Living memory, p.9
Living Memory, page 9
“Marcy’s quite fond of peanut butter, just like Wallace,” Paula said. “There’s a box in her cage that we put crackers in, but the box requires a key. When she’s good, we give her a key, and later, in the evening, we put crackers in the box and she can open it and have a treat. If she loses the key, she has no way to open the box, so she has to keep track of it.”
Paula pulled a peanut butter cracker from the package and maneuvered a key off of the ring. “Watch.” She gave the key to Trevor, and the two of them knelt on opposite sides of the raven, Paula holding out the cracker and Trevor holding out the key. The raven cocked its head, looking first at one and then the other.
“We’ve done this before, so she understands she will only get one of these things,” Paula said. “Either the immediate reward of the cracker, or the larger eventual reward that the key represents.”
Samira watched the raven consider its choice. Its black, emotionless eyes gave no hint of its thoughts, and she thought: it’s alien, all right. The raven darted for Trevor and scooped up the key. Paula closed her hand around the cracker and stood, slipping it back into her pocket. The raven flapped twice to reach its cage and ducked inside to hide the key there.
“But that’s just association,” Samira objected. “You’ve given Marcy a strong positive association with the key, so she picks the key over the cracker. It doesn’t mean she’s thinking it through and making plans about the future.”
“Sure it does,” Paula said. “Watch.”
When the raven returned, Paula took the cracker out of her pocket again and handed Trevor another key from the ring. They both knelt again and offered the bird the same choice. This time, Marcy didn’t hesitate. She snatched the cracker and gobbled it down. Paula stood with a triumphant smile.
“She already has a key to open the box,” Paula said. “She knows she doesn’t need another one.”
◆◆◆
Samira left with Wallace proudly erect on her shoulder. Lewis the dodo hopped around his cage, flapping his wings uselessly, as they passed. Was it possible? Had there really been a race of avian dinosaurs with intelligence to rival homo sapiens? Or was her mind jumping to unwarranted conclusions based on the neat placement of skeletons in the ground? Maybe it was just a curious animal behavior rather than an indication of self-awareness and civilization.
But Samira didn’t think so. She wasn’t ready to give up on the mystery just because she’d been thrown out of Thailand, either. Somebody knew more than they were saying, and she needed to find out what. The first step was to call Dan Everson of the CIA.
Chapter 8
The day after Kit discovered the green chemical, the Royal Thai Army invaded Sirindhorn Museum. Whatever need for secrecy or discretion had held the colonel back before, he had apparently changed his mind. Twenty military trucks poured into the parking lot and uniformed and armored soldiers jumped out. They surged down the tiled path between statues of sauropods and hadrosaurs. A few minutes later, a stream of tourists, some worried, some annoyed, streamed out of the doors and headed for their cars. Soldiers in the courtyard directed them, explaining in Thai and in English that an anonymous bomb threat had been received and the facility had to be closed for their safety.
Sirindhorn Museum had been named for Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, daughter of the previous king. The princess had championed science and technology in Thailand, promoting education and research and education for women, and as a result many of the major scientific institutions of Thailand—and even a few species of dinosaur—were named after her. She had no children, but she had left one more namesake: her great-grandniece had been named in her honor. Now twenty-eight years old, the younger Princess Sirindhorn had captured the people’s hearts and carried on her spirit. The princess spent her time and fortune as an activist, campaigning against the rampant sex trafficking trade and promoting women’s rights. Someday, Kit thought, when he had accomplished something great for Thailand, he would meet her, and his life would be complete. He imagined the young princess pinning an award to his shirt and smiling at him in respect and admiration...
“Come,” the colonel said, snapping Kit out of his fantasy. As they walked into the museum, the soldiers parted like sliding doors to let them pass. The gray exterior of the building had no ornament save the name of the museum in silver letters, both in flowing Thai characters and blocky English text. Inside, however, the main hall rose three stories past viewing balconies to a glass dome. Large dinosaur skeletons dominated the space, most reproductions of fossils discovered in Thailand. Kit recognized Compsognathus and Psittacosaurus and Siamotyrannus, each arranged in a pose of violent activity. The room throbbed with bright colors, every available wall covered with cartoonish explanations of dinosaur life and evolution. There was an earthen smell, like an underground cellar.
“This way, sir,” a lieutenant said, and the colonel and Kit followed him across the main viewing area, down a narrow hallway, and out a back door into a small courtyard. They crossed the courtyard into another building, which they entered through glass doors.
The research facility had none of the glitz of the museum. The walls were bare and gray. The soldiers’ boots echoed on concrete floors as the lieutenant led them down another hallway to the preparation room. Now this was a proper paleontology lab. The place had a warehouse feel, with a high ceiling, exposed beams, and a yellow concrete floor. He counted twelve stations arranged in pairs, each pair equipped with a microscope on a boom arm, an air compressor, and an array of neatly organized preparation tools. Plaster-encased fossils sat waiting their turn on the tables, and rows of trays held carefully extracted and polished bones.
A line of white-lab-coated scientists and technicians stood against the back wall, most of them looking terrified of the armed soldiers who had invaded their workplace. All except one: a young woman, tall for a Thai, her dark hair swept back in a neat ponytail, refused to leave her post near the front of the room. She stood with feet planted and fists on her hips, her chin held high, informing a young soldier in angry, rapid Thai that he had no right to invade her lab or bully her into submission.
“Hello, Arinya.” Kit said.
She whirled at the sound of her name. Spotting him, she stalked past the soldier toward him. “Kit! Are you behind this?” she demanded.
Under her lab coat, Arinya wore a dark purple blouse made of some shiny material and a light scarf of the same color. A thin gold necklace with a single diamond hung against her throat. Makeup accentuated her dark eyes, which were flashing with barely-contained fury.
“Behind this?” Kit gave an embarrassed laugh of surprise. “They won’t even tell me what’s going on.”
“But you’re working for them?”
He was, of course, but he suddenly felt ashamed to admit it. “They took my specimens and I came along. I don’t know anything more than you do.”
She turned to the colonel. “I guess that means you’re in charge. This is a public museum and scientific institution. By what right do you turn away our guests and disrupt our work? You have no jurisdiction here.”
The colonel regarded her with cold eyes and an empty expression. “Young lady, you will find that I have jurisdiction over a great many things. This is a federal institution. This museum, and your place in it, continues by the grace of His Majesty the King. You are welcome to try pitting your contacts in high government against mine, but I assure you, mine are better.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
“I want to use your facilities. And I want you out of the building.” He cocked his head at a waiting soldier, who moved to take her arm.
“Wait,” Kit said. “This is Dr. Arinya Tavaranan. We need her.”
The colonel turned his flat gaze on Kit. “Why?”
“You asked if we needed the Americans, and I said no, we have all the experts we need in Thailand. But she is one of those experts. We need her to make sense of what I saw.”
“I’m not working for you,” she said. “No way. You might be able to shut us down, but you can’t make me help you.”
“Arinya—”
“No! I don’t know how he bought you off, but this isn’t how it works. The government gives research grants; they don’t barge in with guns and demand lab time. It smells. I want no part of it.”
“You don’t even know what we found.”
“Would it make a difference?”
He pitched his voice low, although why, he wasn’t sure. “It’s big, Arinya.”
“And if you tell me, then they won’t let me leave. No thank you.”
Kit reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny snap-shut plastic case from the boxes of dentistry equipment. He suspected the cases were meant to hold dentures, but he had repurposed them as sample cases. He opened it and held it out to Arinya. “Just take a look,” he said.
“What is this?” she asked, but as he expected, she couldn’t resist looking. He had put some scrapings from the dried green liquid into the case.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” he said. “It oozed up out of a fissure in a Cretaceous fossil we found near Khai Nun.”
“If it was still liquid, it couldn’t be that old,” she said. She peered closer, which as Kit had hoped, brought her close enough to smell it. She wrinkled her nose at first, then gasped, then shouted and backed away, dropping the case. Kit, expecting her reaction, deftly caught it and closed it again, returning it to his pocket. Arinya backed against the wall, her jaw moving, eyes wild. She slid down the wall to the floor. A moment later, she looked up, and Kit knew she was seeing the stars.
It was strange to see someone else experiencing it. From inside the hallucination, it had seemed to take much longer. When her vision cleared, he crouched next to her, talking fast. “It’s a real Cretaceous sky,” he said. “I checked. Sixty-six million years ago. That scene…it’s a recording of some kind. It really happened. They were really there.”
Her eyes took a moment to focus, and when they did, they focused on him. With a shout, she pushed him over. He landed ungracefully on his backside. She scrambled to her feet. “You did that on purpose. You tricked me.”
“You had to see. I knew if you saw it, there’s no way you could leave it behind.”
“I hardly have a choice now, do I?” She threw an arm toward where the colonel watched them, impassive. “He’s not going to let me just waltz away now that you’ve brought me in on the secret.”
“You may leave if you wish,” the colonel said. “I’m no jailer. But if you do, it’s with the understanding that you will tell no one. Not the press, not your colleagues from other nations, not even your husband.”
“I don’t have a husband.”
“Not one person. If you do, I will have you arrested for espionage and held for interrogation in a dark hole for a very long time.”
She held his gaze. “I thought you weren’t a jailer.”
“Not unless I have to be.”
She crossed her arms across the front of her lab coat. “Why do you care? These creatures, whatever the truth about them, are millions of years dead. They’re hardly a threat to national security.”
“That is not your affair,” the colonel said. “Are you in or are you out?”
She held his eyes for another beat, then shook her head and looked at Kit, who still sat on the floor where she’d pushed him. “You’re a real bastard, you know that?”
He climbed to his feet. “Does that mean you’re in?”
“You really pulled that stuff out of a sixty-six million year old fossil?”
“With my own hands.”
“What is it? Have you had it analyzed?”
“That’s why we’re here.”
She held out her hand impatiently. It took him a moment to realize what she wanted. He pulled the plastic case out his pocket and dropped it in her hand.
She smiled grimly. “Then let’s get to work.”
◆◆◆
Kit had known Arinya for years and liked her a lot. She was moody and irascible and could lose her temper at times, but she was brilliant and loved paleontology just as passionately as he did. In the lab, though, she drove him crazy. She moved with glacial slowness, checking and rechecking, unwilling to talk until she had run three different samples through a battery of tests. He wanted answers, but she didn’t want to make any conclusions until she had all the information.
“These molecules are extraordinarily complex,” she said, pointing at an X-ray diffraction pattern. “It looks like an alkylpyrazine—the chemicals involved in a lot of strong odors—but much larger. There are multiple repeating sections, too, like a machine constructed from a set of smaller building blocks. For instance, this section prompted it to pull in moisture and reconstitute the dried chemical into a liquid when it came into contact with the air.”
“Is it really encoding a memory in its molecular structure?” Kit asked.
“It’s hard to explain the phenomenon any other way, isn’t it? Not when multiple people see the same thing. I mean, odors often have strong memory associations: you smell hot chocolate, and you suddenly remember visiting your aunt in the mountains as a child. The sense of smell is tightly coupled with memory and cognitive thought. But that association is encoded in your brain, not in the hot chocolate. It would prompt a different memory for someone else. This seems more like someone took a memory and imprinted it on a molecule so it could be transmitted chemically to another individual. I don’t even know how that would be possible.”
“Memories have to be stored chemically in the brain, right?”
“I don’t think we have a good enough understanding of memory to answer that definitively.”
“But jump to the punchline. This actually is what it looks like, right? A non-human species—a Cretaceous avian—had the technology—”
“Or the biology.”
“Or the biology—to communicate memories by recording them in a physical medium that others can experience by smelling it.”
Arinya frowned. “Let’s not jump too far ahead. We can’t say if this was made on purpose. It could be the result of some surprising but natural process. Let’s start with what we do know, and then add to that knowledge through careful experimentation.”
“So what do we know?”
“We know this molecule prompts, in human brains, visual impressions of a scene from the Cretaceous period. The information to create the scene does not come from the human, so it must somehow be present in the molecule and be communicated through smell. Who else has smelled it besides you and me?”
“Just us. Well, with the possible exception of the fossil smuggler who found it.”
“I’d like to get a larger pool of people and compare our experiences carefully. Do our brains contribute anything to what we see? Also, I’d like to try other species besides humans. Other mammals, and especially birds.”
“Do birds even have a sense of smell?’
“They do,” she said. “The myth that they can’t smell has been around for a long time, but it’s false. Many birds can locate food by smell, and some of the most intelligent species, like parrots, have a keen olfactory sense.”
“But if you give a parrot a sniff of this stuff, how will you tell what it sees?”
“Well, we won’t, not really. But we might be able to gauge by its reaction whether it sees something at all.”
Kit rubbed at his chin. “There’s one more problem.”
“What?”
“There isn’t any more. What I just gave you in the sample case, that’s all I have.”
“We’ll need more if we want to answer these questions.”
“We don’t even know where that fossil came from. The police picked it up from a dead fossil smuggler whose partner ran off, apparently after killing him. If they could locate the partner, he might know where the fossil was found, but otherwise…”
He paused, and she noticed. “What?”
“Well, this fossil seemed to be the same species as the ones discovered by the American team I was working with. They cut and shipped out the ones they found, but it was a large site, with dozens of animals, most of which they had to leave behind. If this chemical is connected to this species, it’s possible we could find more if we continued the dig.”
Arinya tilted her head toward the door. “What will your escort think of that?”
“The colonel? Your guess is as good as mine.”
◆◆◆
“How long will it take?” the colonel asked.
Kit was starting to tire. He hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours, and he had worked hard processing fossils for much of that time without very much to eat. This was a powerful man, though, one he had to please if he were to be allowed to keep working on this. “It’s a large dig. I would say a few months at least.” He saw the colonel’s frown deepen, and rushed to explain. “As soon as we start pulling any of it out, though, people here can begin processing and studying it. We could have some more answers for you in as little as a week.”
Now Arinya was frowning at him, too, probably for the implication that her entire staff would drop their current projects and work on this under the guns and scrutiny of the Royal Thai Army. He didn’t think she would have a choice about that, though.
“This is the dig you worked on with the Americans?” the colonel asked.
Kit nodded. “The Americans took everything they could back with them to the United States, but there’s more that they didn’t have time to extract.”
The colonel shook his head. “They did not take anything with them.”
“Well, not exactly. They had it flown to Bangkok and put on a shipping container.”
The colonel shook his head again. “They did not.”
Kit remembered what the colonel had told him before, that the American team had been detained for questioning. “You mean you confiscated the fossils?” Kit felt a surge of elation at the prospect, even though he knew Samira and the others would be devastated by the loss of an entire season’s worth of work.
