“Which is?”
“He-and Intergal-can gain a lot more from Petaybee than consumable minerals!”
“And what can they gain?”
“Working knowledge of a new sentient life-form.”
“Which is?”
“This planet.”
He brought his chin forward in a nod that ended abruptly. He looked at her and smiled: not a really reassuring smile, but the kind one might give someone who might not be playing with a full deck. Yana raised an eyebrow and deliberately laid one arm on the desk, hand relaxed on the surface, as she hooked the other arm along the back of the chair, assuming as indolent and relaxed a position as she could. She had given enough of the psych tests she knew were upcoming to know how to act: open, relaxed, easy, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She even hauled her right ankle up to her left knee, as if to leave herself completely open. This room was hot, also, and she didn’t want to show any perspiration-even if the bird colonel was.
He shot the expected questions at her and she gave him back the answers, pausing briefly now and then to consideras was wise of her to do-but not pausing long enough for him to consider it an evasion or hesitation. It was working, with him and with her, because the more complicated the shrink-questions, the more she relaxed, since she knew exactly the sorts of answers required. They hadn’t really looked at her records, had they?
Suddenly, in the middle of posing a question designed to reveal any sexual aberrations she might have, he stopped and stared at her-as if seeing her for the first time.
“You know all the parameters of the answers, don’t you?”
“Wondered when you’d figure that one out, Colonel.”
He leaned back as far as the uncomfortable chair would let him, crossing his arms on his chest. “So what’s behind all this? Give me a straight answer.”
“I already did, Colonel. I’ve known Captain Fiske a long time. He asked me to do some nosing about for him since I was billeted in a Petaybean village. I did. I gave him my report. He doesn’t care to believe it.” She shrugged at such vagary. “It’s not the first time commanders have refused to believe reconnaissance reports and taken more comfortable rear-echelon theories.” She shrugged again, reaching up to scratch her head as if puzzled by such irrationality. She was sweating, and that wasn’t the way to put across her point of view. Except that the colonel was sweating more profusely than she. “Hey, did they turn up the heat around here just so I wouldn’t get a chill in my paper wrapping?”
Now the colonel was free to take out a cloth and mop his face and neck. “Heat’s been rising steadily. I thought this was the cold season down here.”
“The locals are already taking bets on the exact day and time the ice on the river will crack and be carried away downstream.”
He gave her a side look, then grinned. “How’d you bet?”
“Me?” She chuckled. “I don’t have enough money to waste on foolish bets, Colonel. But the earliest of those dates chalked up is weeks away.” They felt another rumble underfoot, one considerably more authoritative than any of the others.
The colonel clutched at the edge of the desk as the monitor rattled on its stand. In the same second, Yana grabbed the side of the desk.
“Someone’s planting too much semtex,” the colonel said with a frown.
Yana grinned, having thought of another answer to the whammy they had just felt.
“Spill what you know, Major,” the colonel advised, “while there’s still a chance for you to get straightened out on this. Unless, of course, you think the planet’s fighting back?”
“If, that is, I was a bettor, Colonel, I think my money’d be on the planet.”
Just then the door burst open-resisting a little, for it was slightly off kilter from the last quake-and Fiske came in, his eyes narrowed in anger. Behind him were Giancarlo and Terce.
“All right, Yanaba, where is he? How’s he doing this?”
Yana took great satisfaction in maintaining her calm while three sweaty, angry perturbed men threatened to overwhelm her. “I assume that the ‘he’ you refer to is Dr. Shongili?”