On her way to the bathroom to shower, Kim placed a call to the plumber, Albert Bruer, who’d worked on both the cottage and the lab. She left her number on his answering machine.
Albert called back within a half hour, and by the time Kim had finished breakfast he was at her door. Together they drove up to the castle in his truck.
“I think I already know the problem,” Albert said. “In fact I knew about it when your grandfather was alive. It’s the soil pipes. They’re cast-iron and some of them have rusted.”
Albert took Kim into each of the bathrooms in the servants’ wing and took off the fronts of the access panels. In each he pointed out the rusted pipes.
“Can it be fixed?” Kim asked.
“Of course it can,” Albert said. “But it will take some doing. It might take me and my boy a week.”
“Do it,” Kim said. “I’ve got some people staying in here.”
“If that’s the case I can get water to the bathroom on the third floor. Those pipes look pretty good. Maybe no one lived up there.”
After the plumber left, Kim walked over to the lab to let the men know about the third-floor bathroom. She’d not been to the lab for some time and was not looking forward to the visit. They’d never made her feel welcome.
“Kim!” David called out excitedly. He was the first to see her come through the door that led from the vacant reception area into the lab proper. “What a nice surprise.” David yelled out to the others that she was there. Everyone, including Edward, dropped what they were doing and came over to greet her.
Kim felt herself blush. She did not relish being the center of attention.
“We have fresh coffee and donuts,” Eleanor said. “Can I get you some?”
Kim declined but thanked her, explaining she’d just had breakfast. She apologized to the group for bothering them and quickly told the men about the resolution of the plumbing problem.
The men were pleased and assured her that using the bathroom on the third floor was not an imposition. They even tried to talk her out of bothering to make any repairs.
“I don’t think it should be left the way it is,” Kim said. “I’d prefer it be fixed.”
Kim then started to leave, but they wouldn’t allow it. They insisted on showing her what each one of them was doing.
David was first. He took Kim to his lab bench and had her peer through a dissecting microscope while he explained that she was looking at an abdominal ganglion preparation that he’d taken from a mollusk called Aplasia fasciata. Then he showed her printouts of how Ultra modulated the spontaneous firing of certain neurons of the ganglion. Before Kim could even figure out what she was looking at, David took the printouts from her hands and led her into the tissue-culture incubator. There he explained how he evaluated the tissue cultures for signs of toxicity.
Then it was Gloria’s and Curt’s turn. They took Kim downstairs to the animal area. They showed her some pitiful creatures: stressed rats and stressed monkeys that had been raised to have severe anxiety. Then they showed her similar animals that had been treated with Ultra and imipramine.
Kim tried to appear interested, but animal experiments disturbed her.
François took over from Gloria and Curt and led Kim into the shielded room where the NMR machine was isolated. He tried to explain exactly how he was attempting to determine the structure of the binding protein for Ultra. Unfortunately, Kim understood little of his explanation. She merely nodded her head and smiled whenever he paused.
Eleanor then took over and led Kim back upstairs to her computer terminal. She gave Kim a lengthy explanation of molecular modeling and how she was attempting to create drugs that were permutations of Ultra’s basic structure and that would potentially share some of Ultra’s bioactivity.
As Kim was whisked around the lab, she began to notice that not only were the researchers friendly, they were also patient and respectful of each other. Although they were assertively eager to please her, they were content to wait their turn.
“This has been most interesting,” Kim said when Eleanor finally finished her lecture. Kim started to back toward the door. “Thank you all for taking so much of your valuable time to show me around.”
“Wait!” François said. He dashed to his desk, picked up a sheaf of photographs, and ran back. Breathlessly he showed them to Kim and asked her what she thought of them. They were brightly colored PET scans.
“I think they are-” Kim searched for a word that wouldn’t make her sound foolish. She finally said: “Dramatic.”
“They are, aren’t they?” François said, cocking his head to the side to regard them from a slightly different angle. “They’re like modern art.”
“What exactly do they tell you?” Kim asked. She would have preferred to leave, but with everyone watching, she felt obligated to ask a question.
“The colors refer to concentrations of radioactive Ultra,” François said. “The red is the highest concentration. These scans show quite clearly that the drug localizes maximally to the upper brain stem, the midbrain, and the limbic system.”
“I remember Stanton’s referring to the limbic system at the dinner party,” Kim said.
“He did indeed,” François said. “As he suggested, it’s part of the more primitive, or reptilian, parts of the brain and is involved with autonomic function, including mood, emotion, and even smell.”
“And sex,” David said.
“What do you mean, ‘reptilian’?” Kim asked. The word had an ugly connotation to her. She’d never liked snakes.
“It’s used to refer to the parts of the brain that are similar to the brains of reptiles,” François said. “Of course it is an oversimplification, but it does have some merit. Although the human brain evolved from some common distant ancestor with current-day reptiles, it’s not like taking a reptile brain and sticking a couple of cerebral hemispheres on top.”
Everybody laughed. Kim found herself laughing as well. The general mood was hard to resist.
“As far as basic instincts are concerned,” Edward said, “we humans have them just like reptiles. The difference is ours are covered by varying degrees of socialization and civilization. Translated, that means that the cerebral hemispheres have hard-wired connections that control reptilian behavior.”
Kim looked at her watch. “I really have to be going,” she said. “I’ve got a train to catch into Boston.”
With such an excuse Kim was finally able to break free from the obliging clutches of the researchers although they all encouraged her to come back. Edward walked her outside.
“Are you really on your way to Boston?” Edward asked.
“I am,” Kim said. “Last night I decided to go back to Harvard for one more try. I’d found another letter that included a reference to Elizabeth’s evidence. It gave me another lead.”
“Good luck,” Edward said. “Enjoy yourself.” He gave her a kiss and then went back into the lab. He didn’t ask about Kim’s latest letter.
Kim walked back to the cottage, feeling strangely numb from the researchers’ intense congeniality. Maybe something was wrong with her. She hadn’t liked how aloof they’d been, but now she found she didn’t like them sociable either. Was she impossible to please?
The more Kim thought about her response, the more she realized that it had a lot to do with their sudden uniformity. When she’d first met them she’d been struck by their eccentricities and quirks. Now their personalities had become blended into an amiable but bland whole that shrouded their individuality.
As Kim changed clothes for her trip into Boston, she couldn’t stop mulling over what was happening at the compound. She felt her misgiving-the very anxiety that had driven her to see Alice-on the increase again.