Green Earth

“I get that, but interesting how?”

Frank sighed. “In the sense that it might be the way to solve your targeted delivery problem. If his methods work, and you get a patent on them, then the potential for licensing income might be really considerable.”

Derek was silent. He knew that Frank knew the company was on life support. That being the case, Frank would not bother him with trifles, or even with big deals that needed capital and time. He had to be offering a fix.

“Why did he send this grant proposal to NSF?”

“Beats me. Maybe he was turned down by one of your guys here. Maybe his advisor told him to do it. But have your people working on the delivery problem take a look at his work. After you get him hired.”

“Why don’t you talk to them? Go talk to Leo Mulhouse about this.”

“Well …” Frank thought it over. “Okay. I’ll go see how things are going. You get this Pierzinski on board. We’ll see what happens from there.”

Derek nodded, still not happy. “You know, Frank, what we really need here is you. Things haven’t been the same since you left. Maybe when you get back we could rehire you at whatever level UCSD will allow.”

“I thought you just said you didn’t have any money for hires.”

“Well that’s true, but for you we could work something out, right?”

“Maybe. But let’s not talk about that now. I need to get out of NSF first, and see what my blind trust has done. I used to have some options here.”

“You sure did. Hell, we could bury you in those, Frank.”

“That would be nice.”

Giving people options to buy stock cost a company nothing. They were feel-good gestures, unless everything went right with the company and the market; and with NASDAQ having been in the tank for so long, they were not often seen as real compensation anymore. More a kind of speculation. And in fact Frank expressing interest in them had cheered Derek up, as it was a sign of confidence in the future of the company.

Back outside, Frank sighed. Torrey Pines Generique was looking like a thin reed. But it was his reed, and anything might happen. Derek was good at keeping things afloat. But Sam Houston was dead weight. Derek needed Frank there as scientific advisor. Or rather consultant, given his UCSD position. And if they had Pierzinski under contract, things might work out. By the end of the year the whole situation might turn around. And if it all worked out, the potential was big. Even huge.

Frank wandered across the complex to Leo’s lab. It was noticeably lively compared to the rest of the building—people bustling about, the smell of solvents in the air, machines whirring away. Where there’s life there’s hope. Or perhaps they were only like the band on the Titanic, playing on while the ship went down.

Frank went in and exchanged pleasantries with Leo and his people. He mentioned that Derek had sent him down to talk about their current situation, and Leo nodded noncommittally and gave him a rundown. Frank listened, thinking: Here is a scientist at work in a lab. He is in the optimal scientific space. He has a lab, he has a problem, he’s fully absorbed and going full tilt. He should be happy. But he isn’t happy. He has a tough problem he’s trying to solve, but that’s not it; people always have tough problems in the lab.

It was something else. Probably, that he was aware of the company’s situation—of course, he had to be. Probably this was the source of his unease. The musicians on the Titanic, feeling the tilt in the deck. In which case there was a kind of heroism in the way they played on.

But for some reason Frank was also faintly annoyed. People plugging away in the same old ways, trying to do things according to the plan, even a flawed plan: normal science, in Kuhnian terms, as well as in the more ordinary sense. All so normal, so trusting that the system worked, when obviously the system was both rigged and broken. How could they persevere? How could they be so blinkered, so determined, so dense?

Frank slipped his content in. “Maybe if you had a way to test the genes in computer simulations, find your proteins in advance.”

Leo looked puzzled. “You’d have to have a, what. A theory of how DNA codes its gene expression functions. At the least.”

“Yes.”

“That would be nice, but I’m not aware anyone has that.”

“No, but if you did … Wasn’t George working on something like that, or one of his temporary guys? Pierzinski?”

“Yeah that’s right, Yann was trying some really interesting things. But he left.”

“I think Derek is trying to bring him back.”

“Good idea.”

Then Marta walked into the lab. When she saw Frank she stopped, startled.

“Oh hi Marta.”

“Hi Frank. I didn’t know you were going to be coming by.”

“Neither did I.”

“Oh no? Well—” She hesitated, turned. The situation called for her to say something, he felt, something like “Good to see you,” if she was going to leave so quickly. But she said only, “I’m late, I’ve got to get to work.”

And then she was out the door.

Only later, when reviewing his actions, did Frank see that he had cut short the talk with Leo, and pretty obviously at that, in order to follow Marta. In the moment itself he simply found himself walking down the hall, catching up to her before he even realized what he was doing.

She turned and saw him. “What,” she said sharply, looking at him as if to stop him in his tracks.

“Oh hi I was just wondering how you’re doing, I haven’t seen you for a while, I wondered. Are you up for, how about going out and having dinner somewhere and catching up?”

She surveyed him. “I don’t think so. I don’t think that would be a good idea. We might as well not even go there. What would be the point.”

“I don’t know, I’m interested to know how you’re doing I guess is all.”

“Yeah I know, I know what you mean. But sometimes there are things you’re interested in that you can’t really get to know anymore, you know?”

“Ah yeah.”

He pursed his lips, looked at her. She looked good. She was both the strongest and the wildest woman he had ever met. Somehow things between them had gone wrong anyway.

Now he looked at her and understood what she was saying. He was never going to be able to know what her life was like these days. He was biased, she was biased; the scanty data would be inescapably flawed. Talking for a couple of hours would not make any difference. So it was pointless to try. Would only churn to the surface bad things from the past. Maybe in another ten years. Maybe never.

Marta must have seen something of this train of thought in his face, because with an impatient nod she turned and was gone.

A few days after Frank dropped by, Leo turned on his computer when he came in to the lab and saw there was an e-mail from Derek. He opened and read it, then the attachment that had come with it. When he was done he forwarded it to Brian and Marta. When Marta came in about an hour later she had already done some work on it.

“Hey Brian,” she called from Leo’s door, “come check this out. Derek has sent us a new paper from that Yann Pierzinski who was here. He was funny. It’s a new version of the stuff he was working on when he was here. It was interesting.”

Brian had come in while she was telling him this, and she pointed to parts of the diagram on Leo’s screen as he caught up. “See what I mean?”

“Well, yeah. It would be great. If it worked … Maybe crunch them through this program over and over, until you see repeats, if you did … then test the ones with the ligands that fit best, and look strongest chemically.”

“And Pierzinski is back to work on it with us!”

“Is he?”

“Yeah, he’s coming back. Derek says we’ll have him at our disposal.”