The Death of Sleep (7 page)

Omi snuggled in, removing the fist from his mouth for a tiny yawn and popping it back again. Lunzie hugged him, and shook her head aggressively. "I refuse to believe that Fiona is dead. I cannot, will not give up hope." She sighed. "But Wilkins is right. I've got to be patient, but it'll be the hardest thing I've ever done." Lunzie grinned ruefully. ''None of my family is good at being patient. It's why we all become doctors. I have a lot to learn, and unlearn, too. Schoolwork will help me keep my mind in order."

"I'll miss you," Satia said, "We have become friends, I think. You'll always have a home here, if you want one."

"I don't think I'll ever have a home again," Lunzie said sadly, thinking of the vastness of the star map. "But thank you for the offer. It means a great deal to me." Gently, she laid the baby back in his cot. "You know, I went to see Jilet, the miner I was treating for agoraphobia before the
Nellie Mine
crashed. He's still hale and healthy, at ninety-two, good for another thirty years at least. His hair is white, and his chest has slipped into his belly, but I still recognized him on sight. Illin Romsey is his
grandson.
He prospected for some fifty years after his shuttle was rescued, and now he's working as a deck supervisor. I was glad to see him looking so well." Her lips twitched in a mirthless smile. "He didn't remember me. Not at all."

Astris Alexandria University was delighted to accept an application for continuing education from one of their alumna, but they were obviously taken aback when Lunzie, dressed very casually and carrying her own luggage, arrived in the administration office to enroll for classes. Lunzie caught the admissions secretary surreptitiously running her identification to verify her identity.

"I'm sorry for the abrupt reception, Doctor Mespil, but frankly, considering your age, we were expecting someone rather more mature in appearance. We only wanted to make sure. May I ask, have you been taking radical rejuvenative therapy?"

"My age? I'm thirty-four," Lunzie stated briskly. "I've been in cold sleep."

"Oh, I see. But for our records, ninety-six years have passed since your birth. I'm afraid your I.D. code bracelet and transcripts will reflect that," the registrar offered with concern. "I will make a note for the files regarding your circumstances and physical age, if you request."

Lunzie held up a hand. "No, thank you. I'm not that vain. If it doesn't confuse anyone, I can live without a footnote. There's another matter with which you can help me. What sort of student housing, bed and board, can the University provide? I'm looking for quarters as inexpensive as I can get, so long as it still has communication capability and library access and storage. I'll even share sanitary facilities, if needed. I have few personal possessions, and I'm easy enough to get along with."

The registrar seemed puzzled. "I would have thought . . . your own apartment, or a private domicile . . ."

"Unfortunately, no. I need to leave as much of my capital resources as possible free to cope with a personal matter. I'm cutting back on all non-essentials."

Clearly, the woman's sense of outrage regarding the dignity and priorities of Astris Alexandria alumni was kindled against Lunzie. She was too casual, too careless of her person. Her only luggage was the pair of small and dowdy synth-fabric duffles slung across the back of the opulent office chair in which she sat. Not at all what one would expect of a senior graduate of this elite seat of learning.

To Lunzie's relief, her cases had been kept in vacuum temperatures in remote storage on the Mining Platform, so that none of her good fiber-fabric clothes were perished or parasite-eaten. She didn't care what sort of state the University wanted her to keep. Now that she had acknowledged her goals, she could once more take command of her own life as she had been accustomed to doing. Austerity didn't bother her. She preferred a spare environment. She had felt helpless on the Descartes platform, in spite of everyone's kindness. This was a familiar venue. Here she knew just exactly how much power the authorities had, and how much was empty protest. She kept her expression neutral and waited patiently.

"Well," the woman allowed, at last. "There is a quad dormitory with only a Weft trio sharing it at present. There is a double room with one space opening up. The tenant is being graduated, and the room will be clear within two weeks, when the new term begins. One room of a six-room suite in a mixed-species residence hall. . . ."

"Which is the cheapest?" Lunzie asked, abruptly cutting short the registrar's recitation. She smiled sweetly at the woman's scowl.

With a look of utter disapproval, the registrar put her screen on Search. The screen blurred, then stopped scrolling as one entry centered itself and flashed. "A third share of a University-owned apartment. The other two current tenants are human. But it is rather far away from campus."

"I don't mind. As long as it has a roof and a cot, I'll be happy."

Juggling an armful of document cubes and plas-sheet evaluation forms as well as her bags, Lunzie let herself into the small foyer of her new home. The building was old, predating Lunzie's previous University term. It made her feel at home to see something that hadn't changed appreciably. The old-fashioned textboard in the building's entryhall flashed with personal messages for the students who lived there, and a new line had already appeared at the bottom, adding her name and a message of welcome, followed by a typical bureaucratic admonishment to turn in her equivalency tests as soon as possible. The building was fairly quiet. Most of the inhabitants would have day classes or jobs to attend to.

Her unit was on the ninth level of the fifty-story hall. The turbovator whooshed satisfyingly to its destination, finishing up on her doorstep with a slight jerk and a noisy rattle, not silently as the unnerving lifts aboard the Platform had. Neither of her roommates was home. The apartment was of reasonably good size, clean, though typically untidy. The shelves were cluttered with the typical impedimentia of teenagers. It made her feel almost as if she were living with Fiona again. One of the tenants enjoyed building scale models. Several were hung from the ceiling, low enough that Lunzie was glad she wasn't five inches taller.

A little searching revealed that the vacant sleeping chamber was the smallest one closest to the food synthesizer. She unpacked and took off her travel-soiled clothes. The weather, one of the things that Lunzie had always loved about Astris Alexandria, was mild and warm most of the year in the University province, so she happily shed the heavier trousers she had worn on the transport, and laid out a light skirt.

The trousers were badly creased, and could use cleaning. Lunzie felt she would be the better for a good wash, too. She assumed that all the standard cleaning machinery would be available in the lavatory. She gathered up toiletries, laundry, and her dusty boots.

In the lavatory, Lunzie stared with dismay at the amenities. Instead of being comfortably familiar, they were spankingly brand new. The building's facilities had been very recently updated, even newer and stranger than the ones Descartes furnished to its living quarters. If it hadn't been for Satia's patient help on the Platform, she would not now have the faintest idea what she was looking at. There were enough similarities between them for her to figure out how to use these without causing a minor disaster.

While her clothes were being processed, she slipped on fresh garments and sat down at the console in her bedroom. She logged on to the library system, and requested an I.D. number which would give her access to the library from any console on the planet. Automatically, she applied for an increase in the standard student's allotment of long-term memory storage from 320K to 2048K, and opened an account in the Looking-GLASS program. If there was any stored data about Fiona anywhere, the Galactic Library All-Search System, GLASS, as it was fondly known, would find it. As an icon to luck, she set Fiona's hologram on top of the console.

LOOKING-GLASS LOG-ON (2851.0917 Standard)
scrolled up on her screen.

She typed in
*Query Missing Person* NAME *Fiona Mespil* DOB/RACE/SEX/S,PO *2775.0903/human/female/Astris Alexandria*
She had been born right here at the University, so that was her planet of origin.
*Current location requested.* LOCATION SUBJECT LAST SEEN?
Lunzie paused for a moment, then entered:
*Last verifiable location, Tau Ceti colony, 2789.1215. Last presumed location, Phoenix colony, 2851.0421.*
The screen went blank for a moment as GLASS digested her request. Lunzie entered a command for the program to dump its findings into her assigned memory storage and prepared to log off.

Suddenly, the screen chimed and scrolled up a display of dates and entries, with the heading:

MESPIL, FIONA

TRANSCRIPT OF EDUCATION (REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL)

2802 GRANTED DEGREE CERTIFICATE IN BIOTECHNOLOGY, ASTRIS ALEXANDRIA UNIVERSITY

2797 GRANTED DEGREE CERTIFICATE IN VIROLOGY, ASTRIS ALEXANDRIA UNIVERSITY

2795 ASTRIS ALEXANDRIA UNIVERSITY, GRADUATED WITH HONORS, M.D. [GENERAL]

2792 GRADUATED MARSBASE SECONDARY SCHOOL EDUCATION SYSTEM, GRADUATED GENERAL CERTIFICATE

2791 TAU CETI EDUCATION SYSTEM, TRANSFERRED

2787 CAPELLA PRIMARY SCHOOL EDUCATION SYSTEM, GRADUATED

Following was a list of courses and grades. Lunzie let out a shout of joy. Records existed right here on Astris Alexandria! She hadn't expected to see anything come up yet. She was only laying the groundwork for her information search. The search was beginning to bear fruit already.
*Save*
, she commanded the computer.

"I should have known," she said, shaking her head. "I might have known she'd come here to Astris, after all the hype I'd given the place." The first successful step in her search! For the first time, Lunzie truly felt confident. A celebration was in order. She surveyed the apartment, and advanced smiling on the food synthesizer. One success deserved another.

"Now," she said, rubbing her hands together. "I am going to teach
you
how to make coffee."

An hour or so later, she had a potful of murky brew that somewhat resembled coffee, though it was so bitter she had to program a healthy dose of a mellowing sweetener with which to dilute it. There was caffeine in the stuff, at any rate. She was satisfied, though still disappointed that the formula for coffee had disappeared from use over the last sixty years. Still, there was a School of Nutrition in the University. Someone must still have coffee on record. She considered ordering a meal, but decided against it. If the food was anything like she remembered it, she wasn't that hungry. Synthesized food always tasted flat to her, and the school synth machines were notoriously bad. She had no reason to believe that their reputation—or performance—had improved in her absence.

When time permitted, Lunzie planned to treat herself to some real planet-grown food. Astris Alexandria had always produced tasty legumes and greens, and perhaps, she thought hopefully, the farm community had even branched out into coffee bushes. Like all civilized citizens of the FSP, Lunzie ate only foods of vegetable origin, disdaining meats as a vestige of barbaric history. She hoped neither of her roommates was a throwback, though the Housing Committee would undoubtedly have seen to it that such students would be isolated, out of consideration to others.

Following the instructions of the plas-sheets, she logged into the University's computer system and signed up for a battery of tests designed to evaluate her skills and potential. The keyboard had a well-used feel, and Lunzie quickly found herself rattling along at a clip. One of the regulations which had not existed in her time was registration qualification: enrollment for certain classes was restricted to those who qualified through the examinations. Lunzie noted with irritation that several of the courses which she wanted to take fell into that category. The rationale, translated from the bureaucratese, was that space was so limited in these courses that the University wanted to guarantee that the students who signed up for them would be the ones who would get the most out of them. Even if she passed the exams, there was no guarantee that she could get in immediately. Lunzie gave a resigned shrug. Until she had a good lead on finding Fiona, she was filed here. There was no hurry. She started to punch in a request for the first exam.

"Hello?" a tentative voice called from the door.

"Come?" Lunzie answered, peering over the edge of the console.

"Peace, citizen. We're your roommates." The speaker was a slender boy with straight, silky black hair and round blue eyes. He didn't look more than fifteen Standard years old. Behind him was a smiling girl with soft brown hair gathered up in a puffy coil on top of her head. "I'm Shof Scotny, from Demarkis. This is Pomayla Esglar."

"Welcome," Pomayla said, warmly, offering her hand. "You didn't have the privacy seal on the door, so we thought it would be all right to come in and greet you."

"Thank you," Lunzie replied, rising and extending hers. Pomayla covered it with her free hand. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Lunzie Mespil. Call me Lunzie. Ah . . . is something wrong?" she asked, catching a curious look that passed between Shof and Pomayk. "Nothing," Shof answered lightly. "You know, you don't look ninety-six. I expected you to look like my grandmother."

"Well, thank you so much. You don't look old enough to be in college, my lad," Lunzie retorted, amused. She reconsidered asking the registrar to put an explanation on her records.

Shof sighed long-sufferingly. He'd obviously heard that before. "I can't help it that I'm brilliant at such a tender age." Lunzie grinned at him. He was hopelessly cute and likely accustomed to getting away with murder.

Pomayla elbowed Shof in the midriff, and he let out an outraged
oof!
"Forgive Mr. Modesty. They don't bother teaching tact to the Computer Science majors, since the machines don't take offense at bad manners. I'm in the Interplanetary Law program. What's your field of study?"

"Medicine. I'm back for some refresher courses. I've been . . . rather out of touch the last few years."