And, of course, we kept arguing that the universe had to be teeming with life — that there was nothing remarkable about Earth, that it was, in fact, mediocre, that planets like it were, well, as common as the dirt after which we’d named our own world.
But then, in 1988, the first extrasolar planet was discovered, orbiting the star HD 114762. Of course, back then we didn’t think it was a planet; we thought maybe it was a brown-dwarf star. After all, it was nine times as heavy as Jupiter, and it orbited HD 114762 closer than Mercury orbits our sun. But in 1995, another extrasolar planet was discovered, this one at least half as big as Jupiter, and also orbiting its parent, the star 51 Pegasi, closer than Mercury came to Sol. And then more and more were found, all from solar systems unlike our own.
In our solar system, the gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — orbit far away from the central star, and the inner planets are small, rocky worlds. Rather than being a normal planetary system, ours was beginning to look like a freak. And yet the layout of bodies in our system seemed to be crucial to developing and sustaining life. Without the gravitational effects of our giant moon — almost a sister planet, formed early on when an asteroid slammed into our still-molten world — Earth would wobble in an unstable fashion, and our atmosphere would be crushingly dense, like that of Venus. And without Jupiter, patrolling the border between the inner and outer solar system, sweeping up wayward comets and asteroids with its immense gravity, our world would have been hit far more frequently by such objects. A bolide impact apparently almost wiped out all life on Earth sixty-five million years ago; we could not have withstood more frequent bombardment.
Of course, Hollus’s solar system apparently resembled ours, as did the Wreed system. But, nonetheless, systems like Sol’s were extraordinary; the exception, not the rule. And cells aren’t simple; they are enormously complex. And the fossil record, fascinating but frustrating thing that it is, shows evolution proceeding by leaps rather than by the accumulation of gradual changes.
I’ve spent my whole adult life being an uncompromising neo-Darwinian evolutionist. I certainly don’t want to issue a deathbed retraction.
And yet —
And yet perhaps, as Hollus believes, there is more to the puzzle of life.
I know evolution happens; I know it for a fact. I’ve seen the fossils, seen the DNA studies that say that we and chimps have 98.6 percent of our genetic material in common, and therefore must have had a recent common ancestor.
Proceeding by leaps . . .
By . . . perhaps, maybe . . . by quantum leaps.
Newton’s seventeenth-century laws of physics are mostly correct; you can use them to reliably predict all sorts of things. We didn’t discard them; rather, in the twentieth century, we subsumed them into a new, more comprehensive physics, a physics of relativity and quantum mechanics.
Evolution is a nineteenth-century notion, outlined in Darwin’s 1859 book, a book called, in full, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. But the more we learn, the more natural selection seems inadequate on its own as a mechanism for the creation of new species; even our best attempts at artificial, intelligently guided selection apparently aren’t up to the task — all dogs are still Canis familiaris.
And now it’s the start of the twenty-first century. Surely it’s not unreasonable to think that Darwin’s ideas, like Newton’s before them, will be subsumed into a greater whole, a more comprehensive understanding?
Damn it!
God damn it.
I hate it when the pain comes like that — like a knife, slicing into me.
I reached over onto my cluttered night table. Where are my pills? Where are they?
27
Rhonda Weir, short, stocky, silver-haired, was a detective for the Toronto Police. Her phone rang at 1:11 P.M.on Sunday afternoon. She picked up the handset and said, “Detective Weir.”
“Hello,” said a raspy man’s voice at the other end of the phone, sounding somewhat exasperated. “I hope I’ve got the right person this time; I’ve been transferred several times.”
“What can I do for you?” asked Rhonda.
“My name is Constantin Kalipedes,” said the voice. “I’m the weekend manager at the Lakeshore Inn in Etobicoke. One of my housekeepers just found a gun in one of the rooms.”
“What kind of gun?”
“A pistol. And she also found an empty gun case, the kind you’d use to carry one of those — what do you call it? — one of those assault weapons.”
“Has the guest checked out?”
“Guests, plural. And no. They’ve got a reservation through Wednesday morning.”
“What are their names?”
“One is J. D. Ewell; the other, C. Falsey. They have Arkansas license plates.”
“You took down the plate number?”
“No, but they wrote it themselves on the registration card.” He read the string of characters to Rhonda.
“Did the maid finish cleaning the room?”
“No. I had her stop as soon as she found the gun.”
“Good man,” said Rhonda. “What’s your address?”
He told her.
“I’ll be there in” — she looked at her watch, then calculated; traffic should be light on a Sunday afternoon — “twenty minutes. If this Ewell or Falsey return, stall them if you can, but don’t put yourself at risk, understood?”
“Yes.”
“I’m on my way.
The Lakeshore Inn was, not surprisingly, on Lakeshore Boulevard. Rhonda Weir and her partner, Hank Li, parked their unmarked car in front of the entrance. Hank checked the license plates on the cars to the left, and Rhonda looked at those on the ones to the right. Six were American — two from Michigan, two from New York, and one each from Minnesota and Illinois — but none were from Arkansas. A little rain was falling; there would doubtless be more later. The air was pungent with ozone.
Constantin Kalipedes turned out to be an old, paunchy Greek, with a stubble of gray beard. He led Rhonda and Hank along a row of units, past door after door, until they came to an open one. There they found the East Indian woman who was his housekeeper, and he brought her with them to room 118. Kalipedes got out his pass key, but Rhonda had him hand it over; she opened the door herself, turning the knob with the key so as not to disturb any fingerprints that might be on it. It was a fairly shabby room, with two framed prints hanging crookedly, and powder-blue wallpaper peeling at the seams. There were two double beds, one of which had beside it the sort of oxygen bottle that a person who suffered from sleep apnea needed. Both beds were disheveled; the maid obviously hadn’t gotten to them by the time she’d made her discovery.
“Where’s the gun?” asked Rhonda.
The young woman stepped into the room and pointed. The gun was lying on the floor, beside a suitcase. “I had to move the suitcase,” she said with a lilting accent, to get at the outlet, so I could plug in the vacuum cleaner. It must not have been closed all the way, and the gun tumbled out. Behind it was that wooden case.” She pointed.