holy grail of astrobiology: LUCA , he wrote on the board, and stood back for a moment to look at the letters. He leaned in again, punched a staccato period after every letter and then underlined the whole thing. He let the chalk fall to the floor and then turned to the class. A girl in the front row raised her hand.
“The Last Universal Common Ancestor?”
“The Last Universal Common Ancestor,” he said.
The Last Universal Common Ancestor: one cell that appeared four or five billion years ago, from which all life on earth is descended. The ancestor we have in common with violets, with blue whales, with cats and with ferns. The cell from which we and the starfish and the pterodactyls and the daffodils originated, DNA mutating and spinning out in all directions over the passage of millennia and becoming elm trees, goldfish, humans, cacti and dragonflies, sparrows and panthers, cockroaches, turtles and orchids and dogs. We evolved from the same cell that spawned the daisy, and Elena had always been soothed by this thought. Two days before the first time she went to see Anton on the mezzanine level, she was waiting in the lobby of an office suite on the twelfth floor of the new World Trade Center 7. She was staring into space thinking of daisies and starfish and birds when she heard her name.
“Elena,” said the investigator, “I’m Alexandra Broden.” She was a calm woman in a gray suit, with extremely blue eyes and short dark hair. Her office had a temporary, rented-by-the-hour look about it, generic photographs of sunsets and black-and-white forests on the walls and two stiff-looking little armchairs by the window, and there was nothing on the desk but a telephone and a banker’s lamp. Broden retrieved a pad of paper and a pen from a desk drawer, sat down in one armchair and gestured Elena into the other. It was no more comfortable than it looked. “Thank you for coming in to see me this afternoon.”
“You’re welcome,” Elena said. It wasn’t at all clear that she’d had any choice in the matter, but she decided not to bring this up. She sat on the edge of the seat, fiddling with the pearl ring she wore on her right hand. The investigator leaned back in her chair and watched her. “I wasn’t sure I was in the right place. There’s no sign on the door.”
“We’re just moving into the space.”
Elena nodded and looked at her ring. Eventually Broden flipped the first page of the legal pad over—it was already filled with notes—and said, “You were Anton Waker’s assistant?”
“I was, yes. For two years or so.”
“Until when?”
“Until just recently. I guess it’s been a couple of weeks.”
“You liked working for him?”
“I did.” Elena had the impression that Broden was writing more words than she was actually saying, but it was impossible to verify this. The notepad was tilted away from her.
“Why?”
“He was nice to me. Most people you work for in your life aren’t.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Broden said, “but I’d like to just get a little more background on you before we move on to Anton. I believe you did a semester at Columbia?”
“I was an astrobiology major.”
“Why did you drop out?”
“It was too much,” Elena said. “I’d never left the Canadian arctic before, and then all of a sudden I was in New York on a full scholarship, and it was just, I guess it was too much all at once. I’m sorry, it’s hard to explain. I was eighteen and I was alone in the city. I did badly in my first semester, so I thought I’d take a semester off.”
“But you never went back, did you?”
“No. I didn’t go back.”
“I see. We’ll just go through this quickly. So you left Columbia five years ago now? Six? And you began working in a restaurant, if memory serves. Was this immediately after you left school?”
“Yes,” Elena said.
“Was the restaurant your first job?”
“I was a waitress in my hometown back in high school. Then I went to
“The Last Universal Common Ancestor?”
“The Last Universal Common Ancestor,” he said.
The Last Universal Common Ancestor: one cell that appeared four or five billion years ago, from which all life on earth is descended. The ancestor we have in common with violets, with blue whales, with cats and with ferns. The cell from which we and the starfish and the pterodactyls and the daffodils originated, DNA mutating and spinning out in all directions over the passage of millennia and becoming elm trees, goldfish, humans, cacti and dragonflies, sparrows and panthers, cockroaches, turtles and orchids and dogs. We evolved from the same cell that spawned the daisy, and Elena had always been soothed by this thought. Two days before the first time she went to see Anton on the mezzanine level, she was waiting in the lobby of an office suite on the twelfth floor of the new World Trade Center 7. She was staring into space thinking of daisies and starfish and birds when she heard her name.
“Elena,” said the investigator, “I’m Alexandra Broden.” She was a calm woman in a gray suit, with extremely blue eyes and short dark hair. Her office had a temporary, rented-by-the-hour look about it, generic photographs of sunsets and black-and-white forests on the walls and two stiff-looking little armchairs by the window, and there was nothing on the desk but a telephone and a banker’s lamp. Broden retrieved a pad of paper and a pen from a desk drawer, sat down in one armchair and gestured Elena into the other. It was no more comfortable than it looked. “Thank you for coming in to see me this afternoon.”
“You’re welcome,” Elena said. It wasn’t at all clear that she’d had any choice in the matter, but she decided not to bring this up. She sat on the edge of the seat, fiddling with the pearl ring she wore on her right hand. The investigator leaned back in her chair and watched her. “I wasn’t sure I was in the right place. There’s no sign on the door.”
“We’re just moving into the space.”
Elena nodded and looked at her ring. Eventually Broden flipped the first page of the legal pad over—it was already filled with notes—and said, “You were Anton Waker’s assistant?”
“I was, yes. For two years or so.”
“Until when?”
“Until just recently. I guess it’s been a couple of weeks.”
“You liked working for him?”
“I did.” Elena had the impression that Broden was writing more words than she was actually saying, but it was impossible to verify this. The notepad was tilted away from her.
“Why?”
“He was nice to me. Most people you work for in your life aren’t.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Broden said, “but I’d like to just get a little more background on you before we move on to Anton. I believe you did a semester at Columbia?”
“I was an astrobiology major.”
“Why did you drop out?”
“It was too much,” Elena said. “I’d never left the Canadian arctic before, and then all of a sudden I was in New York on a full scholarship, and it was just, I guess it was too much all at once. I’m sorry, it’s hard to explain. I was eighteen and I was alone in the city. I did badly in my first semester, so I thought I’d take a semester off.”
“But you never went back, did you?”
“No. I didn’t go back.”
“I see. We’ll just go through this quickly. So you left Columbia five years ago now? Six? And you began working in a restaurant, if memory serves. Was this immediately after you left school?”
“Yes,” Elena said.
“Was the restaurant your first job?”
“I was a waitress in my hometown back in high school. Then I went to
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