by Nancy Kress
“Colonel, these are my daughters, Amanda and Sudie. Girls, say hello.”
“Hello,” said the older girl, a tall skinny child with long fair hair.
“I don’t want to say hello,” whined the younger. She looked unlike both her sister and her father. She shared Capelo’s dark hair and sallow skin, but while he was thin, short, and nervous, the little girl was a round, pink-faced lump of dough.
“I’m pleased to meet you both,” Kaufman said, insincerely. “May I present Dr. Singh?”
The older girl smiled and returned Dr. Singh’s handshake; Kaufman thought she might be tolerable, for a child. The younger stuck out her lip and scowled.
“Hello, Tom,” Dr. Singh said to Capelo. “It’s good to see you. I’m glad we’ll be working together again.”
“I am, too, Roz,” Capelo said, and seemed to mean it. Kaufman was pleased. Maybe Rosalind Singh would be a calming influence for the famously frenetic Capelo.
Marbet Grant walked up to them. She was the only one besides Lyle, who had put on his dress uniform, in evening clothes. Her gown was made of some wispy green material, the same color as her startling eyes, and it floated around her when she moved. Capelo’s daughters reacted instantly.
“Oh, you’re so pretty!” Sudie burst out. She stopped scowling and touched Marbet’s gown.
“Sudie, don’t do that,” Capelo said.
“I don’t mind,” Marbet said gaily. “You must be Dr. Capelo. And this is Sudie and this is Amanda.”
“How did you know?” Sudie said. “Daddy, I want a dress like this!”
Kaufman made all the introductions, but of course the others already knew of Marbet. The entire Solar System knew of her. Kaufman was particularly interested in this first meeting between Marbet and Capelo. He introduced Marbet as “project psychologist.”
“I don’t believe in psychology,” Capelo said flatly.
Marbet remained unruffled. “Even that based on physiology?”
“If it’s based on chemistry, with replicable results from controlled experiments, then of course I believe in it. That’s science. Literary theories about the mind are not.”
“Ah,” Marbet said.
“Fairy tales, all. From Uncle Droselmeyer Freud to Lady Godiva Jennings, undressing some poor sap’s mind ‘consciousness layer’ by ‘consciousness layer.’ All for a large amount of money, of course.”
Amanda said to Marbet, “You shouldn’t mind Daddy, ma’am. He’s always horrible to people he likes.”
“Unmasked by my own child. Amanda, you know that’s a fib. I’m horrible to everybody, whether I like them or not. Roz will confirm that.”
Marbet said to Amanda, “Is he horrible to you?”
“Awful,” Amanda said, grinning. “He just torments my life out.”
“Yeah,” said Sudie, the five-year-old, holding Capelo’s other hand.
“Unmasked by both my daughters,” Capelo said. “Okay, into the airlock with both of you. I was never meant to be a father.”
The girls ignored him. Amanda said to Marbet, “You’re famous. I saw you on the Net.”
“Have a little dignity, girls,” Capelo said. “Don’t crumble in the face of notoriety. Remember that you come from a long line of proudly independent nonentities.”
Marbet laughed. She hadn’t stopped studying Capelo, and suddenly Kaufman wondered what she saw. He saw a man feeling uncomfortable under scrutiny and covering his discomfort with mockery and sarcasm. On the other hand, since mockery and sarcasm were the physicist’s constant mode, perhaps they couldn’t really be called a response to Marbet’s attention.
The remaining three guests appeared, along with the steward’s mates serving dinner. Kaufman moved everyone to the table, set with white damask and wardroom plate service. There were oohs and aaahhs.
Dr. Ann Sikorski, the xenobiologist, sat between Marbet and Kaufman. Her husband, Dr. Dieter Gruber, the cause of this entire expedition, sat opposite, beside the Capelo children. Gruber was a big blunt man to whom somebody had given the genome of a magnificent Teutonic warrior. Blond, blue-eyed, theatrically muscled. Sudie Capelo took one look at Gruber and burst into tears.
“I don’t want to sit next to that Malor!” she cried.
“She’s been cranky all afternoon,” Capelo apologized. “Come here, Sudie, sit on my lap.”
“Nnnnoooooooo!” the child wailed.
Gruber looked bewildered. “What did I do? And what is this ‘Malor’?”
Tom Capelo’s lips twitched. “The evil warlords on her favorite Net program. Too bad we can’t all be physically appealing, Dieter.”
Sudie dung to her father’s arm, sobbing as if her world had been shattered. Snot ran from her nose. Gruber, looking repelled and determined, leaned toward the little girl and said with forced heartiness, “Don’t cry, Liebchen! See, I don’t bite, not pretty little girls.”
Sudie screamed harder. Capelo said to Amanda, “Call Jane to come get Sudie. She’s just tired; she’ll be fine once she calms down.”
“I always thought,” Hal Albemarle said, “that the Victorians were on the right track. Seen but not heard. Especially not on a Navy warship, which is no place for children anyway.”
Capelo’s face turned ugly. Before he could answer, Marbet Grant said swiftly, “Hal, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Just because you had an unhappy childhood is no reason to pick on poor Sudie, who’s just having a normal overtired mood.”
Everyone stared at Marbet, who went on calmly buttering a piece of bread. Hal said, “How the hell do you know if I had an unhappy childhood? Oh, I get it … you’re trading on your famous sensitivity to impress Capelo. Well, it just so happens you’re wrong.”
“No, I’m not,” Marbet said. “Please don’t try to lie to me.”
Albemarle rose. “Excuse me, please, Colonel Kaufman. I have some unfinished work in my quarters.” He stalked off the deck.
“Oh, I shouldn’t have said that,” Marbet said. “How about I go tell him I’m sorry? Lyle?”
“Give him time to calm down first,” Kaufman said, wondering what he had just witnessed. She was too socially adept for him to take the scene at face value.
Tom Capelo didn’t, either. “Very nice, Marbet. Deflect Albemarle’s attention to yourself and provoke him to leave before he and I can come to serious blows. Do you always interfere in other people’s confrontations? Are you that most dangerous of all people, a peace-at-any-price meddler?”
“No,” Marbet answered, nibbling at her bread.
Capelo gazed at her a moment longer, then laughed. “Don’t try to stage-manage me, Lady Meddler.”
“Daddy,” Amanda said, “don’t be mean to Ms. Grant. I like her.”
Capelo turned to his older daughter. Amanda looked steadily back, her small face determined. “A quisling in my camp,” Capelo said. “Defeated again by the solidarity of women, damn it. All right, honey, I won’t be mean. Ms. Grant, I’m sorry you meddled with me and Albemarle.”
“I’m not,” Marbet said, so serenely that Capelo’s eyes widened and he gave another short bark of laughter.
“No, I’ll bet you’re not. Kaufman, I don’t envy you managing this team.”
“I didn’t want the job,” Kaufman said truthfully, and everyone laughed again. The tension eased. Rosalind Singh left and quietly brought back Hal Albemarle, who nodded stiffly first to Kaufman, then to Capelo. For the rest of the meal, he had the air of a man deliberately trying to be pleasant, but Kaufman doubted he was enjoying himself very much. He wasn’t sure anyone else was, either, except possibly Amanda, who seemed fascinated by Marbet Grant. Still, everyone talked animatedly, first names were introduced, and anyone looking on would have thought these were, if not old friends, at least cheerful acquaintances.
Afterwards, as small groups stood around admiring the receding planet, forming and reforming small groups, Kaufman steered Marbet out of earshot.
“Quite a maneuver you brought off at dinner. Did Albem
arle have an unhappy childhood?”
“No more than anybody else. But he thinks he did.”
Kaufman considered that. “He’s going to be a difficult team member, isn’t he?”
“I think that under ordinary circumstances, Hal would work to fit himself in. But these aren’t ordinary circumstances. He’s not very sure of himself, and it can’t be easy to be a third-rate scientist working with a more-than-first-rate one who doesn’t bother to hide his opinion of other people’s talents. Why did you include him on the expedition, Lyle?”
“I wasn’t given a choice. He’s Navy, you know. I’m Army. The Solar Alliance balances out the services as carefully as a cook making a soufflé. You think that in wartime we’d let all that go, but we never do. And I’m told that as a scientist, Albemarle is more than competent.”
“But not a Thomas Capelo.”
“No, not that. Not to be expected,” Kaufman said. “Are you going to apologize to Albemarle?”
“Oh, yes. Fulsomely. He’s feeling very upset about his own reaction, which surprised even him. I don’t want him to blame me for his losing control like that.”
“Is he going to blame Tom Capelo?”
“Yes, but he was prepared to dislike Tom anyway, even before dinner.”
“And what do you think of Tom?” Kaufman had been contemplating the question throughout dinner.
She answered indirectly, watching Rosalind Singh talk with Capelo and Amanda. Rosalind said something that made Capelo laugh, momentarily lighting up his dark, thin face. “I’m glad Dr. Singh is on the team. She doesn’t feel competitive with Tom, and she’s compassionate about his bitterness.”
“Do you see him as bitter, then?”
“I think he is the bitterest man I have ever met.”
Kaufman was silent a moment. “His wife died two years ago. Killed in a Faller raid.”
Marbet said, “He must have loved her unto distraction.”
An odd choice of words, Kaufman thought. “Dieter seems to get along with Tom.”
“Yes. Dieter is insensitive to mockery, sarcasm, nuances, and insight. Tom may find that restful. At any rate, Tom will never upset Dieter. Only Dieter’s wife can do that. I like Ann, incidentally. Such a gentle person.”
“Yes,” Kaufman said. They went on discussing the team members. Her eyes, however, never left Capelo, now downing with Amanda and Dieter Gruber at the far end of the deck, and Kaufman couldn’t read her expression at all.
* * *
The next day, Capelo ambushed Kaufman before breakfast, in the corridor outside Kaufman’s quarters. “Lyle, I need a favor.”
“Good morning, Tom. I hope you’re comfortable in your quarters.”
“That’s the favor.”
“You don’t like your quarters?” Kaufman said pleasantly. Capelo should like them. He’d been given the VIP stateroom for the children and their nurse, a room big enough to function as bedroom, schoolroom, playroom, and whatever else children needed. Kaufman didn’t want them roaming around the ship, irritating Commander Grafton, who hadn’t wanted children aboard any more than Kaufman did. Capelo had a small room next door.
“The quarters are fine. But Sudie doesn’t like not being able to get to me without going out into the corridor and through my door. She doesn’t even know if I’m there until she does that, which scares her. She’s a bit nervous, and she’s entitled.”
It was the closest Kaufman had heard him come to mentioning his wife’s death. Kaufman said, “I’m not sure what you’re asking. Do you want another bunk put in the stateroom?”
“No. I work at night, and anyway Amanda’s going through a super-modest phase. No, I want you to have a little door cut in the wall between the girls’ room and mine.”
Kaufman stared at him. Evidently Capelo didn’t realize that Army officers didn’t just go around cutting holes in Navy ships. “Tom, I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Just a small door, big enough for me to crawl through. Under my bunk, and we’ll push furniture in front of it on the other side. Sudie just wants the reassurance that she can get to me anytime she needs to, and she likes the idea of a tiny secret door.”
What Sudie liked wasn’t the point, Kaufman thought. Grafton wouldn’t like it at all. Kaufman had told Marbet the truth: Balancing Army and Navy was a delicate act. Kaufman was Special Project Team head, with considerable powers to direct where the Alan B. Shepard went, when she went, and what she did when she got there. But she was still Grafton’s ship.
“Tom—”
“Please, Lyle. I really need this.”
Kaufman studied him. Army/Navy wasn’t the only balancing act here. Capelo was as difficult as everybody had warned, judging from his effect on Albemarle, and even on Marbet, last night. Granting this favor might go far in making him willing to work with Kaufman. Capelo stood now with a most uncharacteristic look on his face: humble waiting. That was too much credit in the bank to throw away.
Kaufman calculated rapidly. Grafton would never agree. But Kaufman hadn’t been in diplomacy as long as he had without learning how to make detours around immovable objects. “All right, Tom, I’ll see what I can do. But neither you nor your daughters can say anything, not to anybody.”
“Wonderful! I’m really grateful, Lyle.”
Which was the point.
Kaufman found the correct form on ship’s computer: Work Form for Alterations to Bulkhead, Non-Operational and Non-Secure Areas. He filled it in, printed a flimsy, and summoned Carpenter’s Mate First Class Michael Doolin, whose name was on ship’s roster.
“Doolin, here’s a work form. Carry out the assignment and return the flimsy to me. I’ll enter it in the records myself.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Only, sir … this form ain’t signed.”
“Yes, it is. See, there—‘Colonel Lyle Kaufman, SADA.’”
“Supposed to be a Navy officer’s signature, sir. Captain or exec or OOD.”
“Doolin,” Kaufman said, with all the quiet authority he’d learned to project in twenty years, underlaid with the subtle menace he’d also learned, “do you understand my position on this ship?”
“Yes, sir,” Doolin said unhappily.
“Do I outrank the OOD?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the exec?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then can you explain the nature of your problem with this direct order?”
“No, sir. Do it right away, sir.” Doolin took the filmsy and set off, his gait expressive of everything he wasn’t saying.
Kaufman deleted the completed work form from the computer. When Doolin returned the flimsy, Kaufman would destroy it. Of course, scuttlebutt would go around about the “tiny, secret door.” But Kaufman doubted it would reach any officer. It was too trivial, and Grafton ran too much of a by-the-book ship. Crewmen and officers didn’t fraternize. Also, the crew on this particular expedition had been carefully selected for trouble-free service records and consistently reliable performance of duties. No one aboard, not the lowest crewman third class, had ever had so much as an official reprimand logged anywhere in the SADN records. Kaufman was pretty sure nothing would come of the hole in the stateroom wall, which he would have Doolin restore when the ship returned to Mars.
All the same, Capelo had, after less than twenty-four hours aboard, already caused Kaufman to move outside the rules. Kaufman wondered how many more times the physicist would do so, and how far he, Kaufman, was actually prepared to go on behalf of Thomas Capelo.
FIVE
ABOARD THE ALAN B. SHEPARD
There it is,” Capelo said, “the most fried object in a thousand star systems. We who are already dead salute you.”
“There wasn’t any life on it anyway,” Hal Albemarle said.
“Do we know that? Do you know that? Are you holding out on us, Hal? Give, give, share the wisdom of the ages.”
Albemarle glared. Kaufman, gathered with the rest of his team on the observation deck of the Alan B. Shep
ard, suppressed an impatient twinge. The relationship between Capelo and Albemarle had not improved since their first encounter, and neither one bothered to hide his dislike. Fortunately, Albemarle and Commander Grafton seemed to be the only ones that challenged Capelo’s sharp mockery. Rosalind Singh indulged it; Ann Sikorski tolerated it; Dieter Gruber was oblivious of it.
Gruber was the only one missing from the preliminary survey of Nimitri, sixth planet from the star in the World System. The geologist had taken ill the day after boarding. Ship’s doctor determined that Gruber had contracted a virus, one of the nasty mutated strains appearing so frequently on Earth; that the virus was laterally transmitted; and that nobody on the Alan B. Shepard possessed immunity. Immediately she slapped Gruber into quarantine, where he remained, querulous at being able to participate only virtually in the project team’s discussions.
The ship had journeyed at top speed from Mars to Space Tunnel #1, and then through several more clustered tunnels to reach this remote system at the far edge of the galaxy. After emerging from the system’s only tunnel, #438, the Alan B. Shepard took another three days to reach orbit around Nimitri, a bleak, frozen, atmosphereless globe that was the closest planet to Space Tunnel #438. Long before their arrival in the star system, Commander Grafton had turned over the observation deck to the project team, who had set up their data-ports there. Now Capelo, Albemarle, and Rosalind Singh studied the displays, which coordinated data from the ship’s normal sensors from those added to her for this expedition, and from the two probes sent down to the surface.
Rosalind said, “Radioactivity is twenty-nine times what would be predicted. Spectography results … high concentrations of iridium, platinum, thorium, moderately high amounts of uranium … Hal, run an Auberjois test on that data, please.”
Capelo said, “Looks like Syree Johnson called it.”
“I told you so!” crowed the voice of Gruber, following the proceedings from quarantine.