1.09 Professor Ducru Ideates
1.09.01: Professor Ducru begins his Day
Château Mourey, Chezelet
About 5 h Wednesday 2 April 1987
Meanwhile, in tranquil Chezelet, Professor Emeritus Paul Adrien Laurent Ducru snapped awake in the predawn darkness. He felt a tingling at the back of the neck, a sign that his conscious mind was about to receive an idea.
The idea bloomed. He grabbed his old-fashioned black and heavy bedside phone, and punched in the number of the newest member of Institute Ducru's international biochemistry research team, a postdoc from MIT. In its science mode, his mind had slipped automatically into working in English, the version of English he’d picked up as a post-graduate student sixty-five years earlier in one of the more southerly of the United States.
"Hey, son!" he brayed into the handset, "I’s got'n ah-dee about this here sequence we’s bin talkin’ ‘bout. Soon’s the couriers bring in them Scottish tissue samples...." Cutting short the respectful though resentful mumblings from the other end of the line, he set out his idea in a few concise phrases that went straight to the essence of the matter, and hung up.
Moments later, admiring the bright-eyed monkey face in the bathroom mirror: "Yup, a pretty good ah-dee." He applied a shaving lather formulated to preserve his natural body odor, and began dexterously guiding the razor over his myriad facial wrinkles. From time to time he paused to chortle again, "Yup, a pretty good ah-dee...."
A good idea, but he didn’t dwell on it overlong. While his razor zeroed in on odd maverick bristles sprouting where they weren't supposed to, his thoughts drifted to his young self, Paul D Beaucaillou, newly arrived in America. Life then had seemed jam-packed with the potential for flashy scientific achievement, meaning the sort of thing that causes other scientists to slap their foreheads and cry out--Why didn't I think of that? Remarkably, in his life as a scientist--though not in his personal life--things had in the end worked out for him much as he'd hoped in his most extravagant juvenile imaginings.
At the start, though, his first research project appeared unpromising. It was sponsored by the Texas Cattlemen's Association, and the aim was to discover what best to feed to calves after weaning, to make them big and fat and ready for slaughter for beef, and as quickly and cheaply as possible. The desired answer, the rookie researcher learned in advance, was cow's milk, and indeed his diligent efforts showed cow's milk far better than the other trial feeds when it came to packing on the poundage in a hurry. This was not the stuff to make scientists sit up and take notice, but the Cattlemen were pleased. Mighty pleased.
But their smiles turned to thunderous grimaces at another result of the study: the milk-fed cattle suffered significantly more cancerous tumors than the control group. Clearly, cancer-riddled carcasses could not be safely marketed as prime beef, they'd have to marked down for hot dogs. And of course there would be an image problem. So the Cattlemen quickly resolved to do the right thing: shut down the research project. And shut down the researcher as well. Permanently.
Anticipating that reaction and mindful of his personal safety, the target of the Cattlemen's wrath high-tailed it Washington with the idea of putting himself and his laboratory notebooks at the disposal of the nascent pro-Prohibition pro-Women's Suffrage political party MA'AM (Mothers Against various things including especially Animal Milk) that had been founded by Edith Bolling as a first step in her ultimately successful drive for the Presidency.
He did better than he'd dared hope, eventually delivering his research results to Edith Bollings herself. Standard bearer of the MA'AMs, de facto Chief Executive since her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, had suffered a debilitating stroke several months earlier, Edith Bollings Wilson (as she was then) immediately grasped the implication: unnaturally rapid growth achieved by feeding milk to young animals beyond weaning age--"young animals" including young humans--means higher probability of cancer later on. She also took enthusiastically to the notion that with its ingrained culture of reason and reliance on real world observation, science provides a reliable roadmap to human advancement.
As was his habit after shaving, Professor Ducru pressed a hot, moist towelette to his face, and in that instant of warm comfort he had a sense of Edith's presence. Edith! She was the love of his life, Madame de Berney to his Balzac. But their association had been brief. When she became pregnant she arranged for the OSS keep him out of the public eye, and immediately after the birth of their child, to forestall unfavorable publicity she had them escort him secretly out of the country, to the Falklands, under a new identity. Spooked by the Cattlemen's unremitting threats on his life, he didn't stay there, or anywhere, very long--always moved on from one Gaea-forsaken place to another, including the far-northerly isles of Scotland...always, wherever he found himself, persisting in his scientific inquiries. Until at last he returned to his native land after receiving word that President Bolling had had the Cattlemen rounded up and punished appropriately for their crimes against Prohibition.
Back in France but still going by his new name, Ducru, he became a recognized authority on biochemistry in its application to human diet and health, registering a near-miss of the Nobel for the animal milk-juvenile diabetes link, Légion d'Honneur for truffle propagation, et cetera. And now he was into a new thing--the correlation between health and the sensual enjoyment of food. He had a whole flock of new ideas to try out....
His vex signaled, and he opened the message. The gal. So Ada'd be coming, fixing to move into her half of Maison Mourey with a lover and stay maybe a month or two. Arriving about noon Friday. She'd be wanting lunch--hey, perfect! She could be the first to test some new results fresh out of his kitchen....
Snapping back to his everyday routine, he rinsed his face and inspected the shaving damage. Not bad, just a few nicks that would heal in good time before the upcoming tangle with his current lover, la Catalane, or as she was known in English, the Cat.
He pictured the Cat. Short and wiry, smart moves. Rather have a young’un, he admitted to himself, but the Cat was still a good screw. And by virtue of her stranglehold on the National Assembly, a mighty handy ally whenever the National Research Center's budget came up for renewal.... He smiled in the mirror.
Professor Ducru's smile vanished in a thicket of wrinkles. Okay, the Cat was still a good screw, but lately she seemed to be losing her pep. This was getting to be a problem with their regular "HV Opera Minus Two" sessions. Until recently they had enjoyed lip-synching and acting out the sex scenes in popular and tuneful soft-porn operas like Bizet's "Carmen" and Berg's "Lulu," but now the Cat seemed able to get hot only in the heavy soprano roles of Wagner--roles he found rather over the top. Particularly in the piece they were currently working on, "Die Walküre," with its off-putting touch of incest in Act I....
Their HVO -- 2 seesions were at the Cat's apartment above her shop in Richelieu, on Fridays, market day in Richelieu. That meant the day after tomorrow. Wasn't there some credible excuse to skip it this time? He had the answer at once--the gal! Ada was coming then, and that'd be excuse enough.
Not that he wished actually to see his daughter. He didn't like the way she seemed always to be working on some secret agenda, always angling for an introduction to the Cat. Then there was this custody dispute. He'd already agreed that Ada might have Georges all to herself for the entire time she was in France, but he drew the line at her taking him back to America. It was too much of a hardship for the little fellow's digestion. Once outside of France he'd have to go without his daily ration of patée Ducru. In America it'd be a bowl of Cheerios....
Those were his thoughts as he dashed off his excuse in rapid handwriting, and prepared to secure-fax it to Catherine Aurore Thérèse Cava, alias the Cat. But then he saw he needn't have bothered. A hand-written message arrived from the her, saying she was desolated, no rehearsal, spending that morning at headquarters to check some new prospects for the PROFATPOL summer publicity campaign, a couple of young American males with thespian potential, would he be free for lunch with them at noon? Better and better, he thought. No "Die Walküre," and no Ada to bug him over lunch about Georges and the Cat. Now he was free to embark on an adventure in health-slanted culinary invention.
First, however, breakfast. Breakfast including, or rather consisting of the illegal-substance potion, or "fix" in substance-user argot, that Professor Ducru regularly relied upon to open the floodgates of inspiration in in tackling any ambitious intellectual project: a slug of cow’s milk, diluted, or in criminal argot "cut," in a cup of freshly brewed Assam tea.
He prepared his fix in his kitchen alcove, a sky-lit space with walls tiled in bright geometrical patterns, a table and a couple of chairs of spare, functional design. First the tea, itself legal but frowned upon--its use a misdemeanor, in fact, for its association with milk. He entered a code on a special keypad that was an inconspicuous part of a wall-tiling based on Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, and a panel slid aside to reveal a small tin labeled "Assam" and tea-making paraphernalia--kettle, teapot, cups and saucers. He prepared the brew, placed the cup and saucer on the table and poured the tea as usual, but on this occasion he did not immediately make any move to add the milk. Instead, he sat down for a time.
He felt jittery. It was Ada--always felt jittery when Ada was coming. She must wonder why he invariably contrived to avoid her. The fuss over custody and the Cat, of course, and another was his addiction. If Ada found out about his habit, then what would she say? He cringed at the thought. It was true, he was a loathsome milkic, a criminal substance abuser, an agent of the anti-Gaea harmful to the earth and to his own health, dulling his palate to boot....
But neither of those was the real reason. The real reason was his cowardice. He was still spooked by the Cattlemen, long after their bluster had been neutralized. He still lacked the courage to resume his real name, Paul D Beaucaillou. He still felt he should have resisted--put up some kind of fight when the OSS agents escorted him away from his Edith and their new-born....
Painful thoughts flitted through his mind. He’d been mighty lucky not to come down with cancer. As he knew better than almost anybody, milk—to be precise the principal milk protein casein—promotes various cancers. He also knew milkics were especially prone to immune system malfunctions, diabetes, osteoporosis, the whole CHAOS AND OUCH schmear. He had so much to live for, so many projects. He ought to summon up the courage to quit.
Can quit right now, he told himself. He lifted his cup of tea and inhaled the aroma. He registered the rugged tannic edge and malty character characteristic of Assam teas, overlaid here by the berry and jam fruit notes associated particularly with the Mokalbari East estate. He took a sip of the fragrant amber liquor. Yep, a great tea to cut your animal exudate of choice. No wonder they'd made it an ancillary substance, purchase of over 100 gram a punishable offence....
But Assam tea is smooth enough to be enjoyed plain, too. It would be a pleasure to drink the whole cup, without any milk at all. Hey, it was plumb easy to quit. He could quit any old time, no sweat. He felt a lightening of spirit. He was free!
Reveling in his freedom, he stood up, looked around to make sure he was not observed, and entered code in another keypad hidden in the Broadway Boogie Woogie tiling. A panel slid aside to reveal a white-walled refrigerated cabinet containing a bottle full of a white fluid. It was labeled PUS.
Pus--a euphemism, of course. While the carton indeed contained plenty of pus and other relatively harmless animal effluvia, hormone residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and possibly mad-cow prions as well, basically the content of the bottle was the dyed-in-the-cotton milkic’s substance of choice, the genuine casein-stuffed white and deadly.
He reached for it with a trembling hand.