Despite having worked under him for several years, Fallows had never been able to master the art of feeling at ease in Merrick’s presence. Displays of undue familiarity were hardly to be expected between echelon-six and echelon-four personnel, naturally, but even allowing for that, Fallows always found himself in acute discomfort within seconds of entering a room with Merrick in it, especially when nobody else was present. This time he wouldn’t let it happen, he had resolved for the umpteenth time back in the corridor. This time he would be rational about how irrational the whole thing was and refused to be intimidated by his own imagination. Merrick had not singled him out as any special object of his disdain. He behaved that way with everybody. It didn’t mean anything.
Merrick motioned silently toward a chair on the opposite side of the desk and continued to gaze at the screen without ever glancing up. Fallows sat. After some ten seconds he began feeling uncomfortable. What had he done wrong in the last few days? Had there been something he’d forgotten?… or failed to report, maybe?… or left with loose ends dangling? He racked his brains but couldn’t think of anything. Finally, unnerved, Fallow managed to stammer, “Er .. you wanted to see me, sir.”
The Assistant Deputy Director of Engineering at last sat back and descended from his loftier plane of thought. “Ah, yes, Fallows.” He gestured toward the screen he had been studying. “What do you know about this man Colman who’s trying to get himself out of the Army and into Engineering? The Deputy has received a copy of ‘the transfer request filed with the Military and passed it along to me for comment. It seems that this Colman has given your name as a reference. What do you know about him?” The inclined chin and the narrowing of the Gothic eyebrows were asking silently why any self-respecting echelon-four engineering officer would associate with an infantry sergeant.
It took Fallows a moment or two to realize what had happened. Then he groaned inwardly as the circumstances came back to him.
“I, er.. . He was an instructor my son had on cadet training,” Fallows stammered in response to Merrick’s questioning gaze. “I met him at the end-of-course parade.. talked to him a bit. He seemed to have a strong ambition to try for engineering school, and I probably said, ‘Why not give it a try?,’ or something like that. I guess maybe he remembered my name.”
“Mmmm. So you don’t really know anything about his experience or aptitude. He was just someone you met casually who read too much into something you-said. Right?”
Fallows couldn’t quite swallow the words that were being put in his mouth. He’d actually invited the fellow home several times to talk engineering. Colman had some fascinating ideas. He frowned and shook his head before he could stop himself. “Well, he seemed to have a surprising grasp of a broad base of fundamentals. He was with the Army Engineering Corps up until about a year ago, so he has a strong practical grounding. And he’s studied extensively since we left Earth. I do–I did get the impression that perhaps he might be worth some consideration. But of course that’s just an opinion.”
“Worth considering for what? You’re not saying he’d make an engineering officer, surely.”
“Of course not! But one of the Tech grades maybe . . . Two or Three perhaps. Or maybe the graduate entry stream.” –
“Hmph.” Merrick waved a hand at the screen. “Doesn’t have the academies. He’d need to do at least a year with kids half his age. We’re not a social rehabilitation unit, you know.”
“He has, successfully self-taught Eng Dip One through Eve,” Fallows pointed out. Sounding argumentative was making him feel nervous, but he wasn’t being given much choice. “I thought that possibly he might be capable of making a Two on the Tech refresher…’
Merrick glared across the desk suspiciously. Evidently he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted. “His Army record isn’t exactly the best one could wish for, you know. Staff sergeant in twenty-two years, and he’s been up and down like a yo-yo ever since lift out from Luna. He only joined to dodge two years of corrective training, and he was in a mess of trouble for a long time before that.”