The Lost Island

36

Garza arrived in the lab at a quarter to six, bone-tired and sick to death of dramatic, early-morning confabulations.

Weaver, the tech, looked weary and drawn. But on top of that, he looked tense, unsettled. Brock was standing in a far corner, hands crossed over his chest, equally put out. Glinn sat beside him, motionless, his face betraying nothing.

“The DNA test on the two follicles is complete,” Weaver said, and then seemed to falter.

“Go on, man,” Garza said.

“Remember how I told you my belief that the vellum on this page might be made from human skin?”

Garza nodded.

“It turns out I was wrong.”

“Exactly what I predicted,” said Brock, primly.

“And right.”

Garza said, “Just get to the point.”

The tech took a deep breath. “According to our analysis, the DNA sequences of these hair follicles match up with human DNA about ninety-seven percent. Yet there are significant sequences that do not match up with the human genome.” He looked around the room. “That’s why I say I’m both right and wrong. It’s humanoid. It’s almost human. I mean, it’s one percent less than a chimp-and-human match, but two percent more than, say, orangutan-and-human.” Weaver swallowed, plucked at his collar. He seemed to be downright frightened by the results.

“What rot!” Brock cried. “You’ve had the greasy fingers of unwashed monks turning that page over for a thousand years — no wonder it’s permeated with human DNA.”

“We were very, very careful. And we got the same results from both samples. We took the sample from the binding edge of the page, which presumably was handled less. And we ran controls for contamination. That doesn’t appear to be the case.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Brock retorted. “It’s been bound and rebound many times! There’s human DNA all over it.” He turned to Glinn. “Human skin simply wasn’t used for making vellum. It’s nothing more than animal skin — I would guess pig — that’s been badly contaminated.”

Ignoring Brock, Glinn came forward slightly in his wheelchair. “You say you obtained similar results from both follicles?”

Weaver nodded.

“Almost human.” Garza had to make an effort to keep the skepticism out of his voice. “Weaver, this makes no sense. I’m with Brock. It’s contamination.”

“No hasty conclusions, Mr. Garza,” Glinn said quietly, then turned back to Weaver. “How, exactly, do you check for contamination?”

“We use a standard technique called BLAST — Basic Local Alignment Search Tool.”

“How certain is it?”

“It’s not one hundred percent.”

“There it is,” Garza said, with a wave of his hand, his irritation beginning to crest — especially at Glinn’s solicitous reception of this nonsense.

“Are there other ways to check for contamination?” Glinn asked.

“Well…there’s a new technique we developed for our Swiss client last year, a hybrid version of the BWA-SW algorithm. We could run the sequences through that. Unfortunately, it’s much slower than BLAST.”

“How does it work?” Garza asked.

“The Burrows-Wheeler Aligner. Basically, it’s an algorithm for aligning nucleotide sequences against a referent, with the intent of uncovering any sequence contaminants. The variation we developed can work with longer query sequences, and with a higher toleration for error, than the original.”

“Get started,” Glinn said.

Weaver nodded.

Garza spoke. “While you’re at it, do another run or two on those samples. Let’s see if you get the same results.” This all seemed unnecessary to him — but he knew they’d make no further progress until Glinn himself was satisfied.

“I’d also like to know,” Glinn said quietly, “assuming there is no contamination — what that three percent difference represents.”

“We could try to match it up with the genomes of any other species.”

“Exactly. And see if you can extrapolate from that to see what sorts of anatomical differences those genes might represent. I want to know precisely what kind of creature we’re talking about. What it looks like, what its capabilities are — if we’re indeed dealing with a new hominid species.”

Weaver’s face — already pale — turned a shade paler. No doubt, Garza thought, he was mentally counting up the additional hours of sleep he was about to lose.