The Dragon Variation Read Online Free Page B

looking for a friend," he said, taking extreme care with the mode-less and rough Terran words. "Her name is Anne Davis. Her field is comparative linguistics. I regret that I do not know the name of the department in which she serves."
    "Well, you're on the right campus, anyhow," the woman said cheerfully. "You got her ident number, retinal pattern, anything like that?"
    "I regret," Er Thom repeated.
    She shook her head so the tousled dark curls danced. "I'll see if it flies, friend, but it's not much to go on with the size of the faculty we've got . . ." She moved away, muttering things much like her counterparts in the East and West offices had muttered. A few meters down-counter she stopped and began to ply the keypad set there, frowning at the screen suspended level with her eyes. "Let's see . . . Davis, Davis, Anne . . ." She turned her head, calling out to him over her shoulder. "Is that 'Anne' with an 'e' or not?"
    He stared at her, unable to force his weary mind to analyze and make sense of the question. "I—beg your pardon."
    "Your friend," the clerk said, patiently. "Does she spell her name with an 'e' or without an 'e'?"
    An "e" was the fifth letter of the Terran alphabet. Surely, he thought, half-panicked, surely he had at some time seen Anne's written name? He closed his eyes, saw the old-fashioned ink pen held firmly in long, graceful fingers, sweeping a signature onto the mauve pages of an ambassadorial guest book.
    "A—" he spelled out of memory for the clerk's benefit. "n, n, e. D, a, v, i, s."
    "Hokay." She turned back to her board as Er Thom opened his eyes, feeling oddly shaken.
    The clerk muttered to herself—he paid her no mind. Terran naming systems, he thought distractedly, Terran alphabet, and, gods help him, a Terran woman, bold and brilliant— alien . But a woman still, with Terran blood in her and genes so far outside the Book of Clans that—
    "Okay!"
    Er Thom shook himself out of his reverie as the clerk's cry of jubilation penetrated, and stepped forward.
    "Yes?"
    She looked up at him, lashes fluttering, and he saw that she was not so young as he had thought. Cosmetics had been used to simulate the dewy blush of first youth across her cheek and her eyes were artfully painted, with silver sequins sprinkled across her lashes. Er Thom schooled his face to calm politeness. Local custom, he reminded himself sternly. As a trader he dealt with local custom in many guises on many worlds. So on this world faces were painted. Merely custom, and nothing to distress one.
    "Don't know if this is your friend or not," the woman was saying, "but she's the only Davis in Comparative Ling. Wait a sec, here's the card." She frowned at it before handing it over. "Lives in Quad S-two-seven-squared. You know where that is?"
    "No," he said, clutching the card tightly.
    The woman stood, leaning over the counter to point. Her breasts flattened against the marble, and swelled toward the margin of the low-cut blouse. Er Thom turned to look along the line of her finger.
    "Go back out the way you came," she told him, "turn right, walk about four hundred yards. You'll see a sign for the surrey. Go down the stairs and hit the summonplate. When the surrey comes, you sit down and code in this right here, see?" She ran her finger under a string of letters and numbers on the card he held.
    "Yes, I see."
    "Okay. Then you lean back and enjoy the ride. The surrey stops, you get out and go upstairs. You'll be in a big open space—Quad S. Best thing to do then is either ask one of the residents to help you find the address or go to the Quad infobooth, punch up your friend's code—that's right under the name, there—and tell her to come get you. Clear?"
    "Thank you," said Er Thom, bowing thanks and remembering to give a smile. Terrans set great store by smiles, where a Liaden person would merely have kept his face neutral and allowed the bow to convey all that was necessary.
    "That's Okay," said the woman, flashing her