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Authors: Christopher Forrest
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lower lip quivered.
“Is it true?” she asked. “People are starting to talk. Is he really dead?”
Madison nodded grimly. “I’m afraid so.”
Fresh tears welled in Grace’s eyes. She reached out to Madison. He held her tightly as she cried.
“I can’t believe this is happening.”
Grace stepped back from Madison’s embrace and smoothed the wrinkles in her white linen shirt. She wiped at her eyes with the flat of her hand.
“They want to talk to you,” said Madison.
“Who does?”
“Giovanni. And Crowe. They want to know what Dr. Ambergris was working on. I told them as much as I knew. Which wasn’t much,” said Madison.
Grace bit her lower lip. “He didn’t want anyone to know. At least not until tomorrow.”
“Giovanni thinks someone may have been after his research.”
Madison related the substance of his conversations with Giovanni and Crowe. Grace’s hands trembled.
“I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “Dr. Ambergris made a big breakthrough,” she said. “He was going to announce it at the Biogenetics Conference.”
“Tell me,” said Madison.
Twenty-one
Dr. Christian Madison’s Office
34th Floor, Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York
She took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled.
“I don’t know everything,” she said. “Dr. Ambergris kept a lot of his work to himself.”
Madison rolled his eyes.
“You may think I was Ambergris’ new golden child, but that’s just not true. Sure, I worked with him a lot, but Ambergris kept me at arm’s length. He was very secretive. Almost obsessively so.”
Madison was silent.
“Why don’t you believe me?”
“Okay,” he said. “For the sake of argument, let’s say I believe you.”
Grace sat on the edge of Madison’s desk. For a moment she seemed lost in thought.
“I don’t suppose it matters anymore,” she said finally. “This is what I know. Dr. Ambergris planned to announce his discovery during our presentation at the Biogenetics Conference. His research clearly shows that certain introns in human DNA follow Zipf’s law.”
“Zipf’s law?”
“Yes. It’s a statistical pattern common to all human languages. All languages follow what linguists call Zipf’s law.”
“I’ve never heard of Zipf’s law,” said Madison.
“I hadn’t either. It’s an odd concept, but it’s not that hard to understand. If you take any book, written in any language, you can see Zipf’s law at work. Count the number of times each word appears in the book. You might find that the most frequently recurring word is ‘the,’ followed by the second most recurring word, ‘of.’ The least common word might be xylophone, which appears only once in our imaginary book.”
Grace picked up a yellow notepad and pen from Madison’s desk. Flipping to a blank page, she drew a graph with a straight line running from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the graph.
“If you plot this data on a graph, with the frequency of recurrence on one axis and the ranking of the word according to its frequency on the other axis, you get a perfectly straight line.”
Grace pushed several strands of fine black hair behind her ear, then continued.
“This straight line will appear for every human language, whether it’s English, Chinese, Greek, or Swahili. If you try and perform the same analysis on a bunch of randomly generated characters, you just get a chaotic-looking graph—no order at all. The Zipf’s law pattern shows up only for human languages.”
“But if that’s true…if Zipf’s law only applies to human languages…”
“Yes,” said Grace. “The logical conclusion is inescapable. It’s the revelation of a lifetime. Of a hundred lifetimes. Think about this for a moment. If genetic sequences in human DNA follow Zipf’s law, then the human genome, or at least part of it, hides some form of language.”
“That can’t be…” said Madison.
“I know it seems impossible to believe,” said Grace, “but Dr.
“Is it true?” she asked. “People are starting to talk. Is he really dead?”
Madison nodded grimly. “I’m afraid so.”
Fresh tears welled in Grace’s eyes. She reached out to Madison. He held her tightly as she cried.
“I can’t believe this is happening.”
Grace stepped back from Madison’s embrace and smoothed the wrinkles in her white linen shirt. She wiped at her eyes with the flat of her hand.
“They want to talk to you,” said Madison.
“Who does?”
“Giovanni. And Crowe. They want to know what Dr. Ambergris was working on. I told them as much as I knew. Which wasn’t much,” said Madison.
Grace bit her lower lip. “He didn’t want anyone to know. At least not until tomorrow.”
“Giovanni thinks someone may have been after his research.”
Madison related the substance of his conversations with Giovanni and Crowe. Grace’s hands trembled.
“I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “Dr. Ambergris made a big breakthrough,” she said. “He was going to announce it at the Biogenetics Conference.”
“Tell me,” said Madison.
Twenty-one
Dr. Christian Madison’s Office
34th Floor, Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York
She took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled.
“I don’t know everything,” she said. “Dr. Ambergris kept a lot of his work to himself.”
Madison rolled his eyes.
“You may think I was Ambergris’ new golden child, but that’s just not true. Sure, I worked with him a lot, but Ambergris kept me at arm’s length. He was very secretive. Almost obsessively so.”
Madison was silent.
“Why don’t you believe me?”
“Okay,” he said. “For the sake of argument, let’s say I believe you.”
Grace sat on the edge of Madison’s desk. For a moment she seemed lost in thought.
“I don’t suppose it matters anymore,” she said finally. “This is what I know. Dr. Ambergris planned to announce his discovery during our presentation at the Biogenetics Conference. His research clearly shows that certain introns in human DNA follow Zipf’s law.”
“Zipf’s law?”
“Yes. It’s a statistical pattern common to all human languages. All languages follow what linguists call Zipf’s law.”
“I’ve never heard of Zipf’s law,” said Madison.
“I hadn’t either. It’s an odd concept, but it’s not that hard to understand. If you take any book, written in any language, you can see Zipf’s law at work. Count the number of times each word appears in the book. You might find that the most frequently recurring word is ‘the,’ followed by the second most recurring word, ‘of.’ The least common word might be xylophone, which appears only once in our imaginary book.”
Grace picked up a yellow notepad and pen from Madison’s desk. Flipping to a blank page, she drew a graph with a straight line running from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the graph.
“If you plot this data on a graph, with the frequency of recurrence on one axis and the ranking of the word according to its frequency on the other axis, you get a perfectly straight line.”
Grace pushed several strands of fine black hair behind her ear, then continued.
“This straight line will appear for every human language, whether it’s English, Chinese, Greek, or Swahili. If you try and perform the same analysis on a bunch of randomly generated characters, you just get a chaotic-looking graph—no order at all. The Zipf’s law pattern shows up only for human languages.”
“But if that’s true…if Zipf’s law only applies to human languages…”
“Yes,” said Grace. “The logical conclusion is inescapable. It’s the revelation of a lifetime. Of a hundred lifetimes. Think about this for a moment. If genetic sequences in human DNA follow Zipf’s law, then the human genome, or at least part of it, hides some form of language.”
“That can’t be…” said Madison.
“I know it seems impossible to believe,” said Grace, “but Dr.
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