The Gorgon Festival Read Free

mathematics of molecular structures. The Englishman was deferred to on the campus because most of Ward’s colleagues didn’t know a knight from a lord and considered him nobility.
    “I’ll peel off the limey,” Ester said, “and you give Fred this drink.”
    She handed Ward the double bourbon and moved ahead of him with a more pronounced sway to her hips than usual.
    “I say, Sir Doctor Peter Waverly-Pritchard, old chap, are you having a love affair with this bloody Yank, Carrick?”
    “We’ve just had a falling out,” Waverly-Pritchard smiled.
    “You need fresh gin and tonic, and I want to introduce you to an elderly lady who’s friend of a friend of yours, Queen Elizabeth.”
    She had the Englishman by the arm, leading him away, and her otherwise masterful ploy, Ward thought, was marred by a touch of malice. Indeed Ruth Gordon had been presented to the Court of St. James’s, but Ruth preferred to drink alone, as Ester well knew.
    “Enjoying your party, Fred?”
    “I was, Alex.” Carrick looked down at his empty glass.
    “Presto,” Ward said and produced the drink from behind his back. “Now I’ve patted your back, you pat mine. Sign my extension request.”
    “I’m taking it under advisement,” Carrick said.
    Since no one advised Carrick, and since his signature, as a Nobel scientist, was tantamount “to government approval of Ward’s research grant, Ward could only read Carrick’s remark one way.
    “Fred, I take this as a vote of no confidence in my research project.”
    “Alex, I have confidence in your work, on the gut level.”
    “How do you acquire confidence in a complex biologic experiment on a gut level?” Ward asked.
    “Well,” Carrick was hesitant, “married to Ester, you wouldn’t spend so much time in your laboratory if the work wasn’t important, but nobody knows what you’re doing out there in the annex. You never publish your findings.”
    Here was the spot to introduce Ruth’s tactics, but Ward had spotted a fallacy in Ruth’s suggestion. If Carrick wanted a piece of the commercial action in a cure for arthritis, he’d want four-fifths of the play in an aphrodisiac.
    “But you have confidence on the gut level,” Ward reminded him.
    “True, but there’s another consideration, the paucity of your request. You’re asking $22,000 for a two-year grant. That sum won’t impress the Federal boys, and Stanford is a proud university. It monkeyfies our image to ask for peanuts. Since no one knows what you’re doing, the only way to impress the government with the importance of your work is by the size of the grant. I advise you to up your request to $180,000.”
    “Fred, I’m not building a cyclotron.”
    “The government doesn’t know it.”
    “What could I do with $180,000?”
    “This research business being what it is,” Carrick said, “we have to take care of our better graduate students. I have eight good boys with no place to go. If you would consider adding them to your staff, the grant might be extended.”
    Suddenly Ward remembered a fragment of patio gossip, “Henderson asked for eighty thousand, but Carrick cut his request to twenty grand.”
    Things were adding up. Carrick wanted to put spies in his laboratory. If Ruth was correct, if he had discovered a cure for arthritis, the adroit pragmatist, Carrick, would have the product past the Pure Food and Drug Administration and onto the market before Ward could formulate an analysis of the DNA bonding process.
    “What’s your deadline for extension requests?” Ward asked.
    “July thirty-first.”
    Little more than two months remained for Ward to find the answers, and he didn’t yet know the questions. Finding out would cut into his Tuesdays with Ester unless Ester, herself, could pull a coup.
    Returning to the patio, Ward saw Ester standing beside Cabroni. Around the police lieutenant, gesticulating guests were hurling words against Cabroni’s granite face.
    As Ward neared the group, he heard someone