Fatal Reaction

in particular are a pain to work with. The conditions have to be absolutely perfect to grow crystals and even if you grow them once there’s still no guarantee you’ll be able to grow them again.”
    “So it’s largely a matter of luck, then?”
    “I wouldn’t say that, but crystallography is one of those things where it’s better to be lucky than good.”
    “And is Michelle lucky?”
    “We’ll see in about ten minutes, though I’ve got to say that up until now lucky is not a word I’d have picked to describe Michelle.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “I guess you wouldn’t know him, but Michelle did her dissertation under Max Guzak—literally. Max is the big crystallographer at Rutgers. He’s a lot like Childress except that on top of having a big ego he has something of a dick control problem. Too bad nobody ever warned poor little Michelle. She just showed up all starstruck that she’d been chosen to work in the great man’s lab, having never had a date in her life—and all of a sudden there’s this good-looking, Nobel prizewinner stroking her cheek and telling her how devastatingly attractive he finds her. I’m sure he told her she was the love of his life and fed her some story about how they were destined for each other.”
    “So what happened?”
    “He fucked her for a couple of weeks and then dumped her for some new techie in his lab with blond hair and big tits.”
    “How did Michelle take it?”
    “Michelle is tougher than she looks. Instead of running home to mama, Michelle stuck it out and finished her dissertation. Not only that, but she told him that if he didn’t recommend her for a postdoc at M.I.T., she’d tell his wife all about what had gone on between them.”
    “So did she end up getting the postdoc?”
    “Yeah. When she was finished there she was offered a postdoc at Purdue. That’s when she started her work on PGHS-1 and doing triathlons.”
    “What’s that?”
    “A race where you swim for two hours, bike fifty miles, and then run a marathon.”
    “I know what a triathlon is,” I replied. “What’s PGHS-1?”
    “It’s one of two enzymes that aspirin binds to in the body. When Michelle started working on it, it was considered a key enzyme for the development of a new generation of analgesic compounds.”
    “And was it?”
    “Nope. It turns out that it’s the other enzyme, PGHS-2, that represents the active site. Michelle spent three years demonstrating that she could solve the" structure of a complex molecule; unfortunately it was the wrong molecule. That’s why she jumped at the chance to come to Azor to work on the integrase inhibitor. She took a lot of flack from her department when- she took a leave of absence from Purdue. I’ve even heard rumors that they might not take her back at the end of the year, that they’re going to say she violated her contract by coming to Azor.”
    “So why did she come?”
    “Because she thought she was getting another shot at stepping into the spotlight. It’s like a tryout in the majors. How can you not step up to the plate and see if you’re good enough?”
    “But Mikos solved the structure of integrase first, and Azor had to abandon the project when Okuda pulled out.”
    “There are some people around here who think that if they didn’t waste so much time putting on a dog and pony show for every company that Danny and Stephen brought through here in the hopes of striking up some kind of joint venture deal she might have gotten to it first.” Lou looked down at her watch and hopped to her feet. “Come on, it’s time to see whether Michelle’s luck has changed.”
     
    I followed Lou Remminger into the basement. Crystal-lographers, she explained, are by necessity bottom dwellers. The computer equipment and X-ray generators necessary for their craft are much too heavy to be supported by an upper floor. At Azor they are relegated to the bowels of the building, somewhere between the loading dock and the animal labs.
    The main crystallography lab was nicknamed the aquarium on account of the large plate-glass window that separated it from the hallway. Through it could be glimpsed all manner of bulky and unfamiliar equipment, which collectively seemed to emit an ominous, low hum.
    Before I’d become involved with Azor I’d always thought of scientific research as a highly cerebral enterprise. But the reality had much more in common with carpentry than with philosophy. I had seen for myself that laboratories are