by Robin Cook
“IT’S OKAY, IT’S OKAY!” DEBORAH REPEATED IN A SOOTHING voice. She was holding Joanna by the shoulders, trying to calm her down. Joanna was trembling with an occasional sob. They were in the lab, standing next to the window where Deborah had spoken with Spencer earlier that morning. Mare had seen them come in, but she’d apparently noticed Joanna’s distress, and respecting their privacy, she’d not come over.
Deborah had called Joanna’s cell phone the moment she’d seen Randy’s head suddenly pop up above the room partition just prior to his dashing from his cubicle. Deborah had to make the call on the run because Randy was moving quickly. Her worst fears were realized when Randy made a beeline for the main corridor and turned in the direction of the server room. The other problem was that she didn’t see Joanna, and her intuition told her that there’d not been enough time for Joanna to have gotten out.
When Randy had gone directly to the server room’s outer door and immediately gone in, any minuscule hope Deborah had entertained that he was heading elsewhere than the server room was dashed. Coming up to the door herself, she hadn’t known what to do. Unable to make up her mind, she’d done nothing.
Agonizing minutes had passed. Deborah had debated whether she should go in and try to defuse whatever situation had developed. She had even envisioned charging in, grabbing Joanna, and bolting for the car. Then to her utter surprise, Randy Porter had reemerged, alone and seemingly calmer than when he’d gone in.
Deborah had quickly bent over and taken a drink from the water fountain to avoid the impression she was loitering. Randy had passed behind her, and she’d sensed his pace slowed. But he had not stopped. When she’d righted herself, Randy had been a distance away. He’d been heading back down the corridor in the direction he’d come but with his upper torso twisted to keep Deborah in sight. When he’d caught her eye he’d given her the thumbs-up sign. Deborah had blushed as it had dawned on her that a significant portion of her derriere had most likely been exposed when she’d bent over the relatively low water fountain.
“I’m not cut out for this!” Joanna said angrily in response to Deborah’s attempts to calm her, although whom she was angry at was not immediately clear. She pressed her lips together, but they quivered as if she might cry again. “I’m serious!”
Deborah shushed her.
“I’m not cut out for this,” Joanna repeated, lowering her voice. “I fell apart in there. I was pathetic.”
“I beg to differ with you,” Deborah said. “Whatever you did, it worked. He didn’t see you. Ease up! You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“You really think so?” Joanna took several uneven breaths.
“Absolutely,” Deborah said. “Anyone else, including myself, would have blown it. But you pulled it off somehow, and here we are, ready to give it another college try.”
“But I’m not going back in there,” Joanna said. “Forget about it.”
“Are you really ready to give up after all the effort we’ve been through?”
“It’s your turn,” Joanna said. “You go in the server room. I’ll stand guard.”
“If I could, I would,” Deborah said. “The trouble is I don’t have the facility you have with computers. And you could tell me what to do until you’re blue in the face, and I guarantee I’d screw it up.”
Joanna stared back at Deborah as if she were angry with her.
“I’m sorry I’m not a computer nerd,” Deborah said. “But I don’t think we should give up. We both want to find out what happened to our eggs, and now I have a new interest.”
“I suppose you’re going to make me ask what it is,” Joanna muttered.
Deborah glanced over at Mare to make sure she wasn’t trying to overhear their conversation. Then she lowered her voice and explained to Joanna the human eggs versus swine eggs episode that had occurred that morning. Joanna was immediately intrigued despite her distress.
“That’s strange,” Joanna exclaimed.
Deborah’s expression suggested she hardly considered strange to be a strong enough word. “Incredible is more like it,” she said. “Think about it! They spent ninety thousand dollars for a half-dozen eggs from us and then have several hundred for me to screw around with today. I mean, I’m an amateur with this nuclear-transfer stuff. That’s more than strange.”
“All right, it’s incredible,” Joanna said.
“So we have even more reason to create ourselves a pathway into their computer files,” Deborah said. “I want to find out what kind of research they’re doing and how they’re getting all these eggs.”
Joanna shook her head. “That may be an appropriate motivation, but I’m telling you: I don’t think I’ll be able to convince myself to go back in there.”
“But we’re better off than we were before,” Deborah said.
“I can’t see how,” Joanna said.
“As near as I can tell, Mr. Randy Porter leapt up out of his seat simultaneously with your opening the server room door. That tells us he’s got it wired to pop up on his monitor. I mean, it stands to reason. The timing couldn’t have been a coincidence.”
“I suppose that seems like a reasonable assumption,” Joanna agreed. “But how does that help us?”
“Simply because it means we have to do more than watch him sit in his cubicle,” Deborah said. “We’ve got to lure him out and keep him occupied.”
Joanna nodded as she thought over what Deborah was saying. “Am I to believe you have some plan to do this?”
“Of course,” Deborah said with a sly smile. “When he passed me a few minutes ago in the hall while I was bending over the water fountain, he practically got torticollis. Judging from that reaction, I’d be very surprised if I couldn’t corner him in the dining room at lunch and have a chat. I trust I’ll be able to keep him interested. Then, when you’re finished in the server room, you can give my cell phone a call to rescue me.”
Joanna nodded again, but she didn’t totally agree, not right away.
“Here’s how it is going to work,” Deborah said, sensing Joanna’s lingering doubt. “Go back to administration and make sure Randy Porter is in his cubicle. Then go to yours. I don’t care if you work or not, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is for you to watch for Randy Porter to leave for lunch. The moment he does, call me. That way maybe I can even intercept him on his way to the dining room, which might be easier than if I get there when he’s already sitting. As soon as I make contact and it’s working, I’ll call you. That’s when you duck back into the server room and do what you have to do. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it’s far better to be doing it over the lunch hour. It makes a lot more sense. When you’re finished, come directly to the dining room. You can rescue me and have lunch at the same time.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Joanna said.
“I honestly think it will be,” Deborah said. “What do you think?”
“I suppose it sounds like a reasonable plan. But what if you start a conversation, and he breaks it off? You’d let me know?”
“Of course I’d call you instantly,” Deborah said. “And remember! If he’s in the dining room you’ll have plenty of time to get out. It’s not the same as when he’s sitting in his cubicle.”
Joanna nodded several times in a row.
“Do you feel better now about going back in there?”
“I guess,” Joanna said.
“Good!” Deborah said. “Now, let’s get the ball rolling. If perchance Mr. Porter is not in his cubicle when you get over there, you’d better call me. We might have to adjust the plan if we can’t find him.”
“All right!” Joanna said, trying to bolster her courage. She clasped hands with Deborah briefly and then turned to leave.
Deborah watched Joanna go. She knew her roommate had been seriously upset, but she also knew Joanna to be resilient. Deborah was confident that when the chips were down, Joanna could be counted on to pull through.
Deborah went back to her mic
roscope and tried to go back to work. But it was impossible. She felt far too jazzed up for such a painstaking task as enucleating oocytes. She was also on edge in case Joanna called indicating that Randy Porter was not in his cubicle. After five minutes had passed without a call, Deborah pushed back from the lab bench and wandered over to Mare’s station. The woman looked up from her microscope’s eye pieces when she sensed Deborah’s presence.
“I have a question,” Deborah said. “Where do these eggs we’re working on come from?”
Mare hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “They come from that incubator way down there near the end of the lab.”
“And how do they get into the incubator?”
Mare gave Deborah a look that wouldn’t have qualified as a dirty look, but it wasn’t all that friendly either. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“It’s the sign of a budding researcher,” Deborah said. “As a scientist, when you stop asking questions it’s time to retire or find another calling.”
“The eggs come up in a dumbwaiter inside the incubator,” Mare said. “But that’s all I know. I’ve never been encouraged to ask, nor have I been inclined.”
“Who would know?” Deborah asked.
“I imagine Miss Finnigan would know.”
WITH HIS HANDS ON BOTH ARMS OF HIS CHAIR, RANDY slowly raised himself to provide a progressively more expansive view of the administration area. He wanted to see if Christine was in her cubicle without her knowing he was checking. If he stood up all the way she could see him, but by doing it slowly he could stop when he just caught sight of the top of her sizable, curly-haired head. Bingo! She was there, and Randy lowered himself back down.
With the knowledge the office manager was nearby Randy lowered the volume on his computer speakers. Although when he was home he let the sound effects roar at full volume, when he was in the office he was a realist, especially with Christine only a few cubicles away.
Next Randy pulled out his joystick. When he got that in the exact position he preferred, he adjusted his rear end in the seat pan of his chair. To game at the full level of his abilities he needed to be comfortable. When all was set to his liking, he gripped the mouse in preparation for logging onto the Internet. But then he paused. Strangely enough another thought occurred to him.
Randy had not only programmed the server room door so that he would be alerted when it was opened, he’d also programmed it so that the card swipe that opened the door would record the identity of the individual.
With a few rapid clicks of the mouse Randy brought up the appropriate window. What he expected to see was his name last on the list from when he’d gone to check the room after Helen Masterson had gone in. That would have confirmed his suspicion that the door had just opened on its own accord from his having not shut it properly. But to his surprise his name wasn’t last. The last name was Dr. Spencer Wingate, the heralded founder of the clinic, and the time was 11:10 that very morning.
Randy stared at the entry with a mixture of confusion and disbelief. How could that be, he wondered. Since he was serious about his computer-gaming prowess, he kept an accurate log of his triumphs and even his rare failings. After minimizing the current window, Randy brought up his Unreal Tournament record. There it was: He’d been killed at 11:11.
Taking a deep breath, Randy rocked back in his chair, staring at the computer screen while his mind recreated his recent dash back to the server room. He estimated that it took him only a minute or two to get from his cubicle to the server room, meaning he’d arrived there about 11:12 or 11:13. If that were the case, where the hell was Dr. Wingate, who’d entered at 11:10? And if that weren’t enough of a conundrum, why did the doctor leave the door ajar?
Something very strange going on, Randy thought, especially since Dr. Wingate was supposed to be semiretired even though rumor had it that he was around. Randy scratched his head, wondering what to do, if anything. He was supposed to report any security lapses to Dr. Saunders, but Randy wasn’t sure there had been a lapse. As far as he was concerned, Dr. Wingate was the highest honcho in the whole organization, so how could anything that concerned him be a security lapse?
Then Randy had another idea. Maybe he’d say something to weird Kurt Hermann. The security chief had had Randy program his computer so it, too, recorded any and all openings of the card-swipe doors. That meant that Kurt already knew Dr. Wingate had been in the server room. What the security chief didn’t know was that the doctor had only been in there for two minutes and had left the door open.
“Oh crap!” Randy said out loud. Worrying about all this was as bad as work. What he really wanted to do was get back on line with SCREAMER, so he tipped forward and grabbed his mouse.
“MISS FINNIGAN!” DEBORAH CALLED OUT. SHE WAS standing in the laboratory supervisor’s doorway. She’d knocked on the jamb, but the depth of Megan Finnigan’s concentration on her computer had precluded her from responding. But Deborah’s voice had penetrated, and the woman looked up with a startled expression. She then hastily cleared her screen.
“I’d prefer it if you knocked,” she said.
“I did knock,” Deborah responded.
The woman tossed her head to rid her face of her bothersome strands. “I’m sorry. I’m just very busy. What can I do for you?”
“You encouraged me to come to you if I had any questions,” Deborah said. “Well, I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“I’m curious about where the eggs come from that I’ve been working on. I asked Maureen, but she said she didn’t know. I mean, it’s a lot of eggs. I just didn’t realize they were available in such numbers.”
“Availability of eggs has been one of the major limiting factors in our research from day one,” Megan said. “We’ve devoted a lot of effort to solve the problem, and it has been one of Dr. Saunders and Dr. Donaldson’s major contributions to the field. But the work is as of yet unpublished, and until it is, it is considered a trade secret.” Megan smiled patronizingly and gave her head another one of her signature tosses that so annoyed Deborah. “After you’ve worked here for some reasonable period, and if you are still interested, I’m sure we can share with you our successes.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” Deborah said. “One other question: What species are the eggs I’ve been working on?”
Megan did not answer immediately but rather returned Deborah’s stare in a manner that made Deborah feel as if the lab supervisor was gauging Deborah’s motives. The pause was long enough for Deborah to feel uncomfortable.
“Why are you asking this?” Megan questioned finally.
“As I said, I’m just curious,” Deborah responded. Megan’s responses to her simple questions were answers in themselves. Deborah felt she was not going to get a straight answer and at that point wanted to leave. She had the sense that her further questioning would only draw unwanted attention.
“I’m not immediately sure which protocol Maureen is working under,” Megan said. “I’d have to look it up, but at the moment I’m too busy.”
“I understand,” Deborah said. “Thank you for your time.”
“Don’t mention it,” Megan responded. She smiled insincerely.
Deborah was relieved to return to her microscope. Going to the supervisor’s office had not been a good or particularly productive impulse. Deborah went back to work but had managed to enucleate only one oocyte when her curiosity, heightened by her short conversation with Megan, got the best of her again. Merely looking at the mass of oocytes in the microscopic field begged the question about their origin, especially if they were human eggs as Deborah suspected.
Leaning back, Deborah gazed over at Mare, who was ignoring her as she’d essentially been doing since the verbal skirmish with Paul Saunders over the eggs’ identity. A quick glance around the huge lab convinced Deborah that none of the dozen or so people toiling away were paying her any heed either.
Grabbing her purse as if she intended to go to the ladies’ room, Deborah sli
d off her stool and headed out into the main corridor. Believing she’d only be working at the Wingate for that one day, she decided the eggs’ origin was too much of a mystery to ignore. She didn’t know if she could sleuth it out, but she thought she’d learn what she could while she had the chance.
Deborah walked down the corridor in the direction of the central tower until she reached the last of the three doors leading from the corridor into the lab. Leaning into the lab, she could see Mare a good distance away, hunched over her scope. To Deborah’s immediate right was the walk-in incubator where Mare had been going for the petri dishes full of eggs. Deborah went to its glass door, slid it open, and stepped inside.
The air was warm and moist. A large wall-mounted thermometer and humidistat indicated it was exactly 98.6°F with one hundred percent humidity. Shelves for the petri dishes lined both sides of the narrow room. At the rear was the dumbwaiter, but it was a far cry from its initial incarnation when it had served to bring food up to the wards from the institution’s basement kitchen. It was made of stainless steel instead of the usual wood, with a glass door and glass shelves. For a dumbwaiter it was large, about the size of a highboy chest of drawers. It also had its own auxiliary heat and humidifying source to make sure it, too, stayed at the proper temperature and humidity.
Deborah pushed on the dumbwaiter to see if it would move enough to give her a view down the shaft, but it was rock solid. It was obviously a highly engineered piece of equipment. Deborah stepped back and eyed the unit. She guessed the back of the shaft was common with the wall of the main corridor.
Leaving the incubator, she went back out into the main hall and gauged where the dumbwaiter shaft was located. Then she paced off the distance to the stairwell near the fire door to the central tower. Using the old metal stairway, she climbed up to the third floor. When she opened the door she was surprised.
