The whole lecture was on science.
Yeah yeah. But I found that idea in particular pretty striking.
A good thought is one you can act on.
Thats what mathematicians say.
Im sure.
So, was the lama saying that NSF is crazy? Or that Western science is crazy? Because it is pretty damned reasonable. Im mean, thats the point. Thats the method in a nutshell.
Well, I guess so. To that extent. Were all crazy in some way or other, right? He did not mean to be critical. Nothing alive is ever quite in balance. It might be he was suggesting that science is out of balance. Feet without eyes.
I thought it was eyes without feet.
Drepung waggled his hand: either way. You should ask him.
But youd be translating, so I might as well just ask you and cut out the middleman!
No, laughing, I am the middleman, I assure you.
But you can tell me what he would say, teasing him now. Cut right to the chase!
But he surprises me a lot.
Like when, give me an example.
Well. One time last week, he was saying to me
But at that point Anna was called away to the front door, and she did not get to hear Drepungs example, but only Franks distinctive laughter, burbling under the clatter of conversation.
By the time she ran into Frank again he was out in the kitchen with Charlie and Sucandra, washing glasses and cleaning up. Charlie could only stand there and talk. He and Frank were discussing Great Falls, both recommending it to Sucandra. Its more like Tibet than any other place in town, Charlie said, and Frank giggled again, and more so when Anna exclaimed, Oh come on love, they arent the slightest bit the same!
No, yes! I mean theyre more alike than anywhere else around here is like Tibet.
What does that mean? she demanded.
Water! Nature! Then: Sky, Frank and Charlie both said at the same time.
Sucandra nodded. I could use some sky. Maybe even a horizon. And then all the men were chuckling.
Anna went back out to the living room to see if anyone needed anything. She paused to watch Rudra Cakrin and Joe playing with blocks on the floor again. Joe was filled with happiness to have such company, stacking blocks and babbling. Rudra nodded and handed him more. They had been doing that off and on for much of the evening. It occurred to Anna that they were the only two people at the party who did not speak English.
She went back to the kitchen and took over Franks spot at the sink, and sent Frank down to the basement to get his shirt out of the dryer. He came back up wearing it, and leaned against a counter talking.
Charlie saw Anna rest against the counter and got her a beer from the fridge. Here snooks have a drink.
Thanks dove.
Sucandra asked about the kitchens wallpaper, which was an uncomfortably brilliant yellow, overlaid with large white birds caught in various moments of flight. When you actually looked at it it was rather bizarre. I like it, Charlie said. It wakes me up. A bit itchy, but basically fine.
Frank said he was going to go home. Anna walked him around the ground floor to the front door.
Youll be able to catch one of the last trains, she said.
Yeah Ill be okay.
Thanks for coming, that was fun.
Yes it was.
Again Anna saw that whole smile brighten his face.
So whats she like?
WellI dont know!
They both laughed.
Anna said, I guess youll find out when you find her.
Yeah, Frank said, and touched her arm briefly, as if to thank her for the thought. Then as he was walking down the sidewalk he looked over his shoulder and called, I hope shes like you!
Frank left Anna and Charlies and walked through a warm drizzle back toward the Metro, thinking hard. When he came to the fateful elevator box he stood before it, trying to order his thoughts. It was impossibleespecially there. He moved on reluctantly, as if leaving the place would put the experience irrevocably in the past. But it already was. Onward, past the hotel, to the stairs, down to the Metro entry level. He stepped onto the long down escalator and descended into the Earth, thinking.
He recalled Anna and Charlie, in their house with all those people. The way they stood by each other, leaned into each other. The way Anna put a hand on Charlie when she was near himon this night, avoiding his poisoned patches. The way they shuffled their kids back and forth between them, without actually seeming to notice each other. Or their endlessly varying nicknames for each other, a habit Frank had noticed before, even though he would rather have not: not just the usual endearments like hon, honey, dear, sweetheart, or babe, but also more exotic ones that were saccharine or suggestive beyond beliefsnooks, snookybear, honeypie, lover, lovey, lovedove, sweetie-pie, angel man, goddessgirl, kitten, it was unbelievable the inwardness of the monogamous bond, the unconscious twin-world narcissism of itdisgusting! And yet Frank craved that very thing, that easy, deep intimacy that one could take for granted, could lose oneself in. ISO LTR. Primate seeks partner for life. An urge seen in every human culture, and across many species too. It was not crazy of him to want it.
Therefore he was now in a quandary. He wanted to find the woman from the elevator. And Anna had given him the hope that it could be done. It might take some time, but as Anna had pointed out, everyone was in the data banks somewhere. In the Department of Homeland Security records, if nowhere else; but of course elsewhere too. Beg or break your way into Metro maintenance records, how hard could that be? There were people breaking into the genome!
But he wasnt going to be able to do it from San Diego. Or rather, maybe he could make the hunt from thereyou could google someone from anywherebut if he then succeeded in finding her, it wouldnt do him any good. It was a big continent. If he found her, if he wanted that to matter, he would need to be in D.C.
And what would he do if he found her?
He couldnt think about that now. About anything that might happen past the moment of locating her. That would be enough. After that, who knew what she might be like. She had after all jumped him (he shivered at the memory, still there in his flesh), jumped a total stranger in a stuck elevator after twenty minutes of conversation. There was no doubt in his mind that she had initiated the encounter; it simply wouldnt have occurred to him. Maybe that made him an innocent or a dimwit, but there it was. Maybe on the other hand she was some kind of sexual adventuress, the free papers might be right after all, and certainly everyone talked all the time about women being more sexually assertive, though he had seen little personally to confirm it. Though it had been true of Marta too, come to think of it.
Howsoever that might be, he had been there in the elevator, had shared all responsibility for what happened. And happily sohe was pleased at himself, amazed but glowing. He wanted to find her.
But after thatif he could do itwhatever might happen, if anything were to happenhe needed to be in D.C.
Fine. Here he was.
But he had just put his parting shot in Dianes in-box that very day, and tomorrow morning she would come in and read it. A letter that was, now that he thought of it, virulently critical, possibly even contemptuousand how stupid was that, how impolitic, self-indulgent, irrational, maladaptivewhat could he have been thinking? Well, somehow he had been angry. Something had made him bitter. He had done it to burn his bridges, so that when Diane had read it he would be toast at NSF.
Whereas without that letter, it would have been a relatively simple matter to re-up for another year. Anna had asked him to, and she had been speaking for Diane, Frank was sure. A year more, and after that he would know where things stood, at least.
A Metro train finally came rumbling windily into the station. Sitting in it as it jerked and rolled into the darkness toward the city, he mulled over in jagged quick images of memory and consideration all that had occurred recently, all crushed and scattered into a kind of kaleidoscope or mandala: Pierzinskis algorithm, the panel, Marta, Derek, the Khembalis lecture; seeing Anna and Charlie, leaning side by side against a kitchen counter. He could make no sense of it really. The parts made sense, but he could not pull a theory out of it. Just a more general sense that the world was going smash.
And, in the context of that sort of world, did he want to go back to a single lab anyway? Could he bear to work on a single tiny chip of the giant mosaic of global problems? It was the way he had always worked before, and it might be the only way one could work, really; but might he not be better off deploying his efforts in a way that magnified them by using them in this small but potentially strong arm of the government, the National Science Foundation? Was that what his letters furious critique of NSF had been all abouthis frustration that it was doing so little of what it could? If I cant find a lever I wont be able to move the world, isnt that what Archimedes had declared?
In any case his letter was there in Dianes in-box. He had torched his bridge already. It was very stupid to forestall a possible course of action in such a manner. He was a fool. It was hard to admit, but he had to admit it. The evidence was clear.
But he could go to NSF now and take the letter back.
Security would be there, as always. But people went to work late or early, he could explain himself that way. Still, Dianes offices would be locked. Security might let him in to his own office, but the twelfth floor? No.
Perhaps he could get there as the first person who arrived on the twelfth floor next morning, and slip in and take it.
But on most mornings the first person to the twelfth floor, famously, was Diane Chang herself. People said she often got there at 4 A.M. So, well He could be there when she arrived. Just tell her he needed to take back a letter he had put in her box. She might with reason ask to read it first, or she might hand it back, he couldnt say. But either way, she would know something was wrong with him. And something in him recoiled from that. He didnt want anyone to know any of this, he didnt want to look emotionally overwrought or indecisive, or as if he had something to hide. His few encounters with Diane had given him reason to believe she was not one to suffer fools gladly, and he hated to be thought of as one. It was bad enough having to admit it to himself.
And if he were going to continue at NSF, he wanted to be able to do things there. He needed Dianes respect. It would be so much better if he could take the letter back without her ever knowing he had left it.
Unbidden an old thought leapt to mind. He had often sat in his office cubicle, looking through the window into the central atrium, thinking about climbing the mobile hanging in there. There was a crux in the middle, shifting from one piece of it to another, a stretch of chain that looked to be hard if you were free-climbing it. And a fall would be fatal. But he could come down to it on a rappel from the skylight topping the atrium. He wouldnt even have to descend as far as the mobile. Dianes offices were on the twelfth floor, so it would be a short drop. A matter of using his climbing craft and gear, and his old skyscraper window skills. Come down through the skylight, do a pendulum traverse from above the mobile over to her windows, tip one out, slip in, snatch his letter out of the in-box, and climb back out, sealing the windows as he left. No security cameras pointed upward in the atrium, he had noticed during one of his climbing fantasies; there were no alarms on window framing; all would be well. And the top of the building was accessible by a maintenance ladder bolted permanently to the south wall. He had noticed that once while walking by, and had already worked it into various daydreams. Occupying his mind with images of physical action, biomathematics as a kind of climbing of the walls of reality. Or perhaps just compensating for the boredom of sitting in a chair all day.
Now it was a plan, fully formed and ready to execute. He did not try to pretend to himself that it was the most rational plan he had ever made, but he urgently needed to do something physical, right then and there. He was quivering with tension. The operations set of physical maneuvers were all things he could do, and that being the case, all the other factors of his situation inclined him to do it. In fact he had to, if he was really going to take responsibility for his life at last, and cast it in the direction of his desire. Make possible whatever follow-up with the woman in the elevator he might later be able to accomplish.
It had to be done.
He got out at the Ballston station, still thinking hard. He walked to the NSF parking garage door by way of the south side of the building to confirm the exterior ladders lower height. Bring a box to step on, thats all it would need. He walked to his car and drove west to his apartment over wet empty streets, not seeing a thing.
At the apartment he went to the closet and pawed through his climbing gear. Below it, as in an archeological dig, were the old tools of a window mans trade.
When it was all spread on the floor it looked like he had spent his whole life preparing to do this. For a moment, hefting his caulking gun, he hesitated at the sheer weirdness of what he was contemplating. For one thing the caulking gun was useless without caulk, and he had none. He would have to leave cut seals, and eventually someone would see them.
Then he remembered again the woman in the elevator. He felt her kisses still. Only a few hours had passed, though since then his mind had spun through what seemed like years. If he were to have any chance of seeing her again, he had to act. Cut seals didnt matter. He stuffed all the rest of the gear into his faded red nylon climbers backpack, which was shredded down one side from a rockfall in the Fourth Recess, long ago. He had done crazy things often back then.
He went to his car, threw the bag in, hummed over the dark streets back to Arlington, past the Ballston stop. He parked on a wet street well away from the NSF building. No one was about. There were eight million people in the immediate vicinity, but it was 2 A.M. and so there was not a person to be seen. Who could deny sociobiology at a moment like that! What a sign of their animal natures, completely diurnal in the technosurround of postmodern society, fast asleep in so many ways, and most certainly at night. Unavoidably fallen into a brain state still very poorly understood. Frank felt a little exalted to witness such overwhelming evidence of their animal nature. A whole city of sleeping primates. Somehow it confirmed his feeling that he was doing the right thing. That he himself had woken up for the first time in many years.
On the south side of the NSF building it was the work of a moment to stand a plastic crate on its side and hop up to the lowest rung of the service ladder bolted to the concrete wall, and then quickly to pull himself up and ascend the twelve stories to the roof, using his leg muscles for all the propulsion. As he neared the top of the ladder it felt very high and exposed, and it occurred to him that if it were really true that an excess of reason was a form of madness, he seemed to be cured. Unless of course this truly was the most reasonable thing to doas he felt it was.