"Well!" That almost simultaneous huff by two of the team members at once made Lunzie laugh. She couldn't help it.
"What's the alarm about?" she asked, fighting the laugh back down to her diaphragm where it belonged.
"Supposedly someone tried to break into the Governor's working office." Bias's voice was still primly disapproving. "Since you didn't show up at once, we were afraid you were involved." A pause, during which Lunzie almost asked why she would want to break into the Governor's office, then Bias continued. "I see you were involved, so to speak."
"Meow," said Lunzie. "I've told you about Zebara before. He saved my life, years ago, and even though it's been longer for him, I was glad to see him…"
"We could tell." Lunzie had never suspected Bias of prudery, but the tone was still icily contemptuous. "I might remind you, Doctor, that we are here on a mission of medical research, not to reunite old lovers. Especially those who should have the common sense to realize how unsuited they are." The word unsuited caught Lunzie's funny bone and she almost laughed again. That showed in her face, for Bias glowered. "You might try to be professional!" he said, and turned away.
Lunzie caught Conigan's eye, and shrugged. The other woman grinned and shook her head: no accounting for Bias, in anything but his own field. Brilliancy hath its perks. Lunzie noticed that Jarl was watching her with a curious expression that made him seem very much the heavyworlder at the moment.
As the guards moved through the crowd, checking IDs, Jarl shifted until he was next to her, between her and the other team members. His voice was low enough to be covered by the uneven mutter of the crowd.
"It's none of my business, and I have none of the, er, scruples of someone like Bias, but… you do know, don't you, that Zebara is now head of External Security?"
She had not known; she didn't know how Jarl knew.
"We were just friends," she said as quietly.
"Security has no friends," said Jarl. His face was expressionless, but the statement had the finality of death.
"Thanks for the warning," said Lunzie.
She could feel her heart beating faster and controlled the rush of blood to her face with a touch of Discipline. Why hadn't he told her himself? Would he have told her if they'd had more time? Would he tell her at their next meeting? Or as he killed her?
She wanted to shiver, and dared not. What was going on here?
By the end of the workshift the next day, she was still wondering. All the way back to their quarters, Bias had made barbed remarks about oversexed female researchers until Conigan finally threatened to turn him in for harrassment. That silenced him, but the team separated in unhappy silence when they arrived. The morning began with a setback in the research; someone had mistakenly wiped the wrong data cube and they had to re-enter it from patient records. Lunzie offered to do this, hoping it would soothe Bias, but it did not.
"You are not a data entry clerk," he said angrily. "You're a doctor. Unless you are responsible for the data loss, you have no business wasting your valuable time re-entering it."
"Tell you what," said Tailler, putting an arm around Bias's shoulders, "why don't we let Lunzie be responsible for scaring up a data clerk? You know you don't have time to do that. Nor do I. I've got surgery this morning and you're supposed to be checking the interpretation of those cardiac muscle cultures. Conigan's busy in the lab, and Jarl's already over at the archives, while Lunzie doesn't have a scheduled procedure for a couple of hours."
"But she shouldn't be wasting her time," fumed Bias. Tailler's arm grew visibly heavier and the smaller biologist quieted.
"I'm not asking her to do it," said Tailler, giving Lunzie a friendly but commanding grin. "I'm asking her to see that it's done. Lunzie's good at administrative work. She'll do it. Come on. Let's leave her with it; you don't want to be late."
And he steered Bias away even as the biologist said, "But she's a doctor…" one last time. Tailler winked over his shoulder at Lunzie, who grinned back.
It was easy enough to find a clerk willing to enter the data. Lunzie stayed to watch long enough to be sure tile clerk really understood his task, then went on to her first appointment. She waited until well after the local noon to break for her lunch, hoping to miss Bias. Sure enough, he'd already left the dining hall when she arrived, but Conigan and Jarl were eating together. Lunzie joined them.
"Did you get the data re-entered?" asked Jarl, grinning.
Lunzie rolled her eyes. "I did not, I swear, enter it myself. Thanks to Tailler, and a clerk out of the university secretarial pool, it was no problem. Just checked, and found that it's complete, properly labelled, and on file."
Jarl chuckled. "Tailler told us when we came in for lunch about Bias's little fit. He says Bias is like this by the second week of any expedition, to Diplo or anywhere else. He's worked with him six or seven times."
"I'm glad to know it's not just my aura," said Lunzie.
"No, and Tailler says he's going to talk to you about last night. Seems there's some reason Bias is upset by women associates having anything to do with local males."
"Alpha male herd instinct," muttered Conigan.
Jarl shook his head. "Tailler says not. Something happened on one of his expeditions, and he was blamed for it. Tailler wouldn't tell us, but he said he'd tell you, so you'd understand."
Lunzie did not look forward to that explanation. If Bias had peculiar notions, she could deal with them; she didn't have to be coaxed into sympathy. But she suspected that avoiding Tailler would prove difficult. Still, she could try.
"I'm having dinner with Zebara tonight," she said. "Bias will just have to live with it."
Jarl gave her a long look. "Not that I agree with Bias, but is that wise? You know?"
"I know what you told me, but I also know what Zebara did for me over forty years ago. It's worth embarrassing Bias, and worth risking whatever you fear."
"I don't like anyone's Security, external, internal, or military. Never been one yet that didn't turn into someone's private enforcement agency. You've had a negative contact with heavyworlders before. You have a near relative in Fleet: reason enough to detain and question you if they're so minded."
"Not Zebara!" Lunzie hoped her voice carried conviction. Far below the surface, she feared precisely this.
"Just be careful." Jarl said. "I don't want to have to risk my neck on your behalf. Nor do I want to answer a lot of questions back home if you disappear."
Lunzie almost laughed, then realized he was being perfectly honest. He had accorded her the moderate respect due a fellow professional, but he felt no particular friendship for her (for anyone?) and would not stir himself to help if she got into trouble. She could change quickly from 'fellow professional' to 'major annoyance' which in his value system would remove her from his list of acquaintances.
To add to her uneasiness, Tailler did indeed manage to catch her before she left the center and insisted on explaining at length the incident which had made Bias so sensitive to 'relationships' between research staff and locals. A sordid little tale, Lunzie thought: nothing spectacular, nothing to really justify Bias's continuing reaction. He must have had a streak of prudery before that happened to give him the excuse to indulge it.
Chapter Six
Dupaynil, hustled through the scarred and echoing corridors of the transfer station to the control center where the Claw's captain met him with the suggestion that he 'put a leg in it' and get himself out to the escort's docking bay, had no chance to think things over until he was strapped safely into the escort's tiny reserve cabin. He had not been passenger on anything smaller than a light cruiser for years; he had never been aboard an escort-class vessel. It seemed impossibly tiny after the Zaid-Dayan. His quarters for however long the journey might be was this single tiny space, a minute slice of a meager pie hardly big enough to lie down in. He heard a loud clang, felt something rattle the hull outside, and then the escort's insystem drive nudged him against one side of his safety restraints. The little ship had artificial gravity, of a sort, but nothing like the overriding power that made Main Deck on the Zaid-Dayan feel as solid as a planet.