Prophet of Bones

by Ted Kosmatka

  “I remember something like that, but it was a while ago.”

  “And then she said, ‘Do you have a—’”

  “Jesus, Charles, was it cloudy that day? Do you remember that, too? Was there an airplane flying overhead? What was the weather like that day?”

  “It was sunny.”

  “Really, are you sure? What time of day did this conversation happen? Was it nine-oh-five or nine-oh-six? Was it the second Tuesday of the month?”

  Paul zeroed in on one of the messiest-looking piles. He searched through the chaos of papers, hoping to get lucky. After five minutes, he found it.

  He held it up in front of his face. An envelope, a bill from an insurance office. In the center was Charles’s home address.

  28

  Paul Google Mapped his way to Charles’s home, which turned out to be an apartment.

  A small, neat walk-up, not far from the water in a quiet, gentrified part of town. A simple fourplex with a dark shingle roof and blue siding. It wasn’t at all what Paul had expected. Or maybe he wasn’t sure what he’d expected. There were always stories circulating around the lab about other companies trying to hire Charles away. Each time it happened, he’d go to the bosses, who would match the offer. Somebody must have told Charles that this was the thing to do. If Charles made a lot of money, the apartment didn’t show it. It was a humble, simple building, in a humble, simple neighborhood.

  So that is what a company does when its star decides not to work anymore, Paul thought. It keeps paying him, so he won’t work anywhere else.

  Paul climbed out of his car and walked up the short sidewalk to the door.

  He knocked.

  There was a long silence, then the sound of rustling from inside. The curtain beside the window parted, though Paul couldn’t see into the darkness of the interior. He could make out only a hand on the curtain. Long, pale fingers. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the hand withdrew, and the curtain settled again.

  Paul waited for the door to open but it didn’t happen.

  He knocked again.

  A few moments later, the door opened a crack.

  Charles’s face appeared. He looked like he’d lost weight.

  “Hey, Charles.”

  “Paul,” he said. “What do you want?”

  From most people, such a salutation would be rude. From Charles, it was an honest question. Nothing more, nothing less.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  Charles looked at him through the gap. They’d been acquaintances, but never friends. Charles had no friends, not really.

  “Come in.”

  Charles retreated from the doorway, disappearing into the shadows. Paul pushed the door open and followed him inside. He closed the door behind him.

  The interior was neat and clean. Almost sterile. A functional brown couch sat against one wall. There were books in a shelf. A TV sat in the corner. A reasonable love seat rounded out the room.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Charles asked. Paul sensed that some protocol was being followed.

  “That would be great. Water is fine.”

  Charles disappeared into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a glass.

  They sat on the couches. Paul put his pack on the seat next to him.

  “So, Charles,” Paul began, “how have you been?”

  “I’ve been well.” Charles sat with his hands on his knees. He looked uncomfortable, unsure of how to navigate the social niceties of an unexpected visitor.

  When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to say anything else, Paul said, “I haven’t seen you at work in a while.”

  “No, not in a while.”

  “What have you been up to?”

  “I’ve just been here.” Charles looked around the room. “Yeah, just here.”

  Paul saw no reason not to avoid the point. “Charles, why aren’t you at the lab anymore?”

  Charles nodded to himself. As if he had some private list in his head and he’d just checked off an item.

  “I don’t work anymore,” he said.

  “Did they force you out?”

  “They didn’t force me. I resigned.”

  “Ms. Bratton says that you’re still on the payroll.”

  “It was their idea. A sign of respect for my service, they said.”

  “It sounds like they want to keep you happy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “No.”

  Paul pulled the envelope of photographs out of his backpack. “Charles, what are these pictures of?”

  Charles’s face showed surprise. “I thought I wouldn’t see those again.”

  “What are they?”

  “They came in with a project. I was never able to learn more.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Right before you left for Flores.” Charles lowered his eyes. “I heard about what happened there.”

  “Do you know the password for the analysis computer on the fourth floor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  Again Charles nodded, but not to Paul. Another item checked off the list. He stood. “Would you like to see something?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Paul said. “If you want to show me.” He followed Charles into the kitchen, where Charles sank into a chair at his kitchen table. Where other houses might have dinner plates or place settings, here the table was covered with drawings. Dramatic, bold illustrations of birds, scratched out in charcoal against a white background. The drawings were piled everywhere. Some of the birds were flying. Others were perched on twigs. Birds of various shapes and sizes, with a whole assortment of different beak shapes.

  “You’re an artist,” Paul said.

  “No, no.”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  Charles shook his head. “I just draw what I see. I didn’t make the birds, after all; they are what’s beautiful.” Charles caressed one drawing with his long fingers. “That’s the true artistry. I just copy.”

  Paul picked up a stack of drawings. “May I?”

  “Sure.”

  Paul leafed through the papers. “This must have taken you quite some time.”

  “I enjoy drawing them,” Charles said. “It’s relaxing. Why do you want to know the password?”

  “Because I want to break into the lab and run a comparison on a sample I took.”

  Charles picked up his charcoal pencil and placed the point on one of the drawings. He traced along the outline of the bird’s leg. He did not nod to himself. That response hadn’t been on his internal list.

  “What sample?”

  Just like that, it was the moment to leap or not. To trust him or not. “A sample I smuggled out of Flores.”

  Charles didn’t look up from the drawing. His face didn’t change.

  “A sample of something new,” Paul said.

  “I heard about your eye,” Charles said. “I heard you were mugged, but that’s not what really happened, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Then what did?”

  So Paul told him everything. He told him about the Tylenol bottle, and the samples, and the flash drive. It felt good to say it. To tell someone about it. To risk it all. Charles’s face barely moved during the telling, though he did wince when Paul mentioned the knife attack. He only nodded, taking it all in. The perfect receptacle of knowledge.

  When Paul finished, Charles nodded again, then said, “The password I last used was ‘deep clade.’”

  Paul smiled. His trust, at least, had not been misplaced. “The Post-it note on the side of the computer said, ‘Flores.’”

  “They must have changed the security pass since I left.”

  “Is there a way to find out what it’s been changed to?”

  “Were there any other Post-its?”

  “I didn’t see any.”

  Charles was silent for a moment. “Then no,” he said.

  Paul pulled out
a chair at the table and sat. He leafed through the drawings again.

  “I like drawing finches the best,” Charles offered. “Darwin drew wonderful finches.”

  “You follow Darwin?”

  “He was wrong about everything, but he drew beautiful birds. So that’s something, at least.”

  Paul leafed through to a final picture. A finch on a rock, the beak a delicate, curved scimitar.

  Charles said, “You need to be careful of Janus.”

  “He’s my lab partner. He’s the one training me.”

  “Don’t trust him. You have to be careful.”

  “I try to be.”

  “You don’t want them noticing you. You don’t want them suspecting you.”

  “I think they already do.”

  “Then it’s already too late.”

  Paul placed the drawing back on the table.

  “Why do you want to test the Flores DNA?” Charles asked.

  “To learn the truth.”

  “Why?”

  “Because people died. And because I need to know. That’s what science is supposed to do, isn’t it? Track down the truth, wherever it takes you.”

  “What will you do with this knowledge, if you get it?”

  “Expose it.”

  “What would you expose?”

  “The murder, the corporation, the conspiracy. Everything.” He searched Charles’s face for a reaction, but there was nothing. “People have died,” Paul said finally. “The truth is being hidden.”

  “What will you do if you find out more than you expected?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You told me about your bones and Flores. There are also things I can tell you.”

  “I’ll listen to anything you want to say.”

  “During my years at the company, I have seen many sequences. It is something few people come to appreciate, the subtle shape of the codes. During my work, I was doing a search of a database, and I mistyped the code I was searching for, a short nucleotide sequence. The search came up zero. This did not make sense. I found the mistake I’d made, a small typo, but still that did not solve the riddle. How could this simple mistyped code not exist in the database? In all the thousands of species on file, how could this sequence not be found in any of them? I searched every database we had, and I realized that this particular sequence of letterbases did not exist anywhere in the genome of any animal tested.”

  “Is that unexpected?”

  “It was a short sequence, a few dozen base pairs. It should have been somewhere, but it wasn’t. It was an outlaw code.”

  “Outlaw code?”

  “Yes. It was verboten.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Long sequences are unique because of statistical improbability. But certain short sequences—all short sequences, actually—should pop up again and again in the animal kingdom. Runs of twenty or thirty base pairs should occur by chance many thousands of times in thousands of species. But some are missing.”

  “How could they be missing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you’re saying that sometimes these short sequences… you can’t find them.”

  “Yes. Because they’re not there.” Charles leaned back in his chair and glanced out the sliding glass door. His eyes got a faraway look. “And there are other things, too,” he said. “Other irregularities that I found. Sometimes I would build cladograms, and it’s possible to show how different sequences might be linked, simple mutations building on earlier mutations, and it’s possible to build trees, not just for recently derived substructures—like breeds of dogs or human ethnic populations. But for everything. All life. All tracing back to a single beginning.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Longer than the world has been in existence.”

  Paul went back to the living room to get his backpack and set it on the floor in the kitchen.

  “I tested the DNA of the Flores sample,” he said.

  Charles’s face lifted from his drawing. “You have the raw code?”

  “Yes. I brought a partial copy.”

  “May I see it?”

  Paul unzipped the pack and pulled out the stack of paper. He handed it to Charles.

  Charles stared at the first page and something happened in his face. A change.

  “Can you read it?” Paul asked.

  Charles smiled. Actually smiled. “No. No, I can’t. I just like the patterns. I get a feel for the patterns is all. Like music in my head.”

  “Does one sound different than another?”

  “Oh, they all sound different. They’re all beautiful.”

  Charles flipped the page, scanning down the sheet with his index finger. “A worm genome is no less beautiful or complex than a blue whale’s, no less beautiful than any other kind of life. Life is life.”

  He flipped another page.

  “But sometimes, I think I can almost tell the species apart. Like music, again. The really, really long pieces.”

  “If you can tell one kind from another, can you tell what species you’re looking at?”

  “No, no, I’d never say that. It’s just a feeling I get. Like when you’re listening to two different jazz tunes. You can sometimes tell they’re the same artist, even if you can’t name the song.”

  Charles closed his eyes, as if listening to some hidden music only he could hear.

  “I’ve seen this before,” he said. “Or a part of it. They went to great lengths not to give any one researcher the whole thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It came in while you were in the hospital. Shipped from Indonesia.”

  “That’s not possible. The bones were confiscated, and I had the only DNA samples.”

  Charles shrugged. “It’s what happened.”

  Paul nodded. “What species did they say the samples came from?”

  “It was just a number code. No species designation.”

  “What did the results show?”

  “I never saw the comparison assays. I just saw a few thousand lines of raw sequence.”

  “What did you think?”

  “It’s why I left.”

  Charles flipped through more pages. Outside the window, evening was beginning to fall.

  “This is how it works,” Charles said. He picked up a pencil and started drawing again, an absentminded doodle. His eyes lost their focus. “I can read the sequence—A, T, C, and G. Nucleotide base pairs all lined up in a row, one after another.” The pencil traced the curve of a beak. “Every three letters corresponds to a certain amino acid, and you can picture it in your mind, see the shape, and the amino acids combine one after another to form proteins, following known rules of conformation, hydrogen and carbon, single and double valence bonds, all of it folding and bending according to stringent, merciless logic.” He drew the arc of the bird’s wing. Charcoal on paper, a dusting of feathers. “More amino acids are added as the sequences get longer, and you can see the proteins in your head assembling from just the code, hundreds of letters, and here is where it gets tricky, because at the level of the protein, it is not just the sequence that matters but the direction in which it is read, and I close my eyes.” Charles closed his eyes, a look of rapture on his face. The hand continued to move across the page, continuing to draw. The bird’s feet took shape. Perched on a branch. A finch, Paul realized.

  Charles continued: “The conformation of the protein changes as you imagine the amino acids lining up, and the whole thing flips into a new configuration that affects the shape of what’s come before, and it grows and becomes more complex, building on itself, each bond following the known rules, and you can almost reach out and touch it, until it gets to a certain size… and then I lose it.” Charles opened his eyes. He stared at Paul. “It gets too big for me to hold in my head, a few thousand amino acids folding in just the right way… and it loses coherence. It slips through my fingers.”

  “You can see that?”

&nb
sp; “For a little while.”

  “I’ve never heard of anybody being able to do that.”

  “It’s nothing so special.”

  “Protein structure visualized from just a base-pair sequence? I disagree.”

  “No, I am a failure. I have tried and tried and I can get no further.” Charles looked down at his drawing. The bird was complete. A finch, perched on a branch. Lifelike, caught in the act of living.

  “It is a zebra finch,” Charles said. “Have you heard of it?”

  “It sounds familiar.”

  “They sing beautiful songs in the wild. Whether instinctual or based in culture, no one knew; so an experiment was performed. It turns out that if you raise a zebra finch in captivity, where it never hears another finch, those songs are lost, replaced by simpler calls.”

  “So they are learned.”

  “But a strange thing happens if you take these cultureless birds and raise them together over successive generations. The songs grow elaborate over time, each generation building upon what came before, until after a certain number of generations, the wild-type song culture is reestablished. Generated de novo. So in a sense, these cultural songs were there in the genome all along.”

  Charles handed Paul the drawing.

  “Using a system of math called recursive equations, it’s possible to model how this could happen. I wonder if it works like that with human cultures as well.”

  Paul gave the drawing back to Charles. “It’s a beautiful picture.”

  Charles placed the drawing on the table with the others. “Imagine what God must see when He looks at us,” he said. “Imagine the mind of God, able to visualize amino acids and all the conformational laws right down the physics of the nuclear bonds, up through protein structure and up into cellular structure. Imagine that. A visualization up through meiosis, and cell synthesis, and ATP, and up through multicellularity into organs and organ systems, and up into the whole living, breathing, functioning higher organism that has to then go out and hunt for its dinner, or photosynthesize—and then reproduce itself, generation after generation, subtle variations in behavior and instinct, social organization, territoriality, migration, song culture, down through millennia. Now that is amazing. To be able to hold all that in your mind at once. To be a figment in the mind of God.”