by E. Coulombe
“Michael!” George wasn’t sure if Michael was real or an apparition standing in front of them.
Michael wasted no time. He tied one end of the rope around a tree, instructing Kerri to carry the slack up the bank. Then he tied it around a second tree and threw the loose end into the water. On the first try, it hit Lono square on the head. But when Lono grabbed it, he lost his grip on the boulder below. He and George both ended up floating, turned onto their sides. With one quick motion, Lono wrapped the rope around his wrist, and it jerked his arm, nearly pulling it out of socket. George was almost ripped off of Lono’s back, clinging by his torn shirt. “Hang on now, old man,” Lono shouted over the roar of the rushing water, “cause we’re gonna get the hell out of this!”
Adrenaline pumped through Michael as he lay flat out on his back, wedging his feet in front of him, and heaving with the strength of ten men. He held them long enough for Lono to find footing. Looking like a giant, Lono rose up out of the water, his black hair tumbling down to his outsized arm. He stood fully upright with George hanging from his back. He took one step forward, then another, Michael wrapping up the slack rope, until George could get his feet planted as well, and together he and Lono were able to crawl up on shore. All three men collapsed in a heap.
“Oh god,” George breathed out, “the creature, the thing, did we save it?” That was the last thing he said as he passed out face down in the mud.
A full hour later, the river had subsided enough for Andrew and Michael to get the packs across. It was nearly dark and George, who was in no condition to hike, lay still on the ground, and watched the others working together quietly, hanging Lono’s tarp, and pitching the tents. Kerri and Andrew helped George out of his wet clothes, and dressed him in the few pieces of dry clothing they could find from a collective search of their bags. They put him in Andrew’s smaller, one-man tent, then Andrew heated soup on the stove, and passed it into the now warming tent.
Lono silently worked on starting a fire. He collected dead twigs from the ohia trees, breaking off small branches overhead, drier than anything lying on the forest floor. He took a piece of rubber, two inches square from his pack, and placed it underneath a pile of dry lint he’d found inside a large fallen koa trunk. Using a lighter, he lit the edge of the rubber, and with his face touching the ground, blew gently and constantly into the tender flame.
George emerged from the tent, and sat down on unused trash bags which were placed around the fire. Kerri wrapped her sleeping bag around his shoulders. After an uncomfortable silence, he said softly, “I guess I ruined our chances of getting home tonight.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Andrew answered, “we’re fine here now, thanks to Lono.”
“Yeah, I have several reasons to be thankful to Lono,” George said. “For one, thank you for saving my life.”
Lono didn’t downplay his heroics, as he had done with Ka`ili. He stared into the fire, obviously angry. This is the local mentality, George thought, a remnant of plantation days. Anger felt, but never expressed. Don’t look them straight in the eye, always look down, nod, say yes sir, but all the while imagine boss lying belly down, on that same ground you been forced to stare at.
But George went on anyway. “You didn’t have to jump into that water to help me. Most people wouldn’t have done that. You risked your life to save mine, and for that I owe you a life.” Lono looked up, a doubtful, dark expression on his handsome face. He’s wondering what’s up with this haole weirdo, George thought. He smiled and nodded.
George, Andrew and Kerri started to talk science once again. Lono ceased to stoke the fire, and soon it went out, only coals illuminated the dark silhouettes ringing the pit. The scientists didn’t notice and continued to discuss various ramifications of hox genes. Finally Lono stood.
“Shit, I am so damn frickin’ wet and cold. More than anything I wanted to sleep in a bed tonight.” He walked out from under the tarp. “But I’d rather stay out here in the pouring down rain than listen to you all go on and on like that.”
Kerri sat up. George placed her sleeping bag on her knees and went to join Lono under the fictional shelter of an ironwood tree, the rain dripping down his back. “You’re right, Lono” he apologized sincerely. In an unusual gesture, he touched Lono’s arm, “please no more talk. It’s time to sleep. Come back under the tarp, and don’t soak yourself anymore on my account. If anyone deserves to stand here in the rain, it’s me, not you.”
Chapter Twenty Five
As soon as dawn broke, the group packed up and returned to the compound. No one had slept well, and they dragged down the trail in silence.
“Kerri, you shower first,” Andrew offered when they reached the house. Kerri felt so chilled and miserable from sleeping in wet clothes that she didn’t bother to object to his chauvinistic gesture. She intended to bathe quickly so the others wouldn’t have a long wait, but instead, found herself lingering in the steam, relishing the hot water as it ran down her body until her shivers completely stopped. By the time she entered the living room, George and Lono had scattered and Andrew was embroiled in an argument with Emma.
“It’s easy for you to risk Michael’s life,” Emma was saying, eyes flashing fury.
“But Emma, you would have been so proud of Michael. He isn’t a kid, Emma. He was so competent out there. We all needed him or—I don’t know what would have happened.”
“And you also needed to stay out overnight without letting me know?”
Kerri tried to walk toward the door unnoticed, but Emma turned to glare at her. What she saw was a slender young blonde in a spaghetti strap tee and low-rider shorts. Not enough material there for a dinner napkin, thought Emma.
“Emma,” Andrew was saying, “We all chose to stay to help George with his discovery. What he found could be groundbreaking. It’s… Tell her, Kerri.”
“Pretty much exactly what he said,” Kerri interjected.
“Yeah,” Andrew shook his head, his eyes troubled for a second.
“I don’t care!” Emma said. “You’ve been on the verge of something groundbreaking for the last 15 years, and I don’t want to spend one more night alone because of it.”
“But…”
“And above all, I don’t want my son’s life risked for your work!”
With that, Emma stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
“He’s my son, too,” Andrew mumbled to the door.
Kerri stood frozen in place, stunned, uncomfortable. “Sorry, Andrew,” she said.
“She just doesn’t get it. What am I supposed to do?” Andrew looked down at the ground, and then he stood up and faced Kerri. “She doesn’t see how important my work is. Can you imagine my frustration?”
“It must be difficult,” Kerri said. Now she looked at the ground.
“I’m sorry, Kerri. I didn’t mean for you…”
“Oh, no. You have to talk about it.” She still avoided his gaze.
“Well, I guess I’d better shower.”
“Good idea,” she said, reaching the door and taking her exit.
Andrew felt guilty about pulling Kerri into his conflict with Emma, so when he got cleaned up, he went to look for her to make amends. He had just stepped out into the hallway when Kerri came rushing across the lawn shouting.
“Guys! You’ve got to see this! Come quick.” He and Andrew rushed down the front steps, and Lono came around from the back of the house where he’d been sitting with his family.
“This had better be good, Kerri. I need a shower bad. I stink like an old fish,” George said.
Eyes sparkling, eyebrows raised, Kerri said. “Well you know that experiment I started…”
“What experiment?” George interrupted. “You and Andrew have kept us all in the dark, remember.”
“But you do remember what I told you at dinner? That I worked with the hox genes back in Cambridge, and I wanted to try something new?”
“Yes,” George answered slowly, recalling the discussio
n, but not the details.
“Okay,” she went on, “remember I said the hox genes appear to switch on and off in sequence, and that I was able to isolate the hox genes in the chick embryo that were responsible for wing development. Remember?”
George nodded. “Well Douboule at Cambridge thought that because the bone structure is so similar in fins and feet, that if the fish hox genes could be tricked into staying on just a bit longer, the fins might become appendages suggestive of primitive feet.”
“But that didn't prove to be the case in his experiments. Then several others tried as well, but no one was able to do it.” Kerri smiled, enjoying her moment in the sun. “At least not until now.”
The three of them, mesmerized and moving as one body, followed her around the small lab. She reached down into the sink, and pulled out a pan filled with water hooked up to a thermostat and a heater. An incubator for fish eggs.
“Douboule, like most researchers, worked exclusively with a fish called zebrafish, because they are so readily available and relatively cheap. Go ahead, remove one of them,” she said to the men. But no one moved. She shook her head and laughed. She had completely charmed all three of these handsome men, who now appeared lifeless around her.
Andrew stepped up and took the tongue depressor. Reaching into the incubator he gently removed one of the eggs and placed it on the base of the dissecting scope. The jellied egg was about the size of a gecko casing, and he was able to prod the embryo out using the needle tipped dissecting tool. Peering through the lens of the dissecting scope, a grin stretched across his face. George shoved him aside and bent down to look through the eyepiece.
"Is this a zebrafish embryo?” George asked.
"No, it's not” Kerri replied coyly and smiled at Andrew who returned her gaze.
"I should hope not" George said from inside the scope, "cause if it is, its growing legs."
Kerri laughed. “Actually George, it is a coelacanth, a very primitive fish reminiscent of the early lung fish."
“Damn Kerri” he spoke from the scope “you’ve done it haven’t you? You’ve created one of Darwin's hopeful monsters?"
Lono finally spoke. “Let me see George,” he said as he pushed the older man aside.
Kerri gave her easy laugh. “Maybe,” she shook her head, “I don't know really. But the credit would go to Andrew actually,” her eyes met his for more than a second. “He was the one who realized the problem with Douboule’s work. Andrew may be right, as he explained at camp last night, the changes can't go backwards. We can't de-program the genes. So when Douboule tried this on the zebrafish it didn’t work because they are ray finned fish that evolved relatively recently. They’re too far advanced - the chemistry, the signals, the whole coordinated dance of development is too far along to change.”
"So I suggested that Kerri try it with the coelacanth,” Andrew cut in. “An organism that evolved 400 million years ago, long before the first amphibians.”
“May I?” Kerri scolded him with knitted brows. He acquiesced with a smile and a gentle bow. “Correct,” she continued, “the coelacanth evolved the capacity to breathe air out of water but never developed feet, it remained in an evolutionary limbo. I thought….we thought, that because it was not as far along in it’s program, that we might be able to change the course of it’s development.”
“Which you did!” Andrew bellowed. The electricity shocked the air between them, as his face, his entire countenance beamed with enthusiasm. Unaware of what he was doing, he wrapped his long fingers around her arms, practically pulling her towards him. Kerri blushed.
“Absolutely amazing, Kerri. Let’s go over the protocol again, step by step, to see what information we can elucidate from this. At what stage in its development did you first see evidence of it growing feet?”
“Now how would I know that--we’ve been camping together at Ko`olau while this incubated, remember?” She laughed at his inanity. “Just calm down for a minute Andrew. Of course I'll show it all to you. We should actually go through the procedure again, together, but first I want you to look at this,” she said as she bent her head over and adjusted the embryo under the scope. “There is something else about this embryo. It’s in the lower spine, see,” she faintly touched the embryo with the needle tipped dissecting tool. “I think the altered timing of the hox gene has also caused the fusion of the lower vertebrae to make what now looks like an embryonic pelvis. We need to look more closely at the musculature to be sure, but this thing may also now have the rudimentary muscles needed for walking on land.”
“Fantastic!” Andrew was shouting into the scope, completely forgetting why he had headed into the lab in the first place. “And you haven’t changed any other genes? Nor touched any of the proteins? Just the one hox gene which you altered. It's like, it's like....you're dancing with the devil, woman! I must say, I am impressed. Let me see exactly how you did this. Better yet , let’s first repeat the procedure. I'm all yours for the rest of the day.”
Oh yes, she smiled quietly to herself. This had been a good day, in spite of the awkward scene an hour earlier--a damn great day. First she had finally succeeded in doing what she and several other laboratories had been working towards for the past two years -- and in doing so she had won Andrew’s praise. She looked at the back of his handsome head, glued to the end of the scope.
Just then he lifted his head and looked directly into her eyes. For a brief second she was afraid she may have spoken her thoughts aloud. Standing next to each other, their eyes locked. “Damn it's hot in here,” Andrew said and turned away. “Kerri, could we open the shutters?”
They worked together long into the evening, discussing every step in detail as they repeated the experiment. Finally, Kerri crossed the room, bent down under the lab bench and positioned the new batch of eggs in the incubator. Andrew’s eyes followed. How did nature make such perfection of form, he wondered. Did any other species have such grace and beauty, softly drawn lines in perfect harmony, left winnowing into right, right to left, concave lines which drew the eye to just the spot, to the unfilled womb. Cats perhaps--they had beauty of form, but not like this. The chimpanzee certainly didn’t have it. Nor the orangutan. Why us? Kerri turned and her s-curved poise held his eye (did she know, as all women knew? They knew instinctively without even looking up when eyes were on them). Beauty so great even the male chimpanzee must see this! It transcends species.
Kerri stood and yawned. “It's been a long day for you, hasn't it Kerri?”
“Was it really just this morning we were rising in our wet sleeping bags?”
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to keep you all evening. And also, about earlier in the living room, I wanted to apologize again…”
“No, I’m fine. It's been a great day.”
Relieved, Andrew said, “You’ve done something truly remarkable today. You know that, don't you? There won't be many moments like this in your life.”
“In your career you should say,” Emma stated, after she entered the room unnoticed by either of them. “There are other avenues to moments as rewarding as this one, you know.”
“Are there, really?” Kerri asked in that slightly superior way women in the office often regard stay-at-home mothers.
“Yes, of course. But you sound skeptical?”
Kerri felt annoyed by Emma’s intrusion. She wanted to bask in her success and in Andrew’s support, but she couldn’t help recalling the earlier incident between Andrew and Emma, and then Andrew’s distress. “Well….what we’ve been able to accomplish here,” she said, “unlocking vital mysteries that have eluded man since he was first capable of asking the questions. Surely such discovery can't be matched by a mere relationship? Unless you have something unusual going on in your life?”
“Well, my relationship with Michael is not unusual. It’s a normal healthy relationship; love, trust, caring. And yes there are moments, such as when we celebrate his achievements, that I feel as elated as you have with your success today. Many mom
ents. And what's more, I have shared many such moments with my husband.” Emma took Andrew’s hand and leaned into his shoulder. The gesture was a statement.
Andrew didn’t take his hand back, as Kerri had expected him to. Perturbed, she continued to brow beat Emma. “But this work is important, really important. It could have repercussions throughout the scientific community for years to come. Who knows we may, from this initial result, soon discover things that change our entire way of thinking about the world and our place in it.”
“Michael has already done that for me.”
“I mean man's place in the world, the really big question,” Kerri spoke harshly, miffed to be having this typical female debate. “You know,” she mocked, “the Why We Are Here question?”
Emma vehemently shook her head back and forth. “You just don’t get it. I already know why I’m here. I’m here for them!”
Andrew took his hand back and tried to speak but Kerri cut him off. “Oh, well” Kerri stammered as she headed for the door, definitely wanting this conversation to end. ““I guess you've got it all figured out.”
“No, Kerri,” Emma mimicked her sarcastic tone, “I most definitely haven't. And one thing I clearly don't understand - is you.”
Kerri slammed the door behind her. Emma looked at Andrew but he couldn’t meet her eye, and turned, using the excuse of cleaning lab ware in the sink. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to deal with this Andrew,” she said to his back, but when he merely shrugged his shoulders, she turned and walked away, so he wouldn’t see the tears streaming down her face.
Chapter Twenty Six
