After all, she was twenty-six and had grown up within the neural system and the sensorweb, whereas Herbert was fifty-­two and had merely engineered such things. Whenever it came to re­deeming Mljet, Vera was burningly committed and utterly sincere. Herbert was older, wiser, and a foreigner, so he was merely interested.

Herbert had his flaws. Herbert’s largest character flaw was that he was publicly in love with a subordinate half his age. Anyone who wanted to look at Herbert’s brain would know this embarrassing fact, and since Herbert was in authority, everyone naturally wanted to look at his brain.

Such was their situation, a snarl that was humanly impossible. Yet it was their duty to bear the burden of it. So far, they had both managed to bear it.

Herbert gently drummed his thick red fingers on his folding camp table. Heaven only knew what labyrinth of second-guessing was going on within his naked head. He seemed to expect her to make the next emotional move, to impulsively spit something out.

What was he feeling? Had Herbert finally learned to hate her? Yes! In a single heart-stabbing instant, this suspicion flamed into conviction.

Herbert despised her now. He hated all the trouble she had given him.

He’d just claimed that he was “reassigning” her. He meant to fire her from the project. He would throw her onto a supply boat and kick her ­off Mljet. She would be expelled, shipped to some other Acquis recla­mation project: Chernobyl, Cyprus, New Orleans. She would never proudly wear her boneware again, she’d be reduced to a newbie peon. This meant the end of everything.

Herbert touched his chin. “Vera, did you sleep at all last night?”

“Not well,” she confessed. “My barracks are so full of dirty newbies…” Vera had tossed and turned, hating herself for panicking in the mine, and dreading this encounter.