Intuition by Allegra Goodman

It was as if Sandy had never spoken a harsh word to Cliff about circling mindlessly on cold, dead trails. All that was forgotten. Cliff's unwillingness to cut his losses and move on to something new had now borne fruit.
    Sandy did not hold grudges, nor did he necessarily remember when he hurt people. He was unreflective, even about the very recent past. History did not interest him. Negotiation, reciprocity, settling old scores bored him. Always he was grappling with the problem at hand, and for some time, the problem had been the need for major new funding. Now, suddenly, seizing on Marion and Feng's observations, Sandy found value in Cliff's work.
    Marion had done some thinking about the genetic strains of mice that Cliff had used and how the genetic material in R-7 might have worked with these particular animals. But Sandy broke in to preview his plan of attack. They would seize on Cliff's slim results as the linchpin for the lab's new grant proposal. Prithwish and Robin would prepare new cells for analysis. “Meanwhile, Cliff and Feng will prepare four new groups of mice for injection.” Sandy beamed at them all, and Cliff and Feng and Prithwish could not help beaming a bit back at him, reflecting a little of his radiant imagination.
    It was up to Marion to douse them with disclaimers. “As you know,” she said, “connections like this can be tenuous at best. Myriad other factors can come into play. This set of experiments could amount to nothing. And there is always an opportunity cost when we—”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Sandy interrupted. He met Marion's skeptical look with a nearly irresistible expression of warmth and mischief. He actually put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug and a shake. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
    Sandy swept back to the office, and Marion stayed to clarify the methods and procedures the postdocs should follow. She spoke soberly, with characteristic gravity. Still, Cliff could not calm down enough to listen. His position had changed too radically. How strange the way neither Sandy nor Marion acknowledged the violence of the change. Did they expect him to shift from failure to success so easily? He might have been a man in Stalinist Russia, suddenly rehabilitated by mysterious powers from above: his work, for the moment, all the rage.
    Naturally, Cliff felt Sandy and Marion were manipulating him. He understood that their whole attention was captured by the research potential of three tiny creatures whose tumors had receded. He knew he was being used, and still he didn't care. He had begun something with the mice, set events in motion that might lead to real results. He saw it in the other postdocs' eyes: tremendous discoveries befalling him. The field had opened up for him; the whole world was ringing in his ears.
    All day he worked with the others, preparing cells for the new trials. He dashed from the cold room to the lab, then into the stockroom and across the hall. By evening, the others were swirling all around him and debating where to go to dinner, arguing about where to celebrate, all except for Robin, who was silent. In the midst of that bustle, he pulled Robin into the hall.
    “Well?” he asked delightedly, and drew her close.
    She reached around him and thrust her hands into his back pockets. “Congratulations,” she whispered.
    He knew how hard and how long she'd worked. He understood that she despaired of ever triumphing as he had that day. Still, he wished she would let herself celebrate, jump and dance down the empty corridor.
    “Robin,” he chided her. He wanted to tell her all this would happen to her, too, that her luck would turn as well. But he had no good arguments for this, and she had no reason to believe him. Such luck as his was far too rare.
    “I hope it all works out,” she said, looking up, and then, as if afraid to sound too stingy, she added, “I'm sure it will.”
    He bent down to kiss her, but she turned away slightly, and