"The sort of compliment you'd give a servo-mechanism, if you gave servo-mechanisms compliments," he said.
"Exactly." She smiled sweetly and folded her hands.
"You've an interesting attitude, Ms. Hap," he said, laying a little stress on the ancient honorific. If she wants to get formal, I'll show her formal. "Most of the women I've worked with didn't object to an occasional compliment on their appearance."
She raised her brows slightly and cocked her head. "Perhaps if they objected you simply dismissed it as being part of an 'attitude.' "
I could cry, if I could cry, Simeon thought. He'd gotten lonely these last weeks without Tell Radon. He'd begun to anticipate the fun he'd been going to have with a new brawn. Someone to talk to… How could they have matched him with this… ice princess? They knew he was easy going, sure, but he'd given them a very good idea of what he was looking for in a brawn. Exact specifications, which Channa Hap hadn't met, fully. Was someone in Central taking advantage of his good nature, somehow hoping he could straighten her out, or maybe loosen her up?
"I find your attitude rather interesting," she murmured, narrowing her eyes. "Have you checked your hormone levels recently?"
"That's a rather personal remark…" Maybe they just want me to blast her out an airlock when nobody's looking.
" 'Sexy lady' isn't?" She smiled and raised a sardonic brow.
"That was a compliment, intended to put you at ease. Have you checked your own hormone levels lately?"
There was silence.
After a moment she sat forward and looked at him levelly. "Look, even though it hardly seems worth the trouble of officially submitting my orders to you, on a practical level we may as well just admit that, for the time being, we're stuck with each other. You need a brawn and I'm here. I'm well trained, experienced and hard working. We don't have to love each other to work together."
"True, but it gets a little cold trying to maintain your distance with someone you see every day. It would be a lot easier if we could be friends. Look, why don't we just erase what just happened and start over? Whaddaya say?"
She pursed her lips, then smiled. "I'm game. But let's start slow, and we'll avoid the personal remarks for the time being, okay?" She cocked her head at him and raised an eyebrow. "You start."
"Hello, you must be Channa Hap. Welcome to the SSS-900-C."
"Thank you. I hope I'm not interrupting."
"Nah, I always have time for a pret… colleague." He detected a slight narrowing of her eyes. "My, you sure are efficient looking."
"Well, and so are you, you're so steely and all."
"Funny, I was just about to say the same thing about you."
She stood up. "This isn't going to work."
"My fault. I shouldn't have said that. Look, you must be tired from all the travel you've been doing. Why don't you settle in, look around, relax a little-things might look different."
"This has nothing to do with my being tired or your hormones…"
"What is this fixation you have with my hormones?"
"Shut-up-and-listen-to-me." Channa was giving him a look that he could almost feel. She paused and held up her hands, sitting down again. "Just listen," she said earnestly. "I think that it would be best if we put our cards on the table. I haven't studied your files in full yet," she admitted with a tired smile. "I just couldn't make myself do it. But I do know quite a bit about you." She leaned back and crossed her long legs. "I know that you have a fair amount of influence and a lot of contacts at Central Admin. And I know that you called on just about all of them in the matter of your brawn replacement." She gave him a severe look. "You made yourself famous on just about every level."
He was a little lost here. He had kicked up quite a fuss when they forcibly retired Tell Radon, but what did it have to do with her?
"In case you're wondering why I'm bringing this up," she continued.
Geeeze, Simeon thought, that's eerie! She can't possibly read my mind. Can she?
"It may interest you to know that I have my own contacts at Admin. And they've told me that you came up with a list of qualifications that were extremely hard to fill. In fact, I was the only candidate who did fit them, with the glaring exception of the age qualification. I hear that I'm four years too young for this post."
"Well, you see…"
"Excuse me, I'm not finished. I was also told that you went over my service records looking for black marks, and that when you couldn't find them, you went looking for shadows that you could pretend were black marks…"
"Hey! I don't know who you were talking to."
"Bear with me a few moments longer," Channa said, holding up one finger. "Then you can have your say. I'm not going anywhere." She looked at his image on the screen for a moment with narrowed eyes, and when he remained silent she nodded. "I've been told that all you need do to ruin the day of almost any Admin executive is to mention my name. The feeling you appear to have left behind you as the smoke cleared on this was that where there's smoke, there's fire. And that if you, well-known and respected brain that you are, would object so strenuously to my assignment to the SSS-900, despite the fact that I fit all but one of your many qualifications, then there must indeed be something seriously wrong with me."
"Oh." He honestly hadn't thought about that. He'd been so intent on saving Tell from forced retirement that no other considerations had seemed important. Channa Hap as a person had never entered into his thoughts.
Channa continued speaking, "I told myself that it probably wasn't personal."
God, it's weird the way she can pick up on my thoughts like that!
"I told myself to keep an open mind. If you had only greeted me as a fellow professional, then I think I could have let the whole mess be forgotten. But the first words out of your speakers show that either you can't discern the difference between a compliment and a lip-smacking, smarmy, personal remark, or your campaign to get rid of me continues."
"Now wait a minute!" Simeon said. She opened her mouth to speak and he overrode her. "It's my turn. Okay, you said I'd get a turn and I'm taking it." She raised her brows and gave him an open-handed gesture, giving him the floor. "I don't know who your informant is, but they've got it all wrong. I'm going to assume that you know the system well enough to realize that whoever came up for consideration was going to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb. A space station the size of a small city requires versatility. I'm going to assume that you're mature enough to know that twenty-six is very young for this posting. Tell was thirty-eight when we came here, and that's the general age I was looking for. I don't think, given the importance of the SSS-900, that I'm being unreasonable. But, I suppose that to someone uninformed, the in-depth investigation could look like a campaign to discredit you. That was honestly not my intention, nor is it my intention now. If my greeting was a little too familiar, I apologize, but I had no way of knowing what dark suspicions you were harboring. I'm really very open, Ms. Hap."
She smiled amiably and nodded. "Mmhm. This entire charming explanation of yours is predicated on the assumption that my informant is someone's secretary." She shook her head sadly. "No."
Gulp, maybe I did go a little far… "Um…"
"You can rest easy," she assured him. "I'm very good at what I do. As you well know, I have an almost perfect record…"
Actually, you do have a perfect record, Simeon thought miserably.
"… so, whether we actually get along or not, the station won't suffer. And I promise you that I'm not going to just up and disappear on you once you've gotten used to me. Because I have it on good authority that, after what you've done to my career and reputation, I'd have to bribe and sleep my way into a secondary assignment on the meanest asteroid-mining outpost at the farthest reaches of the explored galaxy." She rose and said, "I'd like to look at my quarters now."