Reunion

by Andrea Goldsmith

  Helen admired their stance, but at the same time she struggled with it. Never to enter a laboratory again, never to grapple with the mysteries of science, never again that blindingly beautiful moment of understanding. She had touched the very stuff of life; in moving genes around she actually changed life. And she found herself resenting those scientists who had taken a stand. No one wants to acknowledge they might be living in bad faith.

  Back in their university days she, Jack and Ava had often debated the elements of a good and proper life, but back in those days there was little in their experience to test their beliefs. Now there was so much to lose. Helen wanted to do science and she wanted it to be the best science. But without acceptable ethical underpinnings, what exactly was the best science and was it possible any more? She suspected that if she could turn a blind eye to the current situation, if she could just ignore the shadowy presences that were working the cogs and pulleys of science, she would.

  She had hoped Australia would provide her with the opportunity to work far from military policy and defence force funds. But everyone in the Western world was so closely connected these days and the reach of the funding bodies so extensive – the frontiers of space were nothing in this scheme of things – that Australia was no more outside the mainstream than the Virginia–Maryland–DC biotechnology hub where her own centre was located. As for research freedom, the same pressures were applied in Australian laboratories as in the US. An Australian scientist she knew, an expert in renewable energies, had recently been transferred to a huge government-funded project aimed at making coal cleaner – and you didn’t need to be a scientist to detect that oxymoron. He had been told by the director of his institute that it was in the national interest, and when he had questioned whether it was in the planet’s interest he had been given short shrift: coal was Australia’s largest export so the government’s decision made sound economic sense. And if he didn’t like the work, the director added, he could find another job.

  Helen did not want to find herself in a similar position.

  As soon as she was checked in, Helen crossed the lobby and exited through the doors directly opposite the main entrance. She needed time alone to settle herself, to silence the doubts, otherwise she risked wrecking the next four days.

  She stepped outside on to a broad terrace and paused in the crisp white air. Stretching before her was a vast sloping lawn; plush and green even in early winter, it was a typical example of the perfect American lawn that makes its English progenitor look shabby. Leading down to the cabins was a gravel path. Helen had walked several metres pulling her suitcase behind her before she noticed the cross-hatch pattern raked into the gravel. It was a geometric wonder. She stopped and looked back at the mess she had made. Off to one side stood an elderly African-American man with a rake in his hand. With an apologetic gesture she picked up her suitcase, stepped on to the lawn and hurried down the slope towards her cabin. At the door she glanced back; the man was already restoring the path.

  She entered a spacious motel-style room with off-white walls, tweedy carpet and good lighting. Adjacent to one of the windows was a pale laminated desk with ergonomic chair and internet access. Off the main room was a bathroom, and out the front a small verandah enclosed by insect screens. Helen unpacked the essentials, the rest could remain in her suitcase. She sent a text to Luke telling him she had arrived, then grabbed her gloves and coat and went outside.

  The clouds were smoothly grey, the temperature low enough for snow. Helen had lived more than half her life in countries with huge winter falls, but still she maintained the Australian wonder of snow. The grounds were large, and except for the lawns and paths, attractively unkempt – perhaps intentionally or maybe just the normal roughing-up of winter. For about sixty or seventy metres in front of her cabin the vegetation was ragged and sparse, then at the bottom of the slope it thickened into an impressionistic forest of evergreen and deciduous trees. Some of the larger trees were draped in a climbing plant that looked like lengths of organza. The woodland stretched away to the horizon.

  She settled in a deckchair on the verandah and rested her head against the canvas; she hoped she might sleep. All these suspicions and dissatisfactions disconnected her from her usual self. She did not know how to think her way out of the dilemmas, to sort through personal desire on the one hand and personal ethics on the other. Never had she felt so confused nor quite so alone.

  She had thought Jack, Ava and Connie would help. But it was as if each of them had accumulated so much life in their own separate spheres that even with the desire to help, and she did not for a moment doubt their desire, it was not particularly effective. As for speaking with her colleagues as she thought she might at this meeting, now she was here she was afraid of revealing problems that might be exclusively hers.

  There was a fat slimy slug squirming on the boards of the verandah. Too cold, too old or just plain lost, it was going nowhere. Helen watched its futile twists and turns, its clueless head raised weakly to the chill air. The slug might just as well be frozen stiff for all the gains it was making; the slug might just as well be her.

  She had risen to go inside when her attention was caught by a solitary figure emerging from the woods at the bottom of the slope. It was a large man, wearing one of those old-fashioned dark blue woollen jackets she associated with revolutionaries and on his head a cap which, as he drew closer, sharpened into a beret. He carried a wad of pages in one hand, the other hand was pushed deep into his pocket. His pace was a stroll; she could hear a faint singing through the still thin air.

  He continued up the slope, passing only a few metres from her cabin. It was Fabian Möller, the keynote speaker at this meeting, so close but not seeing her, his voice quite clear now in a bluesy riff that skittered over his tongue in a caramel-coloured tenor. Fabian Möller, a genius at moving genes around. Fabian Möller, the molecular scissors wizard and one of the giants in her field.

  A great scientist, the blues, the possibility of snow: it was one of those perfect moments that only ever occur without planning. Helen was aware of being privileged to something private and special, enhanced by the voyeur’s frisson of excitement. Enough of these seesawing moods, she told herself. She was at a professional meeting with the best in the world. For the next four days there would be only the rigours and pleasures of science.

  2.

  Möller’s evening address was an exhilarating romp through recent advances in the manipulation of pathogen transmission and durability, followed by a more leisurely account of his own specific research in this area. He possessed that rare gift of showing how discoveries are made, of deconstructing both the inspirational connections and routine moves which produce new knowledge. He was, in short, the true animateur des idées. He would have been a riveting teacher, Helen found herself thinking, and such a shame he no longer taught in the classroom. Although none of them did any more.

  By the time he was finished, Helen was firing with possibilities for her own work. She sailed through the pre-dinner socialising, but as the meal progressed and the effect of Möller’s lecture wore off, it felt more and more as if she were playing the role of Helen Rankin, molecular biologist, and the spontaneous pleasure and energy the real Helen would have experienced passed her by. After dinner, when a number of the delegates produced musical instruments, rather than leave with the other non-musicians, she settled into an armchair in a poorly lit area of the room, grateful for time stripped of demands.

  The concert began with a violin version of Mendelssohn’s ‘Venetian Gondola Song’. Insistent and rocking, the interpretation was quieter, nocturnal and altogether eerier than the usual piano version. Then the Chinese delegate played ‘The Revolutionary’ and another of Chopin’s études with stunning technique and studied emotion. There followed a clarinet and oboe duo that produced the sounds of heaven, should heaven ever be shown to exist, and Josh played a vigorous jazz trumpet accompanied on guitar by one of his colleagues from the CDC. Helen might lack
the musical gift of many scientists and mathematicians but she rarely failed to respond to music’s power. She felt herself loosen and relax.

  When Fabian Möller stood up and walked to the piano, she shifted her chair slightly so as to have a clearer view of him. She had heard he was an excellent musician, so good he might have made music his career. He began with Bach, the E minor prelude and fugue, ‘My favourite of the Well-Tempered Clavier,’ he said, and followed with selections from the G major Piano Suite. He sat erect at the keyboard, a tall substantial man, his head moving with the flow of notes, his face playing the mood of the music. After Bach, he travelled ahead a few centuries to Debussy and Gershwin, and when he was finished, his foot still pressed to the sustaining pedal, he looked up from the keyboard and asked for requests.

  ‘How about some blues?’ Helen said.

  The words just slipped out.

  Someone close by whispered, ‘He’s classically trained, he might not know the blues,’ but Möller had already begun.

  He started with a composer called Coleridge-Taylor. The piece sounded as if Mozart had spent a long and intimate summer with Billie Holiday. He then moved into a hard-edged barrelhouse number, followed by an easy-strolling syncopated jive, and from there to a more traditional lovesick blues freighted with weariness and pain. ‘I love the blues,’ he said, without lifting his gaze from the keyboard. ‘I love the blues.’

  He must have played for close on thirty minutes and stopped as abruptly as he had begun. He smiled at Helen before being swept up by the crowd. A pleasing moment that smile, she thought, as she crossed the room and headed towards the bar. She collected a coffee and settled on a couch in a corner, notebook open and a pen in her hand, happy to mull in the music. No one would disturb her if they thought she was working, her charred nerves cooling, her mind in a slow jive – towards an idea, she realised, an idea that had been flittering just out of reach, and soon she was improvising on it, a notion spinning out of a cluster of recent findings, writing and writing across the pages.

  The coffee was cold when next she looked up. There were a few people gathered at a nearby table but no one was paying her any attention. She browsed her freshly written pages before closing the notebook and slipping it in her bag; she would study the jottings properly when she was back in her room but for now she was content to trace the shape of her thoughts from memory. There was, she decided, an idea to work on here, and was about to add the usual proviso – as long as she had a place to work – when Fabian Möller entered the bar and immediately crossed to where she was sitting.

  He extended his hand. ‘We’ve met before, at other meetings. I’m Fabian Möller.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and wished she had not. ‘And I’m –’

  ‘Helen Rankin,’ he said.

  She was so pleased he remembered her.

  He asked if he might join her. Of course, she said, making room for him on the couch.

  She told him how much she had enjoyed his music, he told her how much he enjoyed her work. She was embarrassed he should acknowledge her work before she did his. Although it quickly emerged there was a reason: Möller had decided to split his time between Europe and America. He was considering three possible centres in the US, and hers was one. He listed the advantages and disadvantages of the other two centres; as for the third, the main attraction, he said, was her.

  He laughed. ‘Or rather, your work.’

  As he talked about his own work in Germany, his future plans, why the move to America was warranted, where he thought precision genetic engineering was heading, Helen was trying to corral her excitement. If she could choose one person in the world she would most like to work with it would be Möller. But should she tell him of her doubts? Should she tell him how her centre was using her work? Should she tell him she had all but decided to resign? What should she tell him, this man who had done more in her field than any other?

  He lowered his voice, speaking without any prompting from her. ‘We think ours is a difficult area. That our work can be co-opted for purposes with which we may not agree. And perhaps this happens, how can a person know for sure? But that is no reason to stop you and me. We are scientists,’ he leaned towards her but did not touch, ‘and the good of our work and the natural good of humankind will, in the end, make sure that what we discover is applied well.’

  It was as if he knew her struggles; perhaps he’d had similar experiences himself. This great man, the best in her field. And again he said how much he would like to work with her.

  ‘What wonderful science we shall do.’

  Throughout the next four days, Helen discussed and debated and problem-solved with her colleagues, all without a trace of the tension of the previous months. The snow did not eventuate, the clouds cleared and a weak sun shone; nothing on earth seemed troubled. As for Möller, with his humour and generosity and the brilliance of his mind, the prospect of working with him excited her beyond compare.

  When the meeting concluded Helen travelled on the bus with him back to Atlanta. Möller overflowed his seat and for the two-hour journey, even though she pressed herself against the window, she was aware of his body against hers from shoulder to thigh.

  ‘It’s hard to believe it’s taken so long for us to meet properly,’ she said.

  ‘But we have known each other for years,’ he said. ‘We have been reading the work of each other for –’ his shrug shot through her body, ‘for ever. And soon, when I join your centre, every day we shall share our work.’

  As to whether she wanted anything more from him, in a less imperfect world she would, no doubt about it. And twenty years ago she would have pursued him with little thought for the consequences. But now she would be sensible, now she would not forget that lovers were far easier to come by than congenial colleagues, and far easier to lose too.

  She flew back to Australia in a vastly different state than how she had left. She had been offered a gift, a life-saver, a new beginning, a clutch of new opportunities. Fabian Möller at her own centre. As the plane descended into Melbourne, the flat brown land shimmering in the summer heat, she only hoped that Luke wouldn’t mind having his Australian sojourn cut short.

  CHAPTER 9: Allegiances

  1.

  Harry preferred to work with his office door open. His door was now shut. The NOGA board meeting was at five that afternoon. He had written his report a week ago, but because of Conrad and Jack the report now needed to be altered. There was ample time to make the revisions, that wasn’t the problem; he was furious that Jack’s hare-brained nonsense and Conrad’s desperate libido required him to do it.

  Harry always knew his wife’s friends were a risky proposition, but given their prominence he believed they were a risk worth taking. Now as he rejigged his report, sifting through euphemisms and obfuscations in an attempt to disguise their stupidity, it was time, he decided, to remind everyone who was in charge here.

  Jack had arrived at the office an hour ago. It was his first appearance in a week and what he thought NOGA was paying him for Harry could not begin to guess. Although there was a slothful side to Jack – or else he never was as bright as people believed. And of the two options, as unattractive as it was, Harry would opt for the former, providing as it did, at least in theory, for the quality of work NOGA expected of him. For the past month or two, in fact, ever since that article appeared – Bondage! What on earth was Jack thinking? – his work had gone to the dogs. He had provided little useful information to anyone, and if his calendar for the upcoming month was any guide he planned to keep it that way. Jack was a master at losing the plot: firstly, his pointless obsession with Ava, and now these navel-gazing ravings.

  Then there was Conrad, nearly sixty years old and throwing away more opportunities than he realised with his ludicrous fling with a twenty-five-year-old. No one would approve vast amounts of money for a TV series fronted by a man of such tatty morals.

  Of the three, only Helen was being sensible, having arrived home from the
Aiken meeting renewed. She had decided to devote herself to the sort of work that had prompted NOGA’s interest in her in the first place, and to advance that work in the most expedient manner, it was best, she said, that she return to America. While she would not be seeing out the full term of her fellowship, she promised to keep NOGA informed of any developments.

  Helen was back on track and travelling with Fabian Möller – an unexpected bonus – and with his career so recently on the skids Jack could be pulled into line. Harry was less sure about Conrad; it was well-nigh impossible to prevent a grown man from making a fool of himself. But Harry had invested far more than just time in NOGA and he would solve these problems. More intractable and of far greater concern was Ava. She was not herself and had not been for months. His wife, who flew when others crept, who plunged where others paddled, seemed switched to low wattage. Several times he had come upon her slumped in a chair just staring at the wall. And she was vague, not with an out-of-step-with-the-moment vagueness which occurred whenever she was inside a new novel, rather a lagging-behind quality, as if she were unable to keep pace with the normal events of a day. His Davey was not herself at all.

  His concern had been so great that this past weekend while she was out walking in the park he had slipped into her study and riffled through the manuscript of her new novel. Never before had he done such a thing but he had run out of options. The draft carried a date from six months earlier, the finished draft apart from some minor tinkering, so she had told him at the time. The pages were now heavily marked, no minor tinkering this, sometimes as many as four different inks on a single page. Some annotations were actually illegible, others were legible but made no sense; none as far as Harry could see improved on the original. The novel should have been in production by now, but it had gone backwards – staggered backwards.