Probability Sun by Nancy Kress Read Free Book Online

around the ship, irritating Commander Grafton, who hadn’t wanted children aboard any more than Kaufman did. Capelo had a small room next door.
    “The quarters are fine. But Sudie doesn’t like not being able to get to me without going out into the corridor and through my door. She doesn’t even know if I’m there until she does that, which scares her. She’s a bit nervous, and she’s entitled.”
    It was the closest Kaufman had heard him come to mentioning his wife’s death. Kaufman said, “I’m not sure what you’re asking. Do you want another bunk put in the stateroom?”
    “No. I work at night, and anyway Amanda’s going through a super-modest phase. No, I want you to have a little door cut in the wall between the girls’ room and mine.”
    Kaufman stared at him. Evidently Capelo didn’t realize that Army officers didn’t just go around cutting holes in Navy ships. “Tom, I don’t think that’s possible.”
    “Just a small door, big enough for me to crawl through. Under my bunk, and we’ll push furniture in front of it on the other side. Sudie just wants the reassurance that she can get to me anytime she needs to, and she likes the idea of a tiny secret door.”
    What Sudie liked wasn’t the point, Kaufman thought. Grafton wouldn’t like it at all. Kaufman had told Marbet the truth: Balancing Army and Navy was a delicate act. Kaufman was Special Project Team head, with considerable powers to direct where the Alan B. Shepard went, when she went, and what she did when she got there. But she was still Grafton’s ship.
    “Tom—”
    “Please, Lyle. I really need this.”
    Kaufman studied him. Army/Navy wasn’t the only balancing act here. Capelo was as difficult as everybody had warned, judging from his effect on Albemarle, and even on Marbet, last night. Granting this favor might go far in making him willing to work with Kaufman. Capelo stood now with a most uncharacteristic look on his face: humble waiting. That was too much credit in the bank to throw away.
    Kaufman calculated rapidly. Grafton would never agree. But Kaufman hadn’t been in diplomacy as long as he had without learning how to make detours around immovable objects. “All right, Tom, I’ll see what I can do. But neither you nor your daughters can say anything, not to anybody.”
    “Wonderful! I’m really grateful, Lyle.”
    Which was the point.
    Kaufman found the correct form on ship’s computer: Work Form for Alterations to Bulkhead, Non-Operational and Non-Secure Areas. He filled it in, printed a flimsy, and summoned Carpenter’s Mate First Class Michael Doolin, whose name was on ship’s roster.
    “Doolin, here’s a work form. Carry out the assignment and return the flimsy to me. I’ll enter it in the records myself.”
    “Aye, aye, sir. Only, sir … this form ain’t signed.”
    “Yes, it is. See, there—‘Colonel Lyle Kaufman, SADA.’”
    “Supposed to be a Navy officer’s signature, sir. Captain or exec or OOD.”
    “Doolin,” Kaufman said, with all the quiet authority he’d learned to project in twenty years, underlaid with the subtle menace he’d also learned, “do you understand my position on this ship?”
    “Yes, sir,” Doolin said unhappily.
    “Do I outrank the OOD?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And the exec?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Then can you explain the nature of your problem with this direct order?”
    “No, sir. Do it right away, sir.” Doolin took the filmsy and set off, his gait expressive of everything he wasn’t saying.
    Kaufman deleted the completed work form from the computer. When Doolin returned the flimsy, Kaufman would destroy it. Of course, scuttlebutt would go around about the “tiny, secret door.” But Kaufman doubted it would reach any officer. It was too trivial, and Grafton ran too much of a by-the-book ship. Crewmen and officers didn’t fraternize. Also, the crew on this particular expedition had been carefully selected for trouble-free service records and consistently