The hotel suite was smaller than ones she’d known in the United States. It had one compact bedroom and a second sitting room with a folding sofa bed, plus a toilet and a shower. There were cots in the closet—the Finns had been expecting a larger delegation from the United Free Republics and Kentucky.
Valentine and Pistols offered to take the sitting room.
“I don’t see how you’ll manage that without sleeping on top of each other. The couch is fine by me,” she said.
The little si
de tables were pressed into duty for gun cleaning and maintenance. Pistols spent some time with Valentine talking about the advantages of color-coding the bottom of his magazines with mildly luminous paint of the sort used for dots on gun sights, and they went to work on the magazines for Valentine’s old .45 Colt automatic, using colored tape for now.
The conference had its “soft opening” the next day. There were no meetings or votes, just a lot of open meetings for the delegates to get to know one another.
She was registered at the conference as well, a “nonvoting associate” from the Kentucky Alliance. A helpful man at the door with a cross-draw pistol somewhat hidden under a sport jacket directed her to the credentialing desk.
The big open hallway between the glass wall and the individual conference rooms was almost empty. There was a circular desk near the doors with a few Scandinavian types (she was getting used to everyone being blond, tall, and in possession of magnificent teeth) and she opened with the universal line.
“I’m sorry, does anyone speak English?”
It turned out they all did.
Even though the conference had not officially opened yet, there was still business taking place at the center in some of the smaller rooms, and the credentialing and security desk in the main lobby was busy. When she gave her name and freehold they retrieved a file for Kentucky—she noted it looked new and was nearly empty, whereas many of the others were dog-eared and filled—and opened it. The security man stepped over and looked at two photographs with the conference assistant, one that was faint and assembled line by line via some form of transmission, and a second, much better and more recent, of her leaning on the railing of Von Krebs’s yacht looking out to sea. She remembered Von Krebs fiddling with a modern-looking camera, but she hadn’t seen him take the snap of her.
Effective little shit. Was he part of the security staff? Or were the transport people just supposed to take a picture of everyone they’d been assigned to convey?
A uniformed security man took her over to a beige wall outside one of the conference rooms and had her stand on a little piece of tape. He moved to a second piece of tape and took her picture with a camera that spat out an instant color photograph. Back at the desk one of the workers stuck it in a device and centered it on her head, punched it out of its surroundings, and placed it on a badge with her name, then ran it through a laminating machine. Then they photocopied it—those machines were rare!—and put it back in the Kentucky file before handing her the conference identity card and the lanyard. The back had some simple safety instructions. She noted that all firearms had to be turned in at the security desk, but it said nothing about knives—or sword-sticks.
“You must wear identification in this building, or for group activities at your hotel. The ninth floor is the conference area there.”
“Thank you.”
“May I help you with anything else?”
It was worth a try. “Have the Lifeweavers arrived yet?” she asked. She wondered what she’d have to do to get an audience with one to request more Lifeweaver aid for Kentucky.
The staff exchanged a couple of words and she recognized “Lifeweavers” repeated.
The woman who’d made her ID smiled sympathetically. “No one can say. They always attend, though they take little part. Since the disaster in the South Atlantic only one or two are expected. They are here already; I am sure. I know the White Ravens are here.”
“White Ravens?”
She bit her lip in thought. “Do you call it something else? Those humans who communicate with them for us and guard them. They are connected in some manner, you know? Do you have such people in America?”
“Oh, I see. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to talk about that,” she said.
She’d heard rumors about humans who joined up with the Lifeweavers to serve them, like priests attending to a living god. She’d be tempted to take an offer like that. She felt a strange sort of comfort in their alien presence. They were so wise and remote. It would be fascinating to see the cosmos through their eyes, even secondhand.
She attached the little alligator clip and took a walk around the concourse on both levels. It was nearly empty, with just a few attendees like her vacantly wandering, or little groups of Baltic League organizers hurrying about with carts filled with plastic storage bins. She had a few curious looks from the sleek attendees.
Well, she’d have an opportunity to talk with one sooner or later. A Lifeweaver or two would make all the difference in Kentucky.
As she walked away, she heard more Finnish behind her, and a stifled giggle. Sometimes she cursed her enhanced hearing. Sometimes you didn’t want to hear everything that transpired behind your back.
She wondered what the joke was, but felt certain it was about her. There was just something about Europeans that made her feel awkward. Back home, everyone was ragged.
To be honest with herself, she felt a bit of a ragamuffin. It was one thing to shrug and say “screw that noise; I’m just here for the food” and another to be among them—these people were clearly taking the conference very seriously and putting on their best. And here she was, your basic Midwestern farmyard scarecrow. Her pants were thin at the knees and the collar of her shirt was frayed and wrinkled. And these were her presentable clothes.
No wonder the late Thérèse Stamp had nudged her about buying new clothes.
Curiosity satisfied, she wandered around the grounds of the conference center. At the sunken fountain plaza there were garbage bins and several sand-filled basins for tobacco. There were some extinguished matches and butts in the sand, but not many. As for the ground and the fountain itself, both were immaculate. Wait—there were a few silvery coins in the fountain, thank God. These Finns were starting to turn into civic-minded robots in her imagination. That, or there were a lot of make-work jobs cleaning public spaces for the refugees who’d come up the Gulf of Bothnia.