Connie Willis - Bellwether

“No, it didn’t,” I whispered. “A scientist working at the Institut won it.”

“And they were using old-fashioned management techniques,” Management said.

“Oh, no,” I murmured. “Management expects us to win a Niebnitz Grant.”

“How can they?” Bennett whispered. “Nobody even knows how they’re awarded.”

Management cast a cold eye in our direction. “The Niebnitz Grant Committee is looking for outstanding creative projects with the potential for significant scientific breakthroughs, which is what GRIM is all about. Now I’d like you to get in groups and write down five things you can do to win the Niebnitz Grant.”

“Pray,” Bennett said.

I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down:

1. Optimize potential.

2. Facilitate empowerment.

3. Implement visioning.

4. Strategize priorities.

5. Augment core structures.

“What is that?” Bennett said, looking at the list. “Those make no sense.”

“Neither does expecting us to win the Niebnitz Grant.” I handed it in.

“Now let’s get busy. You’ve got divergent thinking to do. Let’s see some significant scientific breakthroughs.”

Management marched out, his baton under his arm, but everyone just sat there, stunned, except Alicia Turnbull, who started taking rapid notes in her daybook, and Flip, who strolled in and started passing out pieces of paper.

“Projected Results: Significant Scientific Breakthrough,” I said, shaking my head. “Well, bobbed hair certainly isn’t it.”

“Don’t they know science doesn’t work like that? You can’t just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you look at something you’ve been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you’re looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don’t they know you can’t get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?”

“These are the people who gave Flip a promotion, remember?” I frowned. “What is ‘circumstantial predisposition to significant scientific breakthrough’?”

“For Fleming it was looking at a contaminated culture and noticing the mold had killed the bacteria,” Ben said.

“And how does Management know the Niebnitz Grant Committee gives the grant for creative projects with potential? How do they know there’s a committee? For all we know, Niebnitz may be some old rich guy who gives money to projects that don’t show any potential at all.”

“In which case we’re a shoo-in,” Bennett said.

“For all we know, Niebnitz may give the grant to people whose names begin with C, or draw the names out of a hat.”

Flip slouched over and handed one of her papers to Bennett. “Is this the memo explaining the simplified funding form?” he asked.

“No- o-o-o,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s a petition. To make the cafeteria a one hundred percent smoke-free environment.” She sauntered away.

“I know what the i stands for,” I said. “ Irritating.”

He shook his head. “ Insufferable.”

Coonskin caps [May 1955–December 1955]

Children’s fad inspired by the Walt Disney television series Davy Crockett, about the Kentucky frontier hero who fought at the Alamo and “kilt a bar” at age three. Part of a larger merchandising fad that included bow-and-arrow sets, toy knives, toy rifles, fringed shirts, powder horns, lunchboxes, jigsaw puzzles, coloring books, pajamas, panties, and seventeen recorded versions of “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” to which every child in America knew all the verses. As a result of the fad, a shortage of coonskins developed, and an earlier fad, the raccoon coat of the twenties, was ripped up to make caps. Some boys even got their hair cut in the shape of a coonskin cap. The fad collapsed right before Christmas of 1955, leaving merchandisers with hundreds of unwanted caps.

It occurred to me the next day while ransacking my lab for the clippings I’d given Flip to copy that Bennett’s remark about having already met her new assistant must mean she’d been assigned to Bio. But in the afternoon Gina, looking hunted, came in to say, “I don’t care what they say. I did the right thing hiring her. Shirl just printed out and collated twenty copies of an article I wrote. Correctly. I don’t care if I am breathing in second-secondhand smoke.”

“Second-secondhand smoke?”

“That’s what Flip calls the air smokers breathe out. But I don’t care. It’s worth it.”

“Shirl’s been assigned to you?” I said.

She nodded. “This morning she delivered my mail. My mail. You should get her assigned to you.”

“I will,” I said, but that was easier said than done. Now that Flip had an assistant, she (and my clippings) had disappeared off the face of the earth. I searched the entire building twice, including the cafeteria, where large NO SMOKING signs had been put on all the tables, and Supply, where Desiderata was trying to figure out what printer cartridges were, and found Flip finally in my lab, sitting at my computer and typing something in.

She deleted it before I could see what it was and leaped up. If she’d been capable of it, I would have said she looked guilty.

“You weren’t using it,” she said. “You weren’t even here.”

“Did you make copies of those clippings I gave you Monday?” I said.

She looked blank.

“There was a copy of the personal ads on top of them.”

She tossed her swag of hair. “Would you use the word elegant to describe me?”

She had added a hair wrap to her hank, a long thin strand of hair bound in bilious blue embroidery thread, and a band of duct tape across her forehead cut out to frame the i.

“No,” I said.

“Well, nobody expects you to be all of them,” she said, apropos of nothing. “Anyway, I don’t know why you’re so hooked on the personals. You’ve got that cowboy guy.”

“What?”

“Billy Boy Somebody,” she said, waving her hand at the phone. “He called and said he’s in town for some seminar and you’re supposed to meet him for dinner someplace. Tonight, I think. At the Nebraska Daisy or something. At seven o’clock.”

I went over to my phone message pad. It was blank. “Didn’t you write the message down?”

She sighed. “I can’t do everything. That’s why I was supposed to get an assistant, remember? So I wouldn’t have to work so hard, only since she’s a smoker, half the people I assigned her to don’t want her in their labs, so I still have to copy all this stuff and go all the way down to Bio and stuff. I think smokers should be forced to give up cigarettes.”

“Who all did you assign to her?”

“Bio and Product Development and Chem and Physics and Personnel and Payroll, and all the people who yell at me and make me do a lot of stuff. Or put in a camp or something where they couldn’t expose the rest of us to all that smoke.”

“Why don’t you assign her to me? I don’t mind that she smokes.”

She put her hands on the hips of her blue leather skirt. “It causes cancer, you know,” she said disapprovingly. “Besides, I’d never assign her to you. You’re the only one who’s halfway nice to me around here.”

Angel food cake [1880–90]

Food fad named to suggest the heavenly lightness and whiteness of the cake. Originated either at a restaurant in St. Louis, along the Hudson River, or in India. The secret of the cake was a dozen (or eleven, or fifteen) egg whites beaten into stiff glossy peaks. Difficult to bake, it inspired an entire folklore: The pan had to be ungreased, and no one could walk across the kitchen floor while it was baking. Supplanted by, of course, devil’s food cake.