Connie Willis - Bellwether

I went down to see if Gina had the missing pages. She was sitting in a tangle of sacks, wrapping paper, and ribbons. “You are coming to Brittany’s party, aren’t you?” she said. “You have to come. There are going to be six five-year-olds and six mothers, and I don’t know which is worse.”

“I’ll be there,” I promised, and asked her about the missing pages. “There are missing pages?” she said. “My funding form’s at home. When am I going to be able to fill out missing pages? I’ve still got to go buy plates and cups and decorations and fix the refreshments.”

I escaped and went back to the lab. A gray-haired woman was sitting at the computer, rapidly typing in numbers.

“Sorry,” she said as soon as I came in the room. “Flip said I could use your computer, but I don’t want to get in your way.” She began rapidly touching keys to save the file.

“Are you Flip’s new assistant?” I asked, looking at her curiously. She was thin, with tan, leathery skin, like Billy Ray would have after another thirty years of riding the range.

“Shirl Creets,” she said, shaking my hand. She had a grip like Billy Ray’s, and her fingers were stained a yellowish brown, which explained how Sarah and Elaine had known she was a smoker “just by looking at her.”

“Flip was using Dr. Turnbull’s computer,” she said, and her voice was hoarse, too, “and she told me to come up here and use yours, that you wouldn’t mind. I’ll be off this as soon as I save the file. I haven’t been smoking,” she added.

“You can smoke if you want,” I said. “And you can use the computer. I’ve got to go over to Personnel anyway and pick up a different funding allocation form. This one’s missing pages.”

“I’ll go get it for you,” Shirl said, getting up immediately and taking the form from me. “Which pages is it missing?”

“Twenty-nine through forty-one,” I said, “and maybe some at the end, I don’t know. Mine only goes up to page sixty-eight. But you don’t have to—”

“What are assistants for? Do you want me to make an extra copy so you can do a rough draft?”

“That would be nice, thank you,” I said, in shock, and sat down at the computer.

I had been nice to Flip, and look what it had gotten me. I took it back that Browning knew anything about trends, Pied Piper or no Pied Piper.

The data Shirl had been typing in were still there. It was some kind of table. “Carbanks—48, Twofeathers—34,” it read. “Holyrood—61, Chin—39.” I wondered what project Alicia was working on now.

Shirl was back in five minutes flat, with a stack of neatly collated and stapled sheafs. “I put copies of the missing pages in your original, and made you two extra copies just in case.” She set them gently down on the lab table and handed me another thick sheaf. “While I was in the copy room, I found these clippings. Flip didn’t know who they belonged to. I thought they might be yours.”

She held up a stack of clippings on dance marathons, neatly paper-clipped to a set of copies.

“I assumed you wanted copies,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said, astounded. “I don’t suppose you could talk Flip into assigning you to me?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “She seems to like you.” She set the clippings on the lab table and began straightening the top of it. She fished the chaos theory book out of the mess.

“Mandelbrot diagrams,” she said interestedly. “Is that what you’re researching?”

“No,” I said. “Fad origins. I was just reading that out of curiosity. They are connected, though. Fads are a facet of the chaotic system of society, with a number of variables contributing to them.”

She stacked Brave New World and All’s Well that Ends Well on top of the chaos theory book without comment and picked up Flappers, Flivvers, and Flagpole-Sitters. “What made you choose fads?” she said disapprovingly.

“You don’t like fads?”

“I just think there are more direct ways of influencing society than starting a fad. I had a physics teacher who used to say, ‘Pay no attention to what other people are doing. Do what you want, and you can change the world.’ ”

“Oh, I don’t want to discover how to start them,” I said. “I suppose HiTek does, and that’s why they keep funding the project, although if the mechanism is as complex as it’s beginning to look, they’ll never be able to isolate the critical variable, at which point they’ll probably stop funding me.” I looked at the dance marathon notes. “What I want to do is understand what causes them.”

“Why?” she said curiously.

“Because I just want to understand. Why do people act the way they do? Why do they all suddenly decide to play the same game or wear the same clothes or believe the same thing? In the 1920s smoking was a fad. Now it’s anti smoking. Why? Is it instinctive behavior or societal influences? Or something in the air? The Salem witch trials were caused by fear and greed, but they’re always around, and we don’t burn witches all the time, so there must be something else going on.

“I just don’t understand what,” I said. “And it doesn’t look like I will anytime soon. I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. You don’t happen to know what caused hair-bobbing, do you?”

“It’s going slowly?” she said.

“Slow isn’t the word,” I said. I gestured with the marathon dancing copies. “I feel like I’m in a dance marathon contest. Most of the time it’s not dancing at all, it’s just putting one foot in front of the other, trying to hang on and stay awake. Trying to remember why you signed up in the first place.”

“My physics teacher used to say that science was one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” she said.

“And fifty percent filling out nonsimplified funding forms,” I said. I picked up one of the extra copies. “I’d better take one of these over to Gina.”

“I’ve already taken one to Dr. Damati,” she said. “Oh, and I need to get back there. I promised her I’d wrap Brittany’s presents for her.”

“You’re sure you can’t persuade Flip?” I said.

After she left, I started work on page 29, but it didn’t make any more sense than when it had been missing, and I was starting to feel vaguely itch again. I took one of the extra copies and went down to Bio to Bennett’s lab.

Alicia was there, head to head with Bennett at the computer, but he looked up immediately and smiled at me.

“Hi,” he said. “Come on in.”

“No, that’s okay. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I said, smiling at Alicia. She didn’t smile back. “I just wanted to bring you a complete funding form.” I handed him the funding form. “There were pages missing in the ones Flip passed out.”

“Incompetent,” he said. “Incorrigible. Incapacitating.”

Alicia was actively glaring at me.

“Intruding,” I said. “Which is what I’m doing on your meeting. I’ll talk to you later.” I headed for the door.

“No, wait,” he said. “You’ll be interested in this. Dr. Turnbull was just telling me about her project.” He looked at Alicia. “Tell Dr. Foster what you’ve been doing.”

“I’ve taken the data on all the previous Niebnitz Grant winners: scientific discipline, project area, educational background—”

That explained the third degree I’d gotten from her yesterday. She had been trying to determine if I fit the profile, and from the look she was giving me, I must not have even placed.

“—age, gender, ethnic group, political affiliation.” She scrolled through several screens, and I recognized a chart like the one Shirl had just been working on. “I’m running regressions to determine the relevant characteristics and then analyzing those to construct a profile of the typical Niebnitz Grant recipient and the criteria the Niebnitz Grant Committee uses to make their choices.”