by Bill Schutt
“Well hello,” Knight said, stepping toward the lab bench as both of Mac’s visitors moved aside, providing him with some elbow room. Never one to make assumptions, Knight turned back to MacCready. “May I?”
“Go right ahead, Charles. Those are the specimens I called you about.”
There was a partial skull, alongside approximately a dozen bones, the smallest of which spanned the length of Knight’s pinky. Knight noticed that Mac had conveniently placed a magnifying glass beside the tray, a respectful nod to the fact that the artist possessed only one good eye—the other had been damaged at the age of six by a pebble-tossing playmate. These days an ongoing battle with cataracts raised fears that his bad eye might one day become his good eye, but he had vowed to do as much as he could, until he couldn’t. With a degree of caution that he’d developed during decades of handing delicate (and indeed, priceless) fossils, Knight picked up the largest of the specimens—a nearly complete lower jaw that was a shade less than two feet in length.
“I must say, this is a wonderfully preserv—” Knight stopped suddenly, then, snatching up the hand lens, he began to examine the bone more closely. “This can’t be,” he said, shooting MacCready an incredulous look.
Mac returned him a wry smile. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.”
“But Mac, this . . . this isn’t a fossil.”
“I figured you might find that an interesting feature.”
Major Hendry cleared his throat, loudly. “How old is it, Mr. Knight?”
Knight responded by using the magnifying glass to carefully examine the complexly surfaced molars embedded in the thickened, rear portion of the jaw. “I can’t be certain of course, but it’s . . . it looks recent!” He turned to MacCready. “But this is impossible.”
“Why’s that?” Hendry asked. “It’s an elephant, isn’t it?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” Knight replied, then paused for a moment. “It appears to be a type of mammoth.”
Knight expected a chorus of skepticism, but instead, Mac’s female friend stepped forward. “A baby mammoth?”
“What? Yes . . . I mean no,” Knight replied, somewhat unnerved by their apparent acceptance of his outrageous pronouncement.
“Go on, Charles,” Mac said, encouragingly. “Show us.”
Knight held the upper portion of the jaw toward his small audience and pointed to the occlusal, or crushing, surface of a large flat molar. “Do you see this cusp pattern? It’s quite different from that of a modern elephant. So yes, it’s definitely a mammoth.” Then he aimed the front end of the jaw at the trio. “But look at this mandibular symphysis.”
“English, please,” injected Major Hendry.
“The fusion of these dentary bones,” Knight replied, turning toward the military man, who shook his head. “The right and left lower jawbones, for Christ’s sake!”
Hendry nodded, flashing a smile that the artist found instantly irritating.
Knight continued, too excited to remain annoyed. “The way they’re fused to each other at the . . . chin . . . tells me this specimen was an adult! Some unknown, dwarf species or a hell of a bizarre mutation.”
“How bizarre?” the major asked, clearly trying to mask his concern.
Still holding the jawbones, the artist gestured to a pair of large openings in the front of the skull. “See those holes?”
His audience nodded.
“They’re nasal cavities,” Knight continued. “There’s supposed to be one, with a septum running down the middle—like we have.”
“And?”
“And this fella had two.”
Hendry shrugged his shoulders. “A pair of nasal cavities. So?”
“So,” Knight said, turning to the major, “I think this individual had two trunks. Is that bizarre enough for you?”
“But Charles—” MacCready began.
“Wait a minute, Mac,” Knight interrupted. “It’s my turn. Where on earth did you find this thing?”
MacCready nodded toward the redheaded officer, who was leaning against a rolltop desk. “Pat?”
The major crossed his arms. “That’s classified information.”
Knight, whose dislike for Hendry was growing by the second, began to throw his arms up, mock surrender-style, then, mindful of the specimen he was still holding, he gently returned the jawbone to the white-enameled tray.
“Classified, he says,” Knight mumbled, using the Sherlock Holmes–style magnifier to scan across the spread of smaller bones. “Well, these all look recent,” he said, mostly to himself but unable to hide the excitement in his voice. “Now how the hell can that—”
Knight held a long, narrow bone—approximately eighteen inches long and bent somewhat like an archery bow. “Remarkable,” he said, examining one end of the object ever more closely. “Unbelievable!”
“What is, Charles?” Mac asked.
“This rib.”
“What about it?”
“It’s also from your mammoth. But you see these?” Knight asked, pointing to a section of the narrow shaft. “They’re cut marks—made by tools.”
“What kinds of tools?” Hendry asked, his interest ratcheting up a notch.
“Sharp ones,” the older man answered, shooting the major a wry smile before shifting his gaze to MacCready. “We can examine these slashes for microscopic fragments and that’ll tell us what made ’em. But at first glance I’d say this was a metal blade.”
Deftly shifting the bone in his hand, Knight used a magnifier to examine one knobby end. “And there’s something else going on. The epiphysis here’s been gnawed on.”
“Gnawed on—like, by a rat?” Major Hendry asked.
“No,” Knight responded, squinting at a telltale set of spatulate grooves that had been chiseled onto the bone. “More like a human—a big, hungry one.”
Yanni stepped forward, watching as the artist ran an index finger along the tooth marks. “So, Mr. Knight, you’re saying somebody butchered a miniature mammoth recently and then chewed on one of its bones?”
“As close as I can tell. But whoever did this is nobody you’d want to meet on the subway.”
Yanni smiled. “Kinda like something out of your Neanderthal paintings?”
“Kind of, Yanni,” Knight responded. “But different—much larger, with massive incisors and premolars. More humanoid than human.” He turned to Mac. “Look, I’ve got some friends over in Paleontology who would literally trade five years of their lives to have a peek at these. Now if you’d just—”
Major Hendry shook his head. “I’m sorry but that won’t be possible.”
“What?” Knight said, exasperated. “For crying out loud!”
“Like I said, ‘classified information.’”
Knight turned to Mac, who shrugged his shoulders, before turning his attention back to the officer. This is definitely the same knucklehead the other curators had been jawing about, Knight thought. “So classified that you let me handle them but I can’t know where they came from?”
“For the time being, that’s correct,” the major answered, impassively. Then he prompted MacCready with a nod.
“Um, Charles, we’re asking you to please keep a lid on this—a tight lid.”
“Tell no one,” Hendry added.
“For the time being,” Mac emphasized, trying to end things on a hopeful note.
Knight, who had a lifetime of experience dealing with decisions that made little or no sense, knew there was nothing to be gained from arguing—at least not now. Without acknowledging MacCready or the major, he placed the rib back on the tray, bowed slightly to Yanni, and exited.
Yanni turned impatiently, aiming the stylus of a fountain pen at the officer. “So, Major, now that we’ve got that settled, where did these bones come from?”
“You mean, where are you going?” Hendry said. He stood beside a wall map, got his bearings, then moved a finger from left to right, crossing the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Slowing down as he reached India,
he traced a path northeast but then stopped abruptly. “Those mammoth bones,” he said, “came from here. A clan of Sherpas had them.”
“Looks cold,” Yanni said.
“Colder than the major’s heart,” Mac chimed in. He had abandoned his examination of the specimen and was looking over Yanni’s shoulder. “Southern Tibet, huh?”
Hendry ignored Mac’s dig. “It’s a region the locals call the Labyrinth. Definitely on the chilly side climate-wise, Yanni.”
“But quite the hotbed of political fuckery,” Mac added, thoughtfully.
Yanni continued to examine the map. “So who’s running the show in there?”
“If you ask the locals, they are,” Hendry continued, “the Dalai Lama and his Buddhist pals. They’re on number fourteen I think.”
Yanni shot the major a puzzled look. “Fourteen what?”
“Dalai Lamas, spiritual leaders, head monks. Whatever you want to call them.”
“Although this one’s no more than a kid, right?” Mac asked.
“So I hear,” Hendry said. “But whether he’s eight or eighty, officially speaking, our government doesn’t talk about Tibetan independence.”
“And why’s that?”
“Chiang Kai-shek wouldn’t like it. He considers Tibet to be part of China.”
Mac rolled his eyes. “I hear Chiang’s got bigger problems brewing than Tibetan Buddhists.”
“You got that right. Some of his Stalinist pals are chomping at the bit to take over, and pretty soon they might be chomping on Chiang’s ass. It’s the real reason we want you in there yesterday.”
MacCready shook his head. “I was wondering why the Army had suddenly gotten all lathered up about miniature wooly mammoths.”
Hendry let out a laugh, then gestured toward the tray holding the bones. “Just consider Dumbo there to be a perfect cover story. If anyone catches wind of this—then it’s all just a museum-sponsored collecting trip. The famous zoologist and his Brazilian associate, well versed as she is in elephant talk—”
“—hot on the track of a living fossil,” Mac added.
“Now you’re talkin’,” Hendry said, with a smile.
“But why send us now?” Yanni asked, ignoring his reference to her recent and highly publicized work on animal communication at the Central Park Menagerie.
“Like I said, we want you both in and out of there before the hammer falls on that whole region. Our intel is pointing towards a communist takeover—imminent, maybe.”
“Nothing like cutting these things close, huh, Pat?” Mac said. “But you still haven’t told us why we need to go in there in the first place.”
Hendry held up his hand. “Before we get to that, I’ve got one question for you. This guy Knight, can we trust him?”
“A hundred percent,” Mac replied, without hesitation. His impatience was now in full view. “Now are you gonna answer our question or what?”
“Yeah, spill it already,” Yanni added, allowing her own annoyance to tick up a notch.
“I guess you’ll want to take a gander at this,” the major said, withdrawing a folded manila envelope from inside his jacket and spreading out several eight-by-ten photographs.
MacCready picked one up, Yanni took another, and they squinted at what appeared to be sections from an ancient text. Some of the writing was accompanied by carefully labeled drawings of plants and animals.
“Well, this is definitely Latin,” Mac said, squinting at the diminutive symbols. “What is this, Pat? It looks Roman.”
Hendry smiled, clearly enjoying the proceedings. “It is. Somewhere between 70 and 80 a.d.”
Mac thought for a moment, then used a hand lens to get a better look. “Well . . . the author’s clearly a naturalist. Pliny the Elder?”
Hendry smiled. “Not bad, Mac.”
“But where are these specimens supposed to be from?” MacCready continued leafing through the prints. “There’s gotta be at least three different primate species here. And these plants? I’m no botanist but I sure as hell haven’t seen any like the ones in these drawings.”
“Me, either,” Yanni emphasized. “Maybe this Pliny made ’em up.”
“Or it could be a forgery,” Mac said, picking up another of the photos. “I’ve read Pliny’s Naturalis Historia but I’m not familiar with these writings.”
“That’s because we’ve only recently rediscovered them. The ‘Omega Codex,’ our boys are calling it.”
“Codex?” Yanni asked, unfamiliar with the term.
“An ancient book,” Hendry replied. “Usually made of papyrus.”
“Or paper,” Mac added. “The format allowed people to look stuff up randomly instead of having to unroll an entire scroll.” Then he turned to the major. “Okay, so why’s the Army all fired up about an ancient Roman text?”
“Well, for one, because Pliny evidently took a little side trip and then never talked about it.”
Mac gestured to the map. “Lemme guess . . . Tibet?”
“You got it.”
“And?” Mac and Yanni replied, simultaneously.
“And it’s what he found there, and what the Chinese may have already found, that’s got us worried.”
“Which was what?”
“According to Pliny, the key to shaping life itself.”
As the major expected, his audience of two paused to consider the statement before Mac slid into zoology mode. “Look, Pat, we’ve got departments full of researchers all over the country delving into the secrets of life: developmental biology, genetics, evolution. What could there be in a two-thousand-year-old codex that these folks don’t already know about? And this ‘shaping life’ reference? I mean, ya gotta admit that’s pretty damned vague.”
The major waited until MacCready stopped for a breath. “Funny you should mention evolution, Mac. I’ve been reading up on your boy Darwin’s theory about natural selection. What’s your take? You buying it?”
“It’s the engine that drives evolution,” Mac recited, transitioning easily into science-speak. “Changing environmental conditions select the best-adapted individuals—the ones with fortuitous variations. They’re faster or taller or better camouflaged than the norm.”
Yanni chimed in. “Which also makes ’em less likely to starve or get eaten and more likely to survive long enough to mate—”
“—and pass those adaptations on to the next generation,” MacCready said, completing the thought.
“Hey, you two should work together one of these days,” the major said, taking a moment to relish the twin frowns they flashed at him. “So this natural selection’s a pretty perfect process, huh?”
MacCready shook his head. “It’s far from perfect, Pat. Plenty of mistakes. Plenty of fits and starts along the way. Then there’s the fact that most of the variations produced by mutations don’t do shit. Others are harmful and some end up killing the individual. In fact it’s so imperfect that a lot of species go extinct before they can adapt to an environmental change—a blight or a new predator or whatever.”
“Well, thanks for the biology lesson, Mac. But what if there was a way to avoid the mistakes, a way to create a superior organism quickly and without all the trial and error?”
“You’re talking about a perfectly adapted species?” MacCready shook his head. “They don’t exist in nature.”
“And how would you do that anyway?” Yanni asked. “Create this so-called perfectly adapted species?”
“There’s selective breeding I suppose,” Mac suggested. “Farmers and livestock breeders have been doing that sort of thing forever—bigger ears of corn, more breast meat on a chicken. But still—it’s never perfect, and more importantly, it takes generations. How would you deal with that little problem?”
“We don’t know, exactly. But the brain trust down in D.C. suspect old Pliny may have stumbled onto something during his visit to Tibet—and it might be just the ticket.”
“Something that speeds up the evolutionary process?”
&
nbsp; “Speeds up. Smooths out. That’s what I’m hearing. Unfortunately this codex of his is in shambles—sections missing, other parts completely confusing or impossible to translate.”
Mac shuffled through the photos again. “But you have uncovered something that’s important enough to send us into the middle of Frozen Nowhere?”
“Yeah, word coming out of China is that their scientists have started cranking up the bioweapons labs the Japs left behind. Now the Chinese army is swarming over the Tibetan plateau like ants—which has got the bigwigs in D.C. plenty scared.”
Mac shot the major a hopeful look. “Did ya ever think that maybe this Omega Codex is just what Yanni suggested: a work of fiction—no more real than Plato’s Atlantis?”
“In which case you and Yanni get to look for Dumbo’s weird, pint-sized cousin, get him to pose for some pictures, then head home to shitloads of egghead acclaim.”
“There is another possibility,” Yanni added, and the two men turned to her. “Since this codex is supposed to be two thousand years old, maybe what was there isn’t anymore.”
Hendry glanced at the photos, and then nodded. “Then I’d welcome that great news. But right now we just can’t take any chances. I mean, how many soldiers they got in the Chinese army? A hundred million?”
“No . . . but far more than we’ve got,” Mac replied, “or anyone else for that matter.”
“Damn right. Now imagine jazzing up even a fraction of that army’s next generation with something that makes ’em stronger or faster, or better adapted to operating at night.”
“Didn’t Hitler try that one already?” Mac shot back. “His super race?”
“Yeah, but the Paper Hanger and his psycho pals didn’t have access to something that could speed up evolution, right?”
MacCready said nothing, knowing full well that this particular argument was over, and that the only things to be determined were the specifics of the mission.
