"Come in," said Wellem Bosler, and Lotta Alsnor entered.
"Unless there's something you don't like in the session record," she said, "I've just completed Forey Benster. I'm ready to start three new cases tomorrow."
Which makes this the ideal time for it to happen, she added silently, if Artus was right. It's unusual to turn over a full slate of operants on the same day.
Bosler nodded and gestured her to a seat. "Tomorrow I've got a different kind of assignment for you."
He looked at her curiously then, as if he'd picked up on her inner reaction. Which, she thought, he no doubt had. "You've always been good at melding with nonhuman life," he said, "mammals, birds, insects, plants. You've done more of it than anyone else I've known, of any age."
He leaned his elbows on his desk, fingers interlaced beneath his chin. "I suppose you know what Kusu's been working on, and what he's run into."
"You're referring to the teleport, and what's happened to the mammals he's tried to put through it."
"Right. Theoretically there shouldn't have been any problem, but the theory was pretty sketchy, pretty incomplete. So when the mammals came out insane, at first he tried to tinker his way through it. When that got him nowhere, he went back to the theory, to expand and strengthen it. Which he did, appreciably. But when all's said and done, it made no difference in the apparatus or the results, and it didn't give him any leads."
Bosler straightened. "Today he called me. He's decided he needs a study on what, subjectively, happens with a mammal's mind when it teleports. And asked me who I'd recommend to work with him. I told him you. He wasn't surprised."
Lotta's look was steady and direct. "I can already see some procedural problems."
He nodded. She didn't elaborate.
"You wouldn't be offering me this assignment," she said, "if you didn't think it was important enough to cut your staff here by one. But what makes it urgent? Is there something I'm overlooking? He could wait till we're done here."
"True, he could. And I can't specify why it seems urgent. The initial sense of urgency was his, and he can't rationalize it either. But the feeling I get is that he's right; it is urgent." He paused. "Although not so urgent that it calls for reckless action."
She made a face at Bosler, then nodded once in decision. "I'll do it. It does sound really interesting. Is there anything more you and I need to say about it before I leave?"
Bosler shook his head. "Anything out of the ordinary in the session?"
Lotta laughed. "Most people would say so. Actually it was pretty routine."
"Good. I'll call Lemal and have one of the OSP floaters ready for you tomorrow after breakfast. Say 0800. You'll be at Lake Loreen for lunch."
"Right." She got up. "I'll see if Jerym is still up. We've only visited once since I've been here." She stopped with a hand on the door. "Oh! There's something you should know." Then she ran down for him her brief conversation with Romlar the evening before. "And that was before Kusu called you," she added.
"Hmh! Interesting." Bosler grinned. "I'm not too surprised, considering. But it's good to know."
When she'd gone, he shook his head. The T'sel certainly saved a lot of teenaged anxieties. That fifteen-year-old girl—woman—was more mature and stable and intelligent than ninety-nine point nine nine percent of the middle-aged population on Iryala, and bringing the population at large to anything approaching Lotta Alsnor's level wasn't going to happen overnight. Or in a generation, or even several.