But a new mind, brilliant, unfettered by such oppressive concerns, might succeed where he'd foundered.
Four weeks… Luc squeezed his eyes shut, You must not fail me, Nadia. Everything depends on you.
7
Nadia sat alone in the darkened room, a bulbous shape floating in the air before her: a molecule of lovastatin, the cholesterol-lowering drug that had gone off-patent; Merck originally had an exclusive on it as Mevacor, but GEM now sold its generic equivalent at a much lower price.
Without taking her eyes off the molecule, Nadia tapped her keyboard, rolled her trackball, and an extra methyl group appeared and attached itself to one end of the larger mass. She rotated the 3-D image 360 degrees in two planes to make sure the new group had the proper orientation, then: voila—lovastatin had become simvastatin, Merck's other lipid-lowering agent, Zocor. But Zocor was still patent-protected, so that one was off-limits to the production department. For now, at least.
Nadia loved the dry lab and all its state-of-the-art equipment. No jars of reagents, no pipettes, no ovens or incubators—every experiment and chemical reaction in this small spare room was virtual, thanks to the holographic molecular imager. Nadia knew it had to cost a fortune, far more than any other pharmaceutical company GEM's size would spend. But Dr. Monnet had told her that GEM had made a commitment to original research. They weren't going to be a me-too company forever. The dry lab was ample proof of that.
Nadia sighed. She was restless. She felt she'd had enough practice now. She had the imager down cold. She was more than ready for her first real challenge.
"Hey," said a familiar voice behind her. "Can we play DNA Wars on that?"
Nadia gasped and spun in her chair. Her words came in a rush when she saw who it was.
"Doug! My God, what are you doing here! How'd you get in? You'll be fired if anyone sees you!"
Strong arms pulled her from the chair and enfolded her. She wrapped her arms around Doug and breathed in his cologne—Woods, she knew, because she'd given it to him for his birthday. Nadia held him close, loving the solid feel of him.
Douglas Gleason, a fair-haired six-footer with an easy smile and merry blue eyes. A natural charmer whose easygoing manner hid a tenacious, razor-sharp mind. He was dressed for work in his gray suit—the same suit he'd been wearing the day they met.
That had been last year at the annual state medical society convention. Doug had been working the GEM Pharma booth in the exhibit area. Nadia had wandered by with her shoulder bag and her laptop, interested because she knew Dr. Monnet had left his teaching position to co-found the company. She remembered the bolt of electricity that had shot through her when Doug glanced up and smiled. She hadn't meant to stop, but now she had no choice—those eyes, that thick sandy hair… A pheromonal cloud enveloped her, drawing her in…
She lingered and listened, barely comprehending a word, as he extolled the virtues of TriCef, GEM's brand-new third-generation cephalosporin antibiotic. When he finished his pitch she accepted a glossy index card and promised to give TriCef a try. But the pheromones wouldn't release her, so she asked about GEM's generic line. When he finally exhausted that subject and nothing was left to say, at least about pharmaceuticals, she thanked him and forced herself to turn away.
"Say, isn't that a 486?" Doug had said, pointing to her laptop. "I haven't seen one of those in a dog's age."
He wasn't letting her go! Nadia remembered feeling giddy with relief.
Playing it cool, she'd told him that at the moment it was an overpriced paperweight. She hadn't been able to get it to boot up this morning. Doug took a break, sat down with her, and within minutes had it up and running, booting faster than she could ever remember. He explained something about her system.ini and winini files being "junked up," which meant nothing to Nadia. Computers were like cars to her: she knew how to operate them, could make them do what she needed, but had no idea what was going on under the hood.
They got to talking and she learned that Douglas Gleason thought of himself not as a pharmaceutical sales rep but as a software designer. He even had his own start-up company: GleaSoft; it didn't have a product line yet, but that was why he was working as a sales rep: research. Well, research and a way to pay the rent while he was learning the ins and outs of the pharmaceutical trade in order to program a new tracking software package that would revolutionize how drugs were marketed to physicians.
He'd offered to take her out to dinner—strictly business on his GEM sales account—and she'd accepted. They wound up at Vong, a French Vietnamese place she never could have afforded on her resident's pay. The meal had been fabulous, and their hours together magic. Doug was bright and funny, with wide-ranging interests, but it was his entrepreneurial spirit that captured her. Here was a man with a dream, a need to take control of his life, to call his own shots, and the drive and tenacity to pursue it until he'd achieved it. If he had to be a sales rep for a few years to get started, he'd do it. But he wouldn't—couldn't—do it halfway. He threw himself wholeheartedly into everything he did, and as a result he'd achieved GEM's top sales record.
One dinner led to another, and another, and soon they were sharing breakfast. Lately they'd been talking about marriage.
But right now Nadia was worried for him. She pushed herself back to arm's length.
"Doug, this is a secure area. How did you get in?"
He held up a MasterCard. "With this."
"A credit card? How?"
"It's an old one. I hacked your swipe card and copied the code from its magnetic strip onto this one."
"But that's illegal!"
She'd been worried about him getting fired. Now she was worried about him being arrested.
He shrugged. "Maybe. I just wanted to see if I could do it. And I wanted to get a look at this machine you've been telling me about." He stepped past her and stood before the imager, staring at the 3-D hologram floating above it, a look of sublime wonder on his face. "Oh,
Nadj, this is amazing. I'd love to see the code that makes it go."
"Maybe I never should have mentioned it."
Knowing Doug was the compleat computerphile, she'd told him about the molecular imager. She'd noticed him mentally salivating when she described it. She never dreamed he'd go this far just to see it.
He was slipping around the rear of the workbench, peering at the electronics. "Oh, Nadj, Nadj, Nadj," he was murmuring, sounding a little like he did during sex, "you've got a Silicon Graphics Origin 2000 running this thing! I'd give anything to play with it."
"Don't even think about it. If this thing crashes—"
"Don't worry," he said, returning to her side. "I won't touch it. Wouldn't dare. I just wanted to see it. And see you."
"Me? Why?"
"Well, this is the big day, right? Your first real project? I just came by to wish you good luck, and to give you"—he reached inside his breast pocket and produced a single yellow bud rose—"this."
"Oh, Doug," she taking it and sniffing the tightly coiled petals. She felt lightheaded. Only a rose. How could a single simple flower touch her so deeply? She kissed him. "How sweet of you."
"Let's just hope your project's not the same one Macintosh was working on."
"Why not?"
"Because he said it was—and I quote—'a real bitch.'"
"You knew him?"
"We had a few beers now and again. Tom wasn't the cheeriest guy, and I don't think he had many friends. Wouldn't discuss any details, just kept saying the same thing over and over: 'Real bitch of a problem.' Got so fed up, he just walked out one day and never came back."