Fatalis

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The DNA results presented Grand with an impossibility. They showed the presence of metabolic activity in the hair samples, most actively in the gene that regulates the chemical breakdown of glucose. That ruled out the hairs having been part of a Chumash paintbrush. But the test did not produce a match in the database of mammals indigenous to Southern California. It was possible and not unprecedented that an animal from outside the area had escaped from a zoo, circus, or private collection. Either no one had noticed it or was afraid to acknowledge it for fear of lawsuits or insurance claims.

It also meant that he would have to run a lengthy series of tests comparing the DNA of the hair to the DNA of all the mammals that were in the database.

Before Grand did that, though, he decided to have a look at the other test results. What he found there might help to narrow the search. As he loaded the data from the radiocarbon dating, Hannah asked Grand to explain how the dating process worked.

"Carbon 14 is a more massive form of carbon, one that's radioactive and loses electrons as it decays," he told her. "Since carbon 14 is created by interaction between solar radiation and earth's atmosphere, it becomes integrated in carbon dioxide and is found in all living things. When something dies and the carbon in the system is no longer replenished, the carbon 14 already present begins to decay. Because the rate of decay is constant, we're able to accurately determine when living tissue last absorbed carbon 14."

"Understood," Hannah said. "Then how do you determine the age of nonliving things like rocks and pottery and the Shroud of Turin?"

"All rocks, minerals, and other nonliving matter contain different kinds of radioactive material such as uranium, thorium, potassium-40," Grand said. "Those decay into different states which are also measurable."

"I see," Hannah said. She plucked several fries from the bag and ate them. "So we could test these fries using radiocarbon dating because they were once alive."

"That's right." Grand smiled at Hannah. "At least, you're assuming they were. You have to read the fine print at a place like Chris's Crinkles."

"What do you mean?" Hannah said.

"The last time I went to the movies with Rebecca they had something they called 'buttery topping' for the popcorn and a 'frozen dairy product' where they used to have custard-"

"Are you saying that these may be fake spuds?"

"It wouldn't surprise me."

Hannah shrugged and ate several more fries. "You could be right. But Chris Sheehy is a local businessperson and an advertiser, so I've got to patronize her place. Anyway, who knows? Maybe next week one of your scientific colleagues will find out that eating dead things with carbon 14 is bad for us. Potassium-40 may be all the rage."

Grand smiled as the results of the radiocarbon daring began to appear on the monitor. While he read the data his smile evaporated. "It can't be," he said.

"What?"

Grand finished the file, then scrolled back and began reading the figures again slowly.

"What can't be?" Hannah pressed.

"The radiocarbon dating results," Grand said. "They say these hair samples are nearly eleven thousand years old."

"You're joking," Hannah said. "But according to the DNA findings the hairs came from a living creature," Hannah said.

"They did," Grand replied.

"Is there any way something could have contaminated your samples, like microbes or germs?" Hannah asked. "Maybe they were mistaken for signs of life in the hair."

"That can't happen at the DNA level," Grand said. "The tests Tami ran take apart the hair itself. There's no way of mistaking that for a microbe."

"Well, something's obviously wrong," Hannah said. "And if the DNA tests are foolproof-"

"Then there must be a mistake in the age," Grand said. "I'm going to check the DNA analysis. The tests also give us a chemical breakdown. There may be something in the hair, a chemical, mineral, or radioactive element that could have skewed the radiocarbon result."

The fan in the computer hummed quietly as Grand asked the computer to identify elements and chemicals that were present in the hair. There was nothing unusual. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur, and various salts.

Grand brought up the proportions of organic materials and other compounds. When those were on-screen he compared them with elements and compounds found in the hair of local bobcats, gray wolves, foxes, elks, field mice, and rabbits. He wasn't trying to determine that the hairs had come from one of those animals, only that the ratios were relatively similar.

They were, with two exceptions.

"The average water content of the other fur samples is 68.7 percent," the scientist said as he read the ratios. "The hair samples I brought in have an elevated saturation level of 87.6 percent."

"That sounds pretty high," Hannah said.

"Yes, but explainable. The hairs were probably submerged at some point down in that cavern. What I don't understand is this other figure."

"Which is?"

"Carbon dioxide," Grand said. "The random fur samples have levels that are an average of 300 percent higher than the hairs I found in the stalagmite. That shouldn't be. The air my creature breathed shouldn't have contained such low percentages unless-"

He stopped.

"Unless what?" Hannah asked.

"No. There's got to be a mistake," the scientist said as he went on-line to the UCSB Web site and accessed the Biological Sciences database.

"What are you doing?" Hannah asked.

"I'm asking the computer to give me the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide eleven thousand years ago and today," he said as he typed. "If the older figures correspond to the CO₂ levels found in the hair samples, it will corroborate the date the radiocarbon test gave us."

"In which case we have an eleven-thousand-year-old specimen with reliable DNA findings that tell us the specimen is alive," Hannah said.

"It's impossible, but that's pretty much what we'll have."

"I don't think I'll be running that information in tomorrow's paper," Hannah said. "I wonder if Gearhart's crime lab gave him the same results on the hair samples."

"That's a good question," Grand said. "If they did, that could be one reason he's being so tight-lipped. He doesn't want to look foolish either."

"After we've checked this out, maybe I should tell him what we've found," Hannah said. "See if that opens him up a little, maybe fills in a few missing pieces for him."

The scientist nodded and sat back.

As the computer worked on finding the data he tried to think of explanations that might reconcile the findings. The only thing he could come up with was that one or the other of the tests had somehow been compromised. If that were true, then the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide eleven thousand years ago could not be in the same proportion as the ratios the DNA test found in the hair samples. Otherwise, the tests would prove one another to be correct.

"How do we know what earth's atmospheric levels were eleven thousand years ago?" Hannah asked.

"From studying ancient ice," Grand said. "Scientists have taken thousands of deep core samples from ice in both the north and south polar regions. They've analyzed air trapped in bubbles in the ice and found a steady increase in carbon dioxide levels from prehistory to now."

"Increased why?"

"Mostly due to volcanic activity," Grand said. "Volcanoes pour massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They also caused a greenhouse effect that was probably what ended the Ice Age and caused the spread of deserts and the destruction of countless ancient forests."

"So human burning of fossil fuels wasn't the initial cause of global warming?" Hannah said.

"No. In fact," Grand said, "some scientists believe that humankind may actually be helping the planet. By keeping it warm enough, we may have prevented the Ice Age from returning."

"Do you believe that?"

Before he could answer, the figures appeared on the screen. Grand and Hannah both looked at the monitor.

"This is incredible," Grand said. "Eleven thousand years ago there were eight parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere compared to twenty-five parts per million now."

"That's an increase of 300 percent," Hannah said with open astonishment. "Just like the hair samples."

Grand felt the same galvanizing frustration he did when he tried to understand the Chumash paintings from the passageway. The material was there, the answers were there, true and immutable. He simply didn't know how to interpret what he was seeing.

Maybe he wasn't seeing because he was looking too closely. Perhaps he needed to put the data in a larger picture.

"If the DNA test results can't be wrong and the age of the hairs has been confirmed, what's next?" Hannah asked.

Grand ignored the raspy voice of Professor Wildhorn as he walked around the department asking if anyone had seen his chair. He leaned forward and began typing again.

"What's next," Grand said, "is we take a step back. In math, a point doesn't tell you much. But two points define a line. We need to draw a line from our sample to another one just like it."

"Word association," Hannah said.

"Pardon?"

"Never mind," Hannah said. "What do we have to do?"

Grand went back to the UCSB Web site and opened a comparative research program on the Biological Sciences Web site. He dropped the results of the DNA test into it.

"I'm having the computer search every biological file it has access to until it finds a match for the DNA," Grand said. "This could take five minutes or five hours, depending on how lucky we get. If you have other things you need to do I can phone you."

"No," Hannah said. "Getting this story is all I need to do. So unless you mind-"

"Not at all," he said.

The computer hummed, the breakers broke, and Grand suddenly felt warm behind the ears. The space between him and Hannah was small and the silence made it seem even closer. Intimate.

He reached for his hamburger and unwrapped it. As he did he noticed Hannah absently work a finger through the top of her blouse. She was rubbing what looked like a piece of jewelry.

"What have you got there?" Grand asked. He had to say something.

"Excuse me?" Hannah said.

He pointed at her neck.

"Oh." She smiled and pulled out a tarnished pair of dog tags. "My good-luck token."

"Were you in the military?"

"No. They belonged to my dad, in Korea. See how they're dented?"

She leaned closer to show him.

"I see," he said.

There was a moment, just an instant, when everything else in the room and in Grand's brain disappeared. He blanked on everything but the smell of the woman and the soft light on her throat. He felt warm and probably looked red all along the jaw. He hoped she didn't notice.

Hannah sat back. "The dog tags deflected a piece of shrapnel the day my father got there," she went on. "So every day after that, when he woke up, the first thing he did was hold them in his fist and pray for Life and good luck. After the war he put them away until my junior year of college."

"What happened then?" he asked, the heat fading quickly from his neck and face.

"My dad read some of my stuff in the college paper," Hannah said. "He was convinced that one day someone I wrote about would try to kill me."

"So he gave them to you as a good-luck token."

"I thought it was a little over the top," Hannah said, "but I appreciated the thought. I mean, I didn't see my life being quite like a war zone-though I did start touching them for good luck."

"And now it's a habit."

"I do it without even thinking. I guess it's weird."

"Not at all," Grand said."Totems and amulets are as old as civilization. They can signify a unity with something- with your father, for example-or they can symbolize the protection of a deity."

"So I'm actually very cutting-edge New Age," she said. "Do you have anything like that? A rabbit's foot or a lucky squeezed penny with a picture of something on it?"

"No, but my father used to have this little ritual he did. He drove a bus in Los Angeles and every time he got in, he'd step up with his left foot first. When I asked him why he did that, he said the left was his heart side and it always made him think of life, his family, and how precious both of them were."

Hannah looked at him. "Now that's sweet."

"My father's a great guy," Grand said. "He used to love talking to the regulars on his route. He's totally outgoing. My mother liked staying home, taking care of the house, and listening to opera. But as different as they were, somehow they just fit together."

"And they love you."

He nodded.

"What was the best thing they ever did for you?" she asked.

He looked at her. "That's an odd question. It's a good one, but strange."

"So what's the answer?"

He smiled. "The best thing they ever did was to take me to the Grand Canyon when I was six years old," he said. "When I was a kid I loved to collect comic books. I loved the art and I couldn't get enough of the most dramatic characters: Thor, the Spectre, the Flash, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man. Other kids were into kickball and dodgeball, but I was overweight and I didn't enjoy them."

"You were overweight?" she said.

"Yeah."

"My God," she said. "You could be a poster child for fitness."

"That also came from what my folks did for me," he said. "The kids at school started calling me Grand Canyon because I was so fat. So I just shut myself off from everyone. Comic books became my universe and my mother and father decided that probably wasn't a good thing. So during the summer between first grade and second, my parents decided to show me that the Grand Canyon wasn't just big, it was majestic and wonderful. They packed me and my younger sister Victoria in a car and we drove out there. I'd grown up knowing the mountains and the ocean but I have never imagined actually seeing anything like the awesome alien worlds and colorful subterranean realms I'd read about in comic books."

"That must have blown you away."

"Completely," he said. "Not only that, but the people who lived there loved the same things I did. They made animal fetishes-dolls of frogs, turtles, bears, and other creatures that were supposed to have magical powers. They made little corn maidens-witches that lived since the beginning of time. And some of the inhabitants even carved and painted their own forms of comic books on cave walls and mountainsides, pictures of great hunters and extraordinary animals. I came home from there with a new sense of my name." He smiled. "I also came back with an armload of books, postcards, Brownie Starflash photographs, and a purpose. The mythology of ancient peoples-the stories of real superheroes-became my new passion. I got my pilot's license years later, but I never flew as high as I did on that trip."

Hannah was smiling. "Thanks for telling me that."

Grand smiled back. "Thanks for asking. I didn't mean to get carried away."

"You didn't. And I liked it. Do you still see your folks much?"

"On Christmas and their anniversary, mostly," Grand said. "They moved to Cornwall, England, which is where my sister lives and my mother's family came from. They have a little farmhouse there. They don't raise anything but they love it there. What about you? Do you see your parents?"

Hannah's smile twisted. "I'm expected to make the pilgrimage back to Rhode Island every few months. My mom keeps setting me up with this yacht-guy and that stock broker-guy because she's the only one at the club who doesn't have grandchildren and I don't have any siblings. My dad wants to make sure I'm still alive and that the newspaper isn't being printed in red ink."

"Is he one of your investors?" Grand asked.

"No, he's my only investor," Hannah said. "Nineteenth-century railroad money is underwriting my-"

Hannah stopped speaking as the computer pinged. Grand swung to the keyboard.

"What happened?" Hannah asked.

"I'll be damned, it found a match," Grand said.

"After just eight minutes?" She jangled the dog tags. "Thanks, Dad. What is it?"

Grand stopped the search and clicked on the highlighted file.

"It's in paleoanthropology, my department," he said. "That's why it came up so quickly."

"Doesn't your department only deal with ancient things?" Hannah asked. "Extinct races and animals?"

"Yes," Grand said.

The file opened and the database DNA map was displayed side by side with the original DNA fingerprint that Grand had given the computer. The database map was from a sample that Grand had discovered himself in Mexico, the only fossil minutely detailed enough to yield a complete DNA fingerprint.

He stared at the two sets for a second, the stacks of horizontal dashes that signified genetic sequences. The loci-the individual patterns-were identical in both samples. Everything was right.

Yet everything was wrong.

The sea seemed louder, the air somehow different as he tried to process what the search had turned up. Even the suggestion of it being true did, for an instant, make Grand feel as though two points in time had somehow folded back on themselves, like a ribbon being twisted round. The campus, thousands of years, all of human knowledge seemed to vanish for that instant.

The moment itself passed quickly, though the aftershocks stuck in his mind like the remnants of a nightmare.

Or a vision?

"So what is it?" Hannah pressed. "What does it say?"

What does it say? Grand thought. No one would play a trick like this and risk expulsion. And though he'd have tests run again, they were rarely wrong.

"Jim?" Hannah pressed.

"According to this, the hair I found belongs to a living animal that's been extinct for at least eleven thousand years."

"What animal?"

"Smilodon fatalis," Grand said. He looked at her. "A saber-toothed cat."