Greg Morgenstern’s laboratory staff had burgeoned to thirty and was subdivided into groups working on different aspects of the problem. But, of course, he placed his highest hopes on Sandy, whose capacity to solve the mysteries of cellular behavior was the greatest he had ever seen.
As they came closer and closer to finding the long-elusive protein that would provide the ultimate solution, both men verged on the monomaniacal. Greg did not even take into account that many of the hours Sandy spent in the lab were the rightful property of Judy and little Olivia. Neither had been the best of family men.
Yet Sandy Raven’s personal loss was his professional gain.
Late one night when he was all alone in the lab, he discovered the golden fleece—the molecular structure of the anticancer virus that he, Greg, and their teams of biologists and crystallographers had spent years seeking to replicate. And it was there in glorious Technicolor on his monitor.
Sandy was ecstatic—at once elated and exhausted. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, before broadcasting the news to the world he wanted to savor the delicious taste of being the only man on earth to know one of God’s secrets.
He walked into the deserted coffee lounge, opened the Frigidaire, pulled out a small green Perrier bottle, twisted the cap, and poured the liquid into a glass.
Giddy with excitement compounded by his solitude, he toasted himself out loud: “To Sandy Raven, the first man in his Bronx Science class to win a Nobel Prize.”
“Amen,” said a voice.
Startled, Sandy whirled around. It was his father-in-law.
“My God, Greg, I thought you’d be asleep at this hour.”
“No,” his mentor answered. “I had this uncanny feeling that we were getting close. I woke up and was drawn back here like a magnet.”
“We’ve done it!” Sandy suddenly exploded. “I’ve got the answer right here.”
Morgenstern was thunderstruck. He seemed temporarily paralyzed by the shock. Then, finally, he managed a breathless, “Show me.”
They raced to Sandy’s lab station, where the computer still glimmered with its victorious construct and his lab book lay open at the page when the writing had come to a complete, unexpected, and triumphal end.
For a minute or so the older man was speechless, his eyes darting frantically from the page to the screen and back again.
The two men embraced.
“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” Greg murmured. He turned to his son-in-law and said, “Go home and wake Judy. I’ll just read through these last few days of notes and call Ruth.” Tears welled up in his eyes. “Oh Sandy, you can’t imagine how I’ve dreamed of this moment.”
“I can, Greg. I can. This is like being on top of Mount Everest.”
The rest of the day dissolved into a blur. After waking Judy and, as an inevitable result, three-year-old Olivia, Sandy was too excited to go to sleep. His wife was so elated she opened her heart and said everything this victory meant to her.
“Oh God, I’m so happy about Daddy. My whole life, people have told me that he was the smartest guy they’d ever met, but that his only fault was being too noble to fight for all the recognition he deserved. And now, like it or lump it, he’s going to be famous.”
“Hey,” Sandy protested, “what about me? I wasn’t exactly the office boy in all this.”
“Oh, you’re my special prize,” Judy bubbled affectionately. “Now we’ll get you back. It’s like the end of a long, hard war. The troops—even generals like you and Daddy—come marching home to their families.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Sandy acknowledged. “I’ve been sort of delinquent. But as soon as we tie up the loose ends, we’ll go away for a while.”
The long evening of festivities began at five P.M. as champagne corks popped in Gregory Morgenstern’s lab. This time some of the neighboring dignitaries came to drink to him. Professor Baltimore was there, as well as Har Grobind Khorana. And the long-emeritus Salvador Luria.
Greg was forced to make a speech. But with characteristic modesty, he downplayed his own role.
“This is a team effort,” he began, “and a team victory. And if it means the beginning of the end of one of the cruelest diseases ever to afflict man, then all of you should feel as gratified as I.”
Then it was down to the waiting taxi that sped them, with Judy and Ruth, to the Ritz-Carlton to continue the effervescence en famille.
The aristocratic diners could not fathom the cause for the loud laughter and jubilation. They simply came to the most obvious conclusion—that these plebeians were from out of town.
“And now my fellow inebriates,” Greg announced, with a perceptible slur in his voice, “I’m gonna share with you—and only you—the cherry on the sundae.” He put his finger melodramatically to his lips and uttered in a stage whisper, “Shh!”
They all leaned forward as he murmured confidentially, “Guess when the news is being published?”
“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Sandy volunteered, also mumbling slightly. “It’ll take us about two hours to write it up—”
“Two hours?” Judy queried with astonishment. “Is that all?”
“Yeah, honey,” Sandy smiled. “It’s a piece of cake it’s so simple. The computer can practically do it on its own. The hard part was all the years that came before. Anyway, as soon as we knock off the draft, we’ll call the editors of Cell, Science, and Nature and see who begs the most. I’d say the best offer is gonna be less than three weeks to publication.”
“An excellent hypothesis, Dr. Raven,” Greg pontificated tipsily. “That’s what would’ve happened in the normal run of things. But my special surprise is …” He took a dramatic pause and concluded, “… the paper’s already in the press.”
Naturally the others did not take this literally. But something about Greg’s tone made Sandy uneasy.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well,” Greg responded grandiosely, “you would all agree that Nature is the most prestigious journal in our profession. Watson and Crick used it to announce the cracking of the genetic code. And, as you know, it’s published weekly in London.
“What’s more, Marcus Williams, the current editor, happens to be one of my former research fellows. When I called him this morning, he was in his office going over the latest proofs. But he was so happy for me—for all of us—that he held everything while I scribbled out a few pages and faxed them. He not only dispensed with the normal refereeing, but rammed it into this week’s issue. It’ll be in every lab in America by Wednesday.”
“Wrong,” Sandy interrupted. “In every lab in the world.”
In the days that followed, Sandy walked on air.
On Wednesday morning he fell to earth with a thud.
Arriving at the lab earlier than he had since the Great Breakthrough, Sandy was not surprised to find a cluster of staffers crowded around what he assumed to be a copy of Nature. The huddle was so large, it was impossible for him to see.
Just then Rudi Reinhardt, one of their star biochemists from Munich, noticed him and called out, “Hey, Sandy, can you believe this?”
“What’re you talking about?”
The German’s expression abruptly changed to one of concern. “You mean, you don’t get your own copy of Nature?”
“Sure,” Sandy replied. “I was just gonna amble over to my mailbox and see what’s new in the world of science.”
“Then prepare yourself for a shock,” Rudi answered sympathetically, holding out the publication to him. “It turns out that our humble prof is a closet egomaniac.”
Sandy suddenly grew cold and the hairs on the back of his neck began to bristle. He grabbed the magazine, which was already turned to “An Antibody for Some Hepatic Oncogenes.”
The listed author was Gregory Morgenstern, Department of Microbiology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was the only author.
All the usual collaborators’ names were relegated to the first footnote and prefaced by the demeaning platitude, “I owe my deepest thanks to …”
At first Sandy thought it was a bad dream. It was tantamount to discovering that the saintly Albert Schweitzer was a werewolf.
In a move without precedent, Gregory the fair, Gregory the altruist, Gregory the self-effacing, had taken sole and unique credit for what should not even have been called a team effort, but was really the fruits of Sandy’s own sweat and brains.
He suddenly felt dizzy and then desperately sick. He barely made it to the men’s room in time.
Fifteen minutes later, having composed himself sufficiently, he appeared chalk-faced in front of Greg’s secretary. “Where is he?” Sandy mumbled.
“I don’t know,” the woman replied, attempting to be offhand, but without sufficient conviction.
“Marie-Louise—you don’t have any experience at lying.” Sandy slammed her desk and demanded, “Now, tell me where he is.”
Frightened, she stammered, “He and Ruth are going to Florida for a few days. That’s all he told me.”
Sandy’s temper was swiftly reaching boiling point. “When? What airline?” he asked, browbeating her. “I know you must have made the reservations. You always do.”
Marie-Louise glanced downward, partly to avoid his gaze and partly to check her watch.
“Delta at noon. He’s probably on his way there,” she answered, still unable to look at him.
Sandy checked his own watch, raced out the door, down the steps, and into the parking lot.
It was just after eleven, and the Callahan Tunnel was relatively quiet. He drove like a demon.
When he reached the Delta terminal, he simply abandoned his car and ran inside.
As Greg Morgenstern and his wife were arriving to join the other first-class passengers to board, he spied a figure hurtling toward them down the corridor.
He tried to hurry Ruth into the passageway.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.
“Greg, you thieving sonovabitch,” Sandy cried out.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Morgenstern responded, cowering.
Sandy had never before lost his temper. But now he was so consumed with anger that he was shaking the older man and shouting, “You stole it. You stole my work.”
As airline personnel and a police officer rushed toward them, Sandy held him tightly and continued to demand, “Why, Gregory? Why?”
“Please try and understand,” Morgenstern pleaded. “It was like a stroke of madness. I’ve been playing second fiddle my whole life. And Sandy, whatever you may think, this project was my life. All I could see was the chance of getting honor, respect—instead of all those condescending backhanded compliments I’ve heard for thirty years. You’re young, Sandy, your time will come—”
This facile consolation cut the last thread of Sandy’s self-control. “My time is now,” he insisted. “You should have given me credit.”
“Oh, shut up, will you,” Greg countered, matching fury for fury.
Then Sandy shocked even himself by unleashing a blow aimed at Greg’s head. Fortunately, it was deflected by a large policeman. Instantly, they were surrounded by uniformed figures.
“Now, what seems to be the trouble here?” the cop demanded in a Boston-Irish accent.
Sandy and Greg glared silently at one another. In the end, it was Ruth who rescued them.
“It’s just a family argument, officer,” she said, her voice strained. “My husband and I are on our way to Florida. This other gentleman is our son-in-law and …” Her verbal powers failed her.
She grasped her husband by the arm and led him off down the gangway toward the airplane.
Sandy stood rooted to the spot. Then he realized that he had been left in the “custody” of the various officials. He took a deep breath, scanned their faces and capitulated. “Like the lady said, it was just a family argument.”
Though he would not have believed it, the worst part of Sandy’s day was yet to come.
Judy’s reaction was the coup de grâce.
Indeed, the most painful discovery was the fact that, first and foremost, she was not really his wife as much as Greg’s daughter.
She was furious at him. “You struck my father,” she repeated in a hysterical litany. “How could you dare even touch him?”
Sandy could not explain his own loss of control. Indeed, a very small part of him was ashamed of his behavior. But his greatest preoccupation was with the low blow that Greg had just dealt him.
“He stole what was rightfully mine,” Sandy insisted.
“You presumptuous bastard,” Judy shrieked. “Whatever you did was nothing compared to the years my father put in.”
“Jesus Christ, this has nothing to do with time. It has to do with brainwork. I ‘owned’ the best ideas—the ones that led to the solution. But even so, I would never have dreamed of not sharing the credit with him. He’s as much a common thief as a guy who mugs an old lady.”
“Stop it! Stop it!” she screamed. “I won’t let you talk about him that way!”
The fires of Sandy’s own temper were being stoked by indignation—and incredulity.
“I don’t believe this. You’re actually defending his dishonesty—his theft of my solution?”
“For God’s sake, Sandy,” she shouted back, “he earned it! I mean, he deserves recognition.”
“Dammit, I do too. Judy, there was room for another name on that article. What Greg did was patent an invention that was not completely his. I mean, the courts recognize intellectual property—and your father’s just robbed me of mine.…”
They fumed in silence for a moment, each waiting for the other to lash out.
Sandy was gradually coming to an agonizing realization.
He suddenly did not recognize the woman he had married.
“I’ll tell you one more thing,” he said quietly. “You can’t have it both ways anymore. You can’t be his daughter and my wife.”
“Good. I agree,” she hurled back.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“Isn’t it clear?” she answered, softly but sternly. “After what you did today, I don’t want to be married to you, Sandy.”