Guest Night on Union Station Read Online Free PDF Page A

leaving enough space between the rows to get in and retrieve items. From the end of the back row, the shelves travel up the side of the hold and enter the front row again. When all of the shelves in the back row are full, we open that side of the room and invite the second-hand dealers to come and bid on lots from the exposed row. The last sale was twenty-three years ago.”
    “How many, uh, customers come into the lost-and-found each day looking for things on the shelves?”
    “The vast majority of the lost items that come in are from travelers. You might see a dozen walk-ins during a busy shift, depending on the way the clocks used by the various species are overlapping that day. Other shifts, you might be here five hours and not see a soul.”
    “That’ll be great once my course work for the Open University picks up,” Dorothy said enthusiastically. “Hey. Is that why Paul called this a ‘work-study’ job?”
    “Yes. When Paul was an Open University student, he was employed by the lost-and-found until he started doing his own lab work.”
    “So how do I catalog stuff the bots bring in?”
    “Flazint will be staying late today to show you the system. When I asked her to work overtime, she requested a short break to get her hair misted. Ah, here she comes now.”
    For a brief moment, Dorothy thought that a large bird of prey had entered the lost-and-found, but then she realized that it was an elaborate upswept hairdo of the sort favored by young Frunge women. She marveled that Flazint could walk through doors without damaging the trellis work that provided a template for her hair vines.
    “Hi. I’m Flazint.”
    “I’m Dorothy. I love your hair. How do you keep from breaking it?”
    “Practice,” Flazint replied. “You start with a flexible training-trellis, so even if you run into stuff, the worst that can happen is a few split vines. I usually don’t come to work like this, but it’s the start of pollination season and it’s the first year that my ancestors are letting me date.”
    “Cool. Libby was just telling me how most of the lost stuff gets found before we catalog it, but she said you’d show me what to do. I feel bad about making you stay late, though.”
    “I’m happy to get the overtime. I’m saving to move out with friends, but don’t tell anybody,” Flazint added hastily. She eyed the human girl closely, wondering if her confidence might be misplaced.
    “I won’t,” Dorothy promised, pressing a fist to her forehead. It was a gesture she’d seen the little Frunge children on Aisha’s show make when they were promising to be good, and it seemed to satisfy Flazint.
    “Let’s get started then. The first step is to separate the legitimate lost items from the litter,” the Frunge girl explained. “All of the new stuff goes in the marked bins under the counter at this end. The borderline cases, like the foil jewelry, we keep for a little less than nine days before recycling.”
    “A little less than nine days?”
    “A Verlock boy who worked here like a couple million years ago came up with the system, so it’s all based on their calendar period of a Klunk. Whenever you come to work, you should take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the new items in the bins under the counter at the intake end. The bins are sitting on a continuous belt that ages them towards the cold-storage end of the counter, a journey that takes one Klunk. The bots will then remove anything in blue bins for recycling, and whoever is working the counter is responsible for cataloging the unclaimed items in the white bins.”
    “Is there anything in the white bins now?” Dorothy left the Frunge girl behind as she ran down the length of the counter, so enthusiastic was she to get to work. “Is this one ready?”
    “Well, normally you wouldn’t pull it off until the bots take the blue one that’s ahead of it, but I guess we can make an exception for training purposes,” the girl called back. She was