Prophet of Bones A Novel

by Ted Kosmatka

  A dozen pews lined up in neat rows before an altar that stood upon a raised dais. Behind that, a simple cross graced the far wall. The room was dark and silent. White walls and small, rectangular stained-glass windows.

  “Come into my cathedral, gentlemen.”

  Gavin and the congressman followed the old man inside. An electronic scanner above the door flashed green as they entered. Martial got a few steps down the aisle before he turned. “A necessary precaution against unwanted ears,” he said, gesturing toward the scanner. “Green means there are none.” The old man smiled. “In here, none should hear us but God.”

  Martial cast a look at the guards, then at the congressman. The congressman hesitated, considering. He moved his head almost imperceptibly toward Martial’s guards, a complex conversation without a single word. Martial nodded. “Please wait outside,” he said to his security.

  “Keep them company,” the congressman told his own contingent.

  The security teams backed away from the doorway, and the door closed with a loud click.

  Martial walked down the aisle of the little church. He took a seat on the left side, third pew from the front.

  Gavin and the congressman followed. Gavin sat in the row behind Martial, while the congressman took a seat directly beside the old man. Gavin knew his place. He was to remain silent until needed. Martial had made that very clear. “You’re to watch and listen,” the old man had told him earlier, when they’d discussed the congressman’s impending meeting. “Unless I lose my patience with the fool. Then feel free to jump in and try to defuse the situation.”

  But looking at him now, Gavin didn’t see a fool. The congressman was right to be concerned.

  Gavin watched the two men, sitting side by side in the bizarre little church. What made a church a church? It wasn’t the size. It wasn’t the pews, or the altar. It was the quiet, he decided. A special kind of quiet that happened only in churches. He thought of Liang Bua.

  “The man who died, what did he do here?” the congressman asked, breaking the moment.

  “It has been some years,” Martial said.

  “Then to the best of your recollection.”

  “He was a handler.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of animals. He was a low-level worker, back when our hiring practice was less carefully tuned.”

  “He was killed in Miami.”

  “Yes.”

  “There was also a dead woman.”

  “He was deranged, as I said. We had no part in that.”

  The congressman sighed. “This is bad business.”

  “It’s a hiccup. Nothing more.”

  The congressman’s mouth became a line. “Congressman Lacefield is looking into it.”

  “Lacefield? Should I know that name?”

  “You know it well enough.”

  Martial glanced up at the white cross hanging on the wall. “A simple, unfortunate death is a little beneath his pay grade, isn’t it?”

  “Normally, I’d expect you’d be right. But it seems that for you he will make an exception.”

  “Why is that?”

  The congressman laughed—a sound without any mirth at all. “Perhaps you imagine yourself to be a man without enemies?”

  “Truth always has enemies. Lacefield is just the latest.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself this place is? Some kind of truth?”

  “One path to it.”

  Martial reached down between his legs and lowered the padded kneeler to the floor. He slid to his knees and folded his hands on the pew before him.

  “Lacefield’s supporters might see it differently,” the congressman said. “And they are as numerous as our own.”

  “If not as influential.”

  “Yet. But remember that our supporters are not the only religious organizations to seek a voice in Washington. Lacefield has his hand in a different offering tray. There are those who predict a complete reshuffling in the next election.”

  “Then you’ll have to make sure we don’t give them a cause.”

  “We can’t sweep this under the rug,” the congressman said. “This is a tricky time right now. You are being watched.”

  “I have nothing to hide,” Martial said.

  The congressman’s face flashed anger again. “There are times when I can’t tell if you’re mocking me or just insane. Your jokes won’t go over so well back in Washington.”

  Martial said nothing, but instead closed his eyes in prayer.

  The congressman leaned forward and knelt close to the old man. He leaned into him, whispering softly, so that Gavin could barely hear: “We’ve known about the shallow grave for years. We’ve even known about your little beasts. But the thing that has me out here are the rumors. Rumors you would not want your enemies to hear.”

  The old man’s head stayed lowered in prayer.

  “There are rumors about a place called Flores, Martial. There are rumors that something bad happened there. There are rumors that you got your hands on strange bones.”

  “Bad things happen all the time. As for the bones, they were stolen.”

  “Stolen.”

  “By the Indonesian authorities.”

  “That’s not what the Indonesians say.”

  “Nonetheless.”

  “There are also rumors of new experiments.”

  “Would you like me to show you, Congressman?”

  The congressman looked up at the cross hanging on the wall. He bowed his head briefly.

  “Congressman?”

  “No,” he said. “You fucking bastard. You know I don’t want to see.”

  Martial nodded.

  “This project you have here,” the congressman hissed, “it has grown over the years.”

  “Like a flower.”

  “It was never envisioned like this.”

  “It is like any flower: the perfect expression of God’s will.”

  “With all due respect, there are those who say you have too much freedom here. There are those who feel we should leash you in.”

  “Then I say, with all due respect, Congressman, just fucking try it.”

  “That’s a dangerous attitude.”

  The old man turned toward him, face reddening, on the edge of saying something. He opened his mouth to speak.

  Gavin chose this moment to intervene. “There are dangers for all involved,” he said. “Care should be taken.”

  The two men glanced at him briefly, then turned their attention back to each other.

  The congressman smiled. “You’re toying with the wrong man,” he said to Martial.

  “Toys are for children. I don’t play games.”

  “Neither do I.”

  The congressman rose to his feet and stepped into the aisle. He faced the altar and crossed himself; then he turned and left without another word.

  The door slammed behind him.

  Gavin lowered the kneeler in his own row and dropped to his knees. He let the silence envelop him.

  “You agree with him, don’t you?” Martial asked Gavin without turning to look at him.

  “I think it’s dangerous to anger him.”

  “He came today. He was here. That means he can do nothing.”

  “He’s a congressman.”

  “They are less powerful than gnats. No, that’s not true,” Martial said. “That’s the wrong way to look at it.” He considered for a moment before speaking. “You’re right, they are powerful, but they are also fragile. It is a fragile power, so vulnerable to attack. It is in this way they are like gnats. They realize their vulnerability, and this is what makes them weak.”

  Gavin watched the back of the old man’s head.

  “What vulnerability?”

  “To public opinion. To the withdrawal of support. To exposure.” Martial turned to look at him. “You don’t yet understand how it all works,” he continued. “Running for office requires money. Lots and lots of money. Campaigns are expensive, after all.”

&
nbsp; Martial rose to his feet. “Come,” he said.

  They left the church room and took the corridor back toward the main part of the complex. The security detail fell in behind them again, until Martial waved them off. They melted away like butter. “To get the money to run for office, the politicians need the churches. The people in the pews. The special-interest groups. The churches fund the politicians, who use their votes to fund government programs—which outsource certain things to outside contractor groups like Axiom.”

  “I see.”

  “Not yet, you don’t.” They arrived at another set of doors. A-17 was stenciled on a nameplate on the wall. Martial pushed through, and they moved into a deeper, older part of the facility. They came to another room that Gavin had never seen before. As they crossed the room, Gavin glanced around in wonder. It was enormous. If the other room had held the silence of a church, this room had the size. Endless rows of cages climbed the walls, floor to ceiling. Chrome bars. Tiny, empty cubicles, six feet high, stacked one on top of another, cage upon cage, extending to the ceiling. As they passed the cages, Gavin tried to imagine what they might be expected to contain someday.

  Martial continued: “We’re funded by the votes of politicians, who are funded by the churches, who have a vested interest in the status quo. Knowledge is power, after all. We’re the funnel here. We release too much information, or the wrong kind of information, and the politicians suddenly have a lot to answer for. They have screaming donors. Midnight phone calls.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  They pushed through another set of doors and took a flight of stairs down to a lower level. Here there were no windows. They entered another room—this one bristling with activity. For a moment, Gavin’s mind couldn’t take it all in. Lab-coated techs moved through the room like bees in a busy meadow. Some carried clipboards. Others pushed carts. Gavin saw one who held a baby bottle. She was pretty and serious, but his eye snagged on the bottle, so incongruous in the setting. He watched as this technician crossed the room to where an incubator sat near a wall beneath a halo of light, surrounded by beeping machines and digital readouts. Within the incubator, he saw a shape. A small bundle.

  The tech moved against the incubator, sliding the bottle and her arm through a small aperture in the side. Inside the glass enclosure of the incubator, a tiny hand reached up to hold the bottle.

  “Not everything is meant for prying eyes.”

  Gavin stared at the little hand curled around the bottle. He moved no closer. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

  “We never lie, here,” the old man said. “We just control the truth.”

  When Gavin found his voice, he asked, “And get what in exchange?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  The old man gestured toward the incubator.

  “We get freedom.”

  “Freedom to do what?”

  “To play God.”

  24

  Paul followed Janus down the hall, arms full of sample tray, being careful not to spill the gel.

  It was Paul’s sixth week of training, and he’d finally been assigned to a project. “The Endangered Species Project” Janus had called it, saying the words slowly so that Paul would understand the gravity of the task. For some kinds of scientists, conservation was ideology. Save an animal, and it was like saving the world, one unit at a time. Paul envied men who felt this way. It had been a long time since he’d believed the world could be saved as easily as that.

  Paul watched Janus run the samples. They were working with bald eagle DNA, testing the degree of heterozygosity of an inbred population in Colorado. They loaded the assays into the machine and hit the button.

  “Pay attention to this,” Janus said. “This is the thing you watch for.”

  Janus was tall. Almost as tall as Paul, so they were looking nearly eye to eye as they stood there in front of the machine. Janus seemed to have gotten used to the eye patch now, that earlier flash of pity now replaced by a nearly constant look of irritation.

  “You put in a sample, and the machine spits out data. Then you plug the data into a program. The rule of thumb is, heterozygosity good, homozygosity bad.”

  “Got it,” Paul said. As if he’d needed to be told.

  “Too much homozygosity leads to a paucity of immunity haplotypes. Like cheetahs. All practically twins, a bottleneck within a bottleneck. These eagles might not be much better.”

  Paul nodded. Despite appearances, the genes of men, he knew, like the genes of eagles, were less diverse than most species. A function of our creation, some said. Man, after all, had been made on the last day. Made in His perfect image.

  Paul put the samples of eagle DNA in the tray and hit the button.

  * * *

  “I’m going to lunch,” Janus said.

  “Go ahead,” Paul said, without looking up from his work. “I’ll finish up this batch.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’d rather get it done.”

  “Okay.” Janus left.

  When Janus was out the door, Paul continued to work. He waited two minutes, counting to one hundred and twenty in his head. After a hundred and twenty seconds, he figured that Janus had made it to the elevator. If he’d gotten that far, there was a good chance that he wouldn’t turn around and pop back into the lab for some reason. Paul put down his samples and rushed across the room to the forgotten drawer. He pulled out the old Tylenol bottle at the back.

  He dumped the lozenge into his hand.

  For a moment, his breath caught in his chest.

  It had been a long time since he’d looked at the sample. For the last several weeks, he’d almost been able to pretend that none of it was happening, if he wanted to. But now, here it was.

  Green and smooth to the touch. The lozenge was made of a special protein membrane, vacuum-sealed with a pocket in the middle. It was still hermetically sealed. Still protecting its secrets.

  He inserted the applicator tip into the lozenge like a hypodermic needle and drew out a tiny sample of fluid.

  The rest he knew by heart. Mass-production analysis, in two-million-letter sequences. But the key, he understood, wasn’t in the sequences; it lay in finding the places where the sequences were different. That’s where the software came in. He injected the sample into the agarose, adjusted the settings. He hit the button. The machine whirred to life.

  From a genetic standpoint, most life on earth was quite similar. It was all just variation on a theme: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, repeated in a pattern and packaged in chromosomes. Even the sequences themselves didn’t differ a whole lot between species. Humans and chimps were identical across the vast majority of their sequences. But tiny differences could result in big changes in the organism. The entire human genome was more than three billion letters.

  He went to the keyboard and typed the restriction codes.

  The prompt flashed on the screen: Sample Type?

  Paul typed five letters: Human. He wondered if it was true.

  “Now we find out,” he whispered. Then he hit Enter.

  Paul looked at the clock.

  The read would take about fifteen minutes. Janus usually spent around twenty eating his lunch. It would be close.

  Paul sat on his stool and waited to be found out or not.

  Time dragged.

  The machine hummed.

  Paul stared at the machine as if watching it could hurry it.

  Finally, an interminable time later, it beeped.

  Paul checked his watch. Janus would be back any minute. He hit Print. He walked across the hall to retrieve the printout from the laser printer.

  Gly – lle – Yal – Glu – Gln – Ala – Cys – Ser – Leu – Asp – Arg – Cys – Pro – Yal –Lys – Phe – Tyr – Thr – Leu – His – Lys - Asn - Gly - Met - Pro – Phe - Tyr - Ser - Cys – Yal - Leu - Glu –Yal - Asp - Gln -

  Page after page of it, building into a thick stack. And this was only a small, representative sam
ple—a compilation of hypervariant loci compressed into an amino acid chain. Hot spots, not the genome entire.

  It might as well have been Morse code. Paul shoved the hard copy into his backpack and put the lozenge back into the Tylenol bottle. The lozenge contained enough sample for another analysis, if needed. He shoved the Tylenol bottle into his front pants pocket. Then he plugged his jump drive into the computer and saved the files to it. After that, he hit Delete. And it was like it had never happened.

  Except for the jump drive.

  Except for the printout.

  Five minutes later, Janus returned. He came through the door and walked across to the lab bench.

  He looked down over Paul’s shoulder.

  “You didn’t get much done while I was gone,” Janus said.

  “It’s slow work.”

  * * *

  That night, Paul sat in the darkness of his apartment, reading the code. He read it for hours, tracing the letters with his mind.

  He wasn’t one of the gene freaks. He couldn’t read the amino acid sequence like prose. But the answer was there, in the code.

  Paul went to his desk and opened the top drawer. He rummaged through the detritus of past projects, odds and ends, looking for something.

  There.

  He found it. The card was white with a single black magnetic strip running along the back. A Westing security card.

  All the Westing cards looked the same. The size of credit cards, they were utterly featureless, meant to be carried in a wallet. Paul had broken this one the previous winter, a day near zero, and the cheap plastic had cracked in his pocket, a fault line splitting the magnetic strip, rendering the card useless. He’d gotten a replacement card the same day but had forgotten to turn his old card in.

  Paul looked at the printout again: an impenetrable sequence, a language he couldn’t understand. What he needed was the Rosetta stone to tell him what it meant.

  He knew just where to find one.

  25

  “I’m good at Ping-Pong,” Paul told him.

  “Really?” said Makato in monotone.

  “I’m the best player I know.”