Silver Shark (3 page)

The officer looked at the screen in front of him. "Your first priority is finding a job. You will receive job recommendations from this office. You must follow these recommendations. Failure to comply will result in deportation to Uley."

"So they aren't really recommendations, are they?" Claire asked.

"No. They are not."

"I see."

"If you fail to obtain a job after five recommendations, you will be downgraded to Class B and recommendations will no longer be provided to you. If you fail to obtain employment within your three-month probation period, you will be deported. If you engage in any criminal activity during your probation period, you will be..."

"...Deported?" Deportation would mean death. Melko Corporation would kill her if she returned. They made it abundantly clear before she boarded the spacecraft.

"We understand each other." The officer nodded again. "Your first job interview is in one hour. When you walk out of this building, you will see a row of aerials. Your aerial is number 57/78. The course is already programmed into it. It will take you to your job interview and then to your apartment. Should you obtain employment, the aerial will return for you in the morning. If you like it, you may choose to assume payments for it at the end of your probation. Here are the particulars." The Immigration Officer slid a data card across the table.

Claire slid it into the tablet she had been issued. The tablet's screen blinked and pale words emerged from the background: Guardian, Inc.:
Extrasensory Security Protocols and Biocybernetic Safety
.

Her hands went cold. "I'm not a psycher," she managed.

"We know. You show no psychic activity at all." The Immigration officer nodded for emphasis. "The Escana
kinsmen
family has all the psychers they could want. What they need is support staff with quiet brains, so they can work without interference. They have an Admin Specialist opening and you will apply for it." He peered at her. "Unless there is a problem?"

Passing PPP was one thing. PPP was simply a painful pulse generated by a computer. Walking into a building filled with psychers, whose job it was to find and eradicate psychically active intruders... Declining the recommendation would instantly arouse suspicion. "No problem," Claire said.

"You sure?"

"Yes." Unless one counted certain death as a problem. "I just didn't want to fail before I started."

"Don't worry," the officer said. "You will make an excellent drone."

*** *** ***

"May I have your name?" The dark-haired receptionist smiled from behind the counter.

"Claire Shannon," Claire said. The smiles looked odd to her. The aerial had touched down in a parking lot and she had to walk two blocks to the Guardian building. In the five minutes she spent outside, she realized that people of New Delhi spent their lives baring their teeth. They smiled when they opened the door, they smiled when they bought groceries, they smiled if you accidentally happened to meet their gaze on the street. It was deeply unnerving.

"May I ask the purpose of your visit?" the receptionist asked. Behind her on a white stone wall, elegant pale gold letters spelled Guardian, Inc
.
Under it smaller letters read:
Your thoughts are safe with us
.

Claire made an effort to smile back. "I'm here to apply for the position of the Administrative Specialist."

A faint touch swept over Claire's mental shield. She held her smile, fighting doubts with logic. She had spent the entire two-week flight reinforcing the shell over her mind and thickening the surface layer. Her mind was well-hidden. Too well, as the interview with the Immigration officer had proved.

"Take the elevator to the fifteenth floor, then follow the hallway," the receptionist said. "You will be met. Good luck!"

"Thank you."

Claire crossed the lobby to the glass elevator, her heels making quiet clicks on the pale granite floor. The presence stayed with her, hovering in the background, scanning her mind, lightly but attentively. Standard practice. People tended to guard themselves during live encounters, such as being questioned by receptionist. Once past a check point, the body and mind relaxed, and hidden thoughts strayed to surface. If she was guilty of anything, her relief at having made it this far would be apparent.

She had to appear normal. Most people would be slightly nervous before a job interview and Claire allowed herself some mild anxiety. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The elevator door slid open. Claire stepped inside. The door closed and the aerodynamic cabin accelerated upward.

Shaped like an elongated flower bud, the Guardian Building contained an inner core of offices and working spaces, up the side of which the elevator now climbed. This inner core sat within an outer shell of twisting steel beams forming a diagonal grid, the outer surface of the bud. Solar glass panels sheathed the diagonal spaces between the twisting beams, flooding the inside of the building with a warm golden light that set the polished granite floor of the enormous lobby aglow. The diagrid must've been enormously heavy, but bathed in the sunlight, it seemed ethereal, almost weightless. It was so beautiful, it felt magic.

Her memory served up the recollection of her home world, spare boxes of skyscrapers, canyon streets, her grey apartment, the steel and worn plastic of the spartan spaceship she'd boarded two weeks ago... She couldn't decide if those memories were a nightmare or if this airy building with its bright colors and smiling people in vivid clothes was a lovely delusional dream.

Deep inside, beneath her shields, anxiety churned. Making it to this planet had been a miracle. If her shields failed, she faced immediate deportation. She couldn't go back. Not after seeing this. Besides, if she was deported back to Uley, she'd never make it out of spaceport. There would be a death squad waiting for her at the spacecraft's door.

Below her people moved through the lobby. The men wore formfitting black and grey, the women chose flowing dresses and bright colors. What must it be like to come to work here every day? Did they ever become immune to this beauty?

The elevator stopped. Claire sighed, loathe to leave the view behind, turned and exited into a narrow hallway, its indigo, almost black, walls reflective like a dark mirror. Above her, long ribbons of dark blue luminescent plastic, set on their edge, ran parallel to each other, curving and twisting like three-dimensional current of a river. The transparent floor reflected it, and as she walked down the hallway, Claire had an absurd feeling she was swimming.

The hallway opened into a wide chamber, the transparent floor replaced by grey marble. Pale blue and grey couches lined the walls. Two men and three women sat on the couch cushions. Her shield didn't permit her to actively scan their minds, but it didn't prevent her from listening to their psychic emissions. She was open to any signal, like a satellite dish.

The woman on the right, with purple streaks in her black hair, had a loud mind, powerful, but untrained. All her thoughts floated around her like noise above a spaceport. An easy target. The woman on the left was more restrained, but weak. Of the three men, two were trained psychers, but both were mediocre. She had more training by the time she was fifteen. The final man showed no psychic activity at all, his mind practically invisible. On Uley, he would be a dud. Here the term was
drone
, apparently.

A tall middle-aged woman in an artfully draped, deep red dress stepped through the arched doorway at the end of the room. She was carrying a tablet. The woman looked her over, her gaze precise like the beam of a bio scanner. "Claire Shannon?"

"Yes."

The woman stared at her with brown eyes. Her mind sliced through Claire's surface thoughts with a laser precision and fell short of the shell. That was the beauty of mirroring surface thoughts over the shell
-
nobody realized the shields were there.

"Take this," the woman said, handing her the tablet. "There are three tests loaded on the tablet. Sit down and complete them. You will be called."

Inwardly Claire exhaled.

"Rokero Grenali," the woman said.

The older of the men rose and approached her. They disappeared through the doorway.

Claire sat. The polished wall presented her with her own reflection: a severe grey skirt that clasped her narrow waist, a conservative pale blouse, dull brownish hair pulled away from her face. Of the three changes of clothes she was permitted to bring, this was the best, most feminine outfit she owned. She could count on her fingers occasions when she had worn civilian clothes in the last year.

The other two women were looking at her. One wore a slick silvery business suit, the other a vivid red and orange dress. Their minds betrayed their reactions: pity tinged with superiority. They felt prettier. They were bright dahlia blossoms, and she was a drab mouse. They dismissed her.

It hurt. It hurt and stung her pride. The emotions boiled inside and bounced off her inner shields. Her face, reflected in the polished wall, was calm. The outer surface of her mind was collected. Nothing showed except for the mild anxiety, typical to any job applicant. She had too much discipline to let any emotion seep through.

She shouldn't have been this unsettled. First the anxiety from the landing, then tests, the echoes of PPP still humming through her skull, and now the realization that she stood out after a lifetime of being told to how important it was to perfectly fit in. She attracted too much attention. All those factors shredded her normal poise to tatters. It's the sensory overload, she told herself. It will be fine. She had over eight hundred combat missions behind her. This was just one more.

Claire slid a stylus from its holder on the side of the tablet and scanned the tests. A written and mathematical proficiency, a psychological questionnaire, and a card test. The virtual deck contained fifty-two cards in two sets, one red, one black. Each card bore a single symbol: a circle, a triangle, a diamond, or a long narrow rectangle. The program dealt cards face down and the user had to indicate color and shape. It was the simplest of psychic tests.

She had to make sure she failed it.

*** *** ***

"Shannon," the woman called.

Claire stood up and crossed the now empty hall to the woman in red. She was the last applicant of the day. Her chances of being hired had shrunk to miniscule.

"My name is Lienne," the woman informed her. "Follow me."

They crossed through another dark hall. Claire braced herself. Whoever waited for her would scour her mind. Her shields had to hold.

They entered a large room. To the left, a floor to ceiling window showed the view of the diagrid envelope, the light streaming through the solar panels now the deep honey of late afternoon. Three plush crescent-shaped couches formed a ring in the middle of the room with a cream-colored coffee table made of reflective plasti-glass in the center. Further, a crescent desk of the same material curved from the wall, on which a large screen hung, streaming some sort of data. A tall blond man stood with his back to her. He turned at their approach and Claire almost stumbled.

He had a strong, masculine face, with a square clean-shaven jaw. On Uley, blond people had a washed out, sickly look, their skin too white, their hair verging on transparent. His skin was flawless bronze, his hair a pale, almost white gold. His broad shoulders strained the fabric of his tailored light-grey summer doublet, the outline of muscle on his chest and arms plainly visible under the thin fabric. Everything about him, from the way he turned, graceful and perfectly balanced, to the way he held himself now, communicated health, strength, and power. He was sun-kissed, golden, overwhelming.

His dark green eyes focused on her, reflecting a sharp, perceptive intellect. The eyes of a man who could be either very generous or completely ruthless. The man smiled, at once charming and reassuring, and she felt the power of his mind. It was like a typhoon held back, enclosed in a self-imposed cage.

It was too much. Every coping mechanism that let her make it this far collapsed. She stared with no idea how to respond.

He was larger than life.

Lienne cleared her throat.

The sound shattered her trance. Claire closed her mouth.

"You're Claire," the man said, his voice resonant, communicating strength as much as his body did.

"Yes?" she answered, reeling from the shock.

"My name is Venturo Escana," he said.

The Escana
kinsman
family, a distant part of her mind informed her. They owned Guardian, Inc., and Venturo Escana led the family. She was facing the god of this beautiful building.

"This is my aunt Lienne Escana; she is my second in command. Please sit down," he invited her to the couch.

She sat on autopilot, smoothing her skirt over her legs. She felt so out of place here, in this office. Venturo sat across from her. Lienne sat on the same couch as he, leaving several feet between them.

"You're a refugee," he said.

She couldn't sit there, mute, and simply stare. Claire forced herself to formulate words. "Yes."

"As I understand, our planet made an arrangement with your home world. We agreed to accept a certain number of refugees in return for the use of Uley's interstellar bases as refuel points. I understand your home world made these arrangements with a number of other planets."

"That's correct," she said. He was keeping his mind firmly away from hers. It was an exquisitely polite gesture. She had expected him to batter her the moment she entered the room.

"It must've been very difficult to leave your world."

He had no idea. "I've been very fortunate to arrive here."

"Do you like it here?" he asked with genuine interest.

"It's very beautiful," she said. "Very bright." Too bright. Too vivid. Too many smiles. Men that were... that were...

"We try to live life to its fullest," he said.

He didn't intend anything sexual by it, but inside her shields, his words triggered an image of him naked. It flashed before her, stunning in its shamelessness. She wanted to touch him.