Strong Medicine (58 page)

thought to what you'll do now that you're through at Felding-Roth? I can't

see you staying at home forever."

"No," she said, "I'm sure I won't do that. But as for anything else, I just

don't know. I need time to think-which you're giving to me, darling."

That night they made love, not with grand passion but with a sweet

gentleness in which Celia found peace.

During the several weeks that followed, Celia kept her word about making no

public statement concerning the reason for her departure from Felding-Roth.

Not surprisingly, news of her resignation filtered quickly through the

industry and became known to the business press. There was a good deal of

curiosity, which remained unsatisfied. The Wall Street Journal, Business

Week, and New York Times all telephoned Celia, requesting interviews. She

refused. She also politely turned aside questions from her own and Andrew's

friends.

Only to Lisa and Bruce did Celia confide everything, and that on Andrew's

urging. "You owe it to them," he told her. "The children admire you, just

as I do. They're entitled to know why they can go on doing that. They

should not be left wondering."

It meant special trips, to Stanford in the case of Lisa, and to Pottstown

where Bruce was now in his junior year at the Hill School, and in a way the

diversion was good for Celia. Her days were no longer active and filled.

The adjustment to having more time on her har~ds than she could use did not

come easily.

Lisa was sympathetic but-practical. "You'll find something else

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to do, Mom, and whatever it is will be important. But the best thing that

could happen right now is you and Daddy going on that world tour."

But it was Bruce who, with a sensitivity beyond his years, summed up the

situation best. "If you're comfortable with yourself, Mom . . . if, now

that time's gone by, you're sure what you did was right, that's all that

matters."

After talking with both children, Celia decided that she was comfortable,

and in that mood, in early March, flew from New York to Paris with Andrew

for the beginning of their get-away-from-it-all odyssey.

14

In his house at Harlow, Martin Peat-Smith had gone to bed for the night, but

couldn't sleep. It was Saturday, a few minutes short of midnight, and the

culmination of an exciting, eventful week.

Deciding that sleep would come when it was ready, he lay relaxed and

wakeful, letting his mind roam.

Science, he thought whimsically after a while, could be like a woman who

withholds her favors from a suitor until eventually he is close to giving

up, ready to abandon hope. Then, in a sudden switch of mood, without

warning, the woman capitulates, opens her arms, lets her clothing fall

away, revealing and offering everything.

Carrying the metaphor further, Martin mused, sometimes a whole series of

orgasms followed (wasn't "rippling" the word women used?) as more and more

of the hitherto unknown, and only dreamed of, continued to come clear.

"y the hell, he asked himself, am I doing all this sexual fantasizing?

Answering his own question: You know damn well whyl It's because of Yvonne.

Every time she comes near you in the lab, your mind leaps to one thing,

which might be biology but sure as bell isn't science.

So why haven't you done something about it?

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Why indeed? Come back to that question later.

For the moment, Martin returned to thoughts of his own scientific pursuit

and the truly remarkable progress made since . . . when was it?

Well, the breathtaking, breakthrough part had begun barely a year ago.

His mind went back. To that point and beyond.

The visit to Harlow by Celia Jordan had been two years earlier, in 1975.

Mar-tin remembered showing her films of chromatograms and explaining,

"Where bands appear, we have a peptide . . . you'll see two columns of

dark lines . . . at least nine peptides."

But the problem-insurmountable, it seemed-was that the mixture of

peptides discovered in brains of younger rats occurred in amounts too

small to be purified and tested. Also, the mixture contained extraneous

material, causing Rao Sastri to describe it as "nonsense" peptides.

Attempts to purify the mixture had continued, but results were desultory

at best, seeming to confirm Sastri's view that the required techniques

were a decade or more away.

Among other members of the Harlow scientific team, morale had declined,

along with faith in Martin's basic theory.

It was then, at a time of lowest ebb, that it happened.

After working patiently, using larger quantities of brains from young

rats, they achieved partial purification. Then the new, enriched mix-of

fewer peptides-was injected into older rats.

Almost at once there was a startling improvement in the ability of the

elderly rats to learn and to remember. Maze tests showed this clearly.

Smiling as he remembered, Martin thought of the laboratory maze.

It was a miniature of the mazes in which humans for centuries had amused

themselves by entering, attempting to get out, then becoming lost or

blocked by dead ends before the exit was attained. Probably the world's

most famous maze, created in the seventeenth century, supposedly for

Britain's King William 111, was at Hampton Court Palace, west of London.

The plywood maze in the Harlow labs was a small-scale version of Hampton

Court's, remarkably accurate in detail, and had been built by an

institute scientist in his spare time. Unlike Hampton Court, however, it

was used exclusively by rats.

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The rats, one at a time, were placed in the maze entrance, prodded if

necessary but otherwise left to find their own way out. At the end a reward

of food awaited them, and their ability to reach the food was observed and

timed.

Until the most recent series of tests, results had been predictable. Young

and old rats introduced to the maze for the first time had trouble finding

the exit, but eventually did. However, a second time around the young rats

got out and reached the reward faster, a third time faster still, and so

on.

The young rats clearly learned from each experience, remembering which

turnings to take or not take.

In contrast, the old rats either failed to learn or were much slower than

the younger animals.

Until the injection of the latest peptide solution.

After that, the improvement was extraordinary. When in the maze for the

third or fourth time, the old rats literally raced through it, for the most

part without hesitation or errors. There was now little difference in

performance between the young rats and the old.

As tests continued with the same results, excitement among the watching

scientists became intense. One or two, after a spectacular performance by

an elderly, fat rat, shouted with joy. At one point Rao Sastri wrung

Martin's hand. "My goodness! All along you were right. It entitles you to

say to the rest of us, '0 ye of little faith.' "

Martin shook his head. "I was beginning to lose faith too."

-I do not believe that," Sastri said. "Like the gentleman you are, you are

attempting to make your humbled colleagues feel better."

"Either way," Martin said, delighted himself, "I think we have something

worth reporting to America."

This report reached Felding-Roth in New Jersey at the time when

preparations for launching Montayne were in high gear, and shortly before

Celia's doubts about the wisdom of proceeding with that drug,

Yet even while the report was being reviewed in New Jersey, at Harlow a new

problem was having to be faced.

Despite favorable signals, the latest peptide mix presented difficulties.

Like its predecessor, it was available only in limited amounts. For the

work of further refining, and to identify and isolate the single, critical

memory peptide, larger quantities were essential.

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The route Martin chose to greater supplies was through the production of

antibodies. These would bind with the desired peptide and isolate it. For

that purpose rabbits would be used, since they produced antibodies in large

amounts, more so than rats.

Enter Gertrude Tilwick.

The institute's supervisor of animals, a technician, was a severe,

tight-lipped woman in her forties. She had been hired, fairly recently, by

Nigel Bentley, and until the incident that brought them together, she and

Martin had had little to do with each other directly.

At Martin's request, Miss Tilwick brought several rabbits in cages to his

personal lab. He had previously explained to her that the crude peptide

mixture in an oily solution-an "adjuvant"would have to be injected into the

rabbits' paws-a painful process. Therefore each animal must be held

securely while it was done.

Along with the rabbits, Tilwick brought a small flat board with four straps

fastened to it. Opening a cage, she seized a rabbit and placed it on the

board, belly up. Then, with the creature spreadeagled, she swiftly strapped

each of its legs to the board's four corners.

Throughout, her movements were rough and careless, her attitude

indifferently callous. While Martin watched with horror, the terrified

animal screamed-he had not realized before that a rabbit could scream; the

sound was awful. Then there was silence and, by the time the fourth leg was

secured, the animal was dead. Clearly, it had died from fright and shock.

Once again, over an animal, Martin's rare anger surfaced and he ordered

Tilwick from the lab.

Exit Miss Tilwick.

Martin then sent for Nigel Bentley and informed the administrator that no

one as insensitive to suffering as the animals' supervisor could continue

working at the institute.

"Of course," Bentley agreed. "Tilwick must go, and I'm sorry about what

happened. Her technical qualifications were good, but I didn't check her

for TLC."

"Yes, tender loving care is what we need," Martin said. "Can you send me

someone else?"

"I'll send Tilwick's assistant. If she's satisfactory we'll promote her."

Enter Yvonne Evans.

Yvonne was twenty-five, slightly overweight but cheerful and at-

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tractive, with long blond hair, innocent blue eyes and a milk-androses skin.

She came from a small country town in the Black Mountains of Wales called

Brecon, the locale reflected in her lilting voice. Yvonne also had stunning

breasts and, quite obviously, she wore no brassiere.

Martin was fascinated by Yvonne's ample bosom from the beginning, and

especially when the series of injections began.

"Give me a minute or two first," Yvonne told him. She ignored the strap

board brought to the lab by Gertrude Tilwick and, while Martin waited with

a hypodermic syringe ready, she lifted a rabbit gently from a cage, held it

close to her face and began crooning to it, comforting it, murmuring soft

words. Finally she pillowed the rabbit's head in her bosom and, holding the

lower paws toward Martin, said, "Go ahead."