Page 87 - Just Deserts

PIVOT

Mungo tried to smile encouragingly. “Hey, don’t worry. This isn’t
big-time research and development, like Eugenex. If you didn’t have
some skills the professor needed, you wouldn’t be here. I can swear
to that. Just about all the gene-splicing and recombinant DNA work
I’ve done since I came to BU has been under his direction; you
know, the same old story: professor uses student to do dirty work,
takes credit for it later.”
She put her purse down on a reagent-scarred lab table. “Oh, did
he really steal your research results? He sounded like such a nice man
on the telephone.”
Beane slammed a file drawer closed with slightly more force than
necessary. “Our dear Dr. Kingswater is quite civil most of the time—
if most of the time you don’t disagree with him. Look, don’t get me
wrong: I know I’ve got to pay my dues. You probably did, too,
especially being a woman and all. Uh, you know what I mean.
Anyway, if his theory works, and somebody out there likes it, then
this project could be the beginning of a great career for me—and
you, too, of course, if you stick around.”
She ran the fingers of one hand through her disheveled coiffure
and smiled. “Frankly, Mungo, I need this job. So I’m just as willing to
do the doctor’s bidding as you are. I think I have a reasonably high
tolerance of verbal abuse. He’s never physically threatened you, has
he?”
“No more than any other professor I’ve ever worked for. But he’s
a hell of lot more single-minded than the others. Maybe outside
academia they call that ruthlessness, or consider it a virtue in the
business world. You will soon discover that the professor has no time
or interest in his students or anything else going on here at BU.
PIVOT has taken him over, body and soul. Don’t expect him to have
any sympathy for your personal problems, that’s for sure! And he will
scrutinize any work you do here for its value to him.”
“PIVOT? Is that an acronym for something?”
“Right. He’s trying to keep most of it secret, so we never refer to
the theory by its full name, ‘paramorphic idiotropism via ontogenetic
transmutation.’ I did a lot of the theoretical work at the gene level:
you know, computer models, gene maps, Mendelian hierarchies.
Pretty much state of the art, since the professor keeps up with the
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