Darwin's Radio d-1

by Greg Bear

  “Now,” Saul said, and his face went suddenly blank. “Give it to me straight about Lado and Eliava.”

  Kaye stared at him for a moment with an intensity that almost crossed her eyes. Then she glanced down and said, “I think they’ve decided to go with someone else.”

  “Mr. Bristol-Myers Squibb,” Saul said, and lifted a rolling and waving hand in dismissal. “Fossil corporate architecture versus young new blood. They are so wrong.” He gazed across the yard at the sound, squinted at a few sailboats dodging small whitecaps in the light morning breezes. Then he finished his orange juice and smacked his lips dramatically. He fairly wriggled in the chair, leaned forward, fixed her with his deep gray eyes, and clasped her hands in his.

  This is it, Kaye thought.

  “They will regret it. In the next few months we are going to be so busy. The CDC just broke the news this morning. They have confirmed the existence of the first viable human endogenous retrovirus. They’ve shown that it can be transmitted laterally between individuals. They call it Scattered Human Endogenous Retro Virus Activation, SHERVA. They dropped the R for dramatic effect. That makes it SHEVA. Good name for a virus, don’t you think?”

  Kaye searched his face. “No joke?” she asked, voice unsteady. “It’s confirmed?”

  Saul grinned and held up his arms like Moses. “Absolutely. Science marches on to the promised land.”

  “What is it? How big is it?”

  “It’s a retrovirus, a true monster, eighty-two kilobases, thirty genes. Its gag andpol components are on chromosome 14, and its env is on chromosome 17. The CDC says it may be a mild pathogen, and humans show little or no resistance, so its been buried for a very long time.”

  He placed his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. “You predicted it, Kaye. You described the genes. Your prime candidate, a broken HERV-DL3, is the one they’re targeting, and they are using your name. They’ve cited your papers.”

  “Wow,” Kaye said, her face going pale. She leaned over her plate, the blood pounding in her head.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, feeling dizzy.

  “Let’s enjoy our privacy while we can,” Saul said triumphantly. “Every science reporter is going to be calling. I give them about two minutes to go through their Rolodexes and search MedLine. You’ll be on TV, CNN, Good Morning America!’

  Kaye simply could not wrap belief around this turn of events. “What kind of illness does it cause?” she managed to ask.

  “Nobody seems clear on that.”

  Kaye’s mind buzzed with possibilities. If she called Lado at the institute, told Tamara and Zamphyra — they might change their minds, go with EcoBacter. Saul would stay good Saul, happy and productive.

  “My God, we’re hot shit,” Kaye said, still feeling a little woozy. She lifted her fingers, la di da.

  “You’re the one who’s hot, my dear. It’s your work, and it ain’t shit.”

  The phone rang in the kitchen.

  “That’ll be the Swedish Academy,” Saul said, nodding sagely. He held up the medallion and Kaye took a bite out ofit.

  “Bull!” she said happily, and went to answer.

  11

  Innsbruck, Austria

  The hospital gave Mitch a private room as a show of respect for his newfound notoriety. He was just as glad to get away from the mountaineers — but it hardly mattered how he felt or what he thought.

  An almost total emotional numbness had stolen over him in the past two days. Seeing his picture on the television news, on the BBC and Sky World, and in the local papers, proved what he knew already; it was over. He was finished.

  According to the Zurich press, he was the “Sole Survivor of Body-Snatching Mountain Expedition.” In Munich, he was “Kidnapper of Ancient Ice Baby.” In Innsbruck, he was called simply “Scientist/Thief.” All reported his preposterous story of Neandertal mummies, helpfully relayed by the police in Innsbruck. All told of his stealing “American Indian Bones” in the “Northwest United States.”

  He was widely described as an American crackpot, down on his luck, desperate to get publicity.

  The Ice Baby had been transferred to the University of Innsbruck, where it was being studied by a team headed by Herr Doktor Professor Emiliano Luria. Luria himself was coming later in the afternoon to speak with Mitch about the find.

  So long as Mitch had information they needed, he was still in the loop — he was still a kind of scientist, investigator, anthropologist. He was more than just a thief. When his usefulness was over, then would come the deeper, darker vacuum.

  He stared blankly at the wall as an elderly woman volunteer pushed a wheeled cart into his room to deliver his lunch. She was a cheerful, dwarfish woman about five feet tall, in her seventies, with a wizened apple face, and she spoke in rapid German with a soft Viennese accent. Mitch couldn’t understand much of what she said.

  The elderly volunteer unfolded his napkin and tucked it into his gown. She pressed her lips together and leaned back to examine him. “Eat,” she advised. She frowned and added, “One damned young American, neinl I do not care who you are. Eat or sickness comes.”

  Mitch picked up the plastic fork, saluted her with it, and began to pick at the chicken and mashed potatoes on the plate. As the old woman left, she switched on the television mounted on the wall opposite his bed. “Too damned quiet,” she said, and waved her hand back and forth in his direction, delivering a chiding, long-distance slap to his face. Then she pushed the cart through the door.

  The television was tuned to Sky News. First came a report on the final and years-delayed destruction of a large military satellite. Spectacular video from Sakhalin Island traced the object’s last flaming moments. Mitch stared at the telephoto images of the veering, sparkling fireball . Outdated, useless, down inflames.

  He picked up the remote and was about to shut off the television once more when an inset of an attractive young woman with short dark hair, long bangs, large eyes, illustrated a story about an important biological discovery in the United States.

  “A human provirus, lurking like a stowaway in our DNA for millions of years, has been associated with a new strain of flu that strikes only women,” the announcer began. “Molecular biologist Dr. Kaye Lang of Long Island, New York, has been credited with predicting this incredible invader from humanity’s past. Michael Hertz is on Long Island now.”

  Hertz was formally sincere and respectful as he spoke with the young woman outside a large, fashionable green and white house. Lang seemed suspicious of the camera.

  “We’ve heard from the Centers for Disease Control, and now from the National Institutes of Health, that this new variety of flu has been positively identified in San Francisco and Chicago, and there’s been a pending identification in Los Angeles. Do you think this could be the flu epidemic the world has dreaded since 1918?”

  Lang stared nervously at the camera. “First of all, it’s not really a flu. It’s not like any influenza virus, and for that matter, doesn’t resemble any virus associated with colds or flu…It isn’t like any of them. For one thing, it seems to cause symptoms only in women.”

  “Could you describe this new, or rather very old, virus for us?” Hertz asked.

  “It’s large, about eighty kilobases, that is—”

  “More specifically, what kind of symptoms does it cause?”

  “It’s a retrovirus, a virus that reproduces by transcribing its RNA genetic material into DNA and then inserting it into the DNA of a host cell. Like HIY It seems quite specific to humans—”

  The reporter’s eyebrows shot up. “Is it as dangerous as the AIDS virus?”

  “I’ve heard nothing that tells me it’s dangerous. It’s been carried in our own DNA for millions of years; in that way, at least, it’s not at all like the HIV retrovirus.”

  “How can our women viewers know if they’ve caught this flu?”

  “The symptoms have been described by the CDC, and I don’t know anything
more than what they’ve announced. Slight fever, sore throat, coughing.”

  “That could describe a hundred different viruses.”

  “Right,” Lang said, and smiled. Mitch studied her face, her smile, with a sharp pang. “My advice is, stay tuned.”

  “Then what is so significant about this virus, if it doesn’t kill, and its symptoms are so slight?”

  “It’s the first HERV — human endogenous retrovirus — to become active, the first to escape from human chromosomes and be laterally transmitted.”

  “What does that mean, laterally transmitted?”

  “That means it’s infectious. It can pass from one human to another. For millions of years, it’s been transmitted vertically — passed from parents to children through their genes.”

  “Do other old viruses exist in our cells?”

  “The latest estimate is that as much of one third of our genome could consist of endogenous retroviruses. They sometimes form particles within the cells, as if they were trying to break out again, but none of these particles have been efficient — until now.”

  “Is it safe to say that these remnant viruses were long ago broken or dumbed down?”

  “It’s complicated, but you could say that.”

  “How did they get into our genes?”

  “At some point in our past, a retrovirus infected germ-line cells, sex cells such as egg or sperm. We don’t know what symptoms the disease might have caused at that time. Somehow, over time, the provirus, the viral blueprint buried in our DNA, was broken or mutated or just plain shut down. Supposedly these sequences of retroviral DNA are now just scraps. But three years ago, I proposed that provirus fragments on different human chromosomes could express all the parts of an active retrovirus. All the necessary proteins and RNA floating inside the cell could put together a complete and infectious particle.”

  “And so it has turned out. Speculative science bravely marching ahead of the real thing…”

  Mitch hardly heard what the reporter said, focusing instead on Lang’s eyes: large, still wary, but not missing a thing. Very bold. A survivor’s eyes.

  He switched the TV off and rolled over on the bed to nap, to forget. His leg ached inside the long cast.

  Kaye Lang was close to grabbing the brass ring, winning a big round in the science game. Mitch, on the other hand, had been handed a solid gold ring…And he had fumbled it badly, dropped it on the ice, lost it forever.

  * * *

  An hour later, he awakened to an authoritative knock on the door. “Come in,” he said, and cleared his throat.

  A male nurse in starched green accompanied three men and a woman, all in late maturity, all dressed conservatively. They entered and glanced around the room as if to take note of possible escape routes. The shortest of the three men stepped forward and introduced himself. He held out his hand.

  “I am Emiliano Luria, of the Institute for Human Studies,” he said. “These are my colleagues at the University of Inns-bruck, Herr Professor Friedrich Brock…”

  Names that Mitch almost immediately forgot. The nurse brought two more chairs in from the hallway, and then stood by the door at parade rest, folding his arms and lifting his nose like a palace guard.

  Luria spun his chair around, back to front, and sat. His thick round eyeglasses gleamed in the gray light through the curtained windows. He fixed his gaze on Mitch, made a small urn sound, then glared at the nurse. “We will be fine, alone,” he said. “Please go. No stories sold to the newspapers, and no big damned goose chases for bodies on the glaciers!”

  The nurse nodded amiably and left the room.

  Luria then asked the woman, thin and middle-aged, with a stern, strong face and abundant gray hair tied in a bun, to make sure the nurse was not listening. She stood by the door and peered out.

  “Inspector Haas in Vienna assures me they have no further interest in this matter,” Luria said to Mitch after these formalities were observed. “This is between you and us, and I will work with the Italians and the Swiss, if we must cross any borders.” He pulled a large folding map from his pocket, and Dr. Block or Brock or whatever his name was held out a box containing a number of picture books on the Alps.

  “Now, young man,” Luria said, his eyes swimming behind their thick lenses. “Help us repair this damage you have done to the fabric of science. These mountains, where you were found, are not unfamiliar to us. Just one range over is where the real Iceman was found. There has been a lot of traffic through these mountains for thousands of years, a trade route perhaps, or paths followed by hunters.”

  “I don’t think they were on any trade route,” Mitch said. “I think they were running away.”

  Luria looked at his notes. The woman edged closer to the bed. “Two adults, in very good condition but for the female, with a wound of some sort in the abdomen.”

  “A spear thrust,” Mitch said. The room fell silent for a moment.

  “I have made some phone calls and talked to people who know you. I am told your father is coming here to take you from the hospital, and I have spoken with your mother—”

  “Please get to the point, Professor,” Mitch said.

  Luria raised his eyebrows and shuffled his papers. “I am told you were a very fine scientist, conscientious, an expert at arranging and carrying out meticulous digs. You found the skeleton known as Pasco man. When Native Americans protested and claimed Pasco man as one of their ancestors, you removed the bones from their site.”

  “To protect them. They had washed out of a bank and were on the shore of the river. The Indians wanted to put them back in the ground. The bones were too important to science. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  Luria leaned forward. “I believe Pasco man died from an infected spear wound in his thigh, did he not?”

  “He may have,” Mitch said.

  “You have a nose for ancient tragedies,” Luria said, scratching his ear with a finger.

  “Life was pretty hard back then.”

  Luria nodded agreement. “Here in Europe, when we find a skeleton, there are no such problems.” He smiled at his colleagues. “We have no respect for our dead — dig them up, put them on display, charge tourists to see them. So this for us is not necessarily a big black mark, though it seems to have ended your relationship with your institution.”

  “Political correctness,” Mitch said, trying to keep the acid out of his tone.

  “Possibly. I am willing to listen to a man with your experience — but, Doctor Rafelson, to our chagrin, you have described a rather gross unlikelihood.” Luria pointed his pen at Mitch. “What part of your story is lie, and what part truth?”

  “Why should I lie?” Mitch asked. “My life is already shot to hell.”

  “Perhaps to keep a hand in the science? Not to be separated so quickly from Dame Anthropology?”

  Mitch smiled ruefully. “Maybe I’d do that,” he said. “But I wouldn’t make up a story this crazy . The man and woman in the cave had distinct Neandertal characteristics.”

  “On what criteria do you base your identification?” Brock asked, entering the conversation for the first time.

  “Dr. Brock is an expert on Neandertals,” Luria said respectfully.

  Mitch described the bodies slowly and carefully. He could close his eyes and see them as if they floated just over the bed.

  “You are aware that different researchers use different criteria for describing so-called Neandertals,” Brock said. “Early, late, middle, from different regions, gracile or robust, perhaps different racial groups within the subspecies. Sometimes the distinctions are such that an observer might be misled.”

  “These were not Homo sapiens sapiens? Mitch poured himself a glass of water, offered to pour more glasses. Luria and the woman accepted. Brock shook his head.

  “Well, if they are found, we can resolve this matter easily enough. I am curious as to your timeline on human evolution—”

  “I’m not dogmatic,” Mitch said.

  Luri
a waggled his head — comme ci, comme fa — and turned some pages of notes under. “Clara, please hand me the biggest book there. I’ve marked some photographs and charts, where you might have been before you were found. Do any of these look familiar?”

  Mitch took the book and propped it open awkwardly on his lap. The pictures were bright, clear, beautiful. Most had been shot in full daylight with blue skies. He looked at the marked pages and shook his head. “I don’t see a frozen waterfall.”

  “No guide knows of a frozen waterfall anywhere near the serac, or indeed along the main mass of the glacier. Perhaps you can give us some other clue…”

  Mitch shook his head. “I would if I could, Professor.”

  Luria folded his papers decisively. “I think you are a sincere young man, perhaps even a good scientist. I will tell you one thing, if you do not go talking to papers or TV Agreed?”

  “I have no reason to talk to them.”

  “The baby was born dead or severely injured. The back of her head is broken, perhaps by the thrust of a fire-hardened pointed stick.”

  Her. The infant had been a girl. For some reason, this shook Mitch deeply. He took another sip of water. All the emotion of his present position, the death ofTilde and Franco…The sadness of this ancient story. His eyes watered, threatened to spill over. “Sorry,” he said, and dabbed away the moisture with the sleeve of his gown.

  Luria observed sympathetically. “This lends your story some credibility, no? But…” The professor lifted his hand and pointed at the ceiling, jabbing slightly, and concluding, “Still hard to believe.”

  “The infant most definitely isn’t Homo sapiens neander-talensis,” Brock said. “She has interesting features, but she is modern in all particulars. Not, however, particularly European. More Anatolian, even Turkic, but that is just a guess for now. And I know of no specimens of that sort so recent. It would be incredible.”

  “I must have dreamed it,” Mitch said, looking away.

  Luria shrugged. “When you are well, would you be willing to walk the glacier with us, look for the cave again in person?”