by Warren Fahy
Out of every thousand juveniles clinging to the sides of the rolling bugs, one dropped off and extended legs on one side like mangrove roots. Then their disk-shaped bodies expanded into tiny cylinders as their upper legs morphed into fronds. Multicolored egg clusters formed like coconuts under the fronds. Within each color of egg, a different species of “tree” began to incubate.…
FEBRUARY 21
10:14 A.M.
Clouds colored the sea gray like the shore except for a spill of vivid hues on the rocky coast of a tiny island Captain Tezuka was studying with his binoculars. His crab boat, the Kirishima, had been poaching the contested waters north of Japan when his crew drew his attention to the strange sight on the shore. It looked like a melted circus growing out of the island. He rubbed his eyes and smoothed back the white stubble on his shaved scalp, stumped.
This fragment of the Khabomai Rocks was one of a hundred islets dotting a political limbo claimed by both Russia and Japan. With both countries’ navies asserting their authority over them, it was effectively a no-man’s-land, where a fortune in snow and king crab could be harvested for a gambler like Tezuka.
“Captain, we shouldn’t stay here any longer,” his first mate implored.
Captain Tezuka knew he was right, but in all his travels, he had never seen what he was looking at now. “Send three men in for a closer look, Hiro. Have them bring back some of that stuff,” he ordered. Tezuka had a gut feeling this might be a lot more valuable than crabs, to the right buyer. And he knew the right buyer. Telling the authorities was out of the question, of course. After all, it was illegal for him to be here in the first place. “Tell them to use your camera case!”
Hiro sighed. In that camera case was his new video camera, which he was hoping to use to make a reality show pilot of their crab-fishing adventures and sell it to one of Japan’s television networks.
“Empty the case and give it to them,” Tezuka ordered.
Hiro sadly removed his camera and the foam forms inside, placing them inside an empty ice chest. Tezuka threw the empty aluminum case down to three men in the inflatable launch, who gunned the outboard engine and whipped a creamy curve across the sea toward the eruption on the shore of the island.
When they hit the shore, one man dragged the launch above the surf onto the gray pebble beach as the other two men trotted toward the lurid garden growing on the rocky shelf above.
At the base of the ledge, they found the remains of a large Zodiac, half-buried in seaweed. Oddly, no swarms of flies rose as they approached to inspect it. Inside the raft was a corpse wearing a bleached cargo vest, jeans, and shriveled Nikes. The mummy’s bearded face was frozen in a scream and its eye sockets followed them as they passed.
The younger man took the aluminum camera case and lunged up footholds in the escarpment to the ledge. He reached out to a purple coral-like growth and broke off a branch, throwing it into the open case. Reaching down with his other hand, he scooped handfuls of some kind of flat-leafed square-edged moss into the open case, along with what looked like two hard brown dates and some skittering white bugs that suddenly appeared all around him, crawling over the rock.
Transparent blue flower petals popped out on the branches of the coral tree next to his face, startling him. The heel of his hand burned suddenly, and pain scorched the skin on his legs. The three-petaled flowers shot out of the purple branches, revealing insect bodies hanging under three beating wings, hovering a few inches in front of his face, like whirligigs. Before the young man could react, two inch-long bugs had bitten into his neck.
A five-winged creature dived into his cheek and bounced off into the case as he slammed it shut. The case banged down the ledge as he dropped it, where his shipmate caught it and saw the young man collapse, blood spraying from his neck. His mate was about to climb up to help when an angry swarm of strange bugs appeared and instantly covered the young man’s body as he screamed.
His older crewmate turned and ran, embracing the suitcase. Thousands of tiny disks rolled, bounced, and hurled after him like miniature Frisbees. They caught up to the veteran crabber, who had come ashore barefoot with pants rolled up above his knees.
Seven of the pale disks stuck like Chinese throwing stars into his calves, and he ran twenty more steps before falling in crippling agony, dropping the case. It slid down the pebbled beach toward the water as he shrieked and the bones of his calves were exposed as his flesh melted off his legs before his eyes. Attracted by his screams, two flying bugs shot down his throat, silencing him.
The third shipmate, who had stayed with the launch, heard his muffled scream as a wave embraced the camera case and sucked it into the surf. A number of large flying bugs headed toward him, buzzing loudly as he shoved the launch into the water, leaping in. He saw the case floating near the boat and pulled it aboard, throttling the launch toward the Kirishima.
The flying bugs turned away, heading back to shore.
10:28 A.M.
Through his binoculars, Captain Tezuka saw the body of his crew chief rolling in the surf. “Kuso!” he cursed.
“We must report this, Captain,” said Hiro.
Tezuka scoffed. “And get ourselves arrested?” The captain rubbed his head. “Rikio is coming.”
They saw the weeping man in the raft, holding the aluminum case over his head.
“He got it!” Tezuko shouted.
MARCH 12
5:27 A.M. CENTRAL EUROPEAN TIME
Otto Inman heard the e-mail beep while he was typing his notes. He had been up all night, working on a book about his experiences on Henders Island.
Several of his colleagues had made a bundle off book deals and product endorsements since the species they discovered on the island had added an entire branch to the tree of Earth’s evolution. All the creatures that had evolved on that isolated, crumbling fragment of an ancient supercontinent had been sterilized with a nuclear weapon—except for the incredibly alien and astonishingly sentient “hendros,” who were now kept in an undisclosed location.
Though virtually imprisoned since their public debut on the reality TV show that had first encountered them, the five surviving hendros had become world famous. Even in their seclusion, they had each made a fortune in sponsorship deals, their likenesses appearing in comic books, movies, trading cards, action figures, board games, children’s cartoons, and commercials for hundreds of brands around the world.
Otto was one of the first scientists to encounter life on Henders Island, and was instrumental in designing the doomed NASA mobile lab the navy had flown in to investigate the island, yet he was having trouble spinning his story into gold, as so many others had. He did appreciate, and accept, a lucrative fellowship at the University of Berlin to study the legacy of Henders Island and the vast array of animals from its now extinct ecosystem, but he knew he was letting a golden opportunity pass.
Bored with his ideas, Otto welcomed the distracting e-mail. At first, it seemed like an offer to help an African prince withdraw money from a frozen bank account:
Dear Dr. Inman,
It is with the greatest respect that I solicit your expertise on a matter I believe to be of professional interest to you, and to the scientific community at large. We are prepared to make your acceptance of our offer quite lucrative, in the amount of two million American Dollars to be discreetly deposited into a private Swiss bank account with appropriately exclusive access.
I hope you will meet me at 5 o’clock this afternoon at Maruoosh restaurant in Charlottensburg to discuss the project, which, you should understand, we expect you to keep in perfect confidence.
I look forward to making your acquaintance and to discussing this matter further. We hope very much you will be agreeable to assisting us in this important scientific investigation, which promises to be very much more than professionally rewarding.
Very truly yours,
Galia Sokolof
Human Resources Procurement Director
GEM Worldwide Holdings
Well, why not,
he thought, and replied:
See you there!
MARCH 14
6:59 P.M. EASTERN STANDARD TIME
The placard onstage in Lillie Auditorium read:
TONIGHT’S
FIRE-BREATHING CHAT:
What Is Human?
The cozy theater in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, was packed as people continued to crowd in, standing behind the seats.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.”
Nell stacked her index cards on the lectern, pushing back a strand of her auburn hair, which was trimmed after her first trip to a hairdresser in three months. Tall, slender, with engaging mahogany brown eyes and an easily freckled complexion, Nell surveyed the crowd. “Tonight I must start with the confession that I am not an anthropologist. However, I would like to discuss a new force in evolution, which I believe may explain the rise of sentient life on Earth. My husband, the founder of the Fire-Breathing Chat, who seems to be late, informs me that this audience, above all others, might welcome such an unconventional proposal as I am about to propose, if only to rip it to pieces.” She smiled wryly, and the audience congratulated itself with applause.
A few wolf whistles pierced the humble auditorium where three dozen Nobel Prize–winning scientists had spoken over the last century. Nell scanned her cue cards and kicked a leg out of the hula skirt she was wearing, which got a big cheer. “Now, now.” She arched a brow and waggled her finger at the audience of rambunctious nerds. The Fire-Breathing Chat tradition required her to wear a random garment of ethnic origin, so she had chosen a pa’u, or Hawaiian “hula skirt,” as well as her husband Geoffrey’s torn CONSERVE ISLAND HABITATS T-shirt, which had somehow survived Henders Island.
“I have spent the last six months with hendropods, the marvelously intelligent species that my colleagues and I helped rescue from Henders Island. And during this extraordinary time, I have concluded that there is something unique about the development of sentient beings that both of our species share despite the vast biological differences that separate us. Indeed, a unique evolutionary force distinguishes us, in a very real way, from all other life on Earth.”
Nell peered over the audience but still saw no sign of Geoffrey. Though she and her husband enjoyed a very special relationship with the hendropods, it had not come without a cost. Shy of human contact, the hendros interacted with only a very exclusive group of humans. For any biologist, it was the greatest opportunity in history to be one of those they had chosen. These intelligent creatures inhabited the Earth and yet were not of human, primate, or even mammalian origin. Their mere existence was the most exciting discovery of all time, even more astonishing than would be the discovery of intelligent life on another planet. Nell and Geoffrey treated this privilege, moreover, as a solemn duty, vowing to protect the brilliant beings who now depended on them.
But the responsibility had proved exhausting, and this brief furlough away from the hendros was their first separation since encountering them on Henders Island. Even so, apart from getting married in a quick wedding ceremony in New York two days ago, attended by Geoffrey’s rushed parents, she and Geoffrey had so far spent their marriage separated from each other. Geoffrey had had to attend several high-level meetings at the United Nations to lobby for the hendros’ freedom while Nell departed for Woods Hole to give this lecture. Both of them realized, however, that their fates were inextricably intertwined with that of the hendropods. The sooner the hendropods won their freedom, the sooner Nell and Geoffrey would regain theirs.
An athletic man with a coffee and cream complexion, handsome African features, and pale blue eyes burst through the doors at the back of the auditorium. With relief, Nell recognized her husband, despite his new haircut. Geoffrey’s dreadlocks were shorn, and she noticed the pleasing shape of his cranium in the soft light. “Hi, husby!” she said.
A round of laughter and applause acknowledged the newlywed scientists. He waved back as an audience member offered him his seat near the back. After dealing with UN diplomats for two days, Geoffrey had been flown from LaGuardia to Logan Airport only three hours ago, racing in a government limousine to get here. He thanked the man and sat, sighing, as he waved at her.
“Now, then,” she said. “To the topic of tonight’s chat. Most scientists claim no special origin for human beings out of a desire to acknowledge that the same evolutionary processes that created all life on Earth produced us, as well. I believe, however, that this bias might have obscured an essential factor in the understanding of human evolution, one which may well explain the spectacularly rapid rise of our species in such a relatively short time. In fact, I think that humans and hendros, unlike all other species, share a unique and powerful evolutionary dynamic: We are both the product of intelligent design!”
The feisty first row harrumphed, ready to pounce, as she knew they would, and catcalls rose in the back of the auditorium. Geoffrey braced himself.
Nell smiled and squeezed the clicker to project an image of a cute wallaby. “Kangaroos and this Henders species helped retire Plato’s definition of human beings as the ‘featherless biped.’” A series of images showed a furry biped with an anvil-like head bashing the window of a doomed NASA lab abandoned on Henders Island. The pictures elicited gasps, as did all pictures of Henders organisms. “Benjamin Franklin defined man as the ‘tool-making animal.’” Nell put up a photo of a wise bonobo ape with penetrating eyes. “Jane Goodall disproved his definition by discovering toolmaking chimpanzees. We now know that some birds, like crows, also fashion twigs into tools. After the discovery of the hendros, however, I believe that an entirely new distinction redefines ‘humanity.’ Humans, I suggest, are the only animals that create themselves.”
The theater hummed with tension as she projected an image of a primitive stone ax. “Nature still had to provide the raw material: DNA sequences that produced a brain that could conceptualize, a vocal apparatus that could create sounds to symbolize concepts, and coordinated hands with opposable thumbs that could facilitate creativity. But this potential was all nature could provide. When a human ancestor with these innate abilities made the giant innovation of assigning a vocalized sound to an abstraction—a specialized grunt symbolizing ‘lion,’ for example—that creative act connected these aptitudes in a new way and introduced a unique evolutionary force to the animal kingdom, and this new force could operate over generations just like DNA. Creative behavior that required specific physical aptitudes was transferred by language from generation to generation, creating a new evolutionary pressure.”
Nell gauged the audience as she took a breath and they settled back in their seats.
“Language required aptitudes for conceiving, communicating, and implementing ideas and at the same time set conditions for selecting those aptitudes over generations. It would not have mattered if the ancient genius who thought of the first word had the best vocal cords or brain specialization to fully exploit speech. The invention of language conferred benefits on those equipped to take advantage and pass those genetic traits to their descendants. In this way, humans created themselves as their own ideas influenced their evolution.”
Nell clicked to a close-up of a gibbon gripping a branch. “When a prehuman ancestor suited to tree-swinging thought of a new use for hands—making tools—an idea, once again, became an adaptive force. Without language, such a creative breakthrough could not have been passed through offspring long enough to have an evolutionary effect. But with language—the DNA of ideas—a toolmaking culture could be transmitted from generation to generation over a sufficient amount of time to select for improved opposable thumbs, hand-to-eye coordination, geometric thinking, and a host of other complementary adaptations.”
Nell clicked through a series of primitive stone axes now, all of which appeared roughly the same. “This identical style of stone tool was made by Homo erectus for nearly one-and-a-half million years with no significant variation. But the hands and the brains making them over that time were changing and adapting t
o the task at hand along with the teaching of it. Just as Edison, Einstein, Ford, or Gates did in the modern day, one person finally improvised, long ago—and that innovation could be passed on through language, changing and focusing the pressures of adaptation.” Nell clicked to an image of a diverse collection of stone knives, spearheads, tools, and adornments made by Homo sapiens. “By the time we appeared, an explosion of biological and technological adaptations had already occurred.”
Nell clicked through a gallery of skydivers, spacewalkers, ballerinas, and Olympic swimmers. “We recognize in our hands, our mouth, our mind, our face, and our feet customizations that serve the needs of the spiritual, creative, inquisitive, and intellectual being that we are. There is something unique about human evolution, something that has made our bodies specialized vessels for the human spirit. Unlike any other animal, we ski on snow, skydive through air, swim in water, and walk in space. Something tells us that our origin could not simply be the result of purely mechanical or physical forces acting on the randomly mutating sequence of nucleotide bases in our genes. Our evolution is most profoundly of intellectual origin, expressed and carried forward, I submit, through language. Speech joined with DNA to complete a unique feedback loop between our minds and bodies, which over time accelerated and directed our own evolution. The intuition inspiring creationists—that humans must be different in some special way from all living beings and that there must be a conscious plan in our design—is not mistaken. Strictly physical theories of evolution are blind to an empirically obvious truth: We are the product of conscious design in almost every way that distinguishes us from other living things. But the designer we have searched for from time immemorial is us.”
The audience churned like waves kicking up ahead of a storm. Nell showed an image of the famous biologist Richard Dawkins, whose picture elicited cheers, boos, scolds, and laughter. “The eminent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has introduced a corollary to my hypothesis with his theory of ‘memes.’ His genetic metaphor suggests that ideas, or memes, are selected in the same way mutations are selected, leading to the evolution of human cultures. Good ideas have a way of surviving, along with their hosts. Bad ones perish, taking their hosts with them. I propose that not only do ideas select for or against their human hosts, as Dawkins postulates, but that successful ideas biologically alter their hosts over time, leading to the seemingly miraculous creation of both humans and hendros.”
