Prophet of Bones A Novel

by Ted Kosmatka

  “You requested this meeting, Paul. What can I do for you?” Belshaw leaned back in his chair, his wide hands interlocked behind his head.

  He was in his fifties, a large man, tan and fit. His broad face was relaxed and confident, the face of a man in charge. Farther down the hall, Paul knew, were other offices with light switches and hardwood floors, other administrators in five-thousand-dollar suits—men Paul would recognize on sight, though he’d never been introduced: the big bosses, their names and faces picked up over time the way employees always pick up that kind of information. By osmosis. And if you kept walking down that hall, passing door after door, you’d eventually reach the end, Paul knew, and there would be a final doorway and a final big boss, who was not there most of the time yet maintained an office still, and a private secretary even more beautiful, somehow, than the stunning receptionist.

  “I’d like a transfer,” Paul said.

  The broad face changed. The brows furrowed. “You aren’t happy in sampling anymore?”

  “I’m happy, but I feel I need to move on.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “The fourth floor,” Paul said. “Testing.”

  Belshaw stared at him. He was trying to understand what Paul was really asking.

  “You feel you deserve a raise,” Belshaw said. “I think we can address that to your satisfaction.”

  “That’s not it.” Paul did not offer anything further.

  “Paul,” and here the man paused, gathering his objections. “You do good work. We usually keep field techs in sampling for several years before promoting—”

  “It doesn’t have to be a promotion. You can pay me the same—I don’t care.”

  Again the brows furrowed. This new detail really seemed to confuse him.

  “Are you not happy in bones?”

  “I need a change, that’s all.”

  Finally, leaning forward: “Perhaps there are other adjustments that can be made.”

  “No other adjustment would be adequate.”

  “If it is an issue with travel, I can assure you that we have no intention of sending you out on field assignment until you feel ready. We’re not interested in rushing anything.”

  “I don’t ever want to go into the field again.”

  “I understand that you’ve been through … an ordeal. But I think you’re making a rash decision.”

  “I’m not.”

  “We’d be promoting you above several senior samplers.”

  “You keep calling it that.”

  “It would be a promotion,” Belshaw snapped. Belshaw was used to getting his way. There was a brusqueness in him. Brusqueness was an asset whose value was not to be underestimated in an administrator’s career. Paul had often thought that managers failed or succeeded more on the basis of their temperaments than due to any other factor. But here was a man both smart and brusque. The kind of man for whom “no-nonsense” would doubtless appear no fewer than three times in any quarterly evaluation. The highest possible praise.

  “How much longer were you planning on keeping me in sampling?” Paul asked.

  “How long have you been with the company?”

  “Four years.”

  “Then another three at least.”

  “So your plan was to move me eventually. I’d simply like you to bump that date forward. Keep my pay where it is now.”

  Belshaw leaned back in his chair again, considering Paul across the broad surface of his desk. “Have you talked to your direct supervisor about this?”

  “No.”

  “Why come to me?”

  “Because you can make it happen.”

  “There is an established system in place. Why should we disregard the system and move you ahead of other samplers who’ve put in their time? Why move you to the front of the line?”

  “Because I gave an eye.”

  Belshaw closed his mouth. He looked at Paul for a long time. Paul had said it: the thing, of course, that was always under the surface. Obvious as a black leather eye patch. It was a betrayal; Paul saw that clearly in Belshaw’s eyes. It was a betrayal to mention his eye, to play that card. But Paul knew in that moment that he had won. He knew that Belshaw would give in. He could see it in the man’s face. He would give in, but he would not forget. Men like Belshaw didn’t appreciate being backed into corners. The silence drew out between them. “I will get back to you by the end of the week,” Belshaw said. He rose to his feet and extended his hand. The meeting was over.

  Paul shook the proferred hand. He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t say anything. He simply nodded and left.

  * * *

  Later, Hongbin sat in Paul’s office. He leaned back, flinging his yo-yo. Down, up. Down, up. The string broke.

  Hongbin was philosophical about it. “Now it is just a yo,” he said.

  Paul thought of telling him. He thought of explaining everything. He thought of telling him about what had really happened on Flores, and about the sample he’d hidden and what he planned to do. But he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to Hongbin. It wouldn’t be right to expose him to the risk.

  “So you are leaving bones,” Hongbin said.

  “No,” Paul said. “I’m never leaving bones.”

  19

  Evidence of Expansive Introgression

  [Translated from Russian.]

  The geographical distribution of the 25-microsatellite Y-chromosome haplogroup C3c was educed from the analysis of 4,600 blood samples taken from phyletic populations across Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Analysis shows that the highest frequency of the 25-microsatellite sequence is found in southern Mongolia, with significant recurrence presenting across most of China, as well as among the Altaian Kazakhs of Russia and the Hazara of the Bolan Pass area of Pakistan. The limited variation of the 25-microsatellite marker demonstrates an anomalously young age for this group relative to other local haplogroup distributions, suggesting that this distribution resulted not from normal population expansion but from a series of “introgression events” into a preexisting population matrix. The current geographic range of the 25-microsatellite sequence is proximally bounded by the expansive limit of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century. This unusual distribution can best be explained as the genetic artifact of a massive reproductive advantage conferred on a single paternal lineage of that time period. The origin of this lineage likely traces to southern steppe tribes of Mongolia, and to Genghis Khan.

  Paul received word on a Friday. There was no fanfare. The news arrived in his in-box; he was being transferred to testing the following Monday. A 7 percent pay raise. The paperwork called it a promotion.

  Mr. Lyons came by and congratulated him and shook his hand. “Sorry to see you go,” he said. And Paul could tell that the man meant it. Paul’s own emotions were more conflicted on the matter.

  On Saturday, he got blindingly, stupefyingly drunk for the first time since Flores. He took Sunday to recuperate, puking only once, his face resting on the cool white porcelain.

  On Monday he left for work early, taking the scenic route. He wanted to see the water from the road. He crossed the bridge as the sun came up along the far side of the bay.

  He got to the parking lot early and carded himself inside. The guard nodded to him as he crossed the lobby. Paul took the elevator to the fourth floor, where he was supposed to meet Janus, his new supervisor. The fourth-floor lobby was similar to the fifth, only instead of an elegant folding wall of glass origami, here the wall was smooth steel, with a single steel door on which the words GENE FREQ LAB was stenciled in bold block letters.

  Home of the gene freqs. Gene freaks.

  There was no bone-freq lab, but the third-floor workers were still called bone freaks. Paul figured it was like rhinos. The first rhinos discovered were called white rhinos in anglicized bastardization of the local dialect. It had nothing to do with color. Still, when a second species was discovered, there was never much doubt about what to call them: b
lack rhinos. Defined by opposition. And never mind that both species were gray.

  Paul tried the door. It was locked. A card swipe glowed red from the wall.

  Paul had been trained in school to test DNA, isolating base-pair sequences from bones and junk and contaminants. The index was what mattered, though. The comparison assays. Without the index, there was nothing to compare the sequences to. It was just noise, raw code. Meaningless pattern.

  You had to have the index to know what you were looking at.

  That was what they did on the fourth floor, on the other side of this door he couldn’t open.

  A little after nine o’clock, Janus finally arrived. He was lanky and ruddy, with florid, pockmarked skin and a down-turned mouth. His thick, strawberry hair paid for his face. Although he was well into his sixties, his hair was nothing short of luxuriant. The first time Paul had seen him walking the halls, he’d assumed it was a hairpiece, but it wasn’t. Janus combed it straight back from his forehead, as if to accentuate the fact that his hairline hadn’t crept back a millimeter since grade school. His eyes were small and sharp and hazel.

  “I see you’re here early?” Janus said. Janus, Paul knew, liked asking questions that were really statements. That way you couldn’t disagree with him.

  “Yeah,” Paul said. “Early bird and all that.”

  Janus looked at him, wary condescension on his pitted face. Then the look changed to pity as his gaze lingered on Paul’s eye patch. Somehow that was worse. Paul wondered what Janus had been told about the transfer. Did he know how hard Paul had pushed for it? Did he know he’d jumped his place in line?

  “We’ll start with you making the fixative,” Janus said, then turned, swiped his card, and opened the door to the lab.

  * * *

  Janus led him down gleaming halls, past rows of windowless clean rooms, past men in white paper jumpsuits who carried steel trays crammed with samples in agarose gel. On the other side of glass doorways, men faced Pyrex isolation booths, arms extended through long latex gloves that stretched into the booths’ interiors. Paul and Janus passed a small lounge area; a vending machine hummed in the corner while researchers stood talking and sipping their coffee.

  “You’ll eat in the lounge. There’s no food or drink in the lab area,” Janus noted. This rule, Paul discovered over the next week, was taken very seriously. This was different than the floor below, where techs sometimes ate at their desks or in their labs, if they didn’t feel like facing the confines of the lunchroom.

  That first week on the fourth floor, Paul learned little about actual testing that he didn’t already know. He’d done fixative before; he’d done simple base-pair testing. But the fourth-floor subcultural information he gleaned was priceless. The fourth floor might have been a different world.

  Janus showed him bits and pieces over the next several weeks. It wasn’t training so much as a careful rationing of information—the slow, reluctant release of sacred knowledge to one who may or may not be worthy.

  It began with the machines. Dark blue obelisks, designed from scratch by Westing engineers. The machines had no names but only generic markings nameplated to one side: FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS. They translated data into the Bioinformatic Markup Language that computers could use for polymorphism analysis. The sample arrays were interpreted by scanners that picked up the fluorescent tags activated in the sample matrix. The ratio of red-to-green fluorescence in the hybridization solution assembled a pattern; special recognition software then coded that pattern into a language the computers could archive.

  There were rumors that certain gene freaks had long sequences memorized and could read genes like prose, ticking off amino acids like most people read words in a sentence. The other bone techs didn’t believe these rumors, but Paul did. He understood the power of obsession.

  Once, in college, he’d attended a lecture on axolotl salamanders. “A fascinating species from the perspective of intelligent design,” the professor had said. “They are one of the rare species of salamander that don’t have a terrestrial form. Unless, that is, you inject them with thyroxine.” The professor paused to write “thyroxine” on the board.

  “They live out their entire lives in the water, growing and reproducing—happily living out their aquatic existence.” He turned back toward the classroom. “But if you inject them with thyroxine, it all changes. Their skulls broaden and flatten. They lose their gills. They go through all the metamorphic changes other amphibians go through.” He paused, letting the implication sink in. It was like all the axolotl salamanders of the world were just waiting for humans to come along with their hypodermic needles full of thyroxine. “The species has genes for the entire biological infrastructure of metamorphosis already in place, passed silently and invisibly from generation to generation.”

  This had bothered Paul greatly at the time. It was a riddle, hidden in their genes. A message, some said. And strange biological cults rose up around it. He read about the experiments. He saw the aquariums filled with dozens of salamanders—all living out their placid, watery lives without ever once stepping foot on dry land. Unless you injected them with thyroxine. And that’s all it took, that addition, that single ingredient, and they became another kind of creature entirely.

  People could be like this, too.

  One morning two months after Paul returned from Flores, he took his sample from the medicine cabinet and drove to work with the lozenge in his jacket.

  He nodded to the gate guard as he pulled onto the property. The sample was in a Tylenol bottle in his pocket. The pills rattled as he walked.

  As he pushed through the front doors of the lab, he considered all he was risking. His job, his career, his life. He wondered what would happen if they discovered that he’d lied to them. He felt a sudden urge to turn and walk out, to get into his car and drive to the nearest bridge, and throw the sample into the bay.

  The elevator doors opened before him. He stared at them for a moment without moving. The doors began to close, and he stuck his arm in to stop them. They opened again. He stepped inside and took the elevator up.

  * * *

  Paul hid the lozenge in the testing lab. He shoved the Tylenol bottle into one of the forgotten drawers, behind several boxes of latex gloves and a snarl of old VWR tubing used for nitrogen tank assemblages.

  The sample would be safe there, at least for now. As safe as it could be.

  When Janus arrived, twenty minutes later, Paul was already working on the day’s fixative solution, beginning the prep for all the samples that needed to be tested.

  20

  Cohanim: A Y-chromosome Analysis Using SNP and STR Markers

  DNA samples extracted from the mucosal swabs of 645 men were referred for Y-chromosome analysis. The test subjects self-reported as being of either Sephardic, Kurdish, or Ashkenazi Jewish descent, and all were typed for Y-chromosome DNA sequence. The Y-chromosome profiles of each group were compared to each other, as well as to a fourth, existing control group of non-Semitic men of Middle Eastern descent. Analysis of genetic distance indicates close proximity between the Sephardic and Kurdish groups, with the Ashkenazim and non-Semitic Middle Eastern Y chromosomes demonstrating as distinct isolates. In addition to these divisions, deeper analysis suggests intrapopulation substructure within the Ashkenazim, revealed as an unusual haplogroup distribution among the subset of the Jewish priesthood (the Cohanim). Identity within the Cohanim is highly prescriptive, being passed only from father to son by rigid patrilineal descent. Further testing elucidated a phylogenetic division between Cohanim and non-Cohanim Semitic males. The demographic cohesion of the 6SNP-6STR genetic motif infers hereditary continuity between present-day designates of the Cohen surname and ancient biblical Hebrews. High-resolution Y-chromosome analysis establishes that this distinct paternal lineage among the Cohanim is in accordance with expansion from a single male progenitor and thus conforms to long-established rabbinic assertions of paternal descent from the biblical Aaron, brother of Moses. From
these data, it can be inferred that Moses likely belonged to Y-chromosome haplogroup J1.

  It was nearly seven and the sky was still brightening toward full morning. Paul drove with the windows down.

  The air smelled clean and fresh. Like the ocean before a storm.

  As he pulled into the parking lot, he took note of the number of vehicles in the lot. He opened his little green notebook and wrote down the time and the number of cars: “7:49—3 cars.”

  He climbed out and walked toward the building. He’d beaten the front-desk guard in and so had to use his card to swipe through the entrance doors.

  Though the workforce of Westing was a cross section of the human species, most of the researchers were Asian; but then, Paul thought, most humans were Asian, so this was perhaps not altogether unexpected. The other researchers came from all over the world.

  Paul sat in the lounge during his breaks, listening to conversations.

  It was like a joke. Put an American, a Filipino, a Kenyan, and a Korean in a room. What will they talk about?

  Women.

  There were also run-of-the-mill complaints.

  “That’s what I keep telling him, but he doesn’t listen.”

  “Why don’t you go home and cry to your old lady?”

  “I do, but she doesn’t listen, either.”

  “John doesn’t listen, your wife doesn’t listen, Hongbin doesn’t listen. Who else?”

  “Tom doesn’t listen, either.”

  “Not even Tom?”

  “No.”

  “All these people don’t listen, what’s that tell you?”

  “Tells me I’m the only smart one.”

  Paul did his best to learn the procedures. It was more than monotony and memorization. There were flashes of insight. Conversations with the other techs. Laboratory minutiae.

  It wasn’t just the disciplines—bones and genes—that were stratified at Westing. There were differences, too, within the gene freaks. A stratified hierarchy, with the assayers firmly at the top, information trickling down.