Prizes (6 page)

By her ninth birthday Isabel was so well-grounded in mathematics that Ray could introduce her to the sacred temple in which he was merely a humble acolyte. He presented her with the same copy of
Physics for Students of Science and Engineering
by Resnick and Halliday that he himself had used in college.

She immediately began to read the first chapter.

“This is terrific, Dad. I wish you had given it to me sooner.”

Though he was elated by Isabel’s reaction and longed to plunge into physics with her, Ray had apparatus to build for Professor Stevenson that was due the next day. He never used to leave things to the last minute, but he had different priorities now. Recharging himself with black coffee, he set out for the university after the eleven
P.M.
news.

He returned on the fringe of morning and wearily turned the key in the lock. He could hear the sound of classical music emanating from the living room. And the lamps were still on.

Dammit, do they think I’m made of money? he thought to himself.

He entered irritably, only to find Isabel sprawled out on the living room floor, candy wrappers scattered everywhere. She had propped the textbook against the sofa and was working furiously with a pad and pencil.

“Hi, Dad,” she called cheerfully. “How are things at the lab?”

“The same boring stuff,” he replied. Then added, “Shouldn’t you be asleep? It’s almost time for the big bad wolf to knock on your door for morning studies.”

“I don’t care.” She smiled. “I’ve been having a great time. The problems at the ends of the chapters are really neat.”

Chapters? How many had she read? He sat down beside her on a hassock and asked, “Tell me what you’ve learned.”

“Well, since I did the linear motion chapter, I know that acceleration is the first derivative of the velocity.”

“And what’s the derivative?”

“Well,” she answered eagerly, “take for example a ball you throw into the air. Its initial speed greatly slows down when it leaves your hand because of gravity, and comes to a stop at the peak height of its path. Then gravity pulls it back down again faster and faster until it hits the ground.”

Of course, Raymond thought to himself, she’s a quick learner. He knew she had a photographic memory. But how much did she
understand
?

He probed carefully. “How come you have all these different speeds?”

“Oh well,” she volleyed back. “At first the ball gets faster from your upward throw, and it takes time for gravity to determine its speed completely. So the acceleration is the rate of change of the velocity. And that, Dad, is the first derivative. Any questions?”

“No,” he murmured barely audibly, “no questions.”

6
 

After his return from Washington, Adam had wondered whether to tell Max about that final conversation with Hartnell. But his mentor had already been upset to learn that the man for whom he had compromised his principles was not, after all, the President of the United
States. The fact that someone like the Boss had offered to help obtain him a Nobel, might stigmatize the prize forever in Max’s scrupulous estimation.

In any case, whenever the Nobel had come up in casual conversation and someone suggested that Max had long ago earned it, he always commented dismissively, “Well, if it must come, let’s hope it’s not for a while. T. S. Eliot was right when he said, ‘The Nobel is a ticket to your own funeral. No one’s ever done anything after he got it.’ ”

“In that case,” Lisl playfully called his bluff, “if the Karolinska Institute should telephone tomorrow, are you in or out?”

“Well,” he continued to equivocate, “Did you know that some of their smorgasbords have more than twenty different kinds of herring? Not to mention smoked reindeer steak.”

“Then by all means you have to accept,” Adam interposed, “if only for gastronomic reasons.”

That round was over. The trio exchanged silent smiles for a moment, then Max said earnestly, “Anyway, they’ll never choose me—I don’t go to conferences. I don’t play the game.”

Lisl beamed. At times like this he would only accept
her
reassurance. “Darling, granted you’re not a politician, but on rare occasions simply being a genius is enough for the Nobel Prize.”

The evening continued with small talk—although in the Rudolph household no talk was really “small.” After a heated debate on the artistic virtues of Sarah Caldwell’s revival of Monteverdi’s
Orfeo,
Lisl brought out some more glasses of tea and asked casually, “Now that you’ve cured your mysterious patient, what are you whiz kids going to do for an encore?”

“Lisl,” Max explained, “this lymphosarcoma was out of our line anyway. They were just borrowing our mice to test other people’s research. After all, the sign on my door does say ‘Immunology,’ and there’s no shortage of
autoimmune diseases to investigate. And of course we still have the ongoing pernicious anemia project.”

“I know,” she countered. “But your lab is like a circus, and where you two choose to work is always the center ring.”

“Don’t worry,” Max uttered with mock exasperation. “When we decide, you’ll be the first to know.”

“No,” Max shouted, “I absolutely refuse—you’re a sadist!”

“Come on, get in, it’s good for you. Remember, I’m a doctor.”

“No—it’s insanity to make a normal person jump into freezing water at the crack of dawn.”

Adam, treading water, continued to coax the distinguished professor to join him.

“Listen, you did your medicine back in the Stone Age. They didn’t know that exercise was so important for your health.”

“Very well,” the older man capitulated, “but I’m coming down the ladder.”

As Max—no picture of grace—huffed and puffed through the water, his self-appointed trainer swam in the adjacent lane shouting encouragement.

“Good going—the first ten laps are the hardest. How do you feel?”

“Like an old fish,” he gasped as he struggled along.

“Great. You’ve never seen an overweight fish, have you?”

Afterward, as they sat in the locker room drying off, Max confessed, “I hate to admit it, but I actually feel wonderful. Now I only hope nobody from the lab saw me. I feel undignified without a tie.”

“By all means bring one to the pool next time. Didn’t you notice those two lab technicians who waved at us?”

“How could I tell what they were, they weren’t wearing white coats.”

“They certainly weren’t,” Adam grinned. “Still, they were sending very friendly smiles in our direction.”

“
Your
direction. I’ve no illusions about my looks. But let’s get upstairs. I want to talk to you about an important project.”

“Something new? How long have you been hiding it from me?”

“Oh, about ten years.” And there was something about Max’s tone of voice that sounded as if he was not exaggerating.

Thirty minutes later they were locked within the glass-walled partitions of Max’s office.

“This is very difficult for me to discuss,” the older man began uneasily. “Tell me truthfully, have you come across any rumors about why Lisl and I didn’t have children?”

“That’s none of my damn business.”

“Decency never slowed the circulation of juicy gossip, my boy. Do you mean to tell me that you’ve never heard it whispered in the corridors that I didn’t have a family because it would distract me from my research?”

Adam looked his boss in the eye and said with conviction, “First of all, I’ve never heard it—and most of all, I don’t believe it for a minute.”

“I’m glad,” Max responded, “The truth is, we both desperately wanted a baby. And in fact Lisl was pregnant at least fourteen times.”

“Fourteen?”

“Well, a great number of them ended so early that only a doctor could have determined that she’d been pregnant at all. There didn’t seem to be anybody in our illustrious OB/GYN Department who could shed light on the matter. So I took the investigation into my own hands.

“I soon discovered that there was a sizable number of women who go through this agony many times before giving up completely. It’s a catastrophe that haunts them through their whole life. And a mystery which, to this
day, remains unsolved.” He looked up for a moment, his face flushed with emotion.

“Max, think of all the nights we’ve worked together in the lab, spilling out our hearts to each other. How come you never once mentioned this to me?”

“I didn’t want to burden you with something that neither of us could do anything about. But I’ve been gathering data over nearly ten years.”

“All that time behind my back?”

Max nodded. “I’ve been moonlighting in the Marblehead Gynecological Clinic, specializing in patients with repeated miscarriages.” He patted his computer and said, “Everything’s in here. All I need is the benefit of your brain.”

“Okay, boss. But I still sense that if Batman’s calling Robin, it means he’s already on the trail of a solution.”

“As a matter of fact, I am, Boy Wonder. Naturally, I’ll give you the printouts, but I think you’ll agree with my basic hypothesis: that these unexplained miscarriages might result from the woman rejecting the fetus as a foreign body, the way early transplant patients rejected hearts and kidneys.

“My experiments with mice have shown that certain females carry their own antigens, which are toxic to the baby.” He lowered his head sadly and murmured, “I am afraid my little Lisl is that kind of mouse.”

“You must have suffered a great deal,” Adam whispered, unable to hide his sadness.

“No. She suffered—I just endured.” And then, regaining his gruff tone of voice, he ordered, “Now, let’s get to work, shall we? Your computer’s already hooked to my database, so all you have to know is the password.”

“Which is?”

“You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out.”

“ ‘Blintzes’?”

“You have great scientific instinct.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you thanking me for, dear boy? I’ve just saddled you with a problem of enormous magnitude.”

“I know,” Adam conceded, “but it makes a difference to be working on an experiment and being able to visualize the human being involved.” To which he added softly, “Even though it’s too late for Lisl.”

With the data, the technicians, and the mice already in place, it was relatively easy for Adam to move his investigation from the confines of Max’s obsession to the open benches of Immunology Lab 808. Also, the information already gathered had given them leads with which to begin.

Moreover, there had been progress in other areas of the field, as Max explained. “I have it on good authority that researchers at Sandoz are well along the way with an immunosuppressant that will transform organ transplants into everyday occurrences.”

“Great,” Adam responded. “Now all
we
have to do is discover an analogy that would suppress the autoimmune reaction in pregnant females.”

“Right.” Max smiled. “And then we’ll go for lunch.”

Adam worked demonically. Whenever he was not seeing patients or delivering babies, he was in the lab.

Late one night, the lab phone rang, shrilly interrupting the quiet contemplation of those few still present and working.

“Hey, Adam, it’s for you,” called Cindy Po, a microbiologist from Hawaii. “Female—and very sexy.”

So immersed was he in what he’d been studying, Adam did not at first react to someone “sexy” calling him at this time of night. He merely walked like a somnambulist to the phone and said, “This is Dr. Coopersmith.”

“Hi, Doctor,” came a cheery voice.

“Toni,” he responded with pleasure. “It’s nice to hear
from you. What made you call me at this ungodly hour?”

“The whole truth? I’ve been pining here, hoping you’d make a house call. Since it didn’t look like it was going to happen, I phoned your apartment. When I got no answer, I decided to find out whether you were on a heavy date or buried in research. Is there someone else in your life yet?”

“Listen, now that you know where I am on a Saturday night, you must realize the only creatures I’m involved with are furry and have tails. It was you who was otherwise … engaged.”