Lessons in Chemistry(36)

She paused, remembering ugly Evans just before she pictured pretty Zott back in the dating pool, men teeming about her like frothy bubbles in a bathtub. “And once you find one,” she said, “maybe a lawyer,” she specified, “then you can stop all this science nonsense and go home and have lots of babies.”

“That’s not what I want.”

Frask straightened up. “Well, aren’t we the little renegade,” she said. She hated Zott, she really did.

“There’s just one more thing then,” she continued, tapping her pen against the board, “and that is your bereavement leave. Hastings has awarded you three extra days. That’s five days total. Unheard of for a non–family member—very, very generous, Miss Zott—and again an indication of how important Mr. Evans was to us. This is why I want to assure you that you can and should go home and stay there. With the dog. You have my permission.”

Elizabeth wasn’t sure if it was the cruelty of Frask’s words or the foreign feel of the small, cold ring she’d buried in her fist just before Frask walked in, but before she could stop herself, she turned to retch into the sink.

“Normal,” Frask said as she darted across the room to collect a wad of paper towels. “You’re still in shock.” But as she placed a second towel on Elizabeth’s forehead, she adjusted her cat-eye glasses and took a much closer look. “Oh,” she sighed judgmentally, drawing her head back. “Oh. I see.”

“What?” Elizabeth murmured.

“Come on, now,” Frask said disapprovingly. “What did you expect?” And then she tsked just loud enough to make Zott understand she knew. But when Zott didn’t acknowledge that she knew she knew, Frask wondered if there was an outside chance Zott actually didn’t know. That’s how it was with some scientists. They believe in science right up until it happens to them.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Frask said, withdrawing a newspaper from under the crook of her arm. “I wanted to make sure you’d seen this. It’s a nice photo, don’t you think?” And there it was, the article from the reporter who’d attended the funeral. “The Brilliance He Buried,” claimed the headline, followed by a story that implied that Evans’s difficult personality may have kept him from reaching his full scientific potential. And to prove that point, just to the right was a photo of Elizabeth and Six-Thirty standing in front of his coffin, with the caption “Actually, Love Isn’t Blind,” accompanied by a short summary of how even his girlfriend said she barely knew him.

“What a horrible thing to write,” Elizabeth whispered, clutching her stomach.

“You’re not going to be sick again, are you?” Frask scolded as she held out more paper towels. “I know you’re a chemist, Miss Zott, but surely you expected this. Surely you’ve studied biology.”

Elizabeth looked up, her face gray, her eyes empty, and for one tiny moment Frask found herself almost feeling sorry for this woman and her ugly dog and the vomit and all the problems that were to come. Despite her brains and beauty and her incredibly slutty approach to men, Zott wasn’t any better off than the rest of them.

“Expected what?” Elizabeth said. “What are you getting at?”

“Biology!” Frask roared as she tapped her pen against Elizabeth’s stomach. “Zott, please! We’re women! You know very well Evans left you something!”

And Elizabeth, eyes suddenly wide with recognition, was sick all over again.





Chapter 13



Idiots

Hastings Research Institute management had a big problem. With their star scientist dead, and a newspaper article implying that his lousy personality had kept him from accomplishing anything worthwhile, Hastings’s benefactors—the army, the navy, several pharmaceutical companies, a few private investors, and a handful of foundations—were already making noises about “reexamining Hastings’s existing projects” and “rethinking future grants.” That’s how it is with research—it’s at the mercy of those who pay for it.

Which is why Hastings management was determined to lay this ridiculous story to rest. Evans had been making good progress, hadn’t he? His office was overflowing with notebooks and strange little equations written in an indecipherable script and punctuated by exclamation marks and thick underlines like the kind one makes when one is on the brink of something. In fact, he was scheduled to present a paper on his progress in Geneva in just another month. Or would have if he hadn’t been backed over by a police car because he insisted on running outdoors in the rain instead of indoors in ballet slippers like everybody else.

Scientists. They just had to be different.

That was also part of the problem. Most of the Hastings scientists weren’t different—or at least not different enough. They were normal, average, at best slightly above average. Not stupid, but not genius either. They were the kind of people who make up the majority of every company—normal people who do normal work, and who occasionally get promoted into management with uninspiring results. People who weren’t going to change the world, but neither were they accidentally going to blow it up.

No, management had to rely on its innovators, and with Evans gone, that left a very small pool of true talent. Not all of them were in lofty positions like Calvin’s; in fact, a few of them probably didn’t realize they were regarded as true innovators. But Hastings management knew it was from them that nearly every big idea and breakthrough came.