Grail - Elizabeth Bear [14]
The central table was the one element likely to impress, but that was due to it being a state-of-the-art piece of technology rather than to any calculated effect. A thick memory crystal embedded with data arrays, a solid-state quantum teleconferencing system, holographic displays, recorders, and other useful and interesting devices, it had the appearance of a palm-thick, armspan-wide slab of pale violet glass threaded with circuits and guide panels. The array rested atop four graceful C-shaped ceramalloy legs, like something that trembled on compressed springs. But it was solid as rock—and heavy as one, too, as Danilaw clearly remembered from the work party he’d hosted to move the damned thing in here. Even blunting the gravity hadn’t made that project easy.
The secondary task of carrying in the chairs had been handled by Danilaw’s sister’s kids, since it had been his day to watch them. Good life experience, and a few community service credits toward their citizenship, combined with a family outing. Sometimes, laziness was the next best thing to genius.
Two Administrators waited behind the table. The citizen on the right was Jesse Corelio, with his nut-brown hair and pale olive complexion—a tidy medium-sized young citizen serving his first stint as a Councilor. He wasn’t using a chair. He perched, legs drawn up, in an observation blister. A mathematician and farmer, he’d passed the suitability tests with flying colors, and so far Danilaw had enjoyed working with him, but the relationship hadn’t been tested yet.
On the left was Gain Kangjeon, whose hair was as black and straight as Amanda’s, though her skin was paler and her eyes creased at the corners by epicanthic folds. She was bigger than Jesse, broad-shouldered and broad-hipped. Danilaw, in particular, liked her hands. They were lean—not elegant, but capable—with defined tendons across the back. When she wasn’t serving out her Obligation, she was a primary musician, with civil service as her secondary. Danilaw thought maybe, when their term of Administration Obligation was up and there was no longer a conflict of interest, he’d ask her if she was interested in a date.
He wouldn’t mind if she even wanted more than a date, although he couldn’t imagine that she didn’t have half a dozen potentials already bidding on her reproduction contracts. And there was the marketability issue of his genetic disadvantage.
By the time Danilaw settled the work coat’s collar around his neck—a smidgen too tight; his predecessor had not been such a muscular man, but the coat fit otherwise, so there was no reason except vanity to replace it—Danilaw had his face under control. He surveyed the room, assessing the citizens assembled, their strengths and weaknesses, and that let him offer a small, honest smile.
Danilaw liked to handle briefing his staff personally when possible. He thought it led to increased rapport.
“Administrators, posterity”—he acknowledged the recording device—“this is Captain Amanda Friar, of the research scull Quercus. She’s an expert in antique Earth cultures, among other things.”
Amanda pulled out his chair and her own, and they both sat. Jesse drew his legs up higher into his bubble, while Gain seemed composed and at ease in a chair. If they shared a glance, it was a concerned, collegial one.
Danilaw folded his hands in front of him and drew in a focusing breath, arranging his report in his head before he began to deliver it. “Captain Amanda informs me that an antique ship, possibly derelict, is headed in-system.”
The faces of his colleagues reflected a host of emotions. Not disbelief—there was no reason for Danilaw to summon them to a midnight meeting in order to lie to them—but concern, confusion, and shock. He saw it in the way Gain sat straighter and Jesse hunched tighter, grasping his ankles in his crossed palms.
Gain was the closer to impassive, and even she blinked and frowned. He could tell, from the way the tiny muscles of her face rearranged themselves afterward, that she was having a conversation with herself not dissimilar