Connie Willis - Bellwether

“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.”

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, 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.