Chapter 82

Having established that there was something behind her, Zhao Qi and Xie Nan stopped being polite about it and handed her a small share of the experiments outright. For the first couple of days they worried about mistakes, and repeated several of the harder ones themselves, and finding nothing wrong, handed everything over with complete confidence.

After a while they found there was no settling-in period with her at all: given the barest description of an experiment she understood it at once and produced a perfect answer, and where she didn't know something she established it quickly and never held the work up. The efficiency had Xie Nan exclaiming that they'd struck gold — the more so against the other research assistant next door, still finding his feet.

"You're beyond anything I imagined." Reading her report, Zhao Qi couldn't help saying it. This was the second time in a month of her hundred-hour — no, research assistant — life that he'd adjusted her workload, and she still hadn't disappointed him. Surprised, he also began to suspect she had capacity left over.

"I just about managed. Have a look and see whether anything's wrong." She said it modestly. He believed he had adjusted the difficulty; to her it was still elementary handling, and the occasional complicated experiment was well within her.

"What could be wrong?" he said, without thinking.

Thinking about her rate of work, he considered. "How are you getting on with the papers?" Enough time had passed that she'd long since finished the first lot, at which he'd first expressed admiration and then, without embarrassment, sent a second list.

Assuming he was about to set more homework, she said, "Finished them the day before yesterday." The second lot were on the new topic, and the relevant work being limited, there were fewer of them.

He paused. "You're faster than most doctoral students." A month in, he knew about the memory, which explained the speed. What made him say it was that on top of the memory she wasn't complacent: she came in on the timetable, never late and never leaving early. More gifted than you and working harder than you, in full view — nothing like the students who reach university and let go entirely.

Had she known what he was thinking, she'd have observed that last time round she had reached university and let go entirely and learned nothing, and had regretted it right through to the end of her masters.

"Here's a thought," he went on. "If you've capacity left, you could try getting into the carbon glycosyltransferase synthesis work. Old Xie, Xiao Wei and I put those papers together, and since you've read them all you can go and find literature yourself now — and try out any ideas you have."

Her eyes widened, delighted and disbelieving at once. Did he mean what she thought? "Brother Zhao — do you mean—?"

He nodded. "I mentioned it to the professor a couple of days ago and he doesn't object. So you're still a research assistant, but you can try taking part."

A research assistant normally does the tasks assigned and rarely joins the project group itself, partly because most assistants are undergraduates with limited ability, and partly because of the tangle of relationships in a laboratory. Taking part meant she could work in the group directly, rather than running elementary experiments.

Joining the group was why she'd come, and she hadn't expected it in a month. An undergraduate gets in either by being socially adept or by being genuinely good — and at a top university the masters and doctoral students are not short of ability, still less at Tsinghua or Peking. Why would anybody let an undergraduate in?

Since he'd said it, though, it was settled.

"You're not the professor's student, though, so you won't see much of him. Bring anything to me or Xie Nan." He said it because the professor's team runs on doctoral students supervising undergraduates. Able as she was, she was an undergraduate, and two doctoral candidates should be adequate supervision for any paper she wrote — as with Meng Wei's, where he and Xie Nan held the direction and the professor offered the occasional suggestion.

A paper written that way wouldn't be enough for an SCI journal; produce a result, though, and Li Lan would be first author, which for a first-year is a long way ahead of everybody else.

She nodded quickly. Who objects to supervision? "Yes — as long as you and Brother Xie don't find it a nuisance."

He smiled. "It isn't. I graduated with other people's help myself. And since you've read most of the literature, find a direction this week and write an outline proposal, and present it briefly at next week's group meeting?"

"Yes." She agreed instantly. Having read that much, of course she had ideas. She could write it the moment she got back.

Seeing no reluctance, he looked at her. "Right. Next week's meeting, then." Watching her go, he thought about the family meetings, where any mention of presenting produced either refusals or pained expressions from most people. Nothing like this eagerness. She'd evidently been ready for a while. He hadn't loved study this much at university either.

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She already had a rough idea of the topic. A month of reading hadn't been wasted, and about eighty per cent of the references she needed were in place; the other twenty were literature specific to what she was about to write.

Three days got her through the rest, which meant the literature survey was essentially done, and next came experimental design — the longest and hardest stage. Longest because it's uncertain which method will demonstrate your hypothesis, and establishing that takes a great many experiments; hardest because on top of finding the right method you must keep up your own pace, since if another laboratory produces the same result your work is wasted and starts again.

For her the reverse was true, and this step was the easiest, because the shop gives a plant's stages straight through from extraction to finished drug.

The new topic being carbon glycosyltransferase synthesis, after a great deal of literature and the plant information stored in her memory, she settled quickly on one: Trollius chinensis.

Trollius chinensis is of the buttercup family, genus Trollius, and was one of the plants she'd collected visiting the Shanghai botanical garden. It clears heat and toxicity and can be used against tonsillitis and otitis media, and the active components responsible are vitexin and orientin. The shop showed that the plant contains a carbon glycosyltransferase capable of synthesising thirty-six C-glycosides including vitexin and orientin.

A hundred L2 points bought her the detailed information on making a heat-clearing, detoxifying drug from it — and among it, the relevant experiments for extracting the corresponding active components and synthesising the enzyme. Whether it worked would depend on the experiments themselves.

So at the group meeting she produced her topic: Molecular structural studies of C-glycosyltransferase in Trollius chinensis.

The other three looked at one another.

Getting no response, Li Lan looked at them, puzzled. Zhao Qi glanced round, and with nobody speaking, cleared his throat. Her proposal wasn't quite what he'd pictured. It was fine. No need for alarm.

"Li Lan. How long have you been preparing this?"

She looked at him. "A week or so?" Seeing his eyes widen, she corrected herself quickly. "A month or so." Which, counting from his first reading list, it was.

On a month's evidence he'd already formed a private estimate of her, and had prepared himself. Except that doing experiments well doesn't mean doing research well; research is largely a test of originality, and originality rests on accumulation, which is why the first demand on masters and doctoral students is to read a great deal — only enough reading shows you where the gaps are. Which is why undergraduate papers are hard: no supervision, and not enough reading.

He'd assumed that by undergraduate standards she'd read plenty and that coming up with a direction of her own would be creditable. He had underestimated her again. Evidently she'd been reading a great deal beyond what he'd sent, or the topic wouldn't be this difficult. On what she'd shown, the paper was about as demanding as Meng Wei's thesis — which meant that done well it might be worth a decent journal, and with luck an SCI.

Xie Nan exhaled. "You've given us a surprise."

Being in the group, he knew about Zhao Qi's suggestion that she join the research beyond her assistant work, and had assumed they'd be nursing a beginner along; the proposal was a grandmaster's. She even had a preliminary model of the experimental design. Further along, in fact, than Meng Wei.

At the end of the meeting, her design having a preliminary model and the surprises having been considerable, Zhao Qi didn't feel able to tell her the design wouldn't do. He and Xie Nan offered a few simple suggestions, amounting to: run the experiments to your own model, and if problems arise we'll discuss them specifically; if it works, go on to the next stage.

Meng Wei had less to offer still, being at the stage of feeling out which experiments to run. His own work being on carbon glycosyltransferases too, her report had given him some ideas, and he intended to go back and talk it through with her.