Acceptable Risk (14 page)

Kevin reached across his desk and dropped several small dark objects into Edward’s palm. Edward nudged them with his index finger. They appeared like dark grains of rice.

“I think you better tell me what these sclerotia are,” Edward said.

“They’re a type of vegetative, resting spore of certain fungi,” Kevin said. “They’re different than a simple, unicellular spore because sclerotia are multicellular and contain fungal filaments or hyphae as well as stored food.”

“What makes you think I’d be interested in these things?” Edward asked. He thought they also looked like the seeds in rye bread. He brought one to his nose; it was odorless.

“Because it’s the Claviceps’ sclerotia that contain the bioactive alkaloids that cause ergotism,” Kevin said.

“Wow!” Edward said. He sat up straight and studied the sclerotium between his fingers with additional interest. “What are the chances that this little bugger contains the same alkaloids as Claviceps?”

“That, I believe, is the question of the day,” Kevin said. “Personally, I think the chances are reasonably good. There aren’t many fungi that produce sclerotia. Obviously this new species is related to Claviceps purpurea on some level.”

“Why don’t we try it?” Edward said.

“What on earth do you mean?” Kevin asked. He eyed Edward with suspicion.

“Why don’t we make a little brew with these guys and taste it?” Edward said.

“You’re joking, I hope,” Kevin said.

“Actually I’m not,” Edward said. “I’m interested in whether this new mold makes an alkaloid that has a hallucinogenic effect. The best way to figure that out is to try it.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Kevin said. “Mycotoxins can be quite potent, as those countless people who’ve suffered ergotism can testify. Science is finding new ones all the time. You’d be taking an awful risk.”

“Where’s your adventuresome spirit?” Edward asked teasingly. He stood up. “Can I use your lab for this little experiment?”

“I’m not sure I should be party to this,” Kevin said. “But you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Very much so,” Edward said.

Kevin led Edward into his lab and asked him what he needed. Edward said he needed a mortar and pestle or the equivalent, distilled water, a weak acid to precipitate the alkaloid, some filter paper, a liter flask, and a milliliter pipette.

“This is insane,” Kevin said as he rounded up the materials.

Edward set to work by grinding up the few sclerotia, extracting the pulp with distilled water, and precipitating a tiny amount of white material with the weak acid. With the help of the filter paper, he isolated a few grains of the white precipitate. Kevin watched the procedure with a mixture of disbelief and wonder.

“Don’t tell me you are just going to eat that?” Kevin said with growing alarm.

“Oh, come on,” Edward said. “I’m not stupid.”

“You could have fooled me,” Kevin said.

“Listen,” Edward said. “I’m interested in a hallucinogenic effect. If this stuff is going to have such an effect, it will have it at a minuscule dose. I’m talking about less than a microgram.”

Edward took a speck of the precipitate on the end of a spatula and introduced it into a liter of distilled water in a volumetric flask. He shook it vigorously.

“We could screw around with this stuff for six months and still not know if it can cause hallucinations,” Edward said. “Ultimately we’d need a human cerebrum. Mine is available right at the moment. When it comes to science, I’m a man of action.”

“What about possible kidney toxicity?” Kevin asked.

Edward made an expression of exasperated disbelief. “At this dosage? Hell, no! We’re well below by a factor of ten the toxicity range of botulinum toxin, the most toxic substance known to man. Besides, not only are we in the microgram range with this unknown, but it’s got to be a soup of substances, so the concentration of any one of them is that much lower.”

Edward asked Kevin to hand him the milliliter pipette. Kevin did so reluctantly.

“Are you sure you don’t want to join?” Edward asked. “You could be missing out on making an interesting scientific discovery.” He laughed as he filled the slender pipette.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Kevin said. “I have a comfortable understanding with my renal tubular cells that we won’t abuse each other.”

“To your health,” Edward said as he held aloft the pipette for a moment before depositing a single milliliter on the curl of his tongue. He took a mouthful of water, swished it around, and swallowed.

“Well?” Kevin questioned nervously after a moment of silence.

“A tiny, tiny bit bitter,” Edward said. He opened and closed his mouth a few times to enhance the taste.

“Anything else?” Kevin asked.

“I’m just beginning to feel mildly dizzy,” Edward said.

“Hell, you were dizzy before you started,” Kevin said.

“I admit this little experiment lacks scientific controls,” Edward said with a chuckle. “Anything I feel could be a placebo effect.”

“I really shouldn’t be a part of this,” Kevin said. “I’m going to have to insist that you get a urinalysis and a BUN this afternoon.”

“Ohooo weee,” Edward said. “Something is happening!”

“Oh, God!” Kevin said. “What?”

“I’m seeing a flood of colors that are moving around in amoeboid shapes like some kind of kaleidoscope.”

“Oh, great!” Kevin said. He stared into Edward’s face, which had assumed a trancelike appearance.

“Now I’m hearing some sounds like a synthesizer. Also my mouth is a bit dry. And now something else: I feel paresthesias on my arms, as if I’m being bitten or lightly pinched. It’s weird.”

“Should I call somebody?” Kevin demanded.

To Kevin’s surprise, Edward reached out and grabbed him around the upper arms. Edward held him with unexpected strength.

“It feels like the room is moving,” Edward said. “And there’s a mild choking sensation.”

“I’d better call for help,” Kevin said. His own pulse was racing. He eyed the phone, but Edward strengthened his grip.

“It’s OK,” Edward said. “The colors are receding. It’s passing.” Edward closed his eyes, but otherwise he didn’t move. He still had hold of Kevin.

Eventually Edward opened his eyes and sighed. “Wow!” he said. Only then did he become aware he was gripping Kevin’s arms. He let go, took a breath, and smoothed his jacket. “I think we got our answer,” he said.

“This was idiotic!” Kevin snapped. “Your little antic terrified me. I was just about to call emergency.”

“Calm down,” Edward said. “It wasn’t that bad. Don’t get all bent out of shape over a sixty-second psychedelic reaction.”

Kevin pointed up at the clock. “It wasn’t sixty seconds,” he said. “It was more like twenty minutes.”

Edward glanced up at the clock’s face. “Isn’t that curious,” he said. “Even my sense of time was distorted.”

“Do you generally feel OK?” Kevin asked.

“Fine!” Edward insisted. “In fact I feel better than fine. I feel...” He hesitated while he tried to put into words his inner sensations. “I feel energized, like I’d just had a rest. And also clairvoyant, like my mind is particularly sharp. I might even feel a touch euphoric but that could be because of this positive result: we’ve just ascertained that this new fungus produces a hallucinogenic substance.”

“Let’s not be so lax with the term ‘we,’~” Kevin said. “You ascertained it, not me. I refuse to take any credit for this craziness.”

“I wonder if the alkaloids are the same as Claviceps?” Edward asked. “I don’t seem to have even the slightest signs of reduced peripheral vascular circulation, a frequent sign of ergotism.”

“At least promise me you’ll get a urinalysis and a BUN or creatinine this afternoon,” Kevin said. “Even if you’re not worried, I still am.”

“If it will make you sleep tonight I’ll do it,” Edward said. “Meanwhile I want some more of these sclerotia. Is that possible?”

“It’s possible now that I have figured out the medium this fungus needs to grow, but I can’t promise you a lot of sclerotia. It’s not always easy to get the fungus to produce them.”

“Well, do your best,” Edward said. “Remember, we’ll probably get a nice little paper out of this.”

As Edward hurried across campus to catch the shuttle bus to the medical area, he was thrilled with the results. He couldn’t wait to tell Kim that the poison theory involving the Salem witchcraft episode was alive and well.

As excited as Kim was about seeing the progress at the compound, she was even more curious as to why her father had called her. Confident she was early enough to catch him before he left for his Boston office, Kim detoured to Marblehead.

Entering the house, she went directly to the kitchen. As she expected, she found John lingering over his coffee and his clutch of morning papers. He was a big man who’d reportedly been quite an athlete during his days at Harvard. His broad face was crowned with a full head of hair that had once been as dark and lustrous as Kim’s. Over the years it had grayed in a comely fashion, giving him a stereotypically paternal appearance.

“Good morning, Kimmy,” John said without taking his attention away from his paper.

Kim helped herself to the espresso machine and foamed some milk for a cappuccino.

“How’s that car of yours running?” John asked. The paper crinkled loudly as he turned the page. “I hope you are having it regularly serviced like I advised.”

Kim didn’t answer. She was accustomed to her father treating her as if she were still a little girl and she mildly resented it. He was forever giving her instructions on how to order her life. The older she got the more she thought he shouldn’t be giving anyone advice, especially considering what he’d done to his own life and marriage.

“I heard you called my apartment last night,” Kim said. She sat on a window seat beneath a bay window overlooking the ocean.

John lowered his paper.

“I did indeed,” he said. “Joyce mentioned that you’d become interested in Elizabeth Stewart and had been asking questions about her. It surprised me. I called you to ask why you wanted to upset your mother like that.”

“I wasn’t trying to upset her,” Kim said. “I’ve become interested in Elizabeth and I just wanted to know some basic facts. Like whether or not Elizabeth truly had been hanged for witchcraft or whether it was just a rumor.”

“She was indeed hanged,” John said. “I can assure you of that. I can also assure you that the family made a good deal of effort to suppress it. Under the circumstances I think it is best for you to leave it alone.”

“But why does it warrant such secrecy after three hundred years?” Kim asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t matter if it makes sense to you or not,” John said. “It was a humiliation then and it is today.”

“Do you mean to tell me that it bothers you, Father?” Kim asked. “Does it humiliate you?”

“Well, no, not particularly,” John admitted. “It’s your mother. It bothers her, so it should not be a subject for your amusement. We shouldn’t add to her burdens.”

Kim bit her tongue. It was hard not to say something disparaging to her father under the circumstances. Instead she admitted that not only had she become interested in Elizabeth but that she’d developed a sympathy for her.

“What on earth for?” John questioned irritably.

“For one thing I found her portrait stuck away in the back of Grandfather’s wine cellar,” Kim said. “Looking at it emphasized that she’d been a real person. She even had the same eye color as I do. Then I remembered what had happened to her. She certainly didn’t deserve to be hanged. It’s hard not to be sympathetic.”

“I was aware of the painting,” John said. “What were you doing in the wine cellar?”

“Nothing in particular,” Kim said. “Just taking a look around. It seemed like such a coincidence to come across Elizabeth’s portrait, because I’d recently been doing some reading about the Salem witch trials. And what I’d learned just added to my feelings of sympathy. Within a short time of the tragedy there was an outpouring of regret and repentance. Even back then it had become evident innocent people had been killed.”

“Not everyone was innocent,” John said.

“Mother intimated the same thing,” Kim said. “What could Elizabeth have done for you to suggest she wasn’t innocent?”

“Now you are pushing me,” John said. “I don’t know specifics, but I’d been told by my father it had something to do with the occult.”

“Like what?” Kim persisted.

“I just told you I don’t know, young lady,” John snapped angrily. “You’ve asked enough questions.”

Now go to your room, Kim added silently to herself. She wondered if her father would ever recognize that she’d become an adult and treat her like one.

“Kimmy, listen to me,” John said in a more conciliatory and paternalistic tone. “For your own good don’t dig up the past in this instance. It’s only going to cause trouble.”

“With all due respect, Father,” Kim said, “could you explain to me how it could possibly affect my welfare?”

John stammered.

“Let me tell you what I think,” Kim said with uncharacteristic assertiveness. “I believe that Elizabeth’s involvement could have been a humiliation back at the time the event occurred. I also can believe it might have been considered bad for business since her husband, Ronald, started Maritime Limited, which has supported generation after generation of Stewarts, ourselves included. But the fact that the concern over Elizabeth’s involvement has persisted is absurd and a disgrace to her memory. After all, she is our ancestor; if it hadn’t been for her, none of us would even be here. That fact alone makes me surprised that no one has questioned over the years this ridiculous knee-jerk reaction.”

“If you can’t understand it from your own selfish perspective,” John said irritably, “then at least think of your mother. The affair humiliates Joyce, and it doesn’t matter why. It just does. So if you need some motivation to leave Elizabeth’s legacy be, then there it is. Don’t rub your mother’s nose in it.”

Kim lifted her now cool cappuccino to her lips and took a drink. She gave up with her father. Trying to have a conversation with him had never been fruitful. It only worked when the conversation was one-sided: when he told her what to do and how to do it. It was as if he mistook the role of a father to be an instructor.