James Rollins - Altar Of Eden

Carlton shrugged. “I don’t understand. It’s simple mimicry, is it not? Nothing more. What are you trying to prove?”

“I think it’s more than mimicry. You posited the question why these animals seem to be synchronizing their brain waves. I think I might have the answer.”

She noted Jack staring at her. She took strength in the intensity of his interest and attention. But what if she was wrong?

A few moments later, Zoë and Paul returned with charges in hand. Zoë carried Bagheera like a baby in a blanket. The cat stared out at them with bright blue eyes. The two monkeys clutched to Paul’s lab coat with both hands and feet. He gently cradled them under an arm, while wearing a goofy smile, like a proud papa.

Lorna asked Carlton, “Once the animals were brought together, how long did it take for this synchronization to occur?”

“I’d say a matter of seconds. Half minute at most.”

Satisfied, Lorna turned back to the birdcage. Let’s try this again.

“Igor, what is pi?”

The bird’s posture had gone straight again, fully attentive, his eyes brighter, staring hard at Lorna.

“What is pi?” she repeated.

Igor flashed his pupils at Lorna and began a recitation with that eerily human voice. This time there was no hesitation. “Three, one, four, one, five, nine, two, six, five…”

Kyle, seated by the computer, followed on the screen. Her brother’s eyes got huge. “By golly, he’s right.”

As Igor continued to recite the numbers his eyes drifted closed- not with squinted concentration, but more like contentment. “… three, five, eight, nine, seven, nine, three…”

Everyone remained silent. Lorna’s boss drifted closer to Kyle and followed along on the screen.

Igor performed for a full three minutes, passing beyond the hundreds of numbers displayed on the screen.

Lorna watched Carlton’s face shift from skepticism to awe. He finally took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. He shook his head. “I concede. His memory is amazing.”

“I’m not sure it is memory,” Lorna said as Igor continued. “I think he’s actively calculating it.”

Carlton looked ready again to scoff-then something seemed to dawn in his eyes. “You’re thinking… the synchronization… that it goes beyond physicality and into functionality!”

She smiled and nodded.

“What’s that mean?” Kyle asked.

Zoë moved closer. She stared down at the cub in her arms. “Then they’re not just linking up to synchronize-”

Her husband finished her thought. “-they’re networking together at the functional level.”

Kyle shrugged heavily, still not understanding. Jack also moved closer to Lorna, wanting to know more.

She explained. “A brain is really an organic computer. And most of the time its vast network of neurons and synapses are inactive, a large resource of untapped computing power. I think the transmission dish-the one inside their heads-is functioning as a network router, linking the computing power in each animal’s brain. Each one has full access to tap into the dormant resources of the others’ organic computer. Basically these animals are forming a crude computer network, linked wirelessly.”

“But how can that be?” Jack asked.

Before anyone could answer, the buzz of a cell phone interrupted the discussion. Carlton gave an apologetic look and answered it. He listened for a moment, then said, “Thank you, Jon. We’ll be right down.”

Lorna’s boss closed his phone and faced Jack.

“It seems our resident pathologist might have an answer to your question, Agent Menard.”

JACK HAD EXPERIENCED his share of dead bodies, but there was something particularly macabre about the pathology suite at ACRES. The windowless room was as large as a basketball court. Drains and floor traps crisscrossed an expanse of cement floor. Huge stainless-steel tables lined the center of the room lit by surgical lamps. Overhead ran a pulley-and-chain system for moving the carcasses of large animals into and out of the place. The air reeked of formaldehyde and an underlying hint of decay.

On the whole, the space had a feel of a giant slaughterhouse.

The promise of answers from the facility’s pathologist had drawn everyone down here.

Off to one side, the intact carcass of the female jaguar covered one table, but they all gathered by another. It held the dissected remains of the young cub. The tiny body was splayed out like a frog. Its cavities had been hollowed out. Parts floating in labeled jars: heart, kidney, spleen, liver. But the most gruesome sight was the cranial cavity: sawed open and empty.

The brain rested on an instrument tray at the head of the table. The organ’s gray surface glistened moistly under the halogen lamps.

Jack noted Lorna staring at the hollowed-out carcass. The violation and needless loss of life clearly troubled her, but the pathologist drew her attention.

Dr. Jon Greer waved everyone closer with a thumb forceps. “I thought you should see this in person.”

Jack did not necessarily appreciate this consideration, but he kept quiet.

Using the forceps and the edge of a scalpel, the pathologist peeled back the top layer of the brain and exposed a deeper layer of the cerebrum. The tissue looked much like the rest of the organ, except for what appeared to be four tiny black diamonds reflecting the light. The indentation for a fifth marked the firm flesh.

“I teased out one of the inclusion bodies and did a couple of quick tests. Let me show you.”

He moved to a neighboring table. On a plastic tray rested one of the black diamonds, only this one had been sectioned into four pieces. Greer used tweezers to pick up a shard. He moved it over to a pile of material that looked like coarse ground pepper.

“Iron filings,” the pathologist explained.

As the shard passed over the pile, a few metallic granules leaped and clung to the sliver.

Greer glanced to the others. “I believe what we’re dealing with- what’s lodged in these brains-are dense aggregates of magnetite crystals.”

“Magnetite?” Jack asked. No one else looked particularly surprised. Lorna’s brother merely looked ill and like he’d rather be anywhere but here. “Like magnets?”

“Sort of,” Lorna said.

Zoë explained. “All brain tissue, including our own, has magnetite crystals laced naturally throughout it. Crystal accumulations can be found in the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, even the meningeal layers that cover the brain.”

Lorna nodded. “The magnetite levels in avian brains are even higher. It’s believed that these magnetic crystals are one of the ways that birds orient themselves to the earth’s magnetic field during migrations. It’s how they get to where they’re going each year without getting lost. It’s also found in bees, fish, bacteria, and other organisms that navigate by internal compass.”

“Then why do we have it in our brains?” Jack asked.

Lorna shrugged. “No one knows.”

“But there are theories,” Zoë interjected. “Newest research suggests that biomagnetism may be the foundation for life on this planet. That magnetism is the true bridge between energy and living matter. For example, piezoelectric matrices can be found in proteins, enzymes, even DNA. Basically all the building blocks of life.”

Lorna lifted an arm and cut her off. “Okay, now you’re losing even me.”

“Regardless of all that,” Greer interrupted, “we’ve never seen this level of magnetite in any animal. Nor such precise symmetry and pattern of deposition. I took the liberty of examining the inclusion under a dissecting microscope. The structure is composed of smaller and smaller crystals, breaking down into tinier and tinier identical parts.”