Finally he said, “I don’t know what happened, Derek. You’re the one who’s in the best position to know that… Yeah, that’s right. They must have had their reasons… Well you’ll be okay whatever happens, you were vested right? …Everyone has options they don’t exercise, don’t think about that, think about the stock you did have… Hey that’s one of the winning endgames. Go under, go public, or get bought. Congratulations… Yeah it’ll be fascinating to see, sure. Sure. Yeah, that is too bad. Okay yeah. Call me back with the whole story when I’m not at work here. Yeah bye.”

He hung up. There was a long silence from his cubicle.

Finally he got up from his chair, squeak-squeak. Anna swiveled to look, and there he was, standing in her doorway, expecting her to turn.

He made a funny face. “That was Derek Gaspar, out in San Diego. His company Torrey Pines Generique has been bought.”

“Oh really! That’s the one you helped start?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, congratulations then. Who bought it?”

“A bigger biotech called Small Delivery Systems, have you ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“I hadn’t either. It’s not one of the big pharmaceuticals by any means, midsized from what Derek says. Mostly into agropharmacy, he says, but they approached him and made the offer. He doesn’t know why.”

“They must have said?”

“Well, no. At least he doesn’t seem to be clear on why they did it.”

“Interesting. So, well it’s still good, right? I mean, I thought this was what start-ups hoped for.”

“True…”

“But you’re not looking like someone who has just become a millionaire or whatever.”

He quickly waved that away, “It’s not that, I’m not involved like that. I was only ever a consultant, UCSD only lets you have a small involvement in outside firms. I had to stop even that when I came here. Can’t be working for the Feds and someone else too, you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My investments are in a blind trust, so who knows. I didn’t have much in Torrey Pines, and the trust may have gotten rid of it. I heard something that made me think they did. I would have if I were them.”

“Oh well that’s too bad then.”

“Yeah yeah,” frowning at her. “But that isn’t the problem.”

He stared out the window, across the atrium into all the other windows. There was a look on his face she had never seen before chagrined she couldn’t quite read it. Distressed.

“What is then?”

Quietly he said, “I don’t know.” Then: “The system is messed up.”

She said, “You should come to the brown bag lecture tomorrow. Rudra Cakrin, the Khembali ambassador, is going to be talking about the Buddhist view of science. No, you should. You sound more like them than anyone else, at least sometimes.”

He frowned as if this were a criticism.

“No, come on. I want you to.”

“Okay. Maybe. If I finish a letter I’m working on.”

He went back to his cubicle, sat down heavily. “God damn it,” Anna heard him say.

Then he started to type. It was like the sound of thought itself, a rapid-fire plastic tipping and tapping, interrupted by hard whaps of his thumb against the space bar. His keyboard really took a pounding sometimes.

He was still typing like a madman when Anna saw her clock and rushed out the door to try to get home on time.

THE NEXT morning Frank drove in with his farewell letter in a manila envelope. He had decided to elaborate on it, make it into a fully substantiated, crushing indictment of NSF, which, if taken seriously, might do some good. He was going to give it directly to Diane Chang. Private letter, one hard copy. That way she could read it, consider it in private, and decide whether she wanted to do something about it. Meanwhile, whatever she did, he would have taken his shot at trying to improve the place, and could go back to real science with a clean conscience. Leave in peace. Leave behind some of the anger in him. Hopefully.

He had heavily revised the draft he had written on the flight back from San Diego. Bulked up the arguments, made the criticisms more specific, made some concrete suggestions for improvements. It was still a pretty devastating indictment when he was done, but this time it was all in the tone of a scientific paper. No getting mad or getting eloquent. Five pages single-spaced, even after he had cut it to the bone. Well, they needed a kick in the pants. This would certainly do that.

He read it through one more time, then sat there in his office chair, tapping the manila envelope against his leg, looking sightlessly out into the atrium. Wondering, among other things, what had happened to Torrey Pines Generique. Wondering if the hire of Yann Pierzinski had anything to do with it.

Suddenly he heaved out of his chair, walked to the elevators with the manila envelope and its contents, took an elevator up to the twelfth floor. Walked around to Diane’s office and nodded to Laveta, Diane’s secretary. He put the envelope in Diane’s in-box.

“She’s gone for today,” Laveta told him.

“That’s all right. Let her know when she comes in tomorrow that it’s there, will you? It’s personal.”

“All right.”

Back to the sixth floor. He went to his chair and sat down. It was done.

He heard Anna in her office, typing away. Her door was closed, so presumably she was using her electric breast pump to milk herself while she was working. Frank would have liked to have seen that, not just for prurient reasons, though there were those too, but more for the pleasure of seeing her multitasking like that. She typed with forefingers and thumbs only, like a 1930’s reporter in the movies; whether this was an unconscious rejection of all secretarial skills or simply happenstance, he couldn’t say. But he bet it made for an attractive sight.

He recalled that this was the day she wanted him to join her at the brown-bag lecture. She had apparently helped to arrange for the Khembali ambassador to give the talk. Frank had seen it listed on a sheet announcing the series, posted next to the elevators:

“Purpose of Science from the Buddhist Perspective.”

It didn’t sound promising to him. Esoteric at best, and perhaps much worse. That would not be atypical for these lunch talks, they were a very mixed bag. People were burnt out on regular lectures, the last thing they wanted to do at lunch was listen to more of the same, so this series was deliberately geared toward entertainment. Frank remembered seeing titles like “Antarctica as Utopia,” or “The Art of Body Imaging,” or “Ways Global Warming Can Help Us.” Apparently it was a case of the wackier the topic, the bigger the crowd.

This one would no doubt be well-attended.

Anna’s door opened and Frank’s head jerked up, reflexively seeking the sight of a bare-chested science goddess, something like the French figure of Liberty; but of course not. She was just leaving for the lecture.

“Are you going to come?” she asked.

“Yeah sure.”

That pleased her. He accompanied her to the elevators, shaking his head at her, and at himself. Up to the tenth floor, past the spectacular Antarctic underwater photo gallery, into the big conference room. It held about two hundred people. By the time the Khembalis arrived, every seat was occupied.

Frank sat down near the back, pretending to work on his hand pad. Air-conditioned air fell on him like a blessing. People who knew each other were finding each other, sitting down in groups, talking about this and that. The Khembalis stood by the lectern, discussing mike arrangements with Anna and Laveta. The old ambassador, Rudra Cakrin, wore his maroon robes, while the rest of the Khembali contingent were in off-white cotton pants and shirts, as if in India. Rudra Cakrin needed his mike lowered. His young assistant helped him, then adjusted his own. Translation; what a pain. Frank groaned soundlessly.