“No,” he said, “not really a good—”
Bobbie wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or someone on the phone, so she got up and moved over to his desk, sitting on the edge of it. He gave her a withering glare, but she just smiled and mouthed, “I’ll wait.” The edge of his desk creaked a little under her weight.
He turned his back to her.
“I understand,” he said. “But this is not a good time to discuss— I see. I can probably— I see, yes. Foster won’t— Yes. Yes, I understand. I’ll be there.”
He turned back around and tapped his desk, killing the connection.
“What?”
“I hate your cookies. The constant crinkle of the package is driving me insane.”
“Cookies?” Soren said, a baffled expression on his face. Bobbie thought that it might be the first honest emotion she’d ever seen there.
“Yeah, can you put them on a—” Bobbie started, but before she could finish, Soren grabbed up the package and tossed them into the recycling bin next to his desk.
“Happy?”
“Well—”
“I don’t have time for you right now, Sergeant.”
“Okay,” Bobbie said, and went back to her desk.
Soren kept fidgeting like he had more to say, so Bobbie didn’t call the next person on her list. She waited for him to speak. Probably the cookie thing had been a mistake on her part. Really, it wasn’t a big deal. If she weren’t under so much pressure, it wasn’t the sort of thing she’d probably even notice. When Soren finally spoke up, she’d apologize for being so pushy about it and then offer to buy him a new package. Instead of speaking, he stood up.
“Soren, I—” Bobbie started, but Soren ignored her and unlocked a drawer on his desk. He pulled out a small bit of black plastic. Probably because she’d just heard him say the name Foster, Bobbie recognized it as the memory stick Avasarala had given him a few days earlier. Foster was the data services guy, so she assumed he was finally getting around to taking care of that little task, which would at least get him away from the office for a few minutes.
Until he turned and headed for the elevators.
Bobbie had done a little gofer work running things back and forth to data services and knew that their office was on the same floor and in the opposite direction of the elevators.
“Huh.”
She was tired. She was half sick with guilt and she wasn’t even all that sure what she felt guilty about. She disliked the man anyway. The hunch that popped into her head was almost certainly a result of her own paranoia and addled image of the world.
She got up, following him.
“This is really stupid,” she said to herself, smiling and nodding at a page who hurried by. She was over two meters tall on a planet of short people. She wasn’t going to blend.
Soren climbed into an elevator. Bobbie stopped outside the doors and waited. Through the aluminum-and-ceramic doors, she heard him ask someone to press one. Going all the way to the street level, then. She hit the down button and took the next elevator to the bottom floor.
Of course, he wasn’t in sight when she got there.
A giant Martian woman running around the lobby of the UN building would draw a little attention, so she scrapped that as a plan. A wave of uncertainty, failure, and despair lapped at the shoreline of her mind.
Forget that it was an office building. Forget that there were no armed enemy, no squad behind her. Forget that, and look at the logic of the situation on the ground. Think tactically. Be smart.
“I need to be smart,” she said. A short woman in a red suit who had just come up and pressed the elevator call button overheard her and said, “What?”
“I need to be smart,” Bobbie told her. “Can’t go running off half-cocked.” Not even when doing something insane and stupid.
“I … see,” the woman said, then pushed the elevator call button again several times. Next to the elevator control panel was a courtesy terminal. If you can’t find the target, restrict the target’s degrees of freedom. Make them come to you. Right. Bobbie hit the button for the lobby reception desk. An automated system with an extremely realistic and sexually ambiguous voice asked how it could assist her.
“Please page Soren Cottwald to the lobby reception desk,” Bobbie said. The computer on the other end of the line thanked her for using the UN automated courtesy system and dropped the connection.