The anthropology team—all twelve of them—were sitting around the circular table in one of the starship’s smaller conference rooms. It was their regular Wednesday meeting, where they exchanged notes on the work they were doing.
Sitting almost directly across the table from Littlejohn, Brad realized that Kosoff had never attended one of their meetings. He sits in on all the other department meetings, but not ours. He doesn’t regard our work as real science. We’re not important to the mission, as far as he’s concerned.
One by one the group members reported on their work. Littlejohn listened mostly in silence. The team was building a picture of how the other scientists aboard Odysseus were creating—mostly unconsciously—a social structure for themselves.
“Their pecking order is pretty simple.” Larry Untermeyer was reporting on his study of the technology team’s engineers. “There’s Kosoff at the top of the heap, of course. Then comes Kosoff’s graduate students, then their grad students, and finally the poor slobs who come from other schools.”
“No recognition of merit?” Littlejohn asked. “Accomplishment?”
Untermeyer shook his head. “None of them has accomplished anything that would impress Kosoff. Not yet.”
One of the women piped up, “It’s the same with the health and safety department. Kosoff and his former students are at the top of the heap.”
“If you tried to draw an organization chart,” Brad pointed out, “it would look like a series of concentric circles. Kosoff in the middle, his former students in the next circle, their graduates in the next, and so on.”
Littlejohn made a tight little smile. “Seems to work. They’re productive.”
“So far,” Untermeyer said before Brad could voice his own opinion.
Once they had gone completely around the table, Littlejohn nodded smilingly and said, “Good work, all of you. If we keep this up, we’ll have a fine report to make back to the mission coordinators on Earth.”
One of the women—blond, slim, sharp-featured—asked, “Have any of the other teams put out reports yet?”
Littlejohn shook his head. “Too soon. We could issue an interim report in a few weeks, I think.”
“The rest of the people on board don’t seem very happy about our work,” the woman said.
Nods and murmurs of agreement went around the table.
“They think we’re snooping on them.”
“They don’t like it.”
“They don’t like us.”
Littlejohn shrugged. “That in itself is an important indicator of their attitudes, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“But it doesn’t make it any easier for us, you know.”
With a smile that looked downright fierce, Littlejohn said, “We’re not here to do an easy job. It’s important to understand how teams of people, isolated and far from home, build their social systems.”
“Important for who?” asked the man sitting next to Brad.
“Whom.”
With a sour expression, the man growled, “All right, whom, for Christ’s sake.”
“It’s important for our understanding of how human societies work,” said Littlejohn. “The human race is expanding out among the stars. Human social norms are going to change; they’ll have to if we’re to survive and flourish out here.”
“We’re not going to spend the rest of our lives here,” the blonde snapped.
“Perhaps not,” said Littlejohn. “But others will. Humankind is enlarging its habitat again. It’s something we’ve been doing since Homo ergaster started walking out of eastern Africa, nearly two million years ago. We’ve spread all across Earth and out through the solar system. Now we’re beginning to spread among the stars. You people”—he gestured to the team sitting around the table—“have the opportunity to study how our civilization changes in its new environments.”
Dead silence fell on them.
And Brad thought, He sees farther than we do. He’s looking ahead generations, centuries.
Untermeyer finally wisecracked, “Here I thought we were just studying how Kosoff controls everything.”
“That’s part of it,” Littlejohn admitted. “Maybe an important part. Will Kosoff found a dynasty among the stars?”
“More likely he’ll proclaim himself a god,” Brad heard himself say.
“He might at that,” Littlejohn agreed with a chuckle.
* * *
As the meeting broke up, Littlejohn called, “I want to talk to you, Brad.”
Brad stepped out of the line heading for the conference room door. “Yes?”
“Dr. Steiner is very happy with the work you did at Alpha.”
Surprised, Brad blurted, “She is?”
“You got excellent data. And the philology team is happily building up their understanding of the octopods’ language.”
“It’s pretty primitive,” Brad said. “Barely a language by our standards.”
“Yes, but they communicate,” said Littlejohn. “And even the astronomy team is impressed by the temperature profile you took of Alpha’s ocean. Dr. Abbott told me it’s very interesting.”
Brad shrugged. “The sensors worked automatically. All I did was collate the data they took.” Before Littlejohn could react he added, “I had plenty of time on my hands with nothing much to do.”
“I imagine you did. Well, anyway, Steiner is very pleased.”
“I see Dr. Steiner almost every day,” Brad said. “She’s never indicated that she’s pleased with me.”
Littlejohn reached up and placed a hand on Brad’s shoulder. “She can’t tell you directly. You’re still on Kosoff’s blacklist.”
Brad grumbled, “He’s still sore at me.”
“He’s an alpha ape. He’s got to keep you in your place if he wants to keep himself at the top of the tribe.”
“I’m only a junior anthropologist,” Brad said. “I’m no threat to him.”
“He thinks you are.”
“That’s bullshit!”
Cocking his head to one side, Littlejohn said, “Yes, I agree that it is. But Kosoff knows the game and he’s good at playing it. He can’t smile at you, that would loosen his status a little. And he can’t allow subordinates like Steiner to smile at you, either.”
“But she told you that she appreciates my work.”
Littlejohn nodded. “There’s more than one way to skin an alpha ape, my boy.”