“Because my biology doesn’t care whether he was interested in you like that. My biology clocked a predator-class male within conversation distance of you, and the report saysmonitor,and it is going to saymonitorevery time a male who looks like that says your name.”
She is quiet for three steps. Then: “Every time?”
“Every time.”
“For how long?”
“Lorri.” I look at her. “Permanently.”
Something crosses her face. Not alarm or displeasure. The beginning of understanding — the first edge of whatpermanentlymeans when a Skiveth male says it, and what it will cost, and what it will give.
“The manual,” she says.
“The manual.”
“I really need to read that manual.”
“You really do.”
* **
Morrison’s office is on the admin level. Third door. The coffee mug on the threshold that has been there for eleven years. Nobody has moved it. The mug has seniority over most of the staff.
She stops at the door. Looks at me. The pink eyes from Flossie’s office have cleared but the vulnerability is still there underneath, and her hands are working — clenching, releasing, clenching again, the rhythm of someone talking herself through a door she hasn’t walked through yet. I have watched her do this twice now. At the foot of the ramp. At the comm console. The hands argue and the hands lose, and she walks through anyway.
“I’ll wait out here,” I say.
She nods. Walks in. I turn towards the corridor.
“Ereux,” Morrison, from inside. Not a request. “Get in here. This concerns you too.”
I get in there. Morrison does not issue invitations twice. I stand by the door. Lorri sits in the chair across the desk. Morrison looks at both of us with the expression of a woman who has already decided everything and is now going to tell us what she decided.
Morrison is behind the desk. Steel-gray hair. Reading glasses low on her nose. The operational coffee mug in her hand. She takes one look at Lorri — the borrowed shirt, the bandages, the pink eyes, the post-Vrennak look of someone who is no longer the person they were yesterday — and one look at me, the bandaged forearms, the ridges at a shade she has never seen on me in a decade of dock reports, the posture of a male who is standing by the door of his superior’s office and will not sit down because sitting down would mean being further from the female in the chair.
“Vance. Sit. You’re already sitting. Good.” She sets the mug down. “I’ve read the incident report. I’ve read it twice because the first time Ithought there was an error. There was no error. You held a Vrennak’s gaze with a vocal trick on your first day. You pulled two containment seal releases under fire. You did not run when you were told not to run. And you set off my quarantine protocol by touching a panel, which I have been telling Bay Authority to fix for six months and which they have not fixed because Bay Authority operates on a timeline I find personally offensive and which I intend to correct.”
A sound from Lorri. Small. The sound of a female who has just been told that the quarantine was not entirely her fault. Her mouth opens — the beginning ofsorry,I can see the shape of it, the reflex that has been firing every time something goes wrong since she walked into my hold — and then she closes it. Swallows the word. Her hands flatten on her thighs. She does not apologize.
Morrison notices. Morrison notices everything. The coffee mug pauses a fraction of a second, which is Morrison’s version of a standing ovation.
“Flossie tells me you are brave and not built for SNAG. Flossie is correct; she’s almost always correct about people, which is annoying, and almost always wrong about timelines, which is why I handle the schedules.” A beat. “I want you at OOPS. You start next cycle.”
“I —”
“I am not finished.” Morrison’s coffee mug hits the desk. The sound is a full stop. “I am offering you two options, and I want you to consider both before you answer. Option one: station-side operations. Logistics. Cargo coordination. You learn the systems, the protocols, the communication grid. Solid work. Safe work. You will be excellent at it.”
She pauses. Picks up the mug. Sips. Sets it down.
“Option two: courier support. On-ship operations. Manifest coordination, cargo management, communications. Paired placement with an existing OOPS courier on a long-haul route.” She does not look at me. She does not need to look at me. The room is doing the looking for her. “The courier in question is standing by my door. He can hear every word I am saying because Skiveth auditory range is between forty and sixty thousand hertz, and I have never once in a decade been able to have a private conversation in his presence.”
I fold my arms. My ridges are doing something theatrical about this, and I concentrate on making them stop. They do not stop.
“Station-side or courier support. Both positions are yours. I am not going to tell you which one to choose because I am not in the business of making personal decisions for my staff. I will tell you this: if you choose courier support, I will require a formal co-assignment agreement from both parties. This is a professional placement, not a —” She selects a word with the precision of a woman who has been selecting words for thirty years. “— a domestic arrangement. You will have separate duties. Separate evaluations. If it doesn’t work operationally, we reassign. Clear?”
“Clear,” Lorri says. Her voice has become steady. The kind of steady it went before the Vrennak.
“Good. Take time to think about it. Discuss it with Ereux. I don’t need an answer until —”
