Lab Notes: a novel (3 page)

μ CHAPTER THREE μ

Olimpia glanced around at the dozing passengers with envy. She usually slept well in flight, but the phone call had left her staring at the seat in front of her, reflecting (
for the millionth time
) on a moment of youthful exuberance and an innocent accommodation that led to a lifetime of servitude.

Three days before her carefully charted life veered off course, twenty-three year old Olimpia Garza climbed the crumbling steps to the Church of the
Madre de Remedios
. Reaching the top, she turned and strained her eyes toward the solitary figure down at the harbor. Olimpia had not yet met the khaki-clad young man in the Panama hat who stood on the wharf. But she knew he was
the
Gabriel Carrera, Eduardo Carrera’s older brother.

Eduardo Carrera, whose abilities were vastly undervalued (according to his own impassioned account), had approached Olimpia the evening before and introduced himself moments after she stepped off the riverboat. And despite their exceptionally short acquaintance, they had hatched a conspiracy of sorts.

Olimpia watched Gabriel wave farewell to a workboat. As the vessel moved out into the bay with its cargo of logs, he hastened up to Turbo’s double-rutted main street where he was met by Eduardo. They spoke briefly, then the men headed toward their villa, playing Frisbee with Gabriel’s hat along the way.

The Carrera villa, an imposing walled-in stucco structure, along with the neighboring church of the
Madre de Remedios
and its rectory, stood like white-clad sentinels guarding over the frontier town.

Olimpia waited patiently on the church steps. Things were going as planned; the brothers were heading straight for her.

Olimpia had learned from Eduardo that his brother was furious about being sent to Turbo to oversee the Carrera logging operation again this season. This summer, as industrialist-intraining, Gabriel was to have his own office suite in New York, Paris or Barranquilla and participate in his choice of the many Carrera family interests: shipping, coffee, cattle, petroleum, telecommunications, logging or wineries.

He blamed his “exile to this sweltering gateway to hell” on his father’s displeasure with him, beginning with his bringing an American girl home from the States over the past Christmas holiday.

Olimpia knew that Gabriel Carrera dreaded tomorrow when he and Eduardo and their crew would motor up river into the jungle; Gabriel detested the jungle. And he had told Eduardo that almost more than the jungle, he dreaded going back to graduate school at Harvard in the fall and confessing to what he
actually
did on his summer vacation.

As the Carreras approached, Olimpia tightened the knot of her cotton blouse at her waist, hiked up the hems of gauzy wide-legged slacks and bounded down the steps waving a tanned arm at Eduardo. Her shoulder-length mane bounced behind her.

In a moment, Olimpia was being introduced to Gabriel Carrera. Eduardo explained to his brother that she was Padre Garza’s niece.

Shifting from foot to foot, feeling like a nervous colt, Olimpia told Gabriel she was doing graduate work in botany at the
Universidad Nacional
in Bogotá. She and Eduardo had discovered last evening that she would be the graduate teaching-assistant in his
Introduction to Botany
course next semester.

She knew she was talking too fast; that had always been a problem for her. And Gabriel’s amused glance made matters worse; she was forgetting to breathe between sentences.

Eduardo came to her rescue. “I thought we might invite Olimpia and Padre Garza to supper tonight,” he said.

Gabriel nodded, never removing his eyes from Olimpia. “It will be lively dinner for a change. Eduardo and I are quite bored with one another.”

Eduardo shot Olimpia a conspiratorial wink.

Olimpia, unable to contain herself a moment longer, blurted out, “I am traveling up the Atroto River tomorrow with my maid and guard and Indian guide and bearers. Eduardo said we might accompany your flotilla part of the way.” She looked up at Gabriel with all the earnestness she could conjure.

“I imagine people have difficulty denying your wishes,” Gabriel said. “It seems you and Eduardo have done a lot of planning during your short acquaintance. We will talk about it over dinner.” Gabriel smiled and added, “I look forward to hearing what crime you committed to deserve banishment to this place… Eight o’clock?”

Padre Garza appeared at the Carrera villa looking biblical with his white Order of the Passionate Fathers robe, silver hair and beard. In deference to her uncle, Olimpia had wrestled her hair into a demure braid and chose a chaste yellow cotton dress designed to drop from shoulder to ankle without touching her body. But even draped in tenting, her assets could not be concealed.

Gabriel and Eduardo, both wearing cool white slacks and loosely fitting shirts, led their visitors along an echoing terra cotta hallway. On one side, stucco arches framed an untamed atrium garden carpeted with ferns and hung with pitcher plants and multihued bromeliads, their leaves straining upward toward the call of the jungle outside.

In a formal dining room overlooking the garden, Eduardo seated the Padre at one end of the table, and Gabriel pulled out a side chair for Olimpia. She caught him assessing her from head-to-toe, and blushed.

Gabriel uncorked and poured a fruity white wine from his family’s vineyards. Indian servants carried in the first course: fresh grouper with a sauce of jungle herbs. The Padre said Grace.

The wine relaxed the formality, and conversation flowed easily.

Olimpia assured Gabriel that her trip to Turbo was not a punishment. She was an aspiring scientist studying ethnobotany. As part of her dissertation research, she had come to Turbo in quest of medicinal plants.

Olimpia had visited medicine men and women from many Indian tribes around Colombia seeking plants used for native cures. This was her last trip within Colombia this summer. In August she would be going to the U.S.—to a conservatory in the city of Pittsburgh, in the State of Pennsylvania. There she will be teaching outstanding young students at a botany camp sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Here in Turbo, her goal was to track down the legendary Shaman of the
Winotos
tribe. She hoped she could persuade him to share some of his secret plants used for healing.

“The
Winotos
have been known to shrink some heads now and then,” Gabriel warned Olimpia. “Does that not concern you?”

“I studied everything I could find on them,” she stated confidently. “They are not threatened by
female
outsiders: They will not fear that I am a
bandido.
And they can be certain I will not rape their wives or daughters.”

The three men lowered their eyes.

Guilt compelled Olimpia to drop her gaze also; she had not disclosed the entire truth. According to her research, head shrinking was not the only cephalic art the
Winotos
practiced. Another of their specialties was mind control. It was reported that the
Winotos
’ Shaman used a treatment, involving local tree lichen, to render a person amenable to suggestion—even at great distances. Olimpia was not sure what it all meant, but she intended to find out. The burning objective of her jungle trek was to obtain a sample of that tree lichen, with or without the Shaman’s approval.

Eduardo broke the silence. “How do you feel about Olimpia going into the wilderness, Padre?”

“It may have been preordained. Olimpia has wanted to come to this area for over a year. Then I was assigned here six months ago, after the American missionary priest, Father Lawrence, contracted malaria. But enough about the Garzas. Tell us something about the Carrera brothers.”

Gabriel explained the reason for their impending jungle trek: During the relatively dry winter season, crews had constructed four-meter high dirt levies about three quarters of a kilometer square around dense stands of catevo trees along river tributaries, and they chain-sawed the trees to the ground.

Spring and early summer rains flooded the levies, floating the logs to the surface. Gabriel and Eduardo and their crew would be dynamiting narrow openings in eight adjacent levies, slowly releasing forty-foot logs for transport down the river.

Mosquito screens had been rolled down, and candles that cast amber glows from wall niches burned low. After finishing a dessert of bananas and shredded coconut, the Padre said the hour was getting late and expressed his gratitude for “such a sumptuous feast.”

Gabriel and Eduardo escorted their guests toward the door. Gabriel walked slightly behind Olimpia with his hand ever-so-lightly touching her arm.

Outside, the air was almost liquid. A hazy three-quarter moon illuminated ghostly forms of the jungle’s steamy breath. Olimpia summoned her armed guard from the shadows of the courtyard. He lit a lantern and led the Garzas back to the rectory.

An agreement had been struck: Olimpia and her entourage would accompany the Carrera’s flotilla as far as the confluence of the
Rio Atroto
and
Rio Destino
, a three-day trip.

It seemed like a perfect plan.

μ CHAPTER FOUR μ

To: Olimpia Garza

From: Diane Rose

Subject: Possible career move

Dear Olimpia: Vincent and I are being courted by a biotech company (Bayside Research Inc) in Houston. Raymond Bellfort, BRI’s president, stopped in Pittsburgh two months ago on his way home from a biotechnology convention in Boston. He phoned and invited us to lunch, stating that he was recruiting scientists.

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Dear Olimpia: In a research environment where a grant from the National Institutes of Health is far from a guarantee, I thought it well worth our time to meet with a recruiter from a Houston biotech company to determine what his organization had to offer.

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Diane spun her desk chair away from the keyboard, shaking her hands as if drying nail polish or limbering up for the
Flight of the Bumblebee
. An email to Olimpia frequently had false starts like this. It wasn’t writer’s block—she’d been known to plug up Olimpia’s internet server with her wordy missives. It was more like an emotional block. After the words “Dear Olimpia,” any form of expression, other than lifeless facts, seemed to get hung up between her brain and the keyboard.

Too often, notes intended to be friendly read like term papers. And when asking Olimpia for advice, Diane frequently presented her problems and goals with backup research as if submitting them for a grade. Her grandmother would have called it a “Twinkie Complex.”

Twinkie was her Grammy’s portly yellow cat who frequently yowled for help after wedging her body between the backyard fence slats or behind the clothes dryer, which had been her favorite spot during her kittenhood. Grammy said that as Twinkie grew older and rounder, she continued to judge her body clearance by the width of her whiskers, which had not changed in years.

So, people who seemed to be hung up on self-perceptions from their early years were forever after dubbed “Twinkies.”

Olimpia and Vincent had been Diane’s teachers before they’d become colleague and husband/research partner. And though she was intimately aware of Vincent’s foibles, and she had swum naked and showered under waterfalls with Olimpia and stood guard while she squatted to pee in the jungle, she often had to recalibrate her mindset to avoid reverting to her student roles.

Diane knew that other scientists thought she’d had it easy, that, as a graduate student, she’d hitched a ride on Vincent’s star and never looked back. Of course there was some truth to that. But it wasn’t like she skipped ahead to a Nobel once she signed on as Vincent’s assistant—in fact, only in recent years had she emerged from the “et al” designation that followed Vincent’s name on their publications.

Her tenure track ran uphill like everyone else’s. And even now, she sometimes felt like a shadow puppet, backlit by Vincent’s professional acclaim.

She had to admit that the party invitation had her daydreaming about a change, about trading the political theater played out in academia for a focus on the bottom line in the corporate world, about having her income tied directly to her successes—and maybe having a star of her own someday.

That thought in mind, she spun her chair back around and accosted the keyboard:

Dear Olimpia:

I haven’t heard from you since receiving your voice mail when you were in Houston. I wish I had known you were in the States; I would have flown down to see you.

I take your silence to mean you’re in the wilderness downloading the brain of a shaman who is, in turn, planning to have yours for lunch.
I’m envious. And I’m anxious for your return to civilization; I need your advice.

Most of my rites-of-passage regarding schooling and career have been imprinted with your influence. So, once again, I seek your counsel.

Two months ago Vincent and I were asked out to lunch by a man named Raymond Bellfort who was recruiting for his biotech company (BRI) in Houston. I accepted the invitation and talked Vincent into going along. Big mistake.

To say that conversation did not flow at the lunch table would be a gross understatement. Vincent took the opportunity to express his scorn for the growing number of “mercenaries” lured away from their university posts by biotechnology companies who seduced them with promises of great wealth. Despite my efforts as moderator (and referee), Bellfort’s conversation became strained and disjointed. He put me in mind of a distracted bulldog, and I was sure we’d never hear from him again.

But now we’ve received an invitation to BRI’s Christmas yacht party. And it sounds intriguing.

At the very least, the hop down to Houston for a “Black Tie” party aboard BRI’s company yacht could be a great holiday diversion. Besides, it wouldn’t cost anything—they’ve sent plane tickets and reserved a hotel suite for us. And I wouldn’t even have to buy a dress; I have that little black YSL—the one I spilled red wine on at the Botanical Society meeting in San Francisco. (My mother-in-law—may she rest in peace—bought that designer dress for me a few years back, fearing I’d wear my old gold lame’ to their country club dance). And Vincent, the serial award-dinner honoree, owns two tuxes. So, we’re all set.

But for the past three days Vincent and I have been engaged in a lively debate about whether to go or not. As often happens, I see the trip as an adventure; Vincent considers it folly.

People had warned me against marrying a man ten years my senior, but after twelve years together, I still feel his sterling qualities by far eclipse his lack of derring-do.

However, in this case, there’s more at stake than a party. I have a premonition that our government funding will not be renewed.

Granted, we have always thought of ourselves as intramural researchers. But, who knows, maybe Bayside Research could prove the perfect non-university venue for us. Vincent could complete the development and testing of Peruvase without funding worries. I would continue collecting and analyzing plants for medicinal compounds. And, if BRI is affiliated with a university, I wouldn’t have to give up teaching. As a matter of fact, I would stipulate that as part of our contract.

Commercial biotechnology. To many, the term conjures up a brew of crazed scientists, evil clones, bioterrorism, super bugs, Frankenfood and super drugs. But in my mind, I see it as a soft landing if our government grant doesn’t come through this time.

I understand Vincent’s resistance. If we left Pittsburgh, he’d miss the gaggle of relatives who assemble at his father’s house on Sundays and holidays. He seems to thrive on that tumultuous camaraderie. Whereas, now lacking the unifying force of grandparents; my aunts, uncles and cousins have all scattered. Family interface has been reduced to words on a computer screen. So, I can communicate with them wherever I go.

Then there’s Vincent’s position as department chairman—he’d have to give that up if we moved on. I, on the other hand, might possibly improve my circumstance.

Is it heresy for scientists to entertain the idea of becoming rich from their intellectual properties? Raymond Bellfort hinted at generous salaries and royalties and unlimited funding that day at lunch. I find it all tempting enough to want a closer look. But Vincent, the trust fund baby, does not in any way measure success by his income. He says (never unkindly) that salary’s such an issue with me because I’m running from my blue-collar background. Maybe so.

I have to admit that even though it was my grandmother’s small, plastic-covered, herbal greenhouse that set me on this path, at times I avoid any disclosure of my background to colleagues—as though I’d left behind a childhood riddled with crime; as if, exposed, I’d be remanded to “et al”
limbo once again.

Am I being naïve in my thinking? Do my glossy expectations come from lack of any other experience? Has my growing up in the science world, under Vincent’s peerless tutelage, been akin to finding my way wearing sterling blinders? Is it safe for me to go out into the world at large?

I can’t use my friends and colleagues at the university as sounding boards. They’ve made it clear that they’d consider a move to Texas akin to giving up my U.S. citizenship.

I know you’ll be swamped when you return to civilization. But please send your thoughts on this as soon as you can.

Having said all this, is a Christmas yacht party really the proper venue for deciding our future? Would we be able to see clearly through tinsel-dazzled eyes?

Regards,

Diane

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Where are you Olimpia?