“Ah, there you are,” said Marion from the doorway. “Cliff and Feng, may I see you for a minute?”
Sandy Glass was in the office, but that didn't surprise Cliff, because it was almost lunchtime. The two of them often called him in these days. They had begun to treat him more like a junior colleague, and less like a glorified student.
“What's up?” Cliff swung himself up and took a seat on the end of Marion's desk, while Feng politely took as little space as possible by the door.
Marion swept the two of them with one of her critical glances. She looked pale, Cliff noticed suddenly, and sad, and fierce. “We've received a request for information from ORIS,” she told him, and passed him a piece of NIH letterhead. “They're auditing the lab.”
Cliff stared at the letter in confusion. The words were right there in front of him, but he could not comprehend them. He passed the letter to Feng. “What do you mean?”
“See, they've named you and Feng specifically,” said Sandy, pointing to the place, “in a complaint brought by Robin Decker, for investigation of possible fraud.”
Feng did not look up. He was devouring the paragraphs before him.
“This is unreal,” Cliff whispered. “Robin did this? I can't believe she'd do something like this.”
“Yeah, good for her,” Sandy said darkly. “I always said she was a go-getter.”
“But what does it mean?” asked Cliff.
“Ha. What does it mean?” Sandy asked with rhetorical flair. “It means that when Robin left the lab she didn't really go away. It means she's fallen in with vicious characters who will use every opportunity to exploit her and her so-called cause.”
“Vicious!” Cliff exploded. “It's a violation. I can't believe she'd do something like this. It's such a violation of trust.”
“And what it means,” Sandy continued, “is that Marion and I are going to have to divert our time to mounting a defense of everything we've done with R-7, during which we'll lose ground on all the progress we've made. It means a public inquest at the NIH and a shadow of guilt on all our work, even while we prove our integrity to our own colleagues in the field.”
Cliff looked at Feng. “Why did she name you?” he asked. Robin had never before directed her suspicions toward Feng.
“That's something I'm curious to find out,” said Sandy. “I suspect it's something Alan Hackett and Jonathan Schneiderman contributed. A general broadening of the complaint to make it appear less like a personal vendetta.”
“Will I be sent home?” Feng asked. His voice was so calm, and in contrast to Cliff's horrified exclamations, the question was so practical, that Sandy and Marion didn't even register it at first.
“Pardon me?” said Marion.
“Could I be sent home?” Feng asked.
“You mean deported? No, of course not,” Marion declared. She spoke with complete conviction, although she knew nothing about deportation, green cards, or student visas.
“Look, enough of the doomsday prophecies,” Sandy said. “Will the audit be unpleasant? Yes. Will an investigation hamper our research? Undoubtedly. But the question is who will prevail, and there is no doubt of that at all. We'll crush them, because we have the results and the documentation to do so, and that's all there is to it. Marion and I have spoken to Peter Hawking and we have his assurance that every resource at the institute will be available to us. Peter is well aware of the situation with Robin. He is very adept with these sorts of claims, and he knows how to fight them.” Sandy wasn't just speaking figuratively here. Hawking knew how to marshal institute funds to fight necessary battles. He was a master of the art of indirect cost, managing and channeling expenditures, even billing grants for legal fees. “He did a terrific job with Akira O'Keefe, for example,” Sandy said. “Peter has, unfortunately, dealt with things like this before.”
Magically, before their eyes, Sandy took up his spear and cudgel and sat before them at his desk in full battle mode. His voice seemed to expand until it squeezed out any doubt or fear in that little room. And it was extraordinary how cheerful he sounded, how his blue eyes sparkled. They'd known his temper and his infectious optimism, but they had never experienced Sandy managing a major crisis. They had not seen him with his patients in the hospital. For a moment, even in their confusion and distress, Marion and Cliff and Feng looked at him in awe. For a fleeting instant they almost relished the thought of following Sandy Glass into battle against the disbelievers and vengeance seekers, the barbarians at the scientific gate.
Still, the shock was terrible. Within the hour, the others in the lab all knew; in half a day, the rest of the institute knew as well. Peter Hawking was said to be drafting a secret memo to ORIS on the subject. Sandy was supposed to have retained the services of Leo Sonenberg, defense attorney to the stars, counsel to indignant politicos and the embattled rich, as well as sometime Harvard law professor. Neighboring researchers on the third floor declared the Mendelssohn-Glass lab in crisis, and techs from other labs came through regularly on little errands upstairs. Aidan, Natalya, and Billie were accosted for information. “No comment,” Aidan tossed over his shoulder as he ascended the stairs. “I know nothing about this,” said Natalya. But Billie described Robin's breakdown in the animal facility to anyone who would listen.
“She started screaming,” Billie told a bunch of researchers in the lounge, “and then I tried to calm her down and she ran away.” Billie sighed. She was only a little pleased by the attention she was getting talking about the situation. Her eyes widened behind her glasses, and her soft graying hair fluttered around her shoulders like a half-blown dandelion puff. Softly, earnestly, Billie let the seeds of new rumors fly. “I think she was really suffering here. It was the animal facility, and especially the mice. She couldn't take it anymore.”
There were those who imagined Robin had grown hysterical, or even suicidal. There were those who began to think Robin had joined forces with Billie to demand an investigation of work conditions in the Mendelssohn-Glass lab. And there were even some who had heard Robin was in the early stages of some kind of class action suit against the institute. There was no evidence for this, except that Glass and Mendelssohn were closeted together in Peter Hawking's office. Successive new speculations chased each other down the corridors and into every stairwell. The Philpott was aflutter with diagnoses, dismay, and glee.
Inside the windowless media room, with the door locked, a breathless Nanette phoned Robin, but only reached her answering machine.
“Call me!” Nanette whispered. “All hell is breaking loose, and I'm convinced you're going to bring the lab down! You sneaky, sneaky girl—why didn't you tell me you were starting an investigation? Call me please and tell me everything!”
But there was no word from Robin all that day, and no explanation was forthcoming.
At lunchtime, Feng walked over to the Harvard bio labs. Softly, he opened the door to the huge, high-ceilinged Krakauer lab, where six postdocs and four graduate students were studying algae. “What's wrong?” Mei called out in Chinese, as soon as she saw him. He never came over so early in the day.
Feng hurried over to her lab bench and answered in Chinese as well. “The government's Office of Research Integrity is auditing our lab. They're investigating me and Cliff.”
Mei gasped. “But why?” Her colleagues were working all around them, but by speaking their own language they were entirely alone, their conversation nothing more than background music or birdsong to the others.
He told her everything that had happened, but he was just as confused as he had been before. He could not quite believe Glass when he said the lab would prevail. Nor did he entirely trust Marion's assurances that he would not be penalized because he was foreign, and a Chinese citizen, at that. And yet, even in his anxiety, the violence of Robin's action overshadowed everything else. To go to the highest authorities and press charges on Cliff's data! She might as well have come into the lab with a knife and ripped Cliff's notes to shreds, and smashed the glas
sware, and seized the poor mice and thrown them against the wall. She sought to destroy her own colleagues' work, their word, their reputation. To do all that, and to spit in the face of her own mentors. What had influenced her to act this way? Whose spell had she come under? “Glass and Mendelssohn think they just added my name to mask the fact she's really after Cliff,” Feng told Mei.
“She must have felt he stole her position from her,” Mei said, thinking aloud. “When Cliff had his success, she must have felt that he humiliated her somehow—because she had been the most senior postdoc.”
“Maybe,” Feng said. “Who knows why she did it?”
Mei frowned. “I'm sure he does.”
Cliff was numb. That strangling paralysis was setting in, the desperation Cliff had vanquished just a year before. His luck had changed again, and despite all his accomplishments, and all Marion's and Sandy's protestations of support, he could not shake the melancholy that crept inside him. He could already sense the fates turning against him, and his good fortune withering away.
Robin had set her dogs on him, and Cliff knew they would not rest until they found some fault. His work had been brilliant, but already he knew the inquiry would tarnish his results. ORIS would broadcast Robin's suspicions publicly. He might dart to left or right. He might escape their grasp, but he would be marked. Already he could hear the world whispering around him. In that respect he was helpless. He was doomed.
At the end of the day, a scant handful of snowflakes floated in the air like dust motes. He thought for a moment of walking down to the river, but this time he didn't want to be alone. He unlocked his bike and began riding home to Somerville, back to his brick building with its ugly wrought iron balconies. The neighbors had strung up Christmas lights, red, green, and gold, spelling JOY, PEACE, and LOVE. He hoisted his bike and carried it up the stairs to the apartment.
“Hey, man,” Prithwish called out, poking his head into the pass-through from the kitchen to the dining area. Cliff's heart sank. Prithwish was on the phone again.
“I'm just ordering pizza,” said Prithwish.
“Oh, good,” he called out, for he'd just that moment realized he was famished. “Thank you!”
“Half pepperoni?”
“Yeah.” Cliff swung his backpack onto the floor and stretched out full length on the futon. “God, I'm so tired. What's to become of me?”
“What was that? Anchovy?”
“No. I said, what's to become of me?” Cliff bellowed, with self-mocking drama.
“Oh, is that all? I thought you were changing the order.” Business concluded, Prithwish came around with a couple of beers, tossed one to Cliff, and sank down into the creaky papasan chair.
“Stop being so damn cheerful,” Cliff said, but he appreciated Prithwish's cheerful manner. “Just because you're getting married and moving out—you don't have to gloat.”
“All right.” Prithwish pulled a long face. “What's to become of you?”
“It wasn't a rhetorical question.”
“Well, I don't really think anything terrible is going to become of you,” Prithwish told Cliff more seriously. “Work like yours is going to stand up.”
“I know, I know—if I ever get to finish it.”
“Oh, come on, we'll keep at it.”
“I feel like we had this one perfect, shining paper, and now all that is going to be tarnished.”
“How can it really be tarnished if it's true?” Prithwish asked.
“Jealousy. Politics.”
“Those are always going to be there,” Prithwish said philosophically. “Those are just part of the game.”
“They shouldn't be,” said Cliff.
“But they are, so you have to get used to it,” said Prithwish. “You can't let it get to you.”
“I just want to keep working.” For the first time, Cliff's voice trembled. He hadn't articulated until that moment how desperate he was to keep moving on the project. R-7 was everything he had, and everything he'd ever dreamed: his life, his future, his contribution.
“You can keep working,” said Prithwish. “You will! We won't stop.”
Cliff rolled over and looked at Prithwish. He loved his roommate. He loved Prithwish's loyalty and his trust in R-7. Prithwish had never been jealous of Cliff's success, or if he had been jealous, he'd never let it show. He'd never begrudged Cliff anything. Someday, Cliff thought, he would repay Prithwish. Someday, when Prithwish needed a good word, or a helping hand, or an antibody shipped, Cliff would jump at the chance to help his old friend. Already his imagination was reviving, and he glimpsed himself, as through a doorway, in a senior position capable of largesse. His mind was still limber, flexible enough that he might be doomed one instant and famous the next. First melancholy, and then sentimental, emotion after idea tumbled over Cliff, because he felt so grateful he was not alone. It was not Cliff alone against ORIS, but the whole lab together, and they would keep the faith. They would prevail.
Marion was sure of this as well. Devout pessimist that she was, she knew her own lab and the results in it. She had only to walk into the animal facility to see R-7 in action. A full sixty-five percent of Cliff's experimental mice were responding to the virus. Their tumors had withered away, and in many animals had disappeared entirely. These were tangible, unambiguous results, and she would defend them against all comers. If only Cliff had kept better records.
Meticulous as always, Marion had set about the task of collating and copying all the R-7 materials for ORIS. She had prepared labeled binders full of notes, and zealously annotated pages of raw data.
Sandy was elated by the reams of evidence Marion had compiled. He saw the papers as munitions piles, neatly stacked as sticks of dynamite. “It's like setting a fuse,” he told Marion in the office. “I just can't wait to fire this stuff off.”
“Hmm.” She frowned as she studied the notes in front of her.
“Why so gloomy?”
“If Cliff's notes had been in order, we would never have had this problem. Aidan's records are a mess as well.” She leaned down on her three-hole punch with all her weight, but she'd jammed too much paper into it. She could hardly make a dent.
“Here, let me.” Sandy cracked the hole punch altogether as he tried to do the job.
“Now you've broken it!” Marion cried, aghast.
“So what? Really, Marion, you're blowing everything all out of proportion.”
“I don't think you realize how bad this is going to be.”
“For us or for them?” Sandy asked.
He won a faint smile for this bravado, but Marion was chastened by the tangled mess of notes she had uncovered. All the paperwork relating to R-7 was rushed, disorganized, and sometimes even fragmentary. She'd spent days piecing scraps together. She had become an archeologist of the recent past.
“Oh, come on, no lab is going to have totally transparent records,” Sandy said. “No one is going to be coherent in the middle of making groundbreaking discoveries. These are private notes here!” He picked up a sheaf of papers in Cliff's handwriting. “They weren't written for submission to some kind of trumped-up interrogation. And you should be careful, Marion, not to organize them so well. You rearrange and annotate them too much, and ORIS will hold that against you.”
She looked up, startled, because Jacob had made exactly the same point a few nights before. He'd added, “Cliff should be the one pulling together his notes, not you.”
“No, ultimately, they're my responsibility,” Marion had told him stoically.
“I disagree,” said Jacob. “You're losing too much sleep over this. You're trying to cover for Cliff when you should be moving ahead.”
“I can't move ahead without defending the work we've done,” Marion retorted, and she said as much to Sandy now, adding, “I have to pull the record together and make it coherent.”
“Just don't make it too pretty,” said Sandy.
“Pretty? There's no danger of that.” She sighed and went back to work, sorting photo
copies into one set of binders, and original notes into another.
“Everything's going to be all right,” Sandy told her softly. “You'll see.”
She looked at him with a mixture of irritation and affection.
“I know you just want to get this over with,” he said.
“Do you know what I want?” she said. “I want the originals of the three pages Robin found.”
“Doesn't Cliff have those?”
“He thought he did, but somehow they've disappeared. We have several sets of photocopies and no originals. This is what I'm dealing with, Sandy, so don't tell me everything's all right.”
“Going to be all right.”
“Ah, so you admit things are not exactly going well right now.”
“I admit nothing. I have nothing to hide, and nothing to declare,” said Sandy, “and neither should you. Stop acting guilty when you're not. Stop dreading everything when you have nothing to fear.” He took Marion gently by the shoulders, as if to shake the self-criticism and second-guessing right out of her. “Buck up.”
Despite herself, she felt a little better to hear Sandy speak this way. He had such complete faith in their work and in her that she might have given up her own agnosticism if he could have produced the originals of those three pages. She had hunted for them, and Feng had searched. Cliff had spent the greater part of a day looking for them, but they were nowhere to be found.
4
THEY DIDN'T look like monsters. Their whiteboard was covered with jottings and sketches, their office filled with academic journals and squat computer monitors and dead plants, just as if Hackett and Schneiderman were really scientists, and not creatures gone over to the dark side, as Larry and Wendy had suggested. They were big men, but big in different ways. Alan Hackett was in his sixties, well over six feet tall, but baby-faced and gangly. His brown hair was cut boyishly and his ears stuck out. His blue eyes were oversize as well, as if to make him extra-alert. He chewed gum constantly, working his bony jaw as he talked so that he chewed his words, and then slowly drew them out again to examine and even laugh at, as if his ideas were half-ridiculous, ripe for cracking. Jonathan Schneiderman, on the other hand, was perhaps fifty, barrel-chested, entirely bald, with a full beard. His arguments were detailed and rapid, and all his sentences punctuated with an earnest resonance.
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