“He’s been on for more than an hour, you know.”
Jason looked up. “I didn’t realize that.”
A nod. “I wonder what’s so damn important.”
“Let me tell you, then.” Summers walked up on deck, a strange look on his heavily stubbled face: fatigued and concerned, too.
Darryl’s eyes narrowed. “What’s up, Craig?”
“What’s up is we’ve got a major problem in the Pacific Ocean with GDV-4. Phil, I’m expecting an e-mail on it, about ninety pages. Can you print it for me?”
As Phil trotted off, Jason was mystified. “A major problem with GDV-4 in the Pacific?”
“Yeah. And that’s not all. I think GDV-4’s affecting this species of yours—maybe catastrophically.”
“What?”
“Jason, I don’t think these rays are from Mexico, Hawaii, the Marquesas, or anywhere else.” Craig gave him a measured look. “I don’t think they’re surface animals at all.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Every known species of manta lives exclusively at or near the surface. “Craig, that’s not possib—”
“It is possible. I’ll prove it—all of it.” He eyed him ominously. “Jason, I think this species of yours is from the depths.”
CHAPTER 17
CRAIG EXHALED, gathering his thoughts. Jason, Monique, and Darryl had just fired fifty questions at him and were waiting for answers. Standing in front of the three-person inquisition, he was ready.
“The first thing you should know is that a number of critical beliefs we had about GDV-4 are apparently . . . all wrong.”
Jason looked at him blankly. “You’re joking.”
“This is straight from Tom York, the head of the Woods Hole Oceanic Virus Group and the number one expert on GDV-4 in the world. Turns out his group’s been running tests in every major ocean on the globe for more than a year. They officially released their findings two hours ago.” Another exhale. “Here’s the deal. GDV-4 isn’t a surface virus at all. It spread to the surface, it was discovered at the surface, but it originated in the depths. And we’re talking the real depths. Ten, twenty, thirty thousand feet down. That’s why I think your species is from there, Jason.”
Darryl was flabbergasted. “GDV-4 originated there?”
“And it’s spreading like wildfire. This thing’s algae-based, guys.”
“Holy cow.”
Phil returned, handing Craig ninety sheets of tiny print. “What’s the significance of it being algae-based?”
“Phil, algae are near the very bottom of the food chain so a virus that infects algae has the potential to destroy entire oceans.” Craig nodded to the others. “It gets worse. They’re now saying GDV-4 is considerably more devastating than AIDS. Not only does it attack immune systems, it also causes severe brain damage, destroys the musculoskeletal system, and spreads with extraordinary speed within the body. And it is everywhere. York’s guys have found it in every ocean on Earth. Lisa was onto something with her plankton findings. Plankton are surface organisms, but somehow they detected GDV-4 rising up from below and adapted preemptively to fight off an attack.”
Jason shook his head. “Craig, is York sure about all this? I mean, how could GDV-4 have spread this far this fast? Especially before anybody even knew it?”
“Because viruses can hide, Jason. They can hide for decades.”
The public knew nothing about GDV-4 and that wouldn’t change anytime soon. It usually happens that way. The bottom line is that major news organizations become interested in viruses only when they caused human deaths, preferably on a large scale. The mad cow virus in Europe, for example, decimated European cattle herds for years but only garnered real attention after people began dying from it.
The long and storied history of viruses hiding from the public has been well documented. None is more infamous than AIDS. AIDS didn’t become part of the international consciousness until the mid-eighties but had existed much earlier. And not just in remote jungles in Africa, but in major American cities. In New York, a sailor died in 1959 of what medical records at the time called “complications caused by immune deficiency and pneumonia.” Blood samples analyzed decades later tested positive for HIV and AIDS.
Craig continued soberly. “We have unambiguous proof GDV-4’s been in the Pacific for a very long time. I assume you’ve all heard of that terramouth specimen that turned up in 1976?”
It was a famous discovery from back before any of them even knew what marine biology was. In November 1976, a naval research vessel, the AFB-14, was conducting experiments offshore of Oahu, sending probes to the ocean floor fifteen thousand feet below to perform sediment analysis. But when the AFB-14 retrieved the probes, something came up with them and it wasn’t sediment. It was the corpse of a giant fish no one had ever seen before: a previously unknown shark species, a strange-looking animal with dark brown skin, a massive mouth, unusually shaped teeth, and a weight of two tons. Dubbed terramouth, it was an astonishing find. It proved what many in the seagoing community had assumed for years: that there were entire species living in the depths that man knew absolutely nothing about. And these weren’t small animals, but enormous ones, and they hadn’t evolved recently, but had always been there. Fossil analysis determined that terramouth had been evolving for as long as some of the oldest sharks. It had been in the depths for more than 450 million years, but before 1976, man had no clue it even existed.
Jason went to the stern, his mind racing. “Are you saying that terramouth died of GDV-4?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. York personally flew to the National Oceanographic Institute at Waikiki seven weeks ago to check old tissue samples.”
“Then that means . . . that virus has been down there for thirty years?”
“At least.”
“How could that be? If it’s been down there that long, how could we not have known? How could the fishing industry not have been affected?”
“Because the fishing industry doesn’t fish the depths, Jason. Do you understand how deep we’re talking here? Three, five, even six miles down.”
“So we’re supposed to believe this virus has just stayed down there all this time without climbing to the mid and upper waters?”
“You know how big the damn oceans are, big guy. It would take decades even for a fast-moving virus to cover that much ground.”
Jason hesitated. The world’s oceans were indeed enormous, triple the surface area of dry land and that didn’t account for depth. The seas were two miles deep on average with many trenches more than six miles down. Craig was right. Even a fast-moving virus could take decades to form a meaningful presence in the higher waters. Until then, it might show itself only in dribs and drabs, which, of course, was exactly what had happened. It explained why GDV-4 had been so challenging to locate up to this point.
Monique turned. “Did York say anything about it going airborne?”
“What?” Darryl eyed his wife. “They’re worried about GDV-4 going airborne?”
Craig cleared his throat. “They were. The Audubon Society’s been crowing about some missing seagulls, but those rumors were gibberish. GDV-4 had nothing to do with it. But it has everything to do with these rays of yours, Jason. It’s driving them out of the depths, and they’re migrating to escape it.”
Jason turned to Monique. “Does a migration from the depths make sense here?”
“It makes perfect sense. If there really is serious devastation down there, these rays would have to go into higher waters to find food.” She shrugged. “Lack of food is the single biggest reason for off-season migrations.”
“A new food source.” Jason loved the simplicity of it. “So what was their old food source? I mean plankton doesn’t exist down there, right?”
“I couldn’t say what exists down there, Jason.”
No one could. The depths are an enigma, not just to them but also to human society; the only place on earth that truly is. There is no light at all in the depth
s, literally none, an entire world bathed in constant darkness. There is also the pressure. Pressure in the depths is so powerful it can literally crush a dump truck. The most sophisticated subs ever made can get nowhere near the depths, barely capable of diving more than nine hundred feet when the world’s oceans average more than ten thousand. And that’s just the average. While unmanned probes can be sent down, the devices are usually ineffective. The reality is that as advanced as human society is, the depths are still a mystery. Like deep space, they totally defy exploration. Man can attempt to visit but only for the briefest of moments, and even then, with very limited access.
Jason shook his head. He had no idea what the rays fed on down there. “But now we know why that one settled in the oil slick near Clarita.”
Darryl pivoted. “We do?”
“If Craig’s right, it must have been sick, even dying. I could never figure it: Why would a healthy ray lie down in a patch of oil? It wouldn’t. But a sick one, one that didn’t know where it was or what it was doing . . . Dollars to doughnuts, it was infected with GDV-4. You realize you could be talking about an apocalypse down there, Craig? I mean, if what you’re saying is actually happening, this virus could be the deep sea’s version of an ice age. These rays could be on the verge of extinction.”
Monique stepped forward. “Or adaptation.”
Jason turned. “You think so?”
“Think about how long these things have been down there.”
“How long?”
“Rays are cousins of sharks, right? So they could have been there since Pangaea.”
Pangaea was an ancient supercontinent, an enormous landmass that preceded the earth’s current five-continent formation. Pangaea’s breakup 290 million years ago had profound effects on all the earth’s species, on land and at sea, placing them in wildly new environments that either killed them off or forced them to adapt. The evolutionary adaptations attributed to Pangaea are nothing short of astonishing: kangaroo rats in the deserts evolving organs to make their own water internally, polar bears in the Arctic evolving skin to endure temperatures below minus-eighty degrees, duck hawks developing wings to fly 175 miles per hour.
“So you’re suggesting Pangaea could have split an ancient population of rays?” Jason turned to Monique fully. “While mantas evolved on the surface, this other species evolved in the depths?”
Monique nodded. “Sort of like a . . . deep-sea cousin.”
“Deep-sea cousin.” Craig smiled. “I like that.”
Jason eyed Monique curiously. “So how would this . . . deep-sea cousin have evolved? I guess it’s hard to say, isn’t it? Since we know so little about life down there.”
Monique raised an eyebrow. “We might know how it didn’t evolve, though.”
“How so?”
“Every species of manta we know lives in warm, tranquil seas, and they’ve all evolved identically. So doesn’t it stand to reason that if another group of rays lived in an entirely different environment, they’d have evolved into entirely different animals?”
“You think? How different could they really be, Monique? No matter where they evolved, you’re still talking about very large, slow-moving creatures. Wouldn’t their size alone limit their abilities to evolve into anything significantly different from the mantas we already know? It’s a rougher environment down there, granted, and I suppose they might have adapted—I don’t know—some stinging or electrical capabilities to compensate, but I can’t imagine anything much more than that.”
Monique wasn’t so sure. She recalled reading what Darwin had once said on a similar subject. When asked to explain how two genetically related species, the harmless domestic house cat and the vicious African lion, had evolved so differently, the father of evolution had attributed the results to vastly different environments, stating that more rigorous environments will force surviving species to become more rigorous as well.
“Life’s a lot tougher down there, Jason. Maybe these animals somehow evolved to deal with that.”
Tougher, Jason thought. In the case of the deep-sea cousin to the manta ray, what did tougher mean? But they’d gotten ahead of themselves. They were speculating, perhaps blindly. “We still don’t really know anything here, do we? I mean despite everything Craig just said, we don’t know these animals are from the depths; we don’t know they’re a new species. There’s really no proof.”
Monique looked at him. “Don’t forget the teeth Darryl found.”
Jason hesitated. The teeth. Was there any way the fat, stumpy S-shapes had actually come from the rays? Jason had previously written that off as unrealistic but now . . . “When’s Lisa’s meeting with that tooth expert?”
Monique checked her watch. “I think it’s starting right now.”
CHAPTER 18
THE LOBBY of UC Berkeley’s new biosciences and bioengineering facility was jam-packed. With a three-day conference just getting under way, more than six hundred well-dressed men and women in their thirties to sixties were smiling, shaking hands, making small talk, and sipping water from Styrofoam cups.
How am I going to find Mike Cohen in this mess? Lisa Barton thought, standing on her tippy toes to see over the morass of people. She glanced down at her own tailored suit, an elegant charcoal-gray number over a sheer white blouse, and smiled. Lisa hadn’t dressed up for anything in more than a year and appreciated the opportunity to wear something nice. She pushed into the crowd. Catching the occasional elbow and throwing a few herself, she methodically walked the entire room until she saw him, engaged in a low-key conversation. Mike Cohen was forty-five with a full head of curly brown hair, a laser-sharp intellect, and an ensemble that would make any fashion designer vomit: a navy suit made of 100 percent Dacron with a cheap red tie loose at the neck. When his conversation ended, he spotted Lisa and smiled wide.
“Lisa, how are you?”
“Hi, Mike. Nice to see you.” They hugged.
“How you been?”
She shrugged. “Honestly, things were slow for some time, but we might be onto something now.”
Cohen smiled anew. “You were always a straight shooter, Lisa. If I asked anybody else here that question, they’d say everything’s been gangbusters since birth.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry, but I have a presentation in fifteen minutes, so maybe we should get to the reason you’re here.”
“Is there a place we can talk?”
Seconds later, they entered Cohen’s office, nondescript and white-walled. He sat behind a metal desk with a faux-wood top. “So what do you got?”
Lisa placed a few of the fat S-shapes on the desk. “These.”
Cohen didn’t move. He just stared at the teeth, his brown eyes narrowing. Then, without actually touching the teeth, he ducked down to study them from another angle. Then he stood and moved his head all around, assessing them from more angles still, ignoring his dangling tie.
“Where did you get these?”
“The Pacific.”
“Where exactly?”
“About twenty miles off Monterey.”
“What depth?”
“A little more than a hundred feet.”
“Do you know the coordinates?”
“Longitude and latitude? Two of my colleagues might.”
“You said on the phone your team’s tracking some kind of new species?”
“We think so.”
Cohen picked up the phone. “Janet? I have to cancel my presentation. Please apologize and check timetables so we can reschedule.”
Lisa was staring at him now. He raised one of the teeth carefully and tapped it with a fingernail. “These didn’t come from a shark.”
He studied the tooth further, again from multiple angles. “They didn’t come from a barracuda, angler, gar, wallfish, parrot fish, or pike. They didn’t come from anything I’m familiar with.” He stared at them anew. “I’ve never seen teeth like this in my life.”
Lisa was stunned. Had they come from the rays?
“Would you like me to do an analysis on them?”
Lisa could barely contain herself. “Very much so.”
Cohen stood, eyeing the glass door that led to his lab. “Back soon. I’ll let you know what I find.”
CHAPTER 19
MIKE COHEN began speaking before he was even through the door. “I’ll start by telling you where else these teeth didn’t come from. They’re certainly not from anything land-based.” Teeth from land-based animals vary considerably in shape and size, and included incisors, canines, bicuspids, molars, fangs, and tusks. Teeth from water-based animals, on the other hand, tend to come in just two basic shapes, sharp cutting incisors and crushing molars. “These teeth obviously came from something that lives in the water, but that’s the only thing I can say with certainty.” He sat behind his desk. “There are a few things I think are highly likely.”
Lisa leaned forward. “OK.”
“Three comments. One, these are what we call specialized teeth; they’re designed for a specific purpose, and in this case, that isn’t playful nibbling. These teeth are designed to pierce very thick skin and internal organs. I don’t want to scare you, Lisa, but they belong to a predator, and an extremely dangerous one at that. Their curved shape is a fascinating adaptation I’ve never seen before. It would make it very difficult for any prey to wriggle away, especially if the animal has powerful jaws.
“Two, it’s highly likely there’s a second type of tooth in the mouth these came from. You found canines, which are located in the front and sides of the upper and lower jaws, very possibly in multiple rows. But I’m positive there are molars, too, because when this thing finishes killing whatever it’s caught, it’s going to need something to chew the meat. I modeled what the mouth might look like. It’s speculative, so I’m not sure, but it could even have extra-long incisors, what you’d effectively call fangs. Sort of like a tiger’s fangs, except these would be considerably sharper. I expect the total number of teeth in the mouth could easily number in the hundreds.”
Natural Selection Page 8
