“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 flat 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.”
4. Rapids
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.