She paused when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored wall and noticed the frown still marring her fine-boned countenance. She needed a tension relaxer but knew the bath wouldn’t do it. What she needed was her massager, but as the machines were rare and used only by a few residents on Kystran, they weren’t standard in temporary quarters. The apartment had most of the other amenities she would find at home, but a massager wasn’t one of them.
She knew what Martha would tell her to do about it, and was glad that Fanya’s Stress Clinic wasn’t operational, because for the first time she was actually tempted to visit one. The benefits would be the same, just accomplished with a different kind of body pounding, the kind she had yet to experience, though not for lack of offers. Men were attracted to her despite her size, and it was only her Sec 1 rating that kept them from becoming nuisances about it in pursuit of her. She often wondered how bad it would be if she weren’t as tall as she was. But she was above average in height, about an inch above the male average of five feet nine inches. Six feet was tops for men on Kystran, but rare, and all of those six-footers were in Security, which would have been nice if she was interested, only she wasn’t.
Eventually would come along the man she couldn’t make mincemeat out of, and then she would be glad that her body was sleek and nicely proportioned, her breasts an abundant handful, her waist narrower than most, and her hips marginally curved rather than bony or thrusting. The peach-gold skin tone, large almond-shaped eyes, patrician nose, and soft coral mouth were nothing to ignore either. The stern brown hair and eye color were only for effect and not her own today, but they couldn’t detract from features that went together just right to from a very pretty package. Tedra didn’t bemoan that package. She had just never had a reason to appreciate any of it except for her height, which was one of the main requirements for a career in Security.
She left her uniform where it dropped on the floor, knowing the robocleaner would zip out to pick up after her as soon as the walls opened. No one could accuse Tedra of being tidy, but then robocleaners had been around longer than she had and they tended to spoil a person awful, keeping everything sparkling and sanitary and in its proper place. The machine stood no higher than her hips, moved on silent rollers so it never made a nuisance of itself; in fact, most of the time she barely noticed the thing as it worked around her. Her home unit was even programmed to take her order and bring her meals to her in bed if she felt too lazy or tired to get up and press the buttons on her Meal Provider herself. Hell, the farden thing would brush her teeth if she’d let it.
The solaray bath was smaller than her home unit by about a foot, the tubelike bath about a foot and a half round, just barely adequate for someone her size. The curved door slid quietly shut as soon as both feet were on the floor of the unit, and the tall cylinder filled with a red light that bathed her in scarlet hues. The beam of light turned off by itself after three seconds, the door opening automatically, a silent suggestion that she step out, which she did, squeaky clean now from head to toe, even the dull brown of her hair given a soft sheen in the cleaning. She didn’t know how the thing worked, but the solaray bath had come into use more than fifty years ago during what was now termed the Great Water Shortage, and stayed in use because of the time-saving efficiency of the thing. Her home unit, a newer model, was designed to be compatible with the solarcloth of her uniforms, to clean them as well, and since the uniform was thin and comfortable enough to sleep in, too, it saved her even more time in not having to change clothes unless she was going somewhere other than on duty. Few citizens on the planet remembered what it was like to take baths any other way.
But her assignment was finished here now, and so she dialed a two-piece outfit, which the closet promptly delivered, the pants and vestlike top being the only other articles of clothing she had brought with her for her short stay in Fanya. The perfume she favored had been applied only last week, so she didn’t need to refresh it. And the little bit of eye makeup she preferred, a thin application of black liner that matched her lashes, and the barest smudge of blusher were permanent. She was done with the nondescript hair color now that the job was finished, and spared the twenty seconds required for a new color, a vibrant lemon yellow that she couldn’t wear well with any but the brown eye shade. She kept her long hair in the tight folded roll required by her job, since it was unnecessary to loosen it for cleaning or coloring. A quick swipe with the styler over her shortened bangs to get them off her forehead, and she was ready to depart, the whole process having taken less than five minutes.
The robocleaner was already heading toward her as soon as the walls opened and disappeared in their slots. “Pack me to go, fella,” she told it, not having bothered to name a temporary unit, afraid her home model might get jealous if she did. Even though it wasn’t a free-thinking machine like Martha, she didn’t want to take any chances of upsetting her smoothly run household.
While she waited for her personal items to be collected and bagged, she headed for the audiovisual console to call her boss to tell him she had happily failed her mission. Every single boskrat had been whisked out of the lab when the ecology students had finally stumbled their way over the bodies on the floor to rescue their scaly friends. Actually, she hadn’t really failed. The building was still standing, no one was dead, and there was only minor damage to the interior of the lab. No one had said she had to prevent the boskrats from leaving the premises.
Dropping into the adjustichair before the console, which immediately adjusted to her height and contours, she was just about to activate the long-distance channel for direct access to Gallion City, nine hundred miles away, when the three-by-three-foot screen flashed on in front of her, and a man she vaguely recognized filled the screen in vivid color. Her hand stilled in midair and she sat back, a little in shock that the screen was on without having had the voice command of “Answer,” nor had the console chimed that there was a call awaiting her attention. People didn’t appear on audiovisual consoles without permission, since the viewing was two-way and it would be an invasion of privacy otherwise. Yet there the man was, looking at her, sitting behind a desk in an office she did recognize, the office of the Director of Kystran, but he was most definitely not Garr Ce Bemn.
The shock dissipated before he spoke as it dawned on her that he couldn’t see her, that she was seeing what many other people were likely seeing at that very moment-a multiple transmission. She knew it could be done, that every single audiovisual unit could broadcast simultaneously planetwide, but it had never been done before, so she couldn’t be faulted for being thrown by it. But the shock returned as he began to speak.
“Greetings, citizens.” His voice was modulated. He looked a happy man and likely was, if his message could be believed. “Some of you may remember me from my bid for the Directorship in 2134 A.C…, five years ago.”
Now she knew where she’d seen him before, with his brown hair an even mousier shade than hers had been, and his gray eyes like chipped steel. The challenge for the Directorship had taken place before she had been transferred to Goverance Building, when she was still a Sec 2, but she remembered how outraged the citizens had been at this man’s underhanded tactics in trying to buy votes from the Council of Nine, who were only all-powerful during election time every ten years when it was their duty to decide the matter, and were mere advisors otherwise.