killing animals for food (he did not want to do that, but frisbee golf was the surrogate)
experiencing terror (he did not want to do that either)
It appeared by these criteria that he was living a pretty healthy life. The paleolithic pleasures, plus modern dental care; what could be nicer? Optimodal in the best possible sense.
He went back to the Acheulian hand axe link list, and checked out a commercial site called Montana Artifacts. It turned out that this site offered for sale an Acheulian axe found near Madrid, dated at between two hundred thousand and four hundred thousand years old. Classic teardrop shaped of a fine textured gray quartzite. The surface has taken a smooth lustrous polish on the exposed faces. Superb specimen. One hundred and ninety-five dollars. With a few taps on his keyboard Frank bought it.
Primates in airplanes. aack!
Flying now made Frank a little nervous. He gripped his seat arms, reminded himself of the realities of risk assessment, fell asleep. He woke when they started descending toward Logan. Landing on water, whoahbut no. The runway showed up in the nick of time, as always.
Then into Boston, a city Frank liked. The conference was at MIT, with some meetings across the river at Boston University.
Quickly Frank saw that getting an opportunity to talk in private with Dr. Taolini would be hard. She was involved with the organization of the event, and much in demand. The one time Frank saw her alone, in the hall before her own presentation, she was talking on her cell phone.
But she saw him and waved him over, quickly ending her call. Hello, Frank. I didnt know you were going to be here.
I decided to come at the last minute.
Good, good. Youre going to tell us about these new institutes?
Thats right. But Id like to talk to you one-on-one about them, if you have the time. I know youre busy.
Yes, but lets see checking her cell phones calendar. Can you meet me at the end of my talk?
Sure, Im going to be there anyway.
Thats very nice.
Her talk was on algorithms for reading the genomes of methanogens. She spoke rapidly and emphatically, very used to the limelight: a star, even at MIT, which tended to be an all-star team. Stylish in a gray silk dress, black hair cut at shoulder length, framing a narrow face with distinct, even chiseled features. Big brown eyes under thick black eyebrows, roving the audience between slides, conveying a powerful impression of intelligence and vivacity, of pleasure in the moment.
After her talk many people, mostly men, clustered around her with what seemed to Frank a more-than-scientific interest. Turning to answer a question she saw him and smiled. Ill be just a minute. Tiny rush of pleasure at that; ha ha, I get to take the beauty away, ooooop!
Her voice was low and scratchy, indeed it would be nasal if it werent so low. A kind of oboe or bassoon sound, very attractive. Some kind of accent, maybe Boston Italian, but so faint it was impossible for Frank to identify.
Then the others had been dealt with, and he was the only one left. He smiled awkwardly, feeling alert and on edge.
Nice talk.
Oh thanks. Shall we go outside? I could use some coffee and maybe a bite.
Sure, that would be nice.
They walked out into the bright sunlight on the Charles. Francesca suggested a kiosk on the other side of the Mass. Ave. bridge, and Frank followed her onto it happily; Bostons river was full of light, open to the wind. It had good feng shui.
They talked about the dedicated institutes that NSF was planning, and Francesca said she had done a post-doc at the Max Planck in Bremen and been impressed. Then they reached the kiosk, bought lattes and scones, walked back onto the bridge. Frank stopped to look at a womens eight, sculling underneath them like a big water bug. He would have liked to linger there, but Francesca shivered.
I get cold out here, she said. Its like Byrd saidthe coldest he ever got was on the bridges over the Charles.
Byrd the polar explorer?
Yes. My husband did work on the Greenland ice cores, and he likes to read the polar classics. He told me Byrd said that, because I was always complaining about how cold I get.
Well okay, back to land then.
Theres some benches in the sun just over there. She pointed.
Didnt Byrd fake getting to the poles?
She laughed. Maybe that explains why here is the coldest he ever got.
No, but didnt he?
I dont know, but he definitely wintered on the Ross Ice Shelf.
You couldnt do that now.
Sure you could. There are people living on the big pieces of it still floating around. Thats what Jack tells me. Icebergs as big as Massachusetts, and so people have settled on them.
Fun. What does he do?
Paleoclimatology. Hes been studying the Younger Dryas for a long time now.
Really! Thats the climate were dropping into again, I hear.
Yes. Hes often away giving talks about it. Its quite a scramble with the kids.
I bet. How many do you have?
Two. Angie is eight, Tom is five.
Wow. You must be busy.
Yes, its totally crazy.
They sat on a bench looking out at the river, eating their scones and talking. She was a beautiful woman. Frank had not fully noticed this during the panel meeting at NSF. Of course he was well aware of the famous experiment in which an attractive woman approached men on a bridge with some question that allowed her plausibly to ask the men to call her later, after which seventy percent of the men on the bridge had called, as compared to only thirty percent accosted in the same way in a park. So, very possibly this was another example of the bridge effect. But whatever. She looked good. Black tangled curls framing sharp Mediterranean features; neat intilting teeth; all of a piece, stylish and intelligent. If you were to play the game of choosing which movie star should play her, youd have to go right to one of the ultimate Italian exotics, a middle-aged Sophia Loren or Claudia Cardinale.
A joy even to watch her eat; and at this observation Frank could not help remembering another paper, on human female sexual attractiveness, which had argued that even facial beauty consisted of signs of reproductive prowess, symmetry revealing undamaged DNA, widely spaced eyes meaning good eyesight, and prominent cheekbones and a gracile jaw indicating masticatory efficiencyat which point in Franks reading of the paper Anna had looked in his door to see why he was laughing so hard.
If you can chew your food well, its sexy! he had informed her, and handed her the article while he continued to chortle convulsively. Sociobiology could be so stupid! Anna too had laughed, her gorgeous mirth pealing through the halls.
Frank grinned again thinking of it, watching Francesca sip her latte. No doubt she masticated very efficiently. And had legs fast enough to escape predators, hips wide enough to give birth safely, mammary glands generous enough to feed infants, yes, sure, she had quite a figure, as far as one could tell under her dressand of course one could tell pretty damned well. She would certainly have many successful offspring, and therefore was beautiful. All so much crap! No reductio ad absurdum was more absurd.
Yes, its very busy, she was saying between mastications, in response to a question he didnt remember asking; she appeared to be unaware of his train of thought, but maybe not; he might be staring. It works outusuallybut it feels so crazy. I dont know how, but swallow things just seem to get busier and busier.
Frank nodded as he chewed. Its true, he said. True for me, and Im not even married.
She grinned. But that can make you even busier, right? Leaning into his shoulder slightly with hers, giving him a conspiratorial bump.
Startled, Frank had to agree. There were lots of ways to be busy, he said, and his days were very full. She sipped her latte, looking relaxed and somehow pleased. Not flirtatious, but expansive. She could do what she wanted; what man was going to object? She licked coffee from her upper lip, neat pink tongue like a cats. For sure the symmetry-as-beauty hypothesis was wrong; Frank had a tendency to zero in on the asymmetries in other peoples faces, and he had often noted how it was precisely the asymmetry that drew or hooked the eye, that tugged at it like a magnet. As now, seeing the way Francescas sharp nose tilted very slightly to the left then back. Magnetic.
Of course he was envious of her too. Lab, tenure, home, partner, children: she had it all. And seemed relaxed and happy, despite her talk about the crazy pace. Fulfilled. As Franks mom would have said, in one of her most annoying formulations, She has it all put together, doesnt she? At this point in his life Frank doubted that anybody on Earth had it all put together in the way his mom meant. But if anyone did, this woman might.
So: Frank chatted on happily, full of admiration, respect, envy, doubt, resentment, suspicion, and a lust that was perhaps bridge-induced but nevertheless real. He had to mask that part. She would be used to seeing it in men, no doubt. Nonconscious regions of the mind were very sensitive to that.
He would also have to be very circumspect when it came to inquiring about her business affairs. This was one way of characterizing what he had come up to do, and she was done with her scone, and no doubt would soon suggest returning to her duties, so now was the time.
But it was a subject that scientists did not often discuss at academic meetings, as it was too much like prying into matters of personal income. How are you turning your scientific work into money? How much do you make? These questions werent asked.
He tried a roundabout course. Is the teaching load heavy here?
It was.
Do you have any administrative duties?
She did.
And you do some consulting too, I think you said?
Yes, she said, looking slightly surprised, as she had not said any such thing. Just a little. It doesnt take much time. A company in London, another in Atlanta.
Frank nodded. I used to do some of that in San Diego. The biotechs can use all the help they can get. Although they seem to have a hard time turning lab results into products. Like the stuff we evaluated on that panel last fall.
Right, that was interesting.
This was likely to be mere politeness talking. But then she glanced at him, went on: I saw one proposal there that I thought was a good one, that the panel ended up turning down.
Yes?
Yes. By a Yann Pierzinski.
Oh yes. I remember. That was a good one. I was the outside member of his doctoral committee at Caltech. He does really interesting work.
Yes, she said. But the panel didnt agree.
No, I was surprised at that.
Me too. So when Small Delivery told me they were looking for a biomathematician, I recommended him.
Oh, is that what happened?
Yes.
Her irises were a kind of mahogany color, speckled with lighter browns. Was this the face of what science could become, so vivacious and sophisticated?
Well, he said carefully, good for him. I liked his proposal too.
You didnt seem to at the time.
WellI was on his doctoral committee. And I try not to be one of the evaluators in my panels anyway.
No?
No. I just run the panel. I dont want to sway anyone.
Then you must have to be careful which proposals you assign to Stuart Thornton, she said with a brief ironic smile.
Oh I dont know! he said defensively, startled. Do you think so?
Hmm. She watched him.
I guess I know what you mean. It was probably a mistake to invite him on the panel at all. But, you know. He waved a hand: people legitimately on the cutting edge deserved to be asked, no matter their personalities.
She frowned very slightly, as if she did not agree, or did not like him pretending she did not know what he had done.
Frank forged on. Anyway it sounds like Yann ended up all right, thanks to you.
Yes. Hopefully so. She sipped her latte. Her fingers were long, her fingernails polished with a clear gloss. A thin wedding band was the only jewelry she wore. Frank looked down, unwilling to meet her sharp gaze. Her shoes were open-toed, her toenails colored pink. Frank had always considered toenail polish to be a kind of intelligence test that its users had embarrassingly failed; but here was Dr. Taolini, tenured at MIT, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, exposing pink toenails to the world without embarrassment. He would have to rethink some of his opinions.
Still, he said tentatively, even though Yann has ended up all right, Id like to get him into one of these new institutes.
Maybe you can, she said. Multiple appointments arent that unusual anymore.
In academia, anyway. Do you think his contract would allow for that kind of thing?
She shrugged, made a little gesture of her own; how should I know, Im just a consultant.
He had learned what he was going to learn about her connection to Yann. Pressing further would look weird. She basked in the windy sun, would soon want to go back in to the conference.
He could ask her outright if she knew anything about the surveillance. He could share what he knew. It was another prisoners dilemma: they both knew things the other could probably benefit from knowing, but it was a risk to bring them up; the other might defect. The safest thing was to defect preemptively. But Frank wanted to try the more generous strategies these days, and so he wanted to tell her: Were being watched by Homeland Security, in a surveillance clustered around Pierzinski. Did you know? Why do you think that is? What do you think is going on?
But then she could very justifiably ask, how do you know? And then he would be stuck. He could not say, because Ive fallen in love with a spook who kissed me in an elevator, and she told me all about it. That just wasnt something he wanted to say to this woman.
Although in another way he did; it would be great to be close enough to this person to confide in her. She might laugh, might lean into his shoulder again, to draw out more of the tale.
But in fact he wasnt that close to her. So he couldnt talk about it.
A different approach occurred to him. Im getting interested in finding algorithms or other rubrics for sorting through the various climate proposals weve gotten, to see if some are worth jumping on right now. Ways of checking not only the physical possibilities, which is the easy part in some senses, but also the economic and political viability of the plans.