She took it, and weighed it, finding it heavier than she'd expected. She might be able to use it to clunk someone on the head with it if she needed to—and wasn't that an antisocial thought! It immediately felt molded to her hand, with the supposed top glowing a dim green.
"Here's a map; as I say, they're expecting you, and the token."
He began to bow—stopping as Theo danced a kink out of her shoulder, and abruptly asked:
"How do I know the people there are who you say they are? Can I carry a key to the Cherpa with me? Will the Cherpa be here when I leave the office? Will they check me for weapons?"
He smiled, bowed fully this time, and held a key set out to her.
"Please, check that the hatch answers this key on the way out. I expect you will not be overlong, and as your copilot I will do everything in my power to have the Cherpa here and operable when you return. If it is not, I suggest that you yell for Bringo, who is boss of yard dogs this quarter moon. As to your other questions, the place I send you to is the most secure on Codrescu as far as I know. If they'll do a weapons check depends on how they view the threat level, both of yourself and of the universe."
The air pressure on Codrescu was space normal, which meant low but with a little more oxygen than she was used to on Eylot. The extra oxygen was a good thing, Theo thought, since her walk, even with the map, was more stressful than she had expected, especially when she'd turned the last corner and found the guards, one looking eager for an excuse to use her sparker.
Theo'd been using the token as if it was a piloting stick, holding it in front of her and zoommming down straight, banking into turns. She hadn't realized that the Guild office was quite so close to that last kink in the corridor.
The guard with the gun glanced at Theo's hands even before Theo could recover a properly serious aspect; and with that glance removed her hand from the weapon and nodded, perhaps toward the token, which now was clearly emitting a green glow.
"Pilot, first time in?"
"Yes, Pilot," Theo replied serenely as she glided to a stop in front of the door, "my first time to the Guild. I'm told I am expected; I'm Theo Waitley."
* * *
The guy at the front desk, like the guards outside, was a pilot. She hadn't noticed him at first, since she was overwhelmed by the sheer and unexpected luxuriousness of the room. It wasn't a big room, but the walls were paneled in what appeared to be wild-grown wood, and part of the floor was covered with carpets that made her own fine rug at home look shabby. There was artwork on the wall—like the wood, things that looked like they were real—intentional art and not simply office art meant to soothe or set a mood.
One wall display might be showing text of the messages she'd been hearing by speaker, but this place was quiet, overgrown and—a nice change from the stark halls.
The part of the floor that wasn't carpeted was covered in green plants, some showing flowers, some not. The room was filled with scents she associated with being outside, and something smelled like grass or bushes she might find at Leafydale Place. A small, carefully encased rock-lined waterfall with a tiny open pool with its own arm-thick mini-tree occupied that end of the room, and oh! A norbear!
The norbear was sitting quietly on a mat of vegetation beside the pool, gently chewing a long green plant with a bulb at the end. She looked shyly up at Theo and made a sort of chuckling noise, its thick brown-and-orange fur almost matching the rocks of the waterfall.
"Hello," Theo told the norbear, and the guy at the desk said, "Hello, Pilot, how may we assist you?"
She laughed, hand-flashing see you Pilot, and then said, "Excuse me, I—oh there's someone else! But I'm Theo Waitley. Here to apply . . ."
Tucked behind the tree in a very hard-to-see nest was a nearly colorless norbear, with wizened visage and slitted sleepy eyes. The color of her eyebrows—there was a touch of rust there, and the skin of her face showed clearly through the facial fur, as if the creature was so old it was—like Veradantha!
The old one stretched, slowly and thoroughly, as if it needed to recall exactly how it was done. Theo heard a low sound, more of a rasp than a burble, and the old norbear stood. She was skinny almost to the point of emaciation. Theo saw that this was no "hothouse norbear" as Win Ton had called the silky creatures on Vashtara, but someone who was looking at her as much as she was looking at him.
"Hevelin!" said the pilot behind the counter. "Hardly anybody sees him in there, and he hardly ever says anything. The hungry one's Podesta, Hevelin's great-granddaughter." He grinned and gave Theo a nod. "Please, sit where you will, and be comfortable."
"Here?" she asked, impulsively pointing to the matted plant beside the burbling water.
He shrugged, finger-spoke seat is seat, then laughed.
"But first I need your token and your cards, if you're here to apply. In fact, we ought to have enough to finish the application right now, if you like. Give me those, please, else if the old guy gets to talking to you, you may fall asleep waiting for his next sentence!"
Theo rapidly discovered that the "old guy" did have a lot to say, or maybe a lot of questions to ask. Unlike the Vashtara norbears, who were smaller and much less seemly, Hevelin was dignified in his movements, and grasped rather than grabbed as he adjusted himself on Theo's lap. The resonance in her head was calm and thoughtful, more like Father's cat, Mandrin, than young Coyster, and sincerely inquisitive, as if everything was not only interesting, but meant something.
Puzzlement reached her; and she found herself closely recalling the norbears she'd met and seen; especially Threesome, the white and spotted one from Vashtara who apparently never went alone to a visitor, but always shared. There was something more going on that she couldn't identify, as if she was seeing older, larger norbears than she'd seen before, like Hevelin was asking her for a catalog of friends they might both have met—except coming up disappointed that she'd never met anyone he'd known. . . .
But there was another catalog going on; even as her records were going to and fro in electronic pathways and being compared and cross-indexed by the Guild, Hevelin was seeking other acquaintances. She thought of yos'Senchul lecturing her, and felt as if there were an assent, and of Kara, who was not known as a game player but appreciated, and Win Ton, quite warmly, who was not known but gave off echoes of joy and something else, and then, since she was thinking Liadens at him, she thought of Father, carrying his cane and—
The norbear grabbed her hand and held it, and when she looked into those eyes she saw not Father, but a man who might have been Father, as if seen in a haze. Father with no sign of greying, spirited black hair in a tail falling over one shoulder. Father with a glow around him, and another face—female—sharing his space, peering down with amused green eyes, and more faces in the background. There was question in that, and she agreed that yes, Father may have been that person, there, moving lightly as a young pilot. The woman—she wasn't sure, not knowing all of Father's friends, after all.
There was more then: lots more norbears, and something that might have been a cat as seen through norbear understanding. More human faces—none familiar to her, and the sense of eager inquisitiveness fading into a ripple of raspy burbles . . .
"Pilot Waitley?"
The desk-pilot had already called her a couple times, the first to ask for a date check, the next to verify next of kin, Terran-style, not Delgado-style, and then in the midst of her dreamy listening to the norbear, to ask if she had plans for dinner. She'd managed to wake up enough to decline that, pointing out that she was on assignment, and got a slow finger-flash of work, work, work and a see you next trip alongside of, "I know the best bars and restaurants on Codrescu, Pilot. Just ask for Arndy Slayn."