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?”
He shook his head. “They’re too independent. I need an animal with a strong herd instinct.”
What about “The Pied Piper”? I thought.
“And even lab rats cost money,” he said.
“What about the pound?” I said. “They’ve probably got cats. No, not cats. Dogs. Dogs have pack behavior, and the pound has lots of dogs.”
He was looking almost as disgusted as Flip. “I thought you were an expert on fads. Haven’t you ever heard of animal rights?”
“But you’re not going to do anything to them. You’re just going to observe them,” I said, but he was right. I’d forgotten about the animal rights movement. They’d never let us use animals from the pound. “What about the other Bio projects? Maybe you could borrow some of their lab animals.”
“Dr. Kelly’s working with nematodes, and Dr. Riez is working with flatworms.”
And Dr. Turnbull’s working on ways to win the Niebnitz Grant, I thought.