Beth touched the warm glass window. Inside, the baby Minaran swam, its small head rounded and sleek, its eyes open and friendly. When she had first passed the cubicle, the baby rested on its back on a rock, basking in fake sunlight. Its fur was white, its fins slender but strong.

Odd that it would have a cubicle all to itself just inside the human wing. Odder still that the cubicle had been a banquet room a few days before.

She leaned her face against the glass, wishing she could go inside. The poor little thing had to be lonely. If she could hold it and feel its warm, wet fur against her skin, she might be able to ease the loneliness--both of their loneliness--for just a short time.

"Beth!"

Roddy's voice. She jumped away from the window and stood, hands clasped behind her back. She kept her gaze trained downward, away from the Minaran in the cubicle. Roddy hated it when she ogled the guests.

"What are you doing in the main lobby?" He stood beside her. She could smell peppermint on his breath. He had just had a cup of his favorite--expensive--tea. "Did someone call for you?"

She shook her head. How many demerits this time? Or maybe he would take a week's worth of tips. The diamond square pattern on the carpet ran together. She blinked, making sure her eyes were tearless.

"You know I don't like having the personal staff in the lobby. It creates a sleazy atmosphere. Some of our patrons would prefer to ignore people like you."

As you would, she thought. She finally raised her head, saw Candice at the lobby entrance, watching the entire exchange. Roddy wore a black suit, very twentieth-century retro, fitting in perfectly with the decor in this half of the human wing. Except for the Minaran.

"I was walking through," Beth said, "and I saw the Minaran. What's it doing here?"

"That's none of your business," Roddy said. "When you were hired on, you were told not to ask questions--"

"Beth was not hired," Candice said. She started down the incline into the lobby. Roddy didn't move. He froze, just like Beth had, when faced with his boss. "Let's not have this discussion in the lobby, hmm? My office, please."

Except for the Minaran, the lobby was empty. The next ship was twenty minutes behind schedule. The staff was having its break, preparing for the midafternoon rush.

Beth and Roddy followed Candice around the registration desk. Her office was a spacious room with a view of the docking ships and the stars beyond. She had to have been at Hotel Andromeda for most of her life--and had to have been a valued employee--to attain a view like that.

"Sit down," Candice said as she slipped in the wide leather chair behind her desk. Her office, too, was done retro. Beth didn't want to sit in the leather chair on the other side of the desk--she hated the feet of the material against her skin; it brought back too many unpleasant memories--but she did anyway. Roddy sat beside her, perched at the edge of the chair as if he were going to spring up any minute.

"The lobby is not a place for dressing down an employee," Candice said, folding her jeweled hands together and leaning forward on the desk. "We are striving to make our guests as comfortable as possible, and they don't need to see dissension among the staff. Is that clear?"

Roddy nodded.

"Good. You may go."

Roddy leaped out of the chair as if it had an ejector seat. He was gone from Candice's office in the time it took her to turn to Beth. "You know better than to stand in the lobby when you're not working."

"Yes." Beth looked at her hands. They weren't as well groomed as Candice's. The years of hard labor would always remain in the form of yellowed calluses, bent nails, and scarred skin.

"The Minaran fascinates you."

Beth didn't answer. When she stared at the creature, memories crossed within her. Memories of the investigator--what was his name? Shafer?--who had killed so many Minarans and destroyed her world, too. Memories of being trapped, naked, in a cubicle the same size for her first real journey into space, the other prisoners passing her, jeering, and tapping on the clear plastic. She had hated it, hated it, and not even the memory of John got her through.

All that combined in loneliness so deep that sometimes she thought nothing would fill it.

"Beth?"

Beth looked up. Candice's voice was harsh, but her eyes weren't. Candice was the only nice person Beth had met on the staff. The rest treated her like dirt, like she was worse than dirt, like she had no value at all.

"You have more demerits than any other staff member. Your ten-year service contract has grown to sixteen. If you don't watch yourself, you could be indentured to the hotel for life."

Beth shrugged. She had nowhere else to go. Meager as it was, the hotel was more home to her than any other place she had lived. Any other place except Bountiful, among the Dancers.

Candice stood up, and shoved her hands in the pocket of her suit. She was a big woman, and powerful. "I would like to make you a project, Beth. I think you're smarter than any other person on the staff. I can send you to an alien no one knows anything about, and you can discover its sexuality and please it within a matter of hours. If this system ran on merits instead of demerits, I suspect you would have been out of here in five years, instead of accumulating enough trouble to keep you here indefinitely. But I need to know if you're willing."

"What do you want from me?" Beth's voice felt rusty, as if she hadn't used it for days.

"I want to train you to become my assistant. You would act as liaison between all branches of the hotel, and you would mostly work in New Species Contact. You would discover what a species needs to feel most at home, and work with the design and personal staff to accomplish that."

Beth clasped her hands together. She had never done anything like that. She could barely speak to other people. Imagine if she had to speak to other species. Normally she went into their rooms and became like a Dancer, absorbing the emotions of the other being and flowing with them until she found what they wanted. Then she would leave, and Dancerlike, forget everything that had happened. "I don't know design or diplomacy."

"I would train you."

Beth shook her head once and stood. "If you knew about me, you wouldn't offer this."

"I know you came to us from a penal ship. I know you were in for murder."

"No." Beth reached out and touched the edge of Candice's desk. The wood was smooth and warm, like the glass around the Minaran's cubicle. "I was convicted under the Alien Influences Act. Some friends of mine and I saw Dancer puberty rites and tried them on each other, not realizing that when you cut off a human's hands, heart and lungs, they die. Because of us, the Intergalactic Alliance closed its second planet--Bountiful--and ordered that humans never have contact with Dancers again. And we were scattered into isolation, away from aliens. That's why the hotel had to get special dispensation to buy my indentured servitude contract."

"But no aliens have influenced you since," Candice said.