There is an avalanche of sidelong glances. Everyone looks at everyone else rather than meeting Greaves’ eyes (although catching that skittering gaze is a difficult feat at the best of times). The plain fact of the matter is that Greaves does not merit a vote because he’s just a child. He is only here at all because Dr. Khan forced him onto the roster by delivering an ultimatum. All of this is self-evident. But apparently it’s not self-evident to Greaves himself.
“Wow,” Phillips says, summing up the general sentiment. Nobody else says anything at all. They are all waiting for the colonel to find some diplomatic way of telling Greaves to sit down and be still.
“You’re right, Stephen,” Carlisle says gravely. “I did say that I would only yield to a unanimous verdict. And I appreciate your support. But the two of us together don’t make a consensus. I think the majority has spoken.”
Greaves is not deterred, although it’s clearly costing him a considerable effort to speak up in public like this. His face has gone red. His breath is uneven. “I have a report,” he says. “I want to make a report. It’s relevant to your decision.”
Fournier is embarrassed for him. It seems as though everybody else is, too. They wait in silence for a few moments, then a few moments more. Greaves can’t get the words out, though his throat works hard to make a sound. It’s like he’s trying to regurgitate something big and angular that’s stuck in his gullet.
“Was it something you saw while you were off on your own in Invercrae?” Khan coaxes. And then before Greaves can scrape up an answer, “Do you want to make your report to me, Stephen? Would that be easier?”
Greaves nods gratefully.
“Okay,” Khan says. “Dr. Fournier, can we use the engine room?”
Fournier is about to agree, but a half-formed presentiment makes him hesitate. The argument is won. It’s highly unlikely that anything Greaves can say will change that; but it’s not impossible. “I think enough has been said on this subject already,” he says instead.
“What harm does it do to hear him out?” Dr. Sealey demands, with a quick look at Khan which she meets halfway. Fournier has very little insight into other people’s sexual chemistry, being all but celibate himself, but he realises as he tracks the pathways of their mutual gaze that Sealey is Khan’s lover and the father of her unborn child. That will go into his next report, he decides, as soon as everything gets back to normal.
“No harm at all,” he says, getting to his feet. “Stephen, if you have any information that bears on the current situation, whether it’s a sighting in Invercrae or an observation based on what we’ve seen tonight, you can of course report it to me as mission commander. I’ll be happy to hear anything you have to say. Apart from that, I’m going to consider this conversation closed. We’ll want to make an early start in the morning, so I suggest we use this opportunity to get some sleep.”
For once, his assumption of authority actually works. With very few words, most of them sideways on to the subject, they break up by ones and twos and find their bunks.
When Foss passes through the mid-section a few minutes later to retrieve her fatigue jacket, which she had left hanging on the rail of the turret stairs, she sees Stephen Greaves sitting in the airlock with his head buried in his folded arms. He has taken a blanket in there, too. It won’t be the first time he’s slept in the airlock. Not even the hundred and first. He likes his own space. Foss is surprised to find herself speculating on what it must have cost him to come out on this little road trip, to voluntarily lock himself up in a steel box for most of a year with other people’s voices, presences, personalities.
Greaves comes across like a startled mouse most of the time, but maybe that’s a trick of perspective. Like Dr. Fournier measuring everyone else on board by his own weasel length. People only make sense from the inside, Foss has found. And that’s if you’re lucky.
33
At 0800 the next morning, the hunting party leaves Rosie. Foss chooses to lead it herself, which feels right, and she rounds out the escort with McQueen and Private Phillips. Drs Sealey and Akimwe are there to represent the science team.
Sixsmith remains in Rosie on the grounds that she is the best driver they’ve got by a country mile. And country miles are what they’re dealing with here. They’ve come down half a thousand feet and south a couple of dozen miles from Ben Macdhui but they’re still on the plateau, a landscape of mountains and moorland intersected by dozens of small rivers. It was wild even before the Breakdown and now it’s a whole lot wilder. If they get into trouble, Rosie might have to ride to the rescue. Nobody besides Sixsmith would have a chance of finding a safe way through this sprawling mess.
There is going to be a problem with the short-range radios too, Sixsmith tells them. “Well, unless you stay on the near side of those hills. There’s nothing to boost the signal now the cockpit radio’s fucked, and nothing to bounce it off. It’s just got to go through every bloody thing it hits.”
“We’ll definitely be going over the ridge,” McQueen says, forgetting in the heat of the moment his new place in the pecking order. “You’ll have to figure something out, that’s all.”
Sixsmith chews it over. “Two possible work-arounds,” she says. “Either we find a high spot and park Rosie up there, or we put someone up in a tree with a radio to be a relay.”
The trouble is, they’re running out of someones. It doesn’t feel like a good idea to anyone to split the party up further, and making Rosie do another steep climb is such an obviously bad move that nobody mentions it again.
“We’ll make do,” Foss decides. “We’ll go out of range when we have to, but we’ll check in again as soon as we’ve got elevation.”
“Do we have to stay inside while you’re gone?” Dr. Penny asks, which probably means that most of this fraught conversation has gone over her head. “Or can we search the immediate area?”
“Search it for what?” Foss interjects. “Four-leaf clovers?”
Penny seems surprised at the sarcasm. “Footprints. Artefacts.”
Foss doesn’t have words. She shrugs and looks to the colonel.
“I think that would be unwise,” Carlisle says mildly. “Given that we still have no idea what we’re facing.”
Penny almost pouts. “Then I’d like to join the hunting party. Or lead a second party to search the immediate area.”
The colonel vetoes that too, and the hunters leave (thank God) without any more conversation. Foss breaks the trail herself. She has a plan that involves getting up on some high ground and then circling Rosie on a widening spiral until they catch a glimpse of something. McQueen is carrying the thermal goggles and his sniper rifle. Foss herself has taken one of the heavy assault rifles. She is not conceding that McQueen has better aim: she’s just taking the grunt work and leaving the glamorous part to him because that’s what leaders have to do. Their place is in the thick of things. She has learned that much from Colonel Carlisle, at least.