Free Hypocrite's Isle by Ken McClure

huh?’
    Gavin turned round and looked daggers at Morton-Brown. ‘On the contrary, I am very interested. In fact, I’m currently engaged in it. It’s your journal club I’m not interested in.’
    ‘Don’t you think it would be the perfect way to keep up to date with what’s going on in science?’
    ‘No, it would involve sitting through a lot of talks about stuff I’m not at all interested in.’
    ‘Please yourself. I just thought it would be a help to everyone …’
    ‘No, you didn’t. You thought it would look good on your CV.’
    ‘Now wait a minute …’
    ‘Gentlemen, please,’ interrupted Mary. ‘Just let us know when you plan to have the first one, Peter,’ she said, giving Morton-Brown his cue to leave. When he did, she turned to Gavin and said, ‘You really are the limit.’
    ‘He’s a bullshitter.’
    ‘You have to get along with bullshitters.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘You just do!’
    ‘You know,’ said Tom thoughtfully, ‘there’s only one thing worse than a bullshitter …’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘A bullshitter with a journal club to promote.’
    All three of them burst out laughing. It was a good moment, a bonding moment that none of them had seen coming.
     
    Over the next few days, Gavin came in early each morning to check on his cultures before going off to the library to read up on everything surrounding his project. On Monday morning his customary response to Mary’s enquiry changed from ‘Nothing yet’ to ‘Wowee! Now we’re cooking.’
    Mary came over to take a look at the cells. ‘Not much doubt about that,’ she said. ‘Quite a dramatic effect. What concentration is this?’
    ‘Manufacturer’s recommended.’
    ‘Gosh, it’s hard to see how a drug that can attack tumour cells like this in the lab had absolutely no effect at all in patients.’
    ‘Just what I was thinking,’ said Gavin. ‘I thought when I first read up on Valdevan that the company might be exaggerating the facts in order to make their drug seem better than it actually was, and that they had selected exceptional cells to photograph and make their point, but I was wrong. All the cells in the monolayer are behaving the same way. This drug is absolutely wonderful.’
    ‘Except that it doesn’t work in people,’ said Tom.
    ‘Maybe something inactivates it in the body?’ suggested Mary.
    ‘I guess.’
    ‘Stomach acid maybe,’ said Tom.
    ‘I think Grumman Schalk would have checked that out,’ said Gavin. ‘You don’t spend multi-million dollars developing a drug and then throw it away because you can’t take it by mouth. You inject it.’
    ‘I suppose.’
    ‘Gavin’s right: they must have checked every possibility under the sun before giving up on it,’ said Mary. ‘Why not ask them … or ask Frank to find out just what they did?’
    ‘Ask Frank to do what?’ said Frank Simmons, coming out of his office and hearing his name mentioned.
    ‘I’ve reproduced the Valdevan effect on tumour cells,’ said Gavin. ‘It’s much more dramatic than I expected. I can see why the company must have been excited by it at the time. We were just wondering how it could possibly have had no effect in vivo. Mary was saying that the company must have investigated this fully and we were wondering if you think it might be worthwhile asking them what they came up with?’
    Mary positively beamed at Gavin’s diplomacy. Tom looked as if he were witnessing an unnatural act.
    ‘Worth a try,’ agreed Simmons. ‘But you mustn’t get bogged down in investigating why an old drug didn’t work. Keep sight of the original aim of the project, which is to investigate the action of the S16 gene. There’s a danger of going up a blind alley here and ending up repeating everything the people at Grumman Schalk did years ago, with exactly the same result.’
    ‘Okay, boss,’ said Gavin.
    ‘How are the cell membranes looking?’
    ‘There are big changes,’ replied Gavin. ‘Definite pinching of the lipid bilayer at