Relic

“You can add this one, then: you’re a sack of shit.”

Coffey threw back his head and laughed. “I love people who slit their own throats and save you the trouble. It’s already occurred to me that this case is much too important to have a lieutenant acting as NYPD liaison. You’re go

D’Agosta said nothing. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised.

= 37 =

An explosive sneeze rattled beakers and dislodged dried plant specimens in the Museum’s auxiliary botanical lab.

“Sorry,” Kawakita apologized, sniffling. “Allergies.”

“Here’s a tissue,” Margo said, reaching into her carryall. She’d been listening to Kawakita’s description of his genetic Extrapolator program. It’s brilliant, she thought. But I’ll bet Frock supplied most of the theory behind it.

“Anyway,” Kawakita said, “you start with gene sequences from two animals or plants. That’s the input. What you get is an extrapolation—a guess from the computer of what the evolutionary link is between the two species. The program automatically matches up pieces of DNA, compares like sequences, then figures out what the extrapolated form might be. As an example, I’ll do a test run with chimp and human DNA. What we should get is a description of some intermediate form.”

[261] “The Missing Link,” Margo nodded. “Don’t tell me it draws a picture of the animal, too?”

“No!” Kawakita laughed. “I’d get a Nobel Prize if it could do that. What it does instead is give you a list of morphological and behavioral features the animal or plant might possess. Not definite, but probable. And not a complete list, of course. You’ll see when we finish this run.”

He typed a series of instructions, and data began flowing across the computer screen: a rapid, undulating progression of zeros and ones. “You can turn this off,” said Kawakita. “But I like to watch the data download from the gene sequencer. It’s as beautiful as watching a river. A trout stream, preferably.”

In about five minutes the data stopped and the screen went blank, glowing a soft blue. Then the face of Moe, from the Three Stooges, appeared, saying through the computer’s speaker: “I’m thinking, I’m thinking, but nothing’s happening!”

“That means the program’s ru

A message popped on the screen:

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 3.03.40 min.

“Chimps and humans are so close—they share ninety-eight percent of the same genes—that this one should be fairly quick.”

A light bulb suddenly popped on the screen over Moe’s head.

“Done!” said Kawakita. “Now for the results.”

He pressed a key. The computer screen read:

 

FIRST SPECIES:

Species: Pan troglodytes

Genus: Pan

[262] Family: Pongidae

Order: Primata

Class: Mammalia

Phylum: Chordata

Kingdom: Animalia

 

SECOND SPECIES:

Species: Homo sapiens     

Genus: Homo

Family: Hominidae

Order: Primata

Class: Mammalia

Phylum: Chordata

Kingdom: Animalia           

 

Overall Genetic Match: 98.4%

 

“Believe it or not,” said Kawakita, “the identification of these two species was made solely on the genes. I didn’t tell the computer what these two organisms were. That’s a good way to show unbelievers that the Extrapolator isn’t just a gimmick or a kludge. Anyway, now we get a description of the intermediate species. In this case, as you said, the Missing Link.”

 

Intermediate form morphological characteristics:

Gracile

Brain capacity: 750cc

Bipedal, erect posture

Opposable thumb

Loss of opposability in toes

Below average sexual dimorphism

Weight, male, full grown: 55 kg

[263] Weight, female, full grown: 45 kg

Gestation period: eight months

Aggressiveness: low to moderate

Estrus cycle in female: suppressed

 

The list went on and on, growing more and more obscure. Under “osteology,” Margo could make out almost nothing.

 

Atavistic parietal foramina process

Greatly reduced iliac crest

10-12 thoracic vertebrae

Partially rotated greater trochanter

Prominent rim of orbit

Atavistic frontal process with prominent zygomatic process

 

That must mean beetle browed, thought Margo to herself.

 

Diurnal

Partially or serially monogamous

Lives in cooperative social groups

 

“Come on. How can your program tell something like this?” Margo asked, pointing to monogamous.

“Hormones,” said Kawakita. “There’s a gene that codes for a hormone seen in monogamous mammal species, but not in promiscuous species. In humans, this hormone has something to do with pair bonding. It isn’t present in chimps, who are notoriously promiscuous animals. And the fact that the female’s estrus cycle is suppressed—you also see that only in relatively monogamous species. The program uses a whole arsenal of tools—subtle AI algorithms, fuzzy logic—to interpret [264] the effect of whole suites of genes on the behavior and look of a proposed organism.”

“AI algorithms? Fuzzy logic? You’re losing me,” Margo said.

“Well, it really doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know all the secrets, anyway. What it boils down to is making the program think more like a person than a normal computer would. It makes educated guesses, uses intuition. That one trait, ‘cooperative,’ for example, is extrapolated from the presence or absence of some eighty different genes.”

“That’s all?” Margo said jokingly.

“No,” Kawakita replied. “You can also use the program to guess at a single organism’s size, shape, and behavior by entering the DNA for one creature instead of two, and disabling the extrapolation logic. And assuming the funding holds up, I plan to add two other modules for this program. The first will extrapolate back in time from a single species, and the second will extrapolate forward. In other words, we’ll be able to learn more about extinct creatures of the past, and guess at beings of the future.” He gri

“It’s amazing,” said Margo. She feared her own research project seemed puny by comparison. “How did you develop it?”

Kawakita hesitated, staring at her a little suspiciously. “When I first started working with Frock, he told me he was frustrated by the spottiness of the fossil record. He said he wanted to fill in the gaps, learn what the intermediate forms were. So I wrote this program. He gave me most of the rule tables. We started testing it with various species. Chimps and humans, as well as various bacteria for which we had a lot of genetic data. Then an incredible thing happened. Frock, the old devil, was expecting it, but I wasn’t. We compared the domesticated dog with the hyena, and what we got was not a smoothly intermediate species, but a bizarre life form, totally different from either dog or hyena. This happened with a [265] couple of other species pairs, too. You know what Frock said to that?”

Margo shook her head.

“He just smiled and said, ‘Now you see the true value of this program.’ ” Kawakita shrugged. “You see, my program vindicated Frock’s theory of the Callisto Effect by showing that small changes in DNA can sometimes produce extreme changes in an organism. I was a little miffed, but that’s the way Frock works.”