Strong Medicine (44 page)

wood was dirty. Air conditioning removed airborne impurities. Lighting was

bright without glare. A pair of incubation rooms housed massive glass-faced

incubators, specially designed to hold racks of petri dishes containing

bacteria and yeast. Still other rooms had double-entry doors with "Danger:

Radiation Hazard" signs outside.

The contrast to the Cambridge laboratories that Celia had visited

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with Martin was startling, though a few familiar things remained. One was

paper-a prodigious quantity piled high and untidily on desks, Martin's in

particular. You could change a scientist's background, she thought, but

not his work habits.

As they moved away from the bench and the chromatograms, Martin continued

explanations.

"Now that we have the RNA, we can make the corresponding DNA . . . then

we must insert it into the DNA of living bacteria . . . try to 'fool' the

bacteria into making the required brain peptide . . . "

Celia attempted to absorb as much as she could at high speed.

Near the end of their inspection, Martin opened a door to a small

laboratory where a white-coated, elderly male technician was confronting

a half-dozen rats in cages. The technician was wizened and slightly

stooped, with only a fringe of hair surrounding his head, and wore

old-fashioned pince-nez secured by a black cord worn around the neck.

Martin announced, "This is Mr. Yates, who is about to do some animal

dissections."

"Mickey Yates." He extended his hand. "I know who you are. Everybody

does."

Martin laughed. "That's right, they do." He asked Celia, "May I leave you

here for a few minutes? I have to make a phone call."

"Of course." When Martin had gone, closing the door behind him, she told

',,ates, "If it won't bother you, I'd like to watch."

"Won't bother me at all. First, though, I have to kill one of these

little buggers." He motioned to the rats.

With quick, deft movements, the technician opened a refrigerator and,

from the freezing compartment, took out a smallish, clear plastic box

with a hinged lid. Inside was a slightly raised platform with a tray

beneath containing crystalline material from which wisps of evaporation

rose. "Dry ice," Yates said. "Put it in there just before you came."

Opening one of the cages, he reached in and expertly grasped a large,

squirming white-gray rat which he transferred to the plastic box, then

closed the lid. Celia could now see the rat, on the small platform

inside.

"Because of the dry ice, in there it's a CO, environment," Yates said.

"You know what that means?"

Celia smiled at the elementary question. "Yes. Carbon dioxide is what we

all brzathe out after we've used the air's oxygen. We couldn't live on

it."

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"Nor ~an chummy there. He's just about a goner."

While they watched, the rat jerked twice, then was still, A minute

passed. "He's stopped breathing," Yates said cheerfully. After another

thirty seconds he opened the plastic box, removed the unmoving creature

and pronounced, "Dead as a doornail. But it's a slow way to do it."

"Slow? It seemed quick to me." Celia was trying to remember how rats were

killed during her own laboratory days, but couldn't.

"It's slow when you've got a lot to do. Dr. Peat-Smith likes us to use

the CO, box, but there's another way that's faster. This one." Yates

reached down. Opening a cupboard beneath the lab bench, he produced a

second box, this time metal. The design differed from the first in that

one end of the box had a small round aperture cut into it while

immediately above was a hinged, sharp knife. "This here's a guillotine,"

Yates said, still cheerfully. "The French know how to do things."

"But messily," Celia responded. Now she remembered; she had seen rats

killed in a similar kind of device.

"Oh, it ain't that bad. And it's fast." Yates glanced over his shoulder

at the closed door, then, before Celia could object, he took a fresh rat

from a cage and swiftly thrust it in the second box, its head protruding

through the round hole. As if slicing bread, he pushed the hinged knife

down.

There was a soft crunching sound, another which might have been a cry,

then the rat's head fell forward as blood spurted from arteries in the

severed neck. Celia, despite her familiarity with laboratories and

research, felt sick ,

Yates casually tossed the rat's body, still bleeding and twitching, into

a trash receptacle and picked up the head. "All I have to do now is

remove the brain. Fast and painless!" The technician laughed. "I didn't

feel a thing."

Angry and disgusted at once, Celia said, "You did not have to do that for

me!"

"Do what?" It was Martin's voice behind her. He had come in quietly, and

now took in the scene. After a moment, and with equal quietness, he

instructed, "Celia, please wait outside."

As Celia left, Martin was glaring at Yates and breathing heavily.

While she waited, through the intervening door she heard Martin's angrily

raised voice. "Don't ever again! . . . not if you want to go on working

here . . . my orders, always to use the CO, box which is painless, no

other wayl . . . get that other monstrosity

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out of here o:- break it up . . . I will not have cruelty, do you

understand?"

She heard the voice of Yates saying weakly, "Yessir."

When Martin emerged, he took Celia's arm and escorted her to the conference

room where they were alone, a thermos jug of coffee between them, from

which Martin poured.

"I'm sorry that happened; it shouldn't have," he told her. "Yates got

carried away, probably because he isn't used to having an attractive woman

watch him at work-at which he's very good, incidentally, and it's the

reason I brought him here from Cambridge. He can dissect a rat's brain the

way a surgeon would."

Celia said, her mild annoyance past, "It was a small thing. It doesn't

matter."

"It matters to me."

She said curiously, "You care about animals, don't you?"

"Yes, I do." Martin sipped coffee, then said, "It's impossible to do

research without inflicting some pain on animals. Human needs come first,

and even animal lovers have to accept that. But the pain should be kept to

a minimum, which you ensure by an attitude of caring; otherwise it's all

too easy to become callous. I've reminded Yates of that. I don't think

he'll forget."

The incident made Celia like and respect Martin even more than before. But,

she reminded herself, likes or dislikes must not affect her purpose here.

"Let's get back to your progress," she said briskly. "You've talked about

differences in the brains of young and old animals, also your plans to

synthesize a DNA. But you haven't yet isolated a protein-the peptide you're

looking for, the one that counts. Correct?"

"Correct." Martin gave his swift, warm smile, then continued confidently..

"What you just described is the next step, also the toughest. We're working

on it, and it will happen, though of course it all takes time."

She reminded him, "When the institute opened, you said, 'Allow me two

years.' You expected to. have so mething positive by then. That was two

years and four months ago."

He seemed surprised. "Did I really say that?"

"You certainly did. Sam remembers. So do L"

"Then it was reckless of me. Working, as we are here, at the fronti--r of

science, timetables can't apply." Again Martin seemed untroubled, yet.

Celia detected strain beneath the surface. Physi-

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cally, too, Martin seemed out of condition. His face was pale; his eyes

suggested fatigue, probably from long hours of work; and there were lines

on his face which had not been there two years ago.

"Martin," Celia said, "why won't you send progress reports? Sam has a

board of directors he must satisfy, and shareholders

11

T he scientist shook his head, for the first time impatiently. "It's more

important that I concentrate on research. Reports, so much writing and

paperwork, take up valuable time." He asked abruptly, "Have you read John

Locke?"

"At college, a little."

"He wrote that man makes discoveries by 'steadily intending his mind in a

given direction.' A scientific researcher must remember that. "

Celia abandoned the subject for the time being, but raised it later that

day with the administrator, ex-Squadron Leader Bentley, who suggested a

different reason for the absence of reports.

"You should understand, Mrs. Jordan," Nigel Bentley said, "that Dr.

Peat-Smith finds it excruciatingly difficult to put anything in writing. A

reason is that his mind moves forward so quickly that what was important to

him yesterday may be out of date today, and even more so tomorrow. He is

actually embarrassed by things that he wrote earlier-two years ago, for

example. He sees them as nalve even though, at the time, they may have been

incredibly perceptive. If he could have his way, he'd wipe out everything

he's written in the past. It's a trait not uncommon in scientists. I've

encountered it before."

Celia said, "Tell me some more things I should know about the scientific

mind." They were sharing the privacy of Bentley's modest but neatly

organized office where Celia was having increasing respect for this

competent, sparrowlike man she had chosen to run the research institute's

business side.

Nigel Bentley considered,.then began, "Perhaps the most important thing is

that scientists stay so long in the educational process, become so involved

in their chosen, sometimes narrow, specialties, that they come to the

realities of everyday life much later than the rest of us. Indeed, some

great scholars never come to grips with those realities at all."

"I've heard it said that they stay, in some ways, childlike."

"Precisely, Ws. Jordan, and in certain areas very much that

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_ way. It's why one sees, so often, childish behavior in academic

circles-petty squabbles and the like, over trivial issues."

Celia said thoughtfully, "I would not have thought any of that was true

of Martin Peat-Smith."

"Possibly not, within those specific limits," Bentley acknowledged. "But

in other ways."

"Tell me."

"Well, something Dr. Peat-Smith has great trouble with is small

decisions. Some days, as one might put it, he can't decide which side of

the street to walk on. As an example, he agonized for weeks over which

one of two technicians we employ should have preference in going on a

three-day course in London. It was a minor matter, someilling you or I

would have decided in a few minutes and, in the end, because my superior

couldn't reach a decision, I made it for him. All this, of course, is in

total contrast to Dr. PeatSmith's mainstream purpose-his scientific

clarity and dedication."

"You're making several things much clearer," Celia said. "Including why

Martin hasn't sent reports."