by E. M. Foner
“Sorry, I’m still waking up,” Dorothy said as they reached the picnic table. “Good morning, Tzachan. Nice banner.”
“They’re my family colors,” the Frunge attorney told her. He planted the pole in a socket at the center of the picnic table before continuing formally. “Mr. Crick. Mrs. Crick. Thank you for your supervision.”
“You’re welcome, Attorney Tzachan,” Kevin said, trying to match the Frunge’s official manner. He wracked his brain for the bits that Dorothy that insisted on reading to him from Frunge for Humans and recalled something about seating procedures on dates. “Aren’t you going to sit, my dear?” he asked his wife.
“What? I mean, yes, thank you,” Dorothy said, taking her place. “Flazint?”
The Frunge girl slid in next to her friend, and seeing no other option, Kevin went around to the other side of the table and sat across from Dorothy. Both girls began jerking their heads to the right as if they wanted him to do something, so he slid over to be across from Flazint, trying to make it look like that’s what he intended the whole time. Tzachan took his place on the bench across from Dorothy.
“What would you like to drink?” the Frunge attorney inquired.
“I haven’t had breakfast yet, so orange juice if they have it,” Dorothy said.
“Any chance of coffee?” Kevin asked.
“Cold drinks only,” Tzachan replied. “Let me check the menu.” He stared off into space for a moment consulting his heads-up display. “They have iced coffee.”
“Works for me.”
Dorothy felt somebody kick her under the table and turned to see her friend staring at her significantly.
“Uh, aren’t you having anything, Flaz?”
“Thank you for asking, Chaperone,” the Frunge girl said. “If a small Feechee Nut juice could be arranged, I would be ever so grateful.”
“The waitress will be out in less than five minutes,” Tzachan informed them, and then fell silent. The two Frunge seemed content to sit straight-backed and stare at the humans across from them, but Dorothy felt another kick on the side of her ankle.
“So I’ve been hoping for a chance to talk to you about work,” the EarthCent ambassador’s daughter said to the Frunge attorney. “SBJ Fashions is planning to launch a dance series on the tunnel network stations. I’ve been thinking of naming them after Cinderella, but I’m afraid we won’t have any legal protection.”
“Who is Cinderella?”
“A fairytale heroine who loses a glass slipper at a ball because she has to rush off before her carriage turns into a pumpkin. The only way the prince can find her is to fit the slipper on her foot.”
“Like Perzinna?” Flazint asked. “But it was a sandal.”
“Fairy tales are often based on universal themes that recur across species that have never been in contact,” Tzachan told them. “We have a story about a young woman, Perzinna, who loses her mother but is brought to the attention of the king by a magical flying lizard that takes her under its protection. When the girl finishes her housework and is out riding the lizard, her sandal comes off and falls out of the clouds into the king’s lap. He takes this to be an omen from the gods, and when his agents find the girl, the king marries her and they live happily ever after.”
“Do you mean that Perzinna went around with just one sandal until she was noticed?” Dorothy asked.
“I don’t know if the story was clear on that part,” Tzachan admitted. “I was never a big fairytale fan.”
“Enough!” Mizpah shouted, stepping out of the hedge where she had blended in so well that nobody had spotted her. “Perzinna was at the harvest festival where she danced all night with the young king who was in disguise, and when she flew off in the morning on her magical lizard, the sandal fell in the king’s lap. The king had his sorcerer enchant the sandal with a seeking spell, and then he followed it back to the girl’s home with his royal troop. How can you not know that?”
“I guess it was never on a test,” Tzachan replied, displaying remarkable composure considering the surprise interruption. “How nice to run into you while—”
“Oh, drop it,” the matchmaker said, sliding onto the end of the bench next to Flazint, who was frozen in fear. “I know perfectly well that you were tipped off to my inspection because nobody carries banners on dates anymore, at least not after the first couple of meetings. Hand over the calendar.”
“A seeking spell,” Dorothy mused, while Kevin dug in the contract carrier bag for the device and delivered it to the tiny Frunge woman. “I bet Baa could cast one of those with her eyes closed.”
Mizpah powered on the dating calendar and shook her head. “Reset to the factory defaults. I wonder how that happened?”
“I must have hit the wrong button when a prompt came up,” Kevin said, his ears turning red. “I’ve been meaning to learn more Frunge.”
“Right, a prompt that required a twenty character password,” Mizpah snorted, flipping the calendar over and inspecting the back. “I don’t suppose any of you would know why the area where the password sticker was attached is so squeaky clean, like it was just removed.”
“It was all me,” Flazint cried, scrambling off the bench backward and dropping to her knees. “I took advantage of my chaperone to see Tzachan more often than we should have. But we mainly went bowling or ice skating, and we never entered a theatre or a nightclub. I swear it.”
“Get up, you silly girl,” Mizpah said. “Do you think that it’s my job to make you miserable? Look at you in that ridiculous dress, and with a trellis on your head that went out of fashion back when I was a young shrub with dirt in my boots. Now tell me. Since when is there an ice skating rink on Union Station?”
“It’s on the Vergallian deck, in one of their old ballrooms that got replaced by the new complex,” Flazint said, slipping back into her place on the bench between Dorothy and Mizpah. “Our friend Affie told us about it, so we’ve been going a lot before everybody finds out and it gets too crowded.”
“I’ll have to pay it a visit myself,” Mizpah said. “I haven’t been on the ice in hundreds of years. And you,” she continued, pointing a twiggy finger at Kevin. “Protecting your friends is an admirable goal, but lying is a bad habit to get into.” Then she turned to Tzachan and her glare rekindled. “The Foundational Tales of Frunge, it’s in every bookshop on the deck. Buy it, read it, know it. There will be a test.”
“Yes, Mizpah,” the attorney said, bowing his head.
A waitress whose hair vines towered on a trellis at least five times the height of the low-riser Flazint was wearing arrived with their drinks.
“Orange juice must be you,” she said, handing the beer-mug sized glass to Dorothy.
“I’m the iced coffee,” Kevin said.
“Of course,” the waitress replied, handing him a glass filled with black coffee and clinking with ice. “And three small Feechee Nut juices.”
“I told them to put mine on your tab,” Mizpah informed Tzachan.
“You really surprised us coming out of the shrubbery like that,” Dorothy said, after taking a sip of her orange juice. “I must have looked right past you.”
“Give me a little credit for something,” the matchmaker replied. “The day an old Frunge can’t hide in the bushes is the day petrifaction sets in. Now tell me more about your dance idea.”
“Seriously? You’re not just asking to be polite?”
“When have I ever been polite? And although this may come as a shock to you, the job of a matchmaker is to make matches, and dancing plays an important part in the later stages of most courtships. Now how do you plan to commercialize poor Perzinna?”
“Cinderella, though if we do sandals, Perzinna could work too. SBJ Fashions employs a Terragram mage to enchant items for the professional LARPing league. The other day she gave me a glass slipper that was ensorcelled so that if my husband put it on my foot, it turned into a pair of our best dance shoes.”
“Both on the same foot?”
“No, my other shoe vanished and was replaced at the same time. Baa said it was some kind of—I don’t remember.”
“She probably doesn’t either,” Mizpah grumbled. “Magic users make terrible witnesses because they can’t be bothered with details.”
“Our enchanted fashions for LARPing have been doing really well, especially the bags of holding that Flazint designs.”
“Baa’s Bags. I bought one.”
“You role-play?” Flazint asked, surprise overcoming caution.
“All of the time, but not in the sense that you mean. No, I’m too old to fool around trying to stab hologram-wrapped bots with a sword, but I visited a LARPing fair while I was doing my research on you, and I happened to need a new purse. I couldn’t believe how inexpensive it was, and the metal clasp is a testament to your skill.”
Flazint’s hair vines flushed dark green, but something the matchmaker had said troubled Dorothy. “Did you say it was a bargain?” the EarthCent ambassador’s daughter asked.
“Fifteen creds for a designer purse? I’m surprised it covered the materials and the hand-made clasp.”
“It couldn’t. Would you happen to have it with you?”
“How could she have it with her?” Kevin asked, but Mizpah undid the neck of the molted green and brown cloak that had allowed her to blend in with the shrubbery so effectively, and brought out a cherry-red handbag.
“Oh, no,” Flazint said, pointing at the small black lightning bolt embroidered over the four feathers. “Your purse is cursed!”
“Obviously,” the matchmaker said, “considering I bought it from the cursed goods table. The man assured me that the contents would be safe as long as I didn’t enter a LARP studio.”
“If you want more cursed clothes or accessories, we usually have a few odds and ends around awaiting destruction,” Dorothy said. “Baa claims she makes mistakes when she gets tired, but I think she does it on purpose to keep Jeeves from overworking her. Tzachan, can you look into who’s selling our cursed products at LARPing fairs? I know we pay a Drazen disposal service that’s supposed to destroy them.”
“So how is your Cinderella going to help you sell more ball gowns and shoes?” Mizpah asked.
“I’m still working out the details, but I was thinking that we’d host singles dances, and Baa would enchant a glass slipper so that it would only turn into our shoes if placed on a girl’s foot by her preordained love.”
The Frunge matchmaker choked and sprayed her mouthful of Feechee Nut juice all over the shrubs. “Are you begging to be sued?” Mizpah demanded when she recovered from a fit of coughing. “Are you trying to put yourselves out of business?”
“I respect the monopoly position of the Matchmakers Guild on the Frunge deck, but I don’t believe you have any grounds to bring suit against my clients for poaching,” Tzachan said, his professional ethics winning over his desire to please Mizpah.
“Not me, you idiot. The poor couple who get glued together by your client’s cockamamie promotion.” The matchmaker got up from her place so she could move to the end of the picnic table and address Dorothy without having to lean around Flazint. “There are two possible outcomes to a promotion like that. One, your mage gets the spell right, in which case you could hold dances until entropy freezes the universe without the glass slipper ever transforming. Two, your mage gets the spell wrong and you find yourselves in court.”
“But Baa did a prototype glass slipper and when my husband put it on my foot, it transformed.”
“Remind me again how the two of you met?”
“As children,” Kevin said. “Years later, after I was captured by pirates and escaped through the old Verlock emergency rescue system, it turned out that the Stryx had taken it over, and they dumped me out at Union Station.”
“Sounds like somebody’s love was pre-ordained by the Stryx,” Mizpah cackled. “Unless you have a deal with the station librarian’s dating service to send you matches made by AI, I’d ease up on the grand ambitions and use the glass slipper for something fun.”
“This coming from a matchmaker whose species doesn’t let courting couples hold hands,” Dorothy objected. “What kind of fun could Frunge singles possibly have at a dance?”
“Now you’re beginning to get it. Cursed items aside, who can afford your fancy shoes?”
“The question we like to ask is can you afford not to own a pair. At least, that was our most successful promotion to date.”
“Do I have to spell it out? You should be marketing to married women if you want to find more non-Human buyers, and you should, since Humans are a tiny part of the tunnel network population. Didn’t you list the founders of InstaSitter as references on your chaperone application?”
“Yes, they used to babysit for me before they started the business,” Dorothy said. “Chastity is already our biggest customer, though, and I wouldn’t feel right using the glass slipper to trick her into buying more shoes when she already has a closet full.”
“Is your wife playing dumb just to irritate me?” Mizpah demanded of Kevin. “You’re in business. You see it, don’t you?”
“InstaSitter has unique access to parents who like to get out of the house from time to time,” Kevin said slowly. “You’re thinking about a combined promotion, like giving them free babysitting if they go out dancing.”
Dorothy jumped up so fast that she banged her knee on the picnic table and cried out. “Ow, that hurt. It’s so brilliant that Jeeves will have to go along with it.”
“How will you keep track of who actually goes to the dances?” Tzachan asked.
“You can validate tickets,” Kevin suggested. “Back when I was a trader, I visited plenty of orbitals and habitats where parking cost an arm and a leg, but if you ate in enough restaurants or stayed in a hotel, you would get a discount on the docking arm fees.”
“Not free?” Dorothy asked.
“You’d have to eat in a lot of restaurants for that. Parking isn’t cheap when you’re actually connected to an airlock. There are only so many to go around.”
Ten
The assistant director hopped down from the stage, glared at a few Drazens in the studio audience who were whispering, and then looked up at the control booth for the giant timer counting down to the end of the commercial break. At five ticks remaining, he began stamping his foot in sync with the countdown to prepare the cast. The children were still scrambling for their marks as the status lights on the immersive cameras went hot and Aisha began to speak.
“Welcome back to Let’s Make Friends. I want to thank you all again for sending in your recipe suggestions for the All Species Cookbook. I hope you’ve been enjoying our first cooking special as much as I know the children have enjoyed mixing the ingredients and licking off the spoons. Now, who wants to show everybody how their desserts turned out? Plynth?” she prompted, since the Verlock children were usually a sure bet to do everything right, if slowly.
“Five more minutes,” Plynth replied sadly. “So hungry.”
“Brule?”
“I’m only up to the sixth layer,” the Dollnick child reported. “Ask me later.”
“Our cookies only have one layer,” Grace said in dismay.
“Brule wants to be a professional baker when he grows up,” Aisha reminded Shaina and Daniel’s daughter. “Are your cookies ready?”
“I think so.” Grace ran for the row of multi-purpose kitchen appliances that one of the show’s sponsors had supplied for free, but her little Stryx friend beat her there.
“Where’s your baking mitt?” Twitchy demanded.
“I had it a minute ago.”
“I’ll take the tray out.”
“But where’s your baking mitt?”
“I don’t need one. My pincer is rated for—really hot,” the little Stryx concluded, having taken to heart Aisha’s request not to use too much scientific vocabulary above the children’s grade level.
“What’s that funny odor?” Gzera asked, sniffing the air.
“That’s what baking with wheat flour usually smells like,” Aisha told the Frunge boy. “Your species doesn’t eat grains so you aren’t used to it.”
“Is that what the powdery stuff was? Gross.”
“I’ll try one of your cookies as soon as they cool down,” Binka offered, watching carefully as Grace used a spatula to move the cookies from the baking sheet to a plate. “I don’t want to burn my mouth.”
“I’ll take one now,” the Verlock boy said, shuffling over to Grace and Twitchy. He put a steaming hot cookie in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “It’s kind of sweet and squishy. Maybe if you added salt and left them in longer?”
“My cookies should be ready to eat,” Gzera said. “I hope I followed the formula right.”
“Don’t forget your oven mitt,” Grace called to him.
“I froze mine,” the Frunge boy replied. “Baking is for girls.”
“Now that’s not true,” Aisha protested. “Just look at Brule and Plynth. Do they look like girls to you?”
“Aliens are weird,” Gzera said, his go-to explanation for everything that didn’t match his Frunge upbringing, and he opened the freezer unit and pulled out the plastic tray. “They look yummy.”
“Do you remember what you put in them?”
“No, it was all Human ingredients because that’s what the bunnies let us have. I grated lots of orange sticks and added a cup of grainy brown stuff.”
“Sounds like carrots and brown sugar,” Aisha said, accepting one of the cookies from the Frunge child and nibbling on the edge. “Ooh, it’s cold, but I like it.”
“Cold is better than lukewarm,” the Verlock said, popping one in his mouth. “Crunchy.”
“Pietro?”
“I made campaign biscuits,” the Vergallian boy said. “It takes hours for them to bake fully.”
“All right, we can try yours on the next show. Binka?”
“These are ready to eat,” the Drazen girl said, carrying around a tray. “I set the oven to cool them after the bake cycle.”
“Excellent,” Plynth declared. “Crunchy, and with a bite.”
