“Quite so. Nothing is as certain to guarantee disaster as if a crew panics-and nothing will panic a crew faster than fear or uncertainty in the leaders over them. The higher you get in the chain of command, the more certain you have to appear. As the head of the fleet, part of my job is to appear infallible.”
“Yet you’ve already admitted your own fallibility.”
“There is a great difference between being infallible and seeming infallible, Mr. Erickson. While there is a great pressure on me to be infallible, fortunately, seeming to be infallible is all that is actually required.”
Erickson added wryly, “Along with everything else, I must admit that before I had this opportunity to speak with you, I never stopped to think of how grueling your position actually must be. Everything you’ve told me so far is testimony to the constant demands on your energies and time. What I can’t understand is how you stand it. How do you put up with the unending pressure?”
“The answer to that is quite simple, Mr. Erickson,” Tambu replied easily. “I don’t. To survive unchanged and unscarred would require a superman-and, as I have been trying to assure you, I’m quite human. Often painfully so.”
CHAPTER TEN
Ramona awoke alone in Tambu’s bed. She groped for his warmth for a few moments, then sleepily burrowed back into her pillow, assuming that he was in the bathroom. Poised on the brink of unconsciousness, her mind registered a small noise on the far side of the cabin. She snuck a lazy peek through her lashes, then blinked her eyes fully open.