To her further annoyance, he treated her like some kind of superior AI; he was obviously annoyed with having to go through an interview in the first place and wanted to be elsewhere.
"Donning Chang y Narhan, reporting," he said in a bored tone of voice. "As ordered." He proceeded to rattle off everything that had been in the short file, as if she couldn't access it herself. He did not sit down. He paid no attention to Ted.
"Have you any questions?" he asked, making it sound as if questions would only mean that she had not been paying attention.
"Only a few," she replied. "What is your favorite composer? Do you play chess?"
He answered her questions curtly, as if they were so completely irrelevant that he couldn't believe she was asking them.
She obliged him by suggesting that he could leave after only a handful of questions; he took it with bad grace and left in a hurry, an aroma of scorched ego in his wake.
"Garrison Lebrel," CenCom said, as Donning vacated the lift.
Well, Garrison was possible. Good academic marks, not as high as Donning's but not bad. Interest in archeology... she perked up when she saw what he was interested in. Nonhumans, especially presumed extinct space-going races, including the EsKays!
Garrison let her bring him in and proved to be talkative, if not precisely congenial. He was very intense.
"We'll be spending a lot of time in transit," he said. "I wasn't able to keep up with the current literature in archeology while I was in the Academy, and I planned to be doing a lot of reading."
Not exactly sociable. "Do you play chess?" she asked hopefully. He shook his head. "But I do play sennet. That's an ancient Egyptian game. I have a very interesting software version I could install; I doubt it would take you long to learn it, though it takes a lifetime to master."
The last was said a bit smugly. And there had been no offer from him to learn her game. Still, she did have access to far more computing power than he did; it wouldn't take her more than an hour to learn the game, if that.
"I see that your special interest is in extinct space going races," she ventured. "I have a very strong background in the Salomon-Kildaire Entities."
He looked skeptical. "I think Doctor Russell Gaines-Barklen has probably dealt with them as fully as they need to be, although we'll probably have some chances to catch things survey teams miss. That's the benefit of being trained to look for specifics."
She finally sent him back with mixed feelings. He was arrogant, no doubt about it. But he was also competent He shared her interests, but his pet theories differed wildly from hers. He was possible, if there were no other choices, but he wasn't what she was looking for.
"Chria Chance is up next," CenCom said when she reported she was ready for the next. "But you won't like her."
"Why, because she's got a name that's obviously assumed?" Neither CenCom nor the Academy cared what you called yourself, provided they knew the identity you had been born with and the record that went with it. Every so often someone wanted to adopt a pseudonym. Often it was to cover a famous High Family name, either because the bearer was a black sheep, or because (rarely) he or she didn't want special treatment But sometimes a youngster got a notion into his or her head to take on a holostar-type name.
"No," CenCom replied, not bothering to hide his amusement. "You won't like her because, well, you'll see."
Chria's records were good, about like Garrison's, with one odd note in the personality profile. Nonconformist, it said.
Well, there was nothing wrong with that. Pota and Braddon were certainly not conformists in any sense.
But the moment that Chria stepped into the central room, Tia knew that CenCom was right.
She wore her Academy uniform, all right, but it was a specially tailored one. Made entirely of leather; real leather, not synthetic. And she wore it entirely too well for Tia to feel comfortable around her. For the rest, she was rapier-thin, with a face like a clever fox and hair cut aggressively short. Tia already felt intimidated, and she hadn't even said anything yet!
Within a few minutes worth of questions, Chria shook her head. "You're a nice person, Tia," she said forthrightly, "and you and I would never partner well. I'd run right over you, and you'd sit there in your column, fuming and resentful, and you'd never say a word." She grinned with feral cheer. "I'm a carnivore, a hunter. I need someone who'll fight back! I enjoy a good fight!"
"You'd probably have us go chasing right after pirates," Tia said, a little resentful already. "If there were any in the neighborhood, you'd want us to look for them!"
"You bet I would," Chria responded without shame.