He doesn't look particularly sorry. That's the thing. He's standing there in the middle of the street looking like a man who would absolutely do it again, and something about that makes the sharp, panicked edge of my anger go sideways into something messier and more complicated that I don't have a name for yet.
"You said it would be fine," I say. "You said—you literally said, this morning,in your bed?—"
"I know what I said."
"So what happened?"
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he tilts his head down the street, toward the little park at the end of it, the one with the tiered fountains.
"Walk with me," he says.
I want to say no just to be difficult.
But I walk with him.
He tells me about Dresh. About Veth. About the specific shape of the argument—the way they kept circling back tohuman researcherlike it was a complete sentence, like it explained something that didn't need further examination.
I listen.
I don't say anything.
I listen all the way to the fountain, and I sit down on the bench next to it, and I listen until he's done, and then there's a silence that goes on for a little too long.
"Lyn," he says.
"I'm thinking," I say. "I'm thinking about the most efficient way to say what I'm about to say."
"That sounds ominous."
"It's a little ominous," I agree. I look at my hands. "You told me—you specifically told me, multiple times, that you had a plan. That you knew how to handle this. That I was not going to take a hit to my project, my funding, or my standing, because you were going to be transparent and above-board and it was all going to be fine."
"Your project?—"
"Is not the point right now," I say. "You.Youare the point. You just got put on leave because you lost your temper defending me to a room full of people, and you didn't even call me. I had tohear it fromRiley,of all people, and he sounded fucking giddy over it.”
“I…have not been very charitable to McRae,” he mutters.
“That is absolutely not the point.”
He takes a seat next to me with a sigh. Doesn’t say anything else.
"I know what they said," I tell him. "I know whathuman researchermeans when people say it like that. I've been hearing it my whole career, okay? I know. And I—" I stop. Swallow. "I am angry on my own behalf about that, and I'm going to deal with it, and if Dresh wants a conversation about the documented research record of humans in advanced xenobiological study she can absolutely have it." I look at him. "But you do not get to take that hit for me without telling me first. You don't get to walk into a room, blow up fifteen years of professional goodwill, and then just…come find me around the corner like nothing happened."
"I was coming to tell you?—"
"After the fact."
"Lyn—"
"You told me I wasn't a secret," I say, and my voice does the thing I didn't want it to do, the thing where it goes quieter instead of louder when I'm really upset. "You said you were doing this above board because I wasn't a secret and it wasn't a mistake. And that's great, that's—I believe you, okay, I'm not—I'm not questioning that. But above board goes both ways." I press my hands together between my knees. "I didn't get to be in there. I didn't get to say anything. You just…decided, by yourself, that this was worth blowing up over, and now you're on leave and I still have my project and my funding and that's a great outcome for me, professionally, except that it feels absolutely terrible."
He's very quiet.
"Because you took a consequence that should have been shared," I say, "and you made it yours. And I know—I know you were trying to protect me. But I didn't ask you to protect me like that."
The fountain does its thing. Water over stone.
"No," he says finally. "You didn't."
