“How dare you accuse me of—”
“No one’s accusing you of anything,” Laid-back Ahmed said soothingly.
But Aurelia wasn’t willing to let it slide. And if you put half the energy into working that you put into slinging malicious gossip—”
“I refuse to allow this consult to degenerate into personal attacks,” By-the-Book Ahmed said, predictably rising to Bella’s defense. “If you don’t have the leadership skills to manage the people under you—”
“That’s humanist crap!” Aurelia burst out. “I don’t need leadership skills! I’m not a goddamn sheepdog! And it’s not my Part in life to chase down people who won’t put in an honest day’s work unless they’re nagged and nattered at!”
“Listen,” Arkady began, knowing from late-night drinking sessions that once Aurelia started in on her ideological objections to caste-based genelines things could only go downhill. Not that he disagreed with Aurelia on either count. Ever since that first night she’d let her sib do her dishes, Bossy Bella had shown a formidable talent for being nowhere in sight whenever there was work to do. And as to the caste nonsense…well, just look at the current situation.
His interruption did no good, though; Aurelia had gotten the bit firmly between her teeth.
“And speaking of nagging and nattering,” she went on, “I’ve about goddamn well had it with the so-called shipboard duty schedule. Are we grown-ups or crèchelings?”
“Collective job lists are inefficient,” By-the-Book Ahmed said in his usual categorical tones.
“Not as inefficient as pissing people off by treating them like galley slaves instead of pre-citizens!”
“Shipboard duty rosters work,” Ahmed insisted. “It’s proven.”
“By AzizSyndicate studies!” Aurelia said contemptuously. “Studies done on B’s and C’s. Well, we’re not B’s and C’s, in case you hadn’t noticed. And if your so-called leadership skills are limited to bossing around worker drones sociogenetically programmed to swallow your counterrevolutionary humanist bullshit—”
“Look,” Laid-back Ahmed said in his usual levelheaded tone. “Let’s just focus on the problem at hand. We can’t solve everything today. And none of the rest matters worth a lick if we can’t get to the bottom of the DVI situation.”
“Why not just redo the DVI readings and make a fresh start on the problem?” Arkasha said. It was the first time he’d opened his mouth since the consult started.
There was a momentary silence while everyone considered his proposal. Arkasha had acquired an unofficial and nebulous authority over the past week as his crewmates—one by one, and without ever admitting they’d done it—downloaded his public dossier. The long string of publications, citations, and discoveries attached to the dossier had subtly shifted not only their views on Arkasha but their assumptions about the entire mission. Arkasha was the closest thing the anti-individualist culture of the Syndicates had to an academic superstar: one of the best theoretical geneticists of his generation in a society where genetics was the undisputed top of the scientific food chain. Naturally his articles were published under his geneline name. But you only had to see that all-important first footnote to understand how many articles he’d written, and how influential his work had been on other geneticists. Arkasha’s presence on the mission signaled the magnitude of what the joint steering committee expected them to find on Novalis. And without doing or saying anything to demand the position—in fact he barely even talked to anyone except poor little Shy Bella, who was the farthest thing imaginable from a social power broker—Arkasha had become the de facto lead scientist on the survey.
Bossy Bella, however, was conspicuously uninterested in Arkasha’s academic qualifications. She and Arkasha stared at each other, locked in a private battle of wills. “If you’ve got something to say,” she told him, “why don’t you have the guts to say it? Or would you rather come creeping around my quarters again making your nasty insinuations?”
“There’s no need to jump down his throat!” Aurelia snapped, interrupting whatever had been going on between Arkasha and Bella and foreclosing any chance at finding out what Arkasha’s “nasty insinuations” had been. Arkady smothered a sigh. He dearly loved Aurelias in general, and these Aurelias in particular…but their “help” in a consult was a burden he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.
“Don’t browbeat me!” Bella cried, her attention momentarily deflected from Arkasha.
“ Browbeather?” Aurelia’s sib muttered for Arkady’s ears only. “I wish we could horsewhip her.”
“Come on, people.” Laid-back Ahmed again. “Let’s focus on solutions, not fault finding.”
Arkady took a deep breath and plunged in. “Maybe the best solution really is just to check the numbers again. I’ll redo the DVI if Bella doesn’t have time. It’s no problem. Honestly.”
Laid-back Ahmed gave him an eloquently grateful look. The idea that doing a little extra work yourself was better than letting the social gears get squeaky was one of the many things Arkady and the big Aziz A had already discovered they saw eye to eye on.
“I don’t need you looking over my shoulder for mistakes,” Bella snapped at Arkady. She cast a venomous look toward Arkasha’s end of the table. “And don’t think I don’t know who put you up to this!”
“No one put me up to anything,” Arkady said, wondering what Arkasha could possibly have said to provoke such animosity. “I just meant that I have a little extra time and if you’re too busy to be able to go over the numbers again, I could…uh, help you.” Arkady did his best to make the offer sound supportive and unthreatening. Inside, however, he was having counterrevolutionary thoughts about whether some of those bad old repressive human political systems had found a way to make sure the decent hardworking people didn’t get the short end of the stick…and the bullies, prima donnas, and manipulators didn’t rise to the top like scum on milk.
Bella’s sib leaned over to whisper something in her ear. Whatever it was Bella didn’t like it much.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she cried. “Why are you turning against me?”
“I’m not. I just—”
“It’s not fair! Why isn’t anyone asking if it’s Aurelia’s analysis and not my readings that are wrong? Why are you all so ready to believe her and turn against me? Because she’s an A and I’m a B, that’s why!”
“Because she knows her job and you don’t, you moron,” Aurelia’s sib muttered—thankfully too softly for anyone but Arkady to hear.
“She has a point,” By-the-Book Ahmed said. “Why aren’twe considering the possibility that the numbers are good and the, uh…what did you call it just now, Arkady?…the ground truth is different than what we thought it would be?”
“Because…” Aurelia said, and trailed off helplessly.
Arkady and every other science track A sitting around the table knew what that “because” stood for. Because the numbers Bella had come up with were flat-out impossible. Because we didn’t come all the way out here to run a basic ecophysics course. Because we all have too much work to do to waste our collective time explaining to Bella why if she knew her ass from her elbow she’d know her numbers were wrong.
But of course the Ahmeds knew even less about terraforming than Bella did. All they knew was that they had a bunch of temperamental techs and scientists at each other’s throats. And in the absence of technical knowledge, they could only fall back on their knowledge of their fellow crewmates. By-the-Book Ahmed sided with Bella because she flattered and deferred to him and was the only crewmember who didn’t display “lack of motivation” by bridling under his beloved shipboard duty roster. Laid-back Ahmed followed his basic philosophy—fair in most disputes but disastrous in this case—of trying to get the combatants to split the difference and compromise.
“I agree,” Laid-back Ahmed said. “I mean there’s no reason not to consider every possibility, is there?”