond these, and a few other minor discrepancies, they are far more similar to us than different, with a variation of only one-point-six percent on the entire gene map."

Herman pointed at the computer screen. "This animal we have mapped here is different from a chimp in what way?"

"One difference I found was for neurotransmitters. They signal impulses between neutrons in the brain, which means this animal thinks more like a human than a standard chimp would."

"Fascinating," Herman said, studying the screen. "That neurotransmitter gene had to have been spliced into the chimp zygote," Dr. Adjemenian went on. "It would improve rapidity of brain processing, facilitate nerve growth, as well as dexterity. The genetic engineering would also change various muscle proteins." She paused and looked at them.

Susan picked up the fifty-page gene map. Zimmy went to a chair across the room and sat. Like Jack, he didn't want to hear any of this. He and Jack liked chimps just the way they were.

"Next, I looked at the second asterisked gene, called the Troponin Myglobin gene, which deals with communication. This animal, while it still may not be able to talk, will understand much more than a normal chimp when it comes to human language. Next is the Conexin gene. It's involved with processing sounds, so it's also part of what I see as a communications upgrade. Put it all together and, in essence, the animal we have here has been upgraded from 98.4 percent Homo sapiens to about 99.1."

"What does it look like?"

"Beats me," she said, then she looked at Jack and smiled. "But it's probably not going to buy its clothes at the Gap." Jack smiled back.

"It has fur, probably for warmth, but its face might be more human than chimp-like-maybe a slightly larger head because it has more developed areas in the brain. Its fingers are probably shorter, and it doesn't walk on its knuckles. It might prefer walking upright, yet could still run on all fours. But these are only guesses."

Now they all sat in silence trying to conjure up this beast.

"I have a question, Doctor," Susan said.

"Sure."

"Does this animal really exist, or could this just be some gene map that somebody put together, a hypothetical or virtual animal?"

"Good question," Jack blurted.

"It is a good question," Carolyn Adjemenian agreed. "There is no way anybody could do this without taking a DNA sample from the animal and scanning it. It would be virtually impossible to come up with this by reverse-engineering it. There are things in the genome that would be impossible to make up-like the structure of the coding regions and their connections to one another. Is that clear?"

"No," all of them said at once.

"The answer to your question is: This is legit. Somebody has actually upgraded a chimpanzee and fed the hybrid animal's DNA into the computer to construct this map. But I haven't a clue as to why."

Zimmy didn't have a clue either, but Jack and the Strockmires had been over it all before when this thing was an imaginary, hybrid space alien. Now they were back to

Herman's theory of a genetically engineered monkey-human. A chimera with the strength of ten. A disposable soldier.

Suddenly, Jack heard the same noise he'd heard outside Donna Zimbaldi's apartment-four car doors slamming. Then he caught a glimpse of someone running past the window in a low crouch.