Free Pharmakon by Dirk Wittenborn Page B

dong that had had such a healing effect on Dr. Winton’s lieutenant.
    The rats crowned with purple were the ones Friedrich and Winton were placing their bets on. They had consumed two ounces of the dissolved crystals. Friedrich had pointed out that this would have been the equivalent of a human being imbibing a gallon of The Way Home. Winton had argued that since they were interested in seeing a clear demonstration of its effects, they should not be too concerned with the fate of the rats. The pair she had fed three ounces of crystals went into convulsions and stopped breathing before they got around to deciding whether to dot them with pink or black.
    The control group, those that had had nothing but kibble for breakfast, were marked with a spot of yellow.
    Friedrich had worked with rats before—they bit. Their incisors vibrated, cut you to the bone. Under the fluorescent lights of a psych lab, it was easy to be detached while watching a rat drown or shock himself to death. And if they had just bitten you, it was acceptable, even natural, to take some adolescent pleasure in having a hand in their demise. But Friedrich found the idea of watching the rats struggle, panic, give up, and sink to the bottom of a pool decorated with a mosaic likeness of a robber baron wearing a toga and holding a trident both ironic and depressing. He was flushed with enough adrenaline that the thought that he identified with the rat made him smile as he lorded over the drowning pool.
    The realization that he had partnered up with a woman connected by blood to the kind of money and power that built indoor pools that weren’t used because the owner preferred to spend the spring tarpon fishing in the Gulf of Mexico not only awed Will Friedrich, but made him feel at the very bottom of the primal cortex of his brain that he had stepped into a trap of his own making, that something was now being tested on him.
    Some of the rats treaded water, face to the wall of the pool, until their noses bled. Others swam back and forth across the pool at odd angles, hour after hour, in the hopes that a different trajectory would lead them out of the exitless hell their rat lives had become.
    Just after lunch on day three, the rats began to die. The first pair to go were the two that had been fed the alcohol. Friedrich was not surprised. Of course, a hundred milliliters of alcohol in an eight-ounce animal was the equivalent of a human drinking a dozen martinis and swimming the English Channel. Five hours and eleven minutes later, the first of the two rats who had ingested the kwina leaves turned on his back and drowned. The female gave up eleven minutes later. A few minutes before ten o’clock, the control pair began to show signs of giving in to the madness of their plight.
    Friedrich was getting tired of waiting for rats to drown. His efforts to turn off the heat in the pool house had been unsuccessful. He had taken off his trousers and was sitting in his boxer shorts when Dr. Winton showed up early for her 12:00 to 8:00 A.M. shift. The temperature was nearly a hundred. Friedrich was too hot and tired to be embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t expect you for another half hour . . .”
    “I understand completely. Sensible. I should have worn shorts myself.” She watched him as he pulled on his trousers and reached for his shirt. She was as neat and clean as a printed page. She stayed in a guest room up at her uncle’s big house; it was easy for her to stay fresh. As always, her hair was braided into a serpentine bun. For an instant it looked like the male of the control pair was going to give in to the inevitable. But at the last second, he followed the female as she headed yet again for the opposite side of the pool.
    Friedrich’s mouth tasted like an ashtray. He was looking forward to a shower and a few hours’ sleep next to his wife. Winton had a sticky bun in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Her eyes were fixed on the pair of rats marked with purple