and thousands of individuals: the work was statistical and mathematical. If her search engine was no good, she felt, she herself would be worthless. She might as well give up and become a stewardess, like Penny Watermeadow.
She was surprised to see Annette Bigelow waiting outside her door. Annette was a graduate student whose work Jeannie supervised as part of her teaching duties. Now she recalled that last week Annette had submitted her proposal for the year’s work, and they had an appointment this morning to discuss it. Jeannie decided to cancel the meeting; she had more important things to do. Then she saw the eager expression on the young woman’s face and recalled how crucial these meetings were when you were a student; and she forced herself to smile and say: “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Let’s get started right away.”
Fortunately she had read the proposal carefully and made notes. Annette was planning to trawl through existing data on twins to see if she could find correlations in the areas of political opinions and moral attitudes. It was an interesting notion and her plan was scientifically sound. Jeannie suggested some minor improvements and gave her the go-ahead.
As Annette was leaving, Ted Ransome put his head around the door. “You look as if you’re about to cut someone’s balls off,” he said.
“Not yours, though.” Jeannie smiled. “Come in and have a cup of coffee.”
“Handsome” Ransome was her favorite man in the department. An associate professor who studied the psychology of perception, he was happily married with two small children. Jeannie knew he found her attractive, but he did not do anything about it. There was a pleasant frisson of sexual tension between them that never threatened to become a problem.
She switched on the coffee maker beside her desk and told him about the
“It has to be Sophie,” he said.
Sophie Chapple was the only other woman on the faculty of the psychology department. Although she was close to fifty and a full professor, she saw Jeannie as some kind of rival and had behaved jealously from the beginning of the semester, complaining about everything from Jeannie’s miniskirts to the way she parked her car.
“Would she do a thing like that?” Jeannie said.
“Like a shot.”
“I guess you’re right.” Jeannie never ceased to marvel at the pettiness of top scientists. She had once seen a revered mathematician punch the most brilliant physicist in America for cutting in line in the cafeteria. “Maybe I’ll ask her.”
He raised his eyebrows. “She’ll lie.”
“But she’ll look guilty.”
“There’ll be a fight.”
“There’s already a fight.”
The phone rang. Jeannie picked it up and gestured to Ted to pour the coffee. “Hello.”
“Naomi Freelander here.”
Jeannie hesitated. “I’m not sure I should talk to you.”
“I believe you’ve stopped using medical databases for your research.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“I mean I haven’t stopped. Your phone calls have started some discussions, but no decisions have been made.”
“I have a fax here from the university president’s office. In it, the university apologizes to people whose privacy has been invaded, and assures them that the program has been discontinued.”
Jeannie was aghast. “They sent out that release?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I saw a draft and I didn’t agree to it.”
“It seems like they’ve canceled your program without telling you.”
‘They can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a contract with this university. They can’t just do whatever the hell they like.”
“Are you telling me you’re going to continue in defiance of the university authorities?”
“Defiance doesn’t come into it. They don’t have the power to command me.” Jeannie caught Ted’s eye. He lifted a hand and moved it from side to side in a negative gesture. He was right, Jeannie realized; this was not the way to talk to the press. She changed her tack. “Look,” she said in a reasonable voice, “you yourself said that the invasion of privacy is
“Yes.…”
“And you have completely failed to find anyone who is willing to complain about my program. Yet you have no qualms about getting this research project canceled.”
“I don’t judge, I report.”
“Do you know what my research is about? I’m trying to find out what makes people criminals. I’m the first person to think of a really promising way to study this problem. If things work out right, what I discover could make America a better place for your grandchildren to grow up in.”
“I don’t have any grandchildren.”
“Is that your excuse?”
“I don’t need excuses—”
“Perhaps not, but wouldn’t you do better to find a case of invasion of privacy that someone really cares about? Wouldn’t that make an even better story for the newspaper?”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Jeannie sighed. She had done her best. Gritting her teeth, she tried to end the conversation on a friendly note. “Well, good luck with it.”
“I appreciate your cooperation, Dr. Ferrami.”
“Good-bye.” Jeannie hung up and said: “You bitch.”
Ted handed her a mug of coffee. “I gather they’ve announced that your program is canceled.”
“I can’t understand it. Berrington said we’d talk about what to do.”
Ted lowered his voice. “You don’t know Berry as well as I do. Take it from me, he’s a snake. I wouldn’t trust him out of my sight.”
“Perhaps it was a mistake,” Jeannie said, clutching at straws. “Maybe Dr. Obell’s secretary sent the release out in error.”
“Possibly,” Ted said. “But my money’s on the snake theory.”
“Do you think I should call the
He laughed. “I think you should go along to Berry’s office and ask him if he meant for the release to go out before he talked to you.”
“Good idea.” She swallowed her coffee and stood up.
He went to the door. “Good luck. I’m rooting for you.”
“Thanks.” She thought of kissing his cheek and decided not to.
She walked along the corridor and up a flight of stairs to Berrington’s office. His door was locked. She went to the office of the secretary who worked for all the professors. “Hi, Julie, where’s Berry?”
“He left for the day, but he asked me to fix an appointment for you tomorrow.”
Damn. The bastard was avoiding her. Ted’s theory was right. “What time tomorrow?”
“Nine-thirty?”
“I’ll be here.”
She went down to her floor and stepped into the lab. Lisa was at the bench, checking the concentration of Steven’s and Dennis’s DNA that she had in the test tubes. She had mixed two microliters of each sample with two milliliters of fluorescent dye. The dye glowed in contact with DNA, and the quantity of DNA was shown by how
