5
“I
ASSUME
that I'll go back,” Feng told his lawyer.
“What do you mean, go back?”
“To China.”
“What are you talking about?” Byron Zouzoua demanded. He was an arresting-looking advocate of Cameroonian descent, New Jersey raised, Harvard and Oxford educated, just a few years out of Yale Law School and keen to make his name. His complexion was black as obsidian, his hair close cropped, his voice deep, and his fingers long and delicate. His suits were crisp, beautifully cut, his shirts perfect, to Feng's eye. “You're not going anywhere, man. You're not seceding from this controversy.”
Feng did not argue, but looked at Zouzoua with a mixture of skepticism and misery, and just a touch of amusement at the stern reprimand. His dark humor had not deserted him.
“You will not go back anywhere. This media frenzy is not about you, and it's not about science. Do you think these people have a clue about science?” Zouzoua scoffed at the folders of newspaper clippings on his desk.
The file was now voluminous indeed. Feng had been elevated, lionized, adored as the young Chinese researcher who had stumbled upon a possible cure for cancer. He had been the soft-spoken genius, unaware of his own powers, realizing for the first time that R-7 diminished tumors in experimental mice. Always, in the stories, he was in the dark, toiling silently, far from home. Always, he had sacrificed his homeland and his native food, his family, his childhood (his boyhood journey far away to school was epic)—all for science. He had been a Horatio Alger for the scientific age, working his way from peasant rags to intellectual riches; from poverty and village ignorance in China to a world of possibility in America.
And now the dream was falling apart in all the newspapers. The work with R-7 was suspect. An inquiry at the highest levels was under way, and Feng's very integrity questioned. Great wondering articles appeared in
The Boston Globe;
a critical analysis was published in the Science section of
The New York Times.
Feng's picture flashed on television newscasts, reporters had begun to call the lab, and even Feng's apartment. As quickly as he'd embodied hope, he now became the target of suspicion. As intriguing and delightful as his shy, mystified face had been, his was now the face of doubt.
Zouzoua scowled at the old profile of Feng torn from
People
magazine. “What you are experiencing is the xenophobia of this country. That's the first thing you've got to understand and the first statement we have to make. There is no area of inquiry in the United States untainted by politics, and, unfortunately, there is no political arena untouched by the specter of race.” Zouzoua spread his open hands before him as if to say “Need I say more?” and Feng marveled at his perfect white cuffs, the glint of his cuff links, the pinkness of his palms.
“These fascinate me,” Zouzoua said of the clippings on his desk. “They're all the same. Every article, every venue, from
People
to the
Times;
every byline and every date. They all tell the same story—and it's about how we see difference. If we can expose that, if we can really open people's eyes to the prejudices and racial politics underpinning this investigation, that would mean something.”
“Would it mean something for me, too?” asked Feng. While he appreciated Zouzoua's broad vision of the situation, he could not really believe that such visions or bold statements would be of any help. Since when did reporters retract their articles because they had come to understand their own subtle racism? He'd thought he had inured himself in the lab to forces beyond his control, but all the mysteries and difficulties there appeared small and manageable compared to the storm raging outside, the blizzard of articles driven by—what? ORIS? Public interest? Xenophobia? Or were the new articles spawned by the ones that came before?
No one teased Feng about the attention now. There were no more postings on the bulletin board. One day, in fact, the old clipping from
People
disappeared.
Lab meetings were fraught. Marion knitted furiously, bent over the fisherman's sweater she was making for Jacob. As she grew more anxious, her pattern seemed to grow more elaborate. She knitted cables and honeycombs, double zigzags, basket weaves, diamond and trellis patterns, and the stitches were perfect, tight and even. She held her yarn taut against her index finger, even as she studied documents on the table. No matter what was happening, she kept the tension of her wool consistent.
Cliff was ashamed to think that once he'd been even a little jealous of Feng for getting so much press. He had been afraid before that Feng would get the credit for R-7; he'd never imagined Feng would take the blame as well. What a lot of time he'd spent fretting that Feng would get all the glory. How foolish he had been. These days, envying Feng could not have been further from Cliff's mind. He had no envy left, and he had no time.
Feng's story had been cruelly publicized in the popular press, but everyone in the scientific community knew that Cliff was the driving force behind R-7. Feng had tapered off his contributions even as Cliff stepped up his efforts. Researchers in the field were keenly aware of this. They calibrated the reputations of their colleagues and competitors with precision, and had awarded Cliff the lion's share of credit for R-7. In their eyes, the full weight of the ORIS investigation fell on him as well.
Nothing had prepared Cliff for this constant battering. He felt that every time he paused in answering Hackett and Schneiderman's questions on the phone, they took his silence as an admission of guilt. He was sure every detail he could not recall would be held against him. Cliff's earnest, bespectacled attorney, Tim Borland, talked about a vigorous defense; he used the words
outrage, disbelief,
and
travesty
. Sandy Glass scoffed at ORIS, and mocked what he called their fishing expedition. Brave words, but they were only words. The investigation persisted, shadowing days and weeks, and Cliff's inner certainty could hardly shelter him from the accusations and suppositions raining down upon his head.
The day Prithwish left for Sri Lanka, Cliff took refuge in the animal facility. He scanned the cage racks for his experimental mice, and tried to comfort himself with their good health. Marion and Sandy had decided to delay submitting the new journal article. “This is not a reflection on you,” Sandy had reassured Cliff.
“We want the paper to get a fair hearing, that's all,” said Marion.
Cliff understood their logic, but he was miserable all the same. He was losing time, missing the chance to publish when his work was freshest. ORIS could deliberate for months. They would announce their findings at their leisure, and his new work would remain under wraps, smothered with innuendo.
He knew now that he and Feng and Marion and Sandy would all be testifying before Representative Redfield's Subcommittee on Science and Technology. They had not been asked to testify, but commanded to appear. The documents and data ORIS had collected—even Cliff's personal notes—would be presented and entered into the
Congressional Record.
He perched on a stool in the room where most of his mice lived, and he tried to take this in. What chance could he have in front of Redfield? His work was beautiful, but the world was arbitrary and unfair. His methods were elegant; his work, this last year, the deepest joy he'd ever known. And now, just as he'd found his scientific way, ORIS blocked his path. He stood on the threshold and ORIS locked the door. He told himself he would not panic, he would not give up; but he would be testifying before politicians whose views were preordained. He had as little hope of escaping summary judgment as the animals scuffling in their cages.
There was so little he could control. Labs at Stanford and Cornell were working to reproduce his results. Once, those researchers had been the competition. Now they couldn't work fast enough to satisfy Cliff; he prayed for Hughes's and Agarwal's success as a hostage prays for family to redeem him. If only he could give up this waiting and go to Ithaca or Palo Alto and advise the scientists there. Of course he could not interfere; those trials had to proceed independently. Still, he longed to guide them.
How beautiful it must be at Stanford now, the great avenue lined with palms, the red-tiled central court soaking up the sun. But then, even Cornell sounded lovely to his ears, the campus split with gorges, boulders sheathed in ice, and all the fields knee-deep in snow. He wanted to run away, but he could not go. He was not a coward; he would not allow Robin to defeat him. Nor did he take his stand alone; his friends stayed with him, talking and teasing as they had always done.
“You aren't bringing Nella?” Feng asked one wet December day as they divided colonies of cells into new dishes. Glass's Christmas party was that night.
Cliff frowned, concentrating. “I haven't seen Nella in a while.”
“And would that be because you're seeing Beth?” Aidan asked him.
The others suppressed muffled laughter. They all knew Beth Leibowitz, the secretary downstairs.
“Do not talk about Beth,” Cliff said with mock severity.
“Why not?” asked Natalya.
“Beth is a delicate flower,” Aidan said.
Natalya snorted. “A delicate—?”
“She's
shy,
” Cliff interrupted.
“Oh really?” Aidan said. “We'll have to do something about that.”
“No, you don't.” Cliff turned to him. “She's scared enough of you already.”
“Of me?” asked Aidan, flattered.
“All of you, so don't start,” he warned, but it felt good to bicker and banter in that way. Even petty disputes amused him now. Such was the gravity of his situation.
“It's almost like a death sentence,” he told Beth that evening as they drove to the party in her Volkswagen Rabbit.
“Oh, don't say that.”
“I mean, it makes you understand.”
She looked at him with tender concern. She was soft and gentle and utterly unscientific. “What do you understand?”
“I see now that science is what I love. It's my life and they're trying to take it away from me. I never appreciated research before, and now I see it's my—”
He stopped short; he couldn't say the word. These were Robin's sentiments. Unconsciously, he'd followed her turn of phrase, her anguished declaration.
“I hate it here,” she'd confided once at the end of a particularly horrible day.
“Then do something else,” he said. “Go to business school or New Guinea or something; climb around in the rain forest canopy. You like heights, right?”
She laughed, but then she was serious again. “I want to give up, but I can't.”
“You can't do what you want?”
“No. I realize you always do what you want, so it's not such an issue for you.”
“Mmm.”
“But I can't give up research, because it's my vocation.”
The scientists drank more than usual that year. Ann noticed right away. They laughed louder, talked faster than the other guests. Even Marion drank almost a whole glass of sherry, and Sandy teased her mercilessly.
“Let's see if you can hold your liquor. You're looking a little red in the face.”
“I doubt that very much,” Marion retorted, and took another sip. She sipped with great deliberation, as though she were courting mortal danger. Her pinched, concerted face sent everyone around her into peals of laughter.
The merriment seemed to Ann a little forced. Now Marion and Sandy both had representation. Marion employed Sybil Halbfinger, famous for her early work in civil rights, her arguments before the Supreme Court, her seminal articles on jurisprudence, her white pageboy haircut and girlish voice and frilled collars. Contrary to expectation. Sandy had not chosen Leo Sonenberg, attorney to the stars, but the understated Thayer Houghton-Smith, who litigated high above the Boston skyline from offices fitted out with wing chairs and nautical paintings, grandfather clocks and china urns—antique ballast to counteract the vertiginous view. These lawyers were necessary now, each serving as a
masque de guerre,
projecting a grimace of formality.
“Who wants another glass?” asked Sandy, scanning the room.
Cliff and Beth slipped away to sit on the stairs. Kate just happened to be walking by, and came upon them there.
“Hey, Kate,” said Cliff.
She noticed the way their fingers entwined. “How do you do?” She held out her hand to Beth.
Surprised by this formality, Beth roused herself to shake Kate's hand. Beth wasn't tall as Nella had been, or pre-Raphaelite like Robin. She had a small face, deep-set brown eyes, a tiny nose, tender mouth, weak chin, and a great deal of rough brown hair tied back. When she smiled, Beth seemed to shrink into herself, her eyes crinkling smaller, her mouth and chin receding with self-effacing pleasure. Surprised, almost offended, Kate could only think:
She isn't pretty!
“What's going on?” Cliff asked.
“I don't know,” she said. Of course she knew all about the investigation.
“Don't you have anything to rehearse?” He turned to Beth. “Kate is educating me in English literature and drama.”
Beth laughed softly, and leaned against him.
“Yes, well, I'm not competing on the speech team anymore,” Kate said.
“What? You gave it up?” Elbows on the stair runner, he sat back in mock surprise.
“I wasn't very good,” she said.
“I thought you were,” he insisted. “Don't you have anything to read us?”
“No,” she said, and then instantly regretted her curt tone. She knew he must be suffering; he must be exhausted, beset as he was on all sides. “Well, I don't know.” She relented, and disappeared in some confusion into the library.
Beth had gone off to the dessert table when Kate came back carrying a worn copy of essays by Francis Bacon.
Undistracted now, Cliff turned to her, and she felt his smile brush over her, as if they were standing quite close together and his eyelashes and his nose and his lips were brushing hers. She wanted to sit next to him, but she was too shy.
“I found this,” she said, and sat as near as she dared—just one stair down. “This is the essay on truth.”