Soup Night on Union Station

by E. M. Foner

  “Not always, G3-uh…”

  “G32FX,” the Farling rubbed out on his speaking legs, which Kelly glimpsed through a temporarily transparent section of the bubble. “Has EarthCent agreed to your end of the deal?”

  “I have authorization from the president to negotiate for him, but we haven’t heard any details.”

  “That’s a relief,” the Farling said. “I was beginning to think that everybody knew more about my business than I do.”

  “I don’t understand. How do you expect me to agree to some sort of multi-party deal when you’ve left us completely out of the process?”

  “Hasn’t your son kept you in the loop?” G32FX asked.

  “I don’t have a clue what he’s up to. The Thark ambassador just dropped some hint about meetings with Vergallians in tunnels but it’s the first I’m hearing of it.” The fractal pattern turned clear again and Kelly thought she saw another shape behind the beetle. “Is somebody with you?”

  “Abort,” the Farling commanded, and by the time Kelly got back to Joe, the beetle was halfway across the room studying a different Rinty bubble. The EarthCent ambassador noticed that Aainda stood not far away, her mouth shielded with her hand.

  “What was that all about?” Joe asked. He proffered a small plate of cantaloupe balls pierced with toothpicks.

  “I wish I knew. I think that Aainda may be using our son to get around a prohibition on sharing information with me, but Samuel is too loyal to her for it to work,” Kelly said in frustration. “How can he not trust his own mother to keep a secret?”

  “You’ve got me,” Joe said, striving to prevent any note of sarcasm from entering his voice. “Are you sure we should be talking about this at a party?”

  “Given that we must be the least informed guests in the room, I think it’s safe.”

  Eighteen

  The doorman of the Vergallian embassy bowed his head slightly and greeted the EarthCent ambassador’s son with a curt, “Sam.”

  “Raef,” Samuel acknowledged cautiously. “The conference was a bore, Aainda didn’t miss anything. I’m just going to drop the recorder in the data room and then I’m done for the day. Did the ambassador send any new instructions for me?”

  “You can ask her yourself.”

  Samuel had to resist running through the lobby to reach the ambassador’s office faster. She’d vanished from the station a day after the arrival of the Thark ambassador, and other than cryptic messages relayed by the doorman, he hadn’t heard from her in a week. He skidded to a halt at her open door when he heard her speaking, but she waved him in without missing a beat.

  “—everybody, but getting them all to sit down and sign in blood will still be a trick,” Aainda concluded. “The one thing working in our favor is that the endless speculation on the Grenouthian news is keeping all of the intelligence services on the tunnel network chasing shadows.”

  “And the boy?” asked the Vergallian in the hologram, who Samuel could only see from the back.

  “He’s a grown man by Human standards and he just walked in,” the ambassador said. “Samuel will be perfect for the job.”

  “It’s your show, Aainda. Do me a favor and try talking some sense into that crazy daughter of mine.”

  “I’ve invited them both to dinner tonight. Just an intimate gathering,” the ambassador said, a wolfish grin appearing on her perfect features. “We’ll talk soon.” The hologram winked out, and Aainda gestured for Samuel to take the chair in front of her display desk. “I owe you several explanations.”

  “I’m just doing my job,” Samuel hurried to say. “To tell you the truth, it’s easier for me at home if I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t want to lie to my mother.”

  Aainda nodded. “I understand. It’s a shame you didn’t have royal training growing up. We’re all taught compartmentalization techniques that are very useful for separating our work lives and our family affairs.”

  “But Vergallian government is a family affair,” Samuel protested.

  “Yes, to an extent, but in the final analysis, a queen is only as strong as the loyalty of her subjects. Our entertainment industry tends to focus on royal family pageantry and rivalries for the sake of ratings, but keeping our populations gainfully employed and providing alternative paths for those who want something different is what’s made the Empire of a Hundred Worlds what it is today.”

  “Do you know if Ailia’s world is safe? Whenever I ask, she just laughs and says that Baylit has it all under control. I’m afraid that one day she’ll have to marry some stranger from another royal family just to guarantee her future.”

  “We all marry some stranger from another royal family to guarantee our futures,” Aainda replied with a laugh. “Marrying within one’s own family leads to myriad problems, and I don’t just mean the medical issues. But thank you for raising the subject as I want to speak to you about a matter that falls well outside the duties of a cooperative education student.”

  “Is it about Aabina?”

  “No. My daughter is a long way from being old enough to marry, and I already have a stranger picked out for her in any case. It’s about your sister’s friend, Affie. I was just chatting with her mother.”

  “Oh,” Samuel said, recalling the message from the Fleet admiral. “So she doesn’t approve of Stick.”

  “Exactly. You can tell by a glance that Diemro is from an upper caste family, but Imperial Intelligence draws a blank on his background, and Fleet is no wiser than we are. Affie’s mother originally agreed to let her come to Union Station to attend the Open University, and she extended that freedom when your sister got Affie involved in the fashion business, but there’s a difference between a harmless flirtation and throwing away years of one’s youth on a drug dealer.”

  “Stick’s real name is Diemro? I’ve never heard it, but he seems like a nice enough guy. I’ve worked with him in some of Dorothy’s fashion shows, and we did a bunch of LARPs together. I don’t know much about the whole Kraken Red thing, but I thought it was legal, sort of.”

  “Legality isn’t the point here. He’s been selling individual sticks at parties for the last ten years and that seems to be the limit of his ambitions. Would you want your daughter living with somebody like that?”

  “I didn’t know they lived together, but I guess I think it’s kind of their business,” Samuel said, looking down at his feet.

  Aainda sighed. “Someday you’ll be a parent and you’ll understand. In the meantime, the pair of them will be here for dinner this evening, and if it’s not too late for you to invite your fiancée, I’d like you there to set a good example.”

  “Now I’m confused. You want Stick, I mean, Diemro, to propose to Affie?”

  “You’re missing the point. She and Diemro live as if they plan to be young forever. Even though Affie works for SBJ Fashions, she doesn’t put in nearly the same hours as Dorothy or their Frunge friend, not to mention Baa, who doesn’t sleep. I want to hold you and Vivian up as an example of hard-working young people who have their eyes on the future. And Aabina is bringing along a fellow co-op student who works at EarthCent Intelligence.”

  “I don’t see how it’s going to change anything, but I know that Vivian has been dying for a chance to see what I do at your dinners. She thinks—” Samuel stopped and his ears turned pink.

  “I can guess what she thinks. I don’t expect one dinner party to alter Affie’s attitude, but I’ve agreed to become involved and I have to begin somewhere. It wouldn’t be civilized to just start right in with the threats.”

  “Uh, I guess not,” the EarthCent ambassador’s son said, recognizing a typical plot line from Vergallian dramas and realizing that he was in over his head. “I’ll just go ping Vivian, then.”

  “Ping her? Is that how you treat a girl once you get your ring on her finger? Buy Vivian some flowers and request the honor of her attendance. And tell her informal dress is fine. I gave the musicians the night off.”

  Samuel wandered out
of Aainda’s office, somewhat confused by the sudden shift from intergalactic diplomacy to personal relationships, though on second thought, he realized that the two might not be that far apart. He stopped by the Vergallian flower shop down the corridor from the embassy and invested a day’s pay in a corsage that the seller assured him would go with anything, including a jumpsuit. Then he pinged Vivian, who informed him she was on a job at the main arrivals concourse, but if he wanted to meet her there, it should wrap up within a half hour.

  When Samuel exited the lift tube at the main arrivals area on Union Station’s core, he reflexively glanced up at the large hologram that cycled through the major tunnel network languages providing information about commercial space liners on scheduled runs. There were only three arrivals due in the next thirty minutes. The first was a Sharf ship coming from some orbital that wasn’t on the tunnel network, the next a Dollnick liner on the eleventh stop of some sort of tourist cruise. The last was a Vergallian vessel named ‘Princess Akida.’ He heard a ping over his implant and immediately chose to accept the call without requesting the source.

  “I see you,” Vivian said in his head. “I’m at Gate Eight, but keep your distance.”

  “Will do,” Samuel replied, and seized the opportunity to finally use some of the techniques he’d learned watching EarthCent Intelligence agents train in Mac’s Bones. He strolled casually towards Gate Seven and stopped along the way to buy a bottle of Union Station Springs water at a kiosk. There he intentionally fumbled a coin to the deck and used the opportunity to turn his head and check for a tail. Next, he started for Gate Nine, only to halt behind the aliens waiting to meet arrivals coming from Gate Eight. “In position,” he subvoced tersely.

  “Are you playing spy?”

  “Maybe. I still can’t see you.”

  “I’ll scratch my ear,” Vivian said.

  Samuel scanned the crowd but his fiancée was nowhere to be seen. “You must be in front of one of the tall aliens.”

  “I’ll try again.”

  “Is that really you?” he asked, staring at the back of a slender Drazen woman who was idly scratching an ear with her tentacle.

  “If you’re staring, stop it,” she hissed over the implant. “And here come the arrivals, so don’t distract me while I’m working.”

  A stream of passengers from the Sharf liner poured through the gate, waving, whistling and hooting for family members. Samuel knew from Jeeves that the Stryx station owner employed remote sensing to check off every arrival against the ship’s manifest while also scanning them for contraband. Gryph did it all so unobtrusively that even the most technically advanced species couldn’t identify the means employed.

  Vivian began worming her way through the crowd towards the right, and Samuel shifted his own position just enough to keep her in sight. He saw her cross one of the tributaries of travelers that had branched off from the main stream just as a Farling with five or six small pieces of baggage dangling from his various limbs passed. For a moment it looked like she had lost track of her prosthetic tentacle, which whacked the beetle on his shell, but if the Farling had noticed, he didn’t make any sign.

  “All done,” Vivian announced. “Meet me by the all-species restrooms.”

  “On my way,” Samuel responded, but it took him a couple of minutes to reach their rendezvous through the crowded concourse. “Are you here?”

  “Don’t rush me, I’ll be out in a sec.”

  Samuel took advantage of the time to ping the EarthCent embassy and asked Vivian’s grandmother if he could speak with Aabina.

  “She just left for EarthCent Intelligence, though I suppose I shouldn’t be telling you that,” Donna said. “Do you want to talk to your mother?”

  “Just tell her that I’m having dinner at the Vergallian embassy with your granddaughter, assuming she agrees.”

  “Buy her flowers,” the embassy manager advised.

  “Let’s go,” Vivian said, emerging from the restroom without the prosthetic or the custom facial overlay that allowed her to pass for a Drazen. “Did you see me working that tentacle? A few months ago I was terrified that I’d yank out my own hair.”

  “Yeah, that was pretty sweet,” Samuel said. “Aainda invited us to dinner. It’s informal dress, no dancing. And I got you these.”

  “A corsage? Now I have to go home and change.”

  “The Vergallian florist said they go with everything.”

  “I don’t know,” Vivian said, pinning the corsage to her Drazen pantsuit. Then she pulled a small tab from her bag and swiped it to life. “Check this out.”

  “What is it?” Samuel looked down at the concentric rings on the screen. “One of those tilt games where you’re supposed to move the blinking light to the bulls-eye?”

  “Not unless you want to get caught. It’s the tracking device I stuck to the beetle’s shell. The Farlings are up to something.”

  “It doesn’t seem to be moving.”

  “That’s an old trick to foil a tail,” Vivian told him. “Just wait a few minutes and you’ll see. He’ll go out of range in the lift tube, but we’ve got agents around all of the likely hotels waiting to pick him up.”

  “You were right, but it’s moving in this direction,” Samuel said, watching the screen. “He’s headed straight for us.”

  “Kiss me,” Vivian ordered him.

  “What?”

  “That’s what field agents always do in dramas.”

  Samuel grinned and leaned in for a kiss, being careful not to crush the corsage. Vivian ruined the romantic interlude by holding the hand with the tab over his shoulder and keeping up a running commentary about the Farling’s movements over their implants.

  “He’s still coming.”

  “Don’t you close your eyes while we’re kissing?”

  “You’re kissing, I’m working.”

  “I’m still on the clock too and I closed my eyes. What, you want to wrestle now?”

  “Turn left, I need to—oh, fudge.”

  Samuel broke away and turned to see one of the teenage skycaps who hung around the concourse after school trying to pick up a few creds carrying bags for travelers. The kid was standing right in front of them with something on his open palm.

  “A chitinous gentleman of the alien variety paid me five creds to remove this from his back and deliver it to you with a message,” the skycap informed them, and handed the tracking device to Vivian. Then he began rubbing his forefingers together in an imitation of a Farling’s speaking legs, and said, “The day I get taken in by a fake tentacle is the day I stop practicing medicine.”

  “Was it M793qK?” Samuel asked as the kid sauntered off, repeatedly flipping the five-cred coin in the air and catching it behind his back. “I only saw him from the side, and to tell you the truth, I doubt I could pick the beetle doctor out of a room of Farlings unless he was the oldest one there.”

  “I only saw the back of his carapace,” Vivian said, looking utterly miserable. “My handler is going to kill me.”

  “Wait a sec. I have an idea. Let’s stop by his old medical shop.”

  “That’s right, it’s down here somewhere, isn’t it?”

  “Near that lift tube,” Samuel said, leading the way. They paused outside the bank of diagnostic scanners at the entrance to the walk-in clinic and heard the Farling physician buzzing away on his speaking legs at top volume.

  “You obviously haven’t cleaned the DNA sequencer in over a cycle! How do you expect to get meaningful readings if there are bits of a hundred different species in there? I’m only on the station until the All Species Cookbook release party, but I’ve got plenty of time to find a replacement doctor if you don’t shape up.”

  Vivian drew Samuel away, looking extremely pleased with herself. “A positive identification is even better than a tracking device. All we need to do now is get one of his old patients to ping him and he’ll answer.”

  “So you’re done for the day?”

  “I’m on duty for anoth
er three hours, but I just pinged my handler, and she said if I could get inside the Vergallian embassy I should go for it. Hey, I just remembered—”

  “We are not stopping for you to pick up bugs, Vivian. I have to work in that embassy, and the Vergallians are way ahead of the Drazens on surveillance technology in any case. They’d catch you at the door.”

  “All right, all right. What time is this dinner?”

  “Your grandmother said that Aabina has already left to pick up Wrylenth, so we may as well go straight there.”

  “She better not be dressed up,” Vivian said with a scowl.

  “They’re both coming from their co-op jobs and you know they dress professionally,” Samuel reasoned. “That pantsuit looks great on you.”

  “It’s from the same boutique where Tinka buys hers,” the girl said, somewhat mollified. “I asked her advice about dressing for the Drazen workplace.”

  “Mr. McAllister, Miss Oxford,” the doorman greeted the couple formally when they arrived at the embassy. “The rest of your party is here. Please go in.”

  “Uh, thank you, Raef.”

  “Is that the guy you say is always trying to provoke you?” Vivian whispered as they headed for the dining room. “He seemed very polite.”

  “I haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe the ambassador talked to him.”

  “Samuel, Vivian,” Aainda welcomed the latecomers enthusiastically. “My daughter and Wrylenth were just sharing their co-op experiences with Affie and her companion, and Diemro made the most amusing observation.”

  “I was just pointing out that Humans are easy to work with because you don’t have any history to speak of,” Stick said, sounding slightly embarrassed. “I was on a Frunge world once and said something about a bright star you could see before the sunset. It turned out to be light from a nova on the other side of the galaxy that had destroyed a Frunge colony eighty thousand years earlier. They were all in mourning and they thought I was making fun of them.”

  “You’ve traveled, Diemro?” Aainda asked.