Green Grow the Dollars

by Emma Lathen

  Pendleton, deep in his thoughts, saw none of this. He sat reviewing what Dick Vandam had said, and not said. Then, when he had come to certain conclusions of his own, he set forth in search of his wife.

  He relied on her more than he realized. When they had first married, Fran was a graduate student and he already a professor; the 20 years that yawned between them shaped the marriage. But Fran had become a mother and a grandmother and, somewhere along the line, those 20 years had evaporated. Now the roles were reversed. Fran provided the ballast in their partnership.

  When he went seeking her, he headed for a greenhouse, not a kitchen.

  “Fran!” he bawled into the humid emptiness, over the benches containing thousands of rose plants, in all stages of development. The only reply was silence, broken by the rhythmic gurgle of the automatic watering apparatus that fed droplets of water into the tubes snaking down the center gutter. “Fran!”

  “Wait a minute!”

  “Where are you?” he demanded.

  “I’m fixing this damn filter again,” said the unseen voice. “If I’ve told Ramon once, I’ve told him a zillion times to keep the switch off when we’re running the humidifiers. He’s jammed it again, and he’s going to keep on jamming it.”

  To this accompaniment, Fran backed out from under a table halfway down the greenhouse. Since she was nearly bursting out of disreputable jeans, this was not a posture that showed her to advantage. Neither did the greasy hands she rubbed on her shirt as she rose.

  “I’m going to kill Ramon,” she said, ruffling her short, wiry hair.

  “You could always fire him,” said Howard gravely.

  “Oh, well,” she shrugged. Some of the grease from her hands and jeans now adorned her forehead.

  “Did you get it fixed?” he asked with real interest.

  “I certainly hope so,” she said. “Otherwise, I could lose every last one of those Chinese crosses.”

  Fran Pendleton was a well-known geneticist in her own right, a world authority on roses, and an extremely capable woman. As everyone at IPR knew, she could no more fire Ramon than she could fly.

  “Fran,” he said, “I’ve got to talk to you.”

  Communication between them was so good that he did not have to add that her greenhouse would not do. Fran’s research assistants, the maintenance men, even the wretched Ramon, could wander in at any moment.

  Involuntarily, she cast a look of regret at her Chinese crossbreds. Floribunda roses were dear to Fran’s heart. Howard, of course, came first, but only by a hair.

  “Wait until I wash my hands,” she said from the sink.

  The concession was to hygiene, not vanity. Almost despite herself, Fran was still an attractive woman. Her gold hair was streaked with grey, and blight-resistant floribunda engrossed her more than manicures or weight watching. But she was happy and contented, which beats all the blue eye shadow in the world.

  “They haven’t changed the program again, have they?” she said following him into his office, possibly the only place where privacy could be guaranteed. At IPR, the atmosphere was informal. Horticulturists chatted in greenhouses, chemists brewed coffee in the labs, entomologists flitted in and out like moths. Howard’s office was not out of bounds, but it was usually empty.

  “What program?” he asked, at a loss.

  “What pro . . . Howard, what on earth is the matter?” she cried. The annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Sciences, due to open in Chicago in a week, was an important fixture on the Pendleton calendar.

  “I think,” he said, regarding her steadily, “there is some sort of controversy shaping about Numero Uno.”

  “Oh, is that all?” she exclaimed, relieved that he was not breaking really bad news, like death, accident, illness. There was a fractional click between them, compounded of his disappointment and her awareness of it. Hastening to make amends, she said, “What kind of controversy can there possibly be?”

  In theory, Fran knew all about Howard’s epochal experimentation to perfect a biennial tomato and shared his pride in the triumphant results. Actually, as they both recognized, she was as single-minded as he. While he had concentrated on tomatoes, Fran had been knee-deep in roses. And since roses, particularly her improved strains, made their own handsome contributions to IPR’s coffers, Howard could scarcely resent the rivalry. To his credit, even on a purely personal level, this had never occurred to him. When it came to work, he and Fran went their separate ways.

  “The controversy, Fran,” he said with a hint of his old classroom manner, “comes in the form of a lawsuit against Vandam’s.”

  Fran left the business side to her husband but Vandam’s had funded too much IPR work for her to overlook their importance. Even so, it took her a moment to make the connection. “I thought you said this was about Numero Uno,” she started before braking to a halt. “Oh, Howard, you don’t mean somebody’s disputing the patent award?”

  “I mean just that. And you’ll never guess who it is.” Fran was already running down the list of notable research competitors. “I never heard a whisper about any of the big outfits trying for a biennial tomato,” she decided with wrinkled brow. “It isn’t those Germans, is it? The ones who did the squash?”

  “It isn’t a big outfit,” said Howard, putting an end to the suspense. “It’s Wisconsin Seed.”

  “Scotty?” she cried. “You mean Scotty’s been working on the tomato, too?”

  Howard Pendleton’s mouth tightened. “So he claims.” Scott Wenzel had worked at IPR for two years before going off to set up a laboratory of his own. He had been a familiar figure to both of them during that period and a casual acquaintance ever since. Fran’s whole face was contorted with concentration as she agonized over some arithmetic calculations. Finally she heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Well, that’s all right. I’ve just figured it out. Scott was gone from here before you ever began on Numero Uno. So there’s no question of hanky-panky,” she announced. “Not that Scotty would ever do anything like that.”

  “I was not implying anything of the sort,” Howard said stiffly.

  Fran shook her head at him. “If that wasn’t it, what were you implying?”

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “This business about a lawsuit has rattled me. But there’s another thing about that call that got to me. Apparently Vandam’s has been sitting on this for weeks without breathing a word to me. And when they do get around to telling me, suddenly it’s Dick I’m talking to instead of the head of R & D. Why didn’t Jason Ingersoll get hold of me as soon as they knew?”

  “Maybe they didn’t think it was worth bothering you with,” Fran suggested.

  Pendleton smiled bleakly. “That’s what Vandam claimed. A nuisance suit, that’s what they thought. But Fran, that doesn’t ring true—not one bit. In the first place, Numero Uno is probably the most important product Vandam’s has ever handled, commercially speaking. And I happen to know it was crucial in their merger with Standard Foods. Talking about nuisance suits is utter nonsense. Which leaves the question, why put off calling me until the last possible minute? It’s as if they were hoping I wouldn’t find out.”

  His last suggestion was so outlandish Fran dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “Vandam’s didn’t want to remind the world that you developed Numero Uno and they didn’t,” she said with down-to-earth shrewdness. “Depend on it, that’s the explanation.”

  “Leaving us to take the cash and let the credit go?” he said with a rueful smile. “Not even Dick Vandam is such a fool as to think he can do that. Every geneticist in the world would notice that little footnote in the catalog.”

  But she was thinking of something else. “It’s funny when you come to think of it, that we never realized Scott was working on a biennial tomato, too. We’ve seen him lots of times since he left here and he never mentioned it.”

  Pendleton chuckled. “Be fair, Fran. I’ll bet I never mentioned to him that I was working on it. None of us takes possible compe
titors into our confidence. I’ve noticed you can be pretty closemouthed when you’re around other rose developers.”

  Fran had the grace to blush. “I suppose that’s so. Well, anyway, it shows what an idiot Dick Vandam is, trying to handle this on his own. You and Scotty can clear this up in five minutes after you’ve seen each other’s lab books. It’s clear enough what happened. You and Scotty started to work on the same thing and you got there first. It’ll be interesting to see how far he reached and if he followed the same line you did. I always said he was a bright boy.” “You think it’s going to be that cut and dried?” he asked, looking at her quizzically. “Somehow I can’t believe Vandam would be in such a flap if it were that simple.”

  Fran’s eyes widened. “For heaven’s sake, Howard, you’re not seriously worried about a dead heat or anything, are you? Even if Scott started working the same day you did, he doesn’t have anything like IPR’s resources. Barbara told me she had to fight for an electric typewriter. He has to be at least two or three seasons behind you.”

  “If he’s that far from a patent application himself, what in the world makes him think he can block me? That’s what I don’t understand.”

  At IPR research assistants came and went in a steady flow. Howard knew their qualifications inside out when they came, and their professional competence when they left. It was Fran, even in the midst of her roses, who managed to catch the human flavor, the personality quirks.

  “He isn’t trying to block you,” she announced with sudden decision. “He’s trying to block Vandam’s. Scotty’s hated them since the day they turned down his independent research project. You remember the way he used to carry on about the corporate establishment and the power it had to decide which projects would go forward. To hear him, you’d think Vandam’s was manufacturing napalm. He’d go wild if he spent four or five years on research and then Vandam’s scooped the pot. He’s probably ready to claim they’ve burglarized his safe or bribed his field hands.”

  Howard was nodding appreciatively. “That hadn’t occurred to me. Of course he doesn’t know yet that I did the development.”

  “And as soon as he finds out, he’ll calm down,” Fran predicted. “Naturally it will be a disappointment, but he’ll just have to swallow it.”

  It would be a bitter pill, she admitted to herself, particularly for a young man like Scotty. Just as sure of himself as Howard, and determined to make it on his own. Smart, difficult, cocky, ambitious . . .

  Suddenly she remembered another research assistant with some of these same traits.

  “Eric!” she exclaimed.

  Pendleton had been writing a list of things to say to Dick Vandam. Looking up, he said, “Eric Most? What about him?”

  “Oh, Howard, he’ll explode when he hears,” she said with maternal exasperation. “You’d better break this to him as gently as you can. And if you have to go up to Vandamia to straighten things out, you’d better take him along with you.”

  He considered this. Then, thoughtfully, he replied, “You know, Fran, that might not be a bad idea.”

  Eric Most was Pendleton’s current research assistant. This enviable position had been a springboard for many of his predecessors, there being no better qualification in plant genetics than an internship at IPR. But it was not enough for Most. He persisted in regarding himself as Pendleton’s colleague.

  “. . . so I said to Howard that I thought it was worth a try. The second generation of the Siberians was what really did it . . .”

  “Uh-huh,” said the biometrician. “Look, Eric, I promised Steve these photographs this afternoon.”

  Obligingly he slid down the counter, leaving her camera accessible. He did not leave.

  The biometrician, a pretty brunette as well as a highly skilled technician, sighed. Eric’s deep resonant baritone should have tipped her off. He might look like a golden-haired All-American but, as one interminable evening with him in Old San Juan had proved, Eric was a dried-up stick before his time.

  “. . . my name on the paper, together with Howard’s,” said Most, trying to sound blasé. “You know, Alice, I never expected to be a celebrity at the meetings.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said again. The paper, it went without saying, was on Numero Uno. No one at IPR doubted the achievement. Opinion about Eric Most’s contribution was considerably less unanimous.

  “As I was telling Howard this morning—”

  Fortunately for Alice’s temper and Steve’s pictures, the house phone buzzed.

  “Yes? . . . Oh yes, Dr. Pendleton. . . . Yes, he’s here. . . . I’ll tell him right away.”

  Downing the phone, she turned to Eric Most. “It’s Howard,” she said with honeyed mockery. “He wants to see you right now, Eric.”

  “Thanks,” he said casually.

  But, as she did not fail to note, the eyes gave him away. That outstandingly promising young geneticist, Dr. Eric Most, was scared to death.

  Farther north, another touchy interview was already taking place.

  “What did Pendleton have to say about this guy Wenzel?” Jason Vandam Ingersoll demanded.

  Looking him straight in the eye, Dick Vandam said, “Nothing.”

  Ingersoll could not keep from frowning. But, swallowing hard, he said, “That just proves I was right. You should have let me talk to Pendleton. He’s used to me and, after all, I was the one who first saw possibilities in Numero Uno. Besides, R&D has been dealing with Pendleton all along—”

  His argument was brushed aside.

  “The circumstances have changed,” said Vandam weightily.

  With any other subordinate, this would have been enough. But, as they both knew, Jason was not any other subordinate. Like his uncle Richard, he was a Vandam heir as well as a working executive.

  “Exactly what circumstances do you mean, Dick?” he persisted. “Standard Foods or the lawsuit?

  Either way, we’ve got to defend Numero Uno with everything we’ve got. I’ve said so all along.”

  Jason Ingersoll saw himself as the new wave at Vandam’s. It was not a view calculated to make him a universal favorite.

  “We agreed not to bring Pendleton into the picture unless we had to,” Vandam reminded him.

  “Now it’s necessary and we’ll have to play it by ear.”

  “If it’s not already too late,” said Ingersoll, accepting the dismissal and rising to leave. Ignoring it would disrupt the pretense of harmonious working relations that both men maintained.

  “Meanwhile I’d better get back and see what D.V.’s doing—if anything.”

  “Yes,” said Vandam absently.

  Jason closed the door with extreme care. But he gave no sign of internal churning until he reached his own office down the hall. There, his self-control got one test too many.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he exploded to an unexpected visitor.

  Milton Vandam was a relic of the bad old days. His fussy devotion to Vandam’s was equaled only by his incompetence. Cousin Milton had been a thorn in everybody’s side for decades. Only the Standard Foods merger, and a good deal of dissension, had eased him into early retirement.

  Unfortunately, before SF stepped in, Jason and Milton had been called upon to work together. Even more unfortunately, the bone over which they had snarled and bickered was R & D—in other words, Numero Uno.

  “During a crisis of these proportions,” Milton said sanctimoniously, “it is my plain and simple duty to be here, with whatever aid, support and experience I can offer.”

  Jason glared. “Look, Milton, we’re all busy.”

  “I should hope so. Do you realize that this is the first time since grandfather died that the Vandam catalog has been delayed?”

  Jason willed himself to silence.

  Milton was not that easily deflected. “Is Dick back from New York?” he inquired.

  “He got in an hour ago.”

  “How did things go?”

  Since Ingersoll did not really know, this exacerbated
his already simmering irritation. Milton, who was shrewder than his detractors admitted, recognized this and exploited it.

  “Sometimes Dick’s self-confidence can be a liability. He should keep the rest of us fully informed—family as well as company. After all, we do have a stake in what happens, don’t we?”

  These sentiments were too close to Jason’s for comfort.

  “How does Dick see things?” Milton continued smoothly.

  Before he could stop himself, Jason said, “He’s got every confidence—”

  “Yes indeed,” said Milton, scoring the point before moving ahead. “Of course, there can be no merit to the claim that anybody but Vandam’s developed and owns Numero Uno.”

  Remembered grievances swept over Jason. “Vandam’s owns it, but we didn’t develop it. We funded Howard Pendleton, remember?”

  “It amounts to the same thing,” said Milton, a past master at glossing over. “But since you raise the matter, what does Pendleton feel about this suit?”

  He had put a pudgy finger on another sensitive area.

  “He’s coming up to discuss it,” said Ingersoll. Then, goaded, he continued, “Dick just got off the phone to Puerto Rico. Pendleton says that the other side doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

  Once again, he had underestimated Cousin Milton.

  “Dick himself called?” he mused aloud. “Well then, we don’t really know, do we?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Why, whether that’s what Pendleton thinks, or what Dick wants him to think.”

  Chapter 5

  Poor Man’s Mulch

  WISCONSIN Seedsmen, Inc., outside of Madison, Wisconsin, was miles apart from the Institute of Plant Research in more ways than one. From the greenhouse to the front office, where the entire staff was currently assembled, the whole operation was makeshift, and looked it.