Выбрать главу

"That's excellent news.”

"There's also our application for Derogil pending before the FDA.”

"The new anti-hypertensive.”

Sam knew that Derogil, to control high blood pressure, was not a revolutionary drug but might become a good profit maker. He asked, "Is our application getting anywhere?" Lord said sourly, "Not so you'd notice. Those puffed-up nincompoops in Washington He paused.”I'm going there again next week.”

"I still don't think my statement was wrong," Sam said.”But since you feel strongly, I'll modify it when the board meets.”

Vincent Lord nodded as if the concession were no more than his due, then went on, "There's also my own research on the quenching of free radicals. I know, after all this time, you believe nothing will come of it-" "I've never said that," Sam protested.”Never once! At times you choose to disbelieve it, Vince, but there are some of us here who have faith in you. We also know that important discoveries don't come easily or quickly.”

Sam had only a sketchy idea of what the quenching of free radicals involved. He knew the objective was to eliminate toxic effects of drugs generally, and was something Vincent Lord had persevered with for a decade. If successful, there would be strong commercial possibilities. But that was all. "Nothing you've told me," Sam said, getting up, "changes my opinion that creating a British research center is a good idea.”

"And I'm still opposed because it's unnecessary.”

The research director's reply was adamant, though as an afterthought he added, "Even if your plan should go ahead, we must have control from here.”

Sam Hawthorne smiled.”We'll discuss that later, if and when," But in his mind, Sam knew that letting Vincent Lord have control of the new British research institute was the last thing he would permit to happen.

When Lord was alone, he crossed to the outer door and closed it. Then, returning, he slumped in his chair disconsolately. He sensed that the proposal for a Felding-Roth research institute in Britain would go ahead despite his opposition, and he saw the new development as a threat to himself, a sign that his scientific dominance in the company was slipping. How much farther would it slip, he wondered, before he was eclipsed entirely? So much would have been different, be reflected gloomily, if his own personal research had progressed better and faster than it had. As it was, he wondered, what did he have to show for his life in science? He was now forty-eight, no longer the young and brilliant wizard with a newly minted Ph.D. Even some of his own techniques and knowledge, he was aware, were out of date. Oh, yes, he still read extensively and kept himself informed. Yet that kind of knowledge was never quite the same as original involvement in the scientific field in which your expertise developed-organic chemistry in his own case; developed to become an art, so that always and forever after you had instinct and experience to guide you. In the new field of genetic engineering, for example, he was not truly comfortable, not as at home in it as were the new young scientists now pouring from the universities, some of whom he had recruited for Felding-Roth. And yet, he reasoned-reassured himself-despite the changes and fresh knowledge, the possibility of a titanic breakthrough with the work he had been doing still was possible, still could come at any time. Within the parameters of organic chemistry an answer existed-an answer to his questions posed through countless experiments over ten long years of grinding research. The quenching of free radicals. Along with the answer Vincent Lord sought would come enormous therapeutic benefits, plus unlimited commercial possibilities which Sam Hawthorne and others in the company, in their scientific ignorance, had so far failed to grasp. What would the quenching of free radicals achieve? The answer: something essentially simple but magnificent. Like all scientists in his field, Vincent Lord knew that many drugs, when in action in the human body and as part of their metabolism, generated "free radicals.”

These were elements harmful to healthy tissue, and the cause of adverse side effects and sometimes death. Elimination, or "quenching," of free radicals would mean that beneficial drugs, other drugs, which previously could not be used on humans because of dangerous side effects, could be taken by anyone with impunity. And restricted drugs, hitherto used only at great risk, could be absorbed as casually as aspirin. No longer need physicians, when prescribing for their patients, worry about toxicity of drugs. No longer need cancer patients suffer agonies from the near-deadly drugs which sometimes kept them &live, but equally often tortured, then killed them from some other cause than cancer. The beneficial effects of those and all other drugs would remain, but the killing effects would be nullified by the quenching of free radicals. What Vincent Lord hoped to produce was a drug to add to other drugs, to make them totally safe. And it was all possible. The answer existed. It was there. Hidden, elusive, but waiting to be found. And Vincent Lord, after ten years' searching, believed he was close to that elusive answer. He could smell it, sense it, almost taste the nectar of success. But how much longer? Oh, how much longer would he have to wait? Abruptly he sat upright in his chair and, with an effort of will, expunged his downcast mood. Opening a drawer of his desk, he selected a key. fie would go now--once more-he decided, to the private laboratory, a few steps down the hall, where his research work was done.

Vincent Lord's Friend and ally on the Felding-Roth board of directors was Clinton Etheridge, a successful and prominent New York lawyer who had pretensions to scientific knowledge. The pretensions were based on the fact that, for two years as a young man, Etheridge had been a medical student before deciding to switch to law. As an acquaintance cynically described the changeover, "Clint diagnosed where the big money was and prescribed a route to it directly.”

Etheridge was now fifty-three. The fact that his brief, incomplete medical studies had taken place more than a quarter century earlier never deterred him from making confident pronouncements on scientific matters, delivered in his best courtroom manner with an implication that they should be preserved on stone. It suited Vincent Lord's purposes to flatter Etheridge by appearing to treat him as a scientific equal. In this way the research director's own views were often placed before the Felding-Roth board of directors with the bonus, for Vince Lord, of a lawyer's skilled persuasiveness. Not surprisingly, at a board meeting called to consider Sam Hawthorne's proposal for a British research institute, Clinton Etheridge led off for the opposition. The meeting was at Felding-Roth's Boonton headquarters. Fourteen of the total complement of sixteen directors-all men-were assembled around the boardroom's traditional walnut table. Etheridge, who was tall, slightly stooped and cultivated a Lincolnesque image, began genially.”Were you hoping, Sam, that if this pro-British thing goes through, they'll be so pleased with you over there, you'll be invited to tea at Buckingham Palace?" Sam joined in the general laughter, then shot back, "What I'm really after, Clint, is a long weekend at Windsor Castle.”

"Well," the lawyer said, "I suppose it's an attainable objective, but in my opinion the only one.”

He became serious.”What you've proposed seems to me to overlook the tremendous scientific capability and achievements of our own country-your country too.,, Sam had thought about this meeting in advance and had no intention of letting the argument get away from him.”I haven't overlooked American achievements in science," he objected.”How could I? They're all around us. I simply want to supplement them.”

Someone else injected, "Then let's use our money to supplement them here.”