Yeti Unleashed Page 19

  The area to the east of the range was referred to as the high desert. At elevations ranging from four to six thousand feet, this flatland received little rain because the peaks of the Sierra Nevada blocked precipitation flowing from the west. Although this area was desert, it still remained cold in the winter, and snow frequently covered the area.

  The Great Basin covered most of Nevada and parts of Utah, Oregon, Idaho, and California. Generally, its east boundary was the Wasatch Mountains of Utah and the western edge was formed by the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains that created a rain shadow over much of the Great Basin, preventing many Pacific storms from reaching the region. Northern and southern boundaries, depending on how they were defined, ranged from the Snake River Plain in the north to the Mojave Desert in the south.

  As part of the Basin and Range Province, mountains and valleys were repeated in succession across the region, like great waves cast in time. Valleys were four thousand to five thousand feet above sea level and mountain peaks ranged over ten thousand feet in elevation. Plant communities defined different portions of the Great Basin. Forest communities occurred at high elevations and included the oldest living organisms on Earth, the Great Basin bristlecone pines, which could live five thousand years. Lower in elevation were the pinion-juniper woodlands. As elevation decreased farther, plant communities were characterized by the presence of sagebrush. In the northern Great Basin, an important plant community, referred to as the sagebrush steppe, was co-dominated by big sagebrush and several perennial grasses and forbs.

  The lowest elevations were at the bottoms of valley basins. These areas often had salty soils, and the only plants that could tolerate these conditions grew in salt-desert shrub communities.

  Humans had long been part of the Great Basin ecosystem. Evidence of Native American habitation had been found, dating back over ten thousand years. These people lived in small bands, growing corn and squash as well as hunting and gathering pine nuts and crickets. European explorers and trappers traversed the Great Basin during the 1700s, but settlers didn’t start arriving until the early 1800s. The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged more settlers to come, determined to endure the sometimes harsh, always unpredictable, life in the Great Basin. Mining towns flourished and faded from the 1870s to 1930s as gold, silver, and copper were prospected. With the driving of the Golden Spike in 1869, the Great Basin became the place connecting East to West in a growing nation.

  ***

  Drayton parked the jeep in front of the main building. After eating an early breakfast with Harry, Dixie, Siscom, and Millie, he found them waiting under the portico. In the early morning twilight, the sun not yet up, it was still light enough to see clearly.

  Once everyone was loaded, Drayton started down the mountain.

  “Where to first you think?” Harry said. “Grant?”

  “No, first we’ll stop by a rancher friend of mine to pick up horses and a trailer. It’s just beyond the facility property.”

  “Horses?” Dixie said. “I hate horses.”

  Drayton nodded. “You never know out here. Best be prepared. If those Yeti took out over open ground, the horses will come in mighty handy.”

  “Yeah, the odds are slim we’ll find them along improved roads,” Siscom said from the back seat with Dixie.

  Once on level ground Drayton pushed the jeep hard, tearing past the property gate, then bumping onto the gravel road. They pressed hard all the way to Grant where the Yeti were last seen. Along the way they talked about the animals they were hunting.

  “So what’s so special about these Yeti anyway?” Drayton said. “I’ve never understood. You brought them all the way from Mongolia to study them. Why?”

  “We believe they are an early hominid,” Dixie said.

  “Hominids?” Drayton said.

  “A family known as great apes, forming a family of primates, including chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and humans,” Dixie told him. “To scientists, the term is also used in the more restricted sense as hominins or humans and relatives of humans closer than chimpanzees. Used this way, all hominid species other than Homo sapiens are extinct.”

  “Anyway that was our thinking until the Yeti were discovered,” Millie said.

  “What about the Neanderthals?” Siscom said. “Aren’t they are closely related to humans?”

  Harry nodded. “As a member of the genus Homo they are, yes. But they are extinct. In fact, all known hominids are extinct. What a discovery it would be if there was another living hominid species besides human living in our midst. We are studying these Yeti to determine how close to modern humans they actually are. It’s possible they would be classified in the genus Homo also.”

  “It might even be possible for the Yeti to have interbred with humans like the Neanderthals,” Millie said.

  “You serious?” Drayton said. “You serious?” His voice had a catch in it as if he was taken aback by Millie’s statement.

  “The genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule, about 0.1%, on average. Study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo, which is the close cousin of chimpanzees, differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.”

  “I see,” Drayton said.

  “And if we find parts of Yeti DNA embedded in our own, like we have the Neanderthals, then yes, it most likely happened, Millie replied.

  They circled the town of Grant. Several State Police cars and a Medical Examiner van were parked along Main Street; the town was otherwise quiet. They searched a ten mile radius around the town but found nothing.

  ***

  Lowell and his companions headed down the mountainside to the stream and their camp. Upon reaching their tent, Lowell remembered he left his fleece jacket in the mineshaft.

  “Pour me a drink, Yarak,” he said. “I forgot my jacket. I’ll be back in a minute”

  He grabbed his flashlight and began the climb back up the hill. A few clouds hung in a dark sky, partially obscuring the sliver of moon rising above the gorge. A slight breeze had come up, and Lowell shivered as he climbed. It had been a good day with lots of gold nuggets and ore removed from the mine. His muscles ached but he felt good about what they had thus far accomplished. In spite of his grumbling and talking to himself, Garby did his share of the work along with Terkel. Garby still didn’t smell very pleasant, but Lowell could overlook that fact, as long as the man continued to pull his weight.

  The trudge back up the gorge to the mine gave Lowell a chance to clear his mind and allow it time to unwind. The pressures of the expedition were enormous, weighing heavily on Lowell. Keeping this disparate group of unpredictable men working together as a unit, even with Yarak at his side, was a stress Lowell had not counted on. He put those worries aside as he approached the mine. He stopped briefly at the mine entrance, shot a quick glance at the campsite where the men had a roaring fire going, then hurried inside to retrieve his jacket.

  ***

  Yarak sat by the campfire and wondered what was taking Lowell so long. He followed his boss’s instructions and had his usual whiskey sitting on a small folding table beside his chair. The man should have been back by now. On the far side of the fire, Garby and Terkel played cards on a blanket stretched out on the ground, oblivious to Lowell’s absence.

  Yarak sensed they were close to the end of their mountain sojourn. He knew Lowell was near the end of his tether physically and Yarak was not far behind. The previous evening he and Lowell talked about going back home and resting for a few weeks before returning, refreshed, to work the mine again.

  Yarak gazed into the fire and reflect
ed on his boss and their relationship of many years. For the first few years the only thing they had in common was the deaths of their wives in car accidents, or in Lowell’s case his girlfriend. But during the recent years they mellowed to each other, and now Yarak loved him like a father.

  During the summer of 1990, Boris Yeltsin, head of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, addressed regional leaders and told them to Help yourself to as much sovereignty as you can swallow. So began the parade of sovereignties and with it, the slide toward the federalization of Russia, which became an independent state the next year.

  The local elites did not all want the same thing. Most of Russia’s territories readily agreed to the conditions set out in the federal treaties, but some of the former autonomous republics within the Russian federation, particularly those with oil, sought to acquire a much greater degree of independence.

  Chechnya was a case in point. The fighter pilot Dzhokhar Dudayev came to power after elections and issued a decree entitled, On the state sovereignty of the Chechen republic. The authorities in Moscow, who just survived an attempted coup d’état, didn’t accord it much importance. Then the Soviet Union dissolved. Tension between Moscow and Chechnya rose exponentially during the following year. In the end, Russian Army units left Chechen territory unopposed, leaving weapons and ammunition dumps. But Dudayev, having built up his own armed forces and equipped them with the weapons left behind, continued to insist on Chechnya’s secession from Russia.

  In 1993, the Provisional Council of the Chechen Republic was set up to act as a counterweight to President Dudayev. A pro-Russian head of the Upper Terek region led it. He, in turn, acquired weapons and the council’s leaders began training at Russian firing ranges. Then, fighting broke out sporadically between supporters and opponents of Dudayev and in the summer the opponents appealed to the Russian president Boris Yeltsin for support. Russian army units and interior troops started to mass on the border with Chechnya.

  During the winter of 1994, Dudayev’s opponents stormed the capital with weapons, armored vehicles and helicopters supplied by Moscow. The Federal Counterintelligence Service, later the Federal Security Service, raised volunteers from the ranks of the Russian Army and officer corps, mainly from the tank and rifle divisions. They left with their military equipment to be captured or killed on the streets of the Chechen capital.

  Yarak had been one of the volunteers.

  Officially, Moscow categorically denied that its military personnel, draftees, and enlistees took part in these operations, just as it denied the shelling of the capitol. But the attack stalled and later Yeltsin signed a decree to restore constitutional law and order across the territory of the Chechen republic. War had been declared and Russian troops crossed the border into Chechnya.

  Yarak’s close friend had been killed when he stepped on a land mine. Shrapnel from the blast hit Yarak who walked nearby. For months, he thought he wasn’t going to be able to walk but, after intensive therapy, he managed to overcome his injuries. But he was no longer in the service.

  In a long circuitous route, he ended up in California, working at a burger joint, and it was there that Lowell spotted him. They became friends after Yarak delivered burgers to his office and the friendship deepened over the years. Lowell was the father he longed for, a man in which he could confide. In simple language, he loved Rupert Lowell.

  He glanced up the side of the gorge but did not see Lowell returning. It shouldn’t have taken him this long, Yarak thought. He stood, walked around the fire. “Garby, Terkel, get your flashlights and come with me. The boss hasn’t returned from the mine.”

  “He was just here,” Garby protested.

  “He went to get his jacket fifteen minutes ago. Now, come on.”

  The three men slogged up the trail, their flashlights casting soft beams into the surrounding brush. Upon reaching the entrance to the mine, Yarak hesitated and shined his light into the darkness of the tunnel.

  “Mr. Lowell!” he hollered. “You in there?”

  No response.

  “Mr. Lowell!”

  Nothing.

  “Okay,” Yarak said, “let’s get down there and have a look. He might have hurt himself.”

  With Yarak leading the way, they stalked deeper down the shaft, their lights flickering off the walls. The darkness engulfed them like soft velvet, their flashlights providing the only light. Nearing the Y in the mineshaft Yarak spotted something ahead--a crumpled mass in the middle of the tunnel.

  It was Lowell.

  At his side in an instant, Yarak rolled Lowell over onto his back. The man was breathing in shallow gasps and the front of his clothes was covered in blood. He had a nasty head wound that oozed blood. Garby and Terkel stood behind Yarak, flashing their lights about the shaft.

  “What the hell happened?” Terkel said. “Is he dead?”

  “No, he’s alive, but just barely,” Yarak said.

  “This was more than a fall,” Garby said, stumbling a ways farther down the shaft. “Somebody did this to him?”

  “But who?” Terkel said. “We haven’t seen anyone up here for weeks.”

  “He needs medical attention,” Yarak said. “Let’s get him back to camp. Help me carry him.”

  At the moment Garby and Terkel were getting Lowell up, a sound erupted from deep within the mine. It was an unusual sound, more like a growl--like nothing the men had ever heard. Yarak thought the mine shifted but continued to lift Lowell onto his back.

  But there it was again.

  It sounded exactly like an animal’s growl or snarl. Yarak wanted to get back to the camp as soon as possible, the sound was giving him the creeps. Garby had Lowell supported by his underarms--his knees buckled as he tried to walk. Lowell groaned as he attempted to put one foot in front of the other.

  “Terkel, get his feet,” Yarak said.

  Even though Lowell was a short man, he was stout. The two men struggled to get him off the ground. As Yarak helped steady his boss, a roar filled the shaft.

  Yarak looked up and what he saw horrified him.

  A large beast covered in shaggy hair stood at the Y, its eyes blazing like fire. A horrid smell filled the small space, and the beast roared, revealing fangs stained with blood. It pitched its massive head toward the overhanging wall and growled.

  Yarak stood frozen, unbelieving.

  ***

  “You’re saying we could be related to these creatures?” Drayton said in response to Millie’s assertion.

  “To date there are no known human cousins to Homo sapien other than Homo neanderthalensis,” Dixie answered. “But, like Harry said, they are extinct. The specimens we uncovered in Mongolia did not fit a pattern that would allow them to belong with the Homo genus nor any known hominoid pattern. So, to what primate category these specimens belong remains a puzzle. Unfortunately, we have only a few specimens with which to work and form an hypothesis. That is, until we brought these Yeti back, in order to study them.”

  “We don’t actually know if these Yeti are a member of the genus Homo,” Harry interjected. “At least not yet, anyway.”

  “Not long ago, a finger bone fragment was discovered in the Denisova Cave in Siberia from a juvenile female who lived around forty-one thousand years ago.” Millie leaned forward as she spoke. “Analysis of its mitochondrial DNA showed it to be distinct from Neanderthals as well as modern humans. Its nuclear genome, however, suggested that it shared a common ancestor with Neanderthals. Scientists have achieved near-complete genomic sequencing, dating it around four hundred thousand years ago. To date, it is the oldest hominid DNA sequenced. They were able to demonstrate that some living humans can trace a portion of their ancestry to the Denisovan genome. It shows that all this is a complex puzzle.”

  Dixie nodded. “When we discovered a skull in a Tibetan monastery,” she said, “we found it was much larger than anything in the genus Homo. Neanderthals had larger brains than modern humans--our brains actually shrank about twenty percent. But t
his skull was way larger than Neanderthal. So what it was, we didn’t know until we found the Yeti. We know the animals are hominids. Are they Homo hominids? We can’t say right now. It’s why this research is so important.”

  “If we are related in some way to the Yeti,” Millie said, running a hand through her hair, “it would be by way of a common ancestor. To be a direct descendant would be highly unusual.”

  “Can you prove something like that? Common ancestry, I mean.”

  “Of course we can, Mr. Drayton,” Millie said. Her face softened and her eyes got brighter as she spoke. “Are you all truly interested in this stuff or should I just keep quiet? I’m sorry but I can get excited about my work.”

  “No please, go on,” Drayton said. “I have always wondered what you scientists actually do.”

  “Well, it can get rather involved so please bear with me. I’ll try and make it understandable.”

  Dixie moved closer to Millie and sat beside Drayton.

  “Let’s take the example of hemoglobin,” Millie said. “Hemoglobin is the substance in our blood that carries oxygen and it’s made up of four parts. Those parts are called polypeptides, but we can think of them essentially as four subunits. It has two copies of a part called alpha-globin and two copies of a part called beta-globin.

  “Now, what modern molecular biology has enabled us to do is to pinpoint where the instructions are that specify these. The alpha-globin instructions are specified on Chromosome Number Sixteen and the beta-globin instructions are specified on Chromosome Number Eleven. And as our genome does for many genes, we have multiple copies of these, so we have backups. We’ve got extra copies of the alpha-globin genes and extra copies of the beta-globin genes, and they have interesting physiological functions, these multiple copies.