by Ted Kosmatka
“I’m home,” he said, and then he put his face in his hands.
* * *
Bone is heavy. It is substantial. All bone at Westing had this in common: it had once been alive, but by the time Paul got to see it it was not.
It was late afternoon and Paul sat at his computer, staring at the images on the screen.
He clicked the mouse and new images appeared. He studied them for a moment, comparing them to the image in his head. He clicked again. He’d been at it for hours now.
New images appeared. He scrolled on.
When he was in college, he’d developed a fascination for skulls. He’d spent hours staring at the pictures: Homo habilis, Homo ergaster, the numerous and varied australopithecines. Each variety had its own museum holotype—the remains of a single diagnostic individual meant to perfectly represent the species. All additional specimens existed, by definition, at variance from these holotypes and were in some sense defined by them. Paul finally reached a point where he could recognize not just the species but the individual specimens themselves. The Taung child, Sangiran17, and Atapuerca 5. He knew them at a glance. There was the enigmatic Lusaka specimen—the holotype for a rare anthropoid species whose existence in the scientific literature depended solely on the interpretation of a single mandible. Sometimes the holotype and the complete record were the same.
In class once, a professor had asked if someone could name the kind of skull shown on the projector. Paul had raised his hand. “That’s Amud 1,” he’d said. The professor had blinked. “Neanderthal” had been the answer he was looking for. Neanderthals were an ancient population of man that had spread across Europe, western Asia, and the Middle East. They were an ethnic group. “Distinct,” the professor said. “But no longer extant.”
Whether their kind had been killed off or subsumed was hardly a matter of much debate anymore. Their genes made fractional contributions to most peoples north of the Red Sea—a small but measurable admixture variously interpreted in context with the great flood or the earliest sojourn beyond the garden.
In the summer between his sophomore and junior years, Paul had gone on a road trip, hitting half a dozen museums, because he’d wanted to see the bones in person. He’d already read what other scientists thought of them. He’d digested their theories, which he knew had changed over time, and would likely change again. Only the bones themselves were immutable.
In second-year anatomy, that same professor had placed five skulls on a table at the beginning of the class.
“Each of these skulls was dug out of the ground on a different continent,” the professor said. “I want you to tell me which continent each skull comes from.”
“How old are they?” someone asked, looking for a hint.
“They’re all relatively modern; the oldest is from the eighteen hundreds. And this one here,” the professor said, touching the top of one of the skulls, “is only a few decades old.”
He looked out at his audience of students. In front of each skull, he placed a small paper sign facedown, so the students couldn’t read them.
“This isn’t a trick question. Each of these skulls belongs to one of the five major racial types,” he said. “Write down the name of a continent for each skull. You have five minutes.”
The students stared. They got up from their desks and approached the skulls. They picked them up and weighed them with their hands. The skulls looked similar to one another in a broad sense, though there were differences. The shape of the jaws varied, as did the shapes of the teeth, the mastoid, and cheekbones. It was difficult to tell how those differences in bone might translate into the soft-tissue appearance.
Each of the students wrote their answers on a small white card.
At the end of the class, the professor flipped the signs over, showing where the skulls were from. One was from Europe, another from Africa, the others from Asia, Australia, and the Americas.
Only Paul had gotten them all right.
“How did you know?” the professor asked him.
“I’m not sure,” Paul said. And it was the truth. Maybe he’d gotten lucky.
“There are computer programs you can use,” the professor said. “You take a dozen craniographic measurements at various points around the skull, and then you plug the numbers into the program. The software takes it from there and spits out an ethnicity, usually with a high degree of accuracy. But it’s hard to tell sometimes with just the naked eye unless you have a knack for it. For some, the eye can do the same complex math that computers can.” He gave Paul an appraising look. “Sometimes the eye is even better.”
Paul nodded. The professor turned, addressing the entire class again. “There is a simple rule of thumb, though it doesn’t always work. If you’re ever in a situation where you need to make a quick educated guess, that rule of thumb is this. When you look at a skull for the first time, ask yourself what the first thing you notice is. The very first thing. What jumps out at you? If the first thing you notice is the nose, the midfacial region here”—he tapped one of the skulls with a ruler—“then the skull is likely Caucasoid. If the cheekbones are the first thing you notice, then the skull is likely of East Asian origin. And if it’s the mouth—a marked subnasal prognathism—then the skull is likely African. So remember: Caucasians, nose; Asians, cheekbones; Africans, mouth. And keep in mind that when using this method, you’ll be wrong about forty percent of the time.”
Paul sat at his desk in his office and stared at his computer monitor. He scrolled down through the images. Saved on his computer hard drive were photographs of all the major anthropological specimens that had been found in the last sixty years. He was searching for one that looked like what he’d seen in Liang Bua. He continued scrolling until he got to the bottom and there were no more skulls to look at. The screen was blank. There was nothing small enough.
Nothing like Liang Bua.
He stared at the screen, and his mind drifted.
There were many skulls in the Westing bone room. Some of them were fantastically old. Others had been wrapped in life as recently as a few hundred years ago. Paul couldn’t look at the skulls without hearing his professor’s rule of thumb: What jumps out at you? And as with nearly all such rules, it was from the exceptions that the most interesting data could be drawn.
There was a loud click and the room went black. The only light came from the glowing computer screen.
Darkness like a gift.
16
“You’re gonna clog your arteries eating that shit.”
Paul followed Hongbin into the lunchroom, paper bag in hand. He sat with the group. Five researchers hailing from all points of the globe, eating wildly different meals. The lunch table took up one corner of the small glass room. The room was too bright and smelled of industrial cleanser. One wall lined with vending machines, the other with posters. A large sign entreated them to WASH HANDS THOROUGHLY BEFORE EATING. Below that, a smaller sign reminded them that WESTING IS A SECULAR FACILITY. This was both a reminder not to discuss religion in the break room and a mark of distinction, parochial labs having become more common throughout the world in recent years. Paul ate his usual burger and fries.
“Better than that crap you eat,” Paul offered.
“It’s called a balanced diet,” Hongbin said. “You should try it sometime.”
“Balanced? All you eat is Chinese.”
“A billion brunettes can’t be wrong,” Hongbin said.
In days past, the joking might have escalated. Mothers might have been invoked. But they were still going light on him. Paul’s experiences had made him different, like a man returned from the wilderness, or from war—a man who had seen things he would never explain.
“You eating real food,” Paul said around a mouthful of fries. “Now, that would give me a heart attack.” He took a swig of his Coke.
“You see, yet another reason to stick to my usual. I wouldn’t want to be held responsible for your inevitable cardiovascular collapse.” Hongb
in tipped his white foam cup toward Paul. “To your health,” he said, then sipped noisily from the straw.
“To my health.”
“Speaking of health, have you talked to anyone in sequencing yet?”
“About what?”
“About anything.”
“Haven’t been up there yet,” Paul said. In the two weeks he’d been back, he’d mostly stayed on his floor.
“So you haven’t heard about Charles?”
“What about him?”
“He’s not coming back.”
Paul’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t know he’d left.”
Hongbin took a bite of his noodles. “Some kind of extended leave,” he said.
“Not what I heard,” Makato chimed in.
“What did you hear?”
“Something different,” Makato said. “A breakdown.”
Strange Charles. Paul took another bite of his burger, considering the news.
Odd things happened in the long tail of the bell curve.
Like Charles.
“How long has he been out?” Paul asked.
“Since just before you got back.”
They finished their meals. Paul crumpled up his bag and tossed it into the trash on the way out the door. “I’ll catch up,” he told them, then stooped and pretended to tie his shoe.
For Paul, the last couple of weeks had been about pretending. He’d driven to work each morning, pretending life was normal, carding himself through security doors like nothing was different. He nodded to people in the halls, simulating his old life.
Waiting.
Waiting for the Hallmark cards to stop, sent in pastel envelopes. Waiting for an end to the phone calls. To the well-wishers, and drop-ins, and long-time-no-sees.
They’d come to his office to shake his hand, saying how happy they were to have him back. Makato had brought him a gift, a small bamboo plant grown in a tight spiral. They said how sorry they were to hear about his injury. That’s what they called it, most of them: his injury. Only Hongbin had called it his eye, saying, “Seriously, chicks dig pirates.”
Paul had smiled at that one. Hongbin.
Hongbin, square and muscular, raised outside San Diego by doctor parents. He was so thoroughly American that he didn’t feel the need to Johnny up his name. Perhaps when he was younger he’d done it. Perhaps he’d gone by Henry, or Harry, or Benny. But not now. He was just Hongbin.
Paul accepted the cards and gifts. He waited to blend in again, to become part of the wallpaper.
News of what happened had preceded him—a story as communicable as any virus, passed by casual contact. He learned that people had heard there’d been a robbery in Indonesia, a break-in at the hotel, and things had gone badly somehow. He learned that people thought there’d been a struggle and a researcher had died. He learned that people thought the police had killed the assailant. Perhaps Westing had come up with the story, or perhaps the story had written itself, precipitated itself from the soluble facts—and become what it was, a thing so logical and reasonable that of course it must have happened that way. Of course.
And Paul said nothing to contradict the accepted version. It was easier to let it pass. Perhaps there need be no grand conspiracies in the world. Perhaps in this simple way are the world’s secrets hidden.
Paul nodded and said all the right things.
“I’m fine,” he told them when they came in to see him. “I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
And he waited for his chance.
Brandon from the second floor had stopped by his office one afternoon, and they’d talked about sports, because talking about sports felt normal and familiar. It was a comforting script, and they both had their lines.
“The Patriots,” Brandon said. “I’ve got a feeling.”
Paul nodded. “Could be.”
“Yeah, this is the year,” Brandon said. “I’m telling you. They’re due.”
And they could both pretend for a minute that maybe it worked that way.
Paul finished rearranging his shoelaces and stood. He headed for the stairs, glancing behind himself to see if anyone had noticed.
Most of the third floor belonged to the osteo lab. On the second floor were the tech offices and the storage vaults, along with the secretaries, the conference rooms, and the computer specialists.
But the fourth floor belonged to DNA. It was its own fiefdom.
Paul took the stairs up and pushed through to the fourth floor. He nodded to a researcher whose name he didn’t know. The woman gave him an odd look but said nothing.
He walked the halls, refamiliarizing himself with the layout, counting the doors and exits, noting the badge swipes. The fourth floor had a ring-in-ring configuration, and his current badge got him only to the outer circle. The inner sanctum was out of reach.
He took the stairs back down.
* * *
Paul passed his days in a blur of busy, solitary work. He categorized the incoming bones and readied samples for the DNA analysis that would be performed on the fourth floor. He took photographs and made up specialized mulches.
Preparing a sample for testing required destruction of existing material, a small portion of bone. It was a solemn event. What was destroyed could never be brought back, so you had to be sure that what you’d learn was worth the cost. All knowledge requires some sacrifice.
Paul pulverized bone into a fine powder, to which a special solvent was applied over low heat, and then this slurry was injected into the sterile lozenges for preservation. The lozenges were then taken to the fourth floor, where the DNA samples were extracted and tests performed.
He did his job the way he’d always done it. It came easy to him.
If you stare at bone long enough, you come to appreciate its solidity. Its material constancy. For most aspects of living organisms, phenotype is a maddening blur—things like hair color, skin color, weight, muscle mass. All difficult to quantify and subject to change. Subject to health and age, and season, and nutrition. Subject to being alive. Not so with bone.
Bone is resistant to the world’s exigencies.
People less so.
In the evenings, Paul drove home in the dying light, fighting traffic on the Francis Scott Key Bridge. When he arrived at his apartment, he watered his plants, which, except for the spiral bamboo, were all well and truly dead. But he watered them anyway.
Each night he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He would take off his eye patch and study the scar. He’d look into the smoky ghost eye. “I am less,” he said once, and this gave him pause. That he’d said it.
Each night he’d open his medicine cabinet. He would unscrew the top of the plastic bottle and look at the sample.
He arrived at the lab early one morning, before the rush of the other researchers and techs. In his office, he leaned back in his leather swivel chair, fingers laced behind his head.
He looked up and saw a face hidden in the grooves and notches of the acoustical ceiling tiles. He saw it clear as day: a nose here, the curve of a lip—and there, two shadowy eyes looking down. Depending on how he interpreted the lower lip, the face could almost seem to be smiling.
He looked at it for a long while, wondering how he could have been in this office for nearly three years and never noticed it, never sensed that face gazing down at him.
He shut his eye for a moment, willing the image away. When he opened his eye again, the face was gone. The grooves were still there. The textures. But they were just textures now and nothing more. A swirl without pattern.
He concentrated. He tried to see the face again but couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, he could assemble nothing from it.
That was happiness. Something you see for a moment.
* * *
The next afternoon, a new shipment of bones arrived, packed in green foam. Hongbin wheeled the samples in on a small metal cart. The label read XTN-2421. They could have been from anywhere, a series of small bone dissections completely lacking in morph
ological detail.
Paul crossed the room and grabbed his safety glasses, preparing for the procedure ahead. He adjusted the straps so that the glasses fit his face. Behind him, Hongbin started dividing the samples into two equal sets. Paul approached the counter and picked up the pestle. Working with bone meant working with your hands. He placed one small bone dissection into the mortar. In the early days of DNA extraction, they’d used drills for this kind of work. Most bones, the scientists had found, were barren of DNA. At speeds above 260 revolutions per minute, heat from the drill bit denatures protein structure. In trying to extract DNA, they’d destroyed it.
Paul applied the pestle, grinding the sample to a fine powder.
If you worked in bones long enough, you could be promoted to the fourth floor. But Paul had never wanted that. He’d never craved advancement.
Paul was a bone man. A field man. A necessary evil. The gene freaks knew him by his nucleotide base-pair sequence.
“Pestle,” Hongbin said.
Paul passed Hongbin the pestle and started prep on the next sample. They took turns.
Everybody who set foot above the second floor had to be genotyped. It was the only way to publish in the hypercompetitive world of human genomics. You had to be able to prove you’d eliminated all sources of contamination, and having a walking, talking unmapped DNA factory wandering around your clean room was not acceptable. Until you genotyped everyone, it was like taking water samples in the rain. You couldn’t be sure what you were testing.
The gene freaks lived and breathed DNA. They liked Paul because his sequence was rare. Paul had mitochondrial haplogroup D, a lineage common in East Asia. On his Y chromosome, he was R1a—a type common in Norway, Germany, Scotland, and Ukraine. It was a rare haplogroup combination, Far East meets far West, and it was almost never found in bones you dug from the ground. It made Paul’s DNA easy to identify, which, in turn, made him invaluable as a sampler.
Other bone techs weren’t so lucky. Jason had the western Atlantic modal haplotype (WAMH), a subset of R1b and the most common haplogroup in the Western world. Two others had the Cohen modal haplotype, and several Asian researchers possessed haplogroup C3, the famous twenty-five-marker Y-DNA profile thought to have descended from Genghis Khan and now found in nearly 8 percent of men across huge swaths of Asia and the Middle East. That was Hongbin’s haplotype, a distinction of which he was inordinately proud.
