Analog SFF, December 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “They just took Pinky to the hospital,” was the first thing she said when she got me alone.

  “What? What happened?” I assumed an accident—Pinky's last trip to the hospital was in something like the fourth grade; he suffered from impossibly good health.

  “I don't know. He was fine at lunch,” she said. “But Mildred saw the ambulance pull up and saw them walking Pinky out to it."

  “Okay,” I said. I had a lot to do that day, but I was already mentally clearing the decks: this was Pinky, after all. “I'll call Gerry and find out what hospital he's at."

  What Joy said then gave me a twinge of deep uneasiness. “I asked Gerry where they were taking him: he said nowhere; Pinky was just going home early."

  “By ambulance?"

  “That's what I said to him."

  “And?"

  “Gerry didn't say anything. When I asked again, he said I should ask Nguyen."

  “What's Phil got to do with it?"

  “Who knows?” Joy said, her voice rising in anger. “He's gone for the day. So's his assistant, so's Richard, so's anybody who could give me a straight answer. Phil's not even answering his cellular.” Anybody who knew Phil could easily imagine him sleeping with the cellular phone in the pocket of his PJ's.

  My first thought, and no more noble for being correct, was that Pinky had gotten himself into trouble. Of course I thought about the cabbage, and about the way he'd acted that day, many weeks ago. It wasn't something I wanted to discuss at the lab.

  Joy and I left. I didn't know where we were going until I was on 205 heading north. “We'll go to Pinky's place."

  “Okay,” she said. “You don't think he's there, though?"

  “Maybe not, but I don't know where else to start.” I didn't want to say out loud what I was thinking. We had the keys to Pinky's house, and he had the keys to ours, for vacations and emergencies and such. Even if he wasn't home, we might find out more about Pinky's extracurricular activities at his house.

  I wasn't the only one who had that idea. When we pulled up to Pinky's place, a two-story Tudor in Sky Lake, there were two unmarked vans in the driveway, and Phil Nguyen's BMW parked on the street.

  The front door wasn't locked—I wondered if Phil had gotten Pinky's keys—and when we walked in, two guys in suits who had that institutional cop look about them met us in the hall.

  “Excuse me?” one of the suits said, blocking our way. “Something I can help you with?"

  “Who are you?” Joy said. “And what are you doing in Dr. Sills’ house?"

  The men just looked at us. “We're with security, Miss,” one of them finally said. “I'm afraid you can't come in."

  “Security?” Joy said. “What security?"

  “Ihinger-Ibex,” the suit said. He showed us an oval badge with the company's stylized ibex on it, in a leather case.

  When I thought of security at all, I guess I pictured Walt, at the front gate with his clip-on uniform tie and droopy trousers. These guys looked like FBI agents. I wondered if they carried guns under their jackets.

  “This may be a crime scene,” the guy said. “You're not allowed in."

  Joy, to her credit, was less impressed by his authority than I was. “Crime scene?” she said. “You're not a cop. Get out of my way."

  Just then Phil came from the living room. “Joyce, I thought that was you. Sam, hi. Come in,” he said, gesturing as if it were his house.

  The two security guys stepped out of our way, polite smiles on their faces, and we followed Phil into the living room.

  He looked tired; his eyes were pouchy and his clothes were rumpled as if he'd been in them a long time.

  “Where's Pinky?” I said."

  “He's in the hospital. He's fine—he's fine,” Phil said, holding up a hand to forestall the next, obvious question. “It's just a precaution. He was sampling the pharmaceutical wares, Sam.” Phil made a face and took a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit up—it was a measure of how shaken he was, I thought, since Phil was very image-conscious and the corporate culture at Ihinger-Ibex was very much anti-smoking. “Do you know anything about it?” he asked tiredly.

  I was going to say something about the cabbage, but Joy gave me a subtle nudge. “You look awful, Phil,” she said. “Is everything okay at home?"

  I thought that odd, given the context, and so did Phil, apparently, since he gave Joy a sidelong look before answering.

  “Everything at home is fine,” he said. “But the office is in absolute chaos; Sills has been freelancing, and into the product. He's been unbelievably irresponsible, Joyce—the kind of stuff that could bring the FDA in and shut us down."

  Phil was a driven man, and he did worry more than the rest of us about politics, but that was his job. And he wasn't an alarmist. I wondered what Pinky had gotten into that had Phil so visibly shook.

  “Did either of you know he was self-testing the product?"

  “Are you sure?” Joy said. “Pinky can be difficult, but, really, Phil—as a researcher he's the last one you'd call irresponsible. This is the man who rewrote the Milsam because the old one was too lax."

  Joy made a good advocate. Milsam, MLSAM: the Manual of Laboratory Safety and Management was the company's technical procedural bible, and Pinky had rewritten it, not too many years earlier, because a technician had contaminated an important experiment of his. Ihinger-Ibex had even received a positive citation from OSHA over the new rules. If I hadn't seen Pinky eat that cabbage myself, I would have been swayed.

  “I don't know what I know, Joyce,” Phil said. He sounded disconsolate. “All I can point my finger at is the dozen-odd setups in his lab that weren't in the logbook, and that nobody else knew about. And Sills won't discuss them—he's adamant. What am I supposed to think?"

  The rest of the conversation was like that. Joy tried to pump Phil for information while he tried to pump us. No, we couldn't know what hospital Pinky was in; he'd insisted on privacy. No, we didn't know where Pinky might have kept his own files. And so on. When we left, Phil went back to what he was doing—apparently ransacking Pinky's computer for clues to his extra-curricular activities.

  I sat behind the wheel of the car, not sure what to do next. “Phil seems pretty shook,” I said. “Are you sure it was a good idea not to mention the cabbage?"

  “Don't waste too much energy feeling bad for Phil,” Joy said with uncharacteristic sharpness. “He's lying through his teeth."

  “What?"

  “Pinky's not in the hospital; he's at Phil's house,” she said. “Phil doesn't care about Pinky's privacy: Phil, or someone higher up, doesn't want us talking to Pinky."

  This was out of deep left field, both that my wife would think Pinky was being held at his boss's house, and that she'd be so sure of her hunch. Joy was nothing if not an empiricist. I trod carefully.

  “Is that why you asked him about home, to get a rise out of him?” I said.

  “So to speak.” Her expression was opaque.

  “What makes you think he's there? Wouldn't it make more sense for him to be somewhere on the campus—"

  “He's there, Sam. I don't think he's there, I know. Do you remember where Phil's house is, or should I drive?"

  We'd been to Phil and Nancy's house a dozen times over the years—the usual holiday socializing, mostly. Joy drove over while I thought out loud.

  “There's probably going to be more security guys over there, if Pinky is at Phil's house,” I said. Joy nodded, angry. “Look, if that's the case, you have to avoid glaring at them—in fact, the only way we're going to get to see Pinky is if they believe Phil sent us. We have to give the impression we're on their side—"

  “What side is that?” Joy said, cutting me off.

  “From their point of view, Pinky is some dangerous loose cannon—I don't know why—so we have to give the impression that we're there on Phil's behalf,” I said. “That means treating the security guys as if they're doing you a favor by watching Pinky."

  “My
husband, James Bond,” Joy said, but she smiled.

  “I'm glad you're amused,” I said.

  “I just didn't know you had such a devious streak. Hidden depths,” she said. “I think you're right—needless to say."

  “Well, he's probably not there,” I said. I didn't know where Joy's fey mood had come from, but I was troubled by it, and by what we were about to do if Pinky was indeed being held at Phil's house. It all seemed so unlikely and melodramatic.

  * * * *

  The Nguyens’ housekeeper answered the door—they lived in a huge old Victorian in Northfield—and we asked for Nancy. We waited in the foyer for a minute and Nancy appeared with a guy in a suit—more security. Up to that point I'd felt foolish, showing up at Phil's house. How were we going to explain that if Pinky wasn't there? Now it looked like Phil was the one who'd have some explaining to do.

  “Hi, Nancy. Phil sent us over to talk to Pinky,” Joy said in a funereal tone. The impression was that we were dragooned into this unpleasant duty because of our friendship with Pinky.

  “They're in the den,” she said, looking terribly uncomfortable about the whole thing; understandable, given the corporate goon at her elbow. “Mr. Freeman?” she nodded to the goon.

  Mr. Freeman showed no inclination to let us in. “When did you talk to Dr. Nguyen?” he asked.

  “We just came from Dr. Sills’ house,” I said. “Nothing there. Dr. Nguyen should be right behind us—they were just locking up when we left.” I used Pinky's professional title deliberately: I wanted the security man to feel as though this was high-level stuff, and not some office wretch making off with a box of pencils.

  I must have hit the right note, because he led us upstairs, to Phil's den. I'd never been in that room before. It looked like a set for Masterpiece Theatre: deep leather club chairs, an antique desk with brass fittings, and leather-bound books in dark wood bookcases. It struck me as totally unlike Phil, who, whatever his faults, was not a pretentious man. It took a few seconds to register that there was no computer on the huge mahogany desk. It was probably a showcase never used by Phil, but put together by a designer, or by Nancy, about whose tastes I knew far less.

  There, being watched by two more guys in suits, was Pinky, looking childlike and pathetic in an oversized wing chair. He was clutching a Byerly's shopping bag in his lap.

  “What do you want?” Pinky said, looking from me to Joy. To say I was taken aback would be an understatement—it didn't occur to me that Pinky would immediately identify us with his captors.

  “You're in a lot of trouble, Erik,” Joy said. Pinky's real name sounded strange on her lips. “What the hell is wrong with you?"

  “I guess you talked to Phil. Nothing's wrong with me,” Pinky sounded like a surly teenager. “These Gestapo agents pulled me out of my own lab, in the middle of the day, without any explanation. Phil is convinced I'm freelancing—that's what happens when you become a bean-counter, I guess; you start getting paranoid."

  None of this was making sense to me: not Joy's abrasive tone, nor Pinky's defensiveness. The security guys seemed unruffled, however. I briefly thought it might be an act on Pinky's part—Joy was almost certainly acting, though I didn't know to what end—but there was no way Pinky could have caught on before Joy had said a word.

  “Pinky, we're just trying to help,” I said. “Something's going on..."

  Pinky ignored me, staring morosely at the Byerly's bag in his lap.

  “Come on,” Joy said to me, “this is a waste of time."

  “Wait a minute.” We hadn't found out anything yet. I wanted to talk to Pinky alone, without the security men listening. Otherwise, the whole exercise of coming to Phil's house—likely to get us in hot water as soon as Phil found out—was futile.

  “Pinky, will you tell me what happened?” I asked, sitting in the chair opposite him. “Would you feel more comfortable talking if these other guys left the room?"

  Pinky just retreated further inward.

  I turned to the older of the security guys. “You know, he might be a little more reasonable if you gave us a minute or two,” I said. My tone was peremptory, but I tried to indicate by facial expression that I was humoring Pinky.

  “No can do, Dr. Krase,” he said.

  “Come on, Sam. There's nothing we can do here,” Joy said, rather bleakly, I thought. “Let's go back to campus and get started on the files Phil asked us about."

  Well, that was clear enough. Phil hadn't asked us about any files—Joy had her reasons for wanting us out of there, and seeing as how we weren't going to get Pinky alone, and given his uncommunicative state, there was nothing else for me to say. Still, I had to play out the act for the security men.

  “Dr. Nguyen has my cellular number,” I said to them, getting up. “He can call me if he needs anything.” I felt utterly transparent, playing the charade, but the security guys seemed to buy it. It made me wonder how good they really were at their jobs.

  * * * *

  “What was that all about?” I said, as soon as we were in the car.

  “Let me think for a minute,” Joy said. This was a habit—she liked to work things through in her head before she hashed them out with me. I had learned, after a few unproductive arguments, to wait until she was ready to talk.

  Joy drove. I was busy fretting, primarily about what was going to happen when Phil heard of our visit; my worries about what was going to happen to Pinky were a distant second. I realized, after a few minutes, that we were heading back to Pinky's neighborhood.

  Joy still had her do-not-disturb expression on. I didn't say anything until we pulled into the parking lot of a Byerly's.

  “What's going on?"

  “A hunch,” she said. “I think Pinky left something for us here."

  We went in, and Joy steered us straight to the produce section. There, in the display case along with several different kinds of lettuces, were three heads of Pinky's cabbage.

  I'd only seen a few individual leaves; never a whole head. They looked like spinach more than anything—deep green, but with reddish veins.

  Joy gathered them up and put them in a transparent plastic produce sack.

  “That's not going to work,” I told her. “The cashiers aren't going to recognize it; they're going to look for a produce code and not find one."

  “I thought we'd just bluff through it,” Joy said. “They won't refuse to sell it to us."

  “No, no they won't,” I said. But I was uneasy about it. It didn't come to me in so many words, but the feeling I had was that I didn't want any of the cashiers to be able to connect us with those particular greens.

  “Let's buy a bunch of other stuff,” I said. “We'll throw these in the bag with lettuce—maybe Romaine, they're close."

  Joy gave me a peculiar look, but she went along with my idea. We ended up getting lettuce, radishes, onions, and two bell peppers. We'd be eating salad for days. My excessive caution paid off: the cashier hardly glanced at the odd greens, ringing them up as lettuce.

  Our drive home seemed prolonged by the edgy silence. There were a number of questions I was itching to ask Joy. How had she known Pinky was being held at Phil's house? How had she known we'd find the cabbages at that Byerly's? What was the act at Phil's all about, and for that matter, how were we going to explain our presence there to Phil when we saw him at the lab?

  And the big question: what was Pinky up to—or at least how much did Joy know about it?

  In the kitchen, Joy didn't bother putting the other groceries away; she took out the cabbages and tore a few leaves off one.

  “Here,” she said. “Try these."

  I didn't say anything.

  “I know my behavior seems strange to you,” she said, putting the leaves on a square of paper towel. “This cabbage isn't going to hurt you, though. Eat some and then we'll talk about it."

  “How about we talk now, Joy?” I said. I had a sick feeling in my stomach, as if I knew some horrible news was coming. “I already ate as much of th
ese as I'm going to, that day in the cafeteria. What the hell is going on? Have you been eating these cabbages?"

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Are you and Pinky both nuts? Jesus!” I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. “Tell me what's going on."

  Joy just stared at me, her expression unhappy.

  “Why is Pinky in trouble?” I asked when she didn't say anything.

  “In the short term, because Phil thinks he's whacked out from sampling the product,” she said. “In the long term, because you can't patent a naturally occurring plant."

  “You mean the cabbage?” I shook my head. “What's one fungicide, more or less?"

  Antifungal drugs were big moneymakers because immune-suppressed people who survived everything else often succumbed to fungal infections. But Phil, and by extension the big shots he answered to, were grownups—they knew that not every avenue led to pay dirt. And Pinky had made them enough money to spend the rest of his career sleeping in his office, if he wanted to.

  “You don't understand,” Joy said, looking pained.

  “No, I guess I don't.” I was starting to get irritated. It seemed to me that Joy was holding out on me. That was less scary than thinking she was losing her grip on reality.

  “Why don't you stop tap dancing and tell me what the hell's going on, Joy?"

  “It's not the cabbage's antifungal properties that have Phil's shorts in a bunch,” she said. “It's what Pinky called the cabbage's mild hallucinogenic properties that's gotten him into hot water."

  “Hot water?"

  She sat at the counter and pressed her palms together as if she were praying. It was the same nervous gesture she made when she told me that her mother's estate had left us a quarter of a million dollars richer, and when she told me that the house had been burglarized and she thought she'd left the door unlocked.

  “First,” she said, “it's not a hallucinogen, mild or otherwise. It's sort of a neurotransmitter—well, a neuroamplifier."

  “Pinky isolated the compound?” I said.

  “Yes, but the optimum dose is obtained by eating the leaves—the neurological effect is achieved by about thirty-nine discrete compounds: the raw leaves deliver a perfectly titrated dose. Very complex molecules."