|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
1995 The Study
Mason Eckhart no longer walked with a cane. He moved stiffly, possibly coping with chronic pain somewhere, but without hesitancy or uncertainty. For a long time he had been followed about Genomex by one or more ‘assistants’, men quick enough and strong enough to seize him and possible spare him a catastrophic fall. But no more.
Just a few years before, when I was new to Genomex, his emotional vulnerability was imperfectly camouflaged. Perfectionist that he was, with time he fine-tuned the impression made upon people. All the elements with which he could terrorize subordinates, the inept, and Genomex mutants were now in place: the shark-eye glare, the articulate verbal ambush, and the chilly, distant manner.
I observed Mason Eckhart neither casually nor with fear.
I wore a calculated persona just as he did, although my public performance was far less extreme and I doubt I frightened anyone.
My two technicians and I had just spent months developing and perfecting a method to measure levels of the therapeutically active form of a potent sedative in human blood. Cleaning up any natural matrix so that an analyte may be dependably measured is typically a challenge, but this was made more complex by the demands for safe handling precautions. I demanded –and received—a small lab for sample preparation separate from instrumental areas.
Most analytical types do not “speak biology”. I do, which is why I was so adamant about precautions. I also had some formal training in pharmacology.
My group was performing support for a study designed by others, principally my ‘buddy’ Adam, the Prince of Genomex himself. My broader than typical undergraduate training raised serious questions about this study…that I knew better than to ask.
Why was Genomex investigating the use of sedative most commonly use to calm large animals and dangerous psychotics—in adolescents?
Why did the use of this drug concern not only Adam, who designed the study, but Mason Eckhart, recently charged with overall site security?
And why were we meeting to discuss my support of the study in an obscure conference room half given over to storage because of its inconvenient location?
I could guess at some answers. None were pleasant.
Eckhart was there when I walked in, compulsively early, as was I. I selected a chair halfway down the flattened-oval table. Nobody wanted to sit near him.
“You may want to reconsider your choice in seating, Dr Steyn. Adam is the only other attendee.”
By now, I had assembled a collection of Eckhart mannerisms and nuanced sarcasms and threats in my head. If anyone could pack negativity into a comment, it was Eckhart. I paused to sort through the content and tone of his comment; for him, it had been neutral or even helpful. Odd.
I gathered up folders of summarized data, and moved to sit around the table corner from him.
“What is this meeting about?” I was annoyed and suspicious. I tried not to reveal just how annoyed and just how suspicious I was.
“Adam, as always.”
The antipathy between these two was the stuff of Genomex legend. Initially, I had not known what to make of the stories. Upon accumulating more data, I was less and less inclined to believe Adam’s versions.
Our eyes met. He wasn’t being rude to me, but his reply, implying deep disrespect for the Prince of Genomex, did not exactly answer my question, either. He knew that.
“Where is everyone else?”
“Adam won’t have to quibble with them if he can bully you into retracting your data as flawed, incomplete, or otherwise useless.”
“But…”
“I know it is none of those things. But I do know Adam. Gather your wits and hold on fast. Prepare for battle, and psychodrama.”
I would have liked the luxury of pondering what Eckhart had said, the time to sift and parse it all. Adam was a distasteful fact of life at Genomex. He was probably a brilliant man, but his ability to deliver on the promise of his intellect was uneven, putting things in the kindest terms. Adam could both dazzle with his insights and amaze with his technical blind spots. Most difficult of all, he was Paul Breedlove’s Gold Boy, and had been since he started in 1978. Contradicting Adam was done only with care, tact, and unassailable data.
Genomex lore was full of speculation about Adam’s status as Breedlove’s favorite and heir. Most recently, legend told that Adam was the illegitimate son of Breedlove and his housekeeper Trudy Schuler, in more lurid variations said to be his first cousin or half-sister. I did not care. I did care about any attempt to undermine my credibility or that of my technicians.
And why was Eckhart warning me? What was he trying to get from me, this man said to “scheme in his dreams”?
When I am able, I am bluntly straightforward. When people are surprised, their initial answer tends to contain a large proportion of truth. There wasn’t enough time to try that now, and even if there was, Eckhart knew too much of the truth, and I knew too little. I had no idea what I read in his eyes, difficult enough to read behind grey-tinted lenses.
I was certain of one thing: the brief, intense flicker of loathing and contempt as Adam swept into the room, quickly mastered and controlled.
“I’m sorry I’m late. An experiment had reached a critical point.”
Adam might fool Eckhart with such a comment, but he should know better than to make an absurd, faux-dramatic statement in front of me. Real Science was not the breathless pushing back of frontiers moment by tense moment shown in bad science fiction.
“Good morning, Adam.”
Using just the right balance of formality and casual first-name usage, Eckhart dismissed Adam’s moment of drama for the lie it was, all within the boundaries of perfect civility. They had known one another a long time. Why didn’t Adam anticipate how Eckhart would neutralize his attempt at controlling mood and meeting direction?
A lesser schemer than Eckhart would have turned and looked at me to gauge how I had scored his cleverness. Not Eckhart. I decided that showed greater skill than the way he had deflated Adam’s entrance.
“Rebecca, I’m just not sure I understand the results from the 8, 10, and 12 hour assays.”
“Levels of TAP plummeted 8, 10, and 12 hours after ingestion or injection. The biochemists tell me this indicates a rapid metabolization of TAP from active form to inactive metabolites.”
“Couldn’t that be due to instrumental variability when the beginnings and ends of sample runs are compared?”
This was not Adam’s specialty, but he could not be this unaware of the answer to his question. Could he? Was he perhaps trying to frustrate me, break my concentration and anger me?
“Several things were consistently done throughout this study to prevent such bias. The standards were frequently injected; the samples were run in random order; the samples were extracted in triplicate; and the study itself was also done in triplicate. Three different operators prepared samples, collected, and analyzed data: Harlan, Jenny, and me. Results are not only well within prescribed statistical limits, but in most cases the replicates sit on top of one another. Things rarely get better than this.”
In other words, Adam, I made you a damn good analytical method.
“Most?”
Insufferable swine.
“Yes, most. Not all. Remember the windstorm that blew out several of the lakeside floor to ceiling windows one evening? Plywood was up over the openings within five hours, but the cold air played merry hell with the building thermostats for hours, affecting retention times, peak shapes, and alas, final results of irreplaceable samples.”
“Adam, we have to accept that this study precludes a pharmaceutical solution.”
What was Eckhart talking about?
“I don’t like the idea of using subdermal governors.”
If Adam did not like them, how bad could they be, whatever they were?
“I am even less enthusiastic than you about people walking about with plastic plugs sticking out of their necks, but as useful as TAP has proven in the sedation of frantic cattle and violent adult psychotics, we have to abandon it’s possible application in controlling…adolescent…mutants.”
Adolescent mutants? Adam had been putting TAP into adolescents? All I had been told is that I was dealing with human blood, not that of kids!
“Mason, what do you know about biochemistry or pharmacology?”
“Precious little. But I do understand numbers, and the numbers in this study say that dosage every 12 hours is not the answer since the drug is mostly metabolized after only 8 hours. That is not good enough. Someone will be hurt or killed if we pursue this.”
“That shouldn’t happen. It doesn’t happen in cattle or psychotics.”
Eckhart shrugged. “We have to cope with the real, Adam, even if we once believed it unlikely. We’re going to have to perfect the governors no matter how noticeable they are.”
“Something isn’t right. The data must have been falsified.”
“To what purpose?” Eckhart asked calmly.
I was not so calm. “Adam, I will not sit and listen to any aspect of my operation maligned without evidence anything is amiss. We can go down to my lab now, and you can freely inspect anything you please—instrument calibration, procedures and records, training records, method validation, raw data, reagent expiration dates, routine maintenance logs. You can question Harlan and Jenny—as long as I am standing there. Adam, everything is in place as it should be, exhaustively so, according to federal regulations.”
“As I would expect,” Eckhart said calmly. “Adam, we are stuck with developing the governors.”
“We’ll increase the level and frequency of the dosage.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You forwarded the toxicologists’ papers to me. The human liver will not handle higher levels. We give 13-15 year old kids a higher dosage…we will be murdering them.”
Adam never was a detail-driven person.
“The subdermal governors have only a limited range.”
“They possess numerous shortcomings. But they do not kill. And they do not fail. Do you want to be the target of an angry 13 year old capable of tossing a bolt of lightning across the room? Adam, there is a pressing need to so something to protect ourselves and the larger society.”
“I don’t even know how long subdermal governors hold up in field use.”
“It’s high time we found out, don’t you think?”
Adam scowled.
“Stop fighting it, Adam. Some problems do not have the answer we would like.”
Adam rose from the table. “The subdermal governors are not the whole answer, either.”
“Time for another look at the pods.”
Adam glowered at me before striding out of the meeting room.
“What is going on here?”
“Breedlove and Adam have been busy for a long while, and now, the run of luck that carried them through technical recklessness is beginning to turn.”
“Adolescent mutants?”
“Press me, and I will tell you, but I swear you are better off hearing no more, and forgetting what you have heard.”
“A threat?”
“No. The best advice I can offer. Genomex is more and less than it seems, and host to a welter of secrets, some obscene beyond telling.”
“How long have you known this welter of secrets?”
“Nine years. Thank you for not backing down from Adam…you have prevented more secrets…” Did I hear relief in his voice?
I gathered up my papers, and rose from the table, knowing I was not the same person who sat down to it.
I don’t even know what I’m hiding. I’ve helped him stop Adam from doing something, but what have I set in motion with these ‘governors’? What was I now part of?
He watched me leave.
I turned when I reached the door. He was still watching.
More than eighteen months would elapse before he had reason to speak to me again.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
