Prizes (2 page)

“Dr. Rudolph?” he asked in a subdued monotone.

“Yes.”

“Do you have some sort of ID?”

Max pulled out his wallet and showed the envoy his driver’s license.

The courier checked it with a quick intense look, handed over the package, and quickly receded into the shadows. The two scientists exchanged glances.

“And it’s not even Halloween,” Max whispered. “Let’s get to work.”

They walked slowly down the corridor, an obstacle course of dry-ice chests, refrigerated centrifuges, and tanks of nitrogen, helium, and oxygen splayed chaotically like large metal tenpins.

Adam snapped on the lights of a room stacked floor to ceiling with cages of mice, all scampering to and fro, blissfully unaware of their unique qualities.

When transfused with human blood and other tissue, their systems became carbon copies of the donors. This meant reactions to whatever they were subsequently given were miniature but precise reflections of their human model.

“All right Adam, we have three possibilities. They could cure, kill, or even do nothing. What do you suggest?”

“Four sets of six mice each. We inject them all with the patient’s blood and then treat each group with varying strengths of the medications. The fourth crew obviously gets placebos.”

“But they still get their share of good cheese,” Max admonished.

Adam grinned. “Always the friend of the downtrodden.”

By seven-thirty, when day staff began to straggle in, they had already infected a third of the mice. To avoid arousing suspicion, they merely handed over case AC/1068/24 to the technicians who normally performed this sort of mundane procedure.

Adam called the obstetrics ward. He listened for a moment, and then announced with evident pleasure, “All’s well—eight pounds, eight ounces.”

“Lucky people,” the professor murmured.

As they descended in the elevator, Max permitted himself the luxury of a yawn.

“Shall we visit the House of Pancakes before we turn in?”

“Don’t do this to me,” Adam protested. “I promised Lisl I’d watch your cholesterol.”

“But we’re scientific outlaws at the moment.” Max laughed. “Can’t you let a nervous old man calm himself with some blintzes and sour cream?”

“No, ethics are one thing, but I don’t want to lose my best friend to a lipid-soaked pancake.”

“Okay.” Max sighed histrionically. “To salve your conscience I’ll eat them with margarine.”

Two weeks passed slowly and painfully. At precisely eleven-thirty each evening the two men would meet at the lab to endure a telephonic dressing-down from Admiral Penrose, whose increasingly strained voice reflected the growing apprehension in Washington.

At one point Penrose’s tirade grew so loud and acrimonious that Adam snatched the receiver and growled, “Dammit, Admiral. You’ve got to impress on your patient that in a very real sense these mice are acting as his understudies.”

“He knows that,” the Navy man replied with annoyance.

“Then perhaps he might just appreciate the fact that we’ve held off treating him.” He paused for effect and then continued quietly, “All the Rockefeller mice died last night.”

“All?” The physician’s voice quavered.

“I’m afraid so. But it’s better than a President, don’t you agree?”

Penrose hesitated. “Yes … yes, I suppose so,” he conceded after a moment. “But what do you suggest I report back?”

“The truth,” Adam answered. “Only remind him he’s still got two more bullets. Good night, Admiral.”

He hung up and looked at his mentor. “Well, Max?”

“Very impressive, Doctor. Now let’s get our lab books up to date.”

“That’s okay. Why don’t you go home to your anxious wife while I transcribe the unhappy necrology into the computer.”

The senior man nodded. “I’m not doing my share of the drone work, but I gratefully cede to your excess energy. By the way, what makes you feel that Lisl is concerned about me?”

“It’s her job,” Adam retorted. “She’s told me hundreds of times: ‘My husband worries about the world, and I worry about my husband.’ ”

Max smiled, turned up the collar of his trench coat and began to trudge slowly down the hall.

Adam’s eyes followed the receding figure with an unexpected touch of sadness. He looks so small and vulnerable, he thought. Why can’t I give him some of my youth?

2
 

It is a terrible thing to be born mentally handicapped. Few people realize, however, that it is also an affliction to be born a genius. Isabel da Costa knew.

Nothing in her parents’ backgrounds suggested that their child would someday be called a “female Einstein.” Indeed, her father Raymond twice failed the qualifying exam for a doctorate in physics at U.C. San Diego.

Yet the department admired his unabated enthusiasm and offered him the nonfaculty position of Junior Development Engineer—which involved the preparation of apparatus for lectures and experiments.

This was not what Ray had dreamed of. But at least he had a legitimate connection with a university lab. He was so dedicated that he soon became indispensable. His reward was Muriel Haverstock.

One day this plump, vivacious brunette music major, suffering from the common female phobia for science, pleaded for Raymond’s assistance.

“Oh please, Mr. D.,” she begged the stocky, red-haired supervisor. “I need this course to graduate, and if you don’t help me I’ll never get this oscilloscope to work.”

By the time Ray had shown her how to measure the resonance of RLC circuits, he was smitten.

As the bell rang he gathered his courage, then invited her for a cup of coffee.

“Sure,” she answered. “If you don’t mind waiting till after my orchestra rehearsal.”

His heart leapt. “That’d be great.”

“Okay, why not drop by the auditorium around seven-thirty,” she continued. “You might even be able to catch some of our scratchings and wheezings.”

Raymond arrived early and sat in the back row,
watching Edmundo Zimmer conduct Bach’s D Minor Double Concerto. To his surprise, Muriel had been chosen to join the Concert Mistress in playing the exquisite duet in the largo movement.

“Actually, I came here to study English,” she explained over dinner. “But when I got into the orchestra, Edmundo completely converted me to music. He’s so charismatic—and not even bitter about his accident.”

“What happened?” Raymond inquired. “All I could see was that his arms were kind of stiff.”

“He was a rising young cellist in Argentina when he was in a car crash. He fell against the dashboard and paralyzed both his forearms. So now the closest he can come to being a musician is conducting our bunch of amateurs. I really admire his courage.”

As they got to know one another, Raymond confessed that he was already mired in scientific failure; that he would never rise above his current station.

Paradoxically, this made Muriel admire him more. For Raymond seemed to accept professional disappointment with a strength of character similar to Edmundo’s.

They married.

And lived unhappily ever after.

After graduation, Muriel found a job teaching music at the Hanover Day School and continued playing with the orchestra until late in her first pregnancy.

On July 10, 1967, Raymond da Costa became the proud father of a son, already sprouting wisps of red hair like his own. He vowed that Peter would have the advantages he himself had been denied when growing up. And pillaged the library for books on enhancing a child’s brainpower.

Muriel was pleased that he was taking such an interest in Peter’s development—until she noticed the darker side.

“Raymond, in heaven’s name, what is this sinister document?” she exclaimed after accidentally coming
across a lab notebook containing the detailed day-by-day account of their son’s intellectual progress.

Or, as the father saw it, the deficiencies.

He was in no mood for explanations. “Muriel, I’m going to have the kid evaluated. I don’t think he’s living up to his potential.”

“But he’s barely two years old,” she reprimanded him. “What on earth do you expect him to be doing—nuclear physics?”

The severity of his reply disconcerted her. “No—but it wouldn’t be unprecedented if he could do simple arithmetic with these colored blocks. Frankly, Muriel, I’m afraid Peter’s no genius.”

“So what? He’s still a sweet, adorable child. Do you think I would love you more if you were professor of Physics at Princeton?”

He looked her straight in the eye and answered, “Yes.”

Muriel felt Raymond would be less preoccupied with little Peter’s mind if they had another child.

When she mentioned it, Ray was so enthusiastic that the next day he came home from the lab with a gift-wrapped present—an ovulation thermometer. And his lovemaking seemed to have regained its initial ardor as his enthusiasm grew for their new experiment.

She announced her pregnancy almost immediately.

During the months that followed, Ray was warm and caring. No effort was too great. He scoured the health food shops for vitamins, went with her to every doctor’s appointment, helped her practice her Lamaze exercises, and soothed her when she was anxious.

On the Ides of March, 1972, she went into labor and shortly afterward brought forth a bouncing baby girl.

A
girl.

Raymond had been unprepared for this possibility. His own idiosyncratic, unscientific expectation was that he would have only sons.

Muriel, on the other hand, was overjoyed. She was sure that Ray would quickly be captivated by their new baby’s charm, as well as her long dark curls, and not cherish any absurd fantasies of sending her to Yale while she was still in Pampers.

At first her instinct seemed correct. Raymond was attentive and affectionate to his bright-eyed little girl, whom they named Isabel after his mother. Muriel spent many happy hours reading to her lovely, lively daughter, who seemed fascinated by words and rather adept with them.

At first Raymond did not seem aware that, even as she played in the garden with other toddlers whose vocabulary was limited to monosyllables, Isabel was speaking complete sentences.

But the most astounding discovery was yet to come.

As Muriel was cleaning up the multicolored remnants after Isabel’s third birthday, scraping ice cream off the rug and scrubbing jellied fingerprints from the wall, she overheard a tiny bell-like voice.

“ ‘Babar is trying to read, but finds it difficult to concentrate; his thoughts are elsewhere. He tries to write, but again his thoughts wander. He is thinking of his wife and the little baby soon to be born. Will it be handsome and strong? Oh, how hard it is to wait for one’s heart’s desire!’ ”

She had never read this story to Isabel. Clearly her daughter had simply unwrapped a gift and decided to peruse it herself.

At first she was stunned, unsure of what to do. And though reluctant to call this amazing event to her husband’s attention, she wanted corroboration that it was not her imagination.