Micro. Michael Crichton

almost finished, myself,” she said. “And it’s only nine o’clock.”

      “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

      “It doesn’t appeal to you, my offer?” She was still staring at him, scanning his face.

      “I thought you were seeing Amar.”

      “I like Amar, very much. He is very intelligent. I like you too. I always have.”

      “Maybe we’ll talk later,” he said, pouring milk in his coffee, and moving away so quickly that it spilled a little.

      “I hope so,” she said.

      “Trouble with your coffee?” Rick Hutter said, glancing up at Peter and grinning. Under a halogen lamp, Rick was holding a rat upside down, measuring its swollen rear paw with a small caliper.

      “No,” Peter said, “I was just, uh, surprised at how hot it was.”

      “Uh-huh. I’d say, surprisingly hot.”

      “Is that a carageenen prep?” Peter said, changing the subject. Carageenen was the usual method to produce edema in the paw of a lab animal. It was a standardized animal model for edema, employed in labs around the world to study inflammation.

      “Correct,” Rick said. “I injected carageenen, making the paw swollen. Then I wrapped the foot in an extract from the bark of Himatanthus sucuuba, a medium-size rain-forest tree, and now we are—hopefully—demonstrating its anti-inflammatory properties. I already demonstrated it for the tree’s latex. Himatanthus is an extremely versatile tree, it heals wounds and cures ulcers. The shamans in Costa Rica say this tree also has antibiotic, anti-fever, anti-cancer, and anti-parasite qualities, but I haven’t tested those claims yet. Certainly the bark extract has reduced this rat’s swelling remarkably fast.”

      “You determined what chemicals are responsible for the anti-inflammatory response?”

      “Researchers in Brazil attribute it to alpha-amyrin cinnamate and other cinnamate compounds, but I haven’t verified that yet.” Rick finished measuring the rat, set it down in the cage, and typed in a measurement and time in his laptop. “Tell you one thing, though: extracts from the tree appear to be completely nontoxic. One day you might even be able to give this to pregnant women. Huh, look at that.” He pointed to the rat as it moved around the cage. “It’s not limping at all anymore.”

      Peter slapped him on the back. “Better be careful,” he said, “or you’ll have some pharmaceutical company beating you to your results.”

      “Hey, I’m not worried. If those guys were really in the business of developing drugs, they’d already be working on this tree,” Rick said. “But why should they take the risk? Let the American taxpayer fund the research, let some graduate student spend months to make the discovery, and then they swoop in and buy it up from the university. And then they sell our discovery back to us, at full price. Sweet deal, huh?” He was starting to wind up for one of his tirades. “I tell you, these Goddamned pharma—”

      “Rick,” Peter said, “I’ve got to go.”

      “Oh sure, yeah. Nobody wants to hear it, I know.”

      “I have to spin down my naja venom.”

      “No problem.” Rick hesitated, glanced over his shoulder at Erika. “Listen, it’s none of my business—”

      “That’s right, it’s not—”

      “But I hate to see a good guy like you fall into the clutches of somebody who is…well…Anyway, you met my friend Jorge, who does computer science at MIT? If you want to know what’s really going on with Erika, call this number—” he handed Peter a card—“and Jorge will access her phone records, including voice and text messages, and you can find out the truth about her, uh, promiscuous ways.”

      “Is that legal?”

      “No. But it’s damn useful.”

      “Thanks anyway,” Peter said, “but—”

      “No, no, keep it,” Rick insisted.

      “I won’t use it.”

      “You never know,” Rick said. “Phone records don’t lie.”

      “Okay.” It was easier to keep the card than argue. He slipped it in his pocket.

      “By the way,” Rick said, “about your brother…”

      “What about him?”

      “You think he’s on the level?”

      “About his company?”

      “Yeah, Nanigen.”

      “I think so,” Peter said. “But to be honest I don’t know a lot about it.”

      “He didn’t tell you?”

      “He’s been pretty secretive about the whole thing.”

      “But you think it’s innovative?”

      Yes, I think it’s innovative, Peter thought, peering through the scanning microscope. He was looking again at the white pebble, or micro-bot, or whatever the thing was. Trying to account for his brother’s explanation that it wasn’t a cockpit but just a slot for a micro-power-pack, or a control unit. It didn’t look like a slot for anything. It looked like a seat facing a tiny, highly detailed control panel.

      He was still puzzling over this when he became aware that the lab around him had become absolutely silent. He looked up, and saw that the microscope was also displaying on a large flat-panel screen mounted on the wall. Everybody in the lab was staring at it.

      “What the hell is that?” Rick said.

      “I don’t know.” Peter flicked off the monitor. “And we’re not going to find out, unless we go to Hawaii.”

       Chapter 3

      Maple Avenue, Cambridge

      27 October, 6:00 a.m.

      One by one, all seven of the graduate students decided to take Vin Drake up on his offer. They collected data, they wrote out descriptions of their research, and they sent letters and information to Alyson Bender at Nanigen. One by one, they were informed that Nanigen would fly them to Hawaii; and for simplicity they would travel as a group. As October ran to its end, their days were devoted to preparations for departure. All seven had a lot to do—finishing experiments, getting their research projects in shape to leave them for a while, and, of course, packing. They planned to leave early on a Sunday morning out of Boston’s Logan Airport, with a connection through Dallas, arriving in Honolulu that same afternoon. They would, by general agreement, stay four days, returning toward the end of the week.

      Early on a gray, cold Saturday morning, the day before the flight, Peter Jansen was in his apartment working at his computer. Erika Moll was there, too, cooking bacon and eggs and singing “Take a Chance on Me.” Peter abruptly realized that he had forgotten to turn on his phone that morning—he’d turned it off the night before, when Erika had unexpectedly shown up. He turned on the phone and placed it on his desk. A minute later, the phone buzzed. It was a text message from his brother, Eric.

      He stared at the message. Was this a joke? Had something happened? He typed back:

      He watched the screen, but there was no answer. After a few minutes, he dialed Eric’s number in Hawaii, but got his voice mail. “Eric, it’s Peter. What’s up? Call me.”

      From the kitchen, Erika said, “Who are you talking to?”

      “Nobody.