“Was it?”
“Yes! I didn’t do all this by myself, Papa. Most of the others cannot stand Hoffman.”
Brumado got up slowly and went to the desk. Picking up the telephone, he asked the man who answered to find Dr. Reed. The Englishman opened the office door before Brumado could return to the conference table. My god, he thought, they must all be sitting in the outer office. I wonder if Hoffman is there too.
Reed seemed faintly amused by it all.
“None of us can get along with Hoffman,” he said, smiling slightly as he sat relaxed in a chair across the table from Brumado and his daughter. “Frankly, I think bringing him along to Mars would be a disaster. Always have.”
“But he passed all the psychological tests.”
Reed arched an eyebrow. “So would a properly motivated chimpanzee. But you wouldn’t want to live in the same cage with him, would you?”
“You’ve all been filling out cross-evaluation reports for the past two years!” Brumado heard his own voice rising with more than a hint of anger in it. He forced it down. “I admit that the reports written about Professor Hoffman have not been glowing, but there has been no hint that he was so disliked.”
“I can tell you about those evaluation reports,” Reed said, almost smirking. “No one ever expressed their true feelings in the reports. Not in writing. There is enormous psychological pressure to put a good face on everything. Every one of us realized straight from the outset that those reports would be a reflection on the person who wrote them as much as on the person they were writing about.”
Brumado thought, We should have realized that from the beginning. These are very bright men and women, bright enough to see all the possibilities.
Reed continued, “To borrow a phrase from Scotland Yard, we understood that anything we wrote in those evaluation forms might be taken down in evidence and used against us.”
With a shake of his head, Brumado said, “I still can’t understand why you waited until this very last moment to bring your opposition out into the open.”
“Two reasons, actually,” said Reed. “First, we all expected that DiNardo could keep Hoffman under control. Our good priest seemed to have a calming effect on the Austrian, rather like old Hindenburg had on Hitler.”
Joanna barely suppressed a giggle.
“Second, I suppose that none of us actually faced up to the awful possibility of spending nearly two years living cheek-by-jowl with Hoffman until this very weekend. With the final decisions made and DiNardo packing off to hospital-well, I suppose it suddenly dawned on us that Hoffman simply wouldn’t do.”
“How do I tell this to Professor Hoffman?” Brumado asked softly.
“Oh, I’d be willing to tackle that chore,” Reed said at once. “I’d be almost happy to do it.”
Brumado shook his head sadly. “No. It is not your responsibility.”
He dismissed Reed and asked Dr. Li to come back into the office.
With Joanna still sitting beside him, Brumado said wearily, “I suppose there is no way around it. Professor Hoffman will have to be told.”
Li seemed to have calmed down considerably. His mask of impassivity was in place once more.
“It is my duty to inform him,” Li said.
“If you like, I will explain it to him,” said Brumado.
With a quick glance at Joanna, Li murmured, “As you wish.”
Hoffman looked as tense as a stalking leopard when he entered the office. He stood a moment at the door, eyeing Li, Brumado, and Joanna with unconcealed suspicion. Short, round-shouldered, his round pie face pale with tension. He was wearing a powder-blue cardigan sweater buttoned neatly over a shirt and tie striped yellow and red. His slacks were dark blue, almost black.
“Please,” called Brumado from the conference table, “come in and sit down.”
Li was standing at the end of the table, as far from the door as possible. Joanna still sat next to her father, turned toward Hoffman so that Brumado could not see her face.
As if stepping through a minefield Hoffman walked across the carpeted floor and pulled out the chair at the head of the table. He sat down.