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“It is the senate house.”
There was a small jolt as the shuttle dropped onto the pad. Now she couldn’t see much of anything as the windows darkened.
“So, this is where you work?” she asked.
“And live.” He stretched out his long legs and rose to stand on two steady booted feet. “Unlike you humans, we don’t feel the need to travel long distances between work and habitats. Why waste time?”
Perhaps in cities it made sense, but what about escaping for downtime? She kept quiet. This was one of many cultural differences she was going to have to adjust to over the coming weeks and months. The thought sat uncomfortably in her churning stomach. She’d had so little time to prepare and what she hadn’t learnt in the two weeks back on Earth was going to be experienced firsthand. She took his outstretched hand and the cool palm reassured her. If Jamen was with her, then she’d cope. She had to—she was lightyears away from Earth.
She wished she could understand what people were saying. The sounds of speech were as alien as the city. She felt conspicuous, and obviously different. She wore the clothes of Earth, while Jamen had change post-stasis into Vendu-styled clothing. He explained that there were ceremonial outfits, work and leisure ones. He would arrange for her to have a selection made for her size—meaning small. Vendu women were taller than her, although not as grand as their male counterparts.
Paige tried not to envy the women. Her first encounters with them were on the spacecraft that crossed the galaxy. They’d seemed as curious about her as she was of them, but everyone was too polite to ask questions. While her hair and eyes were light, her skin pale, the Vendu were richly toned with dark locks and black eyes. She stood out as a foreigner before she’d opened her mouth to speak.
She followed Jamen, her head spinning with a fresh bout of nausea. She just wanted to sit still somewhere that wasn’t moving. However, first there was an elevator ride up the building.
“Do all the senators live here?” she asked, as Jamen commanded the elevator to climb.
“Yes. Alternating floors. I share my office one with two other senators from my district, which is the other side of the planet by the boundary—”
“Boundary?” she interrupted.
Jamen raised an annoyed eyebrow. “Where the land becomes too hostile to inhabit,” he explained briefly. “My living quarters are the floor above. A self-contained unit. That way I need only move between floors.”
She wondered how he exercised, maintained his trim physique, if all he did was move between two floors. She guessed she was going to find out soon.
The doors opened straight into a small lobby. Jamen steered her onward, through another door, and into her new home.
At first glance, it wasn’t much different to the hotel suite he lived in on Earth. The one vast room was partitioned off into sections by screens rather than walls, dividing each section into functional areas. She recognized the sleeping part with its huge bed, another for eating and food preparation, and a smaller section with a desk and seating. However, there was no sitting room or area designated for recreation. As for the bathroom, she assumed it was behind the doorway near the bed.
She chewed on her lip. Jamen had implied she would have her own quarters.
“This way.” He pointed to a door by the kitchen—it might resemble a kitchen with its worktop, but there didn’t seem to be any oven or sink.
He smiled as he opened the door—it helped settle her nerves just a little. “This is where you can rest.”
It was a tiny chamber and filled by a bed, which like his bed was positioned in the middle of the room and not against a wall. That was it—not a chair or a wardrobe? There wasn’t even a window!
“Wait,” he said calmly in her ear. As he moved toward the back wall, it began to glow, gradually transforming from a dark opaque to translucent whiteness. The whole wall morphed into a sheet of glass and bright sunlight radiated across the bed. She had a bird’s-eye view of the city with its quirky buildings and narrow open spaces.
“Amazing!” She touched the cool surface and the light deflected around her hand. It wasn’t glass, but a force field of some kind. He drew her away from the wall, back toward the door and the wall slowly transformed back into a solid impenetrable division.
“This is your room. Your possessions will arrive later. For now, I suggest you bathe.” He gestured at a doorway tucked in the corner of the room. She’d not noticed it. Inside was a small wet room; it wasn’t much bigger than the one in her accommodation block back home.
She wasn’t a student any longer. If she was still in New Phoenix, she would be hunting for somewhere to live and everything that entailed. Here, Jamen provided for her. Which led her to wonder for what purpose the room was set aside. She knew, thinking about it, of course she did. He’d brought her to Halos for a reason and he might not have said she would be sleeping in his bed every night, but he had implied she would be close by. Very close, it seemed.
“Is this a guest room?” she asked, before he left her alone.
He tapped the doorframe with his knuckles. “It is always set aside for the hanjin.”
She bit back the question in the forefront of her mind. Who had been his last hanjin and where was she? “I’ll rest up,” she said, pushing aside the niggling thought.
* * *
She fell asleep by accident and woke up ravenous. By then, her luggage had arrived and Jamen must have slipped into the room and left the case at the foot of her bed. Everything she needed for a year, which wasn’t much. He would provide her with clothes and anything else she needed to live comfortably. What she’d brought were personal items, including her favorite books, which she could happily read over and over, a portable music player that thankfully relied on solar energy to recharge, and a few toiletries to last her until she found ones she liked on Halos. Being a student had at least prepared her for a frugal life without many possessions.
She changed into the clothes she had brought, if only because she wanted something familiar on her back. She doubted they would serve for work purposes as they were a little scruffy and the pants were worn at the knees.
