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She’d heard theories in her ti from Osama bin Laden to preer she seemed situated to control Before the men unpacked their crates she had attacked the ce an industrialwith the plastic sheeting And back before they arrived she’d spent a Sundayout fossilized manure with a screwdriver and flat-bottoe ho do that

When Dr Byron firstit as a real possibility Not the long shot it obviously was She felt eht out on a foray into the kind of false identity hijinks she and Dovey used to pull off in bars, pretending to work for Jane Goodall and the like Ovid had changed Gone aas the man who’d moonwalked at her Christmas party, the man with the eyetooth-wide s at her poor credentials She wondered what had happened to darken his ht with his wife Holidays were notorious for family crackups

Whatever the reason, he’d scarcely noticed she orking her tail off in here already, doing the heavy cleaning, to irade her status He just stood around looking vexed, listing proble January had taken a turn, the rain had turned to freezing, his instru to heat the lab? He worried about controlling the humidity and temperature fluctuations, the flaents could be properly stored here Soether, and would have to send those samples back to New Mexico There was soDellarobia missed the man who’d once come to supper and charmed her clever son She resented his new list of cares, wondering how they stacked up against, say, a foreclosure notice or a car breakdown you walked home from without any hope of repair In her experience people had worries or they had tons of e is a deal-breaker?" she asked He see blue He continued to write for several ine what that was about He turned a page, looked up

"Not a deal-breaker, no Mainly I’ for some maturity in this position"

"Maturity," she repeated "Meaning you’re looking to hire an old person?"

He almost smiled "Responsible, I should have said When the place is hopping with student volunteers, it can be overwhel Sometimes I feel like that old woo?"

"So many children she didn’t knohat to do, yes sir I do know Who are these kids, and what all will they be doing?"

He swatted a hand at the eone "Somaybe, lipid analysis for sure, that’s where we’ll start I can train you to do a lot of the routine work on that"

She felt sihtbulb candlewax drainpipe The ht? Some kind of fat"

"Fat, yes We’ll see whether these butterflies fattened up prior to overwintering Usually they travel light during the ration and then pack away a lot of lipid stores just before they roost for the winter We want to see if they are behaving as a norh this is not a noro I a to the cold weather And we still don’t have a full habitat assess all the data from our iButtons It’s a whole lot of busywork"

Was she hired, then? And did he think she had the faintest idea what he was talking about? Her panicto throw you to the lions"

"Okay," she said slowly, noting that so a lot of help here soon The college in Cleary will probably send us biology students for internships, and we’re tapping other options" He set the clipboard on his knee, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and leaned back, relaxing a little Those hands, the ultra-long fingers and pale palms, she’d noticed the first time they s Data entry, body counts, doing parasite counts under the scope But training theround up, it costs a lot of time, you know? It’s time we just don’t have"

"So this position would involve supervising college kids?"

"Pete and I will handle the internships Oh, I should h From Cornell and Florida, : Howparlor?

"But I’ about the day-to-day, you know?" Dr Byron went on "The si a lot of hours We’re looking for soh school kids"

Now she did laugh "Youscience on purpose, on their own time? Good luck with that one Maybe when it coue dis part of our effort Monarch Watch, Journey North, these are national networks of kidsand tagging butterflies, tracking, and so on They help us plot arrivals and departures, on the Internet" He tilted his head toward Pete "Probably halfmonarch projects"

"I’m sorry," she said, "but really? These are kids and schoolteachers going outside to study nature stuff?"

"Tell h school? Our science teacher was the basketball coach, if you want to know Coach Bishop He hated biology about twenty percentstudy sheets while he took the boys to the gym to shoot hoops"

"How is that possible?"

"How? He’d take a vote, usually ‘Who says we shoot hoops today?’ Obviously no girl would vote against it You’d never get another date in your life"