With a click, the picture vanished. Addison lit a cigarette. The members of the meeting were looking at their watches and speaking of appointments, perhaps thinking of their afternoon tea. A girl with flat black hair had come in and was handing a message to Rodriguez-O’Hearn. The one or two questions asked of Flinders had, he felt, little to do with what he had said, and he thought this must be his fault. Addison made an appointment to lunch with him next day, and the girl from Peaceful Uses said shyly that she looked forward to discussing with him the effects of nuclear testing in the Sahara. In the meantime, Rodriguez-O’Hearn, whom Flinders had wanted to meet, had disappeared. A secretary came in to empty the ashtrays and align the empty chairs. It occurred to Flinders that another meeting was about to take place here: the very idea was exhausting.

He left the room and walked down a gray corridor. He wished he had gone to the trouble of taking a proper film, like Edrich, or had at least prepared the right kind of final report. At El Attara he had thought these things peripheral, but here they seemed to matter most of all. He should have been able to address the meeting in its own language—that language of ends and trends, of agenda and addenda, of concrete measures in fluid situations, which he had never set himself to master. At El Attara they had needed help and he had done what he could, but he found himself unable to speak with confidence about this work. He knew the problem of erosion to be immense; and the trees, being handed down that way, had looked so few and so small.

At the elevator he met Edrich. Edrich seemed older and shorter than he had in the conference room. Flinders would have told him what was in his heart, but he somehow felt that Edrich was not the right recipient for the information. They took the Down elevator together, and Edrich got off at the Clinic. Flinders continued to the main floor and, leaving the building by a side entrance, went out through the rose garden.

Rodriguez-O’Hearn put down the telephone. Hearing him ring off, his secretary brought him his afternoon coffee in a cardboard container.

“Thank you, Miss Shamsee.”

“Regular with sugar.” She pulled up a metal blind. In the early outside darkness, red and yellow lights were being turned on. The river icily reflected the crimson Frosti-Cola sign.

“Any other messages?”

She put a slip of paper in his calendar. “Tomorrow afternoon, meeting at three-thirty. Two experts reporting: Suzuki in public accounting, and Raman, malaria control.”

“Better get up their files.”

“I’ve already sent for them.”