Two Geniuses Meet

In those twenty seconds, he did three things:

First, he used the car's onboard system to scan the electromagnetic environment around the clinic. Everything was normal.

Second, he activated the thing on his wrist that looked like a watch. It was actually a miniature holographic projector and vital signs monitor.

Third, he took a deep breath.

Then he pushed open the door and walked in.

The clinic was small.

White walls, brand-new medical equipment, and a cleanliness that felt nothing like Hell's Kitchen.

A white coat hung behind the front desk. No one was wearing it.

Lynn came out of the examination room in the back.

He wore gold-rimmed glasses and a white coat, and carried a stack of medical records.

"Mr. Stark? The two o'clock walk-in?"

"I'm five minutes early. Mind?" Tony looked around. "This place is smaller than my walk-in closet."

"But my clinic can save lives. Yours can't. Have a seat."

Tony sat down in the chair in the examination room.

He crossed his legs and draped an arm over the back of the chair—the standard "I'm in control" body language.

He didn't say outright what he was here to see Lynn about.

"I did a little research on you. You dropped out of community college, right? Why?"

"Financial reasons."

"And then you opened a clinic in Hell's Kitchen, with a one-hundred-percent diagnostic accuracy rate, overturning misdiagnoses from several major hospitals. All without even getting a degree?"

"A degree and ability don't necessarily go hand in hand. Mr. Stark should know that better than I do. From what I've heard, you didn't go to class much when you were at MIT, either."

Tony's mouth twitched.

"Fine. Then let me test you." He sat a little straighter, peering over the top of his sunglasses.

"What's the application of quantum tunneling to permeation through biological membranes? Specifically, what's the relationship with temperature for the probability density function of a nanometer-scale drug molecule passing through a cell membrane's lipid bilayer, given a membrane potential of negative seventy millivolts?"

The question spanned quantum mechanics, biophysics, and pharmacology.

Lynn adjusted his glasses.

"A membrane potential of negative seventy millivolts is the standard resting-state value."

"At that potential, the energy barrier of the lipid bilayer is about zero point two electron volts. At room temperature, the de Broglie wavelength of a nanometer-scale drug molecule—"

He paused to do a quick mental calculation.

"Is about zero point five to one point two nanometers, depending on the molecular mass. The relationship between temperature and tunneling probability isn't linear..."

Tony uncrossed his legs.

"Second question." He spoke faster. "What's the reaction kinetics of palladium in human blood serum? What's the binding constant for palladium ions and serum albumin? And what's the metabolic half-life of the resulting complex in the liver's P450 Enzyme System?"

"The binding constant for palladium ions and serum albumin is about ten to the fourth per mole."

"That's not a particularly strong bond—an order of magnitude weaker than the binding constants for copper and zinc..."

"The metabolic half-life depends on the palladium concentration. At low concentrations, it's about forty-two to forty-eight hours."

"But if the serum palladium concentration exceeds fifty micrograms per liter, CYP3A4 Subtype activity drops below thirty percent of normal, and the metabolic half-life extends to over one hundred and twenty hours. At that point, the palladium isn't being metabolized. It's accumulating."

Lynn paused there.

"Mr. Stark, what's your serum palladium concentration right now?"

A crack appeared in Tony's air of nonchalance.

He knew what Lynn was asking.

But he didn't answer.

Instead, he asked a third question, then a fourth, then a fifth.

Physics, chemistry, biology, engineering.

Each one was a tricky interdisciplinary question, and each required knowledge from at least three different fields to answer.

Lynn answered every one of them without missing a beat.

After the eleventh question, Tony kept his mouth shut for about five seconds.

Then Lynn spoke.

"Mr. Stark, how thick is the palladium-anode electrolyte interface layer in your Arc Reactor?"

Tony's body went truly rigid.

Not because of the question itself, but because the internal structure of the Arc Reactor was one of Stark Industries' highest-level trade secrets.

No more than three people in the world knew that detail. He was one of them.

"How do you know there's an interface layer?" Tony's voice dropped half an octave.

"All high-density energy cores need a buffer layer to isolate the core material from the casing. That's basic engineering." Lynn leaned back in his chair. "But there's a problem with your interface layer."

"What problem?"

"If my guess is right, it's about zero point three to zero point five microns thick. That was enough for the first-generation design."

"But palladium's thermal expansion coefficient is 11.8 parts per million per degree, while the electrolyte layer's is only about seven to eight parts per million. That's a difference of roughly zero point seven percent."

"That difference is negligible in the short term. But the Arc Reactor runs continuously. The temperature in your chest cavity is about 1.3 degrees higher than your body surface, and the reactor core runs hotter still."

"Over time, repeated thermal expansion and contraction will create nanoscale cracks in the interface layer. Palladium ions will seep through them and into your bloodstream."

"That's the root cause of your poisoning."

The examination room fell silent.

Tony took off his sunglasses.

His eyes held neither anger nor suspicion, but something far more complicated.

It was the look that appeared only when one genius met another.

"It took JARVIS three months just to pinpoint the palladium leak." Tony's voice was softer now. "How did you deduce the thermal expansion mismatch in the interface layer?"

"I looked at your public photos from the last six months," Lynn said.

"Your changing skin tone, your weight-loss curve, and how often you switched from holding your coffee cup in your right hand to your left—all of that together let me estimate how your palladium poisoning was progressing."

"Then I worked backward from the progression to the cause. Once I ruled out direct contact and inhalation, only one possibility remained: the core material was continuously leaking through structural defects."

Tony stared at him for a long time.

Then he said, "All right. You really aren't an ordinary doctor."

He took his hand out of his pants pocket and placed it on the examination table.

His right hand was trembling slightly.

"Tell me. How do you treat it?"

The treatment plan had two stages.

"First, we purge the palladium toxins that have already accumulated in your body." Lynn shut the examination room door and drew the curtains.

"This won't cure the underlying problem. The source is the reactor. But it can extend your life from six months to at least two years, giving you enough time to solve the core problem."

"And the second stage?"