"I know you wanted to stay with the others," she said, "but there's a lot you'll have to be briefed on, and we should get started. Also, Simeon may have told you, they'll be moving to their own quarters this evening."
"Yes, so he has told me," Amos said softly.
He looked at her with a warm attention that she found unnervingly intimate. "This will be yours," she said, opening the door farthest from her own.
He entered, looked around, his hands clasped behind his back once more. He nodded judiciously, "It is very nice," he said. He opened a closet, empty but for a few hangers.
"One of the things we'll have to do is fit you out according to your new position," Channa said from the doorway.
He smiled at her. "Yes, I need everything. And Bethel clothing would not be appropriate."
He walked over to stand right beside her. She had noticed that the Bethelites did that; their social distance was close and they were a very tactile people.
"I shall enjoy that," he said, "if you will help me choose?"
She lowered her eyes. "Perhaps, if time allows. Though you'll be guided by experts in men's fashions, which I am not." Down, girl! she told herself.
The door chimed and Simeon opened it. "I've sent down to the commissary for dinner. I doubt you've found the time to eat, Amos, so I've taken the liberty of ordering for two," he said.
"You do not like to cook?" Amos asked, turning to Channa in surprise.
"Not when I have more important things to do," she answered. "It isn't among my hobbies."
"Ah, well, doubtless your servants are skilled." His voice implied that a chatelaine should still oversee them personally.
Ah, good one, Amos. Simeon thought, feeling more cheerful. He had been reviewing what little was known of Bethelite culture. He did not think Channa would find it agreeable. Why don't you ask her to sit on the floor and rub your tired feet while you're at it, then retire to the rear of the house while the men talk business?
It was worrying, though. Much as I hate to admit it, maybe Channa was right. This plan has inherent elements of disaster. I forgot to take into consideration that he's from an insular and probably-I'll be kind, old-fashioned. Nah! Why be kind-backward culture. All their preparations were a mishmash of improvisations. Would this be one too many?
Amos looked quickly from Simeon's column to Channa and said in mild dismay.
"I have caused offense. Please, forgive me. This was not my intention." He smiled ruefully down at Channa and sighed. "I clearly have more to learn than I had imagined. Even my speech-the more we talk, the more I am conscious of how old-fashioned I must sound to you. And, forgive me, we of Bethel are not used to dealing with people of strange-of different customs. That was one thing I disliked about my home, the insularity."
Hell, Simeon thought. He's not stupid. Adaptable, in fact.
With a smooth professional smile, Channa gestured for him to take one of the seats at the table.
"Then let us begin," she said.
To his back she made a small moue of distaste, which quickly turned into a smile as he held out her chair and looked at her expectantly. She grinned and waved him to his seat.
"First," she said, "you must learn that we're much less formal here. We reserve our 'company manners' strictly for company."
"But," he said, smiling as he took his seat, "a beautiful woman should always be treated like a treasured guest."
Channa served herself from a platter and passed it to him, letting go of it almost before he'd gotten a grip on it.
"Flatterer. I'm not ugly, but I'm no great beauty, either."
He almost dropped the hot platter in surprise, its contents tilting alarming close to the edge and burning his thumb. He put it down hastily and sucked the injury for a moment.
"No, truly," he said, flapping his hand to cool it. "I think you are most attractive." There was no doubting the sincerity in his wide, gentian-blue eyes. The lashes, she noticed, were long and curled. His gaze grew playful. "In a strange, foreign, exotic fashion, of course."
"Well, you're very attractive, too, Amos," she said seriously.
"I like attractive women," he said, and his gaze was subtly challenging.
"Mmh, I don't like attractive men," she said positively. Actually, I don't approve of them, which is not exactly the same thing, she amended to herself. "They tend to be spoiled and self-centered and in general much more trouble than they're worth. Now, let us eat before the food cools. We have a great deal of work to do and not much time and energy to spare." She gave him a direct stare. "I'm sure we're going to have an excellent business relationship, manager to manager."
"Of course," Amos said with a neutral, social smile.
"Shouldn't you start calling Amos Simeon-Amos, Channa?" Simeon broke in, before the atmosphere got any cooler.
"Good idea," Channa said.
Amos, as far as Simeon could tell, was sulking slightly.
Aha, Simeon thought. With those looks, plus brains and charisma and high position, he's probably used to women succumbing to his every ploy. And, he noted charitably, the Bethelite was only in his early twenties. All the textbooks said softshells were highly subject to hormonal influences at that stage in their pitifully short development spans.
Nine gets you ten, he told himself, that there's a worn-down track in the carpet between their doors within a week. The notion was oddly unpalatable. He put it aside and launched into some of the nineteen million things Amos would have to become familiar with about station management.
Chapter Twelve
Ahhha, gotcha! Simeon crooned to himself. "Channa? You awake?"
"You can always tell when I'm awake. Why ask?"
"Because it's polite," he replied.
"What is it?" Her tone noted that the sleep period was three hours gone and, in barely five more, she would have to be awake for more of the interminable meetings and briefings.
"I've found out something about our expected and uninvited guests," he went on.
That brought her alert, sitting up in bed and reaching to key up the lights and switch off the soft fugue she had been playing to court sleep.
"Couldn't sleep anyway," she said. "Let me have it."
"Got a download from Central. Had to burn some butts to get it released. It's not much. Planet named Kolnar, settled way, way, way back. Quite a ways from here, too, as such things go. About forty times as far as the sun Saffron, further in on the spiral arm."
Channa frowned. "That's really out in the boonies, settled in the second or third waves."
"Uh-uh. It was first wave."
She pursed her lips in a silent whistle. "Right at the beginning of interstellar colonization."
He went on. "Involuntary colonization. Translation program running… Okay, a whole bunch of bad-hat groups; the Khimir Reddish Rice Cosmetic, the Temil Large Striped Felines, the New Council Men, the Resurrected Aryan-Germanic Statewide Associationist Employees Party, the Sons of Chaka, the Luminescent Footway, the Darwin-Wilson Society, the-"
"What's so amusing?" she said as she caught the laughter ripple in his voice.
"You'd have to be a historian to understand, my voluptuous popsie," he said cheerfully. "Anyway, according to the records, they sent out about ten thousand of these oscos, and about three thousand reached their destination."
"Bad voyages?"