Bellwether (15 page)

But there was nothing for it but to keep slogging through the crocodile- and tsetse fly-infested tributaries. I calculated prediction intervals on Couéism and the crossword puzzle, and then started feeding in the related hairstyle data.

I couldn’t find the clippings on the marcel wave. I’d given them to Flip a week and a half ago, along with the angel data and the personal ads. And hadn’t seen any of it since.

I sorted through the stacks next to the computer on the off chance she’d brought it back and just dumped it somewhere, and then tracked Flip down in Supply, making long strands of Desiderata’s hair into hair wraps.

“The other day I gave you a bunch of stuff to copy,” I said to Flip. “There were some articles about angels and a bunch of clippings about hair-bobbing. What did you do with them?”

Flip rolled her eyes. “How would I know?”

“Because I gave them to you to copy. Because I
need
them, and they’re not in my lab. There were some clippings about marcel waves,” I persisted. “Remember? The wavy hairdo you liked?” I made a series of crimping motions next to my hair, hoping she’d remember, but she was wrapping Desiderata’s wrappers with duct tape. “There was a page of personal ads, too.”

That clearly rang a bell. She and Desiderata exchanged looks, and she said, “So now you’re accusing me of stealing?”

“Stealing?” I said blankly. Angel articles and marcel wave clippings?

“They’re public, you know. Anybody can write in.”

I had no idea what she was talking about Public?

“Just because you circled him doesn’t mean he’s yours.” She yanked on Desiderata’s hair. Desiderata yelped. “Besides, you already have that rodeo guy.”

The personals, I thought, the light dawning. We’re talking about the personal ads. Which explained her asking me about
elegant
and
sophisticated.
“You answered one of the personal ads?” I said.

“Like you didn’t know. Like you and Darrell didn’t have a big laugh over it,” she said, and flung down the duct tape and ran out of the room.

I looked at Desiderata, who was trailing a long ragged end of duct tape from the hair wrap. “What was that all about?” I said.

“He lives on Valmont,” she said.

“And?” I said, wishing I understood at least something that was said to me.

“Flip lives south of Baseline.” I was still looking blank.

Desiderata sighed. “Don’t you
get
it? She’s geographically incompatible.”

She also has an
i
on her forehead, I thought, which somebody looking for elegant and sophisticated must have found daunting. “His name’s Darrell?” I asked.

Desiderata nodded, trying to wind the end of the duct tape around her hair. “He’s a dentist.”

The crown, I thought. Of course.

“I think he’s totally swarb, but Flip really likes him.”

It was hard to imagine Flip liking anyone, and we were getting off the main issue. She had taken the personal ads, and done what with the rest of the articles? “You don’t know where she might have put my marcel wave clippings, do you?”

“Gosh, no,” Desiderata said. “Did you look in your lab?”

I gave up and went down to the copy room to try to find them myself. Flip apparently never copied anything. There were huge piles on both sides of the copier, on top of the copier lid, and on every fiat surface in the room, including two waist-high piles on the floor, stacked in layers like sedimentary rock formations.

I sat down cross-legged on the floor and started through them: memos, reports, a hundred copies of a sensitivity exercise that started with “List five things you like about HiTek,” a letter marked URGENT and dated July 6, 1988.

I found some notes I’d taken on Pet Rocks and the receipt from somebody’s paycheck, but no marcel waves. I scooted over and started on the next stack.

“Sandy,” a man’s voice said from the door.

I looked up. Bennett was standing there. Something was clearly wrong. His sandy hair was awry and his face was gray under his freckles.

“What is it?” I said, scrambling to my feet.

He gestured, a little wildly, at the sheaf of papers in my hand. “You didn’t find my funding allocation application in there, did you?”

“Your funding allocation form?” I said bewilderedly. “It had to be turned in Monday.”

“I
know,”
he said, raking his hand through his hair. “I did turn it in. I gave it to Flip.”

I suppose God could have made

a sillier animal than a sheep,

but it is very certain

that He never did….

jitterbug (1938—45)—–
Dance fad of World War II, involving fancy footwork and athletic moves. Danced to big-band swing tunes, jitterbuggers flung their partners over their backs, under their legs, and into the air. GIs spread the jitterbug overseas wherever they were stationed. Replaced by the cha-cha.

Catastrophes can sometimes lead to scientific breakthroughs. A contaminated culture and a near drowning led to the discovery of penicillin, ruined photographic plates to the discovery of X rays. Take Mendeleev. His whole life was a series of catastrophes: He lived in Siberia, his father went blind, and the glass factory his mother started to make ends meet after his father died burned to the ground. But it was that fire that made his mother move to St. Petersburg, where Mendeleev was able to study with Bunsen and, eventually, come up with the periodic table of the elements.

Or take James Christy. He had a more minor catastrophe to deal with: a broken Star Scan machine. He’d just taken a picture of Pluto and was getting ready to throw it away because of a clearly wrong bulge at the edge of the planet when the Star Scan (obviously made by the same company as HiTek’s copy machines) crashed.

Instead of throwing the photographic plate away, Christy had to call the repairman, who asked Christy to wait in case he needed help. Christy stood around for a while and then took another, harder look at the bulge and decided to check some of the earlier photographs. The very first one he found was marked “Pluto image. Elongated. Plate no good. Reject.” He compared it to the one in his hand. The plates looked the same, and Christy realized he was looking not at ruined pictures, but at a moon of Pluto.

On the whole, though, catastrophes are just catastrophes. Like this one.

Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else—cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments—as long as the paperwork’s filled out properly. And in on time.

“You gave your funding allocation form to
Flip?”
I said, and was instantly sorry.

He went even paler. “I know. Stupid, huh?”

“Your monkeys,” I said.

“My ex-monkeys. I will not be teaching them the Hula Hoop.” He went over to the stack I’d just been through and started through it.

“I’ve already been through those,” I said. “It’s not in there. Did you tell Management Flip lost it?”

“Yes,” he said, picking up the papers on top of the copier. “Management said Flip says she turned in all the applications people gave her.”

“And they
believed
her?” I said. Well, of course they believed her. They’d believed her when she said she needed an assistant. “Is anybody else’s form missing?”

“No,” he said grimly. “Of the three people stupid enough to let Flip turn their forms in, I’m the only one whose form she lost.”

“Maybe …,” I said.

“I already asked them. I can’t redo it and turn it in late.” He set down the stack, picked it up, and started through it again.

“Look,” I said, taking it from him. “Let’s take this in an orderly fashion. You go through these piles.” I set it next to the stack I’d gone through. “Stacks we’ve looked through on
this
side of the room.” I handed him one of the worktable stacks. “Stuff we haven’t on this side. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, and I thought a little of his color came back. He picked up the top of the stack.

I started through the recycling bin, into which somebody (very probably Flip) had dropped a half-full can of Coke. I grabbed a sticky armful of papers, sat down on the floor, and began pulling them apart. It wasn’t in the first armload. I bent over the bin and grabbed a second, hoping the Coke hadn’t trickled all the way to the bottom. It had.

“I knew better than to give it to Flip,” Bennett said, starting on another stack, “but I was working on my chaos theory data, and she told me she was supposed to take them up to Management,”

“We’ll find it,” I said, prying a Coke-gummed page free from the wad. Halfway through the papers I gave a yelp.

“Did you find it?” he said hopefully.

“No. Sorry.” I showed him the sticky pages. “It’s the marcel wave notes I was looking for. I gave them to Flip to copy.”

The color went completely out of his face, freckles and all. “She threw the application away,” he said.

“No, she didn’t,” I said, trying not to think about all those crumpled hair-bobbing clippings in my wastebasket the day I met Bennett. “It’s here somewhere.”

It wasn’t. We finished the stacks and went through them even though it was obvious the form wasn’t there.

“Could she have left it in your lab?” I said when I reached the bottom of the last stack. “Maybe she never made it out of there with it.”

He shook his head. “I’ve already been through the whole place. Twice,” he said, digging through the wastebasket. “What about your lab? She delivered that package to you. Maybe—”

I hated having to disappoint him. “I just ransacked it. Looking for these.” I held up my marcel wave clippings. “It could be in somebody else’s lab, though.” I got up stiffly. “What about Flip? Did you ask her what she did with it? What am I thinking? This is Flip we’re talking about.”

He nodded. “She said, ‘What funding form?’”

“All right,” I said. “We need a plan of attack. You take the cafeteria, and I’ll take the staff lounge.”

“The cafeteria?”

“Yes, you know Flip,” I said. “She probably misdelivered it. Like that package the day I met you,” and I felt there was a clue there, something significant not to where his funding form might be, but to something else. The thing that had triggered hair-bobbing? No, that wasn’t it. I stood there, trying to hold the feeling.

“What is it?” Bennett said. “Do you think you know where it is?”

It was gone. “No. Sorry. I was just thinking about something else. I’ll meet you at the recycling bin over in Chem. Don’t worry. We’ll find it,” I said cheerfully, but I didn’t have much hope that we actually would. Knowing Flip, she could have left it anywhere. HiTek was huge. It could be in anybody’s lab. Or down in Supply with Desiderata, the patron saint of lost objects. Or out in the parking lot. “Meet you at the recycling bin.”

I started up to the staff lounge and then had a better idea. I went to find Shirl. She was in Alicia’s lab, typing Niebnitz Grant data into the computer.

“Flip lost Dr. O’Reilly’s funding form,” I said without preamble.

I had somehow hoped she would say, “I know right where it is,” but she didn’t. She said, “Oh, dear,” and looked genuinely upset “If he leaves, that—” She stopped. “What can I do to help?”

“Look in here,” I said. “Bennett’s in here a lot, and anyplace you can think of where she might have put it” “But the deadline’s past, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, angry that she was pointing out the thought I’d been trying to ignore, that Management, sticklers for deadlines that they were, would refuse to accept it even if we did find it, sticky with Coke and obviously mislaid. “I’ll be up in the staff lounge,” I said, and went up to look through the mailboxes.

It wasn’t there, or in the stack of old memos on the staff table, or in the microwave. Or in Alicia’s lab. “I looked all through it,” Shirl said, sticking her head in. “What day did Dr. O’Reilly give it to Flip?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was due on Monday.”

She shook her head grimly. “That’s what I was afraid of. The trash comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

I was sorry I’d brought her into this. I went down to the recycling bin. Bennett was almost all the way inside it, his legs dangling in midair. He came up with a fistful of papers and an apple core.

I took half the papers, and we went through them. No funding form.

“All right,” I said, trying to sound upbeat. “If it’s not in here, it’s in one of the labs. What shall we start with? Chem or Physics?”

“It’s no use,” Bennett said wearily. He sank back against the bin. “It’s not here, and I’m not here for much longer.” “Isn’t there some way to do the project without funding?” I said. “You’ve got the habitat and the computer and cameras and everything. Couldn’t you substitute lab rats or something?”