by E. M. Foner
“Don’t even joke about that,” Yaem said, setting down his own mug for a refill. “Before I got assigned to Earth, I never even heard of caffeine. I can’t believe how addictive the stuff is. It’s surprising the Stryx don’t isolate your world for being a bad influence.”
“I’ve heard that coffee is one of Drazen Food’s biggest exports, right up there with hot peppers,” Julie said. “How are you coming with the program that I’m supposed to be helping you create?”
“You’re more valuable right now doing exactly what you’re doing,” the Sharf said. “With you taking care of the art show and Lynx handling the merchants, I can concentrate on the schedule grid for sessions and activities. Geoffrey’s help has proven invaluable too, but Flower keeps making him take breaks because of his age, so I’m putting off sleeping until after the con.”
“You can do that?”
“With enough of this stuff, I could probably postpone sleeping for a year,” Yaem said, taking a sip of the steaming coffee. “I’ll catch up eventually. Life is too short to spend it all in bed.”
“How long do Sharf live?”
“In your years? Let me see. Divide by seven, carry the three. Around nine hundred?”
“No wonder all of you aliens are so fanatical about entertainment,” Julie said. “You have a lot of time to fill.”
“Humans will get there eventually, longevity just takes time,” Yaem said, and then held up a finger while trying to figure out if his last comment had made sense in Humanese. “Well, I have to get back to work.”
Julie returned to her own cubicle, snorted at the bowl of fresh grapes that had materialized while she was talking with Yaem, and sat down in front of the display. The con staff all worked with their personal choice of office technology, and Flower seamlessly handled the necessary connections and conversions required for collaboration. Rather than using voice and gesture, Julie stuck with the old-fashioned wireless keyboard that Zick had found for her back when she mentioned that she was trying to write a book. Being from Bits, Zick had insisted she start with a typing exercise game, and within a month, Julie was tapping away like she’d been born with a keyboard in the cradle.
“Where was I?” she asked herself, scrolling through the list of open correspondence on the over-sized display.
“Rosen,” Flower said over her implant. “The one with the T-shirts.”
“Right. I tried to hand him off to Lynx, but he said that he wants to show his book cover T-shirts in the art show. I wrote back to ask if he painted the covers himself, but it turns out that he hired an artist. So I asked Brenda what to do, and she created a legal form for the artist to authorize the author to represent the work at the art show and accept payment from the auction. Then Rosen wrote back and said he doesn’t want to sell the T-shirts, just show them and maybe win a prize.”
“What does he do with the T-shirts if he doesn’t sell them?”
“He wears them, and he said if people want copies, they can order their own from any print-on-demand T-shirt place with access to the content database. So we got all of the paperwork out of the way, he submitted the fee, and now he’s asking about our pegboards.”
“What does he want to know?” Flower asked.
“Whether he needs to bring hardware to hang the T-shirts. I wrote back that we’ll supply a variety of metal hooks for the pegboards, and then there are those clip things that Lynx found, but he also wanted to know about lighting. He said that the last time he did this, the lights were really dim in the hotel ballroom where they had the show. All of the artists had to rush out and buy battery-powered spotlights to attach to the tops of the partitions.”
“Tell him that my lighting is fully customizable and I can employ phased lobe steering to create any number of highlight spots.”
“What if he wants to know what that means?”
“I’ll explain it then,” Flower said. “Who’s next?”
“If you want to handle all of the art show correspondence yourself, I can go help Yaem with the program,” Julie said testily. “Sometimes I think you only hire us all for window dressing to impress your Stryx mentor that you’re providing employment.”
“I’m just trying to be helpful while you get settled into the job. In a couple of weeks, you’ll know more about managing art shows than anybody else on board and I’ll have nothing to add.”
“In a couple of weeks the con will be over and you’ll be explaining a new job to me,” Julie retorted. “At least when I worked in the library, Bea and Dewey waited for me to make mistakes before explaining what I was doing wrong.”
“Don’t you think it’s possible that’s why Humans are so far behind the rest of the tunnel network species? You’re the only sentients I’ve encountered who take such pride in doing everything wrong the first time.”
Julie was careful not to say or subvoc anything as she dealt with the next message in her queue, which was all about how to fill out the auction bid sheets for the items on display. The message after that was a request to swap some reserved tables for pegboards, and then she replied to an artist who had already paid the extra fee to have her works displayed without personally attending. The woman was having trouble choosing between shipping services, so Julie laid out all of the options she had learned about over the last few weeks.
“You know, I was skeptical about that keyboard interface when you started using it, but you actually type faster than you speak,” Flower said.
“Not when I’m working on my novel. I spend most of my time staring at the screen trying to figure out what happens next.”
“Knock, knock,” Bianca announced herself as she entered the cubicle. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it sounds like you’re having trouble plotting. I was going to ask you a favor, so maybe we can trade off. Have you had lunch yet?”
“No, but I was thinking of just getting a salad at Lume’s. He’s a Dollnick, so Flower gives him the best produce.”
“Not true,” the ship’s AI protested through an overhead speaker. “Lume goes down to the ag decks every day to pick his own. He has a very discerning eye, and of course, four arms don’t hurt when you’re harvesting in a crowd.”
“It sounds good to me,” Bianca said. “I’ve been on a diet for, oh, about thirty years now.”
“Just let me send this quick before I forget,” Julie said. Fingers flying over the keyboard, she typed out a disclaimer stating that the risk of damage to poorly packed items was assumed by the sender. “I wish there was a way I could avoid having to retype the same bit over and over again.”
“There is,” Flower said over her implant. “I’ll show you how after lunch.”
“You type faster than me and I’ve been at it for longer than I’ve been dieting,” Bianca commented as the girl rose. “Did you take a special course?”
“A training game. There was a timer involved, and I swear the keyboard sent little shocks through my fingers if I didn’t keep up,” Julie said. “And what you said about plotting, Geoffrey told me the same thing. I just have trouble coming up with a whole story in one shot.”
“You don’t have to get the whole plot done in one sitting,” the seventh author in the D’Arc line said with a smile. “And I’m surprised Geoffrey offered even that much help. He used to be a real jerk to new authors.”
“Really? He’s been so nice to me. Geoffrey even offered to read what I have so far, but I was too embarrassed to send it to him.”
“Maybe having his freedom taken away taught him some humility. He was a bit famous in his day, and when he and Sixth were together, he made her feel like he was doing her a favor. It’s quite a story, really. She even wrote a fictionalized version of it under her own name.”
“You mean, not as Bianca D’Arc?”
“Right. After she passed me the torch, she started writing children’s books, of all things, and she’s been quite successful. She’s even had a special guest appearance reading one of her books on Let’s Make Friends.”
“Wow, she must have sold like a trillion copies,” Julie said as they entered the lift tube. “Food court.”
“Nobody sells a trillion books, not of a single title,” Bianca said. “Well, I guess quite a few Vergallian classics have sold more than that if you count back far enough, but they’ve had interstellar travel for millions of years, and there are over a trillion of them. Have you ever read ‘The Little Princess?’”
“This is a Vergallian book?”
“Yes, it made me cry. It makes everybody cry.”
“I’ll check if the library has it in translation,” Julie said, leading the way out of the lift tube capsule and into the maze of the food court. “Do you write books under your real name?”
“Not since I took over from Sixth. My children had just started school and my ex is a chef, so my time was tightly budgeted.”
“I’d have thought that being married to a chef would have saved you time,” Julie said.
“A professional chef. He barely went into our kitchen at home. The restaurant business requires insane hours, and when I would suggest that he slow down, he’d always say that he was working for me and the children and there would be plenty of time to relax once the restaurant was established. After the children were grown and we divorced, he married a waitress half my age and finally found the time to smell the roses.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“I like to think I got his best years, even if they were barely average. But the kids turned out wonderful, and I have my own career. Someday I plan to write under my own name, probably historical fiction, but first I have to find a replacement and train her up.”
“Refill,” Lume greeted Julie by her char name as she stepped up to the counter. “The usual?”
“Yes, and whatever Miss D’Arc is having.”
“Bianca,” the author introduced herself, eyeing the towering Dollnick’s chest. “Could I ask you something crazy?”
“It can’t be any crazier than the questions I get every day.”
“Could you flex for me?”
“Okay, I guess it was crazier,” Lume said, but he put down his chef’s knife, the carrot, the grater, and the mixing bowl. Then he rolled up his sleeves and balled all four fists in a bodybuilder’s crab pose. “I can’t take off my shirt behind the counter because of Flower’s health code.”
“You could be the cover model for ‘The Trillionaire Prince’s Third Wife.’” Bianca said. “You look just about the right age and—it is you, isn’t it?”
“I might have agreed to do a bit of modeling last time we stopped at Union Station,” Lume said modestly. “The publisher who bought the translation rights to the Trillionaire Prince series lives there. She’s one of the founders of InstaSitter, and she funds Eccentric Enterprises, which officially operates this ship.”
“Blythe Oxford, I met her at a romance con,” Bianca said. “Small galaxy.”
“What can I make you?” the Dollnick asked, rolling his sleeves back down. “I picked some lovely watercress and arugula this morning, and the olive trees Flower had transplanted from Earth recently started producing. It took them a few years to get over the shock.”
“Do you have something like a Mediterranean salad?”
“That’s what I always order,” Julie said. “I love the salty cheese and olive oil.”
“I’ll have them out in a minute,” Lume said, and gestured towards the common seating area. “Anything to drink, Bianca?” he added, giving the author a sly wink.
“Distilled water,” she said with a grimace. “I’m counting calories. Aren’t you getting something?” she asked her companion.
“Milk,” Julie said. “Lume and Flower are thick as thieves. He brings me milk no matter what I order.”
“Milk builds strong bones,” Lume called over his shoulder, proving once again that Dollnicks enjoyed superior hearing. “M793qK told me that Human females lose bone density faster than males as they age so you should at least start from a good level.”
“Are all of the aliens on board so protective of humans?” Bianca asked Julie as they took their seats.
“Well, Lume is one of the stand-ins, I mean, principal actors in the anime production Flower talked me into for my required team sport,” Julie explained. “I guess they’re all pretty nice, actually. I take singing lessons from a Drazen girl named Rinka, and she’s the reason that Jorb—you know him because he’s handling the LARPing track—joined the ship.”
“How romantic. Have you considered working it into a plot?”
“I don’t really know enough about Drazen culture. I’d get something wrong and everybody would think I was just faking.”
Bianca laughed. “Alright, I see we have some work to do. First of all, I didn’t mean to put your friends in a book as themselves. And even if you were writing about them as Drazens, you’d want to change the details so that nobody would know who you’re talking about. Is there some reason you couldn’t take their story and make the characters humans?”
“Well, there’s a lot of romantic tension in their relationship because Drazens don’t fool around, at least, the women don’t. Rinka told me that they usually have arranged marriages set up by the families, and there are all sorts of tests and stuff they have to take.”
Bianca nodded. “Most of the advanced species have elaborate courting rules that involve chaperones, matchmakers, and various aptitude and compatibility tests. I was on a panel with Blythe, the publisher of the alien romances in translation who Lume and I were talking about. She said that the biggest challenge for her editors is making sure that they explain the cultural references without turning the novels into academic treatises on alien sociology. Often times, if a subplot is too complicated, they just edit it out.”
“But if I made Jorb and Rinka into humans, the fact that his family are major stakeholders in a consortium and are pushing him to marry into another consortium family to consolidate their holdings doesn’t mean anything. And from what Rinka tells me, her family almost disowned her when she told them she was moving to Flower to start a remedial choral school for humans. They all expected her to return to the Drazen homeworld for advanced training in composing and conducting large choral groups. The Drazens take music really seriously.”
“Jake, the billionaire scion of the Las Vegas city-state’s top casino family, meets Reba, the daughter of backwoods alien-deniers, who learned how to play fiddle by ear and is now competing for a spot in Earth’s top music conservatory.”
“Wait, wait,” Julie said, pulling her personal tab out of her purse. “Let me take a few notes.”
“You’ve read romances,” Bianca said. “You tell me what happens next.”
“Well, they’d have to feel an attraction to each other at first sight, but he’s used to sophisticated party girls, and she thinks that he’s a spoiled rich boy. Then they, I don’t know, something happens and one of them saves the other one. Maybe Jake’s family is mixed up with organized crime, or her family is making illegal drugs up in the mountains? How about they meet at a charity event where he’s a donor and she’s one of the poor musicians brought in to entertain them, and then kidnappers coming for one of them end up grabbing them both? It would work better if they were actually shifters, but one of them doesn’t know it yet.”
“Everything is better with shifters. And if they’re different types, that gives you another obstacle for love to overcome.”
“Oh, I have to think about this now,” Julie said. “How am I going to get any work done this afternoon?”
“It’s best to let plots simmer for a while and work on adding new levels of complexity,” Bianca said. “Jorb, I mean, Jake, could be getting pushed into marriage with the daughter of another casino owner, and Reba could have a loyal friend from childhood who she just never thought about romantically. And then there’s the whole plotline about whether or not she wins the spot at the conservatory—”
“She could hurt her hand helping Jake in a fight,” Julie interrupted
. “And their families have to hate each other, maybe her grandfather was originally a partner in the casino and his grandfather stole the share.” Julie looked up from her tab. “Wow, I may have to split this into two books to fit it all.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Ladies,” Lume said, placing their salads on the table with his lower set of arms, and the milk and distilled water with the upper set. “Are you looking forward to our new season, Julie?”
“I forgot about that completely,” she said with a groan. “We have a script meeting this week, don’t we?”
“I’m sure Flower will make sure we’re all there.”
“He really is quite the charmer,” Bianca said after the Dollnick returned behind the counter. “Kind of like a big teddy bear with extra arms.”
Julie leaned forward and whispered. “He’s actually a spy, and deadly. When I was working at the diner and an assassin came on board to find me, Lume killed him. Flower was giving all of the aliens bonuses to protect me.”
“That’s another plot right there! I think I’ve held up my part of the bargain, so let’s talk about my problem.”
“Mmph,” Julie nodded, chewing on the first mouthful of savory salad.
Bianca speared an olive, started to raise it to her mouth, and then said, “Flower made me an offer I can’t refuse to be her positive experience coordinator for the con. I’ve been running the D’Arc line long enough to understand something about business, but I don’t understand her budgeting at all. Last night, right before I fell asleep, it occurred to me that con visitors from Earth might like to get a tour of the outside of this ship and Union Station while we’re there. Flower said it was a brilliant idea and that she’d make the tours free for anybody who spent the full week at the con. I can’t imagine how much something like that would cost.”
Julie swallowed her salad and said, “Flower’s idea of economics is weird. She hires people to do everything we’re capable of, but she has a seemingly unlimited number of maintenance bots that could probably do most jobs better and faster at no cost. She’s supposedly making a fortune selling fruitcakes, but she spends another fortune employing immigrants from Bits to keep them on board. A year ago she seemed to worry about every cred, but then the Stryx gave her a huge bonus for reaching a population milestone. I think now she’s shooting for getting a million humans to live here.”
