With this generation raised on constant visual stimuli, Ethan knew that the best way to capture their interest was to play to their need for multisensory input. As he scanned the students engrossed by the slides, he noticed an unfamiliar face in the first row of the balcony staring at the front of the room from behind iridescent orange sunglasses. A feeling of unease crept up Ethan’s spine.
At first glance, the man appeared to be a jock—football or hockey—judging by his size, the dark blue sweats on his legs, and the gray sweatshirt embroidered with a giant blue Y in the center. He perched like a statue in his chair with a military-erect posture that leaned forward as if he were waiting with anticipation for the rest of the lecture. Then Ethan noticed that the man wasn’t the typical large athlete. His bulk strained the fabric on his sweatshirt; his trapezius muscles bulged out of the neckline, almost reaching his ears, while his pectorals distorted the shape of the embroidered Y on his chest, threatening to pull it apart like a wishbone.
Steroids, Ethan thought. He’d never seen such extreme muscle hypertrophy outside of the movies. Who is he? The Yale athletic department didn’t tolerate juicing. Although the sunglasses made it difficult to know for sure, he appeared older than the undergrads in the room, and he was tan, unusual for a New Haven fall.
A realization deepened his sense of unease: muscleman is not a student. Before he could ponder what the man was doing in his class, he sensed the anticipatory silence from his audience. He shifted his gaze to the students who were waiting for him to continue.
“During medical school, I learned how an uncommon but not rare form of epilepsy that originates in the temporal lobe of the brain produces intense religious visions in the sufferers.”
An African American man in the middle raised his hand. “So if we see someone thrashing around on the ground from a seizure they could be speaking to God?”
“Probably not. A grand mal seizure such as you described affects the whole brain—it’s like the entire electrical system short circuits, causing neurons to misfire and create the seizure.”
“Like the electricity in my dorm room last weekend when we plugged in the extra amps for the party?”
He laughed along with the students. “Something like that. But a grand mal seizure usually causes unconsciousness and amnesia. With other seizures that are limited to certain areas of the brain, such as the ones that cause hyperreligiosity, the sufferer may have no idea that they’re having a seizure. They may see a strange light, smell something unusual, hear a voice, or have a full-fledged vision while remaining conscious.”
The woman in the front row spoke again. “So, Professor, are you claiming”—she pointed to the image on the screen, which had cycled back to Caravaggio’s painting—“that St. Paul was knocked from his horse by an epileptic event that also caused his vision of Christ, and”—she paused as the slides transitioned—“that the Spanish mystic St. Teresa de Ávila, Joseph Smith—the founder of Mormonism—and the Prophet Ezekiel also each suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy that led to their religious visions?”
She is sharp, he thought again. “Look at the other symptoms these figures had: flashes of light, strange sounds or smells, their obliviousness to the world around them—all classic symptoms of epilepsy. Is it more likely that an imbalance in the electrical firings of neurons in the brain, which we can record today with modern equipment, caused their visions, or that a supernatural deity spoke to these people from heaven?”
The anticipation of the test of his Logos Project later that afternoon flashed through his mind.
“In the ages during which these figures lived, people had no concept of modern medicine or psychiatry. What we might call an abnormal event today—a vision caused by epilepsy or schizophrenia—might have been interpreted as either a demonic possession or an oracle from God.”
“But if that’s true,” she continued, “then the basis for these religions—Christianity, Mormonism, Judaism—so influenced by these visions would be called into question.”
He let her last comment sink into the other students. As he paused, a memory from his own past intruded on his thoughts, but he pushed it away as he’d done many times before. “A question we can leave to the theologians.”
He glanced at the clock on his monitor: 11:50. He closed his laptop, cutting the video feed to the screen. “Next week’s assignment is posted on the website. Enjoy the discussions in your groups.”
He looked for Chris Sligh as he descended the steps from the stage. They needed to go over a few details before the experiment, but he didn’t see his grad assistant in his usual seat. When he landed on the main floor, students encircled him, peppering him with questions about the lecture. He did his best to answer them while he walked, making his way to the rear of the hall. His mind was already spinning through the possibilities of what might happen that afternoon. When he reached the steps that descended from the balcony, he glanced at the students filing down. The unease he’d felt earlier crawled from his spine to the back of his neck. The muscleman with the orange glasses had disappeared.
CHAPTER 8
DUBAI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Amira’s screams tore at Mousa’s heart.
“Please, what is going on here?” His voice came out sounding more desperate than he wanted. The three security officers who dragged him along the white hallway said nothing.
“My daughter, you don’t understand what we’ve been through. She needs me.” He knew that he was pleading, but he couldn’t help himself. Questions spun in his head like a desert sandstorm picking up debris: where were these men taking him, and who was the woman who had his daughter?
When they reached the end of the hallway, the men stopped at a door marked “Secure Area” in both Arabic and English. The lead officer, the one who had spoken to him at the customs desk, produced an ID card with a magnetic stripe. Mousa took a breath, rested his weight on his good right leg, and evaluated the situation. The two other officers glanced at him warily. Each grasped one of his arms just above the elbow. In their other hands, they held submachine guns.
He turned his attention to the officer working the electronic lock. The door must lead into the airport security room, he thought. I’m going to be interrogated. He had only a moment to gather his wits and calm himself. The officers had made a mistake. Maybe his name was similar to someone on their watch list. Or could something have been wrong with his visa? If he calmly explained who he was—a respected Jordanian surgeon—they would have to listen. He might have to wait while they checked out his story, but many people at the King Hussein Hospital in Amman could confirm his identity and legitimacy. With his hands bound behind his back, he couldn’t see his watch, but he estimated that his flight wouldn’t depart for another two hours. If he remained calm and professional, maybe the security men would clear everything up in time for them to return home that afternoon.
As the lead officer opened the door, Mousa reminded himself not to antagonize the men during the questioning. Regardless of his innocence, he surmised that the security forces in the UAE were like those in Jordan—not to be trifled with.
A wall of hot, dry air rushed into the air-conditioned hallway and dismantled his resolve to stay calm. The door didn’t lead to an interrogation room. It led outside.
“Where are you taking me?” he demanded.
The black-clad men shoved him into the naked sun.
“I haven’t done anything!” he screamed. “You’ve made a mistake.”
Then he noticed the vehicle. Parked on the tarmac just in front of the sidewalk sat a gray, late-model van. It had no markings, and he noted with a growing sense of dread that its windows were blacked out. The lead officer hurried to the van and slid open the side door, revealing a stripped out interior with a metal floor. The only seats were the driver’s and the front passenger’s. Mousa stopped, forcing his feet in front of him. He leaned backward against the pressure on his arms.
“I am a respected doctor in Amman.” He attempt
ed to use his most authoritative, professional voice, the one he used to navigate cumbersome hospital bureaucracy. “I demand to speak to your superiors! You have made a career-threatening mistake here.”
He couldn’t allow these men to remove him from the airport grounds. If they did, he knew that the odds of seeing his family again were slim.
As the words left his mouth, the man to his left swung his submachine gun. Mousa caught only a blur of its movement before the blow struck him in the solar plexus, sucking out his breath. His legs buckled. He would have doubled over in pain, but the men held him aloft. The desert sun became blurry as his diaphragm spasmed in a failed attempt to draw a breath.
The men shoved him into the van. When he landed on the scuffed aluminum floor, a screw in the floorboard cut a gash along his cheek. The men jumped in around him and slammed the door. One jerked his head up by his hair, bringing tears to his eyes. The officer then pulled a black sleep mask, the type the airlines gave out in first class on overseas flights, over his eyes.
In short gasps, Mousa’s breath returned. The air tasted of oil and sweat. Once he recovered his faculties, he opened his mouth to yell again. This time he resisted. The officers had a plan, and telling him anything was not part of that plan. As the adrenaline coursing through his body dissipated, the indignation over his arrest and the frantic urge to be released was replaced by a new emotion: fear. The sudden realization that something more serious than a faulty visa was behind his arrest opened a pit of darkness in his gut.
Before his mind could race through the possible permutations of his predicament, the van stopped. They’d traveled less than five minutes. He heard the door slide open, letting in a deafening noise along with the hot desert wind. This time he didn’t resist as the men lifted him outside. Although he could only see darkness behind the mask, he felt the sun beat down on his blazer. The moment he realized the source of the rhythmic thumping, he instinctively ducked his head to avoid the rotors of the helicopter. He’d been on call at the hospital when the Life Flight chopper brought critically injured patients to the landing pad on the roof. He tried to swallow but found that his mouth had gone dry.
The men shoved him forward. His thighs hit metal, sending a jolt of pain from his injured knee through his body. Hands seized him under his shoulders and lifted him. His leg protested when he collapsed onto a ribbed metal surface.
Shock replaced the fear of a moment ago. He felt detached from the events, as if he were in the middle of a surrealistic dream. Just a few minutes earlier, he’d been standing in the airport with his daughter as they waited to leave for home.
The bass thumping of the rotors increased in frequency. His stomach lurched as the floor moved upward and forward at the same time. The helicopter was lifting off, taking him somewhere. Somewhere away from his home. Somewhere away from Amira.
CHAPTER 9
CAPLAB, YALE UNIVERSITY
“May I help you?” a female voice crackled over the intercom in the basement hallway.
“Dr. Ethan Lightman. I’m here for CapLab.”
Although he visited Yale-New Haven Hospital weekly, he’d never paid attention to the three-story building down the block whose small windows and ribbed concrete exterior gave away its 1960s heritage.
“Be right there, Professor,” the voice replied.
The only marking on the door before him was the suite number: 108. No signage revealed its true purpose: CapLab, Yale’s capuchin monkey research laboratory. Because of animal rights protests at other primate labs around the country, Yale kept the location of its research facilities secret.
After his lecture that morning, he’d found Christian Sligh in their office. His graduate assistant had given him the tightly guarded directions to CapLab and then left to make sure that the experiment would be ready when Ethan arrived. Chris had taken the Logos with him.
Ethan heard the lock click on the other side of the door. When it opened, a familiar face greeted him.
“Hi, Professor.” The young woman stuck out a petite hand with manicured nails but no polish, just as she wore no makeup. “I’m Rachel Riley.”
The student from the front row of his lecture class stood before him. Her chestnut hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, her wide blue eyes staring at him with the same intensity as during his lectures. Her handshake was stronger than her delicate fingers would have suggested.
“You’re one of my students.”
He towered over her—can’t be more than five-two, he thought—but she carried herself with an energy that seemed befitting someone of much larger stature. She held his gaze.
“Grad student—first year.” She spun around, started down the hallway, and stopped at an unmarked door at the end. “Evolutionary Biology.”
Even though his legs were considerably longer than hers, he had to hurry to catch up. “So what are you doing in my undergrad course?”
“Thought Psych for Psychos might give me some perspective on my research here.” She flashed a smile that lit up her face. “And, I heard you were a decent teacher.”
He felt his neck flush, but before he could look away, she turned to the wall and punched a code on a keypad. When the electronic lock beeped, she opened the door and motioned for him to enter. His first impression upon stepping into the room was that it looked more like a dorm than a lab. Jackets and book bags were piled on top of a couch that looked as if it had been purchased at a thrift store. Starbucks cups crowded the surface of a wood-laminate coffee table.
“What’s up, Prof?” Chris waved to him from his seat at the desk against the wall to the right. Ethan’s laptop was open on the desk.
“We ready?”
“The Logos is programmed and warming up now.” Chris flipped his head, flinging blond hair from his eyes. “Rachel’s been quite helpful in organizing the apes.” His eyes lingered on her.
“All hominids are apes, including you.” She jabbed a finger in Chris’s direction. “Ape is too imprecise a term. These are capuchins, monkeys.” Her tone was firm, but from the crinkles around her eyes, Ethan suspected her displeasure was feigned.
“You work here?” Ethan asked her.
“Since freshman year. I was an undergrad here too. One of the reasons I came to Yale was CapLab. I took a gap year after high school—well, two actually—working at an animal preserve in Kenya. I’m the head tech now. I help Professor Sanchez with her research.”
“Where is Laura?”
Ethan respected Laura Sanchez, a fellow psychology faculty member who’d just received tenure last year. Her determination and enthusiasm had been the driving force behind establishing CapLab as one of the leading primate research centers in the nation. She’d also been helpful when he and Elijah had approached her about testing the Logos in her lab.
“Atlanta. Conference at Yerkes. I’ve been instructed to assist you guys with anything you need.” She cast her eyes down the length of his body for a moment so brief that he wasn’t sure that it had happened.
Did she just check me out? As a young faculty member, he’d experienced female students flirting with him before, but he’d never pursued that dangerous path, even though he’d known others—even much older professors—who had done so. Not my type anyway, he told himself. The memory of Natalie’s tall body, jet-black hair, and olive complexion popped into his head, bringing with it the familiar pang of regret in the depths of his stomach.
A touch to his arm brought his attention back to the woman standing before him. Her hand rested on his upper arm; it was warm.
“You’ve had your TB tests, right? We can’t risk an infection that would wipe out our whole population.”
“We both have,” Chris rose from the chair.
“Yes, both negative,” Ethan confirmed.
“So, can we go in now?” Chris gestured to the plate glass window that took up most of the wall to their left.
With his attention focused on Rachel, Ethan had failed to notice the giant window when he entered, though it
was the focal point of the room. Tree branches swayed on the other side, giving the impression that he was looking outdoors—an impossibility since they were in the basement of the building. Closer inspection revealed a chain-link fence and a concrete floor covered in wood shavings that defined a large room on the other side of the window. The tree branches were bare and several ropes connected them to the ceiling and to each other. A dozen small brown monkeys played in various parts of the room-sized cage. Some groomed each other; others climbed on the branches or swung from the ropes; a few chewed on chunks of fruit before tossing the rinds to the floor.
“Do you have the paperwork showing the negative results?”
“Here.” Chris picked up a manila folder from the desk and handed it to her. Ethan once again appreciated how well his graduate assistant handled the myriad regulations their research required.
“Not trying to be a pain.” She flipped open the folder. “I don’t want the IACUC coming down on my ass because the protocols weren’t followed. Just last month we were cited because one of the monkeys was underweight. They refused to listen to us. We provide them more than enough food. He was just a lower ranking member of the community.” She tossed the folder on the desk. “Bureaucrats. Last year, they actually changed the locks on the office doors because they said it was too messy in here!”
Ethan chuckled. The IACUC, the Institutional Animal Care Use Committee, was just as difficult as Samuel Houston’s Human Research Protection Program Committee with its IRBs. Each of these committees saw it as their jobs to bust the researchers before the feds did. In addition to the university’s committees, they had to deal with inspections by government agencies like the USDA and AAALAC—the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care. The acronyms drove him crazy.
“Tell me about it. I’m struggling with the HRPP right now.”
“You work with Sam Houston?”
“Not sure I would say ‘work with’—more like try to avoid at all costs.” She laughed at his half-joke. Talking to the attractive yet earnest grad student felt unusually easy to him. “You know Houston?”
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