Fearful Symmetry: A Thriller

by McBride, Michael

  “A flash of the blade and a chilling battle cry ought to dissuade it from attacking.”

  “If by battle cry you mean screaming like a little girl,” Adrianne said.

  Brooks sighed and turned around. The arguing was getting on his nerves. They’d been constantly going back and forth about something patently ridiculous since Lage. It was one thing for Adrianne and Julian, who—for all intents and purposes—were still kids, but Warren never failed to rise to the bait when by all rights he should have been above doing so.

  “You think a five hundred pound tiger’s greatest natural enemy is loud noises? We’re talking about India, where there are ten people per square foot and another five standing on their shoulders. There’s never a moment of silence.”

  “Now you’re just being silly.”

  “All I'm saying is there are more than enough examples of man-eating tigers to warrant taking extra precautions. The Champawat Tiger killed more than four hundred people in Nepal and northern India. The man-eaters of Chowgarh and Bhimashankar each killed more than fifty.”

  “There’s obviously an ample supply of prey species in this area to sustain them,” Adrianne said.

  “The same could be said of the Sunderbans, where villagers are considered part of the tiger’s food web and their relationship has evolved into a supplementary model.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Brooks said. “And even if we are dealing with a tiger that’s somehow overcome it's trepidation around man and developed a taste for human flesh, I figure the last thing we want to do is hang around in a clearing full of freshly-killed prey for any length of time.”

  Julian nodded reluctantly, but waited for Adrianne before heading into the mouth of the path on the opposite side of the clearing. Warren watched their packs disappear into the brush before following. Brooks waited until they were gone before taking one last look at the carcasses of the deer.

  The claw marks of the predator were easy enough to discern. The dentition of the bites, however, was substantially harder to envision. There were no clear ridges, and the meat appeared to have been torn from the bones, suggesting whatever killed them hadn’t sat down with its meal and worked it over like lions would have. These animals had been quickly attacked and overwhelmed and eaten in a manner that could only be described as violent.

  He raised his stare to the forest once more, but, despite the distinct sensation of being watched, saw nothing.

  Like he himself had said, they were wasting time, and they were going to have a hard enough time pitching their tents in the darkness. Besides, they were going to need as much rest as they could get. They had a big day ahead of them tomorrow.

  “Zhang,” he called.

  The Sichuanese trail boss turned to face him from where he still stood near the point where they’d initially entered the clearing. He extricated the clump of long white fur he’d been examining from the branch of a tree and tucked it into his pack.

  Brooks was reminded of the white fur that framed the face of a tiger and hung from its belly.

  Zhang slung his pack over his shoulders once more and walked past Brooks toward where the trees still shook from Warren’s passage.

  “We need go far as we can before make camp,” he said.

  Brooks again felt the weight of eyes upon him and realized what an excellent suggestion that was.

  Twelve

  Johann Brandt Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

  Chicago, Illinois

  October 3rd

  Eighteen Months Ago

  “Can anyone tell me what causes evolution?” Brooks asked.

  He scanned the faces of the small group of graduate students trailing him through the west wing of the Brandt Institute. They made him feel older with each passing year. Or maybe it was just the disconnect between his generation and the next. He was barely over thirty and could still turn heads at the gym, but his dark hair wasn’t quite as thick as it once was and the lines around his eyes were more defined. Character, they called it. More likely too much time spent out in the sun on some remote dig or other. At least he still had the deep blue eyes. They compensated for the rest of the flaws in an overall comfortable package.

  These kids, though, with their tattoos all over their arms and up their necks were a different breed, although one he found more than a little intriguing, especially when it came to the way they used their quasi-individuality to identify themselves as part of a tribe, but then dyed their hair or added piercings to distinguish themselves from it. Not that they were really kids. They were all in their twenties and the very brightest in their respective graduating classes.

  All of them knew the answer to his question, but feared the consequences of answering in inexact terminology. The JBIEA only had two internships available for the twelve hopeful candidates for whom this would be the crown jewel of their educational careers. They were all exceptionally qualified and would undoubtedly each do a magnificent job. Brooks was looking for the intangibles, though. The ability to think outside of the box and view the world in a unique way that could one day lead to revolutionary breakthroughs in the field of anthropology. He didn’t have a checklist and he couldn’t even clearly define the criteria in his own mind. All he knew was he’d recognize what he was looking for when he saw it.

  “Environmental pressure,” one spoke up. He wore a suit so expensive there was no way he actually owned it.

  “Climactic change,” a girl who’d been doing her best to flaunt her ample bosom said.

  “Predation,” said a skinny kid who hardly looked old enough to drive.

  “Entropy,” said a short girl with a pink stripe in her blond hair. She’d been trailing the group while her competition jockeyed for position at his heels.

  Brooks raised an eyebrow.

  “Qualify.”

  “The world is in a constant state of change. No two seasons are alike, let alone years. As such, species must remain in a constant state of adaptation to combat it. It’s that constancy of variability that triggers mutations of a completely random—and yet statistically predictable—nature, most of which are so subtle their genetic expression goes unnoticed. The minority are dramatic, and, more often than not, turn out to be disadvantageous. The few that prove advantageous are integrated into the gene pool by selective reproduction.”

  “Are those evolutionary changes rapid or do they take a great deal of time?”

  “Both.”

  “Give me examples.”

  “An example of a rapid change would be the peppered moth, which evolved a black-and white-marbled pattern on their wings to camouflage themselves with the indigenous lichens on the trees. During the Industrial Revolution, pollutants killed the lichens and darkened the trees with soot, which made the lighter-colored moths increasingly visible to predators that hunted them to the verge of extinction, while those with the melanistic mutation thrived when they otherwise would have been the first eaten. Thus, the population as a whole shifted to the darker coloration in a matter of generations.”

  “Very good. And how about slow?”

  “Pick any species and you’ll be able to trace its lineage through the eons. Homo sapiens, for example, branched from the same evolutionary tree as primates and great apes. All three of these branches diverged from a common ancestor seven million years ago.”

  “What proof can you offer to support this hypothesis?”

  “Besides common knowledge and every textbook printed after 1960?” suit-and-tie said. “Except in the South.”

  The others chuckled.

  Brooks smiled at the joke, but he was curious to hear pink hair’s justification.

  “Structurally, commonalities can be found between nearly all bones in modern-day species and in fossils. Physiologically, we share nearly ninety-nine percent of our DNA across the board, which can be corroborated through the samples obtained from our shared lineage.”

  “And how do we know which genes we share and for which proteins they’re coded?”
<
br />   “Genomic mapping.”

  “And how is that genetic material passed from one generation to the next?”

  “Through the germ line DNA. Sperm and egg.”

  “So if the same genes are being passed down from one generation to the next, what impetus is required to trigger evolutionary change?”

  “Mutation of the DNA itself.”

  “It’s believed that spontaneous mutation of DNA accounts for only three-tenths of a percent of the difference between humans and our closest living relative, the bonobo, which shares 98.7 percent of our DNA. What constitutes the remainder?”

  “Junk.”

  “And what is junk?”

  “Proteins coded into our DNA for which there’s no established function or direct intraspecies correlation.”

  “Good. And how do those proteins get into our DNA?”

  “They’re encoded there by the RNA, which transcribes them directly into the mitochondrial DNA.”

  “And where does that anomalous RNA come from?”

  “Transcription?”

  “True, but from what source?”

  She opened her mouth, but closed it when nothing came out. The sea of faces went blank, as he expected.

  “What if I told you the majority was encoded from primitive retroviruses and ‘fossilized’ in our DNA?”

  Whispers of disbelief rippled through the group.

  Brooks smirked. He lived for this moment.

  “A full eight percent of our genome is composed of ‘junk’ segments that can be directly matched to historic retroviruses, which evolve both within and alongside their host populations. Once they integrate themselves into a species, they become what we call endogenous retroviruses, or ERVs, which are then passed along to our offspring in their DNA. Now, these retroviruses have more than fifty thousand possible points of insertion, which means that the same sequence of DNA found at the same site in different species means it’s more than coincidence, right? The odds against it are astronomical. So to find the same sequence in all three branches of our evolutionary tree means that all three received that same segment of DNA from a common ancestor.

  “For as many identical segments as we find, there are even more than don’t match. A classic example is Papovaviridae, which can be used to trace migration patterns within the human species. Its various genotypes diverged at the same time as our primitive tribes, essentially creating geographically distinct subspecies. There are even much more recent retroviral segments you’ll find in Europeans, but not Americans, and Africans, but not African-Americans. It is by this means that we continue to evolve as a species as a whole and—more importantly—as geographically-distinct subspecies.”

  “So you’re saying viruses are primarily responsible for our evolution,” suit-and-tie said.

  “I’m saying viruses are one large component.”

  “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” pink streak said.

  “Is that not exactly what Darwin proposed? Think about it this way. The timeframe from initial retroviral infection to the first replication inside a cell can be measured in days, not generations. There is no faster way to alter the genome of an individual and no more certain way to pass it on to the next generation. The vast majority of mutations are recessive, and might not even appear in subsequent generations for centuries. If ever. Now, consider that a French paleovirologist was able to revive a virus that had been dead for hundreds of thousands of years. The Phoenix Virus, as he called it, easily inserted itself into a sample of human cells and began replicating its RNA. That’s the crucial point you need to understand: A virus acts upon one cell and spreads like wildfire to others, rapidly altering the entire individual—including his germ line—from the inside out, with the sole intention of creating an environment conducive to its own breeding efforts, altering the host’s entire genetic code in the process. And so, as Darwin said, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but in a way unique to the resulting proteins produced by the replication and translation of the viral DNA inside the human body.”

  “And it’s the expression of those discrete proteins in the gene line that establishes the foundation for any given population model, while simultaneously contributing to its inherent volatility.” She smiled. “Thus…entropy.”

  Brooks offered a half-smile of approval.

  “What’s your name, Ms.…?”

  “Grayson. Adrianne Grayson.”

  Brooks nodded and returned his attention to the task at hand, namely the tour of the facility. There was still much to see before the individual interviews commenced.

  “Now over here—”

  His words faltered when he turned and looked up the grand staircase to the second level. Johann Brandt himself stood on the landing, leaning heavily on his cane, his head cocked in a curious manner like a bird. He stared at Brooks as though weighing a decision of great importance, then shook his head as though to clear his thoughts. His eyes sparkled and his expression transformed into one of amusement. He gestured for Brooks to proceed with a roll of his right hand.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, revolutionary anthropologist and founder of this institute, Dr. Johann Brandt.”

  Brandt swelled with the attention and waved away their applause.

  “All right,” Brooks said. “Now over here you’ll see the different hominin skulls. Can anyone tell me which one belonged to the most evolutionary advantageous based solely on the shape of the cranial vault?”

  He glanced back to see Brandt still staring at him with an expression he could no longer interpret. The old anthropologist winked at him and headed toward his office with the hollow tapping sound of his cane echoing down the hallway.

  Thirteen

  Yarlung Tsangpo River Basin

  Motuo County

  Tibet Autonomous Region

  People’s Republic of China

  October 15th

  Two Days Ago

  The view from the campsite was breathtaking. The rainfall had waned to a gentle patter, which caused the lake far below to glimmer in the dying aura of the setting sun. It felt good to be out of the confines of the jungle and even better to be free of the horrible cold of the higher elevations. The gentle breeze blowing through the valley dispelled the mist and felt positively divine. Goosebumps rose from Brooks’s skin underneath his damp clothing. The frogs and insects and birds of night croaked and whined and chirped from their mossy enclaves beneath the shrubs and from high in the treetops. Raptors rode the thermals below the cliff top on which he sat, reveling in the sensation of knowing that tomorrow would bring him one step closer to realizing his dreams.

  He looked uphill toward the ridgeline far above their camp, where an evergreen-crowned precipice stood apart from the daunting white peaks he could only occasionally see through the clouds. He had insisted that Brandt describe exactly how to get to their destination, which he thought would prove all but impossible to find in this secluded valley. But Brandt’s description had been perfect. Brooks could nearly see the spot that haunted his every waking thought since Brandt first described it: the sheer face of perilously smooth limestone hidden from nearly every vantage point by overhanging vegetation. One thousand vertical feet of rock virtually inaccessible from every approach and to all but the most ambitious climbers.

  A crackling sound off to his left and he nearly came out of his skin. He whirled to see a red panda trundle out of the brush. It appeared every bit as surprised to see him and scampered quickly back into the shadows.

  Brooks shook his head. Something about the nature of the slaughter of the deer in that clearing still made him uneasy. Not necessarily the savageness of the attack, per se, but something he couldn’t quite define. Carnage like that was part of the natural order of things. He saw it in some capacity everywhere he traveled, from the Amazon to the Nile and everywhere in between. Those who’ve never left society behind wouldn’t be able to understand. The first time he witnessed it, back in Limpopo, had been almost overwhelming. The mere t
hought that the wildebeests had been torn apart scant feet from where he’d been standing, and no more than fifty from where he’d been unconscious behind a single layer of fabric, had really done a number on his head. The reality that the lioness could have been crouching in the tall grasses, sneaking silently up on the wildebeests as he fumbled with his zipper, had taken years to get past. Worse still was the knowledge that he hadn’t heard a sound as the animals had been torn apart. And then there had been the hyenas and the vultures the following morning, vying for the scraps.

  That was it. That was what plagued him. It was the complete lack of scavengers. There hadn’t been so much as a single carrion bird.

  For the life of him, though, he couldn’t fathom what that might mean. A disease maybe? Surely it couldn’t have been solely the proximity of the tiger that held them all at bay.

  And if it was a tiger that had somehow developed a predilection for human flesh, then was it out there at this very moment, watching them from the cover of the shrubs like the lions had all those years ago?

  He shivered at the thought and climbed to his feet.

  The Himalayas encircling him finally swallowed the setting sun. It was astounding how a place like this could form deep in one of the most daunting mountain ranges on the planet and exist to this day in such isolation. It was no wonder the Tibetans considered it the most holy of places and why it was revered by Buddhists everywhere as the “hidden lotus.”

  A crashing sound from the bushes behind him and the wash of a flashlight spread around his feet.

  “There you are,” Adrianne said. “We were starting to wonder what happened to you.”

  “Just enjoying the view.”

  She walked past him and stared upon the valley as the mist crept down from the mountaintops to cloak the lake. It looked almost ethereal in the moonlight.