"There's no need to repay me for anything, Ms. Hibson," the tall woman said gently. "It was Nimitz here who found Susan, you know, not me. If you want to thank anyone, thank him—and the people who actually dug Ranjit and Andrea out, of course. But to be perfectly honest, Susan would have done the job without me or Nimitz. She was less than five meters down when he sensed her, and there was no way five measly meters of snow were going to stop your daughter, Ma'am."
Susan blushed a bright, blazing scarlet—a hue so hot she could have used it to melt her way to rescue if it had been available at the time, Ranjit thought—and Liesell reached out and wrapped her arm tightly around her daughter's shoulders.
"I believe you're correct, Commander," she said with a wry smile. "Her father and I have noticed before that she can be just a bit on the stubborn side."
"So I've heard," Commander Harrington agreed. "Which brings me to the rather delicate matter of what I wanted to speak to her about."
"With me, Ma'am?" Susan said, and her tone was almost as big a surprise for Ranjit as the treecat's appearance. He'd become accustomed to the way his sister always spoke of the Navy—as the "chauffeurs" and "deck jockeys" whose sole job was to move important people like Marines around—but there was no sign of that now. She had addressed the tall officer in tones of profound respect, and as he heard it, Ranjit sensed that there was a great deal about their rescue that he hadn't been told yet.
"Yes." The tall woman looked consideringly down at Susan, and the 'cat on her shoulder joined her, cocking his head to peer thoughtfully at Ranjit's sister. "I thought you'd like to know what I just heard over at the CP," the woman said. "If your parents don't mind, of course."
"Mind what, Commander?" Kalindi asked.
"Well, I'm afraid it has to do with that stubbornness your wife just mentioned, Sir," Harrington said. "You see, the newsies are swarming all over the resort looking for human interest stories, and I'm afraid your daughter here is rapidly turning into the central heroine of the entire disaster. The quickie interview they did with her last night has gone out on live feeds and in all the 'faxes, and we've already heard back from Manticore about her."
"From Manticore?" Susan repeated. "About me?"
"Yes. You know, you really impressed everyone with the rescue teams. We all feel you showed a lot of nerve and determination, and you did a good job of helping us backtrack your tunnel to find Ranjit and Andrea, too."
She paused, and Ranjit watched bemusedly as Susan blushed yet again. The woman with the 'cat smiled ever so slightly, almond eyes gleaming as she enjoyed Susan's atypical tongue-tied silence. She let it stretch out for several seconds, then cleared her throat.
"It just happens," she went on, "that Major Stimson and Major Berczi are old friends, and the Major explained your, um, military ambitions to us. I believe you also said a little something about them to the newsies, didn't you?"
Susan darted an agonized look at her parents, then nodded, and Harrington shrugged. "Well, Major Stimson had already mentioned them to me, and I mentioned them to Captain Tammerlane—he's the skipper of my ship—and he passed them on up the chain in turn, and then the interview imagery hit the capital news net, and, well—"
She shrugged, grinning, and Susan turned her eyes to her brother in agonized embarrassment. She stared at him pleadingly, and he shook himself.
"And what–Ma'am?" he asked finally.
"Well, I understand that somehow your sister's plans got bucked all the way up the chain to the Commandant of the Corps," Commander Harrington told him.
"All the way—?" Ranjit's jaw dropped, and twisted back around to stare at his Susan.
"Yes, indeed. And according to the traffic over at the CP, General Ambristen was rather taken with her exploits himself. Sufficiently so, in fact, that on the recommendation of Major Berczi, Major Stimson, and myself, the Corps has already reserved a slot for her at OCS, assuming—" Harrington darted a moderately severe glance at Susan "—that she gets her grades up, of course."
"Really?" The word burst out of Susan like an explosion, and Harrington nodded with a chuckle.
"Really," she assured the girl. "But it really is contingent on your passing the academic requirements, too. May I assume that you'll be doing a little something about those grades Major Berczi mentioned to me?"
"Yes, Ma'am! I mean– Yes, of course I will!"
"Good. In that case, maybe you and I will serve together sometime."
"I'd . . . I'd like that, Ma'am," Susan said, suddenly almost painfully shy. "I'd like that a lot."
"Stranger things have happened," Harrington observed. Then she nodded to Andrea and Ranjit, shook hands once more with both of Susan's parents, sketched an abbreviated salute to Berczi, and disappeared.
Ranjit stared after her for a long, endless moment, then looked at his parents, but they weren't looking at him. They were looking at each other, with expressions that mingled resignation, pride, bittersweet laughter, and the admission that their long effort to divert Susan from the Marines had just turned into an abject failure. It was going to take them a while to deal with that and once more begin paying any attention to the rest of the world, and Susan was in even worse shape. She was simply standing there, staring off into space, and her entire face was one huge, beatific smile. There wasn't so much as a hint of intelligence in her bemused eyes, and Ranjit shuddered. She was going to be extremely difficult to live with for the next few weeks, or months—or years, he thought wryly—once she resumed interactive contact with the world about her. But that wasn't going to happen for a while, so he turned to Csilla Berczi.
"Who was that?" he demanded.
"She's the one who dug the lot of you out of the avalanche," the teacher replied. "Well, she and a squad of Marines under her command. Her treecat found Susan."
"Yeah, it was great!" Andrea chipped in. "Commander Harrington says he must've sensed her emotions or something and led them straight to her. They were wonderful about getting all the rest of us out, too. But I can hardly believe she went to the trouble of telling her captain Susan wanted to be a Marine and then actually came clear over to the hospital just to tell her!"
"Believe it, young lady," Berczi told her. "There are never enough good officers to go around. Commander Harrington knows that—which shouldn't be too surprising, since she's one of the good ones herself!—and she recognized the same things in our Susan that I've been looking at for the last couple of years. Although," she added judiciously, glancing sidelong at the younger girl's gloriously bemused expression, "we could all be excused for not seeing them just at the moment, I suppose."
"Well I'm happy for her," Andrea said firmly. "Aren't you?"
"Of course I am," Berczi agreed, "and—"
She stopped speaking as Ranjit's deep, heartfelt groan suddenly interrupted her. He, too, had been staring at his sister, but now his eyes were fixed on his parents, and Berczi cocked an eyebrow at him.
"What?" she asked. "Are your legs bothering you all of a sudden, Ranjit?"
"No, no," he shook his head, but his expression was that of someone in intense pain, and she looked a question at him. "It wasn't that," he assured her. "It wasn't that at all."
"Then what was it?" she demanded, and he looked at her mournfully.
"It's just that I really did promise to keep an eye on Susan if Mom and Dad let her come on the trip," he told her, "and I just realized. They may not be going to blame me for the avalanche, but when they come back up for air, they're gonna kill me for letting this happen!"