“They never say no,” Sridar clarified.
“Never?”
“Never.”
“They like to say yes,” Charlie explained. “People come to them, asking for things—favors, votes—consideration of one kind or another. When they say yes, people go away happy. Everyone is happy.”
“Votes,” Sridar expanded. “They say yes and it means votes. Sometimes one yes can mean fifty thousand votes. So they just keep saying yes.”
“That’s true,” Charlie admitted. “Some say yes no matter what they really mean. Others, like our Senator Chase, are more honest.”
“Without, however, actually ever saying no,” Sridar added.
“In effect they only answer the questions they can say yes to. The other questions they avoid in one way or another.”
“Right,” Drepung said. “But he said …”
“He said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’”
Drepung frowned. “So that means no?”
“Well, you know, in circumstances where they can’t get out of answering the question in some other way—”
“Yes!” Sridar interrupted. “It means no.”
“Well …” Charlie tried to temporize.
“Come on, Charlie.” Sridar shook his head. “You know it’s true. It’s true for all of them. Yes means maybe; I’ll see what I can do means no. It means, not a chance. It means, I can’t believe you’re asking me this question, but since you are, this is how I will say no.”
“He will not help us?” Drepung asked.
“He will if he sees a way that will work,” Charlie declared. “I’ll keep on him about it.”
Drepung said, “You’ll see what you can do.”
“Yes—but I mean really.”
Sridar smiled sardonically at Charlie’s discomfiture. “And Phil’s the most environmentally aware senator of all, isn’t that right Charlie?”
“Well, yeah. That’s definitely true.”
The Khembalis pondered this. Drepung was now frowning.
“We too will see what we can do,” he said.
Robot submarines cruise the depths, doing oceanography. Finally oceanographers have almost as much data as meteorologists. Among other things they monitor a deep layer of relatively warm water that flows from the Atlantic into the Arctic (ALTEX, the Atlantic Layer Tracking Experiment).
But they are not as good at it as the whales. White beluga whales, living their lives in the open ocean, have been fitted with sensors for recording temperature, salinity, and nitrate content, matched with a GPS record and a depth meter. Up and down in the blue world they sport, diving deep into the black realm below, coming back up for air, recording data all the while. Casper the Friendly Ghost, Whitey Ford, The Woman in White, Moby Dick, all the rest: they swim to their own desires, up and down endlessly within their immense territories, fast and supple, continuous and thorough, capable of great depths, pale flickers in the blackest blue, the bluest black. Then back up for air. Our cousins. White whales help us to know this world. The data they are collecting make it clear that the Atlantic’s deep warm layer is attenuating. And so the Gulf Stream is slowing down.
The rest of Frank’s stay in San Diego was a troubled time. The encounter with Marta had put him in a black mood that he could not shake.
He tried to look for a place to live when he returned in the fall, checking out some real estate pages in the paper, but it was discouraging. He saw that he would have to rent an apartment first, and take the time to look before trying to buy something. It was going to be hard, maybe impossible, to find a house he both liked and could afford. He had some financial problems. And it took a very considerable income to buy a house in north San Diego these days. He and Marta had bought a perfect couple’s bungalow in Cardiff, but they had sold it when they split, adding greatly to the acrimony. Now the region was more expensive than a mere professor could afford. Extra income would be essential.
So he looked at some rentals in North County, and then in the afternoons he went to the empty office on campus, meeting with two postdocs who were still working for him in his absence. He also talked with the department chair about what classes he would teach in the fall. It was all very tiresome.
And worse than tiresome, when a letter appeared in his department mailbox from the UCSD Technology Transfer Office. Pulse quickening, he ripped it open and scanned it, then got on the phone.
“Hi Delphina, it’s Frank Vanderwal here. I’ve just gotten a letter from your review committee, can you please tell me what this is about?”
“Oh hello, Dr. Vanderwal. Let me see … the oversight committee on faculty outside income wanted to ask you about some income you received from stock in Torrey Pines Generique. Anything over two thousand dollars a year has to be reported, and they didn’t hear anything from you.”
“I’m at NSF this year, all my stocks are in a blind trust. I don’t know anything about it.”
“Oh, that’s right, isn’t it. Maybe … just a second. Here it is. Maybe they knew that. I’m not sure. I’m looking at their memo here … ah. They’ve been informed you’re going to be rejoining Torrey Pines when you get back, and—”
“Wait, what? How the hell could they hear that?”
“I don’t know—”
“Because it isn’t true! I’ve been talking to colleagues at Torrey Pines, but all that is private. So how could they possibly have heard that?”
“I said, I don’t know.” Delphina was getting tired of his indignation. No doubt her job put her at the wrong end of a lot of indignation.
He said, “Come on, Delphina. We went over all this when I helped start Torrey Pines, and I haven’t forgotten. Faculty are allowed to spend up to twenty percent of work time on outside consulting. Whatever I make doing that is mine, it only has to be reported. So even if I did go back to Torrey Pines, what’s wrong with that? I wouldn’t be joining their board, and I wouldn’t use more than twenty percent of my time!”
“That’s good—”
“And most of it happens in my head anyway, so even if I did spend more time on it, how are you going to know? Are you going to read my mind?”
Delphina sighed. “Of course we can’t read your mind. In the end it’s an honor system. Obviously. We ask people what’s going on when we see things in the financial reports, to remind them what the rules are.”
“I don’t appreciate the implications of that. Tell the oversight committee what the situation is on my stocks, and ask them to do their research properly before they bother people.”
“All right. Sorry about that.” She did not seem perturbed.
Frank went out for a walk around the campus. Usually this soothed him, but now he was too upset. Who had told the oversight committee that he was planning to rejoin Torrey Pines? And why? Would somebody at Torrey Pines have made a call? Only Derek knew for sure, and he wouldn’t do it.
But others must have heard about it. Or could have deduced his intention after his visit. That had been only a few days before, but enough time had passed for someone to make a call. Sam Houston,