Natural Selection

by Dave Freedman

  “Are you sure they’re really ‘separate’?” Monique asked, approaching with Lisa.

  “What do you mean, Monique?”

  Monique walked closer. “I mean there are clearly two groups migrating, but it seems like they’re moving more . . . in conjunction with each other, same direction and pace but at different depths and distances from the shoreline.”

  “Whatever. They split up and that seems odd. Have you ever seen a migration like that before?”

  “I haven’t. Have you, Darryl?”

  “Never.”

  Craig nodded. “So why did they split, then?”

  The Hollises shrugged.

  Lisa had no idea either and she wondered what Jason would think. It was strange not having him on the boat. She hoped he was learning something useful from the brain expert in Princeton, New Jersey, whose name she couldn’t pronounce.

  BANDAR VISHAKERATNE, or “Veesh” to his friends, hailed from Sri Lanka and was a classic rags-to-riches story. A decade earlier he’d been an unknown doctor toiling in the neurology department of a poorly funded public hospital in New Delhi when a paper he’d submitted a year prior to the International Federation of Neurosurgeons was judged to possess “unparalleled knowledge of the inner workings of the animal brain.” Entitled “Synapse Multiplication of Visual Cortexes in African Lions,” the paper was subsequently disseminated to everyone in the worldwide neurology community. Global recognition followed. Within six months, the man was a runner-up for the Nobel Prize. Twelve months after that, an offer was extended to become the chairman of Princeton University’s then-new neurosciences department, and with great fanfare, Vishakeratne took the job. While his salary and other compensation were never publicly disclosed, it was widely rumored that Princeton, whose endowment was larger than many small countries’ treasuries, had given him a total pay package rivaling those of America’s best-paid professional athletes. Bandar Vishakeratne had been sitting pretty ever since.

  “Jason who? What kind of stupid name is Jason anyway? Get rid of him.”

  “Dr. Vishakeratne, he’s the one I told you about.” Andrea, Vishakeratne’s thirty-year-old assistant, shuffled into the room, speaking in a New York accent that contrasted humorously with her boss’s Indian accent. “Remember he called earlier? From California? Well, he’s here now, waiting outside actually, and he’d very much like to speak with you.” After reaching San Francisco airport in record time, Jason had taken the next plane to Newark, and a fast taxi straight to Princeton.

  “Tell him to get the fuck away. I’m busy here, for Christ’s sake.”

  Andrea suppressed a smile. Vishakeratne was famous for his bad temper and filthy mouth, characteristics not highlighted in Princeton’s 250th anniversary fund-raising pamphlets. Seated in a massive, elegant office the likes of which most academics only dreamed of, the sixty-one-year-old pointed to a few stapled sheets in her hand.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “A confidentiality agreement.” Andrea meekly handed him the sheets. Darryl had recommended that Jason make him sign one; the doctor was rumored to be quite a shark and having some legal protection couldn’t hurt.

  “A confidentiality agreement! This crazy bastard from California not only wants to meet with me unannounced, he wants me to sign a confidentiality agreement!” The doctor laughed heartily, genuinely amused. “He should be castrated! What a crackpot!”

  “I don’t think he’s a crackpot, Doctor.”

  “No, of course you don’t.” He tore through the sheets. “What’s he promising here? That the moon is made of cheese? That the earth’s crust is composed entirely of low-fat yogurt?” He threw the confidentiality agreement on the floor. “All Californians are crackpots. Maybe he arrived early for Halloween. Now just get rid of—”

  Jason entered the room. He’d been listening at the door and just couldn’t take it anymore. His eyes were lasers as he carried a medium-size white cooler with a red top. He didn’t have time to screw around.

  “Dr. Vishakeratne, my name is Jason Aldridge. I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, but I have something here that just can’t wait. I know you’ll be very interested to see it, but I need you to sign that confidentiality agreement first.” He walked closer and placed the cooler on the large desk.

  The doctor hadn’t heard a word. He was terrified, stock-still in his leather chair, worried that the man who’d just entered his office was some sort of terrorist, and that his cooler held a bomb. Vishakeratne was far from paranoid; in the country he came from, suicide bombers were not uncommon. A colleague had recently been killed by just such a person, and Vishakeratne himself received three death threats a year. Maybe someone was finally following up. Despite his horror, he stayed cool.

  “Call security,” he said quietly to his assistant. Then he didn’t move, tried not to even breathe. The cooler was three feet from his face.

  Unaware of the man’s concerns, Jason leaned forward and pulled off the top. Vishakeratne jolted backward, nearly falling off his chair.

  Jason was astonished. “What are you doing? Doctor, I’m not a mad bomber. I have something here you want to see, believe me. Just take a peek, and if it doesn’t interest you, I’ll leave.” He held up the red top harmlessly. “Fair enough?”

  Vishakeratne breathed easier. Nothing had exploded, and the white man didn’t look or sound like a suicide bomber. He was wearing khakis and a light blue, button-down shirt, purchased at a men’s clothing store at the San Francisco airport. Vishakeratne’s curiosity was suddenly piqued. If this intense-looking fellow had really come all the way from California, what had he brought with him? The scientist slid toward his desk and peered into the cooler.

  “Sweet mother of Buddha,” the chairman of Princeton’s neuroscience department said.

  “Doctor, I need you to sign that confidentiality agreement.”

  Vishakeratne didn’t respond. He simply gazed into the cooler.

  “Doctor?”

  He still didn’t respond.

  Jason put the top back on and suddenly had Vishakeratne’s attention. The doctor looked up at him quizzically. “Yes?”

  “The confidentiality agreement?”

  “Oh.” Now Vishakeratne couldn’t move fast enough. He fumbled at his shirt pocket, searching for a pen. He couldn’t find one. He patted down his jacket. Nothing there either. He ripped open a drawer and rooted around inside, pulling out a Bic. He literally ran to pick up the now partially torn confidentiality agreement off the carpeted floor. Not bothering to read it, he scribbled his signature and the day’s date four times. He gave it to Jason then placed a hand on the cooler’s top.

  “May I?”

  Jason eyed him evenly, even more anxious than he to learn about the fantastic brain.

  “Please.”

  CHAPTER 31

  IT’S REAL all right. The number one brain expert in the world had just finished prodding and probing the strange brain with his bare hands. It wasn’t a fake. The bloody brain was real!

  “Where did you get this?”

  Jason explained.

  “I see. And why are you showing it to me, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Aldridge. Jason Aldridge. I want you to analyze it. Tell me what you make of it.”

  “In exchange for what?” Excited as he was, Vishakeratne was still a businessman—and Jason knew that.

  “An exclusive. You can analyze this brain from top to bottom and publicly release your findings before anybody else even knows it exists.” Jason knew it had to be the best offer the great man had ever received.

  But Bandar Vishakeratne barely blinked. He’d recently entered a Thursday-night poker game with a group of engineering professors and had become quite adept at hiding his emotions. He simply stared into the cooler. Then, in a low, quiet voice, he said, “That’s a fair offer. You’d better let me get to work now.”

  “SON OF a bitch . . .” Craig Summers looked up from the interactive map. “We just got a signal, guys!”

/>   The others ran over; Darryl arrived first. “Where?”

  “North of San Francisco, right off Point Reyes.”

  A whistle. “All the way up there without us detecting them.” Point Reyes was sixty miles north of their current location in Half Moon Bay.

  Craig nodded. “That’s what swimming the canyons will do.”

  “You think they’re doing that intentionally? To evade detection?”

  “Ah, I can’t imagine.”

  “Excuse me, is that depth right?” Monique pointed at the monitor.

  Craig’s eyes bulged. “Jesus, they’re at the surface. And . . .” He leaned in. “Look how close to shore they are. Christ, they’re almost on the beach.”

  Monique nodded. “Craig, we better get up there. Right now.”

  Summers literally ran to the bridge and suddenly they were flying up the coast. No one said the words—they could barely hear themselves think over the wind—but they all wondered the same thing: Why were the rays suddenly so close to shore?

  “NOTHING HERE.” It was ninety minutes later, and Darryl shook his head. “Not a damn thing.”

  They’d made fantastic time, passing El Granada, Daly City, and Muir Woods at record speed. As the boat’s engine took a needed break, they bobbed just twenty yards offshore of a desolate Point Reyes beach.

  “This is where the signal came from?” Monique asked, scanning the shoreline with binoculars.

  Craig nodded. “To the inch.”

  Darryl put down a harpoon gun he’d been holding just in case. “Well, I don’t see a damn thing.”

  “Wait a second. . . .” Monique suddenly pointed. “Look at that.”

  They all turned toward the beach.

  “Goddamn,” Darryl said.

  Phil almost whistled. “Wow.”

  Craig just shook his head. “That’s why they were so close to shore.”

  Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s get over there. Carefully.” She reached for her cell. “And I’m calling Jason. . . .” Whatever the Princeton brain expert was telling him, she knew he’d want to hear what they’d just found immediately. She just hoped his phone was on.

  CHAPTER 32

  BANDAR VISHAKERATNE put down his pencil and rose from a stool. The preliminary analysis was complete. The scientist had just worked nonstop for an entire day, literally twenty-five hours straight, not taking any breaks, not even a visit to the snack machine down the hall for junk food. He was exhausted. He grabbed his blazer, yawned twice, and entered a tastefully appointed hallway.

  Seated on a wooden chair embossed with the black-and-orange Princeton University seal was Jason Aldridge. He was wide-awake, eyeing his cell phone and realizing he had messages. He put the tiny contraption away when he saw that the doctor had returned. “So, Dr. Vishakeratne, what did you find?”

  Veesh-ah-ker-aht-nee. The neurologist had noted it earlier. Most people butchered his name with shocking regularity, but this American took tremendous care to pronounce it correctly. The linguistic touch didn’t make him Albert Einstein, of course, but it demonstrated respect as well an attention to detail that the doctor rarely found in anyone except himself. Vishakeratne decided on the spot that he liked Jason Aldridge. He gestured courteously.

  “Please, come into my office. Let me share my analysis with you.”

  They sat on two small leather couches on either side of a fancy glass table. Vishakeratne went over “general brain preliminaries” first. The human brain weighed 1,400 grams, about 3 pounds, and possessed a large cerebral cortex, or upper brain. Despite man’s apparent “brain superiority,” three—and now four—animals existed in nature that actually had brains that were heavier than man’s. The sperm whale’s weighed 20 pounds, the elephant’s 13, the bottlenose dolphin’s 3.75, and now the new animal’s, 5.81 pounds. Yes, brains varied in size just as any other organ did; just as someone might have longer legs, they might also have a larger brain. The heaviest human brain ever recorded weighed 4 pounds, a full pound heavier than the average.

  Large nonhuman brains didn’t demonstrate nearly as much intelligence as they should have. Unlike man, other big-brained animals didn’t appear to use their brains, which led to the obvious question of why they had evolved to such great size in the first place. Vishakeratne had been one of the first to suggest the presence of an “animal intelligence” that humans simply couldn’t appreciate. Dolphin and whale brains, he postulated, were dedicated to support awesome sensory perceptions, such as sonar, rather than the communication and reasoning skills that human brains were largely limited to. Just as a brain that supported communication and reasoning skills had been critical to man’s survival, so had the dolphin’s and whale’s brain been critical to theirs.

  The preliminaries continued when the eminent scientist noticed that Jason’s eyes were glazed over. It was as though the young ichthyologist was being polite but had heard it all before. He had. On the flight from San Francisco to Newark, Jason had read or skimmed every available piece of information on the findings of Bandar Vishakeratne. Not normally one to waste people’s time, the doctor switched gears immediately.

  “Obviously, you’re here to discuss the brain you brought with you. Let’s do that.”

  He pressed a button. Instantaneously, Andrea entered the large office, carrying the brain in a deep-rimmed white plastic tray, submerged in a few inches of water. She placed it on the glass table, careful not to drip, then left the office.

  Vishakeratne began. “A number of items strike me as most unusual with this brain. The first, clearly, is its weight. Second is its shape. It’s most . . . strange. In fact, I’ve never seen anything like it. Before this, every brain I’ve seen has been rounded, perhaps elliptical, cylindrical, or oblong, but essentially rounded. But this”—he gestured to the lumpy gray matter on the tray—“as we can see, is flat. . . .” His voice trailed off and he became quiet.

  Jason studied the man. The skin above his forehead was crinkled. His eyes looked strained. “This brain didn’t evolve into this particular shape by accident. It happened for a reason. My preliminary judgment is that this is a highly specialized brain. A highly focused brain.”

  Jason leaned forward. “Focused on what?”

  Vishakeratne looked him in the eye, ominously so. “On hunting, Jason.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “ON HUNTING?”

  “You said earlier this animal is a predator, and my analysis bloody well supports that. And not just any predator. A highly, highly efficient one. Almost too efficient, I’d daresay. This brain is capable of supporting sensory perceptions unlike anything I’ve seen before. Now, I haven’t determined which senses—sight, smell, hearing, various magnetic sensory abilities—are the strongest yet, but my guess is that they’re all are very strong on an absolute basis. Perhaps even unparalleled.”

  “Unparalleled senses.” Jesus, Jason thought.

  In rapid succession, Vishakeratne pointed to a series of bulging lobes on the soaking brain. “As you can see, all of this brain’s sensory cortexes—acoustical, visual, auditory—are very large; huge, in fact.” He pointed at one particularly large bulge. “This is its electrical cortex, the largest I’ve seen by far. Jason, the sensory capabilities of this brain are arguably too strong. No capable predator would need a brain like this. But”—he raised his index finger—“an incapable predator very well might. You said these rays are physically underqualified to be predators, but this brain, just like the human brain, would allow them to overcompensate for that.”

  “So it evolved out of need, just like any other organ.”

  “Of course just like any other organ.” It never ceased to amaze the neurologist. Everyone always assumed the brain was different from other organs, that it hadn’t evolved at all, but had simply appeared inside everyone’s skull by magic. “I assure you, Jason, despite its complexity, this brain evolved just like the giraffe’s neck.”

  The giraffe’s neck was a famous example of how the evolutionary process worked.
Due to its simplicity, it was frequently used to demonstrate the critical concept of variation. Variation was the fundamental building block that allowed the entire adaptive process to occur. Every body part and organ of every species—from the neck of the giraffe to the brain of man—had evolved as a result of prolonged variation over time. Giraffes were the example often used to describe this.

  Thirty-five million years ago, giraffes were much smaller animals, resembling Great Danes, their necks just a few inches long. But just like any animal, prehistoric giraffes were all slightly different from one another. They varied in height, weight, fur color, and in literally billions of other ways, including neck length. In a litter of ten prehistoric baby giraffes, the typical animal’s neck might have been three inches long. But a few might have had necks that were just an inch or two, while a few others had necks that were four or five inches.

  And what would it have mattered? Depending on the circumstances, a slightly longer neck might have given a prehistoric giraffe an advantage, a disadvantage, or simply had no effect at all in its quest to survive. But as it turned out, a longer neck provided a distinct advantage. Thirty-five million years ago, the land was filled with hungry herbivores, plant eaters, who fought hard to eat every plant as quickly as it grew. But some greenery—the upper leaves of the tallest trees—was simply too high to reach. But not for the longer-necked giraffes. These animals were able to reach previously unreachable leaves. As a result, they ate and prospered, while the short-necked members of their species starved and died off. The lucky survivors mated with one another and, in doing so, passed on their “long-neck” genes to the next generation. So what could have been a “mutant” long-neck gene instead became standard for the entire species. With a continued shortage of easily accessible greenery, the giraffes that had long necks continued to have an advantage. So over the years, as they survived and mated, the long-neck genes were repeatedly “selected,” and eventually, the entire giraffe species evolved into its current, modern form.