While O’Mara pretended to stare down at his large, blunt-fingered hands on the desk before him, he watched them through lowered brows as they settled themselves comfortably or uncomfortably and stopped fidgeting. He was thinking that one didn’t have to have a history of insanity to work in Other-Species Psychology, but that precondition conferred certain advantages, even where their chief was concerned. Every member of his staff was flawed in some respect, but today he was regarding them all clinically and dispassionately from a completely new viewpoint.
Braithwaite looked relaxed, self-assured, and incredibly neat. Even when he was leaning back onto his shoulder blades in an armchair, his uniform gave the impression that he was about to undergo a fleet commander’s inspection. Cha Thrat was a physiological classification DCNF whose large, cone-shaped body possessed four stubby legs, four medial arms, and another four arms at shoulder level that were thinner with hands terminating in finer, more sensitive digits. Physically, Lioren resembled Cha Thrat except that its body, legs, and arms were longer and less muscular, but the resemblance was no closer than that between a giraffe and a horse.
O’Mara raised his head. “I want to discuss briefly my promotion to administrator,” he said, “and its effect on the future work of this department, the change of emphasis in certain of your duties that will become necessary, and what I expect from all of you as a result. Feel free to interrupt if you are quite sure you have something of value to say. But I shall begin by talking, in order of length of service and experience, about you.”
He waited until a second bout of fidgeting had abated, then went on, “I know that you have all broken the rules by sneaking a look at one another’s confidential psych files, so what I say should not cause embarrassment. If it does, tough. Braithwaite first.”
Without changing his position in the deep armchair, the lieutenant somehow gave the impression that he had come to attention.
“You,” he went on briskly, “deal well with the office staff and routine and you are good with people regardless of species. When sympathy is needed you are sympathetic, firm when the being concerned isn’t doing enough to help solve his, her, or its problem, and you never, ever lose your temper. To your present superior you are respectful without being subservient, and you gently but firmly resist any attempt at bullying. As my principal assistant you’re close to ideal. Intelligent, efficient, adaptable, dedicated, uncomplaining, and completely lacking in ambition. In spite of completing your medical training here, you refused to take the Corps exams for surgeon-lieutenant. You have found your niche in Other-Species Psychology and you don’t want to go anywhere or do anything else. When you were offered a major promotion off-hospital you turned it down.
“But enough of the compliments, Lieutenant,” he went on. “On and under the surface your personality is so well adjusted that it is almost frightening. Your only defect is that in one respect you are a total and abject coward. You want to be and you are a trusted and resourceful second-in-command who enjoys the power and advantages that the position confers, but you are intensely afraid of taking the ultimate responsibility that would go with the top job.” Without the smallest change of expression, Braithwaite nodded. He was a man who was comfortable with the truth about himself. O’Mara turned to Cha Thrat.
“Unlike the lieutenant,” he said, “you are not afraid of anything. On Sommaradva you were a leading warrior-surgeon who, in spite of your patient being the first other-species entity you had ever seen, was able to intervene surgically and save the life of a leading member of the contact team. Because of the team’s gratitude, plus the fact that they wanted to do the Sommaradvan authorities a favor because the contact was not going well, you were sent here as a trainee, in spite of hospital objections, for political rather than medical reasons.
“In the event your surgical ability and technique were acceptable,” he continued sourly, “but your strict adherence to Sommaradvan medical ethics was not. You were free to attend lectures, but soon nobody would accept you for practical work on the wards. We found you a job as a trainee in Maintenance, where you did well and became popular with a large number of the junior-grade medical and maintenance staff trainees until you messed up there, too.
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