Runaway Heart

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "I agree," Herman said as Miro sat.

  "How did these guys know we were following Paul Nichols in Malibu? We weren't on that baseball diamond three minutes and in comes the… whatever."

  "The Whispership."

  Miro said, "Sounds naughty."

  Jack turned to Miro. "You can listen, but be a bud and stay out of this, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "I don't know how they knew we were there," Herman said. "You're right, it's pretty damn strange. The helicopter… the ground troops. They got there seconds after we did."

  "As far as I can see, only one or two things could be responsible for that, and both of them are bad."

  "Like what?" Susan asked.

  "They could have had some way of picking off my cell phone transmission when I was giving Herman directions, which means they know a lot more about what we're up to than we thought, because we've been discussing everything on the phone. Or somebody could have hung a bug on Herman's car, which makes me wonder how long they've been tracking us."

  "The government has a spy network that reads computer or cell transmissions from outer space," Herman said. "It's a computer lab called Echelon. Maybe that's what Octopus is, a new, more accurate version of Echelon."

  "I have a stupendous idea," Miro interjected.

  They all looked over at him. "Go ahead," Jack said. "We can use the help."

  "We have finger foods next door. If anybody is hungry, Miro could go get them."

  Stunned silence, then: "Great. Good idea," Jack said. Miro jumped up and hurried out of the room.

  "But we didn't use the cell phone before we went to Gino's wife's apartment in Montrose," Susan said after he left. "So how did they know to go there? How did they find that apartment seconds after we did?"

  "The Mercedes has to be bugged." Herman pondered aloud.

  "I don't like this, Dad." Susan took her father's hand.

  "I don't like it either," Jack acknowledged. "I don't like that computer lab at Pepperdine, and I don't like guys shooting at us with weapons that look like they belong on the set of Star Trek"

  "Those guns sound like PB ordnance," Herman said. "That's

  a particle beam weapon. Gil and Tom told me they were developing something like that at Area Fifty-one."

  "Great," Zimmy groused.

  Jack turned to Herman. "I know what happened to me, but explain again what happened to you while we were out there at the military base. Give it to us point by point."

  "Not much, other than what I already told you." Herman took them through it again, up to where the doctor discovered his arrhythmia and said, "That won't work," and left. Then he got the injection and had the dream.

  "The doc said what?" Jack interrupted.

  The door opened and Miro returned with some finger sandwiches on a tray. He passed them around.

  "He said, 'that won't work,' " Herman repeated.

  "What won't work?"

  "My heart being in arrhythmia, I guess."

  "Okay, so then they fixed it, right?" Jack said.

  "Well, it feels like they did."

  "But that doesn't make sense, Dad. They follow you, kidnap you, debrief you under drugs, then fix your heart condition? Why would they do that?"

  Zimmy cleared his throat. "I may have the answer to that."

  They turned in unison to look at him. "I know when the CIA debriefs they often use a lie detector to determine the veracity of the answers. I don't think you can administer a polygraph to someone who has a heart condition. The lie detector uses heart rate and skin electrical conductivity to measure a response. If Herm's heart was out of rhythm I don't think they could have gotten an accurate result."

  Herman leaned forward. "Maybe my heart had to be fixed so they could find out if I was telling the truth."

  "We need to get to a hospital and see what they really did." Susan sounded worried.

  Miro pointed to the sandwich tray. "Try the little deviled ham ones they have caviar."

  "Thanks," Jack said as he took one, then continued. "Next are the fifty pages of encryption Zimmy decoded."

  All eyes turned to Dr. Zimbaldi. "It was just a bunch of genetic base pairs. A slice of a gene map of some kind. I checked it against the Celera map of the human body that I keep in my research computer. But it wasn't human, wasn't anything I could determine, so I e-mailed a copy to your computer, Herm, and then I ran my copy over to a friend in Santa Monica, Dr. Carolyn Adjemenian. Her field is genetics."

  "Can you get her on the phone?" Herman asked.

  "We can't use our cell if it's being tracked by satellite," Susan reminded them.

  "You can use the phone in here," Miro offered. He handed the phone to Zimmy. "But what on earth is going on? This sounds juicy."

  "Herm thinks we may have been invaded by aliens," Jack offered glumly.

  Miro nodded. "We don't have many down here, but I know a lot of illegal aliens have been moving into Pico Rivera."

  Nobody cleared up the misunderstanding. Zimmy got Dr. Adjemenian on the office phone, then explained who Herman was and handed over the receiver.

  Herman spoke quietly, cupping the receiver so that Miro couldn't hear. Finally, he hung up and looked over at them. "She wants to see us. She won't tell me what it is over the phone, except to say it's like nothing she's ever seen." Herman seemed jazzed.

  Jack was just about to open the door when he heard something next door.

  "Shhh." He put his ear to the wall. Somebody was moving around his office. He heard drawers opening and whispered: "Somebody's in there again."

  "It's that bunch of drug addicts from down the hall," Miro

  said angrily, then started to storm out to protect Jack's stuff. Jack made a grab for him and stopped him just in time.

  "Wait a minute. Hold it," Jack whispered urgently.

  They waited for almost ten minutes until they heard the office door close and footsteps retreating down the hall.

  Jack slipped outside and silently followed two men who were just disappearing down the stairs. He went to the end of the corridor and looked out the window. From that spot he could see the street below. After a few seconds, he saw the two men walk out of the building, climb into the back of a brown Econoline van and pull the door closed. They were both in their mid-twenties, with crew cuts, jump boots, jeans, and windbreakers.

  The van didn't leave. While Jack watched, the door opened again and the two men got back out. They looked up at the building and scratched their heads. One of them gave the other a beats me shrug, then they headed back inside the building.

  Jack returned to the Lipstick Lounge and waited until the door to his office opened and the men were again walking around inside. He put his ear to the wall and faintly heard the two men arguing. The sentences sounded garbled, like cartoon fish talking, but Jack could make out what was being said.

  "He ain't here," one of the voices insisted.

  "He's gotta be," the other answered.

  "Go tell that to Valdez, why don't ya?"

  "You're right… this is stupid. The equipment must be screwed up. Let's go."

  And they left for the second time.

  Jack followed them out as they headed back into the stairwell, then watched from the window until they appeared on the street. Then they both climbed back into the van and closed the door.

  Jack returned to the Lipstick Lounge and reported. "They're parked out there waiting. We gotta find a way to sneak out of here and slide past 'em."

  "You could wear some of these," Miro said, pulling some dresses off the rolling rack. "We've got wigs in those boxes, some triple-wide pumps."

  "Not even during Gay Pride Week," Jack said. He was trying to be enlightened, but he wasn't going out on the street wearing plastic pumps and a ball gown.

  "The wigs are a good idea," Susan said, and began opening boxes, pulling out a few. She chose a long black one for herself, then gave Herman a blond bob. Zimmy tried on a gray shag. Jack got the strawberry pageboy.

>   "Oh, Jack, that's so you," Miro gushed.

  When Jack looked in the mirror he saw Wynonna Judd on steroids.

  They took off their jackets to further change their appearance, and Susan borrowed a blue plastic raincoat.

  Jack led them down the staircase and out the front, hugging the building, using a crowd of laughing men coming out of The Sports Connection as a screen. Miraculously, they made it to the Nissan Sentra.

  Jack snatched off his wig. "Let's get the hell out of here."

  They pulled past the Econoline van, and as Jack was looking out the back window one of the CDF troopers got out and looked up the street after them. It was almost as if he knew they had just driven away.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight.

  Dr. Carolyn Adjemenian was a tall woman in her

  mid-thirties with a pockmarked, narrow face and a spectacular body. Her muscles were etched on tight skin like lines on an anatomy chart. She had blond-ish hair, grayish eyes, and wore her reading glasses up on her head like a geek tiara.

  "Come in," she said after Zimmy did the introductions. The house was a two-bedroom duplex in Santa Monica. Neat lawn, white shutters, a carport.

  She led the three of them to her computer room in the guest bedroom. As they were walking down the hall, Herman caught a glimpse of the master. She had turned it into a full gym: free weights, a pulldown lat bar, stacks of heavy plates and pulleys. He wondered where she slept maybe on the flat bench.

  "Sit down," she said as if she were ordering

  sprinters onto their marks. She sat in front of her computer, booted up, and found a Web site called BASIC ALIGNMENT SEARCH TOOL:

  BLAST

  "We use this Web site in genetics research to identify any unknown DNA sequence," she said. "It has the gene maps for all plant and animal species that scientists have catalogued to date."

  While she waited for it to load she turned toward Herman. "Zimmy gave me your decoded encryption. As you may or may not know, DNA is made up of thousands of base-pair genes. There are only four different kinds of proteins that make up a gene. Each protein has its own designated letter: A, C, G, or T. The combination and sequence of these base pairs determine our genetic makeup." She reached behind her and grabbed the printout of what Roland had died for. It contained pages and pages of the same four letters in varying chains and sequences.

  ACACACACCAG TGTACCACA TTGATCAG TTCAAGTA CCAAGGTAT GGATTCAGTCC ACCATGGATTA TTAGAACCTA CCTTAGC ACCAACCAAG ACACACAGTATA TATCCG

  "When I first saw it I knew it had to be a DNA sequence for some animal or plant, so I fed it into the BLAST program to compare this sequence of yours with all the gene maps of species already stored in its databank. It gives you a percentage of homology."

  "It does what?" Herman asked.

  "It takes your DNA sample and matches it to all others, then tells you what percentage one is to the other." She turned back to her computer and clicked on two icons. "For example, if you put in a chimp and ask BLAST to match its DNA to the gene map of Homo sapiens, this is what you'll get." The BLAST program displayed a percentage: "98.4 PERCENT HOMOLOGY. She pointed to the percentage printed on the screen. "That's how close human DNA is to a chimpanzee's. A chimp is closer to a human genetically than the African elephant is to the Indian elephant. It's hard to believe, but chimps are closer to humans than they are to their ape cousins, like bonobos, or gorillas, or orangutans. So, despite outward appearances, the chimpanzee's closest relative is not any ape species, but us. Some geneticists believe humans are nothing more than a third more developed species of chimpanzee. You with me?"

  "Yes," all four of them said at once.

  "What comes up on a typical BLAST search is a list from the most homolistic to the least," Dr. Adjemenian continued. "Then if you want to narrow it you can set your search to focus on particular irregularities between species. Those irregularities can also be determined by percentile. A single gene can be a gene-to-gene perfect match between two species, or it can differ by a percentage. Okay?"

  "Okay." This time only Herman answered.

  "We are usually trying to determine the identity of the animal in question," Carolyn went on. "If we recover a DNA sample and we want to know what animal left it, we might run a BLAST search comparing it to a human. If we find that it is 98.4 percent human we know it's a chimp. If it's only 96.4 percent we know it's an orangutan. Still with me?"

  "Yeah, I guess," Herman said.

  "So… once I got my basic DNA comparison, I set BLAST to asterisk any gene in this map that doesn't match on the over forty thousand genes in this particular base-pair string. I ran a BLAST search on your sample, but it doesn't correspond to any exact species we have here on earth… at least not as far as I can determine."

  She looked at them and let this sink in. "It's close, very close.

  But this genome does not represent any species now in existence."

  Jack rubbed his eyes. He hated this more than he hated gang violence or checks bouncing. More than just hating it, he was also terrified of it. Jack didn't mind facing off some murderous asshole like Matasareanu outside a bank in North Hollywood, because at least Emil wore pants and pissed standing up. But aliens? Space monsters? No way. That was not in his emotional zip code.

  "Are you saying that this animal, whatever it is, is from somewhere else?" Herman said, creeping up on his next thought like an Apache in the dark. "Are you saying that it's perhaps from some other world… like… well… like from outer space?" He'd finally said it.

  Jack shuddered, but Carolyn Adjemenian shook her head, sending her geek tiara flying. She got up and retrieved her glasses. "For God's sake, no!" she laughed.

  Herman actually slumped, but Jack was sure as hell relieved.

  "No, no," she went on. "It's definitely from this planet, but it's not a pure breed. It's some kind of mixture of species, and since separate species can't interbreed, that means this animal has more than likely been engineered."

  That remark hung over them like ripe fruit.

  "Basically, it is very close to a chimpanzee, but with some interesting upgrades."

  "Upgrades?" Herman leaned in, looking at the gene map on her computer screen, studying it intently.

  "To answer the question of what it is exactly I had to try and isolate the asterisked base pairs… the genes that were different from normal chimp DNA. Then I tried to determine how those genes differed from a chimpanzee's normal DNA and what parts of its body were affected by the change.

  "As I said, a chimpanzee is our closest living relative… 98.4 percent of human DNA. We know now that chimps and Homo sapiens basically split into two separate species only about four million years ago. Gorillas, for example, split from us nine million years ago, orangutans split fifteen million years ago. Since the chimpanzee's split with Homo sapiens is so recent, you can see why chimps and humans are almost identical on the DNA scale. In some sequences they are perfectly parallel, in others they differ only slightly."

  "Which ones differ?" Herman seemed energized by this new idea.

  "Well, chimps don't have the same communication abilities as humans. They have less-developed fine-motor dexterity. They have an opposing thumb like us, but their fingers are longer, designed to walk on their knuckles, so they're less adept with tools. However, chimps are the only animals besides humans who use tools. For instance, a chimp will use a pole to knock down a banana."

  "But he can't change the transmission on a Chevy," Jack countered. Susan turned and glared at him, so he decided he'd better keep quiet.

  Dr. Adjemenian continued. "Chimps have a different intelligence. They score about like a three-year-old human child on a standard IQ test. But that doesn't mean they're less intelligent than us. It's just that their intelligence is different. If you took the smartest human Einstein, let's say and you dropped him in a chimpanzee's natural habitat deep in the Congo, poor old Albert would last about two days." She paused. "So, intelligence is a relative concept. Chimps are stronger than humans and can run m
uch faster over short distances. They have a better sense of smell, but, beyond these, and a few other minor discrepancies, they are far more similar to us than different, with a variation of only one-point-six percent on the entire gene map."

  Herman pointed at the computer screen. "This animal we have mapped here is different from a chimp in what way?"

  "One difference I found was for neurotransmitters. They signal impulses between neutrons in the brain, which means this

  animal thinks more like a human than a standard chimp would."

  "Fascinating," Herman said, studying the screen.

  "That neurotransmitter gene had to have been spliced into the chimp zygote," Dr. Adjemenian went on. "It would improve rapidity of brain processing, facilitate nerve growth, as well as dexterity. The genetic engineering would also change various muscle proteins." She paused and looked at them.

  Susan picked up the fifty-page gene map. Zimmy went to a chair across the room and sat. Like Jack, he didn't want to hear any of this. He and Jack liked chimps just the way they were.

  "Next, I looked at the second asterisked gene, called the Troponin Myglobin gene, which deals with communication. This animal, while it still may not be able to talk, will understand much more than a normal chimp when it comes to human language. Next is the Conexin gene. It's involved with processing sounds, so it's also part of what I see as a communications upgrade. Put it all together and, in essence, the animal we have here has been upgraded from 98.4 percent Homo sapiens to about 99.1."

  "What does it look like?"

  "Beats me," she said, then she looked at Jack and smiled. "But it's probably not going to buy its clothes at the Gap." Jack smiled back.

  "It has fur, probably for warmth, but its face might be more human than chimp-like maybe a slightly larger head because it has more developed areas in the brain. Its fingers are probably shorter, and it doesn't walk on its knuckles. It might prefer walking upright, yet could still run on all fours. But these are only guesses."