A Tangled Web (43 page)

“Yes. I'd be very happy if you owned Ambassadors. The price is one million pounds.”

Alexandra burst into laughter. “You don't waste time,
do you? You even converted the money into pounds. That's without the inventory?”

“With the inventory.”

“Then you're cheating yourself.”

“I don't know the market in London these days. If you think I've cheated myself when you sell the pieces in the shop, send me half the purchase price. Then you're on your own.”

“Honey, am I missing something? You've got it all thought out. Did you know I was going to do this? How could you?”

“I didn't know, but I think it's wonderful. You're right: I didn't want to sell to a stranger. I feel the same way about my house, but that probably—”

“Yes, Sidney told me about the house. I don't need it; I have my own and you made it so wonderful I wouldn't give it up. But I have some friends who are looking for a place; would you mind if I told them about it?”

Sabrina felt a moment of panic. It was all being taken from her. She had thought it would be a slow process, interviewing people, checking references, cataloguing inventory, all giving her time to let go slowly, to say farewell to what she had been. Now it was being snatched away from her and instinctively she put out a hand to hold it back.

But I don't want to.
And as soon as she thought it, her panic was gone; her reluctance vanished. “That would be fine,” she said. Her hand was still out and she put it on Alexandra's arm, and then they were holding each other, and both of them were thinking about Sabrina Longworth. “Thank you,” she said at last. “I thought it would be so hard to do all that, cut the ties and turn my back on it . . . but this way it's almost like keeping it in the family. Do you think we could do all the paperwork by September? I'd like to have it done by my birthday.”

“The nineteenth, right? Well, why not? Even lawyers ought to get through the paperwork in six weeks.” She stood up and went to the small bar in the corner of the
room and, as casually as if she were, in fact, a member of the family, she poured two glasses of port. “I'd like to drink to that.”

“Yes. And to more visits. Would you come to Chicago again?”

“Honey, Antonio believes there are two places in the world: Brazil and Europe. Why don't you come to see me? I'm in Paris a lot; I'll be in London more than ever now; and we just bought a house in Provence, between Cavaillon and Gordes. You'd be welcome; you and your family. Oh, what a great idea! The kids would love it. Say you'll come. Not now; it's too hot. But in the fall . . .”

“I'll talk to Garth. He has to be at the Hague in October and we're going to be in Paris for a week after that, just the two of us. We might come to Provence for a couple of days; we'll talk about it.”

The telephone rang and Sabrina looked at her watch in surprise. “Ten o'clock; maybe Penny wants to come home early. Excuse me.”

When she answered it, Garth's voice was hurried, abstracted. “I have to stay later than I'd expected. Can you get Penny?”

“I don't like to leave Cliff alone.”

“I thought Alexandra would still be there.”

“Garth, what is it? What's wrong?”

“I'm not sure yet. I'll tell you about it when I get home.”

“Is it Lu's paper?”

“It may be.
Is
Alexandra still there? Can she stay while you get Penny?”

“I'm sure she will. I'll take care of it, Garth. And I'll wait for you.”

“I'll be home as soon as I can. I love you.” Garth hung up and turned back to his desk, where the neatly printed pages of Lu's paper, with perfectly spaced paragraphs, formulas, and footnotes, were spread out before him.

Lu had been working for two years to find a way to produce mice with rheumatoid arthritis identical to that in
humans so that scientists could rapidly test new treatments to alleviate and cure arthritis. To do this he had begun with a person who had rheumatoid arthritis, and isolated and removed genes that controlled the formation of joint tissue. Once the genes were isolated, he cloned them, collected fertilized mouse eggs and injected the cloned genes into the eggs, and then transferred the eggs to the oviduct of a foster mother mouse.

He went through the same procedure with the same person to isolate and remove genes that produced lymphocytes that attacked the joint tissue, causing arthritis. When he had two strains of mice with the two kinds of genes, he mated them. His theory was that their progeny would have rheumatoid arthritis identical to that of humans.

Garth had worked with Lu on his program of isolating and cloning the genes, and of producing two strains of mice that could be mated. They had celebrated together when Lu succeeded in producing a mouse with the gene that controlled the formation of human joint tissue. But after that Lu had withdrawn into the harder part of the project: producing a mouse with the gene with instructions for producing lymphocytes that would attack joint tissue.

And I was busy with the institute, Garth thought, hunched over the papers on his desk. And with my wife. And for a year I haven't paid enough attention.

He had thought from the beginning, two years earlier, that Lu would find it was not a single gene that controlled the development of lymphocytes, but two, perhaps more, which would complicate the project even further. But Lu had created his transgenic mice—mice with foreign genes—with a single gene controlling the development of joint tissue and a single gene controlling the development of lymphocytes. That was the reason Garth thought Lu had taken such a giant step forward.

But something nagged at him as he read the paper. He remembered other experiments with lymphocytes that had been ambiguous as to the number of genes involved; he recalled conversations with other researchers who said
there had to be several genes, and papers that concluded there was much still to be learned.

But Lu's paper, elegantly constructed, said the issue was resolved.

Well, hallelujah, Garth had thought since Lu had told him. But beneath the celebrating, questions remained, and they became insistent in the silence of his office in the empty Molecular Biology Building at nine o'clock on a Friday night. And so, after reading the paper a third time, he reached for the telephone to call his friend Bill Farver. Seven o'clock in San Francisco, he thought; probably still at work. He called Farver's office at Farver Labs and found him there. “I thought you'd like to be the first to know that Lu Zhen says he's done it. I'm going over his paper now.”

Farver's voice rumbled over the telephone, sounding as if he were in the next office. “Transgenic progeny with human rheumatoid arthritis? Garth, that's fantastic. Hats off; a hundred hats off. Of course I'm crushed; I don't like coming in second.”

“How close are you?”

“Well, we're having trouble with the second gene for the lymphocytes; I don't know how long it'll be. I'd like to see Lu's paper; see how he did it.”

Garth stared into the dark corners of his office. He and Farver had not talked about details; in a real sense they were competitors and only now, when he thought this part of the race was won, had Farver been so specific. “What have you tried?” he asked casually.

They compared notes on experimental techniques, Lu's and Farver's and others in Farver's lab, and then Farver said, “I just don't see how he did it, Garth. Two of my researchers swear there has to be a second gene, that there's no way you could end up with rheumatoid arthritis in a mouse with only one gene; you've got to have both. ‘Course that's not the word of God from Jerusalem, but they've done a hell of a lot of work on this and I'm
inclined to think they're right. Have you checked out Lu's work?”

Garth started to snap that of course he had; that that was his job as Lu's advisor and the director of his postdoctoral research project . . . but he got no further than opening his mouth. He hadn't checked out Lu's research as it progressed. He'd been busy, he'd trusted Lu, and he'd wanted him to succeed. “I'll look at it again,” he said.

“Your name is on Lu's paper, right? Have you sent it anywhere?”

“No. I wasn't ready.”

“Good thing. I always knew caution deserved more credit than we usually give it. Listen, let me know what you find, will you? If he's right, if we've missed something here, you could help get us back on track.”

“You'll hear from me. And, Bill, thanks. I appreciate your sharing all this.”

He gathered the pages of Lu's paper together and absently squared the corners. If Farver was right, the progeny of Lu's transgenic mice would be perfectly healthy: no sign of rheumatoid arthritis. Their parents would have had the gene for producing joint tissue, but they wouldn't have had two genes for lymphocytes. And therefore . . .

He left the light on in his office and walked through the building to Lu's laboratory. The mice slept or scampered or sat meditatively as he moved past them, reading the labels on their cages. When he found the ones he wanted, he drew blood from the tails of five of them and took the samples one floor down, to the testing lab. He glanced at his watch as he placed the test tubes in an agitator. Almost ten. He wouldn't be finished in time to get Penny. He called home from the telephone on the wall, gazing at the test tubes as he listened to Sabrina's voice and pictured the two women in the library, curled up on the couch, comparing lives, reminiscing.

“I'll take care of it, Garth. And I'll wait for you.”

“I'll be home as soon as I can,” he said. “I love you.” His thoughts were on the test tubes, shining at him, light
from the ceiling fixtures flashing off the glass and the bright red fluid as the agitator tilted the tubes up and down, like a playground seesaw.

He put the blood into the analyzer, then stood at the computer printer, waiting. A watched printer never prints, he thought, and strolled around the lab, stretching his neck, clenching and opening his fists. He did not come here often, though in his student days and the early days of his teaching at Columbia he had spent as much time analyzing blood as had all the other researchers. I'm getting away from the real work, he thought, and there isn't anything I can do about it. Not if I want to run an institute and advise students. And pay more attention to them than I've paid to Lu in the past year.

He heard the printer start up and he crossed the room to watch the paper roll from the machine. The columns of numbers printed out, one slow line at a time. And even before the printer stopped, even before he tore the page at its perforations to take it back to his office, Garth knew that the blood samples showed no sign of arthritis, or of any disease. The mice were healthy . . . and Lu's paper was a fraud.

S
tephanie heard a key turn, the front door open and close, the key locking it again, and she pictured Jacqueline walking into the coolness of the shop from the July heat on the cours Gambetta, adjusting a vase here, a lamp there as she approached the back room.

“Good morning, did you have a pleasant weekend?” Her voice seemed preoccupied. “Did you and Max do something exciting?” She opened a closet in the corner and exchanged her walking shoes for high heels. “You're very quiet, my dear. Is something bothering you?”

“Yes.”
This is not between you and Jacqueline; it is between Jacqueline and me.
She heard Léon's voice, felt his arms around her in the cool forest clearing where they had made love. But it had been four days since then, with a weekend in between, and she could not stand it any longer; she had to talk to Jacqueline. Because it is between us, she thought, and she and Léon must have been together this weekend, and I can't go on pretending everything is the same, because nothing is.

“Well, then, we must talk about it.” Jacqueline sat on
the edge of the table and reached out to put her arm around Stephanie.

“No, wait, please. I have to tell you . . . I thought, this weekend, you might have . . . you would have seen . . .”

“I was not here. I was in Paris from Friday afternoon to late last night. What would I have seen if I had been here?”

“Léon.”

Jacqueline's body stilled, as if poised to listen, perhaps to flee. “So.” Her voice was a murmur. “I did not guess it was you.”

“What do you mean? You said you weren't here; you didn't talk to him.”

“But he came to my house on Saturday and when he found I was gone he left flowers and a letter. I did not open the letter; it was late when I returned and I was tired and I left it for this evening. Because when a man leaves flowers and a letter, my dear, it means only one thing. Come now, don't hide your face; let me look at you.”

Stephanie met her eyes. “I didn't know. And then he told me, but by then everything had changed.”