“Thank you, no. I don’t drink while I’m working.”
“Very well. However, I’ve taken the liberty of ordering the ship’s crew to load a case of that particular liquor onto your ship. Please accept it as a personal gift from me.”
“You seem to know quite a bit about me,” the reporter observed. “Right down to the brand of liquor I would drink, if I could afford it.”
“I probably know more about you than you do, and definitely more than you’d like me to know. I’ve reviewed your family history, health records, psychological records, as well as copies of everything you’ve ever written including that rather dubious series of articles you wrote in school under an assumed name. You were checked very closely before permission for this interview was granted. I don’t talk with just anyone who drops me a note. In my line of work, my whole future and that of my forces hinges on my ability to gather and analyze data. If I didn’t think you were safe, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Yet you refuse to meet me face-to-face and dispatched a ship rigged to blow in event of betrayal?” Erickson smiled. “Your actions aren’t as confident as your words.”
There was a moment of silence before the reply came.
“I’ve made mistakes before,” Tambu said at last. “Often enough that I long since abandoned any ideas of infallibility. In lieu of that, I guard against all possibilities to the best of my abilities. Now may we start the interview? Even though I have tried to set aside time for this meeting, there are many demands on my time and I can’t be sure how long we’ll have before other priorities pull me away.”