you weigh?”
“I don’t know. About one twenty, one twenty-five.”
“Hm, and this print is yours, I take it, conveniently close by. Let’s see what we can make of this.” Cooksey took a small brass ruler from his shirt pocket, measured the depth of both prints, stood up, took a small leather- bound notebook from his pocket, and made some calculations. He frowned, mumbled, “No, no, you idiot, that can’t be right!” and resumed his scribbling. After some minutes he sighed and said, “Impossible, but there it is. According to these figures, Moie weighs two hundred and six kilos.”
“Is that a lot?”
“I should say so! It’s over four hundred and fifty pounds.”
Jenny said, “But he could have been carrying something heavy. Wouldn’t that make the dirt squash down more?”
Cooksey stared at her, and then a look appeared upon his face that she had never seen bestowed upon her in her life, a look of delight that had nothing whatever to do with her physical appearance. “By God, of course! What an imbecile I am! That’s what comes from doing this just for animals, who rarely haul any baggage. Well, my dear, you have just accomplished an act of scientific reasoning. Good for you!”
Jenny felt herself blushing from her breast to her hairline, smiling hard enough to make her mouth feel funny. Cooksey added, “Still, if we assume he’s around your size, and even accounting for the extra upper-body strength of men, that’s quite a load, well over three hundred pounds. And what could it have been? A boulder? An anvil? And look here, you can see it’s a normal walking footprint, the ball and toes digging into the earth more firmly than the heel. He’s not standing here heaving something up like a weight lifter. I ask you, could you or I snatch up three hundred pounds and trot off with it as if it were a parcel from the shop? No, and therein lies the mystery. In any case, you may wish to inquire why I was visiting here in the first place.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I am, ah, aware of your difficulties-I mean, being asked to leave-and I feel responsible in a way.” And here he related Moie’s problems with mass media, and what had transpired thereafter. “But if you really wish to stay here, I believe I can arrange something. I require an assistant. My specimens are an absolute brothel, and I barely have room to turn around in, as you may have observed. Um, and there’ll be a modest stipend from my grant, of course.”
Jenny did not know what a modest stipend was but did not admit it. “Yeah, but what about Rupert and Luna?”
“Jennifer, not to blow my trumpet, but I draw a great deal more water in this organization than our Luna. A word with Rupert and the thing is done. What do you say, then?”
“But…I mean, I don’t know anything.”
“Yes. And therefore there is nothing to interfere with learning. I have my little ways, and the average graduate student is ordinarily not disposed to learn them. So-are we agreed?”
Nor are they as decorative, nor as full of fine animal spirits, he thought, but declined to say as she flung her arms around him and pressed her damp and marvelous body to his.
During the following week Jennifer found to her great surprise that the skills required of a research assistant were very like those she had learned in the succession of Iowa farmhouses and homes where she had been fostered. These included: moving heavy or bulky objects without getting hurt; not spilling things, or if you did by accident, cleaning them up quickly and efficiently; scrubbing walls, floors, and windows; putting things in stacks of the same kind and storing them in places where you could find them again; and doing everything you were told to do in a cheerful manner. Professor Cooksey was a good deal nicer than many of the foster moms and dads she had endured, always patient with her mistakes and never treating her like the retard she was. When the work was done, all the specimen boxes were neatly arranged on shelves (which Jennifer had put together with Scotty’s help), the scattered papers were put away in files, the journals were racked in green cardboard journal boxes with neat machine-printed labels on them, and an entire room, a former laundry, once filled with cartons, had been cleared, cleaned, and painted. The place now smelled of furniture polish more than tobacco smoke or formalin, and Jennifer was absurdly proud of it.
One morning when Cooksey was meeting with Rupert on the terrace, and she was mopping the floor, Kevin came and had a look and commented that she had finally found her place in life as a janitor. He meant the remark as one of his casual put-downs, but rather to her surprise Jenny felt no sting. “It’s honest work,” she said. “You should try it sometime. It might do you good.”
She turned away from him and continued mopping, and waited for a nasty comeback, which failed to come. Instead, Kevin said, “So what’s the situation, babe? When’re you coming back to the cabin?”
“I don’t know, Kevin”-still mopping-“do you want me back?”
“Well, shit, yeah! What do you think?”
She stopped her work and faced him. “What do you think I should think? When they kicked me out, you were, like, totally cool with me taking off. So, what, you changed your mind?”
“Hey, I’m sorry, all right? I was wrong, okay? You don’t have to get all bitchy about it.”
She leaned on her mop and stared at him, as all the good energy she had enjoyed over the past few days seemed to drain out of her. For the first time she noticed something blurry in his face, and she realized that it had to do with all the time she’d been spending with Cooksey. The professor’s face was solid in a way, a reflection of what was really going on in his head, while Kevin’s was always waiting to see which expression was right for getting him what he wanted, like now, he was giving her the melting, yearning look, slightly hurt, and despite herself it was starting to work. She really did love him, even when he was a total piece of shit, and she knew he really loved her, or would someday if she just kept at him, if she could find a way of making him more like Cooksey. But not just now, just at the moment she had no patience for his tricks. She said, “Well, if I’m bitchy, you don’t have to hang around, do you?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Come on, babe, be nice.” The fetching smile, and now he took a step onto the freshly mopped floor. “Out!” she said. “I got work to do.”
And he slammed out, muttering curses, leaving her shaken and amazed at herself. This argument had proceeded at a peculiar low volume, for Rupert was out on the terrace and Rupert required at least the appearance of harmony. Luna was the only resident allowed to give vent at full voice. Later that day, Jennifer removed the backpack that held all her chattels from the cottage she had shared with Kevin and parked it in the former laundry room, together with her sleeping bag and air mattress. The little room was floored and walled with Mexican tiles, like the kitchen, except for the places where the old sinks had been removed, which were patched with rough concrete. There was a small window and a separate door to the outside. As she surveyed it, she wondered at her own presumption. She seemed to be changing in a way she had never expected.
Cooksey appeared at her elbow. “Moving in, are you?”
“Only if it’s all right.”
“Not to worry, my dear. You created the space, and may claim it. Although I’d appreciate it if your domestic affairs did not interfere with our work, hm?”
“No. And thanks.”
“Good. As to that, work I mean, I believe we are ready to begin.”
“I thought I was working.”
“No, no, I mean work. Scientific work. Surely you didn’t think I required a mere slavey? A char?”
Jennifer didn’t recognize the words but she understood what he meant, and had thought it.
“What kind of work?” she said suspiciously.
“Evolutionary biology. That’s what I do, you see. In addition to my work for the Alliance, I have to maintain scientific respectability by doing research and publishing papers, or else no one will take me seriously when I speak out about the destruction of rain forest habitat and so on. Now, the cryptic species of fig-pollinating wasps are an important area of study in evolutionary biology. The trees can’t reproduce without the wasps, you see, and the wasps can’t live without the trees. Moreover, each species of tree has one and only one species of wasp that can pollinate it, so we have an example of coevolution. We think; the issue of one-to-one specificity is much discussed now in Agaonid circles, and that’s what I’m working on. Have I lost you?”
“Uh-huh. Professor, I dropped out of school in seventh grade.”
“Yes, quite, but perhaps not entirely a disadvantage. Taxonomy is one of the few scholarly fields in which
