If a bee larva is raised on royal jelly, it will become a queen; if an alligator embryo is incubated at a low temperature, it will become female; if an Acrididae insect matures under crowded conditions, it will become a locust.
Otherwise, each will develop in another way, to become (respectively) a worker bee, a male, and a plain old grasshopper.
This is called developmental plasticity.
Among the bears that our lab studied, something similar seemed to be operating. They too could develop in one of two ways.
Recently, however, the frequency of the rarer morphotype had been increasing, to the detriment of the human populations that bordered its habitat.
Our lab was determined to find out why.
We worked in the tradition of the nineteenth-century physician John Snow, who had traced a cholera epidemic to a contaminated well. Like him, we created a map.
To which section of the forest, we wanted to know, were these irregular bears native? Where had they been born? And—most importantly of all—where had the bear mothers been, when, as embryos, these profoundly destructive morphotypes had been gestating inside of them?
To get (approximate) answers to these questions, we studied the statements of survivors collected at the site of each incident. From which direction, each survivor had been asked, had the bear come? Where had it gone afterwards?
We also reviewed decades of data collected by field biologists. Where had every bear in the population been born? Who was related to whom? What was their territory? When—and why—did they shift territory?
Everything we learned (or were able to infer) we added to our map.
Most of the time, the site of a given incident could only be imperfectly traced to the site of a bear’s gestation. In many cases, years, many years, passed between the bear’s embryonic period and the first documented event of morphotype-defining behavior. During these years, additional factors might blur the trail; of these, migrations were both the most common and the most confounding.
By integrating all of these data, however, we were able to build a map with many circles. Clustered circles.
Our answer, like John Snow’s answer, seemed to be water.
The Y. River.
In particular: the frequency of the destructive morphotype was highest along one five-mile section. Even more particularly, it occurred most frequently in the most upstream portion of this section and progressively less frequently as one moved downstream.
It was as if—yes—a causative agent had been introduced to the Y. River at a single point, then progressively diluted as the water carried it away.
And at the top of this implicated stretch, its security fence close to the bank, its efflux pipe opening directly into the water?
A factory.
Expedited Editorial Services (EES) processed thousands of manuscripts a week. It would edit your manuscript “fast,” boasted a brochure that Ling and A.J. brought to the seminar table at our next lab meeting. It would do it “cheap.”
To this same meeting, Mei and Alec brought photos. Most were of the front of the EES building; several showed the company’s title etched on the front doors. Only two, much grainier than the others, showed the back side of the factory, which faced the Y. River.
Could Mei and Alec get us a better picture?
All of these pictures, Mei explained, had been taken from the public record. No one was going to let us drive through there. Certainly not with cameras.
Okay.
Michel reported that he had called EES. But the line—they said—was for customers only. So unless Michel wished to place an order…?
Flustered, Michel had gone on to describe a not terribly plausible scenario, and why it would necessitate the following order…
EES had hung up on him.
Mei snorted. This was exactly, she said, why Michel had never succeeded as a spy but had instead been forced to go into science.
“I think you’re a spy,” said Fenhua, laying a comforting hand on Michel’s shoulder.
I tried not to smile.
“But the real question…” said Alec primly, looking over at me.
“What is EES hiding?” Mei interrupted.
“What are they dumping?” said Ling.
“And how can we make use of the present crisis to better understand animal development?” said Ava.
“And save lives,” said A.J.
“And write a paper,” said Fenhua.
“Two papers,” said Michel.
“Hundreds of lives!” said Mei.
“Three papers!” said Ava.
I suppressed another sort of smile. (Could I possibly be prouder?) Then I held up a hand.
When there was quiet, I took the front of the room. Here—lab head’s privilege—I outlined a few of my own models on the chalkboard. Lines and arrows and…
This was all very well, Ava eventually interposed. But how were we going to test any of this? Didn’t we still need…?
Seconding this, Fenhua held up a collection tube.
“But no one is going to let us drive through there…” said Mei.
“…Certainly not with collection tubes,” said Alec.
I acknowledged that these were excellent points. It was, however, important that I finish outlining the model that I had begun to outline. So I did. But as soon as I set down my chalk, I found myself, rather than listening to my students, staring out over their heads, at the three pictures that paneled the back of the seminar room.
I had hung them myself.
Two were of scientists who had made seminal contributions to developmental biology: Wilhelm Roux (a pair of spectacles + a mustache) and Hans Spemann (also a mustache, but his eyebrows were much fiercer).
The third was of John Snow (mutton chops), who had made a different kind of scientific contribution.
John Snow, 1813-1858.
(The students’ joke, given my feelings for him, was that I was simultaneously too young and too old for him.
They were right about that, too.)
Something about this picture, in particular, always got to me.
Suddenly self-conscious, I snapped my attention back to the room.
(Had the students seen me staring?)
None too soon: the conversation was devolving. Mei and Michel were now putting together some sort of militia. Ling was proposing a helicopter…
I held up my hand again.
“I have a rowboat,” I said.
Fenhua and A.J. laughed.
“They would kill you,” said Mei.
“Don’t!” begged Alec.
“John Snow would never forgive you if you died,” said Ava.
(It seems they had seen me staring.)
“To the contrary,” said Mei. She pressed a hand above her heart. “Then they could be together always.”
The bell rang, 4 pm. There are few things I am strict about. But the sanctity of my lab group’s time has always been one of them. In our weekly meetings, I’ve never held my students past the hour.
I wasn’t about to make an exception today, not for the trivial purpose of defending myself.
Lab meeting over.
In fact, I did have a rowboat.
In another river, far away and half a lifetime ago, when I had been a field biologist, this boat had never let me down.
In the Y. River, though? Rowing against the current? Beneath searchlights? Some decades past my days as a field biologist?
I did—admittedly—just about die.
Even before I set off the security sirens.
What followed, I would later realize, was only a rain of tranquilizer darts. I was lucky—yes—not to have been hit, but, even if I had been, I likely would have survived.
Probably.
All the while, I thought about all the people who had already died.
I thought about John Snow.
I thought about the models—still untested—that I had outlined on the chalkboard.
I thought about my students.
Past the spotlights, the sirens, the darts, I reached the efflux pipe. Here, quickly, lifting and re-securing each cap, I filled three tubes directly from the pipe. Then, with an oar, I pushed off downstream.
Whoosh!
When I reached I distant section of the bank, I abandoned my boat (dear boat!) and my oars (dear oars!). Muddy and wet, I crashed through the forest until I reached the street.
Could I possibly sleep, after all that adrenalin?
(Would John Snow?)
Back at the lab, in the very early morning, I set a dropper’s worth of efflux on a microscope slide and adjusted the magnification.
There, dark and wriggling, swarming and thick, with fatter heads and thinner tails and curved backs: a not-unexpected waste product, perhaps, from so comprehensive and productive an editorial enterprise as EES, and yet I had never seen so many…
Commas.
EES belonged to an industrial lobby, which retained a team of excellent lawyers. In a normal year, they would have gotten exactly what they wanted.
But there had been too many deaths that winter. This was not a normal year.
When I filed my report, a government team was sent out to investigate. Afterwards—within days—an emergency desist order was imposed. Pending environmentalist reforms, EES would be shut down.
Let the industry lawyers protest that if they liked!
Of course (and this was something that the public and even many policy makers didn’t understand), this order would have no immediate effect.
Affected bear embryos, once triggered to develop into killers, would not commit any violent acts until well after birth. So, even with the commas gone, multiple stopgap measures, including stricter firearm control, would likely be necessary for many years to come.
(Another urgently important question, which we would, of necessity, leave to other investigators: In a region of the world where such controls were already very strict, where were the animals even acquiring these weapons?)
Over the next many weeks, we performed new tests. Because we wanted—needed—quick answers, we raised our experimental embryos in glass dishes, not inside of mothers.
To use this in vitro system, we took advantage of a proxy measurement that had been established in earlier studies: a marked difference in the level of a biomarker that could be detected very early in development.
Our results were unequivocal.
Under normal conditions—the sorts of conditions that (at least in a pre-industrial world) usually prevail in nature—an Ailuropoda melanoleuca embryo will nearly always develop into morphotype A: a panda that eats shoots and leaves.
But if commas, even at a fairly low concentration, are added to the in vitro nutrient solution (and the same, pending confirmation, is presumably also true when commas are introduced to the diets of pregnant Ailuropoda melanoleuca females), an embryo will often develop into morphotype B: a panda that eats, shoots, and leaves.
In the embryo, this difference seems small.
Everything about an embryo is.
But among adult pandas, present in the real world, it is catastrophic.
Morphotype A sits placidly amid the trees, chewing on strips of vegetation. Morphotype B seeks out human settlements. Here, in eateries of all varieties: corner cafes, neighborhood bakeries, 4-star restaurants, grocery store salad bars and gastropubs, it orders food. It enthusiastically consumes it. Then it pulls out a firearm. Blood spills and bodies heap: cashiers, waitstaff, chefs, and fellow customers, until the carnage has reached some sort of level that the panda seems to regard as sufficient.
At different stages in my career, I have reviewed the video footage of these incidents. But that is the point that I have always fixated on, the one where the animal makes that judgment: enough.
Again and again I return to that moment: rewind and replay, rewind and replay. As I watch, I try to determine—without ever being able to determine—why the animal decides that, just then: why it stops so abruptly.
Then it leaves.
That afternoon, our lab was celebrating. Our paper, “Differential Development in Ailuropoda melanoleuca Embryos Induced by Exogenous Punctuation Marks,” had just been accepted by an excellent journal.
We had also received yet another commendation from an environmentalist organization.
In the “wake” of these achievements (aquatic pun intended! Ling and A.J. gleefully informed me), the students had commissioned a trophy for me.
It was intended, they said, to commemorate my nighttime journey along the Y. River.
Mei and Michel presented it to me now, over cake and champagne, which we shared at one of lunch tables in the courtyard of the Biosciences Complex.
On the top of the trophy, a metal rowboat was mounted. “Bravery in Collection” was written on its plate.
I wiped my eyes ostentatiously.
“John Snow would be proud,” said Michel.
“I think maybe John Snow would date you now,” said Mei.
I lifted my glass.
It was two o’clock—a time for toasts. We took turns making them. Then Alec solemnly distributed slices of the cake, on which he had inked “Differential Development…” in dark icing.
Fenhua, eyeing one of the courtyard food stands, suggested that this cake would pair excellently with “something savory.” Then he held out his hand.
I handed him the lab credit card.
“Something salty,” Michel disputed, after Fenhua was already halfway across the courtyard. He put out his hand for the second lab credit card.
I handed it over.
There was no chalkboard in the Biosciences courtyard. (I had long regretted this.) So when, inevitably, the conversation turned to the diffusion rates of grammatical pollutants: parentheses, colons, semi-colons, apostrophes, and so on, at different temperatures, we were forced to make use of sketchpads.
Luckily, I was carrying several.
And when—still more inevitably—the news turned to the latest (and deeply disheartening) environmental news, Ling began talking (and sketching) about gases.
“To gases!” said Michel, who had just returned with a tray of salty snacks. Setting it down, he lifted his glass, in which champagne bubbles (gases) sparkled: pop, pop, pop.
Wasn’t this supposed to be a jolly occasion?
“Aerosols,” Ling clarified. Because, of course, following the crackdown on EES and the moratorium on river dumping, this was how some editorial companies had taken to disposing of their factory-based waste.
This was nothing that was worth toasting to.
Michel lowered his glass.
As we crunched on what Fenhua and Michel had just purchased, Ling expressed the outrage we all felt. How little sense this made! Airborne punctuation marks were even more dangerous than water-borne ones. In the air, they could get everywhere!”
Ava shrugged. “There aren’t any laws against that form of the pollution yet.”
“Laws!” sneered A.J.
I was about to second this. But then I looked at the champagne, trophy, and cake on the table—and at Alec, who had made that cake and who was now giving me a mournful look—and I thought better of it.
This could wait until tomorrow.
“Well,” I said, again lifting my glass. “We are lucky that pandas have such a restricted geographical range!”
Alec giggled uncomfortably at my morbid humor. Michel gave me a betrayed look: we hadn’t toasted to “gases” but we would be toasting to this?
In the end, everyone did lift their glass, on the force of my authority, but no one’s heart was really in it.
Cheers.
Afterwards we sat in silence.
A.J. was staring at the cake. “Do you suppose,” he asked suddenly, “that pandas are the only species that is sensitive to punctuation marks during their early development?”
“No one knows,” said Mei curtly.
This possibility had, of course, been addressed in our paper’s discussion section. Perhaps A.J. didn’t remember. By adapting our in vitro system, it might, of course, be possible to test this. I had, however, long been unimpressed by the “fishing expedition” style of research.
On one of the sketchpads, I began to delineate for A.J. and the other students what I felt to be a critical point. How important it was to maintain a focused line of inquiry. That our first priority should be…
Then I lost my train of thought.
Past A.J.’s head, I had caught sight of something.
A cluster of birds—perhaps 20—were pecking at the ground of the Biosciences Courtyard. Birds—true—were not my specialty, but it was immediately obvious to me that they were not native to this region.
I didn’t even recognize the genus.
Perhaps they were resting, mid-migration.
Where had they come from, I wondered, in all that large world of sky?
(And what sort of pollutants had their mothers inhaled, when the eggs that would house their early development were first being synthesized?)
((Man eating bird./Man-eating bird.
Eat your chicken./Eat. You’re chicken!))
At the same time, with growing unease, I noticed several things:
·a server from the food court, setting down an immense platter of sandwiches in front of these animals, directly beneath their beaks
·the awkward, constrained way that the animals hopped on and around the platter, as if they were concealing something bulky beneath their wings
·a certain quality to the way the animals cocked their heads (even as I knew very little about birds). An expression…
“We’re leaving now,” I said.
Ling stared, one salty snack suspended in the air, halted mid-chew. Ava, reaching toward the first platter, was similarly frozen.
“It’s time to get back to work,” I said.
“But—” said Mei.
As I stood, I picked up both the trophy and the champagne.
“Alec, the cake,” I nodded. Eyes wide, he lifted the box.
“And the trays?” said Fenhua.
“Now,” I said.
They all got up, with different degrees of alacrity (jokes aside, wasn’t I the boss?) and then I herded them before me.
I had studied hundreds of these cases. I knew what would happen if these animals were to sense that we knew.
If they were anything like pandas.
The courtyard was nearly full. In it, hundreds of scientists and university students were enjoying late lunches, or staging, like us, some afternoon celebration.
All of them.
I experienced a sudden and terrible temptation to shout my conviction, and to precipitate a stampede that would only make what was about to happen happen faster.
And hinder our own escape.
Instead, I pushed my lab group past them all, all of the people, all of the tables, as quickly as I dared.
In barely a minute, it would start. The violence here, and at many sites all over the world, over the months and years that followed, would be far more terrifying and far more deadly than anything that any panda had ever been able to do.
Pandas are solitary creatures.
But birds travel in flocks.
In just under half a minute, we would be inside the building, inside the brick walls that would turn out to provide an imperfect protection, inside a makeshift bunker paneled with the pictures of Roux, Spemann, and Snow.
But birds can fly. This maneuverability, combined with their greater numbers, would enable this flock, in this large food courtyard and in the Biosciences complex adjacent to it, to inflict 50 times the carnage that a morphotype B panda, acting alone, might have managed.
Still, because I was able to get my lab group inside, we would be spared the worst of it. We would only lose Ava.
And Michel…
Only?
But it could have been worse. And that, for years and years after, would provide a sort of comfort to me, even as it would provide no particular comfort to the families of Ava and Michel.
It could have been so much worse.
“Hurry,” I said now. In my growing panic, I selected a word that was not at all nonchalant. And, in fact, the speed at which I was increasingly pushing them felt even less like nonchalance. Instead, it was desperate and jerky: the sort of motions that morphotype Bs were preternaturally predisposed to notice.
My rational brain knew that.
When I looked over my shoulder, I saw that one bird had already lifted its head from the platter. Its eyes were beady with an unnatural (but familiar) inclination, which industrial pollutants had shaped, inside the membranes of a clutch of eggs, somewhere. I saw its wings lift and the silvery flash of what lay beneath them. Those eyes…
Meeting mine.
I dropped everything: the trophy first, then the champagne. And when Ling and A.J. stopped abruptly in front of the puddles of champagne, in an apparent desire to clean them up (to clean them up??), I hissed, “Get inside! Get inside!” and when they wouldn’t, I grabbed them by their elbows and I forced them up, while the broken glass crunched beneath us. Because I had to get them out; I had to get all of us out…
Before the shooting started.
| Rachel Rodman is the author of two collections: Art is Fleeting and Exotic Meats and Inedible Objects. More at www.rachelrodman.com. |  |