Nodding, “A new batch came in on the torch ship with you. We’ve been making some progress in translating their language. We can talk back and forth with them, to some extent.”
“Can you?”
“It’s slow, but we’re making progress. The work goes back more than twenty years. Elaine O’Hara was one of the earliest researchers in that area.”
Elaine O’Hara! Westfall could feel her eyes flare at the mention of her sister’s name. She immediately clamped down on her emotions and said merely, “How interesting.”
Deirdre slid back the door to her new quarters. Corvus, Dorn, and Yeager stood behind her, peeping through the doorway.
She stepped in and looked around. “Very nice,” she murmured.
The compartment was adequately furnished with a comfortable-looking bed, a small couch and two smaller reclinable chairs, a desk with a spindly typist’s chair, bureaus on either side of the bed, doors that Deirdre figured opened onto closets, and a lavatory. A built-in bar separated the minuscule kitchenette from the rest of the room. Deirdre’s one travel bag rested on the bench at the foot of the bed.
“Not bad,” Yeager said, striding past her to stand in the middle of the room. He turned a full circle, then grinned at Deirdre. “Much nicer than the cubbyhole they stuck me in.”
Dorn said, “All our quarters are quite similar, almost identical. This is a standard accommodation, according to the indoctrination video.”
“You really watch that kind of stuff?” Yeager scoffed.
“Our rooms are further along this passageway,” Corvus said. “We’ll be neighbors.”
Yeager went over to the bed and sat on it, bounced up and down a few times. “This is going to be fun.”
Deirdre decided he’d gone far enough. “Off my bed, please, Max. Go find your own. I’ve got to unpack.”
“I could help you.” Yeager leered.
Dorn took a menacing step toward the engineer.
Corvus said, “I think we ought to get back to our own rooms and let Deirdre unpack.” He waggled a finger at Yeager. “C’mon, Max. Let’s go.”
Yeager grumbled, “Spoilsports. You guys act like a couple of chaperones. I don’t need a chaperone.”
“No,” said Dorn gravely. “You need a keeper.”
They all laughed, Yeager the loudest, and filed out of the room, leaving Deirdre alone. For a long moment she smiled at the closed door, then remembered that she still carried the rabies virus inside her.
The medical staff here will take care of it, she told herself, wishing she really believed that.
As she began to unpack, a chime sounded. Looking up from her travel bag she saw that a yellow light was blinking beneath the smart screen on the wall above the desk.
A message, she thought. Maybe from Dad?
Still standing at the foot of the bed, she called out, “Computer. Display incoming message.”
A man’s face appeared on the wall screen. He looked fairly young, except for his skullcap of silver hair and trim little beard.
“Ms. Ambrose,” he said, “I’m Grant Archer, director of this station. I’d like you to meet me in my office at sixteen hundred hours. You can find the way with your pocketphone. If you have any problems, please call me.”
His image winked out, immediately replaced by the figure of a woman’s face, sculpted, taut-skinned, her hair a perfect golden honey shade clipped like a helmet framing her countenance.
“Deirdre Ambrose, this is Katherine Westfall. Please come to my quarters. At once.”
KATHERINE WESTFALL’S QUARTERS
Deirdre knew who Katherine Westfall was, and she saw that it was only 1410 hours: plenty of time to call on Mrs. Westfall and still make her appointment at Dr. Archer’s office.
Why does she want to see me? she wondered as she swiftly changed into one of the few dresses she had brought with her, a short-sleeved flowered frock that her father had bought for her on her last birthday.
Mrs. Westfall sounded very imperative, Deirdre thought. She said please, but she also said
Using the map display of her pocketphone, Deirdre hurried along the station’s main passageway. She knew it ran along the circumference of the station’s wheel, but the structure was so large that the passageway seemed almost perfectly flat. It was only when she looked far ahead that she saw the deck curved upward and disappeared.
She was grateful that the station was at lunar gravity, like
At last she found the door modestly marked K. WESTFALL and tapped on it.
A lean, almost cadaverous young man in a dark tunic and slacks slid the door back. His head was shaved bald, his cheeks were hollow, gaunt.
“Ms. Ambrose,” he said in a ghostly whisper, before Deirdre could speak a word.
“That’s right.”
The young man stepped aside to allow Deirdre to enter. The compartment looked more like an anteroom than living quarters. A desk, several sculpted plastic chairs, a display screen showing an image of a painting of a mother and child that Deirdre recognized from her art classes: a Renaissance master, she thought, Michelangelo or Titian or one of those. Then she remembered clearly: Raphael, the
“Mrs. Westfall will be with you momentarily,” the young man whispered. Gesturing to the chairs, he added, “Please make yourself comfortable.”
Deirdre sat, wondering why Mrs. Westfall had told her to come at once if she was going to have to wait. The young man sat behind the desk and stared into his computer screen, ignoring Deirdre entirely. There was an inner door beside his desk, tightly closed.
“Mrs. Westfall asked me to come right away,” she said to him.
Hardly glancing up from his screen, the young man said, “Mrs. Westfall is a very busy woman. I’m sure that she’s made a special disruption in her schedule to see you.”
“But I—”
The computer chimed. The young man pointed to the inner door and said, “Mrs. Westfall will see you now.” Without a smile, without a hint of warmth.
Deirdre rose and went to the door. “Thank you,” she said to the man. Silently she added, You flunky.
The door opened onto a compartment not much bigger than Deirdre’s own quarters. But this was obviously merely the sitting room of a much larger suite. Comfortable couches, deep upholstered armchairs, an oval glass coffee table set with a tray that bore a beaded stainless steel pitcher and several metal cups. But no Katherine Westfall.
Deirdre felt her brow knitting into a frown. Where could she be? Why did she—
Katherine Westfall swept into the room from the door in the far wall, looking resplendent in a sheathed lounging suite of carnation red. She’s tiny, Deirdre realized. Petite. But she seemed to radiate self-confidence, poise, power. She was smiling graciously, but there seemed no warmth to it. Deirdre couldn’t help thinking that asps are tiny, too, but deadly.
Mrs. Westfall reclined on the couch behind the coffee table, looking as if she were posing for a fashion ’zine.
Deirdre picked up an aroma of … flowers? There weren’t any flowers in the room. Deirdre thought there
