She smiled, obliged. “Okay, that’s great thanks. Could you just get them to ask if anyone is missing? Particularly if they noticed a little Volin boy earlier on who isn’t there now?”
The Volon looked confused but jogged off to pass the message on. As she waited for a reply, Lois tried to look like nothing was wrong. The Volon came back and said “No one’s missing anyone, but a female says she did notice a little boy on his own when they first arrived. Is there something wrong?”
“No, no. I’ll find him and bring him along later. You get the others to the dorms,” Lois said. Inside she was starting to panic, but she wanted to contain the problem, not hold up the shuttle with thirty people inside while she made the Community Leaders search the building with her. She smiled reassuringly and repeated that they should go, and the Volon was happy to listen to her. She was a DETI employee, and they had thirty people to settle in.
She stepped back into the lobby and let them close the doors, pulling out her Gadgit and dialling security. When they answered, she said “It’s Lois Kennedy from Intake, I just processed a group of new arrivals and I need a headcount from the team at the loading bay. How many people did the scanners count and how many were expected on the manifest?”
She curled her hand into a fist and ran her thumb over her knuckles as she waited for the answer, nervously trying to think what she would do if it turned out they were missing someone. It was a bit after six o’clock. Most of the DETI staff had gone home, and the offices were emptying. She was due to go home herself as soon as she left the forms in her office for tomorrow, but that didn’t look like it was going to happen now.
“Raj says the scanners counted thirty-three, Lois,” came the reply from the Security help desk. “We had thirty-two due.”
“Okay, thanks, that’s all,” Lois replied, ending the call. Shit. She wanted to ask why the team at the loading bay hadn’t flagged it, but the answer was that they expected her to count. And she had expected any small children to be reported by the adult with them when she did.
She took a deep breath. What she should do was tell Security to lock down the building and do a systematic search of every room until they found the child, but that would take all night, and she would probably be put under investigation as a result. If she could find the child herself, she could play it off as no big deal, like she knew where the boy was hiding all along and she had just gone back to get him as soon as she realised he wasn’t with the group. It wasn’t procedure, but Lucia would probably be happier with that than with a huge dramatic incident, especially since the press could get hold of a lock-down.
She’d look for the boy herself first, and then if it turned out he was hurt or something, then she would raise the alarm. But she knew she needed help. If the boy was that young, he was probably scared of humans, and wouldn’t come out of hiding for her. It would also look a lot more responsible and above board if she had a Volin representative with her. She thought about Ban, but he wasn’t working tonight.
She could ask Tol but he was a security guard. He would either order the lock-down himself, or not, as a favour to her. And if he did that and they were found out, he could lose his job. Lois decided if she was going to get fired for this, she wouldn’t take anyone else down with her.
That only left one Volin she could trust, sort of. And he wouldn’t lose his job for helping her, because he wasn’t responsible for refugees. He didn’t know procedure.
If he didn’t hate her enough to say no, that was.
She began hurrying back to the loading bay, dialling ITS and hoping someone would answer. It went to their after-hours messaging service and she hung up in frustration, redirecting her path to go there in person instead.
The Information Technology Services offices were on the ground floor. They were fronted by big glass doors, behind which was a help desk where Aaron sat and took the calls, and behind that was a bank of cubicles for the technicians, littered with tools and hardware. A wall of drawers held spare parts.
Lois pulled the door open, thanking the heavens that it wasn’t locked, suggesting someone must be inside. “Hello?” she called.
A woman with curly hair and glasses stuck her head up from behind one of the cubicle dividers. “Can I help you?” she said, sounding ready to tell Lois they were closed.
“Is Zir here?” Lois said, leaning on the desk.
“No, he’s gone home.”
“Can you get me his number? Please, it’s an emergency,” Lois begged.
The woman stood up and came closer. “What kind of an emergency?”
“Please, I just really, really need to ask him something.”
“I can’t give out his personal information,” the woman said, very sensibly and she was totally in the right, but Zir had got Lois’ personal number when he shouldn’t have so she knew it could be done. “What’s your name?” she said, eyeing Lois suspiciously.
“Lois Kennedy, I work in Intake,” Lois began, but she was cut off when the woman laughed.
“Oh, it’s you. Tell you what, you can call him on our phone,” she said, dialling a number and handing Lois an old-fashioned handset. It was quicker than programming Lois’ earpiece to connect to that phone. She put it to her ear, feeling the awkwardness of it as she listened to it ring.
“Yes?”
She almost didn’t know what to say at the sound of Zir’s voice, hearing it for the first time in two weeks, after everything that had passed between them, knowing he probably never wanted to hear from her again.
“Zir, it’s Lois. I need your help,” she said.
“Lois?” She could hear the surprise in his voice. It sounded like he was outside too, maybe he wasn’t far from the building.
“I’m sorry for calling you like this, but I need your help. I really, really need your help, Zir.”
“What is wrong?” he demanded, sounding worried.
Lois glanced at the IT woman watching her conversation with interest. “I… need a favour, could you come back to work please?”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. Just please don’t say no.”
There was a pause on the line.
“Please, Zir. It’s my ass if you don’t help me.”
“I will come. Wait for me,” he said.
“I will. How long until you get here?” Lois asked.
“Six minutes,” Zir told her, and she almost laughed at his precision.
“I’ll come to the front doors. See you then.” She handed the phone back to the woman, who looked at her up and down.
“Be nice to him,” she said cryptically.
Again Lois wondered what the IT department knew about what had happened between her and Zir, and how much they thought they knew, but now was not the time. She thanked the woman for her help and turned to hurry to the front doors to meet Zir.
Chapter 11
Lois only had to wait a minute or two before she saw Zir jogging up the steps to the building. She held the door open and as he reached her he grabbed her arms, looking her over.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No, it’s not me,” Lois glanced around to see if there was anyone to overhear. “A little boy has gone missing, a Volin refugee, from the group this afternoon. I only found out when they were going to the dorms.”
Something flickered over Zir’s face, and he let go of her arms, but Lois grabbed his wrist, not letting him pull away from her.
“He must be in the building somewhere, but I don’t think he’ll come to me. I think he’s young enough to only respond to a Volin person looking for him. Please, Zir, help. I don’t know how this could have happened,” she implored, begging him with her eyes.
For a moment he stared at her, eyes focused, then said “Of course. I will help you.”
Lois sagged like a great weight had left her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said, pulling him toward the security desk.
Tol saw them coming and stood, glancing at the hand she had a
round Zir’s wrist.
“Hello, Lois, Zir. You are working late,” he commented idly, checking their I.D. and searching her bag.
Lois let Zir go and smiled at Tol, trying to keep her breathing even. “I forgot something,” she said.
Tol finished with her bag and offered it back to her. “And Zir?” he asked, looking at him for an explanation.
Lois tried to think of something to say before Zir could give them away, but to her surprise she felt his hand take hers, the warm dry scales fitting against her palm and his claws resting lightly across her knuckles.
“She asked me to help her look,” he said.
Lois glanced at him, then smiled at Tol. He looked at her, obviously surprised. She concentrated on keeping her hand from squeezing Zir’s to test the weight of it, or letting her fingers explore his scales. Despite working with Volin every day, and dedicating her career to helping them, she’d never actually touched one for any length of time before. She’d never been in a situation where it would have been appropriate.
Tol broke into a big grin, showing the chip in his dental ridge. “I see,” he said.
Lois suddenly worried he had got the wrong impression, and that Zir had given it to him on purpose, and tried not to blush. Right then, though, she’d take it if it meant they could get upstairs and look for the boy without Tol interfering. She could always clear up any misunderstanding later. She slung her bag onto her shoulder and pulled Zir away from the desk, calling her thanks to Tol behind her.
She rushed Zir through the building to the loading bay on the other side where the boy was last seen. It was empty, since no arrivals were expected. Lois immediately began looking under the desks.
“Do you know the missing child’s name?” asked Zir, copying her.
“No, I have no idea who he is, he wasn’t on my register. He must have snuck on to the drop ship,” she answered. Her heart twisted as she imagined the parent who must be frantic right now, probably delivered to another office somewhere else in the world. It could take weeks to reunite them.
The Arrivals lobby was a large but mostly empty space, designed to hold a large number of people and to make it hard to conceal anything. This meant that Lois soon ran out of places to look. “He’s not here,” she said, turning to Zir.
“Wait,” he said, and he made a noise she hadn’t heard before. It was a short, high-pitched noise that almost sounded like a racing car going past, and it seemed to reverberate around the room. He did it with his lips barely parted, and she was sure that at least some of it was out of the range of her hearing. He waited and made it again. “Come here,” he said in Volin. “It’s safe.” When nothing happened, he turned to her. “I don’t think he is here. We should move on.”
“What’s that call?” she asked as she led them out of Arrivals and into the corridor.
“It is how we call for our young to come to us in an emergency. He would have to be very determined not to answer it,” Zir told her. “It is against instinct.”
Zir made the call again as they progressed down the hall to Quarantine and Customs while Lois looked behind every potted plant and in every air vent. They looked behind every unlocked door, in every storage cupboard and bathroom, both of them calling out in Volin for the boy. Lois was getting frantic. If they couldn’t find him… He could have snuck out of the building and been hit by a car or something.
Panicked thoughts of how the boy could be lost forever were circling in her head so chaotically she actually almost missed him. A dark silhouette and the flash of yellow eyes at the end of an air vent. Lois froze when she realised what she’d seen, then calmly moved out of the boy’s sight. She thought if she talked to him first, he might run away, and inside the vent system he could go anywhere. She flattened her back against the wall just to the side of the vent and signalled Zir.
“Here, here!” she mouthed, flapping her hand at him to get his attention and pointing at the vent.
Zir followed her directions and slunk closer. He made the Volin call again, peering into the vent. Lois held her breath and waited, hoping the kid would come out. She heard the click of claws against metal, and the small pop of the vent warping as the boy moved inside. Zir lifted the vent out of the way and dropped his wings, his arms open.
“It’s cold,” he said in Volin. There was a pause, and Zir said “It’s cold, little one,” then Lois just glimpsed the boy as he rattled out of the vent and into Zir’s arms.
Lois watched as Zir settled the boy under one wing with a quiet “This side, this side.” When Zir lowered his arms, only the fact that his mottled wings were down gave away that he was carrying the boy. Lois also spotted a fist-sized hole in Zir’s left wing, but she knew it wasn’t the time to mention it.
Zir turned to face her, and she heaved a sigh of relief, slumping against the wall, feeling the weight of everything that could have happened fall off her. The night wasn’t over yet, but at least the boy was alright, and they wouldn’t have to lock the building down or call in reinforcements.
“We’ll need to get him to the dorms,” Lois murmured quietly.
“First, something to eat, I think,” Zir said, looking a little stiff.
“Of course! Of course, I should have thought…” Lois turned and led them out of the room, checking her watch. The canteen and the café would be both be closed, so she walked to a bank of vending machines next to a small round table and a couple of chairs next to a potted plant.
Zir sat down while Lois fed money into the machine, blanking on what to buy and coming away with a hot cup of choba, a lemon soda, a bottle of water, a protein bar, and a bag of dried fruit and nuts. She put them on the table, and stood awkwardly for a second as Zir looked them over.
“Um, I’m going to run and get an immigration form for him from my office, it won’t take a minute,” she said.
She didn’t actually run, mindful of the security cameras all over the building, but she moved as fast as she could and took less than five minutes to make the round trip to her office, leaving the completed immigration forms from the group earlier behind.
When she came back, Zir was passing bits of fruit and murmuring quietly to the child out of sight under his wing. Lois was struck by the easy intimacy of the scene, the comfort with which Zir sheltered the boy. Lois almost felt like she was intruding when she sat down on the other chair and began trying to fill in the form.
She was embarrassed to fall at the first hurdle when Zir had to take her pen and fill in the boy’s name for her to make sure it was right, but after that, with Zir acting as a mediator, she was able to get all the information a boy his age could be expected to have. He told them he was four years old, and that he didn’t have any parents, not on Earth or on the transport ship.
Lois tried not to flounder when Zir translated that for her, the boy speaking much too quietly for her to hear. She didn’t know how to react. She stared at the form awkwardly, realising that her professionalism wasn’t helping her make a connection with this child. How was she supposed to offer her condolences to someone who was hiding from her under someone else’s arm?
“Um, so, what do you think Lon-” she looked at the form again, trying to read his name out. “Lonritazi-nongoles-sa-sant-”
“Lonritazinongolesesanterolu,” Zir offered.
“Yes, him… What do you think he wants to do next? He needs somewhere to spend the night, but I need to stay with him to maintain the chain of custody. He can’t come home with me, I’m not cleared for that. Ideally, one of the Community Leaders should process him but it’s not like he can get accommodation allocated on his own…” Lois felt the pressure building up again, the dilemma of not knowing what to do next.
“The orphanage will be closed if we took him there. It is too late today, but he could go there tomorrow,” Zir suggested.
Lois was temporarily at a loss for words. She hadn’t known there was an orphanage. It made sense, of course it did, but for some reason it had never occurred to her.
&
nbsp; It must have been set up by the Teissians themselves, like the various shops and businesses that had sprung up between the dorms. Usually any children who emigrated to Earth without their biological parents found someone to look after them on the two-year journey from Teiss, so Lois had never received a lone child in any of her groups. Evidently, however, there was still a need for an orphanage. She wondered about it, but didn’t ask.
“Okay, so he just needs somewhere to stay tonight, and I need to stay with him, and we need a Volin chaperone,” Lois clarified. It was weird to be discussing this so openly, when the child in question was currently clinging to Zir’s side. She could see his polo shirt pulling to the side, but the boy remained out of sight under Zir’s wing. Lois hadn’t seen him except for the brief blur when he came out of the air vent.
“You could join me in my accommodation,” Zir offered quietly, his face averted.
Lois hesitated, though it would solve all of her problems just then. “I don’t want to impose,” she hedged.
Zir shrugged, still not meeting her eyes. “If you do not want to…”
“You don’t mind?” Lois asked, not wanting to draw attention to all the reasons they had for this to be awkward.
Zir looked at her, his yellow eyes steady and focused. “I would be happy to have you in my home,” he said.
Lois was relieved. There was a twinge of awkwardness, but she needed this too much. The well-being of the kid had to come first.
“Thank you,” she said. “That would really help.”
Chapter 12
Lois waited self-consciously as Zir let them in to his apartment. The Teissian dorms were tall apartment blocks all built on the same complex. New ones were being built all the time as new refugees arrived.
They were meant to be temporary housing, as the immigrants eventually became financially secure and socially confident enough to move out into the general human population, but a lot of them stayed. The Community Leaders, for example, as well as any who had set up businesses that sold to Teissians, or those who worked in the DETI building which was practically next door. The buildings themselves needed Estates teams, and social support officers, who all lived on site. New arrivals were encouraged to find work that put them in contact with humans, but any refugee who wanted an insular life could have one.
The E.T. Guy (Office Aliens Book 1) Page 7