The Pollinators of Eden by John Boyd Read Free Book Online Page B

decision, yet, on my memorandum of last November?”
    “No, Jim,” she answered, but he had already slunk back into his crossword puzzle.
    Despite a course in “The Evaluation of Management Personnel,” Berkeley confused her. He did not fit the patterns of behavior analyzed in her class. He was a psychiatrist of the Frommian school who wished to practice the art of loving, he had told her, but he lacked sex appeal, and no one would cooperate. He had been rejected so often that his libido had turned inward so completely that his wife had divorced him and threatened to sue him for alienation of his affections.
    Freda suspected him of fetishism or a peculiar sense of humor. Once he had wandered into her greenhouse looking for a woman’s garter. When she asked which woman, he had replied absently, “Any woman’s.”
    He had never tried to touch her, overtly or covertly, but he had sent her an interoffice memo requesting permission to pinch her thigh. At first slightly peeved, she had considered turning his memorandum over to Doctor Gaynor; but, after reflecting, she tore it up. Not only would public knowledge of the memorandum embarrass her, it might inspire Doctor Gaynor to attempt to show her shortcuts to higher policy levels.
    Now, the author of the memo, rejected again, sank into the depths of his crossword puzzle.
    Doctor Gaynor, slender, silver-haired, handsome, entered briskly, nodded to their greetings, and pulled up the chair behind his desk. He abstractedly studied his manicure, pulled a buffing brush from his desk, and buffed his folded hand. In his presence Freda grew more alert to details, and she noticed that his pale-blue suit matched his pale-blue eyes and that the irregular silver threads in the weave matched the silver of his hair. In the ladies’ lounge, the cryptic lines had once appeared, “If Charlie Gaynor isn’t red-haired, something is being dyed.”
    Looking now at his silver threads among the blue, Freda had the sudden intuition that the note had not been wrong. Gaynor was much younger than his appearance. The hair on his head was dyed to match the platinum sheen of the thread and to lend the authority of age to his office.
    Doctor Gaynor looked up suddenly. He put the fingernail buffer back into the drawer with a military snap, spread his arms wide to grip the edge of his desk, and leaned forward, looking briefly at Doctor Berkeley and at Freda with the half-proud, half-doting air of a teacher regarding his favorite pupils. “I consider you two tops on my team. When I am called to higher responsibilities in Washington, I expect one of you to take over this Bureau. But, before I leave for the Department, I want to leave something down here for you to remember me by…” He paused for dramatic effect. “This morning I got a call from Clayborg at Santa Barbara.”
    “Who is Clayborg, Doctor Gaynor?” Freda asked.
    Doctor Gaynor seemed surprised. “Doctor Hans Clayborg, at the Santa Barbara Institute for Advanced Studies. The world’s leading expert on entropy. He specializes in galactic-energy loss. Doctor Clayborg has been up all night reading the minifacted briefs on the Flora expedition, and he’s wild with excitement. He suggested that I petition the Senate’s Planet Classification Committee to declare the Planet of Flowers an open planet—at least for experimental studies—until the International Agency acts. The Institute doesn’t function except in an advisory capacity, but he says he’ll personally lend his weight to the petition.”
    “That would give us a jump on the Russians,” Freda said.
    “Exactly. And from all reports, that planet is a botanical paradise. Clayborg’s interested in plant evolution on a dying planet to see how the plants… er… solve certain problems. He recommends establishment of a permanent botanical experimental station on the planet—the Gaynor Research Institute. His suggestion, not mine.”
    “Maybe we should give Flora to the Russians,”