43

San Diego, California

MARCH 28

The title of the international conference, arranged in black plastic letters on the convention center billboard, gave Dicken a brief thrill—brief and very necessary. Nothing much had thrilled him in the good old way of work satisfaction in the past couple of months, but the name of the conference was easily sufficient.

CONTROLLING THE EN-VIRON-MENT: NEW TECHNIQUES TOWARD THE CONQUEST OF VIRAL ILLNESS

The sign was not overly optimistic or off base. In a few more years, the world might not need Christopher Dicken to chase down viruses.

The problem they all faced was that in disease time, a few years could be very long indeed.

Dicken walked just outside the shadow of the center’s concrete overhang, near the main entrance, reveling in the bright sun on the sidewalk. He had not experienced this kind of heat since Cape Town, and it gave him a furnace boost of energy. Atlanta was finally warming, but the cold gripping the East had kept snow on the streets in Baltimore and Bethesda.

Mark Augustine was in town already, staying at the U.S. Grant, away from the majority of the five thousand predicted attendees, most of whom were filling the hotels along the waterfront. Dicken had picked up his convention package—a thick spiral-bound program book with a companion DVD-ROM disk—just this morning to get an early glimpse at the schedule.

Marge Cross would deliver a keynote address tomorrow morning. Dicken would sit on five panels, two of them dealing with SHEVA. Kaye Lang would be on one panel with Dicken, and on seven others beside, and she would deliver a talk before the plenary session of the World Retrovirus Eradication Research Group, held in conjunction with this conference.

The press was already hailing AmericoPs ribozyme vaccine as a major breakthrough. It looked good in a petri dish—very good indeed—but the human trials had not yet begun. Augustine was under considerable pressure from Shawbeck, and Shawbeck was under considerable pressure from the administration, and they were all using a very long spoon to sup with Cross.

Dicken could smell eight different kinds of disaster in the winds.

He had not heard from Mitch Rafelson for several days, but suspected the anthropologist was already in town. They had not yet met, but the conspiracy was on. Kaye had agreed to join them for a talk this evening or tomorrow, depending on when Cross’s people would let her loose from a round of public relations interviews.

They would have to find a place away from prying eyes. Dicken suspected the best place would be right in the middle of everything, and to that end, he carried a second bag with a blank convention badge—”Guest of CDC”—and program book.

Kaye walked through the crowded suite, eyes darting nervously from face to face. She felt like a spy in a bad movie, trying to hide her true emotions, certainly her opinions— though she, herself, hardly knew what to think now. She had spent much of the afternoon in Marge Cross’s suite—rather, her entire floor—upstairs, meeting with men and women representing wholly owned subsidiaries, professors from UCSD, the mayor of San Diego.

Marge had taken her aside and promised even more impressive VIPs near the end of the conference. “Keep bright and shiny,” Cross had told her. “Don’t let the conference wear you down.”

Kaye felt like a doll on display. She did not like the sensation.

She took the elevator to the ground floor at five-thirty and boarded a charter bus to the opener. The event was being held at the San Diego Zoo, hosted by Americol.

As she stepped down from the bus in front of the zoo, she breathed in a scent of jasmine and the soil-rich wetness of evening sprinklers. The line at the entrance booth was busy; she queued up at a side gate and showed the guard her invitation.

Four women dressed in black carried signs and marched solemnly in front of the zoo entrance. Kaye saw them just before she was allowed in; one of their signs read OUR BODIES, OUR DESTINY: SAVE OUR CHILDREN.

Inside, the warm twilight felt magical. She had not had anything like a vacation in over a year, the last time with Saul. Everything since had been work and grief, sometimes both together.

A zoo guide took charge of a group of AmericoFs guests and gave them a brief tour. Kaye spent a few seconds watching the pink flamingos in their wading pool. She admired four centenarian sulfur-crested cockatoos, including the zoo’s current mascot, Ramesses, who regarded the departing crowds of day visitors with sleepy indifference. The guide then showed them to a side pavilion and court surrounded by palm trees.

A mediocre band played forties’ favorites under the pavilion as men and women carried food on paper plates and found tables.

Kaye stopped by a buffet table laden with fruit and vegetables, picked up a generous helping of cheese, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower, and pickled mushrooms, then ordered a glass of white wine from the no-host bar.

As she was taking money from her purse to pay for the wine, she spotted Christopher Dicken out of the corner of her eye. He had in tow a tall, rugged-looking man dressed in a denim jacket and faded gray jeans and carrying a scuffed leather satchel under his arm. Kaye took a deep breath, fumbled her change back into her purse, and turned in time to meet Dicken’s stealthy glance, hi return, she gave him a surreptitious tilt of her head.

Kaye could not help giggling as Dicken pulled aside a canvas and they strolled casually away from the closed court. The zoo was nearly empty. “I feel so sneaky,” she said. She still carried her glass of wine, but had managed to ditch the plate of vegetables. “What in the world do we think we’re doing?”

There was little conviction in Mitch’s smile. She found his eyes disconcerting—at once boyish and sad. Dicken, shorter and plumper, seemed more immediate and accessible, so Kaye focused on him. He carried a gift-shop bag and with a flourish pulled from it a folding map of the world’s largest zoo.

“We may be here to save the human race,” Dicken said. “Subterfuge is justified.”

“Damn,” Kaye said. “I’d hoped it was something more sensible. I wonder if anyone’s listening?”

Dicken swept his hand toward the low arches of the Spanish-style reptile house as if waving a magic wand. Only a few straggling tourists remained on the zoo grounds. “All clear,” he said.

“I’m serious, Christopher,” Kaye said.

“If the FBI is bugging Komodo dragons or men in Hawaiian shirts, then we’re goners. This is the best I can do.”

Loud shrieks from howler monkeys greeted the last of the daylight. Mitch led them down a concrete path through a tropical rain forest. Footlights illuminated the pathway and misters sprayed the air over their heads. The charm of the setting held them all for the moment, and no one was willing to break the spell.

To Kaye, Mitch seemed all legs and arms, the kind of man who did not fit indoors. His silence bothered her. He turned, regarded her with his steady green eyes. Kaye noticed his shoes: hiking boots, the thick-treaded soles well-worn.

She smiled awkwardly and Mitch returned her smile.

“I’m out of my league,” he said. “If anybody’s going to start our conversation, it should be you, Ms. Lang.”

“But you’re the man with the revelation,” Dicken said.

“How much time do we have?” Mitch asked.

“I’m free for the rest of the evening,” Kaye said. “Marge wants us in tow by eight tomorrow morning. There’s going to be an Americol breakfast.”

They descended an escalator into a canyon and paused by a cage occupied by two Scottish wildcats. The domestic-looking brindled felines paced back and forth, grumbling softly in the dusk.

“I’m the odd man out here,” Mitch said. “I know very little microbiology, barely enough to get along. I stumbled onto something wonderful, and it almost ruined my life. I’m disreputable, known to be eccentric, a two-time loser in the science game. If you were smart, you wouldn’t even be seen with me.”

“Remarkably candid,” Dicken said. He raised his hand. “Next. I’ve chased diseases over half the Earth. I have a feel for how they spread, what they do, how they work. From almost the very beginning, I suspected I was tracking something new. Up until just recently, I’ve tried to lead a double life, tried to believe two contradictory things at once, and I can’t do it anymore.”

Kaye finished her glass of wine with one gulp. “We sound like we’re working through a twelve-step program,” she said. “All right. My turn. I’m an insecure female research scientist who wants to be kept out of all the dirty little details, so I cling to anybody who’ll give me a place to work and protect me...and now it’s time to be independent and make my own decisions. Time to grow up.”

“Hallelujah,” Mitch said.

“Go, sister,” Dicken said.

She looked up, ready to be angry, but they were both smiling in just the right way, and for the first time in many months—since the last good time with Saul—she felt she was among friends.

Dicken reached into the shopping bag and produced a bottle of merlot. “Zoo security could bust us,” he said, “but this is the least of our sins. Some of what needs to be said may only be said if we’re properly drunk.”

“I gather you two have shared ideas already,” Mitch said to Kaye as Dicken poured the wine. “I’ve tried to read everything I could just to get ready for this, but I’m still way behind.”

“I don’t know where to begin,” Kaye said. Now that they were more relaxed, the way Mitch Rafelson looked at her— direct, honest, assessing her without being obvious about it—stirred something she had thought almost dead.

“Begin with where you two met,” Mitch said.

“Georgia,” Kaye said.

“The birthplace of wine,” Dicken added.

“We visited a mass grave,” Kaye said. “Though not together. Pregnant women and their husbands.”

“Killing the children,” Mitch said, his eyes suddenly losing their focus. “Why?”

They sat at a plastic table near a closed refreshment stand, deep in the shadows of a canyon. Brown and red roosters pecked through the bushes beside the asphalt road and beige concrete walkways. A big cat coughed and snarled in its cage and the sound echoed eerily.

Mitch pulled a file folder from his small leather satchel and laid the papers neatly on the plastic table. “This is where it all comes together.” He laid his hand on two papers on the right. “These are analyses made at the University of Washington.

 Wendell Packer gave me permission to show them to you. If somebody blabs, however, we could all be in deep zoo-doo.”

“Analyses of what?” Kaye asked.

“The genetics of the Innsbruck mummies. Two sets of tissue results from two different labs at the University of Washington. I gave tissue samples of the two adults to Wen-dell Packer. Innsbruck, as it turned out, sent a set of samples of all three mummies to Maria Konig in the same department. Wendell was able to make comparisons.”

“What did they find?” Kaye asked.

“That the three bodies were really a family. Mother, father, daughter. I knew that already—I saw them all together in the cave in the Alps.”

Kaye frowned in puzzlement. “I remember the story. You went to the cave at the request of two friends...Disturbed the site...And the woman with you took the infant in her backpack?”

Mitch looked away, jaw muscles tight. “I can tell you what actually happened,” he said.

“That’s all right,” Kaye said, suddenly wary.

“Just to straighten things out,” Mitch insisted. “We need to trust each other if we’re going to continue.”

“Then tell me more,” Kaye said.

Mitch went through the whole story in brief. “It was a mess,” he concluded.

Dicken watched them both intently, arms folded.

Kaye used the pause to look through the analyses spread on the plastic table top, making sure the papers did not get stained by leftover catsup. She studied the results of carbon 14 dating, the comparisons of genetic markers, and finally, Packer’s successful search for SHEVA.

“Packer says SHEVA hasn’t changed much in fifteen thousand years,” Mitch said. “He finds that astonishing, if they’re junk DNA.”

“They’re hardly junk,” Kaye said. “The genes have been conserved for as much as thirty million years. They’re constantly refreshed, tested, conserved...Locked up in tight-packed chromatin, protected by insulators...They have to be.”

“If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell you both what I think,” Mitch said, with a touch of boldness and shyness Kaye found both puzzling and appealing.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“This was an example of subspeciation,” he said. “Not extreme. A nudge to a new variety. A modern-type infant born to late-stage Neandertals.”

“More like us,” Kaye said.

“Right. There was a reporter named Oliver Merton in Washington state a few weeks ago. He’s investigating the mummies. He told me about fights breaking out at the University of Innsbruck—” Mitch looked up and saw Kaye’s surprise.

“Oliver Merton?” she asked, frowning. “Working for NatureT

“For the Economist, at the time,” Mitch said.

Kaye turned to Dicken. “The same one?”

“Yeah,” Dicken said. “He does science journalism, some political reporting. Has one or two books published.” He explained to Mitch. “Merton started a big ruckus at a press conference in Baltimore. He’s dug pretty deeply into Americol’s relationship with the CDC and the SHEVA matter.”

“Maybe it’s two different stories,” Mitch said.

“It would have to be, wouldn’t it?” Kaye asked, looking between the two men. “We’re the only ones who have made a connection, aren’t we?”

“I wouldn’t be at all sure,” Dicken said. “Go on, Mitch. Let’s agree that there is a connection before we get fired up about interlopers. What were they arguing about in Innsbruck?”

“Merton says they’ve connected the infant to the adult mummies—which Packer confirms.”

“It’s ironic,” Dicken said. “The UN sent some of the samples from Gordi to Konig’s lab.”

“The anthropologists at Innsbruck are pretty conservative,” Mitch said. “To actually come across the first direct evidence of human speciation...” He shook his head in sympathy. “I’d be scared if I were them. The paradigm doesn’t just shift—it snaps in two. No gradualism, no modern Darwinian synthesis.”

“We don’t need to be so radical,” Dicken said. “First of all, there’s been a lot of talk about punctuations in the fossil record—millions of years of steady state, then sudden change.”

“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 SHE VA in their tissues.”

“Urn,” 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 tny 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 rinding 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 punch 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. Voila. 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 ofplague?”

“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.

“Grad students in the university of life,” Dicken said.

“Got ya,” the cabby said solemnly.

“Now we’ve earned this.” Dicken took the third bottle of wine from the bag and pulled out his Swiss Army knife.

“Hey, not in the cab,” the cabby said sternly. “Not unless I go off duty and you share.”

They laughed. “In the hotel, then,” Dicken said.

“I’ll be drunk,” Kaye said, and shook her hair down around her eyes.

“We’ll have an orgy,” Dicken said, and then flushed bright pink. “An intellectual orgy,” he added sheepishly.

“I’m worn out,” Mitch said. “Kaye’s got laryngitis.”

She gave a small squeak and grinned.

The cab pulled up in front of the Serrano Hotel, just southwest of the convention center, and let them out.

“My treat,” Dicken said. He paid the fare. “Like the wine.”

“All right,” Mitch said. “Thanks.”

“We need some sort of conclusion,” Kaye said. “A prediction.”

Mitch yawned and stretched. “Sorry. Can’t think another thought.”

Kaye watched him through her bangs: the slim hips, the jeans tight around his thighs, the square rugged face with its single line of eyebrow. Not beautifully handsome, but she heard her own chemistry, a low breathy singing in her loins, and it cared little about that. The first sign of the end of winter.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Christopher?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Dicken said. “We’re saying the interim daughters are not diseased, they’re a stage of development we’ve never seen before.”

“And what does that mean?” Kaye asked.

“It means the second-stage babies will be healthy, viable. And different, maybe just a little,” Dicken said.

“That would be amazing,” Kaye said. “What else?”

“Enough, please. We can’t possibly finish it tonight,” Mitch said.

“Pity,” Kaye said.

Mitch smiled down on her. Kaye offered him her hand and they shook. Mitch’s palm was dry as leather and rough with calluses from long years of digging. His nostrils dilated as he was near her, and she could have sworn she saw his irises grow large, as well.

Dicken’s face was still pink. He slurred his words slightly. “We don’t have a game plan,” he said. “If there’s going to be a report, we have to get all our evidence together—and I mean all of it.”

“Count on it,” Mitch said. “You have my number.”

“I don’t,” Kaye said.

“Christopher will give it to you,” Mitch said. “I’ll be around for a few more days. Let me know when you’re available.”

“We will,” Dicken said.

“We’ll call,” Kaye said as she and Dicken walked toward the glass doors.

“Interesting fellow,” Dicken said on the elevator.

Kaye agreed with a small nod. Dicken was watching her with some concern.

“Seems bright,” he continued. “How in the world did he get in so much trouble?”

In her room, Kaye took a hot shower and crawled into bed, exhausted and more than a little drunk. Her body was happy. She twisted the sheets and blanket around her head and rolled on her side, and almost immediately, she was asleep.