Green Earth

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, maybe, wanting to stay head science advisor?

Or Marta?

Disturbed at the thought, at all these machinations, he found himself wishing he were back in D.C. That was shocking, because when he was in D.C. he was always desperate to return to San Diego, biding his time until his return, at which point his real life would recommence. But it was undeniable; here he was in San Diego, and he wanted to be in D.C. Something was seriously wrong.

Part of it must have been the fact that he was not really back in his San Diego life, but only previewing it. He didn’t have a home, he was still on leave, his days were not quite full. That left him wandering a bit, as he was now. And that was unlike him.

Okay—what would he do with free time if he lived here?

He would go surfing.

Good idea. His possessions were stowed in a storage unit in Encinitas, so he drove there and got his surfing gear, then returned to the parking lot at Cardiff reef, at the south end of Cardiff-by-the-Sea. A few minutes’ observation while he pulled on his long-john wetsuit (getting too small for him) revealed that an ebb tide and a south swell were combining for some good waves, breaking at the outermost reef. There was a little crowd of surfers and bodyboarders out there.

Happy at the sight, Frank walked into the water, which was very cool for midsummer, just as they all said. It never got as warm as it used to. But it felt so good now that he ran out and dove through a wave, whooping as he emerged. He sat in the water and pulled on his booties, velcroed the ankle strap of the board cord to him, took off paddling. The ocean tasted like home.

Cardiff reef was a very familiar break to him, and nothing had changed. He had often surfed here with Marta, but that had little to do with it. The waves were eternal, and Cardiff reef with its point break was like an old friend who always said the same things. He was home. This was what made San Diego his home—not the people or the jobs or the unaffordable houses, but this experience of being in the ocean, which for so many years of his youth had been the central experience of his life, everything else colorless by comparison, until he had discovered climbing.

As he paddled, caught waves, and rode the lefts in long ecstatic seconds, and then worked to get back outside, he wondered again about this strangely powerful feeling of salt water as home. There must be an evolutionary reason for such joy at being cast forward by a wave. Whatever; it was a lot of fun. And made him feel vastly better.

Then it was time to go. He took one last ride, and rather than kicking out when the fast part was over, rode the broken wave straight in toward the shore.

He lay in the shallows and let the hissing whitewater shove him around. Back and forth, ebb and flow. Grooming by ocean.

“Are you okay?”

He jerked his head up. It was Marta, on her way out.

“Oh, hi. Yeah I’m okay.”

“What’s this, stalking me now?”

“No,” then realizing this might be a little bit true: “No!”

He stared at her, getting angry. She stared back.

“I’m just catching some waves,” he said, mouth tight. “You’ve got no reason to say such a thing to me.”

“No? Then why did you ask me out the other day?”

“A mistake, obviously. I thought it might do some good to talk.”

“Last year, maybe. But you didn’t want to then. You didn’t want to so much that you ran off to NSF instead. Now it’s too late. So just leave me alone, Frank.”

“I am!”

“Leave me alone.”

She turned and ran into the surf, diving onto her board and paddling hard. When she got out far enough she sat up on her board and balanced, looking outward.

Women in wetsuits looked funny, Frank thought as he watched her. Not just the obvious, but also the subtler differences in body morphology were accentuated. He could tell the difference from as far away as he could see people at all. Every surfer could.

What did that mean? That he was in thrall to a woman who despised him? That he had messed up the main relationship of his life and his best chance so far for reproductive success? That sexual dimorphism was a powerful driver in the urge to reproduction? That he was a slave to his sperm, and an idiot?

All of the above.

His good mood shattered, he hauled himself to his feet. He stripped off the booties and long john, toweled off at his rental car, drove back up to his storage unit, and dropped off his gear. Returned to his hotel room, showered, checked out, and drove down the coast highway to the airport, feeling like an exile, even here on his own home ground.

Something was deeply, deeply wrong.

He checked in the car, got on the plane to Dallas. Waiting in Dallas he watched America walk by. Who were these people who could live so placidly while the world fell into an acute global environmental crisis? Experts at denial. Experts at filtering their information. Many of those walking by went to church on Sundays, believed in God, voted Republican, spent their time shopping and watching TV. Obviously nice people. The world was doomed.

He settled in his next plane seat, feeling more and more disgusted and angry. NSF was part of it; they weren’t doing a damn thing to help. He got out his laptop, turned it on, and called up a new file. He started to write.

Critique of NSF, first draft. Private to Diane Chang.

NSF was established to support basic scientific research, and it is generally given high marks for that. But its budget has never surpassed ten billion dollars a year, in an overall economy of some ten trillion. It is to be feared that as things stand, NSF is simply too small to have any real impact.