Intuition by Allegra Goodman Read Free Book Online Page B

students, to raise and reform the spirit. Years later, however, as the Philpott subdivided each floor, and hanging ducts and light fixtures multiplied, the biblical inscriptions had been broken up as well, so that cryptic partial phases popped up in offices and passageways: WETH HIS , or THE GLORY OF GO . No one at the institute read the writing on the walls.
    “Marion,” Sandy said.
    She looked up, startled, from the microscope. She hadn't expected him so early.
    “Come on.” He motioned her into the hall.
    “What was that about?” Robin asked, after the two disappeared.
    Feng shrugged, although he had a fairly good idea.
    “He seemed so secretive. Didn't you think that was strange?”
    “No,” said Feng.
    “Maybe he was looking for Cliff,” Natalya said.
    Cliff drifted in an hour later. Mechanically, he opened the door of the incubator, opened the second glass door, took out his petri dishes, studied his breast cancer cells under the microscope, their irregular clumps like clustered sesame seeds. He stared at each batch of cells, took his notes as usual. He did his time.
    He sensed Feng standing at his shoulder, but Cliff did not look up from the microscope.
    “Cliff,” Feng said.
    “Yeah.”
    “I came in yesterday. Marion and I came to look at your mice.”
    “Great.”
    “The ones injected with R-7 . . .” Feng said. “It looks like maybe something happened there.”
    “What was that?” Cliff asked.
    “Maybe something is going on,” said Feng.
    If Cliff hadn't been so down and so detached, if he had not been cultivating a Zen calm, he might have recognized this statement for what it was. He might have copied Feng's words into his lab book as a classic Fungi:
    “Maybe something is going on” = sudden, life-changing event.
             
    “We've got some news,” Glass began at the lab meeting that afternoon. The researchers sat at attention, galvanized by what they knew he was about to say. Feng had told them all about what he and Mendelssohn had seen. The postdocs had rushed down to see the mice themselves. They'd been talking about nothing else. Now Glass made it official. “There is a possibility we've got a result here, at last, with Cliff's virus and some small number of mice.”
    At last.
Those were the words that struck Cliff. He felt the irony acutely. Sandy spoke as if he had been waiting patiently for months and months, watching and hoping for this day to come. The words were odd, and also sweet. Cliff swung his legs off the table in the third-floor conference room and sat up straight. The other postdocs' excitement brushed against him, as their pity had burned him days before. Cliff looked at Robin, and her eyes were filled with such fierce longing, he turned away in confusion.
    The researchers were all staring: intent, admiring, jealous. Prithwish smiled broadly, but his good cheer was slightly forced. Feng sat composed and quiet. These were Cliff's siblings. They had been his peers here at the wood-grain table; they'd drunk bad coffee with him at these meetings. They had winced with him as Marion chided everyone for inadequate record keeping, or insisted each of them read a journal article and then present the results to the group, demonstrating the published work of other labs. They had all striven to ask the right questions, to look sharp at certain times and nonchalant at others. They were never closer than in commiseration. The longer their hours, the worse the odds of their success, the closer the postdocs had been. Empathically, the others had felt Cliff's embarrassment and hopelessness in their own hearts. Now his status was changing before their eyes, and their emotions became much more complex.
    Clearly, R-7 had had a dramatic effect on three mice, and Sandy was enthralled. Marion kept putting her hand on his arm as he spoke, cautioning him, as if he were driving too fast, but Sandy was in his element, announcing a new set of trials and putting Cliff and Feng in charge.