Pharmakon (9 page)

“Clever, simple, and bleak.” Winton looked at Friedrich as if she felt sorry for him.

“That’s me.” Friedrich scratched his head and looked wistfully out a basement window that offered a view of feet hurrying to places he’d never been.

“What’s wrong?” Winton enquired with uncharacteristic softness as she sipped her tea.

“I was just thinking what sort of tank we’ll need to build to test all the rats at once.”

“I’ve already got one.”

Will didn’t really begin to understand who Dr. Winton was until they began testing. The effect of GKD on rats was ascertained in an indoor swimming pool housed in a redbrick Georgian folly on the grounds of her uncle’s estate overlooking the Connecticut River. The pool was Olympian in more than length. The roof above it was a giant stained-glass skylight designed by Tiffany to transform overcast afternoons into blue-sky days. There were headless Roman statues, potted palms that touched the ceiling, and a steam heating system that rendered the temperature equatorial.

Friedrich and Winton worked in eight-hour shifts. A butler delivered a hamper of sandwiches and a fresh thermos of coffee twice a day. The groundskeeper had lowered the water level in the pool and removed the ladder, so the drowning rats couldn’t claw their way out. They tested male and female pairs and marked them with nickel-sized dots of Easter egg dye on the tops of their heads for easy identification. The rats with the red dot on their head had been fed twenty grams of raw kwina leaves mixed with peanut butter; Friedrich suspected that if the psychoactive properties of the kwina leaves were absorbable in their raw state, the Bagadong shaman would have had his patients chew the leaves or brew them in hot water, like tea, instead of going through the effort of fermentation.

The two rats with blue Easter egg dye on their heads had been fed a hundred milliliters of the alcohol that had been distilled off the fermented
gaikau dong.
(Friedrich thought it unlikely that the psychoactive properties were distilled off into the alcohol, but he was taking no chances with his big chance.)

The pair of rats with the green dot on their head had been fed one ounce of the same form of fermented
gaikau dong
that had had such a healing effect on Dr. Winton’s lieutenant.

The rats crowned with purple were the ones Friedrich and Winton were placing their bets on. They had consumed two ounces of the dissolved crystals. Friedrich had pointed out that this would have been the equivalent of a human being imbibing a gallon of The Way Home. Winton had argued that since they were interested in seeing a clear demonstration of its effects, they should not be too concerned with the fate of the rats. The pair she had fed three ounces of crystals went into convulsions and stopped breathing before they got around to deciding whether to dot them with pink or black.

The control group, those that had had nothing but kibble for breakfast, were marked with a spot of yellow.

Friedrich had worked with rats before—they bit. Their incisors vibrated, cut you to the bone. Under the fluorescent lights of a psych lab, it was easy to be detached while watching a rat drown or shock himself to death. And if they had just bitten you, it was acceptable, even natural, to take some adolescent pleasure in having a hand in their demise. But Friedrich found the idea of watching the rats struggle, panic, give up, and sink to the bottom of a pool decorated with a mosaic likeness of a robber baron wearing a toga and holding a trident both ironic and depressing. He was flushed with enough adrenaline that the thought that he identified with the rat made him smile as he lorded over the drowning pool.

The realization that he had partnered up with a woman connected by blood to the kind of money and power that built indoor pools that weren’t used because the owner preferred to spend the spring tarpon fishing in the Gulf of Mexico not only awed Will Friedrich, but made him feel at the very bottom of the primal cortex of his brain that he had stepped into a trap of his own making, that something was now being tested on him.

Some of the rats treaded water, face to the wall of the pool, until their noses bled. Others swam back and forth across the pool at odd angles, hour after hour, in the hopes that a different trajectory would lead them out of the exitless hell their rat lives had become.

Just after lunch on day three, the rats began to die. The first pair to go were the two that had been fed the alcohol. Friedrich was not surprised. Of course, a hundred milliliters of alcohol in an eight-ounce animal was the equivalent of a human drinking a dozen martinis and swimming the English Channel. Five hours and eleven minutes later, the first of the two rats who had ingested the kwina leaves turned on his back and drowned. The female gave up eleven minutes later. A few minutes before ten o’clock, the control pair began to show signs of giving in to the madness of their plight.

Friedrich was getting tired of waiting for rats to drown. His efforts to turn off the heat in the pool house had been unsuccessful. He had taken off his trousers and was sitting in his boxer shorts when Dr. Winton showed up early for her 12:00 to 8:00
A.M.
shift. The temperature was nearly a hundred. Friedrich was too hot and tired to be embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t expect you for another half hour . . .”

“I understand completely. Sensible. I should have worn shorts myself.” She watched him as he pulled on his trousers and reached for his shirt. She was as neat and clean as a printed page. She stayed in a guest room up at her uncle’s big house; it was easy for her to stay fresh. As always, her hair was braided into a serpentine bun. For an instant it looked like the male of the control pair was going to give in to the inevitable. But at the last second, he followed the female as she headed yet again for the opposite side of the pool.

Friedrich’s mouth tasted like an ashtray. He was looking forward to a shower and a few hours’ sleep next to his wife. Winton had a sticky bun in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Her eyes were fixed on the pair of rats marked with purple dye. They had decided that if those two, the ones that had been given The Way Home, survived eight hours longer than any of the other rats, they would know they were onto something. “You know, there’s no real need for you to drive back in the morning. I’ll call you and let you know how it turns out.”

“I think I’ll stay through the night and see for myself.”

“Does that mean that you don’t trust me to take accurate notes?”

“It means I’m curious.” The butler knocked. Instead of the usual hamper, he wheeled in a tea cart.

Winton explained, “I thought you deserved a decent meal.” There were lamb chops with paper socks on the end of the bone and asparagus and scalloped potatoes under a silver chafing dish.

Friedrich hoped food would wake him up. He waited for her to join him. “Please, don’t stand on ceremony. Start without me.” She was peering down at the control rats now. “Hey, you, Butch.” She was talking to the male control rat. “That’s cheating.” Winton’s nicknames and one-sided conversations with lab animals was getting on Friedrich’s nerves. He looked over just in time to see the male rat climb up on the female’s back. “The brute’s drowning her to stay alive.”

Friedrich helped himself to the potatoes. “They’re copulating.” His mouth was full.

“That’s how my uncle says he wants to go.” The rats continued to mate as they sunk to the bottom of the pool.

At 6:00
A.M.
the following morning, the rats who had been fed the same fermented Way Home that the shamans prescribed and that Winton’s lieutenant had imbibed began to tire. Snapping at one another midpool, it almost seemed as if they argued briefly about when to give up. They drowned almost simultaneously. But the two who had consumed GKD in its purest form, two ounces of diluted crystals each, were still swimming laps.

Winton handed Friedrich a cup of coffee that tasted like it had been brewed in a sock. Together they watched the rats swim back and forth, back and forth, rodent eyes glowing red in the first light of the day; undaunted and unfazed by their predicament, they endured, certain they would prevail. Dr. Winton flicked her cigarette into the pool and clapped her hands. “We’ve done it.”

Friedrich yawned and smiled at the same time. “It would appear so, Dr. Winton.” Friedrich was thinking how he’d surprise Nora with the news. Flowers? Candy? Or would he trick her, pretend the test was a bust, get her to feel sorry for him, and then pull her into bed with his triumph. If he waited another fifteen minutes, the big kids would be at school.

Winton stared at one of the strawberries that were left over on the dinner tray, then slowly, deliberately, she popped one in her mouth and walked over to the bar at the far end of the pool and produced a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

“What’s that?”

“Breakfast.” She handed him the champagne to open and stuffed three more strawberries into her mouth.

It had been twenty-seven hours since Friedrich had slept. He was punchy with fatigue. The thought of champagne on top of the bad coffee was making him feel queasy. He popped the cork anyway. The rats on The Way Home were still swimming. On the way home was where he should be.

They drank the champagne from coffee cups. Friedrich watched the drugged rats swim on. “Think we can reproduce this synthetically?”

“If our initial pilot study with humans pans out, we’ll get the organic chemistry department to spectrum it out in a column chromatography.” Winton was looking at her reflection in the glassy surface of the pool. “One thing’s for certain: It’s some kind of antihistamine.”

“How can you say that?”

Winton was looking at her watch. “I’m allergic to strawberries. I love them, but whenever I eat them, I break out in hives in a matter of minutes . . . antihistamine’s the only thing that takes care of it. It was just a hunch.”

It took Friedrich a minute to put it together. “You took The Way Home?”

“If I didn’t believe in it enough to test it on myself, I couldn’t very well give it to my patients, could I?” Her smile was Mona Lisa lazy. Her pupils were dilated. And her voice and manner were softer and more inviting than he could ever remember.

Friedrich was furious. It was unscientific, it was unprofessional; she could have had a toxic reaction, she could have had an epileptic seizure and stopped breathing, like the two rats they put in the garbage.

“How long ago?” Friedrich’s voice was calm, but he was angry.

“About when you had that cup of coffee.” She smiled.

“How the hell much did you take?”

“About as much as you would give a fifty-pound rat.” She wasn’t trying to be funny.

“How do you feel?” Friedrich began to make notes.

“Like celebrating.”

Friedrich took her pulse. It was fast, but within the normal range. “Any paranoia?”

“No.” She closed her eyes. “Just a strong desire to . . . celebrate.”

“What does that mean to you?”

“Well, the night I graduated from medical school, I celebrated by taking off my clothes and skinny-dipping. Swam all the way across the river to the other side.”

“Is that what you want to do now?” Friedrich was speaking to her like a patient.

“No. At the moment, I feel the urge for physical release. You know, that tingling sensation you feel before you realize you’re feeling lust.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“It’s a nice feeling. Don’t you like it when you feel strong sexual desire for someone?”

Friedrich felt himself getting an erection. In his mind she had already taken off her clothes, and he wanted to get out of there before she actually did. “I’m uncomfortable with you making sexual overtures toward me.”

“I wasn’t thinking about having sex with you or anyone in particular, Dr. Friedrich.”

He might have believed her if it hadn’t been for the smile on her face. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow. I think I should go home now.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I didn’t agree to this. We’re not part of the experiment.” His voice echoed over the water.

“Then why are you taking notes?”

Friedrich put down his pen and began to pack up his briefcase.

“You’re a psychologist. You asked me a question, I gave you a candid answer, which you misinterpreted. It happens to me with my patients.”

“You are not my patient.” Friedrich was walking, but he felt like running.