Irving Wallace - The Prize

‘I must apologize for Mr. Hammarlund,’ Lindblom was saying with some mortification, his bow tie jigging. ‘Everything he possesses must be the best, and he permits these enthusiasms to include his employees.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ said Denise tartly.

‘I mean-I mean-his prediction that some day I may earn the Nobel Prize like your husband and you. I would not allow myself to imagine this, or let you think that I believed I was on the uppermost plane of science with two great laureates. I am relatively a beginner, a student almost, in comparison to your genius. It embarrasses me to have-to have my name brought up in the same conversation with yours. That is why I apologize for Mr. Hammarlund’s extravagance.’

Denise’s eyes narrowed, and she considered her companion more keenly. His lean face, the grey eyes, not entirely unattractive, were sincerely abject, but the one thing that Denise could not bear in a male was weakness. ‘Never mind that,’ she said. ‘We each have our work, our place.’

She knew that she would have to give an ear to his work, before she could be free of him. She might as well get it out of him and over with as speedily as possible. She could see her husband, at the bar, speaking too animatedly to Märta Norberg, and standing too close to her. Now that Claude’s moral balance was gone, and he had sunk to the depths of philandering, there was no telling how far he would let himself slide. If he could not have Gisèle Jordan in Copenhagen, the old fool might try to have that overpublicized iceberg, Mèrta Norberg, right here in Stockholm. It would be just like that old roué, that pitiful Casanova, to feed his vanity with another affair.

Denise bit her lip in resentment, and then knew that she was marring the lipstick, and quickly opened her evening bag to repair her face. She was not yet alarmed by Claude and the actress, but it would be foolhardy to let the flirtation go on at length. She would do her face, and finish her drink, and hear this oaf out, and then take herself to the bar and break that new thing up.

As she worked with her lipstick, and then her powder puff, Denise said, ‘Mr. Hammarlund told me something of your work. Do you wish to tell me more? Of course, this is no place for laboratory talk-but a little might be interesting, just what are you up to, Dr. Lindblom?’

Denise’s peevish tone inhibited Lindblom and, at the same time, made him venerate her the more. This female genius, so other-worldly, her head doubtless teeming with a hundred projects requiring talents beyond his mundane limitations, had actually encouraged him to speak of himself. He wanted to, desperately, and yet feared her impatience. What forced him to speak, at last, was a remembrance of Hammarlund’s command earlier in the day: ‘Oscar, when you are alone with her, interest her in your work-that is one of the main purposes of the party.’

For an introvert, the assignment was as impossible to envision as daring to monopolize the time of a Marie Curie, but the necessity of reporting back to Hammarlund enforced a superhuman effort. ‘I am sure Mr. Hammarlund told you the motivation behind our research into synthetics?’

‘Yes. Personal aggrandizement.’

‘ His motive, for the most, but not my motive. He is a vegetarian, as you know, and he did not want to consume foods-meats especially-that came from the corpses of once-living animals. Yet he knew also that the proteins of meats were necessary to his survival. He posed the problem of synthetic proteins to me, some meat substitute with the same values that would be morally and aesthetically acceptable. I pointed out that with time and money, anything was conceivable in the area of synthetics. When soldiers suffered from malaria in the last war, the cure was quinine. But not enough quinine, from tree bark, was available. This vital necessity mothered the invention of synthetic quinine, known as Atabrine. I pointed out to him that when there is an important need, there is always a possible solution.’

‘And you felt your employer’s vegetarianism was an important need?’ remarked Denise acidly.

‘By no means. While his need was for a solution to squeamishness, and later, a chance to make added millions, my motives were entirely different. For one thing, as I worked in the laboratory, I saw that natural foods were not at all as efficient and wholesome as people imagined. Synthetic foods could be made free of nature’s defects, and promise more health to humanity. For another thing, once food came out of the laboratory and then could come off the assembly line, there would be food, always, for the entire world-no more undernourishment, no more famines. I saw the goal was worthy. I have devoted myself to it ever since.’

‘I admire your humanitarianism,’ said Denise, who had long since tired of the subject, ‘but in the end, you may be manufacturing only fool’s gold.’

‘No, no, Dr. Marceau, you must take my word that anything can be done in this field. Consider what Bergius has accomplished in converting sawdust and wood shavings into carbohydrates of the sugar type, and Fischer, synthesizing proteins that provide full nourishment. Most of us tend to forget that synthetic elements already exist in natural food. What is ice cream? Is it natural? Is it picked in the field? Does it grow? It is the result of combining natural products with chemicals. Or baking powder. Is that grown from trees? Synthetics are employed, chemicals like monocalcium phosphate. Or, for that matter, what shall we say of baked bread-?’

He was going on and on, warming to his subject, but Denise was no longer listening. With her concentrated glare she tried to hold her husband, across the room, in check. He had ordered, and was now accepting, fresh drinks for Märta Norberg and himself. He was standing even closer to the bitch in heat, addressing her more confidentially, beguiling her with his heavy-handed wit, now touching her bare arm and laughing, obviously working at seducing her (had he not had recent practice in the technique?).

Denise only half heard Lindblom’s hymn to synthetics, and the word caught in her mind, and she wished that chemistry could produce synthetic men, with synthetic faithfulness and a love that did not revolt against becoming middle-aged, and synthetic sex as well, that was geared to one mate and one mate only.

‘-and so I am trying to reproduce, in the laboratory, the taste of meat, the nutritional content of meat, the resemblance of meat,’ Lindblom was saying. ‘At the same time, I am exploring new areas, algae strains-’

‘Fascinating,’ said Denise with firmness and finality.

Lindblom knew that Her Majesty had dismissed him, but he was not dismayed. He was flattered to have held her attention at all. He was relieved that he could report some success to Hammarlund after the dinner.

‘Some day,’ Denise went on, ‘under more propitious circumstances, in a more appropriate place, you must explain your concrete accomplishments and the problems that have prevented your going further. Right now-’

‘I would be honoured,’ Lindblom hastily interrupted, ‘to have you visit my laboratory in the grounds, show you about, let you see my work.’

‘Thank you, thank you very much. Our time, as you know, is not our own. We are in the hands of the Nobel Foundation. Count Jacobsson appears to have filled every hour of our stay. But as I said, some day in the future-’

‘You and your husband will be always welcome.’

‘Yes, my husband,’ said Denise, glancing towards the bar. ‘I fear I have neglected him. A tribute to your elocutionary powers, Dr. Lindblom, and the drama of your work. Now I had better see my husband. Thank you so much.’

Abruptly, she left Lindblom and strode across the living-room. Claude and Märta Norberg both had their glasses to their lips when she came between them.