"Dr. Emerson!"
"Quinn!" he said. "What on earth—?"
She was so relieved she wanted to cry. She clung to him.
"In the anatomy lab!" she said, gasping for air. "Someone in there! After me! Had a light!"
He disengaged her arms. "After you? Are you sure?"
"Yes!"
"Here? On campus? This is intolerable!"
He started down the hall, toward the lab, but Quinn pulled him back. She was afraid for him.
"No, don't. He might still be there. Let's get out of here."
"Very well," said. "You come to my office. We'll call campus security from there and have them check it out." He took her arm and led her toward the front doors. "By the way, what on earth are you doing here at this hour?"
"I was supposed to meet Tim—"
"Oh, yes. Mr. Brown. Your cadaver mate. A little last-minute cramming before the practical?"
Quinn didn't know how much to tell Dr. Emerson. She didn't want him thinking Tim had gone crazy. As they stepped out into the chill air, she slipped back into her shoes and ducked his question by asking one of her own.
"I know why I'm here at this hour," she said. "But why are you? You don't have a practical tomorrow."
"I don't sleep well. Haven't since my wife died. Maybe I don't need as much sleep as I used to."
Quinn had heard he was a widower, but this was the first time he'd mentioned it.
He tapped the frayed notebook protruding from the side pocket of his coat. "I came to retrieve this from Lecture B. Then I was going over to Science for a while."
"More work on 9574?" Quinn said.
He nodded. "I suppose. But I'll gladly postpone that." He pointed toward the Administration building across the pond. "We'll stop in my office, we'll call security, I'll make us some tea, and you'll tell me exactly what happened tonight."
Quinn nodded in the darkness. She'd like that. She felt safe with Dr. Emerson.
But where was Tim?
*
Tim watched Dr. Alston pace back and forth before him.
"You've heard my lectures, Mr. Brown," he said. "You're a bright young man. I trust I don't have to go into too much detail about the grim future of medical care and the delivery of medical services during the span of your productive years."
"I don't care about any of that," Tim said. "I want to know about Quinn."
"Forget her for now. You must listen to me and—"
Tim glared up at him. "How can I listen to you when she might be in trouble? Get real, Alston."
"Oh?" he said with arched eyebrows. "It's 'Alston' now, is it?" He turned to Verran and sighed. "Louis, see if you can learn the status of the Cleary girl."
Verran said, "I'll signal Kurt to call in."
He went to another console and tapped in a code, then they all waited in silence, a sweaty, anxious silence for Tim—until a bell rang. Verran flipped a switch and muttered into the mike on his headset. Then he turned to Dr. Alston.
Tim's heart leaped at his first words.
"She got away," he said. "Kurt almost had her but your buddy, Dr. Emerson, happened by at the wrong moment and so Kurt had to let her go."
"Walter?" Alston said. "He has a talent for saying and doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. What's he doing here at this hour?"
"I dunno," Verran said with a shrug. "Maybe—"
The phone by his elbow jangled. He picked up on the second ring.
"Campus Security...Yes, sir. In the anatomy lab you say?...Yes, sir. We'll get right on it."
He grinned at Alston. "Speak of the devil. That was your friend Emerson on the phone, telling me that a 'Miss Cleary' reported being chased through the anatomy lab by an unknown intruder. He says the girl is staying with him—drinking tea, he said—until we've checked the matter out."
"At least we know where she is." He turned to Tim. "Satisfied?"
"How do I know any of it's true?"
Alston smirked. "Look at where you are and look at where I am. I don't have to lie to you, Mr. Brown."
"Okay, okay," Tim said. Quinn trusted Dr. Emerson. If he was looking after her, she was probably all right. "What do you want from me?"
"Your attention. Listen to me with an open mind and then we'll see what you think when I'm finished."
"I already know what I think."
"But you're intelligent enough to be influenced by logic, and logic is what I'm going to give you."
"How about unstrapping me from this chair?"
"All in good time. First, you listen." He began to pace again. "I'm going to tell you everything. But in order for you to fully grasp the import of what I have to say, you'll have to have some background."
"That's usually helpful."
"When Mr. Kleederman set up his Foundation—years before you were conceived, Mr. Brown—he peopled its board not only with a former senator, but with an international array of high government officials and other influential men in industry and labor who shared his cause, his vision. Kleederman Pharmaceuticals was already well established in the U.S. by that time, but even then he saw the writing on the walclass="underline" the new drug approval process was going to thicken into a stagnant quamire unless intelligent changes were made. But he knew those changes would never be made, so he embarked upon a course to find a better way to bring new pharmaceuticals to the sick of the world despite the interference of their own governments."
"And perhaps in the process," Tim said, "move Johann Kleederman from the ranks of mere multimillionaire to multibillionaire?"
"I don't believe he is driven by money. I doubt that he and all his heirs can spend even the interest on his fortune. No, he truly has a vision. Disease is a scourge upon mankind. The tools to defeat it merely wait to be discovered. Yet petty bureaucrats entangle new compounds in endless miles of red tape, delaying their use for years. Mr. Kleederman finds that unconscionable, and so do I."
"Everybody seems to have a bitch about the FDA, but what's that got to—"
"The bedrock of the Kleederman vision is Kleederman Pharmaceuticals. From there he branched out into medical care, building nursing homes, buying up failing hospitals within easy reach of major cities and converting them to medical centers which have become paradigms of compassionate, top-quality care. Those medical centers have always operated under the rule of providing that top-quality care to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. That's why they're always located near urban centers—to allow access to the neediest cases from the inner cities. Mr. Kleederman gathered the medical centers, the nursing homes, and the pharamceutical company under the conglomerate umbrella of Kleederman Medical Industries. KMI funds the Kleederman Foundation, which in turn funds the Ingraham College of Medicine."
"Fine," Tim said. Alston hadn't told him a damn thing he didn't already know. "But none of that explains the bugs, or the contraptions in our headboards."
"Tell me, Mr. Brown: Do you have any idea what it currently costs to bring a new drug to market in the United States?"
"That doesn't answer my question."
"Do you know?"
Tim didn't, so he picked a number out of the air. "Fifty million."
"Oh, if only that were so!" Alston said, laughing. "Actually, the figure is closer to a quarter of a billion—231 million dollars, to be exact."
Tim blinked at the staggering figure. "Okay, I'm impressed, but you've got 17 years under patent to get your money back."
"Not true. We have nowhere near 17 years. It takes 12 years, from synthesis to FDA approval, to bring a new drug to market...twelve years before you can recoup dollar one on a new drug. But the patent clock begins running as soon as the compound is registered, so you try to hold off registering a compound as long as you can. But still it frequently takes a full seven years from registration to final approval. That leaves you only ten years with exclusive rights to sell a product you developed from scratch."