Intuition

by Allegra Goodman

  His flight had not been delayed. He'd come in the night before, slept a few hours, and gone jogging, then rounded at the hospital, talked to a priest who had been admitted overnight, and now, at almost one in the afternoon, without bothering to say hello, Sandy pulled his swivel chair over to Marion's desk and took out his sandwich from its brown paper bag.

  “Listen,” he began.

  She made a face at him. “Tuna fish?”

  He glanced down at his sandwich. Marion hated the smell. He shrugged apologetically. If he made his own lunches he would have remembered not to pack tuna.

  “Marion,” Sandy said, “this is the time to jump on our results.”

  “What do you mean, jump on them? Aren't we submitting this proposal?” She proffered the draft, ignoring his look of horror as he found his work, even at this late date, covered with red ink.

  “We need to announce the results.” He swiped the proposal and red pen right out of her hands. “Get Hawking to announce them. The word is getting out.”

  In the persnickety way he knew so well, she stirred her yogurt with a plastic spoon. “I think you're exaggerating,” she said.

  “Popper was talking about the virus in Orlando,” said Sandy.

  She looked startled for just a moment; then her eyes narrowed. “He was talking about it because you were.”

  “Listen, he brought it up. He confronted me right after the plenary session.”

  This irritated her, as he knew it would. “How would he know?”

  “It's been three weeks—”

  “Two,” she said.

  “Two weeks we've been sitting on these results. We're sending in the grant proposal. The word seeps out. Now is the time, Marion. Either we put out a press release or someone else will.”

  “It's premature,” she said. “We need time to prepare the journal article.”

  Sandy leaned in, resting his elbows on Marion's desk. “We can wait until we've dotted every i and crossed each t. We can wait until we reproduce it all and submit it to Nature. We can make sure every research note coming from the lab is of archival quality. Or we can seize the moment now. We can announce results that are still preliminary.”

  “Results that may be incorrect,” said Marion.

  “Right, we can risk that they're incorrect and stake our claim before someone else does. Before Popper does at UT, or before Yamashita steals our idea. Do you know how much money they have? Do you know how quickly they can run their tests?”

  “The grant proposal will date our work and establish our priority,” said Marion.

  “But it's not enough,” Sandy burst out. “We can't afford to wait six months for the review. In the meantime, everyone and his brother is going to try this.”

  “I don't put out press releases for unfinished work,” Marion said.

  “No, of course not,” Sandy retorted. “You'd rather get scooped.”

  “We won't be.”

  “We will. We will! And you know why? Because it's easy.”

  “You think it's easy to reproduce these experiments? Ask Cliff. Ask Robin.”

  “No, it's not easy work. That's not the point. Throw enough bodies at the problem and you can tackle that. Our work is reproducible because the idea is simple—once you think of it. Because anyone who hears of it will have to try it. And I'll be damned if I stand by and let you sit on these results, preliminary though they may be.”

  “Sandy!” She sat up straight behind her desk, and placed her yogurt down before her. He knew better than to press her further.

  He let the subject go, but he did not give up. He had collaborated with Marion for ten years. He'd studied her closely, with the same keen look she employed so effectively in her own research, and he knew her heart beat faster when she heard that other labs might copy her techniques. He understood that, despite all pretense and patient labor, Marion was a competitive creature. She was after more than modest gains. She wanted major breakthroughs and serious money, more staff and better equipment. She wanted to conduct a research program that matched and then outmatched the big boys at Dana-Farber and at Harvard, otherwise she would never have chosen to work with him. She had not chosen him as her partner for his charm or lab technique. He understood that. All those years working on her own, she had not pounded the pavement or sought out collaborators, and she had been the poorer for it. She'd not played the money game with NIH or understood the politics at the National Cancer Institute. But she'd found in Sandy the one quality she lacked: the chutzpah to press forward and sell her work. He knew, even as he needled her about capitalizing on their preliminary results, that she was, deep down, susceptible to needling. He understood what Marion herself could never admit. She wanted more than a private sense of accomplishment. She wanted glory.

  And yet Sandy struggled to make his case. He could practically taste the inky headlines: “Virus Sends Cancer into Remission: Preliminary Tests on Mice in the Mendelssohn-Glass Lab Show Cancer Tumors Melt Away with Injections of R-7 Virus.” Still, Marion refused to allow Sandy to send out a press release, or even to call his friend at The Boston Globe. Again and again she refused him, despite the power of his arguments, despite his provocations, his opportunistic knowledge of her very heart. He had the great advantage in that he knew her perfectly. The difficulty was that over the years she had studied him as well. She knew him too.

  “I'm not jumping to conclusions,” she warned him. “And I'm not going to let you jump to conclusions for me. I won't stake the reputation of this lab on half-baked results.”

  “You are so damn conservative,” he said.

  “All right, I'm conservative,” she told him.

  “We're going to lose our first-strike advantage,” he said. “And then we'll have to share credit with copycats at Stanford.”

  She said nothing.

  “Don't you care about that?”

  She looked him in the eye and said, “Fine. I'll share the credit if I have to.”

  Even so, he could not stop thinking about their argument. He was preoccupied at dinner and, still later, at the symphony that night. He sat in Symphony Hall and thought about press releases. He leaned forward in his regular chair, E-3, in the crook of the first balcony, and debated the language he would use. Treatment with R-7 yields stunning results. No. Striking results. He could not stop considering and reconsidering, even as he gazed at the musicians tuning. Vic Firth, the timpanist, in his black tie and tails, coming out early to check his instruments. So tall and patrician, like an eminent surgeon, laying out his percussive tools. How would the headlines run? Preliminary results in mice show startling effect of modified virus . . .

  The black- and white-clad orchestra was massing below. Tendril sounds of violins and oboes filled the hall. Perhaps he'd write a draft. He could write some notes for internal circulation at the institute. Or speak to Lorraine in PR, and suddenly find the press release written, a done deed, without a hint of impropriety on his part. These were just pipe dreams. He would never do such things without Marion's consent. And yet, if her consent were somehow unnecessary? He gazed at the gold pipes of the organ above the stage, pipes that seemed to him like rows of golden sharpened pencils, arrayed in their proscenium pencil box.

  The conductor stepped up to the podium. Seiji Ozawa was acknowledging the applause, shaking back his long black hair, ready to begin. He lifted his baton. Where would the musicians be without their conductor? What loose rhythm and wild melodies would emerge without him? Of course Sandy could not push Marion. But could he orchestrate the news? Could he begin the proper, necessary flow of information? He would never hurt her, but he couldn't stand by while she held back. Caution undercut Marion's ambition; worry doomed her to obscure conferences, and articles in esoteric journals.

  To make a mark, to see one's name indelibly imprinted on a field! To be a Pasteur, or a von Behring, or a Salk, revered for saving lives, as Beethoven was revered for his profundity! There was the composer's name over the proscenium, inscribed in gold. BEE
THOVEN, flanked by gilt cornucopia: double symbols of his fecund gift and overflowing fame. The other gold plaques in Symphony Hall were blank as cuff links without monograms, proof of the fickle politics of history. Other composers were also-rans, their contributions semiprecious; no one had bothered to set their names in gold around the stage. And so it was with science. There were those who triumphed, and those who faded. Marion could succeed; he knew that, if only she chose to compete. And he knew how. He knew how to run a race.

  He smiled as the music rose and warmed the hall. The country dance motif began, then the oncoming storm scattering the villagers in the Pastoral. Sandy had nothing but admiration for Marion. He had never known anyone, man or woman, so intelligent. But stubborn! He had to find a way around her myopic brilliance. After all, did she want to end up like Rosalyn Franklin or Watson and Crick? Did she want to be Wallace or Darwin? He would not stand by as the partner of an unacknowledged genius.

  The orchestra rose below. Applause enveloped them. “Lovely!” Ann exclaimed. Startled, Sandy turned to her. He had completely forgotten his wife at his side. His reverie was ended, and he was back in Boston, on a slushy Thursday night. He sat with Ann in a sea of business suits and jersey dresses, ties, turtlenecks, Fair Isle sweaters. This was Symphony Hall in spring: a scent of damp wool and perfume, a glint of old diamonds, a sweep of stoles, the shimmer of silk scarves and squelch of waterproof boots.

  “Sandy,” Ann chided during the break. “You're plotting.”

  “What, me?”

  She shook her head at him. She could always tell. Sandy smiled at the orchestra as he schemed and daydreamed. Sometimes he even laughed silently during concerts, the way other people might laugh during sleep.

  He stood and stretched. “It's Marion,” he confessed.

  “She won't do what you want,” said Ann, who knew all their latest arguments. Ann was used to hearing Sandy complain, but also accustomed to hearing how he got his way. Perversely, it amused her when Marion stonewalled Sandy. So few people could. Ann herself had given up fighting with him years ago, and chosen more circuitous means to get what she wanted. “You have to pick your battles,” she'd explained once to Louisa, and was more than a little hurt by Louisa's reply: “So which battles did you pick?”

  “She's got no sense of timing,” Sandy growled.

  “Do you want my advice?” Ann asked.

  “Advise,” he said, “advise away.”

  “Just don't do anything you're going to regret later.”

  “That's it?”

  “Isn't that enough?”

  “But what does that mean?”

  “You know what it means.”

  He looked at her glumly.

  Ann shook her finger at him. “If you try to send out a press release without Marion, she'll never forgive you.”

  “If we get scooped, I'll never forgive myself.”

  “Oh, you forgive yourself all the time,” said Ann. “Marion's the one you should worry about.” She knew the strictures by which Marion lived. Marion was not given to forgiveness or compromise of any kind. To Ann's mind, Marion had an almost ruthless sense of self and mission. And yet Marion was precious to Sandy, and by extension to his wife. Ann's loyalty and gentleness extended that far. She was old-fashioned in this, more than generous—reading her husband's mind at the symphony, reminding him not to ruin his friendship. Sulkily, Sandy flopped his program face down on the back of his chair and made his way out to the aisle to stretch his legs. Like anyone accustomed to expensive gifts, he took Ann's advice for granted, and simply hated that she was always right.

  5

  CLIFF CAME to the next lab meeting with his hair still damp from the shower. He wore clean jeans and a T-shirt printed with TOSCANINI'S DARK CHOCOLATE #3. He and Feng were going to present the new results: sixty percent of the cancer-stricken mice injected with R-7 were now in remission. The disease had run its course in the controls, but in the experimental groups the engineered virus seemed to stop cancerous cells from multiplying altogether. The tumors shrank and shrank and seemed to disappear. What might this mean in the future for cancer patients? An alternative to the poisons of chemotherapy? In more than half of the diseased mice, R-7 acted like a heat-seeking missile, entering and subverting only cancerous cells, and skipping cells that were growing normally.

  This was a great moment. Even as they gathered in the conference room, Prithwish and Natalya and Aidan were placing bets on how Feng would describe the new developments. Aidan and Natalya both bet on “random luck” as Feng's designated catchphrase, while Prithwish wagered on “some new fluke.”

  As it happened, Feng did not say a word to downplay the numbers in his lab book. If the work had been his alone, he might have undercut the results. However, Feng deferred to Cliff when it came time to delineate and extrapolate from the numbers of mice in remission and their near-perfect health. He gave Cliff all the glory: the discussion of molecular and genetic issues; the ongoing work to understand where and how the genes infiltrated and subverted each cancer cell.

  There were only seven people in the room, but, as Aidan said later, Cliff might have been onstage in front of thousands; he had such presence. Cliff spoke with total mastery. This came of his long hours and late nights. This came of his immersion in the data. Prithwish did not doodle. Aidan did not sprawl across two chairs. Cliff was riveting.

  In the silence afterward, Prithwish and Robin stole glances at Sandy and Marion, who sat together enthroned in their chrome chairs. Shrewdly, Sandy examined Marion. The very color of her eyes seemed warmer, a lighter shade of brown. Her features softened, her knitting lay forgotten in her lap. Her lips, usually tight and drawn in concentration, now parted with delight. She turned to him, and for a moment she was so beautiful that Sandy caught his breath. Strangely, he felt as though he were remembering Marion from another time, although he had never known her when she'd been truly young. He felt almost disoriented by the loveliness of the moment. Now, she was telling him wordlessly. Now we must collaborate. Now we need to work with Hughes at Stanford, and contact Agarwal at Cornell. We've waited to announce initial results, but now is the time. And aren't you glad?

  Jacob was practicing when Marion came home that evening. He stood in the small back bedroom he used as his study and practice studio, and he was working at Bach's Partita in E minor, pouring out the notes and double-stops from his nimble, sweating hands. He had a way of tunneling into Bach that was both expressive and introverted. The theme and variations drew him down distant paths, and he had no sense of the red welt rising on his neck where the violin chafed under his jaw, or the wet patches on his ebony fingerboard. He had no thoughts of these, or bills to pay, or his large and mundane classes, the students with their yellow highlighters and confusion over problem sets.

  He did not notice Marion standing in the doorway until he paused a moment and turned the page. Even then, he didn't acknowledge her until he was done.

  “I think we'll get a paper out of these results,” she said.

  Jacob rocked back on his heels, holding his violin in the crook of his arm, the bow swinging slightly from his index finger. “‘I think we'll get a . . .'” He echoed her words as if they'd fallen far down inside him. Then, surprised: “Oh, really?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “They're that good?”

  “Better than what we had before.”

  “But you'll need to reproduce them.”

  “Of course.”

  He gazed at the music before him. Was it really time to publish? Was Marion entirely ready? Or was the timing her capitulation to Sandy? Silently he posed these questions, but all he said to Marion was “Are you hungry?”

  “Well, that depends.”

  “Aaron and I were thinking about heating up the pot roast.”

  “I could keep you company,” she said.

  He put his hand on her shoulder as he followed her into the hall. The apartment had a stillness about it, as if no wind dared enter. Marion's pa
pers lay exactly where she'd left them, spread over the dining room table and living room sofa. The kitchen seemed empty and unfamiliar. The housekeeper, Philomena, had come and washed the dishes, and put the groceries and chessboard away. Without Jacob's violin, the only sound was the tap-tapping of Aaron typing in his room on his beloved Apple IIe.

  In the kitchen Jacob took the pot roast out of the refrigerator. “Why don't you call Aaron,” he told Marion.

  She felt as though she'd been away longer than a day, as if she'd been gone for weeks and journeyed to far countries. When Aaron came to the table, she thought he might have grown another inch.

  “What did you do at school?” she asked him.

  “We had a math test.”

  “And how was it?”

  He shrugged, surprised she'd ask such a banal question when so much was happening in the lab. He'd seen the change in his mother; she'd brightened visibly. Her eyes were almost merry, her step quick in the hall; even her voice was slightly different, unguarded and at times excited. “Do you think your paper will get into Nature?” he asked her.

  “We'll see.” The question made her smile.

  When he was seven or eight, Aaron used to ask Marion regularly: “Are you going to be famous?”

  “We'll see,” she'd tell him.

  “Are you famous already?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “She will be,” Jacob told their son.

  “A lot, or just a little bit?”

  That always amused her. “At least a little bit,” she said.

  She ate quickly now; she hadn't realized her appetite. When she finished, she jumped up to clear the plates.