Party Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 10) (17 page)

“Not to mention a dance deck,” Daniel commented. “I never knew that, but I guess they’re all fanatics and it must take up a lot of space. Why did the name of that advertiser sound so familiar?”

“Astria’s Academy of Dance,” Lynx repeated. “You’ve heard of it before because it’s a well-known front for Vergallian Intelligence.”

“They don’t actually teach dancing?”

“Of course they do. It’s the top dance academy franchise on the tunnel network, if not in this part of the galaxy. That’s what makes it effective as a front.”

“But what are they going to do with invitations for somebody else?” Daniel asked. “Isn’t Gryph supplying station bots to confirm the identities of aliens at the door?”

“I thought that printing up souvenir tickets would be a nice plus for the humans,” Donna admitted, taking an example out of her purse. “Dring insisted that the printer use real gold foil after I explained the idea. It wouldn’t be easy for an upper caste female to pass as human, they just look too perfect. But I’m sure there will be a huge market for tickets with the Vergallian commoners, and all they really need to do is get a bad makeover.”

“I’ll bet that none of Kelly’s friends sell their tickets,” Daniel asserted.

“We’re giving them awfully short notice, and some may have other commitments or be unable to make the trip,” Donna pointed out. “I suppose there’s no reason to worry about it. More Vergallians isn’t going to hurt a ball.”

“How about all of the aliens that Dring invited?” Lynx inquired. “Has Kelly even met any of them before?”

“I know that Dring got the Stryx to send a science ship to the Gem homeworld to pick up Gwendolyn, and he was trying to locate the retired high priest of Kasil, but most of the guests are just important leaders from species that Dring has come across in his travels. I thought he was doing it all to honor Kelly, but he told me that when he made the list, he realized that he couldn’t invite some of the high-whatnots and not the others without putting them at risk of a war.”

“Hey, everybody,” Shaina said, entering the embassy with her daughter in a baby sling. “Mind if I hang out here? Brinda warned me that our old friends from the Shuk were showing up at SBJ Fashions to beg for tickets, and I figure it’s just a matter of time before they try me at home.”

“We just caved in and promised invitations to an alien dictator, and I imagine it won’t be long before everybody thinks of trying the embassy,” Daniel said. “Maybe we should all just go into hiding for the rest of the week.”

“It’s better to face them down now so we don’t create the expectation that we’ll give in,” Donna said philosophically.

“May I suggest blaming Dring for the ticket distribution?” Libby chimed in. “He won’t mind, and everybody outside of your immediate circle of friends is too awed by him to protest.”

“Works for me,” Daniel said immediately. “I’ve got another holo-conference scheduled in—two minutes ago, so I have to get back to work. You and the little chipmunk are always welcome,” he added, addressing his wife and the baby. Then he retreated into his office and closed the door.

“I liked him better before he began taking his job so seriously,” Shaina said. “I guess I’ll head into the office and tell Brinda the company line on invitations.”

“Hold on a second,” Donna requested. “I’ve been watching your son on Aisha’s show and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen subtitles. It seems they only pop up when Mike is speaking to the Drazen boy.”

“I’m always in the studio when they shoot so I haven’t seen them myself, but I’ll bet it’s the first time they’ve had a child speaking, or trying to speak, an alien language,” Shaina explained. “I guess the Grenouthian engineers are afraid that Mike’s Drazen isn’t good enough for all of the Drazen children watching, but they don’t want their translation technology dubbing over it in real time since he’s trying so hard.”

“I never would have noticed,” the office manager replied. “I guess my implant doesn’t have any trouble making sense of what he’s saying, so I thought he was just speaking English.”

“That’s probably because he gets the words right but his syntax is more English than Drazen,” Lynx speculated, having participated in her share of language training sessions in the EarthCent Intelligence camp. “That’s pretty cool that he’s speaking an alien language on the show, and the Drazens must take it as a compliment. How’s that little Stryx from Libby’s school that Mike and Fenna pal around with working out?”

“Spinner?” Shaina paused and smiled. “He’s settling down, and he really brings a fresh perspective to the broadcast. Even though he knows so many facts, I’ll bet that if you took a vote, the audience would say that either the little Horten girl or the Verlock child is the smartest kid on the show. On the first day, they all thought that the little Stryx knew everything.”

“Which language does Spinner speak?” Lynx followed up.

“English. He can translate from any language into any other language if you ask him, but he’s only comfortable expressing himself in English. What do the Stryx think of Spinner’s performances, Libby?”

“I think he’s the best bit of public relations we’ve had since Gryph and the other first generation Stryx saved the galaxy from the killer AI.”

“What do the other Stryx think?” Donna inquired.

“None of them admit to watching, aside from Jeeves, and you know him. He wants to stand in for Aisha if she ever takes a vacation.”

Seventeen

“That must be it,” Kelly said, pointing out of the shuttle’s window at a ship with Vergallian markings docked at the transportation hub. “It looks much bigger than the one we came out on.”

“That donut section is a centrifuge for the living quarters,” Joe commented, looking out his own port from the seat behind his wife’s. “Hopefully they’ll spin it up once we’re underway.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Kelly asked.

“Some of those freighter captains know how to squeeze a cred until it cries for help. Maybe they’ll tell us that there’s an extra charge if we want to feel gravity, or worse, they could run it fast if they’re adapted to a heavier world, and then charge us to lighten up. You never know with the Vergallians, they occupy so many planets.”

“It’s a 0.91 G ring,” Samuel asserted, looking out at the ship. “The rating is painted on the hull.”

“There you have it,” Kelly said. “It looks like we’re in for a pleasant trip home. I don’t know about you two, but I’m looking forward to a week of being out of touch with everybody. Sometimes I feel like all of this communications technology just doesn’t give us time to catch our breath.”

“It’s a good thing they don’t spin the transportation hub, or we’d have to hire a porter to help with our luggage,” Joe commented.

“I know I brought too much, but for what we’re paying, it didn’t make sense to let the personal baggage allowance go to waste,” Kelly replied defensively.

“I didn’t mean your clothes and stuff, Kel. I was thinking about that giant cooler of fresh fruit that Glunk sent. Samuel and I had enough trouble just loading it into the shuttle, and we’ll never eat it all before it spoils.”

“Vergallians like some of our fruit, especially citrus,” Samuel said.

“Make sure you get something in trade,” his father told him. “The aliens will think less of both you and the fruit if you don’t put any value on it.”

“I, for one, will be glad for the change from those dehydrated meals we brought for the trip out,” Kelly added. “I know that you’re going to say that they were gourmet compared to the field rations you used to live on.”

“It’s just that I already ordered all of our supplies for the return trip from the chandler’s on the hub. Don’t tell me what the overweight charges were for this shuttle. Mass equals fuel to get off a planet, but taking the space elevator instead would have added another day to our trip.”

“I negotiated with the ticket agent while you were loading the cooler,” Kelly said proudly. “I think he was new, because he let me bill the charges to EarthCent.”

“Hope he doesn’t lose his job over it,” Joe replied.

An hour later, the McAllisters left the chandler’s shop and began shuffling along the concourse of the transportation hub on their magnetic cleats. Joe and Samuel strained against the momentum of their loosely bundled baggage as they turned into the docking arm that led to the Vergallian freighter. Ahead of them, a body stretched and contorted, trying to make contact with one of the surfaces of the docking arm, but somehow the unfortunate individual had ended up floating in the very center of the tube.

“Hang in there, Miss,” Joe called out. “We’ll be there in a second.”

“If you throw something you’ll move in the opposite direction,” Samuel added helpfully.

Her slow rotation finally brought the woman’s head around to face the McAllisters, albeit upside down, and Kelly recognized Hannah, the young woman from her conference session who had dreamed of being kidnapped by an alien.

“Ambassador McAllister,” the girl cried when she recognized her rescuers. “I can’t believe it’s you. I took your advice to travel on a freighter and this was the cheapest ticket to Union Station I could find.”

“My wife didn’t mention magnet cleats?” Joe asked.

“I can’t think of everything,” Kelly replied. She pushed her carry-on at Joe, who resignedly undid one of the bungee cords that were threaded through the handles of the other bags and food containers that he and Samuel were already shepherding, and added Kelly’s. In the meantime, the ambassador grabbed the upside-down woman’s shoulder, reached high above her own head to get a hand on Hannah’s knee, and spun her gently around.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Hannah gushed, “I was starting to feel sick from being upside-down.”

“It’s all the same in Zero G,” Samuel pointed out. “If you’ve never been before, it takes a while to get used to.”

“So how are we going to work this, Joe?” Kelly asked, still holding onto the girl who wore a full-sized backpack.

“She can ride on the cooler and the three of us can handle the mass together, at least until we get on the ship. How did you get this far, Miss?

“One of the passengers from the space elevator offered to tow me along to the docking arm since his departure gate was past here. He gave me a push down the center but I sort of drifted to one side, if a tube can have a side. When I made contact I was facing the wrong way, and my pack hit one of the ribs and got stuck. Struggling made things worse, and somehow when the pack worked free, I was barely moving.”

“If you went through all of that without throwing up, you’ll do fine in space,” Joe told her. “Hold on to the cord and don’t be surprised if I grab your foot when we get there. It’s easy to start things moving slowly in Zero G, but it’s rare that you have the same time to slow down. Your mass will just stretch that bungee cord out like a rubber band if we need to stop or make a hard turn.”

“Did you send anything ahead, or is that pack all you brought?” Kelly inquired of the young woman, as the group resumed its shuffling journey towards the Vergallian freighter.

“It’s everything I own,” Hannah said. “I don’t plan on returning to Earth, and I wouldn’t have enough money for a ticket anyway. I sold all of my apartment stuff, but some of it was only mine on credit, and I had to pay off the bank before the space elevator agency would sell me a ticket.”

“All of your clothes and food for the trip are in that one pack?” Kelly asked doubtfully.

“I’m an expert backpacker. I used to go hiking with one or two other girls in the mountains every chance we got, because...” she hesitated, glancing at Samuel and Joe, and then whispered, “You know.”

“Are those sorts of, uh, encounters we talked about at the conference supposed to take place more often in the mountains?” Kelly guessed.

“The aliens can’t just land in cities and kidnap women. Everybody would see them.”

“Grabbing your foot now,” Joe warned the girl, as they reached the open airlock of the freighter. The three upright people and the unified clump of baggage with Hannah holding on fit easily through the hatch, which was intended for both crew and miscellaneous cargo. They cycled through, and when the inner doors slid open, they were met by a middle-aged Vergallian man with a purser’s tab.

“Nice of all my passengers to show up at the same time,” the purser said in a friendly voice.

“What did he say?” Hannah asked Kelly.

“You don’t have an implant?”

The young woman shook her head in the negative. Kelly explained to the girl that while the crew members likely had implants that would allow them to understand English, none of them would speak it.

“She doesn’t have an implant and she’s never been in space before,” Samuel told the purser in Vergallian.

The purser blinked, threw the mental switch on his own implant, and demanded of the teen, “Say that again.”

Samuel repeated himself, and the Vergallian broke into a wide smile. “I’ve met a few humans over the years who could get by in our language, but you speak like a royal consort. Let me show you all to your quarters and then I’ll introduce you to the crew. Can I give you a hand with all this stuff?”

Joe accepted the help gladly and winked at his son. He knew that Samuel’s fluency in Vergallian had made all of the difference in the way the crew of the Earth-bound ship had treated them, and he was pleased to see that it was looking the same for the journey back.

The purser led them through a series of long passages, which were thankfully large enough to accommodate the makeshift load of luggage, with Hannah riding on what she perceived as the top. After almost five minutes of shuffling along on their magnetic cleats, they arrived at a door with a graphic image of a humanoid figure being decapitated after sticking its head through an opening.

“Centrifuge ring,” the Vergallian announced. “We’re primarily a container carrier, and the engines and jump drive are in their own section at the end of the central keel, so there’s no reason to access the cargo section once we’re underway. Most of it is open to vacuum in any case.”

“You mean that once the ring is up to speed, there’s no way to get from the living quarters to the rest of the ship?” Joe asked. “How about the engineering crew?”

“If there’s an emergency, they take a lifeboat, but our chief engineer is fond of saying that repairs are for shipyards. Most of these container carriers run everything from an operations room in the centrifuge ring, and the engineer can always remote into the maintenance bots.”

“Sounds like you don’t need a very big crew.”

“Just fourteen of us, plus five spouses and twelve kids. We all inherited our shares in the ship. My own family invested before the keel was laid.”

“How long ago was that?” Kelly asked.

“I’m twenty-fifth generation, so around two thousand years,” the purser estimated. “She’s practically new.”

“How can a ship last so long, Joe?”

“No rust in space,” her husband reminded her. “All of the alien ships use active shielding to protect against dust and debris, so barring an attack or real careless handling, the structure is good until metal fatigue from stress and radiation sets in. The engines are bolt-in replacements.”

“The Vergallians have battleships that are over a million years old,” Samuel told her enthusiastically. “Some of them take thousands of years to build.”

“Don’t they use bots?” his mother asked.

“To build warships? That’s like, sacrilege,” the boy replied.

Kelly decided to drop the conversation, using the excuse of translating Samuel’s half for Hannah, since her son had persisted in speaking Vergallian.

“Deck is always blue,” the purser told them as they entered the stationary ring through what would later become the ceiling, and then shuffled down the curved wall to the deck. “It’s not like we can spin up in a hurry, but it’s always a good idea in Zero G to know which way will be down when we get going.”

The four humans were soon settled into their cabins, which were surprisingly roomy for a freighter. When Kelly asked the purser about the capacity of the ring, he explained that they often carried livestock between colony worlds, and most of the animals couldn’t tolerate Zero G for long, even when heavily sedated. After that, she regarded every old stain on the bulkheads with suspicion.

As soon as they detached from the transportation hub the donut began to spin up, and the constantly changing angular acceleration slowly pressed them against the outer surface of the ring, which now became the deck. Following the purser’s advice, they all tried to take a nap for the tunnel transit away from Earth. After they woke and had a family breakfast, Kelly took some fruit and went to check on Hannah.

“Thank you so much,” the young woman said, accepting the gift. “I only packed dried fruit because of the weight.”

“What are you making there?” the ambassador asked.

“It’s a dress I was working on that I couldn’t leave behind,” Hannah said, holding up the unfinished garment. “The sweatshop where I worked let us come in on Sundays and rent the sewing machines for personal use. I couldn’t finish this one in time to sell it, so I’m redoing it for myself. It’s been a while since I did a seam this long by hand,” she added ruefully.

“You worked in fashion? That’s my daughter’s business.”

“Oh, I’d so love to meet her, maybe she’ll hire me. I wouldn’t say that I worked in fashion, though. The sweatshop was just the best job I could find with my lack of education, and it was all piecework, so I’m pretty fast.”

“I’m sure Dorothy will be happy to meet you. You can stay with us until you get settled in,” Kelly added impulsively.

“I couldn’t,” Hannah protested, but it took no great effort for the ambassador to talk her into it, after which they went together to explore the ring that would be their home for the next week.

Cries of encouragement and applause led them to what must have been the main social room, where an area was set aside for holographic projections. A popular Vergallian drama from the previous season was being shown, and a few of the crew’s complement had moved into the hologram to play their favorite characters. The power of the projection was calibrated so that the participating crew members remained visible, and to Kelly’s surprise, Samuel had taken the role of a sword-wielding guardsman. In place of a real sword, he flourished his grandfather’s cane.

“If you love me, don’t let them take me,” cried the star of the drama, an impossibly beautiful upper caste actress who managed to convey the mixed emotions of overwhelming fear with the haughty disbelief that anyone could disrespect her person.

“Rally to me,” Samuel shouted in Vergallian. He lunged at one of the oncoming holographic swordsmen with his cane, taking the attacker through the chest. The boy’s uncanny mimicry of the voice and his fluid movement in the envelope of the character he was playing brought another round of applause from the watching crewmembers.