Part 1 (2/2)
POSTERS OF BRIGHTLY DYED microorganisms, like creepy crawly clerestory windows, decorated the door to Evie's lab. My baby sister was perched on her swivel chair, at her sprawling bench. Her bangs flipped joyfully at the ends of her sentences. Before I got to see her digitally simulated bee, she insisted that I take a sniff of the reconstructed Pleistocene honey.
”This isn't a prank? It's not some kind of drug?”
”I would never give an already crazy person a drug. Come on,” she coaxed, handing me a sealed Pyrex retort, its interior coated in small brown beads.
I put my nostril, as instructed, to a tube hanging from the retort, pressed a tiny plastic catch, inhaled, and let out a long whistle. I pressed the catch again, and again, eyes closed, drawing the fragrance into my memory as hard as I could. ”That's enough,” Evie warned. ”We have to limit its exposure. Sorry-I know it's tempting.”
”Don't you think . . . it smells a bit like . . . Joy?” I asked.
”Smells like freakin' paradise.”
I explained that Joy is a perfume, and Evie shrugged.
”How would I know about French perfumes, with the gorilla I'm married to? Let me show you this bee . . .” She brushed the computer keys. On the monitor, the bee's foot-long image was reddish and furry. Magnified again, her fur resembled tangles of raspberry cane. ”The branched hairs mean she was a good sticky pollen collector. But what was she doing here, Sophie? Honeybees didn't arrive on this continent till the Pilgrims brought them, and they sure didn't bring Mic.r.a.pis. That's an Asian bee.”
I looked at the bee, then at my sister, temporarily unable to speak. Scientists are animals too, and if you trigger their instincts, you have only yourself to blame. Images flew past on the monitor; Evie was scouting for a scent.
I was thinking of the Keen-Ears. They are a thriving species of invisible humans, and some of their clans live in caves in my woods. The Keen-Ears tolerate me as a harmless snoop; they don't understand why I've posted signs on their perimeter and check it daily, with my dog, for evidence of trespa.s.s. They have no idea how I've fought on zoning boards to keep their habitat untouched, and their existence unsuspected. Unworried, they go about their invisible business, tending their red, furry bees that made the dangerous trek with them-preceding h.o.m.o sapiens by some twelve millennia-out of Asia, across the frigid marshes of Beringia, and down into a land of giant bears and sloths, a lonesome immensity where (as their mournful ballads recount) a beating human heart sounded as loud as thunder and lightning.
The Keen-Ears would not know what I did now. I was making a decision.
Evie lacked one clue to solve her mystery, and it was this: when they die, invisible beasts become visible. (Their bodies go unnoticed, blending into the endless ranks of unknown species.) With that clue, Evie would realize what her Asian bee was, and how it had come to America in the bee-baskets of the primordial Keen-Ears. One word from me, and science could open the vaults of invisible life.
But what would happen to animals impossible to see until they died? The outlook was not good. Humans are not like bees; we did not evolve from predatory wasps into dancing, vegetarian beings whose honey tastes of sisterhood. Humanity's first reaction to the news would be to go out and kill-kill what we couldn't see and didn't understand. Before my mind's eye rolled a vision of Keen-Ear bodies flung in heaps, tied to truck fenders, stuffed and mounted as trophies. I imagined the TV talk shows and the shrieking Web. I imagined the Keen-Ear survivors, sad toys of defense research, dragging on their lives in sunless laboratories. As for their Parfumier Bees . . . as colonies of visible honeybees went on collapsing, some entrepreneur would doubtless try to farm the invisibles, G.o.d help them. Or they might go feral again, in a world ridding itself of wild bees. These horrors were the likeliest result of giving Evie the clue she lacked.
Yet I owed my sister. She had never belittled my invisible beasts; no, she had always helped me to understand them. She was a cherished guide on the obscure track I pursued in life. And I owed science a debt, too, for giving me, since childhood, my inspiration and a standard of truth.
That is what I imagined, and pondered, while Evie knitted her brows and gazed at her computer screen.
”This bee of yours,” I said, steadying my voice, ”it's extinct, of course.”
”Well, look at it-it's practically a wasp. It's not far from its wasp progenitors, and it's very, very far from a modern bee. I can't imagine it's still around. But,” Evie said, nailing me with a look, ”nature is usually about what we can't imagine.”
3.
Here (with apologies to Evie) I describe the Keen-Ears, an invisible human subspecies with unusual gifts, whose clans I am privileged to shelter in my woods. The most memorable lesson I've learned from them concerns an ancient problem that our species share, and that they approach by emulating ants-no, it's not about hard work or planning ahead . . .
The Keen-Ears.
WE HUMANS ARE NOT ALONE. A few subspecies of our kind survive in the dangerous company of h.o.m.o sapiens by being invisible. The Keen-Ears live in woodlands east of the Rockies and cultivate the edible tree fungus Laetiporus, or chicken-of-the-woods, which causes wood rot but is considered a delicacy by both visible and invisible humans. The Keen-Ears are master fungus breeders; they create many invisible strains of Laetiporus, puzzling some foresters, who can see that a log is rotting, all right, but cannot see why. Visible Laetiporus looks like an orange brain. In the invisible varieties, the Keen-Ears have bred a palette of colors-teal, mauve, scarlet, ice pink, purple-in concentric, paisley, striped, and marbled designs. Wisely, the Keen-Ears have tampered with visible Laetiporus to keep it from breeding with its glamorous invisible cousins. They don't want any episodes of h.o.m.o sapiens stumbling onto a psychedelic fungus protruding from a tree trunk, finding out why, then killing or enslaving all the Keen-Ears. With some remorse-because they're serious about bioethics and believe in sharing the benefits of science-the Keen-Ears think they are justified in keeping their fungus farming secrets from us. They think we mostly prefer mushrooms, anyway.
The Keen-Ears are short, slight, furred, and have large ears that make them look like Hermes in his winged helmet. Their fur is gray and weather-resistant, so they go naked, with a double pelt in winter. Their ears are so keen that they can hear blood coursing through the body's vessels. Not even the Great Horned Owl can float by them unnoticed; they hear its pulse beating over the treetops as it readies the mouse-sized cage of its claws. This special gift has countless ramifications, most of them enviable.
Among the Keen-Ears, you never see two people trying to move out of each other's way, apologizing as they both step right or left at the same time. The Keen-Ears can detect the sound of muscles tensing for a movement-like dogs, they can tell when you're about to get up, or leave the room. At mealtimes, eerily, they share a salt dip without a word or glance from the person offering or accepting. What's more, each person has a blood-signature which sounds as unique to them as a voice to us. A Keen-Ear lying with eyes closed under a feather blanket knows exactly which child is creeping barefoot to the fried fungus jar. They also hear the turbulence that anger causes, and know the combinations of blood-sound and body language for a wide range of feelings. Living as they do in small clans, their minds are nearly as naked as their bodies. (This makes fistfights challenging, though feasible.) They sometimes talk on algae-powered telephones, but such bloodless communication is called ”corpse talk” and viewed as an unseemly necessity.
They have epic songs about the dangers awaiting small, isolated genetic groups like their own clans. The verses they intone, while doing ch.o.r.es in their caves, tell of beasts who selected themselves into an evolutionary cul-de-sac, or outgrew their niches. The Keen-Ears don't particularly enjoy these mournful lays, but insist that their daily performance is vital to ”good health.” They call us ”Flu-huggers,” and say that we have poor bodily health because we don't sing the tales of the species gone from our habitats. Curiously, the Keen-Ears' songs really do help them prevent disease. The ancient melodies were composed to harmonize with the bloodstream-with the boom of stretched atria or the arpeggios of squeezed capillaries-and the Keen-Ears ”play” their blood pressure like an instrument, through biofeedback, while singing. This is very good for their hearts. They also diagnose vascular illness with astonis.h.i.+ng precision. From eavesdropping on their gossip, for instance, I learned about my illness long before a doctor noticed anything-”that old snoop with arterial plaque,” they called me. (Admittedly, I see the Keen-Ears more often than doctors.) The sheer physical harmony of the Keen-Ears' lives seems to limit antagonism. When five of them sit on a twisted oak-root to peruse a map of fungus stands, they sink onto it as one, gracefully. n.o.body has to scoot over or scrunch in. It's not surprising that they dance like angels and make love with the ease of the elements. But for all that, the Keen-Ears are human, and for them as for us, love is complication.
Versed in fungus genetics and animal genealogies, the Keen-Ears have long ago mastered the art of breeding themselves; but unlike us, who try such things under the spur of creepy racism, the Keen-Ears enjoy a personal and s.e.xual freedom we can scarcely imagine, coupled with social stability. Their folkways, though unsuitable for our own rambunctious, high-strung species, are yet worthwhile to contemplate. They live in clans separated by gender. Between men's and women's caves there is plenty of traffic, and all relations.h.i.+ps are possible-business, cultural collaborations of all kinds, professional a.s.sociations, friends.h.i.+ps, love affairs, even hauntingly coordinated orgies. But when it comes to making babies, each women's clan hosts one male guest, who is the exclusive father of any infants born during his stay. After about three years, he rejoins his old clan and the women choose a new man. Genealogies are closely tracked. To prevent inbreeding, a clan father is never invited twice, and incestuous ties are taboo. Sons go to live with their father's clan in late childhood, but both sons and daughters remain in close touch with their biological parents and siblings. Careful family planning, and tight family and clan ties, mean that no one in the Keen-Ear caves is born unwanted, or dies untended, or lives in poverty-and everybody babysits. How many times I've lurked outside a warmly lit Keen-Ear cave, wistfully eavesdropping on conversations in which these precious safeguards are taken for granted.
The marriage rite of the Keen-Ears is the most exotic part of their family arrangements. To choose clan fathers, they have adapted a process of decision-making found among ants and bees.
”It's time you learned about the ants and the bees,” Keen-Ear parents tell their children, clearing their throats. Particularly ants. The lesson sends little Keen-Ear girls scurrying to find anthills, spending hours in rapturous observation, as our own small daughters play at becoming brides. The naughtiest Keen-Ear girls even kick apart anthills for the secret thrill of watching the great event happen. Called ”quorum sensing,” the process helps ants and bees choose new nesting sites without having to rely on an authority-a judge, boss, or chief-to make the final decision. It begins with scouts; in the case of ants, each scout goes off separately to find a new possible nest site, then scurries back to the colony, delivers a report, and recruits other ants to visit the potential site. Timing is the key to the final decision: ants reporting an inferior site take a little longer, as if mastering some embarra.s.sment, and the delay ultimately counts, as we will see. Though trickles of hurried ants running in and out of rocky crevices may not sound romantic, nothing could be more breathlessly fascinating than the marriage rite of the Keen-Ears, those wise apes of the ants!
IN SPRING, WHEN THE MOON s.h.i.+ning through translucent leaves suspends the black trees in a jelly of light, and flowering crabapples perfume the night, the Keen-Ear women dust their bodies with colored powders, hang strings of oak-pollen ta.s.sels from their ears to their glimmering shoulders, and fasten filigree capes, made of leaf-skeletons, from their necks to their ankles. In this ceremonial dress, all the women-from old, bent clan mothers clinging to a youngster's elbow, to young would-be mothers standing very straight with excitement-visit the candidates for clan fatherhood, who have spent months preparing for the events of this evening, called Niche Night.
It's not a tryst, n.o.body is going to bed-at least, that's the official version. This meeting is supposed to be a formal interview, taking place in a rocky niche reserved for the event. The candidate has to show that he can get along with all those eager, fussy females, young and old, who want his genes, his affection, his company, and his help around the cave. His aim is to attract as many of the women as possible to his niche, because the number of visitors will, in the end, decide the outcome of his candidacy.
For a first-time candidate, preparing for Niche Night is a grueling rite of pa.s.sage. Once he has fathered and helped to rear babies, he will have established himself as a Keen-Ear parent, and may be invited, during his life, to several women's caves. But he has to be picked that crucial first time. The stress is on. He spends weeks researching the clans whose women are likely to visit: their environs, personalities, problems, projects. If he has a girlfriend in the clan, he begs for advice till her ears are ringing. He pumps his female relatives and friends for gossip-do these women like pets? Should he offer a nest of phoebes for their cave ledge? Will it bug them if he cracks his knuckles? He asks his father what made him successful. His father shrugs, and pats him on the back. His mother says, Be Yourself. His sisters laugh. His brothers are all pretending that they know where the best niches are, the ones with waterfall views, but maybe they'll tell him and maybe they won't. For days, he has practiced serving up fermented acorn liqueur with a suave flourish. He has memorized compliments, jokes, soulful sayings, earnest plat.i.tudes, and poetry. He has placed his great-great-grandfather's Pluricorn horn armlet, a priceless icebreaker, where it cannot escape notice.
Quorum sensing begins, as I've said, with scouts. Ants send scouts to look at nest sites; the Keen-Ear women send scouts to interview the male candidates. What really happens between the scouts and the candidates is the subject of many jokes and folktales. After all, the Keen-Ears are only human. And though they go naked, a Keen-Ear lady wearing nothing but a netted cape and earrings is not naked, she is fetchingly nude, while a well-set-up Keen-Ear man wearing nothing but warm intentions and yesterday's love-bites is a force to be reckoned with. The oldest joke about the unofficial aspect of Niche Night goes: ”If two women walk into your cave, which one is the scout?”
”The one walking bowlegged.” There are the Three Honored Scouts, a famous trio in song and s.m.u.t: the drunk scout, the bowlegged scout, and the scout who is old, drunk, and bowlegged, and always gets the punch line. But at least in public, Keen-Ears don't admit to hanky-panky on Niche Night.
While the scouts interview the candidates, the other Keen-Ear ladies lounge around the cave, biting their lips, telling stories, playing cards, yawning. The middle-aged women who run everything and everybody confer in low tones, broken by bawdy cackles. The oldest ladies look at each other with rueful nostalgia and quaver, ”I hope those boys have a feather roll for my feet.” Time elapses, and the lapsed time is the key to the whole process.
As the scouts report back, the wisdom of ants becomes apparent. A Keen-Ear girl reappears in the cave entrance and immediately, the sound of her blood thunders like a snowmelt cataract in everyone's ears and they cheer, gathering round to hug the scout as she weeps happy tears, speaking the lucky candidate's name. Another scout returns on the first one's heels, her blood thrumming pleasantly like m.u.f.fled snare drums. This raises smiles, but also questions: so, what was not to like? She is badgered for details, a.n.a.lysis-a full report, in time-consuming words. Meanwhile, a third scout rushes in, her blood roaring like a forest on fire, her ears flapping with haste, and the clan breaks into applause. By the time the second scout has persuaded a couple of women to visit the nice-but-not-perfect fellow, many others are on their way to or from the first and third scouts' fabulous men-it's only natural, enthusiasm is infectious. More scouts come in, and the ones whose blood does not speak volumes instantly, who have to give verbal answers, take longer to report and recruit fewer ladies to visit their candidates. As the night wears on, the number of women trekking to and from a particular candidate's niche reveals who the best choice must be. It is obvious to everyone. No need for an authority to dictate anything. The Keen-Ear women vote with their hearts, their sharp ears, and their feet.
These customs look outlandish to visible humans like you and me-cold-blooded, conformist, full of potential disasters, dystopian, and rather cra.s.s. But suppose we imagine them a little differently? Suppose the male candidates were all the different aspects of one person, and the visiting women were all the different aspects of another person? Quorum sensing is very much like the way we instinctively select the aspects of our mates that suit us best. Over time, as we get to know each other, some aspects will draw us again and again by well-trodden paths, while others will be less visited. Our wives and husbands, partners and lovers, the very people closest to us, are crowded with unknown personalities. But our time together is limited, so we cannot learn them all. We scarcely have time to know ourselves. We stick to a little circle of familiar faces, and are surprised when a new acquaintance speaks up from the pillow, or a stranger offers a cool nod. Now does Niche Night seem more familiar? The Keen-Ears and the ”Flu-huggers” share an ancient human problem: love is too big a task for our allotted time.
4.
Anyone can see an invisible beast once it's dead. Usually, though, the opportunity arises on the roadways after the invisible animal has been squashed flat, and n.o.body stops to inspect it. Biologists sometimes notice the odd corpse, but take it for a specimen of yet another unknown (visible) species; after all, according to the National Geographic, some 86 percent of living species have yet to be described. Viewed in this light, the discovery described here was serendipitous.
The Pluricorn.
THE DRIVER OF A FORD PICKUP spotted something antler-shaped in the breakdown lane. He pulled over, expecting a tasty h.o.a.rd of venison. What he found instead, he photographed and posted on the Web with the caption ”Dead Dinosaur Deer.” The posting drew comments from the scurrilous to the reflective from hunters, bone hunters, and information gatherers.
”Faking a giant rack is just one of those things a real man doesn't do,” quipped a hunter. A paleontologist posted an earnest plea not to spread dinosaur hoaxes, as they bolstered antiscientific prejudice in the American public. Evie sent me the link with a note: ”Pluricorn?”
The photo did resemble a Pluricorn. They live in my woods, and I know no other animal whose males are so patently designed for misery. The best sketch I've made of a specimen was typical-a young male, nibbling hawthorn leaves. He was especially pitiable in May, when other species are showing off their renewed beauty and spirits. As I strolled on one of my trails, illumined by new green mists in the boughs of the oaks and ash trees, I saw signs of creaturely grace everywhere. Two red fox pups who lived in a rockpile were sunning and stretching, rumps raised, heads low, tails flourished like new ferns, and on the other end, pink tongues outfurled like petals. A mother Cooper's hawk, meat in her beak, flew toward her nest through tangled branches as if they melted before her. The very ground lost its dullness where grape hyacinths and violets spread like gaps of sky. And from the throats of toads who resembled clods, issued a sweet trilling chorus that swelled like woodwinds, sank, swelled again, and never ceased.
Into this charming scene came the wretched Pluricorn. The moment I spotted him-a movement of sun-dapples cohering, the way it does, into an animal shape-I knew the reason for certain bizarre rub marks on the hawthorns that earlier had puzzled me. This beast was too hungry to care about my lurking presence. Craning into the leaf.a.ge, he sported a barbed brow horn, a fringe of curly tusks, a horn projecting from his chest, and big spurs, like ivory artichokes, on his rather knock-kneed legs. Over his head, a ma.s.sive rack cast a grotesque, th.o.r.n.y shadow. Poor beast, he kept bas.h.i.+ng himself on the hawthorn trunk, or tipping too far to one side and pawing rapidly to adjust. My stomach hurt to see him; how was he going to feed all four of his? Sketching him quickly on my notepad, I a.n.a.lyzed the details afterward.
<script>