Dr. Dong Xue was facing her lab computer when Dr. Isley introduced her to Bruce and left them alone to talk. Xue informed Bruce her field of specialization was cave biology.
Bruce asked Xue to tell him everything she could recollect from the plans of the most recent trip with Kirk, responding she'd taken ill.
"You've accompanied Dr. Langstrom on research expeditions many times before?" Bruce queried.
"Yes," she replied. "We explored many cave systems in southwest China."
"How many trips would you say you took together?"
"Close to thirty."
"Were the two of you close?"
She snickered, then tried to mask it. "No, far from it. I'm sorry to laugh. Dr. Langstrom is a very eccentric, remote person. His behavior had become erratic, and his work began to lack rigor. His mind...had begun to deteriorate. It was steady, not a dramatic drop, but it became...sad. I don't know how. He became ill in some way."
"When the two of you traveled together, you must've talked some?"
"Yes, but...he was in his own little world. I pitied him."
"Other colleagues were of the same mind as you on Langstrom's decline in mental state?"
"Yes, we joked about it, I'm embarrassed to say."
"Would you be able to guess Langstrom's mental condition? I'm not asking for a diagnosis. I know you're not a medical doctor. I'm curious about your best guess."
"No," she answered. "I'm sorry, I have no idea. Mental illness does not have the same attention in China as it does in the West. He seemed like he was going crazy. It had become severe. I was fearful of going on this last trip together. I hadn't said this to anyone before, but my pneumonia leading up to the trip was...I'm sorry, I don't know this in English..."
Bruce fumbled for a moment, before apprehending the connection. "You mean your body responded to what you worried about in your mind?"
Xue nodded.
"Psychosomatic?" suggested Bruce.
"Yes! Like a body-mind interaction. In Chinese, we would call it "xīnshēn. I noticed he'd begun talking to himself. It sounded like he was talking to someone, not like when you mutter to yourself. It was like a conversation. I started to find it scary and felt unsafe. He hadn't been violent, but it began to feel like it might only be a matter of time before he did. He would get angry with whoever it was he was talking to, in his head - almost screaming."
Bruce exhaled in exasperation. This was a development he sensed was coming, only to hear it in stark, revealing terms, further evidence of symptoms of schizophrenia.
"I didn't bond with Dr. Langstrom," she said, "but I respected him and the quality of his earlier work and didn't wish ill fortune to befall him."
"Can you tell me about any areas where your own research overlapped with Langstrom's?"
"I study any lifeforms found in caves and karst systems. Every instance Langstrom and I went on research trips together, he was studying bats and collecting samples."
"Did your own work focus on bats, Dr. Xue?"
"Not focused upon - cave life in general. Caves are home to a rich biota, though shut off from the world. Because we don't know how much life there is in there, we can't protect undiscovered endangered species. We categorize cave life into troglobitic species, troglophiles and sub-troglophiles. Troglobitic species have adaptations for caves, including some worms, mollusks, spiders, millipedes, crayfish. There are no troglobitic mammals. Troglophiles divide their life between caves and above the surface. Sub-troglophiles frequent caves or spend part of their life in caves - like hibernation - but also need to live above the surface. Bats belong to these second and third categories, because they sleep in caves during the day, but hunt outside at night."
