Deep Past

by Eugene Linden

  But not Bart. As Francisco stared at the rotating simulations, his mind flooded with the implications. He sat back and did nothing for a few minutes. Then he grabbed his phone and typed out a brief message. I’ve got something.

  57

  Katie plunked herself into the one spare chair and dropped her bag. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and could have passed for an undergraduate.

  “So, what’s the plan?

  Claire had scheduled a teleconference call for the evening so that Sergei and the Transteppe crew could join. Francisco would be calling from his office at the National Zoo in Washington. Benoit would be working from his office at the University of Montana. So Claire had a few hours to brief Katie.

  “I never really enjoyed college, but for whatever reason, it’s nice to be back on a campus,” said Claire. “How about you; how was home?” Katie had taken a few days to go back to San Francisco.

  Katie cocked her head. She didn’t miss much. Katie laughed. “You’re right, it’s good to be back on campus.”

  Claire took a deep breath and plunged right in.

  “Keerbrock came by.”

  Katie’s eyes widened.

  “Jesus! Is he on board?”

  “He’s not the kind of guy to go all the way on the first date, but there will be a second date.”

  “Totally cool!”

  Claire looked down. She hated what she was about to do. “And he warned me about you.”

  Katie looked like she had taken a bullet in the gut. It was the first time Claire had seen her lose her cool. She put a hand on Katie’s shoulder.

  “Not you specifically.”

  She saw relief flood over Katie’s features. What had she done in the past? Claire remembered a line, “Nobody goes through life undefeated.” She quickly filled in Katie on the substance of Keerbrock’s reservations. She told it straight, including the part of trusting the potentially most explosive part of the study to a graduate student.

  After discussing how far they could push the boundaries without being dismissed, Claire asked, “So I need to know. Can you live with publishing far less than you are certain is true? If it’s any consolation, I had to make a similar compromise to get this affiliation with Rushmere.”

  “I am who I am,” Katie said soberly, “but I am loyal.” She fixed Claire with a direct look. “You, of all people, should know that.”

  Claire felt like a combination of an ingrate a war criminal. “You’re right, I do know that.”

  Katie left shortly afterward to explore the campus. They planned to meet just before the conference call. Claire looked at her phone and saw that there were a few unread messages. One was from Benoit, confirming that he would be on the teleconference. Another was from Francisco: I’ve got something. Given Francisco’s laconic nature, he really must have something big. Claire responded, apologizing for not getting back to him sooner and saying that she would call on Francisco first when they got to the progress report.

  ¬

  At nine o’clock, Katie and Claire reconvened in her office for the conference call with Benoit, Francisco, Sergei, and the Kazakhs (including Sauat) at Transteppe. Claire had invited Rob to participate in the call, but he begged off, explaining that the situation in Kazakhstan was very fluid, and that the board, the US State Department, intelligence agencies, and the management team were in almost constant contact. He also said that Sergei was doing double duty as an intermediary with the breakaway group as well as chief geologist, and that he might need him to be called away. He suggested that the Transteppe group make the call from his office so that if Sergei was called, he’d be right where he was needed.

  The Transteppe tech people had set up a video connection to Claire’s computer, but the Kazakh crew were the only people she could see. As she watched, Rob came into the frame and waved. He smiled, but his face was drawn.

  “Just wanted to say hi. By the way, Sergei’s”—he clapped a hand on Sergei’s shoulder—“been a stand-up guy.”

  “You mean like comedian?” said Sergei, using his thick Russian movie-villain accent.

  Everybody laughed but the Kazakhs, who looked at each other, confused. “Yeah, like comedian,” said Rob. He sounded wan. “I’ve got to get back …”

  “I miss you guys,” said Claire, hoping that Sergei realized that she particularly meant him. She also wanted to ask about the investigation into Hayden’s death, but now was not the time.

  She noticed that Karil was staring at her with a moonstruck look. What was that about? Then she realized that Karil was not staring at her, but at Katie. With a mixture of curiosity and amusement, she thought, Aha! She stole a quick look at Kamila, and her suspicions were confirmed: Kamila was looking at Karil with somewhat narrowed eyes.

  Claire got down to business. She laid out the plan to submit a letter to Nature or Science as a way of rapidly getting the word out, and stressed the need for utter secrecy until it was published.

  “Who’s going to be the corresponding author?”

  Benoit, of course, just asked the one question for which she did not have an answer. Typically, the etiquette of publishing in a peer-reviewed journal would be for the scientist who made the discovery and did the lion’s share of the work to be first author, with other scientists listed who contributed to the analysis. The last author listed would be the corresponding author, which typically was an eminent scientist whose blessing lent some gravitas to the submission. Claire had prayed that Keerbrock might lend his name, but that did not seem to be in the cards—yet.

  “I’m working on it—there are a lot of moving parts.”

  “What about Gwynne?”

  Claire stiffened. It could have been an innocent question—Gwynne was the preeminent expert on elephant evolution—or it could be Benoit twisting the knife. Claire thought of Constantine and his warning, Gwynne is not your friend.

  “Good idea. I’ll keep that in mind.” Claire quickly moved on to soliciting a quick progress report.

  As planned, Claire asked Francisco to go first. He first offered some ideas. Based on tooth development, he said that the elephant was most likely a mature animal, and also that the shape of the cranium was not consistent with the thesis that the enlarged cranium was the result of a deformity such as hydrocephalus, Francisco explained, because an animal suffering from hydrocephalus almost certainly would not live beyond infancy. He also said that tooth decay suggested that the animal was suffering from malnutrition, a hypothesis supported by an examination of the ulnae, which were bent in ways that suggested vitamin D deficiency. Francisco had made no further progress on whether the cranium and ulnae came from the same species, although he could claim with some confidence that they did not come from the same individual, unless there were twelve-legged elephants roaming around five million years ago. Francisco was enjoying his star turn. Claire knew that he had something big, so he was setting the stage.

  Francisco paused a minute. “So,” he said, “what about Bart’s brain?”

  Francisco quickly went through the basics of the cerebellum to cerebral cortex ratio, the likely reason for the disproportionate ratio in elephants, and the ecological calculus that made growth of the cerebral cortex very unlikely in land mammals.

  “In the case of Bart,” said Francisco, “nature threw out the rule book. Unless his forehead was filled with sand, he’s got an enormous cerebral cortex. We had some sense of that when we first looked at the cranium at Transteppe, but it’s even larger than we thought.”

  Francisco went on a bit about its comparison with modern African elephants, noting that Bart’s cerebral cortex was proportionately outsized compared to modern mammals, even humans, but that it was off the charts compared with the brains of the contemporary mammals 5.5 million years prior.

  “So think about it,” he concluded. “If modern elephants can run a trunk and vocalizations largely through the cerebellum and without an outsized cerebral cortex, something must have happened to initiate fantastic positive feedba
ck that favored a bigger forebrain. Bart’s ancestors somehow found it useful to process the flood of information that most elephants can react to without thinking. Why did they need to do this, and what were they thinking about?”

  Listening to Francisco, Claire felt her pulse beginning to race. She had some hunches about what he was driving at, but she kept quiet. She stole a glance at Katie, whose eyes were wide as she listened intently.

  Sergei spoke next. He had done additional testing and had slightly changed the dates of the bones from 5.5 Ma (the notation for millions of years ago) to 5.4 Ma. He also confirmed that both the bones and the surrounding sedimentary rock were contemporaneous. He gave a confidence level of 95 percent that this new date was correct with an error range of plus or minus fifty thousand years. He then excused himself to resume his role as intermediary between Transteppe and the rebels.

  Claire asked that he call later so that he could fill in the gaps. Katie elbowed her in the side and winked. Claire hoped nobody saw that she was blushing.

  Benoit was up next. “First off, I want to say how grateful I am to be included on this team.” He paused, apparently struggling to find the right words. “Thank you, Claire. You were right and I was wrong. I want everyone to hear that.”

  Claire was embarrassed. “Don’t give it a thought, Benoit. What matters now is how we put this picture together.”

  Benoit cleared his throat again. “OK, here goes. First off, Sergei’s new date is a big deal. I’ll get to that in a moment. As you know, these bones are dated just before the beginning of the Pliocene, which has been the epoch I’ve focused on, trying to see the correlations between speciation, climate change, and brain size. Turns out that had I looked back just a little farther, I’d have found one of the most dramatic and violent events in the world’s oceans since the end of the Cretaceous. And if I’d studied what was happening around the world at that time, I would see that species were dying off and new species emerging in a whole host of animals …”

  The upheaval Benoit was talking about was the Messinian salinity crisis, which began 5.96 million years ago and lasted 640,000 years before abruptly ending about 5.33 million years ago. The trigger for this event was the isolation of the Mediterranean from the world’s oceans, either by tectonic shifts or changes in sea level. Though sea level in the basin fell on a jagged curve over several hundred thousand years, there were a number of violent shifts, culminating 5.4 million years ago when the bottom of the Mediterranean was exposed to the sun, creating a death valley over fifteen thousand feet deep. Scientists estimated that in summer, temperatures on the desiccated sea floor reached as high as 176 degrees Fahrenheit, and the interruption of global ocean currents played havoc with the great ocean conveyor that distributed heat around the world, as well as the jet stream and associated storm tracks. When sea level rose enough to breach the Strait of Gibraltar and refill the Mediterranean, it did so in a flood of water that was the equivalent of a thousand Amazon rivers. Sea level in the giant basin rose thirty feet a day, and the Mediterranean was a sea again in a matter of a few months.

  “So,” Benoit concluded, “our friend lived and died when the drying and cooling in the steppes resulting from the Messinian was at its most intense. If I was looking for an elephant that could survive in these conditions, I would look for an animal specialized for digging up tubers, because that’s where plants hide their biomass in tough times. You see where I’m going with this—an elephant specialized in digging up yams, for instance … By the way, what’s the story with the rock, anyway?”

  Claire jumped in before anyone could say anything. “Katie’s working on that and needs more time. It’s too important to do quickly, and it would be too much of a distraction to include in this first letter, so we will hold that for another meeting.” There was silence as the group digested this. Claire looked at Katie and raised her eyebrows in an “OK?” gesture. Katie nodded, but slowly.

  Claire continued, shifting her glance between Katie and the monitor, “And another thing—until Katie is ready to go public, no one outside of those on this call is to know that the rock even exists. Speculation in the popular press could kill any chances she has for publication. Is that clear?” There were murmured assents, but Claire could feel that there were a lot of unspoken questions. She needed to move on.

  “Karil? Can you give us an update on pollens and vegetation?”

  Karil positioned himself in front of the monitor. “Yes, I can,” he said. “There’s a puzzle here.”

  Claire hadn’t expected this. “A puzzle?”

  “Well, I looked for polymorphs”—organic microfossils—“focusing on pollens and other proxies, and they say that vegetation in that area five point four million years ago was characteristic of desert.”

  “That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course, it is what you would expect.” Karil looked uncomfortable.

  “So what is the puzzle?”

  “OK, I did study of vertical slice of rock—going back in time, yes? I find evidence of lush vegetation—in that immediate area.”

  “How far back in time?”

  “Just before the time of the bones. It’s a really thin layer. Very easy to miss. We only found it by accident.”

  Benoit jumped in. “But the dry period lasted hundreds of thousands of years?”

  “I know, and I checked records for loess plateau and other neighboring areas for same period, and vegetation was dry there, too.” Karil paused. “But not here. Here lush.”

  Claire spoke very slowly. “How long does the lush period last?”

  “Hard to tell—very, very thin layer in the sediment. Not sure I’ll be able to tell exactly, because the resolution is not so good, but I’m guessing ten thousand years.”

  Benoit spoke slowly. “So at the same time the Messinian drying was at its most intense, that area had a lush period?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus.”

  Claire was stunned. “Karil, as you might imagine, we need to check this seven ways from Sunday …”

  Karil interrupted, “What is this seven ways from Sunday?”

  Claire laughed, realizing that Karil’s confusion was real, unlike Sergei’s. “Sorry, Karil, I mean we have to check this from every conceivable angle—it’s too important not to. I’m going to try to find some help for you to see if there were some special circumstances creating a microclimate or some such.”

  “I agree.”

  “OK,” said Claire wrapping it up, “clearly we need to do some digging. And please remember, not a word.”

  After she ended the call, Claire and Katie sat in silence for a few minutes.

  Finally, Katie turned to Claire. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Claire buried her face in her hands. “I don’t even want to say it out loud.”

  “I know we’ve got to eliminate every other possibility, and of course it’s a long shot.”

  “Don’t go there.”

  Katie, who was just the type to go there when warned not to, went there anyway: “Farming.”

  Claire tensed. The mere mention of the word brought visions of Keerbrock’s possible reactions, none of them good. She didn’t want to think about that now, so she changed the subject.

  She looked Katie in the eye. “Karil?”

  Katie blushed.

  Claire continued, “I thought you said, and I’m quoting verbatim here, ‘not going to happen.’”

  Katie looked sheepish. “I meant it when I said it,” she said lamely, “but then it did happen.” She fidgeted. “It seemed pretty uncomplicated—he’s not leaving Kazakhstan, after all.”

  Claire laughed. “Kamila was watching him like a hawk.”

  Katie put her hands out. “Well, I’m not stopping her, at least not anymore.”

  Claire smiled warmly. “Don’t worry. To quote Pope Francis, ‘who am I to judge?’”

  Not long after the conference call ended, her cell phone rang. The call identificati
on read “unknown.” After a moment’s hesitation, she answered. It was Sergei, calling from Rob’s encrypted phone.

  “Sergei! I’m so glad you called!”

  “Me, too. It’s difficult to maintain the formality …”

  “Yes!” Sergei was saying just the right thing.

  “And please don’t read anything into any coolness in a professional situation,” he continued. “I come from a country where it’s a survival skill to hide your feelings … there’s a lot more going on in my head than I might say.”

  “Thank you, Sergei, it’s good to hear that.”

  There was a momentary silence. “I’ve got to get back to things. I’m still juggling, but now it’s chain saws.”

  Claire was alarmed. “Tell me!”

  “I can’t, but don’t worry about me, Claire. You’ve got enough to worry about.”

  He rang off, leaving Claire deeply worried.

  58

  The day after Claire’s team had their conference call, Byron Gwynne took the stage at a special symposium entitled “All Things Elephant,” which was being held at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s gleaming, LEED platinum–certified global headquarters building at the Bronx Zoo. The event brought together elephant experts and handlers from around the globe. It was an impressively varied group, including the behavioral scientists who had shown that elephants recognize themselves in a mirror, animal trainers, zookeepers, explorers, ecologists, conservation biologists, evolutionary biologists, and paleontologists. Francisco had begged Claire to permit him to attend, but she had told him not to get within two hundred miles of the meeting. She knew that this would be the perfect conference to introduce Bart to the world, but it was just too soon. There was no way she was going to jeopardize the chances of publication by some inadvertent comment leaking out. What would Francisco say if someone innocently asked what he was working on? Francisco grudgingly accepted the reasoning.