“Well, Intergal doesn’t, entirely,” the colonel said, as if he had read her thoughts. “The animals we commissioned are here, but there have been sightings of other types that indicate perhaps Dr. Shongili and his assistants were a trifle more creative than was covered by their authorization. The current Dr. Shongili, also Sean, is certainly an odd bird, not what you’d call a team player. We’ve monitored his records, however, and can’t find any evidence that he’s been exceeding his instructions. We could, of course, move him, but this is not a research area favored by many in our employ, and the Shongilis have done so well at producing viable species for arctic conditions that we’re reluctant to remove the current Shongili without more concrete evidence. Trouble is, unauthorized species are not the only anomaly. Something else is going on here-our satellite monitors have detected deposits of important minerals on this planet. When we dispatch teams, they either can’t find the location of the deposits, or else they simply don’t return.”
“That’s why psyops is interested?” she asked, relaxing a little.
“You got it.” Suddenly he grinned at her, an expression that did not make him any more attractive. “That’s where we can help each other, Major.”
“Sir?”
“You’re here this morning technically to be demobilized. You’re a medical retiree due to spend the rest of your days on this iceberg, which is unfortunate for you. However, your experience as an intercommand investigator, and your earlier work with preliminary data gathering landing teams, is of some interest to us, despite your disability, as is your record of combat experience. You don’t realize it yet, of course, but being a combat veteran carries considerable cachet in this place where most families have at least one, and usually several, relatives in the corps. Furthermore your genetic stock is similar to these people’s.” He eyed her, and Yanaba knew he was assessing the sprinkle of white in the black hair that Bry used to claim had an auburn cast under bright light, the high cheekbones, the rather bleached-out olive complexion, and the slightly tilted green-gold eyes. Her body had once been lean and athletic, but weeks of illness had reduced her to brittle gauntness at a weight she might have enjoyed had her strength not deserted her along with the extra kilos.
“How’s that?” she asked, mystified.
“The people on this continent are a mixture of Irish and Eskimo-we’ve resettled cold-weather natives all over the planet to assist the others in assimilation. In this area it’s Eskimo: in other settlements, ethnic Scandinavians and Indo-Asians.”
“I don’t exactly fit then,” she said, smiling as tolerantly as possible.
“Well, of course, you were practically born into the company, but your father was Irish and your first name, Yanaba-”
“Yanaba,” she corrected. “That’s Navajo-my mother’s people. It’s a war name, like a lot of traditional Navajo names. Means ‘she meets the enemy.’ The Navajo, by the way, were desert dwellers, not snow people.”
“Close enough,” he said. “Desert can get damned cold midwinter.” He dismissed her objection with a wave.
That told her she had made a tactical error by showing up his ignorance before she heard what he wanted. But she had a fierce loyalty to her family. All she had of them now was the history recorded in the computers for her by her parents before their deaths. It was about all she had had in her life that hadn’t been Internal-issued.
“We think you can fit, Maddock,” he told her. “And we want you to do just that, because we need to know what’s going on. We want you to get to know the people, find out what or who exactly is responsible for these problems: if Shongili is concealing experiments in producing new life-forms on this planet, we need to know about it. If the geologic survey teams are being deliberately ambushed and eliminated, we want to know that, and we want to know whom we have to deal with. You don’t have enough technical knowledge to locate the deposits yourself, but we want you to find out who’s preventing our teams from locating them. If there’s some kind of sabotage or incipient insurrection brewing, help us put a stop to it.”