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She distracted herself by trying to figure out who people were They’d all been introduced by name and title at some point, but that didn’t mean much Everyone here was an assistant secretary, or undersecretary, or director of soh about how politics worked to know that the military people in the room would be the least important The people with real poould be the quiet ones with unassu a moonfaced man with a skinny tie who’d been introduced as the secretary of sorandht sari, a splash of yellow in the ray She sat and matic half s to guess if Moonface or Grandlass of water from one of the crystal decanters evenly distributed across the table She wasn’t thirsty, but turning her glass over, pouring water into it, and drinking it would burn a lanced down the table and noticed that no one else was drinking the water Maybe everyone aiting for someone else to be first
“Let’s take a short break,” charcoal-suit man said “Ten enda”
People got up and began dispersing toward restroo to a recycling chute and dumped pistachio shells into it Moonface pulled out his ter her eyes with her paleant?” Thorsson said, leaning back in his chair and grinning “The gravity wearing on you?”
“No,” Bobbie said Then, “Well, yes, but e of pace”
Thorsson nodded and patted her hand, a otten any less irritating and paternalistic, but now Bobbie orried that iton her That would be an uncomfortable moment
She pulled her hand away and leaned toward Thorsson until he turned and looked her in the eye
“Why,” she whispered, “is no one talking about the goddamned monster? Isn’t that why I’s work,” Thorsson said, turning away fro with his terh, and no one wants to be the person that screwed it up”
He put his terave her a wink “Careers are at stake here”
“Careers …”
Thorsson just nodded and tapped on his terminal someup into the star-filled void above Gany Her suit radio dead, her ar’s face Without a suit in the radiation and hard vacuum, the red snowfall of flash-frozen blood around its claws And no one at this table wanted to talk about it because it ht affect their careers?
To hell with that
When the ’s attendees had shuffled back into the room and taken their places around the table, Bobbie raised her hand She felt faintly ridiculous, like a fifth-grade student in a room full of adults, but she had no idea what the actual protocol for asking a question was The agenda reader shot her one annoyed glance, then ignored her Thorsson reached under the table and sharply squeezed her leg
She kept her hand up