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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 kil 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 fil ed 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 excel ent 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 accidental y 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 wal , elegant pale gold letters spel ed Guardian, Inc . Under it smal er 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 shel 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 fol ow the hal way," 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 all owed 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 shel 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 recol ection 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 hal way, its indigo, almost black, wal s reflective like a dark mirror.
Above her, long ribbons of dark blue luminescent plastic, set on their edge, ran paral el to each other, curving and twisting like three-dimensional current of a river. The transparent floor reflected it, and as she walked down the hal way, Claire had an absurd feeling she was swimming.
The hal way opened into a wide chamber, the transparent floor replaced by grey marble. Pale blue and grey couches lined the wal s. 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 satel ite dish.
