Fatal Reaction

the weekend. Unlike at Callahan Ross, where I was not expected to even slit open my own envelopes, at Azor I had to carry the boxes to the car myself. When I was finished I made the rounds of the ZK-501 labs, handing out maps and directions to the party at my mother’s Sunday night. When I stopped by Lou Remminger’s lab the thought of Lou and my mother in the same room gave me pause. I considered bringing up the subject of appropriate attire but could not think of a graceful way to approach the subject. What was I going to say, “I’m planning on wearing a black Chanel suit. Were you thinking of wearing your nose ring?”
    “Do you have a minute?” asked Remminger in conspiratorial tones, as she dropped the invitation absent-mindedly onto the chaos of papers on her desk.
    “Sure. Why?”
    She looked at her watch. “Come sneak down to crystallography with me. Michelle says she’s going to try to diffract a new batch of crystals.”
    “And?”
    “And I just have a feeling, that’s all.”
    I followed Remminger down the service stairs past the animal labs where movers were busy loading some of the smaller, more temperature-sensitive animals into transport carriers. When we got to the aquarium window, there were a half-dozen other people milling about, waiting to see what, if anything, was going to happen. To my surprise Stephen arrived shortly after we did. He came up behind us and put his hand on my shoulder.
    He bent down and whispered in my ear, “Keep your fingers crossed.”
    Collectively we held our breaths as we watched Michelle go through it all again. Her face was ashen, and she looked so tired under her dark cap of curls that I wondered how long it had been since she last slept. Michael Childress hovered behind her, hands clasped behind his back like a mad scientist in a cartoon.
    Once the crystals were loaded in the generator, Michelle typed in the commands that set the X rays in motion. For several minutes nothing happened. People shifted restlessly from one foot to another and craned their necks for a better view. As the numbers began appearing on the computer monitor, silence passed over the ranks of watchers like darkness in an eclipse. I didn’t know whether it was good or bad until Stephen, who could see clearly above everyone else, started cheering.
    Suddenly everybody was hugging, laughing. To my enduring astonishment one of the muscle-bound twins from Remminger’s lab grabbed me and gave me a big kiss on the lips. As Stephen made his way through the crowd to congratulate her I caught a glimpse of Michelle Goodwin standing mutely in her triumph, her eyes glistening with tears. My heart leapt for her.
    Childress, on the other hand, was as animated as a lottery winner, shaking hands and accepting congratulations that no doubt really belonged to Michelle. For now at least, there seemed enough good will—and credit—to go around.
    From somewhere Dave Borland appeared, a champagne bottle in each hand, which he swung like a pair of Indian clubs. Stephen’s assistant, Rachel, produced a pocket-instamatic and the two crystallographers stood in front of the computer console self-consciously shaking hands for the camera.
    Champagne corks popped and Borland doused Michelle and Childress with champagne as if they were baseball players who’d brought home the championship. Michelle’s friend from the animal lab managed to scrounge up some gerbil-size paper cups and we all raised our tiny glasses and drank to toast the crystallographers’ accomplishment.
    Someone facetiously called out: “Speech! Speech!”
    Childress needed no further encouragement. He immediately stepped in front of Michelle and began explaining the importance of the discovery. Remminger hissed something under her breath. It sounded suspiciously like “Pig.”
    From Stephen’s point of view the solution of the receptor’s structure could not have come at a better time. Twenty-four hours ago the deal with Takisawa had seemed all but dead. Now he not only had an agreement in principle with the Japanese, but a certifiable breakthrough in the form of the first diffractable crystals of ZKBP.
    But from the crystaliographers’ perspective it couldn’t have come at a worse time. In a few minutes Michael Childress had a plane to catch and in three hours the power company would shut off electricity to the labs in order to install the new transformers. Michelle would have no choice but to surrender her precious crystals to the