by E. M. Foner
“Will Alex be able to make it down the stairs you guys welded to the side of the container?”
“Sure. Sometimes back at Mac’s Bones he’d run up and down them while I was working, just to irritate me.”
As soon as the hatch was open, Alexander proved the truth of Kevin’s words by slipping past the people and barreling down the stairs so fast that Dorothy was sure he would crash into something at the bottom. But the dog turned and raced for the container’s main hatch, where he stood on his hind legs and held his paw just a hair above the ramp button.
“Wait,” Kevin commanded in a stern voice. “If the Vergallians see you standing there by yourself, they’ll assume that you ate us, and then where will you be?”
“Now he’s going to start thinking about food,” Dorothy said. “When’s the last time he did eat?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m also not worried about it. If I know one thing about dogs, it’s that they’ll find a way to let you know when they’re hungry.”
After they reached the bottom of the stairs and started for the main hatch, Dorothy asked, “How do you know if there’s even space to lower the ramp when there aren’t any viewports down here?”
“Ship,” Kevin called out. “Is there room to lower the ramp?”
“Affirmative,” the controller replied.
“Go ahead, Alex.”
The dog depressed the button with his paw and the main hatch slowly folded outwards, transforming into a ramp hinged at the deck. Kevin stood in the center of the opening, keeping both of his hands in plain sight, and warned the dog against racing out before they had permission.
The ramp wasn’t halfway down before Alexander scrambled out and ran into the shadows under the ship.
“Where do you think he’s—oh, I get it,” Dorothy said.
When the ramp touched the tarmac, the dog came trotting back up, acting like nothing had happened. A few seconds later the riders rounded the blast wall on the landing pad and trotted towards the ship. As the troop came to a halt a short distance from the ramp, a number of hounds which had been running alongside the horses sniffed at the air and then dashed under the ship to investigate. Alexander gave his humans an enormous tongue-lolling grin.
“Dorothy McAllister?” the official herald cried in a loud voice.
“Here,” Dorothy replied, half raising her hand.
“Welcome to our domains in the name of Royal Protector Baylit, acting in the interest of Ailia, heir to the throne of Avidiya, daughter of Atuba, granddaughter of Avilia, great-granddaughter of Aagra. You are granted tarmac space in the restricted zone for your ship, though any goods you bring into the realm are subject to our rules regarding technology. Baylit offers you hearth and home for as long as you choose to remain.”
“Uh, thank you very much,” Dorothy replied, unsure if a formulaic response was required. “Can we come out now?”
“Yes, the ceremony is over,” Ailia called, pushing past the large horse on which the herald was mounted. “That’s as short as I could get him to make it. Can you ride?”
“How well trained are those things?” Kevin asked.
“You’d have to work to fall off of the ones we brought for you,” the Vergallian girl told him with a grin. “I don’t imagine Dorothy gets a lot of riding opportunities on Union Station.”
“Like zero,” Dorothy confirmed, coming down the ramp and dropping a polite curtsey. Kevin fumbled his way through an awkward bow.
“Is that Beowulf?” Ailia asked in surprise, approaching the giant dog. “He hasn’t aged a day, though he seems smaller than my memory. It must be because I was so little.”
“This is Alexander,” Kevin explained. “Beowulf’s son.”
The Vergallian dogs returned from their visit under the ship to investigate the perpetrator, and a bout of intense sniffing took place on all sides. Then a small rodent scolded them from its perch on the low blast wall, and all of the dogs took off as one in its direction.
“They’re palace dogs,” Ailia explained apologetically. “Real cavalry dogs would have more discipline. I rushed over as soon as the stable master brought the news of your arrival, but communications between the port and the stables are by runner.”
“Let me grab your presents and close up the ship,” Kevin said. It only took him a minute to reappear with a large pack, after which he instructed the ship to raise the hatch.
Ailia swung herself gracefully into the saddle, and attendants helped Dorothy and Kevin mount their rides. Then the herald sounded a note on a small horn, and the horses broke into a canter that felt smoother than it sounded.
“How can you hear each other over this racket?” Dorothy yelled at Ailia.
“What?” the Vergallian princess shouted in response.
“Never mind.”
Alexander caught up with the riders before any of the native dogs, looking particularly smug as he bounded alongside Kevin’s mount. From the tarmac of the ancient, underutilized spaceport they continued onto a road that wound through endless fields separated by stone walls that fit into the landscape so harmoniously that the scene would have looked unnatural without them. By the time the horses slowed for the palace gates, the sun was beginning to set, and bright lanterns above the streets were being lit by men with long poles.
“Kind of medieval,” Dorothy commented to Kevin as he helped her dismount.
“Reminds me of New Kasil. How’s your backside?”
“My backside is none of your business. Do you ride often, Princess Ailia?”
“Every day before breakfast,” the girl replied with a sigh. “There are twelve roads leading out from the palace, one for each day of the week. If I failed to show myself on one of those roads for two weeks in a row, the nobles of the section would start fighting over my replacement.”
“Just like in the dramas,” Dorothy said, trying to keep the pity out of her voice. “Do you ever get used to it?”
“Years ago. Come, you must be hungry after waiting at the spaceport and your long ride. I have somewhere special to take you.”
“Is it Human Burger?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what that is,” the princess replied.
“What a relief. You don’t know how that place has haunted our trip.”
“I’ve never set down on a Vergallian world before,” Kevin said. “Is there somebody at the spaceport who will approve my goods before I arrange for transport to the closest marketplace?”
“The crown purchases all alien goods arriving at the spaceport,” Ailia replied, leading the way through a maze-like series of passages. Four of the guards who had been on the spaceport trip accompanied them silently. “It’s the only way to control technology leakage, and exotic imports give us a way of raising revenue from the wealthy.”
“My father taught me never to argue with royalty,” Kevin said, eyeing the four guards who had stayed within easy reach of Ailia ever since she dismounted.
“A wise man.” The princess stopped at a heavy wooden door decorated with a crudely painted stack of gold coins. One of the guards stepped forward and knocked on the heavy strike-plate with his pole-axe. A metal shutter on a small window overlooking the alley swung open, and a head popped out to survey the visitors. There was the muffled sound of a bell ringing, and the door yawned open.
“Welcome to the Mercenary Tavern, Your Highness,” a human woman greeted them in English. “We haven’t seen you in some time.”
“These two are friends of mine,” Ailia said. “They are not to be charged if they return without me during their stay at the palace.”
“Of course, Your Highness. The private room will be ready in just a moment.” The hostess glanced over her shoulder to where tavern staff were hustling a couple of irate mercenaries out of a doorway and into the main room. She nodded with approval. “Please follow me.”
“My sister brings me here to meet with the officers of our hired soldiers as part of my training,” the princess explained to her guests. “It�
��s traditional for royal families to employ mercenaries in their personal guard, and I try to get Humans whenever possible.”
“I remember you couldn’t eat chocolate or any of our dairy products,” Dorothy said. “Do they serve real human food here, or is it human style?”
“You can eat anything here. Some of it is imported from off-world, some of it is grown in a special allotment we give the men and their families for raising food. They’ve had very good luck with chickens, which can digest our grains and insects.”
The hostess seated the three diners around a heavy wooden table in the small room, but the guards remained standing, two in the hallway and two just inside the door. “Today’s special is fried chicken with potatoes and boiled Vergallian greens,” she informed them. “I can bring menus if you like, but we had a busy day so we’re out of a lot of things.”
“Chicken is great,” Kevin said. “And if you’ve got something for the dog.”
“We have dog food,” the hostess suggested.
Alexander groaned and shook his massive head.
“Some deboned chicken and potatoes would be good. He doesn’t care for green vegetables.”
“The special for me,” Dorothy added. “Are you eating, Ailia?”
“I’ll have the same, but substitute a double serving of greens for the chicken,” the princess said. “And bring an extra table for the guards to eat in the hall. There’s no other way in here, Sven, and we have the dog for backup,” she added in the direction of guards.
The taller of the two men who had positioned himself inside the door inclined his head, scowled at Alexander, and withdrew with his fellow guard.
“Now tell me about your family,” Ailia continued. “How is Aisha’s new baby?”
“Cute, you know what babies are like. And Fenna is growing like a weed. Did you know about Aisha buying Paul a whole fleet of abandoned ships? That’s where Kevin got ours from.”
“You two got married? Congratulations. I can’t believe Samuel didn’t tell me.”
“We’re just traveling together,” Dorothy rushed to correct her. “It’s Kevin’s ship, but after living on it for—wow, is it already a month?”
“We spent a week on the Frunge world, if you include the elevator time, and five days on the Drazen space station. We slept on the ship at Chintoo.”
“And you haven’t made a formal commitment to each other?” the young princess asked, obviously puzzled.
“We have a Frunge thing,” Dorothy explained. “My friend made us get it. I hope you don’t need to see it because we left it on the ship.”
“No, I brought it in the pack, just in case,” Kevin said. “Most of this stuff is gifts for you, Princess, including a bundle from Jeeves.”
“I’d like to see the contract if you don’t mind. I’ve been studying jurisprudence, and my tutor pushed me to learn something about the Frunge legal system, since it’s the closest to our own.”
“You can read Frunge?” Dorothy asked, as Kevin rummaged through his large pack and extracted the inscribed slab.
“Languages are easy for me, probably because I was exposed to a number of them at a young age when I was living on Union Station. Let’s see.” She started to lift the tablet that Kevin slid across the table and then settled for reading it where it lay. “This all looks like the standard boilerplate, though a number of clauses related to Frunge biology have been omitted. I think it’s nice that the terms leave you free to conduct a romance. Everything in Vergallian companionship contracts is about the bottom line.”
“I wasn’t going to let them put in the number of times a week we, uh…” Dorothy trailed off, remembering that Ailia was younger than she looked.
“I understand perfectly. As long as you do plan to get married in the end.”
“I want to marry Kevin. I just don’t want to be pushed.”
“And I want to marry Dorothy.”
“That’s settled then,” the princess said brightly. “Now tell me about Samuel.”
“He works twice as hard as I did when I was his age,” Dorothy admitted. “When he’s not taking courses at the Open University or practicing ballroom dancing with Vivian, he’s working with my dad and Paul, or at the lost-and-found.”
“But he gave up competing after you left Union Station,” Ailia informed them.
“I forgot you had a secret link with him, so your news is more recent than ours,” Dorothy said.
“You knew about that?”
“Come on, he’s my little brother. Do you think I’d let him hide something like that from me? I’ve known for years, but I didn’t tell anybody.”
“He mentioned that he’s fencing with Vivian now, and between the Open University and her visiting him at work, they spend as much time together as ever.”
“They’re pretty much best friends, and I guess she’s got plans,” Dorothy said. “You know that her mother was going to marry Paul, but she didn’t move fast enough and Aisha came along.”
“They all seemed very happy with their choices when I knew them,” the princess said. “Do you think Vivian would be good for him?”
“Just because she has plans doesn’t mean that he’ll go along with them,” Dorothy said, misunderstanding Ailia’s sad look. “It’s not that easy to drag a McAllister to the altar, well, except for my parents of course, and that’s just because Libby got involved.”
“I’d like you to bring Vivian a gift from me when you go back, but it will take a few days to prepare,” Ailia told them. “Don’t run off without telling me.”
Eighteen
“So we put on these suits and then we can fly?”
“It’s more like swimming in air,” Paul explained to the leader of the Alt mission. “The levitation suits are calibrated to give you neutral buoyancy, but you can get thrust from the booties for accelerating.”
“How can there possibly be rocket engines in these flimsy things?” Methan asked, examining the soles of the shoe covers. “They don’t even look like they’d stand up to a strong rain.”
“It’s just a logical fiction for the humanoids who make up most of the players. You curl your toes to speed up, and the levitation controller actually pulls all of the monopoles woven into your suit forward along the axis of your legs. Most people feel like it’s thrust coming from their feet.”
“The computational power needed to run this game must require a Stryx!”
“Only for the initial setup,” Paul said. “Jeeves repurposed an old Verlock weather control system for the job. I’m sure you know how much math it takes just to predict the weather, so imagine what’s required to control it.”
“Why would you want to control the weather?” Methan’s daughter asked. “It’s all part of nature.”
“Our world isn’t natural, it was made by the Stryx,” her younger brother pointed out. “Even I knew that before the aliens came, except for the Stryx part, I mean.”
“Those large murals are lovely,” Rinla said, hoping to head off an unseemly disagreement between her two oldest children. “We would call it ‘Early modern abstract primitive’ back home.”
“Uh, it’s just random paintball splatter,” Paul told her. “Back when I was sort of managing the place, I had the maintenance bots clean the walls once a day, but the Dollnick who took over the contract decided it was a waste of creds.”
“What do balls of paint have to do with flying?” Methan asked.
“It’s part of the game. You have to avoid getting hit while you shoot the other players.”
“Shoot? As in, with a … weapon?”
“No, it’s just a basket with a small propulsion system built into the handle. Kids love it.”
“I’m not so sure about this,” Methan said, but Antha and Meena had already pulled on their flying suits and were headed for the lift-off area.
“Go ahead, Methan,” Rinla encouraged him. “One of us should keep an eye on the children, and I have to feed Methanon. I’ll be right here waiting.”
> Paul helped the reluctant Alt don the flying suit and escorted him into the game area just as the calliope started wailing.
“Astounding!” Methan declared. “We have an antique pipe organ at our local fairground which is just as badly out of tune.”
“Watch your feet,” Paul cautioned him from below as the players all rose into the air. “You can move forward using swimming strokes, but remember to activate the booties if you want to go faster. Don’t worry about running into anybody. The controller bases your trajectory after an impact on a perfect inelastic collision, but it stretches the time scale to keep the rate of change in your comfort range.”
Even as Paul spoke, Antha barreled towards his father at full speed, but at the last moment his vector changed sharply, and Methan’s suit suddenly accelerated him off on a tangent at perhaps a quarter of his son’s velocity.
“I see why you call it the ‘Physics Ride,’” the Alt scientist shouted back at Paul, who waved and walked off of the game floor.
Twenty minutes later, Kelly arrived out of breath and demanded, “Where is he?”
“Lying down behind the rental counter,” Paul told her. Between the calliope music and the howling Alt baby he was holding for Rinla, communications were suboptimal. He pointed at two small figures in the corner of the flying space and added, “I promised their parents I’d keep an eye on the kids during the elimination match.”
The ambassador glanced in the direction Paul was pointing and was surprised to see two small figures in flying suits floating back to back, shooting a steady stream of paintballs at the few remaining players whose suits hadn’t been powered down for point loss. Then she remembered why she had rushed over from the embassy and hurried into the store area. Kelly breathed a sigh of relief when she entered the noise cancellation field around the counter, but then she saw the bloodied face of the Alt mission leader and she froze.
“Libby!” she subvoced urgently. “We have a medical emergency with Methan. Why did you ping me rather than sending a med bot?”
