Micro - Michael Crichton [14]
Peter was getting a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner of the lab when Erika walked over. “What are you doing later?”
“I don’t know, why?”
“I thought maybe I could stop by tonight.”
She was staring right at him. Something about the directness of her manner put him off. “I don’t know, Erika,” he said, “I might be working here late.” Thinking: I haven’t seen you for three weeks, since the last time.
“I’m almost finished, myself,” she said. “And it’s only nine o’clock.”
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“It doesn’t appeal to you, my offer?” She was still staring at him, scanning his face.
“I thought you were seeing Amar.”
“I like Amar, very much. He is very intelligent. I like you too. I always have.”
“Maybe we’ll talk later,” he said, pouring milk in his coffee, and moving away so quickly that it spilled a little.
“I hope so,” she said.
“Trouble with your coffee?” Rick Hutter said, glancing up at Peter and grinning. Under a halogen lamp, Rick was holding a rat upside down, measuring its swollen rear paw with a small caliper.
“No,” Peter said, “I was just, uh, surprised at how hot it was.”
“Uh-huh. I’d say, surprisingly hot.”
“Is that a carageenen prep?” Peter said, changing the subject. Carageenen was the usual method to produce edema in the paw of a lab animal. It was a standardized animal model for edema, employed in labs around the world to study inflammation.
“Correct,” Rick said. “I injected carageenen, making the paw swollen. Then I wrapped the foot in an extract from the bark of Himatanthus sucuuba, a medium-size rain-forest tree, and now we are—hopefully—demonstrating its anti-inflammatory properties. I already demonstrated it for the tree’s latex. Himatanthus is an extremely versatile tree, it heals wounds and cures ulcers. The shamans in Costa Rica say this tree also has antibiotic, anti-fever, anti-cancer, and anti-parasite qualities, but I haven’t tested those claims yet. Certainly the bark extract has reduced this rat’s swelling remarkably fast.”
“You determined what chemicals are responsible for the anti-inflammatory response?”
“Researchers in Brazil attribute it to alpha-amyrin cinnamate and other cinnamate compounds, but I haven’t verified that yet.” Rick finished measuring the rat, set it down in the cage, and typed in a measurement and time in his laptop. “Tell you one thing, though: extracts from the tree appear to be completely nontoxic. One day you might even be able to give this to pregnant women. Huh, look at that.” He pointed to the rat as it moved around the cage. “It’s not limping at all anymore.”
Peter slapped him on the back. “Better be careful,” he said, “or you’ll have some pharmaceutical company beating you to your results.”
“Hey, I’m not worried. If those guys were really in the business of developing drugs, they’d already be working on this tree,” Rick said. “But why should they take the risk? Let the American taxpayer fund the research, let some graduate student spend months to make the discovery, and then they swoop in and buy it up from the university. And then they sell our discovery back to us, at full price. Sweet deal, huh?” He was starting to wind up for one of his tirades. “I tell you, these Goddamned pharma—”
“Rick,” Peter said, “I’ve got to go.”
“Oh sure, yeah. Nobody wants to hear it, I know.”
“I have to spin down my naja venom.”
“No problem.” Rick hesitated, glanced over his shoulder at Erika. “Listen, it’s none of my business—”
“That’s right, it’s not—”
“But I hate to see a good guy like you fall into the clutches of somebody who is…well…Anyway, you met my friend Jorge, who does computer science at MIT? If you want to know what’s really going on with Erika, call this number—” he handed Peter a card—“and Jorge will access her phone records, including voice and text messages, and you can find out the truth about her, uh, promiscuous ways.”
“Is that legal?”
“No. But it’s damn useful.”
“Thanks anyway,” Peter said, “but—”
“No, no, keep it,” Rick insisted.
“I won