"You'll get the complete explanation—I promise," the director said. "But Ross is right. Perhaps you can treat this as an orientation session or something."
Scharn hesitated, but this time she sensed Halian was telling the truth. "All right. Let's go, then."
The elevator trip was the oddest Scharn had ever experienced. She knew enough to be ready for the change in weight as they moved toward the stations rotation axis, but she'd forgotten about the Coriolis effect that nudged her sideways into the wall and held her there for the embarrassing seconds it took to get her feet back into position and lean into the pseudoforce. Halian and Ross ignored her clumsiness, but she knew they'd seen it. She was glad when the car finally slowed and came to a halt. The corridors were another surprise, though a little reflection told her she should've expected this, too. Several decks above the station's living and business areas, there was no call for bright colors or cushiony carpeting here. Only cargo handlers and station mainters used this area, and they were more interested in utility than aesthetics.
The door Halian led them to was like all the others they'd passed, except that its ID label was lettered in bright red and cautioned the prospective entrant to check with the station computer to make sure no starship mainter was inside. The warning gave her momentary pause—was there something dangerous about starship mainters?—and she hastily searched her memory for anything she might have heard on the subject. But Halian showed no hesitation as he stepped to the door and pushed the hailer. Scharn heard a soft ping, and an even softer reply, and Halian fingered the touch plate. The door slid open and they walked in.
Tomo was standing behind a small desk across the room, his back solidly against the wall. His expression was one Scharn had seen before, on nervous lab animals.
"Hello, Tomo," Halian said. "I'm Jer Halian. Sorry we were delayed a bit."
Tomo nodded once, a quick up-down jerk of his head. "Hello," he said.
Scharn's peripheral vision picked up a couch to their left, a couple of meters farther from Tomo's position than they were now. "Couch," she murmured, nudging Halian.
For a wonder, he caught the hint and led them over there. They sank into it, and Halian gestured to the desk chair a meter in front of Tomo. "Won't you sit down, too?"
Tomo's eyes flicked to the chair, then back to his visitors. Gingerly, he pulled the seat back to rest against the wall beside him and sat down.
"Well," Ross said briskly. "Tomo, Director Halian tells us you'd like to take a trip down to the surface while you're here. We'd like to talk to you about that, if we may."
Some of the tension left Tomo's face, to be replaced by suspicion. "You sound like Max in his psychological mode. Are you a psychiatrist?"
"No, no—I'm Dr. Alexei Ross, chief physician of Maigre Space Station. You must understand that your safety—whether here or dirtside—is our responsibility, and we have to make sure you're properly fit before we can let you go. The gravity's twice what you're used to, for starters."
If Ross had hoped to distract Tomo from his original question, it didn't work. Shifting his gaze to Scharn, he asked. "How about you?"
"I'm Dr. Dreya Scharn," she began; but before she could go on, Halian jumped in.
"Dr. Scharn's from Maigre proper, Tomo," the director said. "We brought her here because she knows more about dirtside conditions than anyone aboard the station. She has some questions she needs to ask you before we can discuss your trip to the planet."
Scharn managed to keep her professional face in place, but it was a near thing. To half-lie about her profession and then drop the conversational burden directly into her lap was a double whammy she hadn't expected. But she was damned if she was going to let Halian's action throw her. Smiling at Tomo, she opened with the simplest time-buyer in her repertoire. "Why don't we start by getting to know you better, Tomo. What was your childhood like?"
"You mean my trainage?" Tomo asked, still looking wary. "Just like anyone else's. Lynn—that was the stations LNN Learning Computer—taught me how to inspect and repair all the machinery on board a starship. When I'd learned everything I was assigned to the Goldenrod."
"What were your parents like?" she asked.
A flicker of puzzlement crossed the mainters face. "Parents?"
"He won't remember any human parents or nurses," Halian murmured in Scharn's ear. "He'd have been taken away from them when he was young."
"I see," she said, trying hard to keep her astonished horror from showing. Mental conditioning was a well-defined, if seldom used, psychological tool, but never had she heard of it being started so early in a subjects life. The legality of this whole thing was getting shakier and shakier. "Were you lonely as a boy?" she asked Tomo. "You had playmates, didn't you?"
"Of course. I already told you about Lynn."
"No, I mean other children. Did you play with any of the others at your station?"
Tomo shrugged fractionally. "I sometimes played with Orbin on the viewer. I liked playing alone or with Lynn better, though. Look, what does all this have to do with my fitness to go dirtside?"
A damn good question, Scharn thought. "We wanted some idea how much experience you've had interacting with other people," she improvised, hoping it sounded reasonable. "So after your training you went aboard the Goldenrod. Do you get along with the other mainters?"
"Well enough. We don't talk to each other much."
Scharn frowned. "You mean you're all together in the same ship for years at a time and don't do things together?" "We're not really together; we've each got our own pod, you know. And there usually isn't any maintenance that requires two of us working in sync. Max flies the ship and tells me when there's work to do; the rest of the time I read or play music or fiddle with my electronics kits."
The starship model Scharn had seen on Halian's desk suddenly made sense. Six mainters, six mutually isolated pods... "So you really are all alone out there."
"Pretty much, except for Max."
"I see. How do you feel about being alone? Does it ever bother you?"
Tomo snorted. "Of course not. What kind of stupid question is that?" His eyes flicked between Scharn and the others. "What's going on here, anyway?"
Scharn raised her hands chest high, palms outward, in a soothing gesture she hoped Tomo would understand. "All right; let's get back to Maigre, then. Can you tell me exactly why you want to visit the planet?"
Irritation was beginning to replace the tension in Tomo's face. "Why is everyone making such a big deal about this?" he snapped. "I've never been dirtside before and I got curious about it. Haven't any of you ever wanted to try something new?"
"Of course we have," Ross put in. "It's just that dirtside conditions are so different from starship life that we wanted you to understand exactly what it would be like. On a planet, you see, you have wide, open-roofed spaces—"
"I know—Max already gave me the full list. I can get used to it."
"There are also people down there," Scharn reminded him. "Lots of people. It seems to me you're having trouble right now, with just three of us in the same room with you."
The tension flooded full force back into Tomo's expression, and Scharn had the sudden impression that he'd halfway convinced himself that his visitors were actually just images on a viewer screen. "I can manage," he ground out. "If you can get used to a port, I can get used to a planet."
"You're talking nonsense, Tomo," Halian said, his frustration evident in his tone. "You're a starship mainter—you don't belong on a planet."
"Do people belong on Charon's World?" Tomo retorted. "Or Tau Ceti? Human beings can adapt to practically anything."