The fan in the computer hummed quietly as Grand asked the computer to identify elements and chemicals that were present in the hair. There was nothing unusual. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur, and various salts.
Grand brought up the proportions of organic materials and other compounds. When those were on-screen he compared them with elements and compounds found in the hair of local bobcats, gray wolves, foxes, elks, field mice, and rabbits. He wasn't trying to determine that the hairs had come from one of those animals, only that the ratios were relatively similar.
They were, with two exceptions.
"The average water content of the other fur samples is 68.7 percent," the scientist said as he read the ratios. "The hair samples I brought in have an elevated saturation level of 87.6 percent."
"That sounds pretty high," Hannah said.
"Yes, but explainable. The hairs were probably submerged at some point down in that cavern. What I don't understand is this other figure."
"Which is?"
"Carbon dioxide," Grand said. "The random fur samples have levels that are an average of 300 percent higher than the hairs I found in the stalagmite. That shouldn't be. The air my creature breathed shouldn't have contained such low percentages unless-"
He stopped.
"Unless what?" Hannah asked.
"No. There's got to be a mistake," the scientist said as he went on-line to the UCSB Web site and accessed the Biological Sciences database.
"What are you doing?" Hannah asked.
"I'm asking the computer to give me the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide eleven thousand years ago and today," he said as he typed. "If the older figures correspond to the CO2 levels found in the hair samples, it will corroborate the date the radiocarbon test gave us."
"In which case we have an eleven-thousand-year-old specimen with reliable DNA findings that tell us the specimen is alive," Hannah said.
"It's impossible, but that's pretty much what we'll have."
"I don't think I'll be running that information in tomorrow's paper," Hannah said. "I wonder if Gearhart's crime lab gave him the same results on the hair samples."
"That's a good question," Grand said. "If they did, that could be one reason he's being so tight-lipped. He doesn't want to look foolish either."
"After we've checked this out, maybe I should tell him what we've found," Hannah said. "See if that opens him up a little, maybe fills in a few missing pieces for him."
The scientist nodded and sat back.
As the computer worked on finding the data he tried to think of explanations that might reconcile the findings. The only thing he could come up with was that one or the other of the tests had somehow been compromised. If that were true, then the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide eleven thousand years ago could not be in the same proportion as the ratios the DNA test found in the hair samples. Otherwise, the tests would prove one another to be correct.
"How do we know what earth's atmospheric levels were eleven thousand years ago?" Hannah asked.
"From studying ancient ice," Grand said. "Scientists have taken thousands of deep core samples from ice in both the north and south polar regions. They've analyzed air trapped in bubbles in the ice and found a steady increase in carbon dioxide levels from prehistory to now."
"Increased why?"
"Mostly due to volcanic activity," Grand said. "Volcanoes pour massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They also caused a greenhouse effect that was probably what ended the Ice Age and caused the spread of deserts and the destruction of countless ancient forests."
"So human burning of fossil fuels wasn't the initial cause of global warming?" Hannah said.
"No. In fact," Grand said, "some scientists believe that humankind may actually be helping the planet. By keeping it warm enough, we may have prevented the Ice Age from returning."
"Do you believe that?"
Before he could answer, the figures appeared on the screen. Grand and Hannah both looked at the monitor.
"This is incredible," Grand said. "Eleven thousand years ago there were eight parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere compared to twenty-five parts per million now."
"That's an increase of 300 percent," Hannah said with open astonishment. "Just like the hair samples."
Grand felt the same galvanizing frustration he did when he tried to understand the Chumash paintings from the passageway. The material was there, the answers were there, true and immutable. He simply didn't know how to interpret what he was seeing.
Maybe he wasn't seeing because he was looking too closely. Perhaps he needed to put the data in a larger picture.
"If the DNA test results can't be wrong and the age of the hairs has been confirmed, what's next?" Hannah asked.
Grand ignored the raspy voice of Professor Wildhorn as he walked around the department asking if anyone had seen his chair. He leaned forward and began typing again.
"What's next," Grand said, "is we take a step back. In math, a point doesn't tell you much. But two points define a line. We need to draw a line from our sample to another one just like it."
"Word association," Hannah said.
"Pardon?"
"Never mind," Hannah said. "What do we have to do?"
Grand went back to the UCSB Web site and opened a comparative research program on the Biological Sciences Web site. He dropped the results of the DNA test into it.
"I'm having the computer search every biological file it has access to until it finds a match for the DNA," Grand said. "This could take five minutes or five hours, depending on how lucky we get. If you have other things you need to do I can phone you."
"No," Hannah said. "Getting this story is all I need to do. So unless you mind-"
"Not at all," he said.
The computer hummed, the breakers broke, and Grand suddenly felt warm behind the ears. The space between him and Hannah was small and the silence made it seem even closer. Intimate.
He reached for his hamburger and unwrapped it. As he did he noticed Hannah absently work a finger through the top of her blouse. She was rubbing what looked like a piece of jewelry.
"What have you got there?" Grand asked. He had to say something.
"Excuse me?" Hannah said.
He pointed at her neck.
"Oh." She smiled and pulled out a tarnished pair of dog tags. "My good-luck token."
"Were you in the military?"
"No. They belonged to my dad, in Korea. See how they're dented?"
She leaned closer to show him.
"I see," he said.
There was a moment, just an instant, when everything else in the room and in Grand's brain disappeared. He blanked on everything but the smell of the woman and the soft light on her throat. He felt warm and probably looked red all along the jaw. He hoped she didn't notice.
Hannah sat back. "The dog tags deflected a piece of shrapnel the day my father got there," she went on. "So every day after that, when he woke up, the first thing he did was hold them in his fist and pray for Life and good luck. After the war he put them away until my junior year of college."
"What happened then?" he asked, the heat fading quickly from his neck and face.
"My dad read some of my stuff in the college paper," Hannah said. "He was convinced that one day someone I wrote about would try to kill me."
"So he gave them to you as a good-luck token."
"I thought it was a little over the top," Hannah said, "but I appreciated the thought. I mean, I didn't see my life being quite like a war zone-though I did start touching them for good luck."
"And now it's a habit."
"I do it without even thinking. I guess it's weird."
"Not at all," Grand said."Totems and amulets are as old as civilization. They can signify a unity with something- with your father, for example-or they can symbolize the protection of a deity."