“Believe me,” I said. “We’re in the right place.”
On our way to the front of the room, we passed a young, skinny white guy with intense blue eyes and blond eyebrows that disappeared into his face. He was wearing a red tracksuit and a white Kangol hat, and was bent in ferocious attention over the glowing oracle of his iPad. Spotting us, he jumped out of his seat and gave me an awkward fist bump.
“Word to your moms, Ozzle,” he said.
“Dr. Strauss, thanks for coming,” I said, introducing him to Chloe. “Eberhard was just awarded the microbiology chair at the University of Bonn.”
Chloe and I walked on. “You see why I need you now?” I said, gesturing at the rows of World of Warcraft diehards we passed. “These guys are all beyond brilliant, but, as you can see, PR is not their strong suit. That’s why it’s so important that you agreed to come with me.”
“And I thought you wanted me for my mind,” Chloe said, smiling.
“Give me the tape, Oz. The audiovisual is in operating order,” said a fresh-faced kid dressed as though he were ready for a rodeo. His shoulders were hunched up to his ears and his long arms dangled stiffly at his sides. He turned and sniffed loudly at Chloe’s hair.
“Your hair smells good,” he said in a too-loud voice, half Okie and half machine, as if Robby the Robot had grown up in a Steinbeck novel.
“Jonathan, thanks, man. Here you go.” I handed him the tape and ushered Chloe along.
“Don’t mind him. That was Jonathan Moore. He’s an autistic savant, and one of the best agricultural engineers in the world. He’s a renowned animal communicator. He was one of my first contacts when I started researching HAC. He helped me work with Attila.”
I had rolled the dice and told Chloe about Attila on our flight. I even showed her my wallet pictures. She said she thought I was brave for having rescued him. So she seemed cool with it. Go figure.
Chapter 36
SOME MINUTES LATER I found myself on the stage, tapping the podium microphone. The feedback squealed and settled down. The murmuring room went silent, and all heads swiveled in my direction.
“Without further ado, folks,” I said, nodding to Jonathan, who gave me a thumbs-up by the projector. “This is what is happening in Africa. It speaks for itself. I recorded this two days ago in the Okavango Delta in Botswana.”
I stepped back into the dark to watch the room watch the video. I was pleased to see that they were stunned. When the male lions’ heads appeared in the field, a wave of whispers rose up in the room. These were some very smart folks, and I’d definitely gotten their attention.
When Jonathan turned the lights back on, the roomful of whispers broke into a full-blast cacophony of forty people trying to shout over each other all at once.
“Come on, folks,” I called over the din as I waved the legal tablet in my hand and stepped up to the microphone. “My meeting with the senator is only a few hours away. His first question is going to be, why is this happening? We have proof not only of this inexplicable hyperaggressive behavior in lions but also of an unprecedented change in their social behavior. We need to come up with some workable theories.”
“How can this be, Oz?” my former evolutionary biology professor, Gail Quinn, said. “How can this have happened overnight?”
“I don’t know, Gail,” I said. “That’s what I called you all here to try to help me figure it out. My best guess so far is that it may be some sort of radical new adaptive zone. I’m thinking that there may be a dramatic change in the environment that for some reason we haven’t been able to pick up on yet.”
“Which aspect of the environment is changing, though?” somebody said.
“My money is on a viral agent, Oz,” Eberhard Strauss said. “As I said before, these behaviors, especially the hyperaggression, are symptomatic of rabies. I am not saying it is rabies, but it may be some virus that attacks the nervous system.”
“I considered that,” I said. “But for one thing, rabies is transmitted from animal to animal through bodily fluids. That might explain what’s going on in the wild, but in the recent L.A. lion attack and escape, the animals were completely isolated.”
“Assuming that incident has anything to do with this,” someone said.
“That’s right. Assuming it is, though—bear with me—how could isolated zoo animals have been affected?”
“It could be airborne,” Strauss pointed out. “Or carried by parasites. Mosquitoes, fleas.” He ticked off possibilities on his fingers. “The meat they were feeding the lions in the zoo could have been infected. You name it. Many possibilities.”
“Let me throw out another argument against the virus theory,” I said. “An animal with rabies, or similar diseases that attack the nervous system, usually exhibits more symptoms than hyperaggressive behavior. Erratic muscle movement, mange, dermal lesions, hydrophobia. The lions that killed my friend looked quite healthy to me. Physically, at least. And the zoo lions in California weren’t displaying any physical symptoms, either. I certainly wouldn’t rule out a virus at this point, but it would have to be one we’ve never seen before.”
“Has there been an autopsy on any of these animals?” asked Dr. Quinn.
“No,” I said. “The African authorities won’t allow it. That’s one of the first things I’m going to bring up with the senator.”
“What about an autopsy on the zoo lions in L.A.?” somebody shouted.
“Good question,” I said.
“If it’s not a virus, then we may be talking about a cascade change in the environment,” said Alice Boyd, a regal, silver-haired septuagenarian, a MacArthur fellow from the University of Washington. “Have you thought about solar flares? A geomagnetic reversal? I’m only thinking of the way that animal behavior sometimes changes rapidly before a major geological event—earthquakes, tsunamis. Maybe something’s coming. A cosmic event that these animals are somehow sensing.”
“Good point,” I said, dashing it down on my tablet. I liked the idea of geomagnetic reversal—well, actually, I hated it, as it was scary as hell, but I liked it as a suggestion. Geological data show us that every once in a while the earth’s magnetic field reverses itself: basically, after such an event, your compass needle will point south where before it had pointed north. These switches seem to be random as far as we can tell. There’s a lot of disagreement about how long these shifts last—recent evidence from the USGS suggests that one of these shifts in the past lasted only four years. But a geomagnetic shift’s potential effect on the biosphere is unknown—for the simple reason that it has never happened in human memory.
“Are you people this stupid?” someone shouted in the murmuring crowd. I looked: it was a lean, handsome young man I didn’t know. He was the only person in the room wearing a suit. “Those lions could have been trained by Siegfried and Roy. This footage doesn’t prove a thing.”
There was a hush in the crowd followed by the buzzing can-opener hum of an electric wheelchair.
I nodded at Charles Groh as he piloted his iBOT wheelchair down the ballroom’s center aisle. Charles was one of the world’s leading gorilla experts, although he was effectively retired these days, unfortunately. Three years ago he was suddenly attacked by a four-hundred-pound gorilla whom he had known and worked with for ten years. The ape broke all the bones in his face and tore away his nose, lips, one of his ears, one of his eyes, and one of his hands. He also took off Groh’s right leg from the knee down.
The primatologist stopped in front of the handsome skeptic.
“That tape is as real as my face,” he said.
I smiled in relief as the group continued debating among themselves. A terrific dynamic was forming now. What had once been mere tolerance of my HAC obsession by my friends and colleagues had now suddenly become scientific respect. The debate was shifting from the question of
But what Alice Boyd had said about geomagnetic shifts stuck with me. It lodged itself in the back of my mind and refused to go away. I had a feeling she was barking up the right tree. It wasn’t exactly the suggestion of a
