cadets. He had a thick white mustache. That was new. “Think you could take them?” he said. “You set a track record here, as I recall.”
She said, “That was a long time ago.” She had once believed she could save the world by running track.
“Yes. When things were simpler. How’s David?”
“Good.”
“Did he come to Arlington with you?”
“No. He has work. And it’s not really his thing.” It wasn’t really her thing anymore, either. She’d once thought places like this were Service: saluting in corridors, drills, meetings. That was what the military was all about. Now it all felt slightly junior high, like watching people play dress-up, worrying about things that didn’t matter. Lately she had trouble believing that even a small portion of what happened here was helping.
“I visited him,” Nettle said, “when it wasn’t clear who had survived.”
“I know you did. Thank you.” There was a pause. “I know why I’m here.”
Nettle’s eyebrows rose.
“I know the press is important,” she said. “The talks. The shows and clips. But I’m not good at it. I can’t . . .” She searched for the word. “I don’t know how to talk to those people. I can’t give them sound bites and slogans.”
“Jolene,” Nettle said, “you’re doing an excellent job because you find it difficult. People see you struggling and they empathize. You’re not hiding any of that. You have an authenticity that can’t be manufactured.”
She was taken aback. “Then I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Well, it’s not because we want to critique your media performance.” Nettle gestured toward the door. “If you’re ready?”
For what? She hadn’t even known there was a we in his meeting. She’d assumed she was coming in for a one-on-one with Nettle. But when she entered the Colossus room, she saw no fewer than half a dozen uniforms clumped around a mahogany table, including a general, a chief of staff, and two majors. More stars in one place than since they’d awarded her the Medal of Valor on live broadcast. At one end of the room was a wall-sized screen, reading: INCIDENT REPORT / XID FS-000-013 / FORNINA SIRIUS.
She thought: Ah, crap.
Nettle guided her to a chair and took the seat beside her. She took a sip of water.
“That’s one of my favorite pieces,” Nettle said. He was gazing at a painting that occupied most of the opposite wall: a wide, featureless plain with a hint of far-off mountains. Near a corner was a dark figure with a stick or a spear. “Do you see the gazelle?”
She hadn’t, until he mentioned it. In one corner was a tiny brown smudge.
“Persistence hunting,” Nettle said. “Practiced by ancient tribes across Africa a million or so years ago. They were slower than their prey, but figured out that they could exploit their basic human advantage in stamina. We can endure, you see. Keep going for hours, days, until the prey ran itself to death. That’s how we survived.”
He was trying to put her at ease, because they were going to make her talk about Fornina Sirius, and she would be expected to do so calmly and rationally, as if reviewing a restaurant meal. One of the men with the general was a civilian in a light gray suit with a Surplex ID tag. She’d never interacted with him directly, but knew his name, Bogart, and his reports, which, when she untangled the words, said that she had killed everyone.
“Perhaps that’s how we win the war,” Nettle said. “By exploiting our innate advantage over the salamanders.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t know.” He smiled. “Maybe it’s still endurance.”
The brass huddle across the table broke up. Officers and staff found their seats. She didn’t know if they’d planned to sit on one side of the table, with her and Nettle on the other, but that was how it wound up. The general asked how her flight had been and how long she’d been in town and she did not allow her gaze to shift to the screen, where someone was dialing through Fornina Sirius layouts. “Now, why don’t you take me through this?” he said finally,