"I'll try, Captain."
"Good. " The commander nodded briskly. "Enough said on that subject. Now then, before I interrupted you, you were starting to say something about the Legionnaire you have the most trouble getting a fix on?"
"Oh. Right," Rembrandt said, rummaging in her notes again. "The one I was thinking of was Rose."
"Rose?" Armstrong snorted. "You mean Shrinking Violet."
"That's what the other Legionnaires call her," Rembrandt agreed.
Phule frowned. "I don't think I've met her yet."
"Not surprising," Rembrandt said. "If you had, you'd probably remember her. Rose, or Shrinking Violet, has to be the shyest person I've ever met in my life bar none. It's impossible to carry on a conversation with her. All she does is mumble and look the other way."
"I've given up trying to talk to her," Armstrong put in, "and from what I can see, so has everyone else in the company. I mean, she's a good-looking woman, and when she arrived a lot of the guys tried to get to know her better, but you get tired of being treated like you're Jack the Ripper."
"It's the same with the women," Rembrandt said. "Everybody seems to make her nervous. Heck, it's easier to deal with the nonhumans. At least they'll meet you halfway."
"Interesting," the commander murmured thoughtfully. "I'll have to try to talk with her myself."
Armstong grimaced. "Lots of luck, Captain. If you can get her to say half a dozen words, it'll be more than she's said since she arrived."
"Speaking of the nonhumans," Phule said, "I wanted to bounce a thought off the two of you. Specifically I want to split the two Sinthians when we assign team pairs. I figure it's hard for humans to relate to and interact with nonhumans. If we team the two of them, it will only make them that much harder to approach. The only problem is, I'm not sure how the Sinthians will react to being separated. What are your thoughts?"
"I don't think you have to worry about them complaining, Captain." Armstrong grinned, winking at Rembrandt. "Do you, Remmie?"
"Well," his partner replied in a mock drawl, "I don't expect it'll be a problem."
The commander glanced back and forth at the two of them.
"I get the feeling I'm missing a joke here."
"The truth is, Captain," Rembrandt supplied, "the two of them don't get along particularly well."
"They don't?"
"The way it is, sir," Armstrong said, "is that apparently there's a real class prejudice problem on their home world. Both of them headed off-world to get away from conditions."
"Their names kinda say it all," Rembrandt continued. "One of them, Spartacus, is a product of the lower class, while Louie, which I believe is short for Louis the XIV, is rooted in the aristocracy. Both of them joined the Legion thinking they would never have to deal with someone from the hated 'other class,' and you can imagine how overjoyed they were when they both got assigned to this outfit."
"I see. How much does their mutual dislike affect their performance?"
"Actually they're pretty civilized about it," Rembrandt said. "It's not like they get violent or anything. They just avoid each other when possible, and maybe glare and mutter a bit when they can't. At least, I think that's what they're doing. Between their eyestalks and the translators, it's a little hard to tell."
"The bottom line, though, Captain, is that I don't think they'll object to being assigned other partners." Armstrong grinned.
"Fair enough." Phule ticked off an item on his list. "All right. Who's next?"
The mood of the meeting had relaxed considerably when the commander finally called a halt to the proceedings. All three officers were punchy with fatigue and tended to giggle disproportionately at the lamest attempt at humor.
Phule was pleased with the results as he ushered his junior officers to the door. The long meeting had drawn them closer together, where it could just as easily have put them at each other's throats.
"Sorry again about losing track of the time," he told them. "Tell you what. Sleep late tomorrow and we'll pick it up again at noon."
The two lieutenants groaned dramatically.
"And hey! Nice work... both of you."
"'Nice work,' he says," Armstrong said, making a face at his partner. "I didn't think we were going to get a pat on the back until we fell over from exhaustion. Of course, tomorrow we get to pick up where we left off."
94
"He's just saying that because we knew some things he didn't," Rembrandt countered owlishly. "Once he's squeezed us dry, we'll be cast aside and forgotten."
Phule joined in their laughter.
"Go on, get some sleep. Both of you. You're going to need your strength before I get done with you."
"Seriously, Captain, what's the rush?" Rembrandt said, propping herself against the wall. "What happened to our relaxed, informal sessions of note comparing?"
"You put your finger on it a minute ago," the commander told her. "You two know some things about the troops that I don't. I want to get as much information out of you as I can before we run everybody through the confidence course day after tomorrow-well, tomorrow, actually."
He glanced up from his watch to find the lieutenants staring at him, all trace of humor gone.
"What's wrong?"
Armstrong cleared his throat.
"Excuse me, Captain. Did you say we were running the confidence course the day after tomorrow?"
"That's right. Didn't I mention it to you?"
Phule tried to focus his mind to separate what he had and hadn't said during the last several hours.
"No, you didn't."
"Sorry. I thought I had. I told the construction crew to give top priority to completing the new confidence course, and the word is that they finished work on it today."
"You mean you expect our company to run a confidence course?" Rembrandt seemed to be hoping she had heard wrong.
"Of course. We've got them looking like soldiers. It's about time we started working toward getting them to act and feel like soldiers, don't you agree?"
For the first time that night there was no automatic chorus of assent. Instead, the two lieutenants just stood looking at him as if he had grown another head.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Journal File #087
For those of you who are like me, which is to say dyed-in-the-wool civilians, and therefore unfamiliar with the stuffy quaintness of military jargon, you should at least be made aware that it is a fantasy language all its own, specifically designed to hide its activities and attitudes beneath officious blandness. (My own personal favorite is referring to casualties as inoperative combat units.) Such is the case with the so-called confidence course.
What it is, is a path strewn with obstacles at regular intervals which the soldiers are to traverse in the least possible amount of time. In short, it's what normal people would refer to as an obstacle course. It is no accident, however, that military personnel are never referred to as "normal people." Somewhere in their hidden past (you notice no one in the military ever writes about it until after they've retired, or shortly before) it was decided to change the image of the old obstacle course. Rather than change the course, they opted to change the name. The theory was that it would be more acceptable to those it was inflicted upon if they understood its function, which is "to increase the soldier's self-confidence by demonstrating to him (or her) that he (or she) can function successfully under adverse conditions."