Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

I’ve heard this before, thought Geoff, knowing that he would hear it again. And she wasn’t being all that unfair, he also realized. But he was running late, and this lingering hangover left him in no mood to talk things out again.

“Honey, it happens that I’m at a crucial stage right now, and I really have to keep at it,” he offered by way of reconciliation. “Besides, we went to the cocktail party at Trelane’s last night, didn’t we? We were together then, weren’t we?”

“Big deal,” Gwen sniffled. “It was a lousy party. All you talked about was medicine.”

Geoff sighed, and glanced at his watch. “Look, I don’t want to make this sound too dramatic, but what I’m working on now could be big – I mean big. How big it might be I haven’t even told my colleagues – I don’t want to look like a fool if it doesn’t work out. But, honey, I think it is going to work out, and if it does, I’ll have made a breakthrough like no one since . . . Well, it will be a breakthrough.”

“Swell! You mean you’ll have discovered a whole new way to implant zits on a monkey’s navel, or some other thrilling discovery that all the journals can argue about!” Gwen was not to be placated.

Giving it up, Geoff bent to kiss her. She turned her face, and he got a mouthful of brown curls. “Baby, it really could be big. If it is, well, things could get a whole lot different for us in a hurry.”

“I’ll take any change – the sooner the better,” she murmured, raising her chin a little.

“Trust me, sweetheart. Hey look, you were fussing about your party dress last night. Why don’t you go out today and pick out a new one – something nice, whatever you like. OK?”

“Mmmff,” decided his wife, letting him kiss her cheek.

“What news today?”

Geoff glanced up from his stack of electron photomicrographs. “Oh, hi, Dave.” And to atone for the trace of irritation in his voice, he added, “Have a cup of coffee?”

“Muchos grassy-ass,” his visitor replied, turning to the large coffee urn Geoff had inveigled for his lab. He spooned in half a cupful of sugar and powdered cream subsititute, and raised the steaming container immediately to his lips – one of those whose mouths seem impervious to scalding temperatures.

“Don’t know why it is, but even when you brew your own, it ends up tasting rancid like all other hospital coffee,” Geoff commented, half covering his pile of photographs.

“Unh,” Dr Froneberger acceded. “Know what you mean – that’s why I gave up drinking it black. Rot your liver if you don’t cut it with powdered goo. I think it’s the water. Hospital water is shot full of chemicals, rays, gases, dead bugs. Very healthfully unhealthful.

“What you got there, Geoff?” he queried, moving over to the desk.

Reluctantly, Metzger surrendered the photomicrographs. Froneberger’s own lab was at the other end of the hall, and it would be impolitic to affront his neighbor. Still, he vaguely resented the frequent contacts that their proximity afforded. Not that Dave was any more than ordinarily obnoxious, but the other’s research with influenza viruses impinged closely enough on some areas of his own work to raise the touchy problem of professional jealousy.

“Unh,” Froneberger expounded, tapping a hairy finger across several of the photos. “Right here, buddy. I can see it too. You got that same twisted grouping along the nuclear membrane, and on these two you can definitely see the penetration. And you can make a good argument with this one that here’s the same grouping on the chromosome. Hey, this is good stuff you’re getting here, Geoff buddy.”

“I think I’m making some progress,” offered Metzger testily, rankled at the other’s appropriation of data he had spent countless hours working toward. It would never do for Froneberger to insinuate himself into this thing with matters such as they were.

“Where’s it leading you, buddy? Got anything backing this besides what the editors like to brush off as ‘artifacts of electron microscopy’?”

“I couldn’t say,” Geoff replied evasively. “I’m getting some new data off these labeled cultures that may lead somewhere.”

“May, and again may not, that’s the way it always is. I know the feeling, believe you me. Been a few times, buddy, when I damn near thought I . . . But, hell, maybe all the cherries will roll up for you this time, you never know. Looks impressive so far, my fran. Could be we’re hearing the Nobel boys sniffing outside the door.”

“I think that’s your telephone.”

“Shit, it is that. And my secretary’s on break. Better catch it. Chow!” He lumbered off.

“Damn!” Geoff breathed, resorting his photographs with fumbling touch.

III

“Too late for you to help him, eh?”

“How’s that?” Geoff looked up from his evening paper and turned toward the man who was seating himself opposite him. It was Ira Festung, who busily rearranged his cafeteria tray, smiling cheerfully as he smothered his hospital pot roast in catsup. He should have taken the paper back to the lab to finish reading, Geoff reflected. He had promised Gwen he would be home before too late, and he could lose half an hour trying to break away from the garrulous epidemiologist.

“I noticed you were reading the headlines about the Supreme Court Justice,” said Dr Festung, doing nothing to clarify his greeting.

“I was,” Geoff admitted, glancing again at the lead article, which told of Justice Freeport’s death from cancer that morning. “Freeportwas a good man. The second justice to die in the last few months, and both of them liberals. They’ll have a hard time replacing them – especially with the Administration we have right now.”

Festung snorted into his ice water. “Oh, they’ll probably find another couple Commies to fill their seats. Don’t see how you can seriously regret Freeport and Lloyd, after the stands those leftists took on socialized medicine. Sure it sounds great to be the bleeding-heart humanitarian, but tell me how much of this fancy research you’d be doing as a salaried pill-pusher. Hell, look at the disaster in Britain! Is that the kind of medical care you want to dish out to the public?”

If this got started again, Geoff knew he could plan to spend the whole evening in the hospital cafeteria. And afterward he’d have a sore throat, and his grey-haired colleagues would shake their heads condescendingly and despair of his political judgment.

“What did you mean by what you said when you sat down?” he asked instead, hoping to steer the epidemiologist away from another great debate.

“That?” Festung wiped catsup from his full lips.

Whiskers, and he’d look like President Taft, Metzger decided.

“Well, Freeport had multiple myeloma, and from what I hear, aren’t you about to come up with the long-sought breakthrough in cancer?” Festung’s watery eyes were suddenly keen.

Goddamn that sonofabitch Froneberger! Geoff fought to hold a poker face. Let word go around that the Boy Wonder thought he had a cure for cancer, and he’d be a laughingstock if this research didn’t pan out!

“Oh, is that the scuttlebutt these days?” He smiled carefully. “Well, I’m glad to hear somebody has even greater optimism for my project than I do. Maybe I ought to trade notes with him.”

“If we didn’t have rumors to play with, wouldn’t this medical center be a dull place to live,” Dr Festung pronounced.

Geoff laughed dutifully, although he had his own opinion of the back-stabbing gossip that filled so many conversations here.

“Waste of time trying to cure cancer anyway,” the epidemiologist continued. “Nature would only replace it with another scourge just as deadly, and then we’d have to begin all over again. Let it run its course and be done, I say.”