The Death of Sleep

"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 centred 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 room-mates was home. The apartment was of reasonably good size, clean, though typically untidy. The shelves were cluttered with the typical impedimenta 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 synthesiser. 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 pre- pared to log off.

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

MESPIL, FIONA