I squinted at him, trying to figure out exactly what it was, so long he looked at me curiously. “I took the box to Dr. Turnbull’s office,” I said hastily, “but she’s gone home.”

“She had a grant meeting today,” he said. “She’s very good at getting grants.”

“The most important quality for a scientist these days,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling wryly. “Wish I had it.”

“I’m Sandra Foster,” I said, sticking out my hand. “Sociology.”

He wiped his hand on his corduroys and shook my hand. “Bennett O’Reilly.”

And that was odd, too. He was my age. His name should be Matt or Mike or, God forbid, Troy. Bennett.

I was staring again. I said, “And you’re a biologist?”

“Chaos theory.”

“Isn’t that an oxymoron?” I said.

He grinned. “The way I did it, yes. Which is why my project lost its funding and I had to come to work for HiTek.”

Maybe that accounted for the oddness, and corduroys and canvas sneakers were what chaos theorists were wearing these days. No, Dr. Applegate, over in Chem, had been in chaos, and he dressed like everybody else in R D: flannel shirt, baseball cap, jeans, Nikes.

And nearly everybody at HiTek’s working out of their field. Science has its fads and crazes, like anything else: string theory, eugenics, mesmerism. Chaos theory had been big for a couple of years, in spite of Utah and cold fusion, or maybe because of it, but both of them had been replaced by genetic engineering. If Dr. O’Reilly wanted grant money, he needed to give up chaos and build a better mouse.

He was stooping over the box. “I don’t have a refrigerator. I’ll have to set it outside on the porch.” He picked it up, grunting a little. “Jeez, it’s heavy. Flip probably delivered it to you on purpose so she wouldn’t have to carry it all the way down here.” He boosted it up with his corduroy knee. “Well, on behalf of Dr. Turnbull and all of Flip’s other victims, thanks,” he said, and headed into the tangle of equipment.