Pilot: Chapter 11

Chapter 11

After a few minutes Elena managed to shake her thoughts away as something to dwell on later and went to rejoin the group in the dining area.  None of them were there.  A preliminary search found the door to the meeting room closed and Elena could hear the murmur of voices on the other side of the door.  She didn't test the handle to see if it was locked, as she had enough of council politics for the moment.  The council was probably taking care of business she had no interest in and as far as she was concerned they could keep doing it.  Elena turned away from the door. While spending some time with her grandfather would have been nice, she was somewhat relieved not to spend the day cautiously treading the verbal minefield of family relations. Returning to the dining area she found the wait staff cleaning up from brunch.  Everyone seemed to know their assigned tasks and the order in which they needed to be completed. She watched them and wondered if interrupting their routine would be a good idea.

"May I help you Miss?" A voice said from behind her.  elena turned, startled. "My apologies Miss, I didn't realize you hadn't seen me."  The voice belonged to a woman with dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail.  She was wearing white pants and a dark blue shirt with a golden L emblazoned on the breast pocket.  White canvas shoes completed the outfit. Elena recognized it as the staff uniform.  The L made Elena think of the shirts Laverne wore in the old television show and the Laverne and Shirley theme song began playing in the back of her mind. 

"Yes, actually," She replied, turning the volume down on her mental radio. "I need to run an errand.  I don't suppose there is a phone to call a taxi near by? Or I could use my cell phone if you have a phone book."  The woman shook her head.

"I'm sorry Miss.  You are allowed the free run of the ship while you are here but for your own safety we were asked to keep you aboard.  If you let me know what is needed I could perhaps secure it for you." She looked extremely apologetic and elena sighed.  "It really is for your own safety Miss."  The woman started to look distressed. 

"I understand," Elena said, knowing the council was trying to help her as well as being paranoid.  She also knew no one on board would go against the direct orders of the council.  She sighed. "Its just sort of personal."  Elena felt her cheeks flush red. "Um, you see I didn't have time to do laundry before coming on this trip and I am running low on undergarments. I suppose I could just rinse these out in the sink and let them dry over night."  The last comment was muttered more for herself than her uniformed companion.  She bit her lip thinking of wearing the date underwear for an extra day but not really seeing much of a choice. "Well I suppose I'll have to make do."  Elena focused on the woman.  "Thank you anyway," she said.

"Oh no Miss," The attendant's face looked shocked at the thought of a passenger's discomfort. "That simply won't do.  I'f you give me your sizes I can arrange for the items to be in your room."  She pulled out a small notepad from her back pocket.  A golf pencil was stuck in the spiral binding.  The woman slid it out and flipped to a clean page.  She stared up at Elena expectantly.  

"Oh, no really, that isn't necessary,"  Elena started to protest thinking how many people would end up involved in her her underwear crisis.  

"It will be fine Miss, discreet as you please."  Realizing she was beat, Elena gave her size requirements to the woman and they were quickly jotted down and the notebook flipped closed.  Elena reached for her wallet.

"Oh no Miss.  That isn't necessary."

"I'm sorry," Elena said, afraid she had offended the woman.  She waved Elena's concern away with a flick of the notepad.

"Not a problem.  I'll make sure these are delivered to your room.  And if you have further need, please let me know.  My name is Regina."

"Thank you Regina."

"My pleasure Miss."  Regina turned back down the corridor and walked briskly away.  Elena tried not to think of how her underwear problem would be solved.  The logistics would be too embarrassing. With the council in closed session and leaving the ship forbidden to her, Elena decided the best course of action would be to take advantage of the council library.  Possibly she could find a few answers to the crop of questions the last few days had garnered.  Besides, she actually knew where the library was.  Anything else would require directions or a map. Mission decided she pushed her sleeves up to her elbows and returned to the library.  

Once inside the doors she allowed her self a brief look around.  Earlier she had focused on the two people dominating the seating area and the rest of the library had faded to a mere backdrop.  This time she could appreciate the soft brown leather chairs and gleaming wood. The rooms accents, the draperies and paintings had overtones of prussian blue and gold.  Each bookshelf had a glass door over it with a small latch placed in the center to secure the door.  elena guessed this to be a measure against rough weather but imagined the sea would have to boil to shake a boat this large.  While she had been in libraries much larger, most books dealing with the guild, the council or piloting would be stored off world at the docking station to keep them from falling into the wrong hands.  No doubt this was probably the largest collection of  guild related titles on the planet. Hopefully some of her questions could be answered here.  

The first set of questions she wanted answered dealt with the details of being named as head of her own house.  She wanted to know exactly what that entailed.  Elena was sure there would be benefits and just as certain there would be requirements now made of her.  Finding out those requirements before the council brought them up would be helpful.  She also wanted more information about being named Friend of the Guild.  Those were the two most pressing problems.  Elena smirked. 

"Well outside of the military wanting to kidnap me for their diabolical schemes, those are my two biggest concerns," she said.  The first lesson her parents taught her about the council was that they never gave without taking, giving every privilege some responsibility.  In some cases Elena actually agreed with the concept.  She spotted a computer discretely tucked into the corner so as not to disrupt the old world elegance and she walked over to it.  With a touch it sparked to life and the electronic card catalog was at her disposal.

The concept of paying for what you got helped keep everyone from getting too greedy or from gaining unchecked power, in theory.  The higher the power, the heavier the responsibility was a concept drilled into each of them at every stage of their training.  However, dealing with the council always left her feeling paranoid and questioning the motives of everyone around her.  Elena sighed and opened up a search window.  She typed her question and prepared to wade through tons of useless information before finding anything relevant.

"After all, it isn't like council law and head of household are that uncommon as phrases go." Just before clicking the search button, Elena noticed a box where she could check and only search the families archives rather than the entire library.  She ticked the box, blessing whatever librarian had spent the time coding the documents separately.

"Besides, I can do a general search later," she said as the computer pulled up a list of resources.  The list was pretty long but nowhere near as extensive as a general search would be.  Noting that all of the sources listed were located in the same general area, Elena didn't bother copying the titles down onto one of the little slips of paper thoughtfully stationed next to the computer.  She just walked over to the shelf listed. The shelf was one of the lower ones and when she sat indian style in front of the book shelf the titles were all at eye level.  She unlatched the shelf door and pulled it open.  The door pulled upwards and slid on a track above the books, keeping it out of the way while she browsed.  

A fat tome simply entitled Council Law looked promising.  She pulled it off the shelf and flipped to the back, hoping there was an index.  There was none.  She flipped to the front of the book and found the table of contents.  elena slid her finger down the page, allowing her eyes to follow.  She mumbled the chapter titles to herself as she looked for something of interest.  Several things caught her attention as she scanned the table of contents and she had to remind herself to focus.  Once her questions were answered she could indulge her curiosity.  Her time her was very limited.

She turned the page and continued scanning.  The fifth page of the table of contents held the title to a promising chapter and she turned to page 246.  Mired in official sounding verbage only a lawyer would enjoy she found that as head of household she was allowed to run her business As a guild business in any way she saw fit as long as it did nothing to jeopardize the other families. She supposed she could now rotate even more exotic stock with her current inventory if she chose to without getting into trouble with the council.  She thought of her grandfather's proposal.  In addition, elena was only answerable to the council member who headed up her regional families and to the council itself. 

"Which means Therese can't really keep me out of anything anymore."  She thought about Nate's upcoming wedding with mixed thoughts and wasn't sure if this was a benefit or a drawback.  Elena was now also eligible to vote in general elections,whereas before she could only offer her opinion to the head of household and hoe he took her feelings into account at election time. The final carrot was that should a council seat be open, she could if she met other qualifications apply to fill it.

"So there is the carrot," she muttered to herself. "Now where is the stick."  She found it buried a few paragraphs down.  "Not too bad," she said.  She would now owe an annual tithe to the Guild, but the amount didn't seem too excessive.  The tithe was not a set amount but rather a percentage of her annual income, revised every year.  As sticks went, it wasn't a particularly heavy one.  Elena weighed the thought of paying the Guild and realized it didn't bother her that much.  It was relatively small compared to some of the potential commercial benefits. She was especially pleased at the thought of her cousin's face when she learned of Elena's new status.

"From outcast to family leader in one fell swoop. Cheap at twice the price," she decided. Elena flipped back to the table of contents and continued scanning for a reference to Friends of the Guild.  She spent an hour flipping between table of contents and pages in the fat Council Law book and others.  By the time she reached the end of the shelf, the only thing she had learned was that a Friend of the Guild was someone who acted on behalf of the Guild and to whom the council was somehow beholden.

Elena looked at the stack of books heaped on the floor beside her. With a shake of her head she began re-shelving them.  She was pretty sure her act on behalf of the Guild was tied to Ian and the military but could find no reference as to how the council was beholden and what that actually meant.  That was something she found strange.  The council may always take something when they gave you something else, but it was always a very straightforward business transaction.  Benefits and responsibilities were always clearly laid out.

"Maybe there just aren't that many people who help the council out so they never really had to think it through," she mused.  All of the books except Council Law were re-shelved.  Se picked the book up and deciding she didn't really have a better way to spend her afternoon, she stood and took the book over to one of the thick leather chairs.  She settled herself into it, curling her feet up underneath her and opened the book.  Idly she wished she had a notepad to jot down key points but let the thought go as she began to read.