Fatal Reaction

But that’s not really the question that’s got me bugged right now.”
    “What is it?”
    “Aren’t you at least a little bit curious about how whoever killed him managed to get him to sit still while they shot him up with the stuff that killed him?”
     
    * * *
     
    When Lou Remminger found me I was standing in front of the vending machine in the lunchroom with a dollar bill in my hand, trying to decide whether to have cheese crackers or a Snickers bar for dinner. I had a terrible headache from peering at columns of numbers for hours and my back ached from hunching motionless over my desk.
    “There you are,” she drawled, smiling. She was wearing an army surplus jacket with what I recognized as an Oxford University scarf wrapped around her neck. “Get your coat on, girlfriend. It’s time for you to further your scientific education.”
    “What did you have in mind?” I asked, fearing that it was something that involved the cold room and pulverizing body parts.
    “Borland’s called a mandatory project council meeting,” she replied, “and we’ve got to get a move on because he gets pissed off when people are late.”
    It turned out that Borland’s weekly meetings were held at the bar of the El Torito Mexican restaurant, an establishment located next to the Oak Brook mall, that served an all-you-can-eat taco bar. After-hours drinking had long been a company sport at Azor, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why Remminger had gone out of her way to include me.
    “I talked to a friend of mine. A woman I met in graduate school. Her husband works for Mikos,” she said as we pulled out of the parking lot. “She says they don’t have diffraction-grade crystals yet, but the internal rumor mill is that they’re close.”
    “How close?”
    “Close.”
    “What about us?”
    “Michelle says she’ll have a new batch of crystals to try on Friday.”
    “And Childress?”
    “Nobody knows. Childress doesn’t tell anybody what he’s working on.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because he’s a paranoid asshole, that’s why.”
    “Do you think Michelle’s new crystals will diffract?”
    “I hope so, because if they don’t the odds are that Mikos will beat us.”
    “Why’s that?” I demanded. x
    “Because Michelle will lose two days when the power goes out,” snapped Remminger, pounding her fist against the steering wheel for emphasis, “and then she’ll have to flush the next three or four days sucking up to the Japanese. At this point in the process, in this kind of race, days matter. Fucking hours matter.”
    “I can’t do anything about the electricity,” I told her. “And the Japanese?”
    “At this point there’s not a damn thing I can do about them either.”
     
    In a country where more people consult a psychic hot line than realize that matter is composed of atoms and molecules, the fierce clannishness of scientists is only to be expected. But I hadn’t anticipated the way their peculiar insularity mirrored that of the very rich. Having grown up in what was for all intents and purposes a closed society—one in which a person could be immediately excluded on the basis of their shoes—I found observing another strictly delineated group endlessly fascinating.
    When Lou and I arrived, we found a dozen or so investigators crowded around a long table being presided over by Borland. El Torito, with its faux south-of-the-border ambiance, struck me as a bizarre setting for what could alternately be described either as a gathering of the world’s brightest organic chemists or the revenge of the nerds.
    Someone pulled up a couple of chairs and we squeezed in at the far end of the table between Bryan and Bill, twin chemists from Remminger’s lab who lifted weights in their spare time and looked for all the world like a set of matching fireplugs.
    “I’d keep my distance from Borland if I were you,” whispered Remminger, striking a match and lighting a cigarette. “His hands have a tendency to wander after he’s had a few.” Remminger and I were the only women at the table. I was the only person wearing a suit.
    “Ladies! You need a drink!” boomed the protein chemist, from the other end of the table. He poured us both margaritas from the pitcher in front of him and passed them down. “Better enjoy these while you can. I hear that by next week we’ll all be drinking sake.”
    “Only if we’re lucky,” grumbled someone I didn’t recognize. “I hear that Mikos is close to