Disclosure By Michael Crichton 405 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.
If you think Japan got a bashing in Michael Crichton's "Rising Sun," just wait till you see what happens to the cause of equal opportunity in his clever new novel, "Disclosure," about a sexual-harassment suit.
The story opens with its protagonist, Tom Sanders, looking forward to the acquisition of the Seattle-based company he works for, Digital Communications, by a New York publishing conglomerate. This merger stands to bring Tom a promotion as well as lucrative stock options when the division he works for goes public.
But when Tom arrives late at the office, because he has helped feed the children, he learns that Meredith Johnson, a flame from 10 years earlier, has been given the promotion instead, by a boss who apparently wants to enhance the role of women in the company.
Swallowing his rancor, Tom accepts his new boss's invitation to a day's-end briefing in her locked office with a bottle of wine. When Meredith tries to reignite their sexual past, Tom eventually protests. Furious at the rejection, Meredith vows to make him pay.
The next day, Tom learns from the company lawyer that while Meredith's complaint of sexual harassment will not be made public, Tom will have to accept transfer to a division of the company he secretly knows is about to be sold off. Rather than capitulate, he decides to hire a lawyer and sue.
Now, Meredith Johnson, as Mr. Crichton paints her, happens to be the embodiment of all those antiquated, chauvinistic stereotypes of the power-hungry woman: she is two-faced, underhanded, manipulative, mendacious, underqualified for her position and delighted to wield sex as a weapon. You quickly grow to loathe her. Yet for a reader to admit this is to risk making common cause with the Neanderthal characters in the story who cry out, "We told you so!," or ridicule Tom for effetely failing to service the boss and keep the peace.
Meanwhile, Mr. Crichton seems to remain above such flinging around of raw meat. He is too busy lecturing on the true meaning of his subject. "Sexual harassment is about power," says the lawyer whom Tom hires, Louise Fernandez, "and so is the company's resistance to dealing with it. Power protects power. And once a woman gets up in the power structure, she'll be protected by the structure, the same as a man."
The author wants us to know that while only 5 percent of sexual harassment suits are brought by men against women, only 5 percent of corporate supervisors are women. As Ms. Fernandez concludes: "So the figures suggest that women executives harass men in the same proportion as men harass women. And as more women get corporate jobs, the percentage of claims by men is going up. Because the fact is, harassment is a power issue. And power is neither male nor female."
Finally, Mr. Crichton offers an afterword in which he solemnly intones: "The advantage of a role-reversal story is that it may enable us to examine aspects concealed by traditional responses and conventional rhetoric. However readers respond to this story, it is important to recognize that the behavior of the two antagonists mirrors each other, like a Rorschach inkblot. The value of a Rorschach test lies in what it tells us about ourselves."
Can you flunk a Rorschach test? Why, you almost feel ashamed for getting so worked up over "Disclosure," and for cheering on Tom Sanders, the poor innocent, and hissing at Meredith Johnson, the vile scheming wretch!
Still, you do get involved, to the point where you worry more about the story than the issues. So along with rooting for Tom Sanders, you wonder about certain technical flaws in the book's elaborate narrative.
Why, for example, can the story switch away from Tom's point of view when it serves to heighten the tension, but not when it might satisfy the reader's curiosity? Why does so much depend on Tom's errant memory when a major attack in the book is leveled against therapists who rely too credulously on children's errant memories?
Why are there more scenes of unlikely eavesdropping than in an early Shakespeare comedy? And why is Tom's marriage so cold that his wife goes away with his children when his troubles begin and never once even telephones until the story is resolved?
Actually, I know the answer to these questions. Mr. Crichton's only real concern is to keep his pot boiling. In fact, "Disclosure" reads as if a fourth of it were dedicated to answering some editor querying its potential implausibilities.
Still, the results keep your blood boiling, too. "Disclosure" is an elaborate provocation of rage in which a thousand fragments of revenge finally fall into place, like acid rain on wildfire. Meanwhile, Mr. Crichton also irrelevantly entertains us with a complex vision of the digital future, complete with cellular phones the size of credit cards, CD-ROM players that can store 600 books and database environments you can virtually walk around in with the guidance of a helpful angel who cracks wise.
That this vision is so much fun and so easy to follow seems pleasantly flattering. It partly makes up for the discomfort of enjoying in "Disclosure" what is deep down an old-fashioned battle of the sexes.
Photo: Michael Crichton (Alan Levenson for The New York Times)