Free Worst Case Scenario by Michael Bowen

about institutional dynamics in mature bureaucracies. Swear to God, and don’t ask me why. They had me in for a chat when they were noodling over some big-picture metatheory called the Mandarin Hypothesis.”
    â€œI’m afraid I’m drawing a blank on that one,” Michaelson said.
    Leaning back so far in his chair that the front legs lifted off the carpet, Marciniak flicked his right hand carelessly.
    â€œThe premise is that every society starts out just barely getting by. Subsistence. Then, boom, something no one understands happens and suddenly some societies explode with energy, going farther in two generations than they had in six centuries. Whatever it is that happens has something to do with people who are really good at doing something useful: fighting, growing food, making tools, putting ten million bits of information on a ceramic chip the size of your fingernail—that kind of thing.”
    â€œI’m with you,” Michaelson said, nodding.
    â€œThe hypothesis is that just when things are going really well, something strange happens. Power starts slipping away from people who can do things and passes to people who can say things. Priests in Egypt and ancient Israel. Mandarins in China. Fonctionnaires and bureaucrats in prerevolutionary France. Apparatchiks in postrevolutionary Russia.”
    â€œLawyers in the United States?” Michaelson asked a trifle mischievously.
    â€œYou said it, I didn’t. Anyway, that’s the Mandarin Hypothesis. There really is a paper on it over there at NSC and I suppose my name really does show up in a footnote somewhere. I think Sharon Bedford probably heard of me when they were batting the thing around on a slow day in the White House basement a few years back.”
    â€œIt’s quite stimulating,” Michaelson said, “but I don’t see any obvious way to use it to explain why she died and who killed her.”
    â€œNo,” Marciniak agreed, emphatically shaking his head. “The Mandarin Hypothesis is a telescope. To get to the bottom of whatever happened to her, you’ll need a microscope. Facts. Data.”
    â€œNo doubt you’re right,” Michaelson said. “What did you go to see her about the morning she died? That would qualify as a datum, wouldn’t it?”
    â€œFair enough.” Marciniak shook his head with a half-smile. “I had a lead on a job for her. Down the road, in an agency that doesn’t exist yet.”
    â€œAn agency run by you?”
    â€œIt’d be nice if it worked out that way, but you learn not to count on things like that in this town.”
    â€œSounds a tiny bit thin.”
    â€œDamn near invisible. I knew how bad she wanted it, though, so I thought I’d float it by her.”
    â€œHow did she react?” Michaelson asked.
    â€œShe was more intrigued than I thought she’d be. She asked me for details, said she wanted to follow up.”
    â€œNot exactly the depths of despair, then.”
    â€œI never saw her despondent,” Marciniak said. “Certainly not that weekend.”
    â€œDid she mention any inducement she could offer?” Michaelson asked. “Information that might come in handy for a busy senior official, that kind of thing?”
    â€œNot to me she didn’t. That’d be a pretty low-rent play. And anyway, I don’t see how she could have had anything I wanted.”
    Michaelson saw the message-waiting light on Marciniak’s phone begin to glow bright red. The bureaucratic day was about to start. He rose from his chair.
    â€œIf she had had something you wanted,” he asked as he leaned across the desk to shake Marciniak’s hand, “do you think you might have found a job that already existed for her?”
    â€œHey,” Marciniak answered, grinning, “I said it was a low-rent play. I didn’t say I was too classy to try it if it looked like it might work.”
    ***
    Not on