Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett Page A

out—and if people can’t respect the whole package, I’m not the one who should have to adjust.” Mom taught me that .
    “Fair enough. It seems like a harder way of going about it, though.”
    Her eyes roved over his avatar’s nude form. “Anything worthwhile is hard, baby.”
    Russell City habitat
In orbit of Vesta
    Though the Troubleshooter Corps had headquarters at Ceres and Vesta for the sake of efficiency and access to resources, it had established them in small habitats known for their political independence. Demetria was an old, diminutive Bernal sphere established to support the scientific study of Ceres, its tight polar orbit precluding it from joining into the Sheaf. Russell City’s neutrality was a function of its popularity as a tourist attraction; its forced orbit over Vesta’s south pole, held in place against the protoplanet’s irregular gravity field by giant solar sails, afforded a spectacular view of Rheasilvia Basin, the immense crater that had flattened out the southern side of the spheroidal body, and its central peak Rheasilvia Mons, the tallest mountain ever climbed by humans.
    The docking bay held more TSC ships than Emry had seen in one place since Arkady’s funeral. “Does he really have to see so many of us at once?” she asked once she’d disembarked. “Somewhere there’s a crime happening, you know.”
    “Give him a chance,” said Sally Knox as she led Emry to the meeting room. Despite being only a meter twenty, Sally kept up a pace that Emry had trouble matching. The cherub-faced, middle-aged blonde had been a mainstay of the TSC’s clerical/support staff from the beginning and showed no sign of slowing down. Emry had never quite figured out what her official job was, since she did so many different tasks skillfully, efficiently, and, when needed, ruthlessly. Sensei had nicknamed her the Troubleshooters’ troubleshooter. It was oddly unsurprising to find her here instead of back at Demetria; some Troubleshooters suspected that there was more than one of her. “Mr. Tai thought it was important to share his ideas with you all in person. He didn’t want to do it more times than necessary. You’re one of the last stragglers,” she scolded.
    “Well, I’ve been busy.”
    “Oh, yes, suffering in a luxury resort. We all bleed for you.” Emry was about to protest that she hadn’t had much fun there, but she knew it would have no effect. Sally was perenially unmoved by tales of Troubleshooter adventure, triumph, or angst. It all seemed to bore her, as though her life of paperwork and organizing and programming and maintenance were infinitely more significant than anything that went on in the field. Somehow Emry found that comforting.
    And if Sally had such a high opinion of this Gregor Tai—by her standards, her words constituted a ringing endorsement—then Emry figured it would be worth hearing what he had to say.
    The meeting room was already occupied by most of the T-shooters whose ships Emry had seen in the bay. They exchanged greetings with her, the friendlier ones generally coming from other recent graduates; many of the veterans were more aloof. Unfortunately, Kari wasn’t among those present. Most of the ’Shooters were in civilian garb, though few dressed quite as informally as Emry herself. She wore a hip-hugger miniskirt that was barely more than a wide belt, plus a cutoff Pellucidar t-shirt displaying animated scenes of the habitat’s more adult-oriented attractions. After Sally’s words, she wondered if her choice of wardrobe had been a bit too deliberately irreverent. But this was how she’d chosen to present herself to Tai and that was that. Whether he could take her seriously was not the issue, as far as Emry was concerned.
    The room was set up with a buffet table and a couple of dozen seats arranged in the round. Emry found herself being waved over to the table by the Dharma Bums—the nickname with which Vijay and Marut Pandalai, officially code-named