by Jerry
Fred Emerson, sitting in the front row, noted the time. At precisely 4:05 P.M. the procession came in from the wings. Though almost everybody wore a white laboratory coat, Emerson recognized Dr. Goldberg at once. The Nobel Laureate, holding the hand of his wife, actually looked like the photographs of him on file. Emerson rushed up to the stage and maneuvered past the entourage toward the center.
“Dr. Goldberg,” he shouted above the din, for a great roar of voices and applause had accompanied the entrance of the scientist. “It’s me, Fred Emerson.” Avrum looked blank. “From last night—the telephone! You remember,” Emerson said with some desperation in his voice. Then Avrum Goldberg smiled in recognition and shook hands with Emerson and introduced him to Ruth. After a brief conversation, Emerson yielded to the stares of the doctors and made his way to his seat.
A tall, dignified man with white hair walked up to the microphone and waited for the room to become quiet. “Is this working?” he inquired of the audience about the mike. Assured that all was in order, he began: “Members of the Press. My name is Edgar Carmichael and I am the Director of New York Hospital. Dr. Hanford—”—he pointed to the stocky man behind him—“is the Dean of Cornell University Medical College and the men and women sitting here are Chiefs of Departments. I have been asked to represent them all on this historic occasion. The awarding of any Nobel Prize is momentous enough but I think that nobody in the field of science is unaware that the achievement of our distinguished Professor of Physiology, Dr. Avrum Goldberg, is unique even among recipients of that highest honor. His contribution ranks among the very foremost achievements in the entire history of medicine. I have obviously ignored Avrum’s request to omit any accolades but I will say no more, other than to voice the sentiments of our faculty and medical staff. We thank God for Dr. Avrum Goldberg. And now, our Nobel Laureate will take over. Avrum.”
There was time-out for picture taking. After introducing his wife to the press, Avrum walked to the wings and induced his three young children to pose with them. As soon as the photographers finished, Ruth returned to her seat and the children returned to their refuge. Finally, Avrum stood alone in front of the microphone. The noise in the crowded auditorium stilled completely, and the silence was almost palpable.
“I think I’ll run this like a Presidential press conference,” the Nobel Laureate announced. “I mean, how many times in your life are you afforded this kind of power?” The ensuing laughter punctured the tension. Avrum waited for quiet. Standing there, he looked terribly young, more like a college athlete than a scientist.
“I have an opening statement—’laughter again—“and then I’ll try to answer any questions you have. To begin with, I am deeply grateful to Dr. Carmichael, to Dean Hanford, and to the entire faculty. This is a wonderful family to be part of. And I am also grateful to the Nobel Prize Committee although I must admit that my life has been complicated by this unfamiliar spotlight. Also, let me make certain that you realize, and this is not perfunctory, that in scientific research, any person receiving credit for his or her work does so really as a symbol for thousands of colleagues in the present and in both the recent past and the distant past. For scientific research is a cooperative venture and progress in the field is made over a very broad and deep foundation. The remarks which follow take into account what I have just said.
The work in which our team has been and is engaged is not based on a new principle. Attempts to fool the cancer cell have been going on since medical research in the cancer field first was started. We are fortunate that the methods we have employed have finally succeeded and that the many forms of cancer are now reversible. I say many forms because I wish to emphasize that we have not discovered the cause of cancer. We do assume that there are multiple causes which may include metabolic changes of aging, viruses and so forth. What we have accomplished is the stymieing of the cancer cell regardless of the factors that caused it to become malignant. We have been able, by gene splicing, to make the cancer cell incorporate, to accept into its structure, a chemical substance which then prevents the cell from multiplying. Cell division, mitosis, of the cancer cell can no longer take place. We have rendered it sterile. Thus we force the malignancy to die out instead of spreading. Of equal importance, normal cells are not affected and their division continues as usual. May I have the first slide, please.”
The lights in the auditorium were dimmed, and Avrum proceeded to show a series of eleven colored slides and give commentary explaining each of them. After twenty minutes, he had finished and the lights were turned on again. Then he invited questions from the audience. The questions, technical at first, were answered with explanations devoid of confusing jargon. Finally, the queries took a more personal direction.
“Have you decided how you’ll spend the prize money, Professor Goldberg?” That from a reporter from Newsweek.
“Not yet,” Avrum answered, “but I can assure you that part of it will be used completely selfishly.” Laughter.
“Will your family accompany you to Sweden for the acceptance?” A New York Times reporter.
“We all hope to make the trip.”
“Do any of your children plan to follow in your footsteps, Doctor Goldberg?” This one from Fred Emerson.
“I hope, Mr. Emerson, that one of them will choose science some day because I know of no more exciting career. But let me tell you their current plans. David, age ten, tight end for the Giants; Philip, age seven, space-shuttle pilot; Anne, age four, mother of two children and President of the United States.”
There were other questions but finally, Dr. Carmichael rescued the Nobel Laureate and signalled an end to the press conference by a simple “Thank you, Avrum.” As reporters rushed to file their stories, Avrum shook hands with the assembled faculty. He spoke briefly with each. When her husband was through, Ruth retrieved the children from their offstage hiding place. Then the Nobel Laureate and his family walked out of the auditorium.
“Therefore,” the Minister of Art concluded, “you see the necessity for cooperative action.”
“It is your opinion that the one in question is the right clay, so to speak?” the Director asked.
“Yes. He is of the right clay. Unmolded, he would spend his days performing menial duties and drinking beer,” the Minister of Art replied. “But with each of our hands applied to this clay, he will serve our purpose. Should they fail to reject him, the aftermath will leave them no doubts that their days of whimsical choices have ended. We will show them, once and for all, that it is by their own hand and by their own hand alone that they will either survive or perish. If, in the face of this aftermath, they elect to carry out business as usual, so be it.”
“I shall give him madness,” the Minister of Health volunteered.
“I shall transform his voice,” the Minister of Rhetoric chimed in and then each spoke in turn once more.
When they had finished, the Director sat back and enunciated the consensus. “We are agreed that there is no other way.”
“I shall begin then,” the Minister of Art said quietly.
The sallow-faced youth walked into the Academy of Fine Arts and entered a small office on the ground floor. Inside the office, a man, obviously not happy to see him, motioned for him to sit down, and began to talk after the youth had complied.
“The results this year are no better than last year. You have again failed your entrance examinations. I must be blunt because really my young fellow, this is the kindest way. You are wasting your time trying to become an artist. You must face the fact that you have no talent, simply no talent at all. Try another field.”
I shall give him early failure.
The youth stared at the older man for several seconds, then stood up and left the room. The place was Vienna. The year was 1908. In 1913, the young man, thinking it was his own idea, travelled to Munich to take up residence. And his madness grew. And his xenophobia grew. And his political power grew in concert with the ability of his voice to stir hatred. And then in
1942, Avrum Goldberg died in an ovum of his mother in Auschwitz and in a spermatozoon of his father in Dachau.
THE TOUCH IN THEIR EYES
Steven Gould
Any talent is potentially valuable—but not necessarily to its owner.
The classroom is small. The child is nine.
His classmates, aged ten, resent him. His teacher, aged fifty, adores him. He is the brightest of his class and, in his youth, flaunts it. On his chest flies the invisible order of “Teacher’s Pet” with double oak leaf clusters. He hands his homework in early and it’s never wrong. He answers every question correctly when called on. He is always first to finish the weekly exam.
He uses five syllable words.
So he was punished.
“Who can list the bones of the leg?” Miss Griggs (oh, how perfect a name, so stringy and wrinkled and humorless) was casting her hook into bored and sullen waters. The child, who had answered every question thus far, showed rare tact and remained silent. Or perhaps his throat hurt. Still, as the silence grew oppressive and Miss Griggs’ eyes settled on him, he scraped back his chair yet again and stood to answer.
(There is a phrase common to westerns and spy thrillers. It goes, “Do you get the feeling we’re being watched?”) A sensation never felt before crawled up the child’s spine and gathered in a tight knot at the base of his skull. His mouth hung open and goose bumps covered his body. His answer and Miss Griggs’ question vanished from conscious consideration.
They were watching him. As intensely as pinpricks, he felt each set of eyes upon him.
Miss Griggs prompted him. “The bones, Johnny?”
He didn’t hear her. He didn’t see her. The air moving across his skin went unheeded and the ever-present smell of chalk dust and disinfectant went unregistered by any part of his mind. All customary sensory impressions were drowned in the flood of this overpowering new sensation. Nothing but the acute awareness of other beings perceiving him reached his beleaguered brain.
“Johnny? Are you all right?”
The sensation increased as Miss Griggs’ sharpened voice directed more of the class’s attention at Johnny. Pinprick intensity became hypodermics stabbing deep. His knees buckled and he fell. When his head bounced off the desk edge, a lancing pain brought the most temporary of reliefs. Then, that welcome normality was smothered as the novelty of his collapse further increased his classmates attention.
He curled into a foetal tuck and started pounding his small fists against his head—anything to distract the intensity of their perception from his mind. And although he drew blood, he barely felt the blows.
His mind couldn’t take it.
His mind wouldn’t take it.
They carried him out on a stretcher still curled in a ball. A small, catatonic ball.
The classroom was small.
The child was me.
Out in the basin a trail of dust wound its way up the old ranch road. At each switchback a windshield flung the morning sun up into the foothills at me. I shifted under the rock overhang and plucked an inconvenient pebble from under my leg. Limestone—upper Permian. I set it softly to the side.
The dust cloud resolved itself into a pair of Chevy Blazers. I cocked my head to one side and listened, but they weren’t quite . . . no, there it was, a growl of low-geared effort coming up the last grade. I stood and moved quietly (always quietly) down the ridge to the end of the road.
Desolation is the face of the moon, the bottom of the Tonga Trench, the heights of the Greenland Ice Cap, and (in the minds of many mistaken people) a desert. Here I stood in the western foothills of the Delaware Mountains, a minor range of twisted rock running north-south in West Texas. It is also part of the North Chihuahuan Desert, a region whose major export is heat transported from its peaks and arroyos by constantly shifting winds.
I love it here.
My Toyota Land Cruiser had a Blazer parked to each side of it, I noted as I neared the flat stretch of gravel at the end of the road. I was stringing my way through a stand of mesquite, not trying to hide, but not stomping my feet either. Voices carried clearly from a group of people stretching the road-worn aches from their bodies.
“My God, what a horrible road!”
“Somebody give me a drink.”
“I suppose this is our expert’s car. Where is our expert?”
When I strode from the mesquite they were looking into the hills, down the dry stream bed, or at each other. None of them saw me walk up and lean against my Toyota.
In the sense of “we shall be three for dinner,” they were six—four men and two women. They were dressed sensibly in boots, khaki, and denim. I hoped they all had hats.
One of the women pointed west. “What is that range over there?” Before the man beside her could unroll his map I spoke.
“Those are the Sierra Diablo, the Devil Mountains.”
I didn’t mean to startle them. Five of them whirled as if I’d lit a firecracker and the sixth one sprayed Coke across the ground.
“Speak of the devil, you must be Mr. Galighty.” The eldest of them, a man of strong grip and greying hair, stepped forward and took my outstretched hand. “I’m Larry Narowitz, the head of this little group.”
I recovered my fingers and smiled.
“Glad you found the place.”
“So are we. This is Tom Gamble, our geophysicist.” A man of about thirty with blond hair and many laugh lines shook my hand. “And this is Robert Stahl, our seismic analyst.” Another handshake, with a man about twenty-five. “Leslie Marshall, our interpreter, and Joe Lindquist, our bang man.” Leslie had hair darker than a raven’s wing, with the same iridescence in the sunlight. Lindquist was nondescript, somewhere between twenty-one and forty-one. Narowitz continued, “And this is Georgette whom everybody calls George Novosad.”
“What do you do?”
She answered seriously. “What everyone else won’t.”
Chuckles all around.
“She’s really our electronics tech,” Narowitz explained. “But we made her leave her soldering iron behind.”
“Good, I didn’t bring any solder.” I indicated a very large pile of trucksized boulders up the hill. “Over there is a great deal of shade. If you’ll carry your gear up that little trail, we can get started.” I looked at the climbing sun. We would all be happier in the shade.
It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be. Like insects crawling over one’s skin. A ladybug or two crawling down one’s arm is distracting, but it is neither painful nor spellbinding. When they looked at me I knew it, but the knowing didn’t disable me as once it would have. I might yet become a social animal.
Why did Lindquist spend so much time watching me while trying not to show it? I was not imagining the intensity with which he watched. Both women also focused strongly on me. They didn’t try to hide it though. Maybe they were interested in me? Maybe Lindquist was gay? Maybe half the rocks in the Chihuahuan Desert belonged in my head.
“I am here because Danforth Geosource has been contracted to do oil exploration in remote regions of three North African nations. You’re here because Danforth feels it’s cheaper to keep a trained employee alive than it is to train his replacement. We have three full days to refine and test your desert survival skills.”
“I thought you would be teaching us those skills,” said Gamble, the geophysicist.
“Not in the sense of spoon-feeding. You will be learning by doing. Did you all read this?” I held up a medium-sized paperback, The Hidden Water: A Guide to Coping In the Desert by J. E. Galighty.
Nods from everyone.
“Good. As a literary effort it ranks just ahead of the Bobbsey Twins, but it will help keep you alive if you keep your head.” I reached into a box and pulled out six small bags. “Take these and open them. The cup is graduated in milliliters. You’ll find three pens in the notebook. Two of these aren’t pens.” I snapped open one of the plastic cases and showed them the glass rod inside. “They’re thermometers. One
’s for ambient air and the other is for body temperature. If you look at the notebook, you’ll see that the pages are set up for the hourly recording of both temperatures and the quantity of water consumed in that period. We’ll also be weighed twice a day with a pair of scales I have in my Land Cruiser.
“There are two excellent reasons for all this rigamarole. First, it will give you an objective measurement of your body’s reaction to dehydration and/or sodium depletion. Second, and most important, it will be good data for my next publication, tentatively entitled, Dehydration: New Directions in Sadism. This is the first time I’ve been paid by my subjects to experiment on them.”
“Okay, Leslie, you’re dying of thirst. The truck broke down three days ago and the radio is on the fritz. You haven’t had a drop to drink since yesterday. Find some water.”
It was the evening of the second day. An achingly beautiful sunset was smeared across half the sky, but I was the only one watching it. Leslie was marching determinedly up a gulley and the other five were right behind her. I stifled an urge to make them sit through the sunset and followed them up the old creekbed.
“Here,” Leslie pointed at the lower edge of a bend in the stream where water would pool when it rained. Stahl and Gamble started digging with collapsible shovels. A meter down, the earth started getting damp.
They climbed out of the hole and George stepped forward with a rolled piece of plastic tubing and a large tin can. She seated the can in the dirt at the bottom of the hole and ran the plastic tubing from the can up the side of the hole and out. Then Leslie and Narowitz spread a two-meter square sheet of plastic over the hole and anchored its edges with dirt. Lindquist waited until they had both backed away before he set a small rock in the center of the plastic. It caused the sheet to dip sharply, forming an inverted cone over the can.