Bellwether

by Connie Willis

  “Sure,” he said, standing up. “Feel free to come down here anytime. I’m always here.”

  “Oh?” Shirl said. “You work on your project even during lunch?”

  He told her he didn’t have a project to work on and he had to wait for his funding to be approved before he could get his macaques, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking at what he was wearing.

  Flip had been right about Bennett He was wearing a white shirt and a Cerenkhov blue tie.

  “I’ve been working on this chaos thing,” he said, straightening the tie.

  “Did Alicia decide chaos theory was the optimum project to win the Niebnitz Grant?” I said, and couldn’t keep the sharpness out of my voice.

  “No,” he said, frowning at me. “When she was talking about variables the other day, it gave me an idea about why my prediction rate didn’t improve. So I refigured the data.”

  “And did it help?” I said.

  “No,” he said, looking abstracted, the way he had when Alicia’d been talking. “The more work I do on it, the more I think maybe Verhoest was right, and there is an outside force acting on the system.” He said to Shirl, “You’re probably not interested in this. Here, let me show you where the porch is.” He led her through the habitat to the back door. “When my macaques come, you’ll have to go around the side.” He opened the door, and snow and wind whirled in. “Are you sure you don’t want to smoke inside? You could stand in the door. Leave the door open at least so there’s some heat.”

  “I was born in Montana,” she said, wrapping her muffler around her neck as she went out. “This is a mild summer breeze,” but I noticed she left the door open.

  Bennett came back in, rubbing his arms. “Brr, it’s freezing out there. What’s the matter with people? Sending an old lady out in the snow in the name of moral righteousness. I suppose Flip was behind it.”

  “Flip is behind everything.” I looked at the littered desk. “I guess I’d better let you get back to work. Thanks for letting Shirl smoke down here.”

  “No, wait,” he said. “I had a couple of things I wanted to ask you about the funding form.” He scrabbled through the stuff on his desk and came up with the form. He flipped through pages, looking. “Page fifty-one, section eight. What does Documentation Scatter Method mean?”

  “You’re supposed to put down ALR-Augmented,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I have no idea. It’s what Gina told me to put.”

  He penciled it in, shaking his head. “These funding forms are going to be the death of me. I could have done the project in the time it’s taken me to fill out this form. HiTek wants us to win the Niebnitz Grant, to make scientific breakthroughs. But name me one scientist who ever made a significant breakthrough while filling out a funding form. Or attending a meeting.”

  “Mendeleev,” Shirl said.

  We both turned around. Shirl was standing inside the door, shaking snow off her hat. “Mendeleev was on his way to a cheesemaking conference when he solved the problem of the periodic chart,” she said.

  “That’s right, he was,” Bennett said. “He stepped on the train and the solution came to him, just like that.”

  “Like Poincaré,” I said. “Only he stepped on a bus.”

  “And discovered Fuchsian functions,” Bennett said.

  “Kekulé was on a bus, too, wasn’t he, when he discovered the benzene ring,” Shirl said thoughtfully. “In Ghent.”

  “He was,” I said, surprised. “How do you know so much about science, Shirl?”

  “I have to make copies of so many scientific reports, I figured I might as well read them,” she said. “Didn’t Einstein look at the town clock from a bus while he was working on relativity?”

  “A bus,” I said. “Maybe that’s what you and I need, Bennett. We take a bus someplace and suddenly everything’s clear—you know what’s wrong with your chaos data and I know what caused hair-bobbing.”

  “That sounds like a great idea,” Bennett said. “Let’s—” “Oh, good, you’re here, Bennett,” Alicia said. “I need to talk to you about the grant profile. Shirl, make five copies of this.” She dumped a stack of papers into Shirl’s arms. “Collated and stapled. And this time don’t put them on my desk. Put them in my mailbox.” She turned back to Bennett. “I need you to help me come up with additional relevant factors.”

  “Transportation,” I said, and started for the door. “And cheese.”

  ironing hair (1965—68)—–Hair fad inspired by Joan Baez, Mary Travers, and other folksingers. Part of the hippie fad, the lank look of long straight hair was harder to obtain than the male’s general shagginess. Beauty parlors gave “antiperms,” but the preferred method among teenagers was laying their heads on the ironing board and pressing their locks with a clothes iron. The ironing was done a few inches at a time by a friend (who hopefully knew what she was doing), and college girls lined up in dorms to take their turns.

  During the next few days, nothing much happened. The simplified funding allocation forms were due on the twenty-third, and, after donating yet another weekend to filling them out, I gave mine to Flip to deliver and then thought better of it and took it up to Paperwork myself.

  The weather turned nice again, Elaine tried to talk me into going white-water rafting with her to relieve stress, Sarah told me her boyfriend, Ted, was experiencing attachment aversion, Gina asked me if I knew where to find Romantic Bride Barbie for Bethany (who had decided she wanted one just like Brittany’s and whose birthday was in November), and I got three overdue notices for Browning, The Complete Works.

  In between, I finished entering all my King Tut and black bottom data and started drawing a Barbie picture. I didn’t have a box of sixty-four crayons, but there was a paintbox on the computer. I called it up, along with my statistical and differential equations programs, and started coding the correlations and plotting the relationships to each other. I graphed skirt lengths in cerulean blue, cigarette sales in gray, plotted lavender regressions for Isadora Duncan and yellow ones for temps above eighty-five. White for Irene Castle, radical red for references to rouge, brown for “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.”

  Flip came in periodically to hand me petitions and ask me questions like, “If you had a fairy godmother, what would she look like?”

  “An old lady,” I said, thinking of Toads and Diamonds, “or a bird, or something ugly, like a toad. Fairy godmothers disguise themselves so they can tell if you’re deserving of help by whether you’re nice to them. What do you need one for?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re not supposed to ask interdepartmental communications liaisons personal questions. If they’re in disguise, how do you know to be nice to them?”

  “You’re supposed to be nice in general—” I said and realized it was hopeless. “What’s the petition for?”

  “It’s to make HiTek give us dental insurance, of course,” she said.

  Of course.

  “You don’t think it’s my assistant, do you?” Flip said. “She’s an old lady.”

  I handed her back the petition. “I doubt very much that Shirl is your fairy godmother in disguise.”

  “Good,” she said. “There’s no way I’m going to be nice to somebody who smokes.”

  I didn’t see Bennett, who was busy preparing for the arrival of his macaques, or Shirl, who was doing all Flip’s work, but I did see Alicia. She came up to the lab, wearing po-mo pink, and demanded to borrow my computer.

  “Flip’s using mine,” she said irately, “and when I told her to get off, she refused. Have you ever met anyone who was that rude?”

  That was a tough one. “How’s the search for the Philosopher’s Stone going?” I said.

  “I’ve definitely eliminated circumstantial predisposition as a criterion,” she said, shifting my data to the lab table. “Only two Niebnitz Grant recipients have ever made a significant scientific breakthrough subsequent to their winning of the award. And I’ve narrowed down the projec
t approach to a cross-discipline-designed experiment, but I still haven’t determined the personal profile. I’m still evaluating the variables.” She popped my disk out and shoved her own in.

  “Have you taken disease into account?” I said.

  She looked irritated. “Disease?”

  “Diseases have played a big part in scientific breakthroughs. Einstein’s measles, Mendeleev’s lung trouble, Darwin’s hypochondria. The bubonic plague. They closed down Cambridge because of it, and Newton had to go back home to the apple orchard.”

  “I hardly see—”

  “And what about their shooting skills?” “If you’re trying to be funny—”

  “Fleming’s rifle-shooting skills were why St. Mary’s wanted him to stay on after he graduated as a surgeon. They needed him for the hospital rifle team, only there wasn’t an opening in surgery, so they offered him a job in microbiology.”

  “And what exactly does Fleming have to do with the Niebnitz Grant?”

  “He was circumstantially predisposed to significant scientific breakthroughs. What about their exercise habits? James Watt solved the steam engine problem while he was taking a walk, and William Rowan Hamilton—”

  Alicia snatched up her papers and ejected her disk. “I’ll use someone else’s computer,” she said. “It may interest you to know that statistically, fad research has absolutely no chance at all.”

  Yes, well, I knew that. Particularly the way it was going right now. Not only did my diagram not look nearly as good as Peyton’s, but no butterfly outlines had appeared. Except the Marydale, Ohio, one, which was not only still there, but had been reinforced by the rolled-down stockings and crossword puzzle data.

  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….

  dorothy sayers

  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, catastroph
es 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,”