He looked forward to joining them. For anyone who was physically, mentally, and emotionally prepared for it, deepsleep was a welcome respite from anything resembling real work.
“Earn while you doze,” one Weyland wag had put it. Except it would be your relatives, friends, and any other designated beneficiaries who spent your paycheck.
Grunting softly, he switched off the vid stream he had been watching and smoothed a beard that sported highlights of gray. Allowed to take breaks between interviews in order to refresh himself, he didn’t hesitate to do so at every opportunity. He couldn’t delay forever, though, nor did he really want to. He knew he was going to have to settle on someone soon.
The trouble was that everyone he had spoken with over the course of the past month had been—incomplete. There were superb tactical fighters who struck him as all too ready to shoot first and analyze later. Folks with impressive records who were intellectually overqualified. Empathetic electronic warriors who would fail in hand-to-hand combat with a macaque.
There was the sizable contingent of applicants who wanted to leave Earth for all the wrong reasons. A busted relationship, a failing marriage, dissatisfaction with a job, a desire to leapfrog the chain of command. Some were ex-military who feared civilian life, but what did they think a colony was about, anyway? While many appeared to be supremely qualified, they had the wrong motivations.
Or they were lacking in other areas, physical or technical. With only one position left open on his team, Lopé could afford to be choosy. Yet the time factor was beginning to weigh on him.
Swiveling in his chair he leaned against a cushion of air that held his back a couple of centimeters away from the seat back itself. Lopé gazed through the one-way oval window that allowed him to see from the interview room into the outer waiting area. The applicants couldn’t see him, though—anyone looking in his direction would see only a panosolve, cycling images of landscapes designed to brighten the otherwise sterile exterior lounge.
Visually, the current group of applicants was reasonably impressive. All physically fit, of course. Mostly young, with a couple of middle-aged aspirants sprinkled in among them. That had been the case every day since he had started doing the interviews. Yet thus far, no one had satisfied every one of his personal requirements.
If nothing else, they would be glad to wait inside one of the city’s monumental buildings. In contrast to the grime-splattered, smog-smothered, rain-soaked world outside, the sterilized interior of the Weyland-Yutani tower was spotlessly clean, its air continuously scrubbed of contaminants. He almost hated to have to turn them out, one by one, into a world that had long since ceased to be inviting to human beings.
He looked forward to being back on board the Covenant. He missed Hallet. He looked forward to finishing the task at hand. Which, he reminded himself, would never happen if he didn’t keep at it. Reluctantly, he spoke to the thick, transparent, intelligent slab of sentilite that formed the desk in front of him.
“Send in the next victim.”
VI
As the door slid aside, he was assailed by the buzz of inconsequential chatter coming from the waiting area. The woman who made her way into the interview room was strikingly attractive—tall, with red hair mowed in a buzz cut on the left side of her head and shoulder-length matching strands on the right. She had steady blue eyes, a small mouth, and a distinctively aquiline nose. She wore no makeup and nothing extraneous save for a single silver orb earring that floated an infinitesimal distance away from her left earlobe. Her jump pants and matching long-sleeve blouse were devoid of insignia, though, interestingly, he could see where several patches had been removed. He reminded himself to, in the course of the interview, ask her why the identification had been excised. Was she not proud of where and in what unit she had served?
He would find out soon enough.
Beneath the pants and blouse her figure was trim and tight. What he could see of her forearms suggested someone who continued to exercise hard and regularly, even if not on active service. All very promising, he told himself, but then, appearances often were. It was not that they were deceiving; only that they were usually insufficient.
He waved a hand in the general direction of the desk’s integrated projector. What he had been viewing earlier was replaced by a rotating image of the young woman who stood before him. It was accompanied by a three-dimensional list of stats that scrolled up or down in concert with the movement of his pupils.
“Meryem Tadik,” he said. “Nice to meet you. I am your interviewer, Sergeant Carl Lopé.”
“Thank you for seeing me, Sergeant Lopé.” She smiled in response. It seemed forced, but that was to be expected. All genuine applicants were nervous, at least in the beginning. Those who weren’t often found themselves disqualified due to overconfidence.
He continued to read aloud from the display, reciting her educational background, service experience, and awards.
“Not married. One long-term relationship, terminated approximately two years ago.” He glanced at her. “Given your life experience, age, and appearance, I find your continued lack of a mate surprising.”
She shrugged, shifting in her chair. “Given my life experience, age, and appearance, I’ve had a hard time finding someone able to measure up to my standards.”
He suppressed a smile. “Crew and colonists have to ship as couples. Security team members do not—but you already know that, or you wouldn’t have bothered applying.” A finger indicated a blue line on the hovering readout. “There’s a brief entry concerning an M’ba Ashoki. What happened with him? Why didn’t that work out?”
“I caught him with someone else.” Her reply was a polite monotone. “Later he tried to apologize. From his hospital bed.”
Lopé nodded understandingly and moved on. In response to a double blink of his left eye, the infoscroll obediently froze. “Says here he drifted away from you because you were becoming involved with too many interests outside of your active duty assignments.”
Her lips firmed ever so slightly. Most people wouldn’t have noticed it or, noticing it, they would have paid it no mind. Not Lopé. As with any finalist, he had been watching her closely from the moment she had entered. Now he began watching her intently.
“I don’t see what bearing my private life has on my application,” she said, a little less under control. “My past becomes moot when I leave Earth forever.”
He leaned forward slightly. “But you’re not leaving your fellow humans forever. You’ll be in a position to watch over them, and may eventually be called on to settle disputes between them. That requires a certain degree of empathy.”
One long leg crossed over another, then back again. They were shapely, Lopé thought. They were also moving around too much.
“I passed all of the psychological tests.” Some of her initial aplomb returned. “I must have, or I wouldn’t be sitting here in front of you now.”
He nodded. “Having taken those tests, you’d also know that a final interviewer is permitted to ask whatever questions happen to come to mind, however unnecessarily intrusive or seemingly irrelevant they might happen to be.”
“Sorry.” A wide smile this time. “It’s just that I know this interview is make-or-break for me, and I’m more than a little nervous.”
“I’m allowing for that.” Using his eyes, he moved to another portion of the readout and enlarged it. “That would explain why your heart rate is so high, why your blood pressure is up, and why your neural patterns show evidence of prevarication.”