Altar of Eden (14 page)

At the shout, Jack pulled Lorna behind him, an instinctual reaction. He crouched, feeling exposed under the porch lamp, blinded by its glare. Towering oaks and bushy magnolias shadowed the dark walkway. Movement drew his eye below. A figure stalked up from the front gate.

Lorna stepped back into view. “Kyle? What are you doing back? I thought you were stuck on that oil rig for another four days.” Lorna turned to Jack and explained under her breath. “My brother.”

“I told you on the phone I was coming back early.”

“And I told you that wasn’t necessary.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to let you go hunting in the swamps by yourself. And it looks like I got here just in time.”

The figure climbed the steps and into the porch light. Jack sized him up. Lorna’s brother had the same sandy blond hair as his sister— in his case cropped short on the sides and longer on the top. From the looks of it, he hadn’t shaved in days and had worn the same cargo shorts and loose polo shirt for just as long. He had a wiry physique, like a coiled spring—though at the moment wound a bit too tightly. As the kid gripped the porch rail, Jack noted that his fingernail beds and the wrinkles of his knuckles were black with ground-in oil. The only thing darker was the kid’s demeanor as he eyed Jack with a hard suspicion.

“I told you not to come,” Lorna said. “The hunt’s already over. You came all the way back here for nothing.”

“Then where are you two going?” Kyle stood a step below, blocking the way.

“Over to ACRES.”

“Both of you?”

Lorna glanced to Jack. “No. He was just taking me over to fetch the Bronco. It’s over by the dock near the zoo.”

Jack cleared his throat. “Or I could take you directly to your lab. Be faster, and I wouldn’t mind hearing firsthand what your colleagues have figured out about those animals. Might be important to the investigation.”

Lorna nodded. “I’d like . . . I mean, that would be fine.”

Kyle narrowed one eye and studied him. “You’re Jack Menard, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

Kyle turned back to his sister. “Then I’m going with you.”

“Don’t be stupid. Get some sleep.”

“If he’s going”—Kyle stabbed a finger at Jack—“then I’m going. Someone needs to chaperone this date.”

“It’s not a date.” Lorna’s face flushed, more angry than embarrassed. “I can damn well take care of myself.”

“What? Like the
last
time you took off with one of the Menard brothers?”

Lorna’s eyes widened, shocked by his words, struck dumb. Jack had to restrain an urge to slam a fist in the kid’s face.

Kyle seemed to recognize he’d overstepped himself and back-pedaled. “Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

He hurriedly climbed the last step and joined his sister, as if shortening the distance could temper his words. He touched her arm, but she turned away. He followed, matching her step for step.

“After what those Menards put you through,” Kyle said more softly as his anger bled away to raw concern. “I don’t want you hurt again. That’s all I was saying. I’d cut off my right arm to protect you. You know that.”

She sagged under his assault. “Of course I know that, Kyle. But in this case, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” She glanced over at Jack. “I trust him.”

Something in her face more than her words steeled through Jack. He found himself standing a bit straighter. At the same time he remembered her fingers on his skin, warm and soft.

Kyle looked between the two of them, then shook his head. “I’d still like to go with you. I won’t get any sleep till you’re home anyway.” His tone was more conciliatory and plainly worked better on Lorna. “And I promise I won’t cause any trouble.”

“Fine. But we’re leaving right now.”

“That’s okay by me.”

He stepped aside, and Lorna led the way back to the street. Kyle kept pace next to Jack. Though the kid had taken a more mollifying tone with his older sister, Jack read the continuing suspicion in his glance as they headed out. Kyle was clearly keeping his guard up—and Jack respected that. Lorna’s brother only wanted to protect her and didn’t care whose feathers he ruffled.

They all piled into the service truck and headed out. Jack placed a quick call to his own brother about the change in plans. Randy still had Burt and had been waiting at the station for them to head back home together.

“Then I’ll just meet you at that zoo place,” Randy said and hung up before Jack could argue.

Lowering the phone, Jack glanced sidelong at his passenger. Lorna shared the front seat with him. He could tell she was lost elsewhere. Her eyes had crinkled at the corners, her mind already working on the mysteries surrounding this case, the woman becoming the doctor again.

Kyle leaned forward, intruding between them. “So what’s up with these damned animals anyway? What’s so special about them?”

Lorna muttered, still lost to the moment, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

An hour later, Lorna sat before a thirty-inch wide-screen LCD computer monitor in the genetics suite. Multiple windows were open on the screen, but she studied the one in the center. A three-dimensional image of an avian brain rotated on the screen, compiled from the Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan done on the African Grey parrot named Igor. A neighboring window showed a photo of the reptilian-looking featherless bird.

“What are we looking at?” Jack asked behind her.

Zoë Trent answered him, standing on her other side. “Something remarkable.”

The neurobiologist shared the small conference room with them off the main lab. Her husband, Paul, was still out there reviewing the DNA analysis on the aberrant chromosome.

“What’s wrong with this bird?” Kyle asked.

Her brother sat on a stool beside the small birdcage that held Igor. The parrot sat sullenly, hunched low to the perch. The bird was nothing like the bright and attentive fellow he had been earlier. Also watery droppings covered the bottom of his cage.

Diarrhea due to stress.

A knot of annoyance burned in Lorna’s gut. Her colleagues should have waited until she returned to perform those extra tests. The health and well-being of the facility’s animals were her responsibility. And that duty extended to the animals rescued from the trawler. The creatures had already been through enough. They didn’t deserve to be treated like guinea pigs here, too.

“How come this ugly guy doesn’t have any feathers?” her brother asked.

Lorna answered without taking her eyes off the screen. “First, he’s not
ugly
. Second, we think it’s a genetic throwback, a lost trait that’s surfaced again.”

“Weird.”

She didn’t argue with that. It was weird. Everything about this was strange. “Just keep him company. He’s spooked. Talk to him.”

Parrots were social creatures and found solace in companionship.

Kyle shrugged and leaned closer to the cage. Her brother lowered his voice to a gentle coo. “So who’s an ugly bird? Not you.”

Igor cocked an eye quizzically at Kyle and responded with a soft clucking, the avian equivalent of a chuckle.

Like Lorna, her brother always had a way with animals. And despite his quick temper, he had a big heart, which might explain his volatility. He felt things deeply, and she knew how much he loved her, sought to protect her. With their father passing away when they were children, he had always taken on the role of the man of the house—and even more so after their mother had died. She both loved him for this effort and bristled against it, but in the machismo world of the South, it was an all-too-common family dynamic.

Jack drew her attention back to the computer. He leaned a hip on the desk. “So what’s so remarkable about this MRI scan?” he asked Zoë. “Why insist Lorna see this first?”

The neurobiologist pointed to the monitor. “It’ll help explain why we didn’t wait before performing the electroencephalograms.” Her voice took on an apologetic tone, but it didn’t appease Lorna.

She studied the rotating image. The brain looked like most birds’, and in fact it was not that much different from a mammalian brain. On the screen, the spinal cord bloomed into a medulla, a cerebellum, and a cerebrum that was divided into two hemispheres. She noted something strange almost immediately: five distinct darker objects appeared to be embedded between the hyperpallium and mesopallium layers of forebrain, the avian equivalent to the human neocortex. They were crisp and hard-edged, appearing almost crystalline in structure.

She rotated to get a top view of these odd densities. The five formed a perfect pentagram within the neurological tissue.

“What are they?” she asked.

Instead of answering, Zoë reached and tapped a button on the keyboard. The parrot’s brain vanished and was replaced by another. “This is the brain from one of the capuchin monkeys.”

Lorna pictured the conjoined twins as she leaned closer to the screen. The same strange densities were lodged within the brain tissue of the monkey. She revolved the image.
The same number and lodged in the equivalent morphological locations.
Even the pattern was the same.
A perfectly symmetrical pentagram.

Despite the warmth of the room, a chill edged through her.

Zoë shifted closer. “We found these same odd intrusions in all the animals recovered from the trawler. I can show you the other scans.”

Lorna shook her head, trusting her colleagues’ assessment. “Are they implants?”

“We don’t think so.” Excitement welled in the neurobiologist’s voice. “We think they might be natural features.”

“Natural?”

“That’s right.” Zoë shifted the computer mouse to zoom down on one of the densities. “Look closer. See how there’s no scarring around the intrusions like you’d expect from a surgical implant. Also there’s no granulation tissue walled around it like you’d see from an embedded foreign body.”

“Then what are they?”

Zoë shrugged. “That’s what Dr. Metoyer wants to know. Jon Greer over in pathology is attempting to dissect one from the dead cub’s carcass so we can study it. He’s also taking multiple brain biopsies around the intrusion.”

“Biopsies?” Jack asked. “Why?”

Zoë circled a finger around the abnormalities on the computer screen. “The neurological tissue appears to be
denser
within the zone of the intrusions. Dr. Metoyer wanted to confirm a supposition that this region is made up of more densely packed neurons.”

Lorna wanted to know, too. She remembered the glow from the jaguar’s eyes, its cunningness. Even the parrot’s ability to recite the mathematical equivalent of pi. More neurons translated to a richer synaptic environment, which meant more computing power to be tapped. This discovery could explain why the animals seemed especially hyper-intelligent.

Zoë straightened and ran a hand through her short black hair. “Now you know why we wanted to perform those EEGs. We were so excited. We couldn’t wait.”

Lorna slowly nodded. By studying the electrical patterns of the brain, they were looking for any change in functionality associated with these intrusions. “What did you find with the EEGs?”

“At first nothing. Each animal’s brain-wave patterns seemed normal enough, each as unique as a fingerprint. There seemed to be no common ground.”

Rather than disappointment, Zoë’s face shone with amazement. Lorna knew there was another shoe still to drop. Zoë glanced over to Igor’s cage.

Lorna followed her gaze, then back to the neurobiologist. “What?”

“I’ll show you.” Zoë sidled next to her and tapped rapidly at the keyboard. “I’m going to display the set of four EEGs we took from the parrot, the two monkeys, and Bagheera, the cub. For simplicity’s sake, I’m only going to show a single lead from each animal.”

The readings appeared on the screen.

Zoë glanced over to Lorna with one eyebrow cocked. She read her colleague’s question.
Can you see anything weird here?

It took Lorna only a second. She pointed to the two center tracings. “These two runs are nearly identical.” She read the labels and scrunched her brow.
Cebus apella. Specimens A and B.
“Those readings came from the conjoined twin monkeys.”

Zoë nodded. “That’s right. At first we thought it might be a mistake. Perhaps the electrode net placed on one monkey was picking up the electrical pattern from its twin. Or maybe because they were genetic twins, their brain activity also matched. Just to be sure we brought all the animals up here and retested them.”

She tapped at the keyboard and another four leads were displayed. “This is what we got when all four specimens were in the room at the same time.”

Lorna leaned closer, running each lead with the tip of a finger. Amazement grew.
Impossible.

Jack spoke next to her. “They all look roughly the same.”

“We ran the leads for a full ten minutes each. They continued to stay synchronized.”

Lorna struggled to comprehend what she was seeing.

“Afterward,” Zoë said, “we took the other animals back to their ward. Except for the parrot here. We tested Igor again with the others gone. His EEG returned to its original unique pattern.”

Lorna stared over to the parrot and her brother. “Are you saying that when they’re all together, their brain-wave patterns somehow slip into perfect synchronization?”

“That’s what seems to be happening.”

How could that be?
She had heard of women in dorms who would begin to menstruate in unison when housed together—but that was due to pheromones in the air, triggering a synchronized cycling. What could be causing the neurological equivalent in these animals? If this data were correct, there had to be some sort of stimulus or communication among the animals.

Lorna pulled up the MRI data on the monitor. Again the three-dimensional model of Igor’s brain appeared. She rotated it to look down upon the five strange densities.

“Whatever’s going on has to be tied to these intrusions,” Lorna said. “All the specimens share this common structure.”

She stared at the screen, picturing the net of denser tissue that spanned the pentagram. It reminded her of something. But what? She cupped out her hand, splaying her five fingers wide. Then it dawned on her. She rotated her hand back and forth.

“A satellite dish,” she mumbled.

“What?” Zoë asked.

“The structure in the animal’s brain. What if it’s acting like a small transmitting dish? Emitting an ultralow frequency signal that the others pick up and somehow triggers this synchronization.”

Zoë frowned, caught between disbelief and possibility.

“Are you talking about some form of telepathy?” Kyle asked, eye-balling the parrot with suspicion.

“No.” Lorna spoke faster. “At least not exactly. For the EEGs to match, something has to be triggering it. It can’t be hormonal or pheromonal. They’re different species.”

“Plus the reaction time is too fast,” Zoë added, her disbelief fading.

Lorna nodded. “But a weak electrical signal could trigger it. Just enough to flip a switch in the brains of all four animals.”

“But what could be powering it all?” Jack asked. “I don’t see any battery.”

Zoë answered him. “No battery is needed. The brain’s an electrical organ, producing energy known as action potentials by pumping chemicals into and out of neurons. The average brain produces a continuous ten to twelve watts of electricity. Morning, noon, and night. Enough to power a flashlight.”

“And certainly enough to transmit a low-grade signal.” Lorna stared at the MRI model and swallowed.

A new voice spoke by the doorway. “Which, of course, begs another question, my dear.”

Lorna turned to find her boss, Carlton Metoyer, leaning in the doorway.
How long had he been listening in on their conversation?

“What question is that?” Zoë asked.

He stepped into the room, wearing a crisply pressed lab jacket, ever the southern gentleman, even when up all night. “Dr. Polk has just offered us an intriguing solution as to
how
these brains are linking up. Which raises an even more dynamic question.”

Lorna understood and asked that question aloud. “Why?”

Why were these animals linking up?