Yeti Unleashed Read online

  Down the hall and isolated from all clean areas was the necropsy/perfusion room - a critical support function used for post mortem procedures on sacrificed animals. There were containment facilities--facilities for working with potentially infectious biological agents--that operated under negative pressure to prevent the escape of air to the general environment. Wastes and effluents were separately contained and decontaminated. Sophisticated control and monitoring systems and equipment were employed to achieve closely controlled and regulated air pressurizations and flows.

  Air flow and air exchanges along with temperatures were alarmed and monitored. Finally, there was a veterinary care clinic that provided lab and care functions such as surgery, clinical chemistry, and histology.

  Animal Care Unit technicians provided routine daily care for all laboratory animals housed in the facility, along with daily observation and provision of food and water. Environmental conditions for each species were maintained, and temperature, humidity, and light cycles modified, as required by experimental design.

  The director of the Primate Research Facility was Dr. Miles Radner, a man in his forties with a Harvard PhD. Kesler hired him after the man made a startling discovery in Indonesia, linking the ancient Denisovans to the extinct Neanderthals. Harry didn’t much care for the man. His pompous and condescending attitude toward his colleagues seemed uncalled for, given the fact the man had not done anything noteworthy since his earth-shattering revelation ten years earlier.

  However, Harry had to admit that Radner had used his notoriety and influence to equip the research facility with the latest in genetic, forensic, and archeological testing equipment. It was a state-of-the-art facility--nothing like it on the West Coast. Besides the usual DNA sequencers, he had managed to equip the many labs with a Solexa Genome Analyzer, a quantitative PCR analyzer, a Galaxy Luminometer, numerous incubators, a mass spectrometer, and a cell sorting system. One recent advance was an enrichment method called whole-genome capture. It involved the use of RNA probes that were based on current human DNA. To eliminate the capture of contaminating DNA, mostly from microorganisms that were invariably present in ancient tissue samples, the RNA probes only bound to small fragments of ancient human DNA. Next, magnetic tags attached to proteins that bound the RNA probes, allowed for the isolation of as much ancient DNA as possible from the limited samples.

  The researchers who developed this particular method reported that they could previously only isolate and sequence about two percent of the ancient DNA available in any given sample. However, using the RNA probe method allowed them to increase their reads to up to sixty percent.

  All in all, the Cal Pacific Primate Research Facility had become a place where brilliant young scientists wanted to work or spend a year doing post-doctoral research.

  And now, with Harry’s discovery that someone at the research facility may have linked the Yeti to modern humans, he needed to unravel the current state of research and find out why he had been kept in the dark by Professor and Dr. Radner. The Yeti were his and Dixie’s discovery after all, and they were responsible for bringing the pair to the primate facility in Nevada. And they had risked their lives, not only with the original Yeti discovery, but also in the expedition to bring them back.

  So his blood simmered as he struggled to analyze the reasons for keeping him in the dark. Kesler’s papers shed no light on why he had not confided in either him or Dixie. There was no indication as to the timeline as to when Professor learned of the possible DNA similarity. It could be recent, just prior to his untimely death. Harry hoped that was the reason for his apparent secrecy. But he needed to uncover the truth for, after all, he was the chairman of the Anthropology Department and the Primate Research Facility was his responsibility.

  Dr. Olson reclined at his desk in his office at California Pacific University that was located on the outskirts of San Francisco. It was a fine office, belonging to his former boss, Julius Kesler, and it offered a magnificent view of San Francisco Bay. Below, a large boat made its way up the channel toward the Palo Alto docks. The sun was bright and Harry felt good.

  He spent the morning with administrative duties, first going over the progress of the department’s graduate students then lecturing to his class in Basic Field Methods. Afterward, he ate lunch with Dixie in the faculty dining room and listened to her explain why one of her students was not doing well in her anthropology class. He feigned interest over their meal together then returned to his office, eager to study Dr. Kesler’s papers once again.

  Harry gazed out at San Francisco Bay. The boat was gone, its long pearlescent wake dissolved in the blue ocean water. He missed the old man as if he were family. His own father was a rude, abusive, drunk who never worked and ranted that Harry would never amount to anything. So, from his first contact with Dr. Kesler, Harry had become enthralled with anthropology and became, after years of dedicated work, a paleoanthropologist. Professor became his surrogate father, in addition to his mentor. It was a complex relationship--teacher, mentor, father figure, friend, and confidant. And Professor treated Harry different from his other students. He was kind but demanding, like a loving father, and Harry responded to the man’s tutelage with a drive and passion for research and fieldwork.

  When the Mongolian expedition became a reality, Professor chose Harry to be the team’s leader. Too old to be scurrying over rough terrain, he allowed Harry to be his eyes and ears on the ground.

  Within a month, they unearthed an ancient Russian airplane containing a box full of bones. As the team worked at uncovering the meaning of their discovery things began to unravel after their encounter with the Yeti. One of the creatures abducted Dixie forcing a change in the team’s priorities--finding Dixie and bringing her back safely. And with the help of the Mongolian authorities, they had been able to do just that. In the process, they discovered a branch of human evolution never thought possible.

  That first expedition had been complicated by his mother’s illness and hospitalization. Her heart required an emergency pacemaker, making her critically ill for a number of weeks. To add to the stress of dealing with her long distance, he was informed of her progress through his estranged brother, Max. Two years older than himself, his brother was the son whom their father loved best, whom their father thought was the greatest, and with whom Harry never spoke. Max worked on Wall Street and boasted an entitled attitude, one condescending to those he met. But through it all, Harry and Max eventually renewed their relationship and his mother’s health gradually improved.

  Once Harry and Dixie returned to the States, Professor, excited by the incredible scientific ramifications, urged Harry and Dixie to return to the Altai Mountains and bring back evidence of the Yeti’s existence.

  At first, Dixie wanted no part of returning to the place where she nearly lost her life but Professor’s gentle pressure and logical arguments, in the end, convinced her to accompany her new husband. It became a harrowing ordeal.

  Mongolia was a large landlocked country between two larger countries--Russia and China. Located on mountains and plateaus, it was one of the world’s highest countries, with an average elevation of five thousand feet. Mongolia suffered temperature extremes, and the huge Gobi desert dominated southern Mongolia. Genghis Khan’s Mongol horsemen conquered much of Asia and Europe during the thirteenth century. Mongolia became a communist country in 1924, but in 1990 multiparty elections were held. Poverty still was a major concern, but copper, cashmere, and gold exports helped the economy.

  The Altai Mountains were a mountain range in East-Central Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan came together, and were where the rivers Irtysh and Ob had their headwaters. In the Mongolic language, the name, Altai, meant the Golden Mountain. Bordering a broad grassland plain, the mountains ranged from two thousand meters to the 4500-meter summit of Belukha, the double-headed peaks that towered over the region. On the east and southeast the great plateau of Mongolia, the transition being effected gradually by means of sever
al minor plateaus, flanked this range. This region was studded with a number of large lakes.

  The people of the Altai steppe were herders, dependent on sheep and goats, cattle and yak, horses and camels. In the present as in the past, families moved in groups about four times a year, in order to seek fresh grasslands and pastures for their animals. In general, the trajectories followed in these moves according with traditions established over many decades. With the aid of his old friend, Semyon Stepan of the Mongolian State Police, who was promoted to the rank of Major and was now Chief Stepan, Harry put together an expedition back to the Altai. Using his former foreman, Cheng, and Abbot Zhing’s information, he and Dixie returned to the original mountain where the Yeti were first encountered. Cheng had been his guide and site foreman, and Dixie hoped that one day the young man and his wife would find their way to San Francisco to live. Back in the mountains after a long, difficult trek that brought painful memories flooding back to Harry, they located a different entrance to the cave system. Using fresh cut hay as bait, they succeeded in luring the creatures out into the open where Harry used a dart gun to subdue and tranquilize two animals. But it was not without a struggle. Sadly, one of the workers had been badly injured when a rope used to bind a Yeti broke, and he sustained a skull fracture.

  The sedated animals, a male and female, were bound then loaded into cages for the transport home. Keeping the creatures alive on the helicopter trip back to Ulaanbaatar was a difficult task and several times the female almost died. Dr. Gerald Siscom, the veterinarian at Cal Pacific’s Primate Research Facility in Nevada, met the team in Beijing where he inspected the animals, then, along with Cheng, transported them to the port city of Tianjin, where they were loaded onto a freighter bound for San Francisco. Harry and Dixie flew home. The creatures were immediately shipped to the Primate Research Facility and placed in quarantine cages until Dr. Siscom deemed them disease-free. Federal inspectors arrived to certify Siscom’s evaluation.

  Except for occasional outbursts from the Yeti, who screamed and rattled their cages with their oversized hands, a pair of graduate assistants assigned to the Yeti and responsible for obtaining blood specimens eventually established a routine. Those times were the most dangerous, for the creature had to be sedated and the assistant required entering its cage and coming into close contact with it. To prevent inadvertent escape, they closed and locked the cage while the assistant drew the blood sample and while Siscom stood by outside the cage with the tranquilizing gun.

  Two graduate assistants were selected to spend a year at the Primate Research Facility doing genetic research. Millie Harbaum and Jimmy Winkleman, both in their last years of graduate studies and needing a research project to finish their doctorate, were living and working at the facility. They were selected after a lengthy process of applications and interviews.

  Harry received monthly reports from the facility director, Dr. Miles Radner, who detailed the progress of the various research projects and the work of the graduate assistants who were under his tutelage. According to the latest report, interestingly, the female Yeti seemed to develop an attachment to Millie, the graduate assistant assigned to her. Millie often came to the unit after work hours to check on her Yeti. Jimmy, the other graduate assistant, didn’t have the same relationship with his Yeti, as the creature growled and snarled each time Jimmy approached its cage. It watched everyone in the cage area with wide, red glowing eyes.

  As Harry sped along the coast on Highway 101, a setting sun provided for a soft golden glow over the bay and its waters turned languid. Dixie was home and it would be good to relax and chat about their day’s activities. He had things to discuss.

  Chapter 3

  Dixie busied herself preparing dinner, one of Harry’s favorites--lasagna. She had made a large pan the previous weekend and put it in the freezer so now she was heating it in the oven. Her teaching and research duties at California Pacific University didn’t leave much time for household chores. Those she relegated to the weekend. Her Anthropology 101 class required a lot of preparation, and she still didn’t have a lot of confidence in her lecturing abilities. Her afternoons were spent in the lab, helping graduate students prepare and restore specimens from the field.

  She grew up on Long Island, in a big house with two servants. Her father was a well-to-do Wall Street banker so she attended Smith College on her father’s money. She took up smoking pot during her freshman year while pledging a sorority and the marijuana led to stronger drugs. Each afternoon, a small group used to snort cocaine in each other’s rooms. She lost interest in college, dropped a lot of weight, and argued with her parents all the time. When she flunked her courses that spring, her father had her tested for drugs and that ended her semester-long party. Reluctantly, she agreed to go into rehab, however, she didn’t excel in the program until tragedy struck. Her younger brother, Bill, was killed in an automobile accident, and the shock devastated her. Bill had been on a pedestal, a special brother. He knew of her struggles with drugs but was never judgmental, although he begged her over and over to stop. He was handsome, funny, and she loved him more than she loved herself. After his funeral, she never ventured out of the house for many weeks. One day, feeling lower than she ever had, she realized no one could help but herself. Bill was right, her downward spiral would only result in her death. Finally, she vowed to begin again in earnest. Returning to Smith on probation, she attacked her studies with renewed zeal.

  The first semester back was the hardest. She struggled with her studies, having to relearn how to learn. But then she made the Dean’s Honor Roll the remainder of her time at Smith and, upon graduation, moved to San Francisco to get away from her parents. She enrolled in the graduate school at California Pacific University. Interested in biology, she elected to study human evolution and anthropology. When she took a course taught by Dr. Olson, she flourished under his patient tutelage. Although she first thought him rude and callous, she later found him to be highly intelligent but shy. For four years, she worked hard writing a doctoral thesis he would be proud of. During those years, and while on the Mongolian expedition, she realized she was in love with Harry. And much to her surprise, he fell in love with her, something she never thought would happen in a million years.

  Since their wedding, she had never been happier. She led an idyllic life--an academic with a great job, married to a wonderful man who cared for her.

  She heard the door open and close and hurried into the living room to greet Harry. He dropped his briefcase on the sofa and plopped into an overstuffed chair.

  “Hi, sweet,” he said. “Something smells good.”

  “Lasagna from last weekend. It’s in the oven. How did your day go?”

  “Got time to talk?” Harry said.

  “Come to the kitchen, honey, while I finish with dinner. We can talk there. And you can grab us a couple of beers on your way.”

  Harry followed his wife into the kitchen, found the beer in the refrigerator, opened them, and sat at the dinette table. The small table was situated in a nook off the kitchen and had a commanding view of the bay. Shadows fell over San Mateo and its docks. He took a long gulp of his beer and watched as Dixie served up the lasagna.

  “So what’s up?” she said, sitting across from him and picking up a fork.

  Harry talked as he ate, speaking between mouthfuls. “Remember I said Professor had papers suggesting that Yeti DNA was linked to modern humans?”

  “Sure,” Dixie said, taking a swallow of her beer. She watched as Harry’s steel-eyes seemed to light up as he talked. “But you never mentioned how.”

  “Comparable to the way Neanderthal DNA is similar to humans. The Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA sequences are substantially different from modern human mitochondrial DNA. Researchers compared the Neanderthal to modern human and chimpanzee sequences. Most human sequences differ from each other by on average eight substitutions, while the human and chimpanzee sequences differ by about fifty-five substitutions. The Neanderthal and modern hum
an sequences differed by approximately twenty-seven substitutions, a much closer relationship.”

  “I suppose so. Harry, you know genetics isn’t my strong suit.” Dixie continued to eat lasagna.

  “But you can understand what I’m saying, right? The Neanderthals are related to us but not exactly like us. And they are closer to us genetically than chimps.”

  She nodded.

  “Well, according to Kesler’s papers, the scientists at the Primate Research Facility sequenced the genome from the female Yeti. It differs from the human genome by only thirty-five substitutions.”

  Harry waited for Dixie to say something and when she didn’t he continued.

  “So the Yeti are farther from human than Neanderthals but closer than chimps. Most likely they are an early form of hominid, not animal primate.”

  “You mean the Homo genus?” Dixie said, now alert and leaning forward.

  “Most assuredly Homo and closely related to the common human ancestor in some fashion. But could be an Australopithecus or Ardipithecus variant, not a Homo. No one knows at this point. One thing is for certain--the Yeti is definitely a hominid.”

  “And Professor had this information?”

  “It appears so, yes.”

  “And he didn’t confide in you? His chief assistant? The man he hoped to take over the department helm when he retired? What do you make of that?” Dixie’s voice turned hard and irritated, her brown eyes flashed sparks.

  “Now, honey,” Harry said, “don’t go getting riled. Professor may have had a good reason, or he didn’t receive the information until just prior to his death. I just don’t know at this point.”