Just as he was leaving, Phil spotted Charlie and stopped. “Charlie! Good to see you at last!”

Grinning hugely, he came back and shook his blushing staffer’s hand. “So you laughed in the President’s face!” He turned to the Khembalis: “This man burst out laughing in the President’s face! I’ve always wanted to do that!”

The Khembalis nodded neutrally.

“So what did it feel like?” Phil asked Charlie. “And how did it go over?”

Charlie, still blushing, said, “Well, it felt involuntary, to tell the truth. Like a sneeze. Joe was really tickling me. And as far as I could tell, it went over okay. The President looked pleased. He was trying to make me laugh, so when I did, he laughed too.”

“Yeah I bet, because he had you.”

“Well, yes. Anyway he laughed, and then Joe woke up and we had to get a bottle in him before the Secret Service guys did something rash.”

Phil laughed, then shook his head, growing more serious. “Well, it’s too bad, I guess. But what could you do. You were ambushed. He loves to do that. Hopefully it won’t cost us. It might even help. But look I’m late, I’ve got to go. You hang in there.” And he put a hand to Charlie’s arm, said good-bye again to the Khembalis, and hustled out the door.

The Khembalis gathered around Charlie, looking cheerful. “Where is Joe? How is it he is not with you?”

“I really couldn’t bring him to this thing I was at, so my friend Asta from Gymboree is looking after him. Actually I have to get back to him soon,” checking his watch. “But come on, tell me how it went.”

They all followed Charlie into his cubicle by the stairwell, stuffing it with their maroon robes (they had dressed formally for Phil, Charlie noted) and their strong brown faces. They still looked pleased.

“Well?” Charlie said.

“It went very well,” Drepung said, and nodded happily. “He asked us many questions about Khembalung. He visited Khembalung seven years ago, and met Padma and others at that time. He was very interested, very…sympathetic. He reminded me of Mr. Clinton in that sense.”

Apparently the ex-President had also visited Khembalung a few years previously, and had made a big impression.

“And, best of all, he told us he would help us.”

“He did? That’s great! What did he say, exactly?”

Drepung squinted, remembering: “He said ‘I’ll see what I can do.’”

Sucandra and Padma nodded, confirming this.

“Those were his exact words?” Charlie asked.

“Yes. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’”

Charlie and Sridar exchanged a glance. Which one was going to tell them?

Sridar said carefully, “Those were indeed his exact words,” thus passing the ball to Charlie.

Charlie sighed.

“What’s wrong?” Drepung asked.

“Well…” Charlie glanced at Sridar again.

“Tell them,” Sridar said.

Charlie said, “What you have to understand is that no congressperson likes to say no.”

“No?”

“No. They don’t.”

“They never say no,” Sridar amplified.

“Never?”

“Never.”

“They like to say yes,” Charlie explained. “People come to them, asking for things favors, votes consideration of one thing or another. When they say yes, people go away happy. Everyone is happy.”

“Constituents,” Sridar expanded. “Which mean votes, which means their job. 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, ever actually saying no,” Sridar added.

“In effect they only answer the questions they can say yes to. The others 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 that, 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.

Robot submarines cruise the depths, doing oceanography. Slocum gliders and other AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles), like torpedoes with wings, dock in underwater observatories to recharge their batteries and download their data. Finally oceanographers have almost as much data as the 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 warm layer is attenuating.

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, and checked out some real estate pages in the paper, but it was discouraging. He saw that he should rent an apartment first, and take the time to look around 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 that, a letter appeared in his department mailbox from the UCSD Technology Transfer Office, Independent Review Committee. Pulse quickening, he ripped it open and scanned it, then got on the phone to the Tech Transfer Office.

“Hi Delphina, it’s Frank Vanderwal here. I’ve just gotten a letter from the 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.”