“As we are to have you here,” beamed Edmund. “We have reviewed Dr. Hatch’s credentials in both the engineering and information fields and found them very impressive. Very impressive indeed.”
“Thank you.” Vee inclined her head modestly.
Edmund’s smile grew fatherly. Vee kept her face still. “Our questions here will be of a more personal nature,” he went on.
“What? Rosa didn’t get you my gene screens?” Vee’s flippancy was reflexive, and she regretted it even before Rosa’s toe prodded her shin.
Ms. Yan laughed dryly. “No. Health issues, if there are any, will be addressed later. These are more questions of political outlook, approach, and general attitude toward—”
“Political outlook?” interrupted Vee.
“Yes,” said Ms. Yan. “I wish this mission were purely a question of research and exploration, but it is not.”
A spark of suspicion lit up inside Vee. She tried to squash it but was only partially successful. She’d grown up in the remnants of the old United States. Her grandfather had talked almost daily about the Disarmament, when U.N. troops went house to house confiscating guns and arresting the owners who would not peacefully hand them over, and worse. Personally, Vee thought her grandfather was nuts for romanticizing the freedom to shoot your neighbors, but his distrust and distaste for the “yewners” had taken root in some deep places, and she hadn’t managed to shake it yet.
“Of course,” Rosa was saying smoothly. “An effective team is more than just a collection of skills. Personalities have to mesh smoothly, and there must be a unified outlook.”
“Exactly.” Edmund’s chest swelled, and Vee knew they were in for a speech.
Apparently, Ms. Yan knew it too because she quickly asked, “Have you ever been to Venera before, Dr. Hatch?”
“Once, about eight years ago.” Vee did not miss the dirty look Edmund shot Ms. Yan, but she suppressed her smile of amusement. “As part of my Planets project.” Vee’s initial fame and the basis of her fortune was made by her creation of the first experiential holoscenic. It was a tour of the solar system, set to the music of Hoist’s The Planets. She had taken people inside the clouds of Venus, the oceans of liquid ice on Europa, the storms of Jupiter, and the revolt in Bradbury, Mars, for the movement “Mars, Bringer of War.”
It suddenly hit Vee what they must be leading up to.
“I have always particularly liked the Veneran segment of The Planets,” said Ms. Yan. “Most people see Venus as hellish. You made it beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Tension tightened Vee’s back. When are they going to say it? When are they going to say it?
“Your section on the Bradbury Rebellion was rather less beautiful,” said Edmund.
Vee caught Rosa’s “be careful” glance and ignored it. “I strove for accuracy,” she said, aware her voice had gone tart. “And comprehension.” The “Bringer of War” segment showed the people being marched into the patched-up ships which were launched without regard to their safety, but it also showed the crowds rallying around Theodore Fuller and his cause, the shining faces, the great hopes of the dream of freedom before that dream had tarnished and twisted.
Edmund’s expression fell into a kind of hard neutrality. “Yes, some of your images were quite…sympathetic.” He glanced at a secondary display on the table in front of him. Vee wished she were close enough to read the items listed there. “What are your feelings about the separatist movements here on Earth?”
This is it? Vee looked incredulously from one face to the other. Both Edmund and Ms. Yan were perfectly serious. Even Mr. Hourani, who had not uttered one word since the beginning of the meeting, had lost his little amused smile. They want to judge my fitness based on how I feel about separatists?
Rosa’s warning prod against her ankle grew urgent Vee dismissed it and heaved herself to her feet.
“You want to know how I feel about Bradbury? I was seven years old when that mess happened. I didn’t have an opinion, just a few vague feelings. The Planets show was for money and to show off what you could do with my new holography tricks.” She planted both hands on the table and leaned toward the yewners. “You want a political yes-sir, pick one of your own. You want an Earth Über Alles, find a Bradbury survivor. You want somebody who can take a look at your Discovery and just maybe come up with something useful to say about it, then you want me. But I will not”—she slammed her hand against the table—“sit here and be interrogated because I may have had a thought or two.”