The God Gene

by F. Paul Wilson

  Rick shook his head. “Really? There have to be others. I mean, Mozi had to have had a mother and a father, right?”

  “Of course, but by all rights Mozi should be extinct. Her species should have died out with the adapiforms and other contemporary primates in the Miocene.”

  Laura had never been able to keep the various -cenes straight. “How long ago are we talking?”

  “Five–six million years.”

  “But she somehow survived,” Rick said. “If Keith found her, why can’t someone else?”

  “I’m not saying it’ll never happen, but Keith’s circumstances were a total fluke. He found her in an outdoor market near the town center in Quelimane—that’s on the central Mozambique coast. She caught his eye as he was walking by.”

  “Those big blue eyes, I’ll bet,” Laura said.

  Grady nodded. “Yeah. They’re startling. You can find blue-eyed lemurs and cats and malamutes, but Mozi had the biggest blue eyes I’ve ever seen—proportionally, that is. Keith told me he knew right away something was different about her, beyond her eyes. At first he thought a new kind of lemur—after all, Madagascar is just across the channel—but on closer inspection he discarded that: no grooming claw and no toothcomb.”

  “You realize that means nothing to us,” Rick said.

  “Yeah, sorry. It means she was def some type of primate but a very unusual one. He asked the vendor where he found her and he said he’d bought her from a fisherman who’d found her floating off the Madagascar coast. Said he sells lots of animals but had never seen one like Mozi.”

  “Could she have been trying to swim from Madagascar?”

  Grady shook his head. “First off, you’re talking hundreds of miles even at its narrowest point. But even if just half a mile, I doubt she’s from Madagascar. That place is a biodiversity jewel—ninety percent of its species exist nowhere else in the world. Zoologists have been fine-combing its biosphere for, like, forever. If Mozi’s kind had a colony there, they’d have been found by now.”

  “Well, she had to come from somewhere,” Laura said, realizing too late how obvious that sounded. “She didn’t just pop into existence.”

  Rick wiggled his eyebrows. “Or did she?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “We’re not going there.”

  “Why not? A species that should be extinct shows up out of nowhere?”

  Laura held up a hand. “Stop right there.”

  Grady looked puzzled. “Am I missing something?”

  “Nothing. Trust me.” She tried to jump to the heart of the matter. “Did Mozi carry that so-called God Gene?”

  Grady’s laugh was brief and almost bitter. “We may never know. But oh, man, the ribbing Keith took around here for that. Even though he’d never written or uttered those words, they stuck to him like a graft. All because he’d mentioned miR-941 a couple of times in his book.”

  Laura remembered that. “Right. I just read a passage about it.”

  “It’s nothing terribly new … discovered years ago. But when he described how it seemed to appear de novo out of non-coding DNA—”

  “Non-coding?” Rick said.

  “The layman’s term is ‘junk DNA.’”

  “Okay, that I’ve heard of.”

  “The term’s passé. It’s not junk at all. It accounts for something like ninety-eight percent of human DNA. It doesn’t encode proteins but it does produce RNA that has functions. So maybe ‘non-coding’ may wind up in the dustbin as well. Anyway, the miR-941 gene pops up a few million years ago and plays a pivotal role in human brain development—neurotransmitter signaling, specifically. People read that and blew it all out of proportion, saying it didn’t just ‘pop up’—God put it there. Divine intervention and all that.”

  “Thus, ‘the God Gene,’” Laura said with a glance at Rick. “It’s not found in any other primates, right?”

  Grady nodded. “Right. But I can think of about twenty other genes that appeared since we split from the chimps. And if you want to go into greater detail, I can get into human copy number variations.”

  Laura could feel her eyes preparing to glaze over, but said, “Try me.”

  “Okay. We used to think it highly unlikely that evolutionary processes could produce a functional protein-coding gene from inactive DNA. New genes could only evolve from duplicated or rearranged versions of preexisting genes—what we call copy variations and transposable elements or jumping genes. Then a couple of researchers in Dublin found a number of human-specific genes that arose from non-coding DNA after the split from the chimps. Best of all, they learned that these were more likely to be expressed in recently expanded human brain structures, like the neocortex and prefrontal cortex. Get it? Newer genes connected to the newer parts of the brain.”

  “So in a sense,” Laura said, “they’re what make us human.”

  “Part of it.”

  “More than one God Gene, it seems,” Rick said. “I’m told my brother wasn’t happy about that whole God Gene thing.”

  Another laugh. “That’s the understatement of the year. Drove him crazy. But it started him digging deep into the human genome, looking for more genes unique to Homo saps. He discovered one similar to miR-941. He designated it hsa-mir-3998.”

  “Meaning what?” Laura said.

  He shook his head and raised his hand into the oath-taking position. “I can’t say. He swore me to secrecy—no formal NDA or anything like that, but I intend to honor it. We put in a lot of hours on it. He wanted to nail down its role in the evolutionary process before he went public with it.”

  Laura had a feeling this was important. “What can you tell us about it?”

  “It plays a major role in human creativity.”

  Laura blinked as an epiphany hit her. “Creativity … that’s huge.”

  He was nodding, grinning. “Tell me about it. Civilization can’t exist without creativity.”

  Rick said, “That’s all you can tell us?”

  “’Fraid so. But I can show you something.”

  He led them to his cramped office, where Laura noticed a porkpie hat sitting on his crowded desk. He stepped to a pair of rickety bookshelves leaning against each other and began pawing through a stack of papers that functioned as a bookend.

  “It’s here … I know I put it here. Ah!”

  He yanked on a sheet, and as it came free the whole bookcase began to tilt away from the wall. Rick’s quick reflexes prevented a bibliolanche. He pushed it back but it wouldn’t stay.

  “Hold that,” he told Grady.

  While Grady steadied the bookcase, Laura watched Rick pull a zip tie from a pocket and use it to lash the wobbly case to the sturdier one.

  “Thanks,” Grady said. “That’s been threatening to happen for ages. You always carry zip ties?”

  “Thousand and one uses,” Laura said, beating Rick to it.

  “So what’s on that sheet?” Rick said.

  Grady showed them a diagram, half printed, half scribbled.

  “Are those Keith’s X’s?”

  “Yes. I found this behind his desk. He and I have spent the last year tracing 3998 back through the hominid tree, but I never saw this.”

  “How far back did you go?”

  “We stopped at rudolfensis. If we hadn’t found 3998 by then, there seemed no point in going further back. We found it only in Homo sapiens. Emerged sometime after heidelbergensis—post the Neanderthal split, ’cause we didn’t find it in neanderthalensis.”

  “Isn’t that odd?”

  “Yes, and no. Under environmental stress, formally coding genes can stop coding and formerly non-coding genes can start—the now-famous miR-941 is a good example of that. Hsa-mir-3998 is apparently the same. Can’t be a hundred percent sure, but we’re working on that.”

  “Under different circumstances I’m sure this would all be fascinating,” Rick said, “but it doesn’t help us locate him. Is there any way we can check his office computer?”

  She knew what Rick was think
ing. Maybe Keith had left an email or some record of whoever had forced him into liquidating his assets.

  “He kept all his files encrypted—but even if someone knew the key, it wouldn’t help.”

  Laura thought that an odd comment, and then realized why the encryption didn’t matter.

  Rick was nodding. Obviously he got it too. “Because someone shredded his hard drive.”

  Grady’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”

  “His home computer was found in the same state.”

  Grady looked crestfallen. “I was hoping he’d backed up all our data there. We had everything organized but Keith wanted to go off and think it all through for a while before we started writing. He said he was going to visit the Rift Valley for inspiration. When he returned we would prepare everything for publication. I was going to be the first author.”

  “I take it the paper was never published?” Laura said.

  Grady shook his head. “When he returned he had Mozi with him and she became the focus of his attention. And now the data’s gone.”

  “Gotta be a backup somewhere,” Rick said.

  “He would never back up to the cloud or to the university servers. Didn’t trust them. Worried about an EMP wiping them all out. He’d only back up to optical media.”

  “DVDs?” Laura said. “Well, where are they?”

  Grady looked glum. “I wish I knew. His home maybe?”

  Laura shook her head. “We searched it. The only ones we found were video.”

  “But his computer’s not all that’s erased,” Grady said.

  “Oh?”

  “No. He wiped all of Mozi’s genetic data from the sequencer.”

  Laura stiffened. Now there was a shocker.

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Rick said, “Are you sure he ran Mozi’s DNA?”

  “Absolutely.” Grady looked hurt. “But he must have run it when I wasn’t around and never told me.”

  Laura wondered about that. “If it was erased, how do you know he even ran it?”

  “After Keith disappeared and we found his hard drive wiped, I searched his office and stumbled on that chart there. When I saw ‘Mozi’ with a question mark I suspected he might have started sequencing her. I checked the log book and Keith’s last run on the sequencer was labeled ‘unknown primate.’ But the results were gone.”

  “Don’t you back up?” Laura’s boss was fanatical about that at the ME’s office.

  “Of course—to the cloud—but Keith had it erased from the cloud as well, so there’s no record.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Exactly what I thought. And I’ll tell you something else: He didn’t erase it just once, he erased it three times.”

  “You mean he was trying to overwrite it?”

  “Sorry, I guess I didn’t say that right. The sequencing folks told me that, after the first run, he came back to them all upset, saying they’d botched it. He gave them a second sample from the same primate and made them run it again—but a larger sequence. After he had that one, he returned yet again, even more upset, and insisted they run a third, even larger sequence.”

  “Three? But why?”

  “It seemed he didn’t believe what he was seeing. And then he came back one last time and stood over the techs until they’d erased the results of all three runs, backups and all.”

  “That’s allowed?”

  “They said he was scary … looked crazy. And he’s one of the bosses, so they did what they were told. When I saw the date of the sequencing I realized that was when he changed.”

  “Changed? Changed how?”

  “He became, I don’t know … distracted.”

  Rick shrugged. “Wasn’t he always distracted?”

  “In social situations, or a conversation like this, sure. I mean, he was a terrible conversationalist. But when he had a problem to solve, well, I’ve seen him put in fifteen-hour days, sometimes even more. His focus was incredible. But all of a sudden he couldn’t focus at all.”

  Laura was baffled. “Why do you think he was upset with Mozi’s genome?”

  “Who knows?” Grady said with a shrug. “I’ve been through his desk and there’s nothing there. And if he left any notes on his hard drive, they’re shredded. I’d love to ask him.”

  Rick said, “Do you think he was expecting this 3999 thing to be there and got all bent out of shape because it wasn’t?”

  “It’s 3998, and it would have been super if it had been there, but that’s highly unlikely. Besides, I doubt 3998 was even on his mind. He seemed to have forgotten about it since his return with Mozi. Most likely he was running her genome so he’d know where to place her on the evolutionary tree. Taxonomy was his specialty, after all. I can’t even guess what the problem was, but the sequencing crew said he looked positively spooked.”

  “Spooked?” Laura tried to imagine that … and failed. “What could spook you about a genome?”

  Rick was giving her that look. “How about something that wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  Laura was not going there. “It was just DNA. Nothing spooky about combinations of base pairs.”

  “Still,” Grady said, “that was the word they used: ‘spooked.’” He looked at his watch—an old Mickey Mouse model, Laura noted. “Hey, I’ve got a meeting.” He grabbed the porkpie from his desk and plopped it over his topknot. “I’ll show you out.”

  “Before we go, do you remember the date he got ‘spooked’?” Rick said.

  “No. But I can find out in a sec.” He leaned over his desk, barraged his keyboard with a series of lightning strokes, then squinted at the screen. “February twenty-fourth. Why?”

  Rick pulled out a pen and a pad of yellow sticky notes and scribbled something. “Just keeping track.”

  Grady led them down to the first floor and onto Waverly Place.

  “If I can help in any way,” he said when they reached the sidewalk, “just call me here.”

  And then he was off, skinny jeans and all. They stood and watched him go.

  “I’d have liked to have spent some time searching through Keith’s office,” she said.

  “Sounds like his colleagues have picked it over pretty well.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Still…”

  He was staring at his notepad.

  “What?”

  “Keith runs Mozi’s DNA on February twenty-fourth. Six days later, on March second, he starts liquidating his assets. By the twenty-third all his dough ends up in the Caymans. April first—just nine days after that—is the last time anyone ever sees him. So in the course of one month he goes from a rich and famous—and ‘spooked’—zoologist to a missing person.”

  Laura shook her head. “Well, that’s spooky right there. But what does it mean?”

  “It says to me that Mozi and his disappearance are linked.”

  “But how?”

  “Don’t know. But I do know I need lunch.” He pointed to a sandwich shop on the corner. “Let’s give that a try.”

  Laura shrugged. She could do with a bite.

  Inside, the food prep area was exposed to view. Laura took one look and pulled Rick back outside.

  “Something wrong?” he said.

  She didn’t say that it looked like the kind of place petri dishes went to feel clean. “I’d like someplace quieter.” She spotted a bar across the street with a sign advertising Food and Fine Ales. “How about there?”

  “Sold.”

  Inside, the White Oak Tavern was all dark wood walls and floors and tables arranged around a big horseshoe bar. It felt new but the sconces and the wrought-iron chandeliers with their frosted globes looked like holdovers from the gaslight era. A young woman in a black apron led them to a window table with a view of Waverly Place, directly across from something called the Torch Club. A blonde dressed exactly the same dropped off menus and took drink orders—an iced tea for Laura and a Pabst for Rick.

  “Pabst?”
she said. “I didn’t know they still made that.”

  He grinned. “Never stopped. Did your father drink PBR?”

  “He was a Mormon, remember? But I remember the kids at college guzzling lots.”

  “The right price for college kids. Grady made me yearn for one. You know: When in Rome…”

  “Well, where are we—really?” she said. “How do you feel about all this?”

  “‘Feel’?” he said, picking up the menu. “Rather think than feel. And now I think more than ever that Keith’s little monkey is at the heart of this whole deal.”

  “No question. Especially after that story about erasing Mozi’s genome from the sequencer. How bizarre is that?”

  “Very. But Keith’s mind never worked like other people’s.”

  She glanced at the menu—soups, salads, sandwiches, and entrées. “That’s to be expected with someone on the spectrum, but Grady said ‘spooked.’ Said it twice. Spectrum or not, what could spook a grown man, a scientist, no less, about that little monkey’s DNA?”

  “Not a monkey, remember?”

  “Oh, I remember, all right. I’ll rephrase: What could spook your brother, a guy who was sequencing DNA up and down the line, what could spook him about that particular little primate’s genome?”

  Rick banged his fist on the table, earning a few stares. “Damn, I wish I knew genetics!”

  Laura understood his frustration. “Don’t feel bad. I studied it in medical school and everything they taught me is obsolete. We’ve learned so much in the past decade, and the pace of discovery keeps accelerating. Unless you work with it every day and keep up with the journals, you’re left in the dust.”

  “So you’re saying neither of us knows enough to figure out what spooked him?”

  She nodded. “Exactly. If he’d left a copy of Mozi’s genome on his computer and you showed me a printout, I’d be at a loss to tell you what was wrong with it. But I know people who could.”

  “‘Wrong with it’…” Rick shook his head. “How could a primate’s DNA be ‘wrong’? And wrong enough to spook you?”