Chapter 81

Having been shown round the equipment, Li Lan took Zhao Qi's reading list to the library. Which is the drawback of being an undergraduate with no desk of your own: after lectures you carry your bag about.

The list wasn't long. She'd passed the paper and the interview, and Zhao Qi still had no idea what she could actually do, so after some thought he'd emailed her — and the attachment was a catalogue, packed with papers in Chinese and English. By his account it was the basic reading every one of Professor Wang's masters and doctoral students had to get through: seventy-odd papers, of which masters students needed only the first forty, while doctoral candidates had to finish the lot. Either way, twenty in the first term at a minimum, with an abstract written for each and at least three points raised against it.

He hadn't required her to write abstracts like a proper student, though he did say that if she wanted to do experiments faster and better she should get through the first twenty, so that she wouldn't be floundering later. Today being Friday, he expected three or four papers read by next Friday — abstracts aside — and the rest at her own pace, though one or two a week would be best if she was to reach twenty soon.

All of which was a floor rather than a target. Three or four a week with lectures taken out, and he assumed anybody who'd passed the selection could manage that much, while giving him a sense of her level. If she barely managed it he'd assign her less; if she was quick, more. He hadn't said so, but the intention was to have her doing assistant work properly within a fortnight.

Three or four papers. He assumed a week. And on Wednesday evening, sorting material at his computer in the study room, he got a QQ message from her.

Her QQ name was simply her own name, entirely out of keeping with the assorted flamboyance of the rest of his contacts.

Li Lan: Good evening, Brother Zhao.

Morning Star: Good evening.

Li Lan: Brother Zhao, I've finished the first twenty papers. Could I start work properly this week?

She didn't hang about.

He looked at the flashing window and doubted his eyes.

Morning Star: Twenty?

Morning Star: Finished?

Morning Star: You're sure?

Several messages in a row, which conveyed the surprise. She typed back.

Li Lan: Yes. I'd read some of them before, so it went a bit faster. :)

Morning Star: I see. Still fast.

Morning Star: Then — come to the laboratory whenever you haven't got lectures, tomorrow or the day after, and I'll take you through a day. We can probably start properly this week.

He hadn't believed it at first, and then reflected that she'd have no reason to tell a lie that came apart at a touch. Perhaps he had underestimated her; a first-year beating third and fourth-years said something about her already.

Li Lan: I've no lectures tomorrow afternoon. Does that suit?

Morning Star: Yes. One o'clock, straight to the laboratory. You remember where.

Li Lan: I remember.

Courtesies done, she breathed out. Research at last. She'd shaded it slightly in that conversation: she had finished twenty, and a good many she'd read last year, and taking those out there hadn't been many left — she simply hadn't said she'd been ninety per cent of the way through already, in case he thought she was boasting.

At one on Wednesday she appeared on time.

He looked up from the experiment he was setting up. "Ah, good. I'm about to run a liquid chromatography analysis on the LC-MS. Come along."

She put on the white coat she'd been issued and followed him without comment.

Two hours later he finished, breathed out and turned to look at her with approval. "Li Lan, have you done this before?"

A four-hour experiment had come in at two with her help, avoiding a good many detours along the way. Bringing on a new person normally costs you effort; he'd resigned himself to working late and assumed the whole afternoon, and had been given a pleasant surprise instead.

"I've a little experience. And it's been covered by my lecturers."

He laughed, in an excellent mood. "You're far too modest. I underestimated you." His pleasure wasn't only the early finish. What pleased him was a new arrival who was actually useful; research assistants normally take a long time to become productive and then contribute barely more than nothing. Students like this exist and they're rare, and having finally met one, why wouldn't he be pleased?

"Incidentally — when I asked last week whether you knew the LC-MS you said you knew it slightly. If that's what you mean by slightly, tell me what else you slightly know and save me teaching you one at a time." He said it outside the laboratory, as though it had just come back to him.

Because it had: showing her round last week he'd asked in passing which instruments she knew, and she'd said she knew most of them slightly, and he hadn't thought about it and had taken slightly at face value. The scale of that slightly now required investigation.

She thought about it. Between Professor Lin's laboratory and the medical park's equipment, she'd operated most of the instruments there apart from the very large — and expensive — ones. He matched the names against the laboratory's inventory, was quiet a moment, and asked, "This knowing slightly. How does it compare with today's LC-MS?"

"Better than the LC-MS, I should think. That's a large instrument, one doesn't get many chances at it," she said, uncertain. It is a large instrument; the park had only two and she'd used them rarely, and had memorised the operation by brute recall.

He didn't know whether to laugh. Nothing about her handling of it suggested a novice, which meant everything else on her list was presumably even less of a problem. He'd found himself somebody genuinely able — and modesty is a virtue, and hers was excessive. The woman kept herself entirely hidden.

"You've upended my plan. I'd allowed you at least a week to learn the equipment, and we can evidently skip that. The really large instruments are generally used by the professors, so you can watch over somebody's shoulder in due course." He didn't sound remotely put out.

"Here's what we'll do. I'll replan this evening — send me your timetable and I'll schedule your laboratory hours, and from now on you come at the scheduled times without checking first." With two hours saved, he'd use them to rearrange her work.

---

So Li Lan's first proper day at the laboratory lasted two hours.

She passed Xie Nan coming in as she left, and he watched her go and looked at Zhao Qi, puzzled. "Old Zhao, weren't you running the chromatography and taking her through it? Why has she gone?"

Zhao Qi swung his chair round. "Old Xie, our luck has turned. We've got a real assistant." And told him what had happened, and what he suspected.

Xie Nan didn't quite believe it. "Seriously?"

Zhao Qi pushed off and swung back to his desk. "We'll know in a few days, won't we? I've two spare hours, and I'm using them to replan her work."

Xie Nan sat down. "It would be good if you're right. Then I'd have more time for my thesis." Third-year doctoral and at the critical point; the professor's project mattered, and set against graduating, his thesis came first.

Zhao Qi understood. He was in his second year and this was his last term as teaching assistant; after it came the third year and the full sprint, with most of his energy on his own thesis.

He'd said he would send the schedule that evening, and it arrived at six. Warm as he was ordinarily, he showed no mercy whatever with a timetable: every free hour Monday to Friday filled, six to nine in the evenings included, and — without embarrassment — a Saturday morning.

Li Lan: …

Lectures from eight, finishing at nine at night. Did this count as starting the hundred-hour week early?