Micro - Michael Crichton [13]
“We already know the basic situation,” she said. “There are 300,000 known species of plants in the world, and 900,000 species of insects, and many of them eat plants. Why haven’t all the plants vanished, chewed down to the ground? Because all plants long ago evolved defenses against insects that attack them. Animals can run away from predators, but plants can’t. So they have evolved chemical warfare. Plants produce their own pesticides, or they generate toxins to make their leaves taste bad, or they release volatile chemicals that attract the insect’s predators. And sometimes they release chemicals that signal other plants to make their leaves more toxic, less edible. Inter-plant communications, that’s what we are measuring here.”
The caterpillars eating the plants in the first flask caused the release of a chemical, a plant hormone, that would be carried to the other flasks. The other plants would increase their production of nicotinic acid. “I’m looking to measure the rate of response,” she said. “That’s why I have three flasks. I’ll be cutting leaves from various places to measure nicotinic acid levels in them, but as soon as I cut a leaf from the next plant…”
“That plant will act like it’s under attack, and it will release more volatiles.”
“Right. So the flasks are kept separate. We know the response is relatively rapid, a matter of minutes.” She pointed to a box to one side. “I measure the volatiles with ultra high-speed gas chromatography, and the leaf extraction is straightforward.” She glanced at her stopwatch. “And now if you’ll excuse me…”
She lifted the first flask, and began cutting leaves from base upward, setting each aside in careful order.
“Hey, hey, hey, what is going on here?” Danny Minot entered the lab, waving his hands. Red-faced and rotund, he was dressed in a tweed sport coat with elbow patches, a rep tie, and baggy slacks, and looked for all the world like an establishment English professor. Which was not far wrong. Minot was getting a doctorate in science studies, a mélange of psychology and sociology, with liberal doses of French postmodernism thrown in. He had degrees in biochemistry and comparative literature, but the comparative literature had won out; he quoted Bruno Latour, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and others who believed that there was no objective truth, only the truth that’s established by power. Minot was here in the lab to complete a thesis on “scientific linguistic codes and paradigm transformation.” In practice it meant he made a pest of himself, bothering people, recording conversations with the other grad students as they did their work.
They all despised him. There were frequent discussions about why Ray Hough had let him in the lab in the first place. Finally somebody asked Ray about it, and he said, “He’s my wife’s cousin. And nobody else would take him.”
“Come on, people,” Minot said, “nobody works this late in this lab, and here you all are.” Waving his hands again.
Jenny snorted disdainfully. “Hand-waver.”
“I heard that,” Minot said. “Meaning what?”
Jenny turned her back on him.
“Meaning what? Don’t turn your back on me.”
Peter went over to Danny. “A hand-waver,” he said, “is somebody who hasn’t worked out his ideas and can’t defend them. So when he presents at a colloquium, and he comes to the parts he hasn’t worked out, he starts waving his hands and talking fast. Like the way someone waves their hands and says, ‘Et cetera, et cetera.’ In science, hand-waving means you don’t have the goods.”
“Not what I am doing here,” Minot said, waving his hand. “The semiotics are completely garbled.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But as Derrida said, techno-translation is so difficult. I am attempting to indicate all of you in a gestural mode of inclusiveness. What’s going on?”
“Don’t tell him,” Rick said, “or he’ll want to come.”
“Of course I want to come,” Minot said. “I am the chronicler of life in this lab. I must come. Where are you going?”
Peter briefly told him the entire story.
“Oh yes, I am definitely coming. The intersection