I made a pot of coffee and opened the zip drive. By the time the sun rose -- I stayed up all night -- it was clear why the alchemists hadn't gotten it, although they should be forgiven for their oversight. The ancient texts contained varying lists of materials to be added to the buttapboo, but unless you understood the underlying chemistry of the differing ingredients, and you wouldn't have in the middle ages, you'd never have gotten it. You didn't mix this stuff with the mature plant, you used it to grow and then sustain the mature plant. It was fricking fertilizer.
* * * * *
Two days later Dr. Hainkel called me into his office.
"Eric, Dr. Boatner called, she was prolix in her praise, said Naomi was very happy, that you went beyond the call of duty. I've got to agree with her, even I had to look up the buttapboo, I'd never hear of it. She even said you treated Naomi with respect, didn't make her usual comment about piggy males. She thanked you, and so do I. We've earned some serious brownie points."
"Glad I could help sir. The work turned out to be fascinating. There is something else I'd like to talk to you about. We've discussed me taking on a specific project. I'm thinking about a laboratory study of the buttapboo. There is almost no literature on it, it's endangered, and there are only six subspecies. It would be relatively easy to do a thorough investigation.
I didn't need to say, for Dr. Hainkel would already be there, that working on an endangered species would be a coup for the department and the cost of acquiring representative samples of the buttapboo, which grew in the wild near several research stations, would be close to zero.
"Eric, why don't you do a proposal."
Sliding my open computer across his desk I said, "I already have sir."
* * * * *
I was a senior, it was my final semester at Humboldt State, and wearing the uniform of a local nursery I'd borrowed from a friend I rolled a dolly with a large potted plant into the university's business school and asked for Adriana Guttierez's office. I was not concerned about being recognized. I'd pulled my cap tight over my face and, as you can imagine, the botany and business schools didn't mix. The secretary, trying to work amidst the omnipresent chaos on this day, half-paying attention, pressed a few buttons on her computer, determined where this visiting faculty member was to be housed, and provided the room number.
If someone had interviewed her that day she might have been able to provide a vague description of the delivery boy. If someone had interviewed her the following day, at best she could have recalled his height, race, and color of his uniform. By the following week she'd not remember the delivery.
Not that I was overly worried about Adriana Guttierez questioning the plant's appearance. In a feature article in a recent San Francisco architectural magazine she'd talked about the health benefits of plants and the accompanying photographs of her law firm's office showed it was liberally decorated with greenery. She'd treat the buttapboo as a stroke of good fortune, not something to be investigated. Leaving the buttapboo under the window, I placed a note on her desk purportedly from the office's prior occupant, indicating he'd taken a position in Tokyo (which he had), that he hoped the office's next tenant liked plants, and providing cursory instructions for the buttapboo's care.
As a tropical plant the buttapboo matured quickly and over the last three years I'd raised thousands of them, some in the lab, most in the greenhouse I erected on the property I rented twenty miles from town. Their fecundity allowed me to study their properties in both their normal and enhanced conditions. The former had led to a series of published papers that, although my name was affixed last to the string of authors, had made me a department star. As to the enhanced buttapboo, a mature plant grown with a steady diet of the fertilizer would give off an odor for about fifteen minutes after additional fertilizer was added. A person exposed to low concentrations couldn't help but like whoever was around them when it happened, which explained why I was the first intern Serena Wilson, the battleaxe who'd been the department's administrator for decades, treated well. Higher concentrations? I'd slept with my fair share of my fellow students, but not so many as to draw attention, and far more than my fair share of the faculty, but they were diligent about keeping the secret.
And, analyzing the data, I was confident I knew how to take the next step, absolute devotion. It would take weekly exposure over several months and there was no doubt as to the identity of the ideal test subject. Adriana Guttierez had been teaching a seminar at the school since my sophomore year. Her looks, and smarts, were favored topics of male students over a Friday night beer. In theory getting into her class would be difficult, hundreds of students applied for the ten spots, but Dr. Boatner had made a phone call.
* * * * *
Adriana Guttierez flew low over the coastal properties she was negotiating to buy, admiring, as she always did, their pristine beauty, then turned her airplane north towards Humboldt State. The parcels of contiguous property had separate owners and she'd employed several brokers, each saying it represented a different potential buyer. The owners were now bidding against each other, the price steadily drifting down, and while the figures had become acceptable, she knew she could get them lower. Inwardly smiling at herself, she could afford it, she was rich after all, but still, she'd grown up fatherless and dirt poor, it was best to be careful.
Knowing the academic credential would impress the Silicone Valley egg-heads for whose business she was constantly competing with larger older law firms, she led a seminar on Intellectual Property Law at Humboldt State each spring semester. Several local universities had offered her the same opportunity, but she loved the land north of San Francisco and loved to fly; now she had a tax deductible reason to do both. It did cut into her billable hours, but there were only thirteen classes a year and her four associates, like her beautiful, smart, articulate, and tireless, were working late.
She made it a point to hire women like herself, wanting to spare them what she'd been through. Her first job had been at a prestigious old-line firm, which it turned out was far more interested in the fact she'd been the first Hispanic named Miss California than that she was the first Hispanic to graduate first in her class at Stanford Law School. She quickly decided she'd learn what she could, then leave and set up her own shop, but it happened faster than imagined. During her third year one of her firm's major clients had watched his lawyer -- gray hair, booming voice, $3,000.00 suit -- so badly flub the cross-examination of the plaintiff that the judge, who had been watching the jury, called the lawyers into his office and suggested the defendant might want to settle. Adriana, however, calmed everyone done, suggested they not be hasty, then eviscerated the plaintiff's expert, a man who, until then, could brag he'd never lost a case.
Two days later, over dinner, the client suggested Adriana open her own firm, promising and delivering more than enough work to keep her busy.
A year later, when she took a patent infringement case on a contingency basis, she hired her first associate. The $235 million dollar verdict put her name in the papers, generated enough work to keep her and several associates busy, and made her wealthy. She purchased a 68th floor half-floor penthouse condominium overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, bought this plane, loved her Jaguar, and would soon have the perfect place to get away from it all.
And if opposing lawyers and their clients complained she didn't play fair, that during vital parts of their presentation jurors were distracted when Adriana crossed her long legs, or let her dress ride up above her knees, or brown eyes flashing, chewed on the earpiece of her glasses, or played with her long impossibly luxuriant light brown hair, what could be more tiresome than Silicon Valley billionaires and their $850.00 an hour attorneys whining about how unfair life was to them.
She guided her plane to a perfect landing and taxied to the hanger so the ground crew could prepare it for the return trip. The car the department sent to pick her up was waiting -- there was no shortage of male students volunteering for that duty -- and flashing her engaging smile gracefully slid her five foot ten inch, 33-24-35, 127 pounds into the SUV's front seat and, after an exchange of pleasantries with the driver, opened her computer and entered the password providing her access to the business school's computer.
After noting, with pleasure, that a record number of students had applied for the seminar, she reviewed the ten students chosen by the school. They were, until the final name, Eric Workholder, Department of Biological Sciences, Minor in Botany, the usual: pre-law or business students at the top of their class. Thinking Mr. Workholder was in over his head, she accessed the university's data base. No questioning the kid's brain power: straight A's, probable class valedictorian, several published papers, and his laboratory internship appeared to be a big deal.
It would be interesting, she thought, to have a student with a different background.
* * * * *
The semester's second class ended much like the first, male students hung in the classroom inventing reasons to talk to Ms. Guttierez, but one student had exhibited the most persistence. Good looking, talking mostly about himself, rich, destined for his father's law firm, he was used to getting what he wanted, especially from the ladies, and ignored her polite attempts to end the conversation. Finally she looked at her watch and said, "Thank you Robert, but I've got to leave for the airport in a few minutes and Eric has been waiting patiently."
