Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [107]
Howsoever that might be, he had been there in the elevator, had shared all responsibility for what happened. And happily so—he was pleased at himself, amazed but glowing. He wanted to find her.
But after that—if he could do it—whatever might happen, if anything were to happen—he needed to be in D.C.
Fine. Here he was.
But he had just put his parting shot in Diane’s 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 contemptuous—and how stupid was that, how impolitic, self-indulgent, irrational, maladaptive—what 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: Pierzinski’s 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 part of 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, 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 letter’s furious critique of NSF had been all about—his frustration that it was doing so little of what it could? If I can’t find a lever I won’t be able to move the world, isn’t that what Archimedes had declared?
In any case his letter was there in Diane’s 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, Diane’s 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 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 couldn’t say. But either way, she would know something was wrong with him. And something in him recoiled from that. He didn’t want anyone to know any of this, he didn’t 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.