Con Living

by E. M. Foner

  “He helped you escape?”

  “Inadvertently,” Geoffrey said, and made a noise somewhere between a snicker and a snort. “He had a regular thing going with the woman who did the laundry. I slipped in the room and stole his wallet out of his pants while the two of them were making feet for children’s shoes, if you know what I mean. The keycard got me out of the locked ward, and the cash was just enough to catch a floater bus to the old fairgrounds where the shuttle put down.”

  “Why didn’t you eat at Flower’s Paradise when you arrived?” Woojin asked. “Those tour groups all start with the bazaar and the library, but then—”

  “I ditched the tour,” the old man spoke over Woojin. “I was dead on my feet so I dropped out at the amusement park. There was an old spaceship ride roped off for repairs, so I snuck onto one of the capsules and slept. My greatest fear has been that the fasting was giving me hallucinations and I was reliving a scene from—”

  “Agent of the Empire,” the captain interrupted him in turn. “I almost forgot you wrote that series because it was more about politics than war, but there were some pretty good chases and escapes.”

  “Tell Geoffrey I’ve prepared a cabin for him,” Flower said in the girl’s head. “Once he’s rested up, I’ll have somebody from the independent living cooperative come by and give him the tour. And tell him there’s free legal aid available.”

  Julie relayed the message, and the old man shook his head in disbelief. “I guess somebody knew what they were doing when they named it Flower’s Paradise,” he said. “I wonder if a smart lawyer can get my royalty payments back, though I wouldn’t be surprised if those lousy kids sold the rights for a lump sum after the court put them in charge.”

  “If they really left Earth, that could play into your favor,” Woojin said. “We don’t have any authority in the Sol system, but EarthCent has limited jurisdiction over humans everywhere else that the aliens don’t assert primacy, and we’re members of the Inter-Species Police Operations Agency. I’ll have our chief of security, Tyrell Hopkins, stop by for a chat tomorrow. Flower can tell him when you’re up and about.”

  Two

  “How was class this morning?” Harry asked his assistant.

  “I think I’m starting to figure out that algebra stuff,” Bill said. “When the instructor goes on about X’s and Y’s, I just get a headache, but then Flower started explaining everything over my implant using real baking examples.”

  “I’ve been a baker for over forty years and I can’t say I remember using algebra.”

  “Well, you could. Like, you know the plum pudding recipe we just released to the factory for production?”

  “It’s going to be a big hit with the Dollnicks because of the cognac and the cooking sherry. It doesn’t use quite as much fruit as my original fruitcake recipe, but Flower loves anything with a long shelf life, and I put in almost as many apples as raisins.”

  “Right. The test recipes we made all used two pounds of raisins and one and a half pounds of apples. Flower explained how to figure out how many pounds of raisins we’d need for a hundred thousand pounds of apples.”

  “She wants to make that many plum puddings?”

  “It’s just an example of using a single equation to solve for one unknown. If you have two unknowns, you need two equations. Like, if I also knew the number of raisins there are in a pound, I could figure out the actual number—”

  “Now you’re giving me a headache,” Harry cut him off. “At the next factory production meeting, don’t let me forget to bring up that they’re going to need to order vegetable shortening from somewhere unless Flower has enough oil on hand to make her own. The original recipe called for suet, but I substituted.”

  “So did Flower. When the instructor started giving us all these problems with trains stopping places, Flower substituted the Stryx tunnels and the human communities on our circuit, and suddenly it all made sense.”

  “What does Julie think of your taking a prep course?”

  “I haven’t told her so I can make it a surprise when I get into the Open University,” Bill said, and began scrubbing the pot he’d let soak in the sink overnight. “Flower told me that Julie went to college before leaving Earth and that she might be hesitating to marry me because I’m not an educated man.”

  Harry glanced up at the ceiling, suddenly suspicious of the sentient colony ship’s motives. “Are you sure Flower isn’t just trying to—”

  “Am I paying the two of you to stand around and chat all day?” the Dollnick AI blared from the overhead speaker. “Lunchtime is in an hour and I want to make an impression on our latest addition. He’s a Sharf.”

  “You picked up an alien on Earth?” Harry asked. “What was he doing there?”

  “Spying, I assume. The same thing he’s planning on doing here, since the Sharf have registered him as an alien agent and made the required contribution to EarthCent Intelligence.”

  “What do Sharf eat?” Bill asked. “I didn’t know they were a tunnel network species.”

  “They’re not,” Flower told him. “Other than employing Humans on the recycling orbital we stop at and running the second-hand ship dealerships in Earth orbit, the Sharf haven’t had much to do with your people. But after an embarrassing incident in which they sold their portfolio of securitized ship mortgages to a criminal organization on Earth and had to buy them all back, they decided to open an embassy there and start paying attention.”

  Harry pulled his dog-eared edition of the All Species Cookbook down from the shelf and began flipping through the tribute section. It included the recipes contributed by humans who lived on alien open worlds and had created dishes inspired by their host’s cuisine.

  “I’m not seeing anything for the Sharf,” he said, and then flipped back a page. “Hang on, there are two recipes from Maree who lives on that recycling orbital. She called them Steel Toast and Rust Bread, but they look like French Toast and Beer Bread to me. I see she substituted vanilla soy milk for the real thing, and I would have added butter.”

  “The Sharf are lactose intolerant,” Flower informed the baker.

  “What will we feed Razood?” Bill asked. “The Frunge don’t eat grains.”

  “I brought back an unused cheese platter from the continuing education lecture at our independent living cooperative last night,” Harry said. “It was only out of the fridge for a couple of hours and nobody took the cling-wrap off so he can have that if he shows. We’ll make the Rust Bread.”

  “Why not the Steel Toast?” Bill asked, moving towards the fridge.

  “You have to soak the bread in the batter overnight for that one. The Rust Bread is just three cups of self-rising flour, three tablespoons of caster sugar, and a bottle of beer.”

  “What’s caster sugar?”

  “Just another name for baker’s sugar.”

  “Got it,” Bill said. “What kind of beer?”

  “I think there’s one bottle left of that homebrew the captain’s friend brought him from Union Station. I let Woojin hide it in our fridge, but we may as well use it up before it goes flat.”

  “Why does the Captain have to hide beer in here?”

  “If he left it in the bar fridge out there in the cafeteria, the aliens would drink it, and he didn’t want to bring it home. You’ll have to wait until you’re married a few decades to understand.”

  “Okay, I’ve got the beer and the sugar. Where do we keep self-rising flour?”

  “We don’t, but it’s just regular flour with baking powder added,” Harry explained. “I usually go with two teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour.”

  “What’s the difference between baking powder and baking soda?”

  “Baking powder gives you a slow expansion, while baking soda needs an acid to do its thing, and then it starts to fizz immediately. We used to make backyard rockets with baking soda and vinegar when I was a kid. Flower could probably give you a more technical explanation if you want.”

  “
Of course Bill wants. You never know what will come up on the Open University entrance exam,” the Dollnick AI said, and then launched into an explanation. “Both baking powder and baking soda are made from sodium bicarbonate, but baking powder also includes acidic ingredients such as monocalcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, or sodium aluminum sulfate, to extend the carbon dioxide production. Monocalcium phosphate begins reacting and producing carbon dioxide as soon as it comes in contact with water, but the other two ingredients require heat as well.”

  “Got that?” Harry asked, giving the young man a wink.

  “Except for the chemistry part,” Bill said. “You’re saying that the bread comes out with all the little air holes because the batter is foamy when it gets baked into place?”

  “Exactly,” Flower said. “One of the reasons that eggs are so common in baking recipes is that their proteins become denatured when exposed to heat, meaning that the molecules unfold and lock into place. When you bake with yeast instead, the gluten proteins hold the bubbles open until the dough is set.”

  “Mix it up and pour it in this tin,” Harry instructed his assistant while handing over a rectangular loaf mold. “It takes an hour to bake, and that’s all the time we have.”

  “So the bubbles in the beer help too?” Bill asked.

  “They don’t hurt, but that beer is home-brewed with plenty of yeast at the bottom. As soon as it gets mixed with the sugar, the yeast wakes up and starts doing its thing again,” Harry explained. “That’s what makes beer bread special.”

  When Bill brought the still-warm Rust Bread out of the kitchen, two aliens were just entering the small cafeteria. The Sharf was as tall as Lume, the four-armed Dollnick spy who ran a soup-and-salad joint for humans in the food court. The Sharf was also the boniest alien Bill had ever seen, with a neck that was perhaps twice as long as the average humanoid type.

  “Yaem, this is Bill,” Lume made the introduction.

  “Pleased to meet you, Yaem,” Bill said. “This is the only recipe for Sharf in the All Species Cookbook that we had enough time to make, but if you have any special requests for the future, just tell me and I’ll see what we can do.”

  “You’re the cook for this cafeteria?” the bony alien asked.

  “Cook’s assistant, and Harry is really a master baker. But there are only a few of you who eat here every day, so we just make what Flower tells us.”

  “Harry? As in Harry’s Fruitcakes? I had a slice at our new embassy reception on Earth and started slurring my words in front of the ambassador, which is probably how I wound up assigned here. Why would such a successful entrepreneur be making meals for aliens?”

  “The business is Flower’s. Harry created the recipe to help use up a bumper crop of fruit and it got named after him. This is also the research and development kitchen for Flower’s Foods.”

  “Some of their premade soup packages for All Species Cookbook recipes are quite nice, and the gluten-free line fits my dietary restrictions,” added a wiry Frunge with close-cropped hair vines who had just arrived. “Razood,” he introduced himself to the Sharf. “I run the blacksmith’s shop in Colonial Jeevesburg.”

  “Yaem. I don’t have a cover job yet because this assignment took me by surprise. Maybe I can set up a little repair business for our old two-man traders that so many Humans buy in the pre-owned market.”

  “Let me know if you need any custom metalwork banged out,” the Frunge said, and then he frowned at the Rust Bread. “I hope that’s not all there is.”

  “I’ll bring out a cheese platter, and there’s a giant bowl of fruit that Flower had a bot drop off a few minutes ago,” Bill told him. “Sorry I haven’t been able to help on the bellows lately, but the homework for my new class is taking more time than I expected.”

  “It’s all for the best,” Razood said. “A couple of those programmers from Bits who buy weapons from me to model for their games just offered to become part-time apprentices. They’re working on a role-playing game and they want to make the crafting option more realistic. Believe it or not, they’re paying me for the privilege of doing the scut work.”

  “Hey, Jorb,” Lume called to the Drazen who had just entered the cafeteria. “Come meet the new guy. Flower put me in charge of getting him settled in.”

  Bill ducked back into the kitchen to get the cheese platter, and by the time he’d brought out the fruit and some reheated leftovers from the previous night’s supper, there were seven aliens sitting around the table engaged in an intelligence community name-dropping contest with the Sharf.

  “You’re telling me that M793qK is here?” Yaem demanded, and the translated voice provided by Bill’s implant went up a full octave. “THE M793qK?”

  “Most of the Humans refer to him as the Beetle Doctor because they can’t remember alpha-numerics,” the stunning Vergallian woman informed the Sharf. “You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to guess Human passwords. All of my training in breaking encryption is wasted on this species.”

  “We may as well dig in,” Lume said. “Our Grenouthian counterpart isn’t going to make it because Flower is keeping him much too busy preparing for the second season of Everyday Superheroes.”

  “I knew you all looked familiar,” Yaem exclaimed, his head swiveling around as Harry came out of the kitchen. “You! You’re Gerryman,” he said to the baker, and then went around the rest of the table in rapid fashion. “Juggler, The Blacksmith, Thinker, Battle Royale, Digger, and Slomo. What a great idea for a char.”

  “Thank you,” the slow-spoken Verlock said. “My real name is Brynlan.”

  “So we’re short Refill and The Producer, who must be the Grenouthian director. It’s somewhat ironic. If I had expected to meet any of the Everyday Superheroes in a cafeteria, I would have bet on the waitress.”

  “She works at a diner in the afternoons, though Flower just talked her into giving notice,” Bill said. “I don’t think she’s ever been in here.”

  “Wait,” Yaem said, raising his eyelids almost as high as his brow ridge. “Does that mean M793qK is the evil Farling mastermind?”

  “When we can get him to show up,” Lume said. “He runs a lucrative medical practice and he has his own stand-in.”

  “You’re not going to believe me now, but I never made the connection between Flower Studios and Flower the rogue Dollnick colony ship. I’m a huge fan of animated dramas, and I originally stumbled into the intelligence business as a location scout for our biggest studio. I’m still a member of the I.A.A—” The Sharf suddenly snapped his jaw shut with a clacking sound and helped himself to a slice of beer bread.

  “What?” Lume demanded. “You can’t just stop in the middle like that.”

  “The Interspecies Academy of Anime,” Flower broke into the conversation via an overhead speaker grille. “The awards show is in two weeks.”

  The Sharf started to lurch up from his chair, but Jorb and Razood pulled him back down.

  “Spill it,” Lume ordered. “You wouldn’t be in here if you hadn’t signed onto our intelligence-sharing agreement.”

  “But this is different,” Yaem protested. “It’s not about the Humans, and you know how much money is wagered on the awards.”

  “I have a compelling need to know,” Flower said. “I already spent a fortune on bribes getting you assigned here. If our production is going to make it to the final round, I’ll triple my buy of commercial time during the awards show broadcast.”

  “Even if I had access to that kind of information, sharing it would put my I.A.A. membership at risk. I’d need something to compensate me for that, and I can tell you right now that my superiors didn’t share any of your bribe money with me.”

  “Free fruit for the rest of your life,” the Dollnick AI offered.

  “Not going to do it,” Yaem said. “The only thing more important to me than anime is my oath to Sharf Intelligence.”

  “You’re welcome to my spot in the cast,” Harry said. “I’m getting too old to fight evil.”


  “Everyday Superheroes has enough votes to make the final round,” Yaem blurted out before somebody could revoke Harry’s offer. “I can play a geriatric Sharf if I have to. Look,” he said, jumping up from his seat and then bending halfway over and taking a teetering step. “I even own a sword cane, though it’s back home.”

  “We’re going to have to rename the show Everyday Spies if this keeps up,” Jorb said. “The Humans are the only ones who aren’t in the game.”

  “We can write Yaem into the upcoming season easily enough, but I’m disappointed to hear you want off the show, Harry,” Flower said. “I think you should wait until after the con to see if being a celebrity agrees with you.”

  “What’s a con?” the baker asked.

  “A con, a convention for fans and industry participants, though primarily fans,” Yaem told him. “When is the next AnimeDramaCon? I heard the backers ran into some financial trouble after losing a string of intellectual property suits and it’s on hold for the near future.”

  “I bought the rights and their contact list,” Flower said. “Now that I know that our production is a finalist, I’ll advertise my con during the awards show and schedule it to coincide with our next stop at Union Station. I really brought you in because I wanted a program director with experience.”

  “You bribed my superiors to assign me here because of the cons I managed back home?” the Sharf asked in disbelief.

  “Forget about setting up the ship repair facility,” Flower told the surprised alien. “You’re going to love this job so it’s win-win. And everybody keep mum about our show making the finals unless it leaks elsewhere. I don’t want it coming back to cost Yaem his position in the academy because that could pay dividends going forward.”

  “Is there really a big enough potential audience on board for an anime con, even adding the people on Union Station?” Harry asked. “Other than my wife, I don’t know anybody who watches our show.”

  “Aliens are just as likely to attend cons as Humans, and according to my information, there hasn’t been one at Union Station in years. Also, cons are destination vacations for true fans, and what better place for that than a Stryx tunnel network hub?”