by E. M. Foner
“Just one more thing before you go, Blythe. About our bet. If you win, you get to run the ‘Eat me up,’ commercial, but what do I get if I win?”
“If you win, I don’t run the ad, Aunty Kelly,” Blythe replied innocently.
“But you already weren’t running the ad because your mother wouldn’t let you,” Kelly complained.
“Yeah, you really shouldn’t have taken the bet,” Blythe told her. Shaina and Chastity nodded in agreement, and Kelly imagined she heard Libby chiming in as well. But the chime was real, and “Collect call from Mother,” appeared before her eyes.
“Accept charges,” she groaned, and shrugged at the girls. Chastity and Blythe understood immediately what was up, and Chastity explained it to Shaina, who had never heard of anybody calling collect. Shaina gave Kelly a sympathetic wave, and the three girls left the ambassador alone in her office.
“Kelly, I’m just a week away now. I can’t tell you how wonderfully everybody treats me when they find out that you’re my daughter. I suspect the ship steward has been spreading it around, because I have nonstop invitations from the sweetest aliens to discuss business opportunities. The aliens are so cute, and their start-ups are so much more interesting than all the gaming businesses on Earth.”
“Did you buy that real estate on Thuri Minor?” Kelly asked.
“I went with a variable option pegged to the Stryx cred, so I have three months to decide whether to close at the current price or forfeit a modest option fee. But since when were you interested in financial affairs, Kelly?”
“Hey, I keep up with the Trader gold exchange rates and stuff like that,” Kelly bluffed. “So why did you decide to hold off?”
“Well, I gave it some thought, and it occurred to me I should wait to take a look at the real estate on Union Station.” A long pause ensued while Kelly’s mother waited for her reaction.
“That’s great, Mom,” Kelly said cautiously, after she recovered enough to speak. “It’s really expensive, though. The human population just keeps on growing because it’s the ideal place to do business.”
“That’s what makes a good investment, Kelly. Do you think I want to buy cheap real estate in a place that everybody is leaving? I could do that on Earth!”
“Oh, right,” Kelly admitted with grudging admiration.
“Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that everything is on schedule and I’ll be showing up at your door in time for dinner next Friday. See you then,” she rang off, without even waiting for Kelly’s acknowledgement.
“Does everybody in the galaxy understand more about business than I do?” Kelly spoke plaintively, looking up at the ceiling.
“Was that a question for me?” Libby replied immediately.
“No, I was just talking to myself,” Kelly replied, sounding a bit deflated.
“I’m always here if you need to speak to somebody,” Libby reminded her gently. “And the galaxy is a very big place. I’m sure there are plenty of people who don’t understand business any better than you do.”
Kelly parsed the sentence looking for something positive and gave up with a sigh.
“Don’t forget that you are one of the top diplomats in EarthCent service, and between you and me, you’re our favorite,” Libby added. “But I can’t understand why you drink such awful coffee that’s fortified with depressants. It’s really intended for human workers in high oxygen environments who get a little too euphoric. I wasn’t going to say anything before, but you don’t even have a prescription for it, do you?”
Prescription coffee with depressants? That would teach her to buy white-labeled food products in the Shuk without bringing Shaina along.
Eighteen
Joe and Kelly stood uncomfortably in the airlock of the Horten embassy, waiting for the decontamination process to complete. Kelly had procrastinated accepting the Horten invitation for as long as was diplomatically possible, because Donna had told her about their pathological fear of biological contamination. At some point in their history, the Hortens had fought a war with microbes, and the aftermath had traumatized them so severely that the whole civilization was obsessed with cleanliness.
“Is my radiation badge changing colors?” Kelly asked Joe nervously, pointing to the band of treated plastic around her wrist that had been supplied by the decontamination attendant.
“I would say that you’re medium-well done,” Joe jested, after making a show of studying the bracelet. When Kelly failed to laugh, he recanted. “It’s not a radiation badge, it’s a sort of a mood bracelet. I thought you were too nervous to understand what that Horten attendant was saying, and she did speak awfully fast.”
“A mood bracelet? Like from when we were little?”
“When you were little, maybe,” Joe tried to sound offended. “Real men don’t wear mood bracelets.”
“I admit it, I wasn’t listening. So is this the Horten idea of a party favor, like they’re trying to make us feel at home?” Kelly asked.
“It’s actually a very smart idea,” Joe explained. “She didn’t go into detail about the technology, but it’s supposed to enhance communications between species by translating the mood of the wearer into colors. Translation implants don’t always do a great job reproducing the emotional tone of the words, and it would take a better poker player than me to read anything from alien faces. You have to grow up around them for that kind of understanding.”
“Mine seems to have turned pale yellow, while yours is more bluish. What did they say it means?”
“She didn’t explain the color codes,” Joe admitted. “Besides, it doesn’t matter, since I doubt the Hortens will be wearing bracelets. If I had to guess, I’d say that pale yellow means nervous and bluish means thirsty.”
A red light flashed over the door and there was a loud wail from a siren. Kelly grabbed Joe’s arm, wondering if they failed the decontamination process and were about to get flushed, and she prepared to call Libby for a rescue. But the light and the siren just meant the decontamination process was complete, and the door leading into the embassy reception room slid open. A slender Horten wearing the top hat of authority strode forward to greet them.
“I am Ambassador Ortha,” he said, stopping about two feet away. There was something odd about the sound of his voice, so Joe flipped the mental switch to turn off his implant and listened for the next sentence.
“I am Ambassador Kelly McAllister, and this is my husband, Joe,” Kelly replied. “Thank you for inviting us to your embassy.”
“We have done you a great honor,” the ambassador replied immodestly, and Joe instantly realized that his voice was coming from a speaker, rather than from the Horten’s mouth. That could only mean one thing, so he put out his arm to stop Kelly as she took an uncertain step forward.
“Glass wall,” he told her. “Apparently, we failed decontamination after all.”
“It is unfortunate,” the Horten ambassador confirmed Joe’s guess. “I would have grudgingly risked your physical presence and later undergone decontamination myself, but my family and several prominent members of our community are in attendance. I imagine you understand.”
Kelly squinted at the ambassador, and then tried looking across the hall at an angle, but she couldn’t see any indication of a glass wall. With the Horten just standing there as if he was waiting for them to do something, she cautiously extended her arm until her fingers made contact with an impossibly smooth, cool surface. She jerked her hand away, leaving a set of prints.
“I see we were correct to be cautious,” the ambassador stated, sounding rather satisfied. “The decontamination technician said something about not wanting to draw all of the oils from your skin, but warned that they could be solvents for our own vital fluids. A long shot, I grant you, but why take chances? Dinner will be served in the isolation booth.” Having satisfied himself with his explanations, he made a gesture, and the transparent walls began to glow with a soft orange light.
“Looks like a hallway leading to an isola
tion booth,” Joe commented, tapping the wine bottle against his hip, where it clinked reassuringly off of his antique Swiss army knife. It looked like he might be in need of the rarely used corkscrew attachment tonight. He exchanged shrugs with Kelly, and they walked down the glass tube, arriving in what appeared to be a well-appointed dining hall. But the orange glow showed that two of the place settings were actually isolated in a glass box that cut right through the table, extending from the floor to some point above their heads.
“Well, this is cozy,” Kelly murmured, feeling like an exhibition at the zoo. The pale yellow of her mood bracelet had acquired a darker tint, while Joe’s bluish band remained unchanged. As soon as they took their seats, the Hortens entered the room from two different doorways and filled up the rest of the places. With the exception of the ambassador, they all wore a filmy plastic sleeve over their evening wear, as if they had come from the dry cleaners and forgotten to remove the protective bags.
“Before dinner is served, I’d like to propose a toast to our human guests,” the ambassador announced, standing directly across the table from the isolation booth. The Hortens passed around bottles of a green liquid and filled their own glasses, while Joe quickly plied the Swiss army knife to open the traditional bottle of gift wine. He barely got the cork out and filled their glasses in time for the ambassador’s toast. “May our past misunderstandings become the basis for our future relations.”
“What does that mean?” Joe asked Kelly, after they each took a sip of their wine. It proved to be an excellent choice, and Joe was relieved they weren’t wasting it on their hosts.
“I think it’s something like forgive and forget, but in reverse,” she whispered back. “Do you think they’re waiting for me to make a toast in reply?” Without waiting for an answer, she raised her glass again, cleared her throat and toasted, “And may our future relations begin this night.”
Joe thought it was a clever formulation that dovetailed nicely into the Horten ambassador’s ambiguous toast, but the Hortens made no reaction at all, none of them even bothered raising their own glasses. Indeed, they were all engaged in making food choices from a holographic carousel that had started making the rounds of the large oval table like a model train. Each Horten it passed chose a holographic entrée and several side dishes by removing them from the carousel, an impressive trick of technology that was new to the humans.
The ethereal representations of the menu items winked and shimmered before each guest, serving as orders for the waiters, who began making the rounds with the real food. Although some of the items were aesthetically pleasing, Horten foodstuffs were generally regarded as poisonous to humans, and neither Joe nor Kelly was inclined to test that thesis.
All during the period that the Hortens were being served, Kelly sat patiently. She assumed that they would soon be receiving a consignment of take-out food from a human restaurant, the way the different species usually dealt with the dietary requirements of alien guests. But when the Hortens all began eating, she started getting annoyed.
“Excuse me,” she said loudly, trying to maintain a look of dignity. “The invitation didn’t say anything about supplying our own food!”
None of the Hortens even glanced in their direction.
“I don’t think the isolation chamber is wired for two-way sound,” Joe told her with a sudden grin. “Either that or it’s not turned on. Let me give it a try.” With that, he leaned forward and rapped the glass sharply with his knuckles. The resulting sounds were more like dull clunks than knocks, reminding him of the armored glass on a fighting vehicle. But it was enough to catch the attention of the Hortens, who jabbed each other and pointed at the humans.
“Is something wrong?” the Horten ambassador inquired, his voice coming from above and slightly behind them.
“We didn’t bring our own dinner!” Kelly replied in frustration, and pantomimed eating soup with a spoon in case the ambassador still couldn’t hear. The Horten turned a shade of light red and turned to say something to the chief server, who immediately turned a bright yellow.
Joe nudged Kelly and said, “I guess that explains the mood bracelets. They’re just trying to level the field.”
“My apologies,” Ambassador Ortha spoke. “The isolation booth has not been used since the embassy was remodeled a few cycles ago. Apparently the voice circuits from your side aren’t operational, and the one-way glass is also malfunctioning.”
“Libby?” Kelly subvoced, not wanting to look like an imbecile who continued talking after being told that nobody could hear her. “Have you been watching all of this? Can you patch me through over whatever they have for an audio system on the other side?”
“If you wish,” Libby replied with a hint of amusement in her voice. “Starting now.”
“I’ve requested technical help from the Stryx,” Kelly said, watching for the Horten reaction. None of the guests jerked their heads up in surprise at the sound of her voice, but the pale blue skin that most of the Hortens had been sporting just a moment or two earlier turned a molted shade of green, with some showing additional streaks of grey. Kelly looked over at Joe and mouthed, “Oops.”
The Horten ambassador either had better control over his emotions, or a different agenda than his family and fellows, because he only turned a little redder. “I see you don’t mince words. Your message has been received loud and clear, so let me be equally plain,” he declared in a steely voice. “The servers were reluctant to deliver the special food we ordered and decontaminated for you because they were afraid that my other guests would be sickened if they chanced to look in your direction. But there’s no need to call upon your Stryx allies in a panic. If you just wait patiently for a minute, we’ll handle this situation ourselves!”
Joe leaned in until his lips were practically touching Kelly’s ear and whispered, “Green for envy, grey for depression, and red for anger?”
Surveying the now colorful display of Hortens at the dinner table, Kelly nodded in agreement. Then it occurred to her to look at Joe’s bracelet, which had gone from slightly bluish to the original white after he had a glass of wine. Her own mood had shifted from a nervous yellow to a light red, and that was fading away even as she watched.
“It’s not so hard to understand why they act the way they do,” she whispered back to Joe. As much as she hated to admit it, she was beginning to feel a little sorry for the Hortens and their overstated emotions. “Now that I think of it, all of the times I’ve seen Hortens in public, they’ve been wearing some kind of environmental suit so you couldn’t see their skin. I thought it was to shield them from contamination, but maybe it’s just to protect their privacy.”
“I wish I could get some of these guys in a poker game,” Joe responded with a marked lack of empathy.
Suddenly, two Horten serving men appeared with rags and buckets and began washing the glass of the isolation booth. For some reason, whatever soap they were using clung thickly to the glass, rendering it an opaque swirly white. In less than a minute, the humans were truly in isolation, unable to see more than suggestions of shadowy movements on the other side of the glass.
“You see that we have our own methods of coping without turning to the Stryx for every little thing,” the now invisible Horten ambassador stated dryly. “I apologize for the delay, of course, but your dinner will be served momentarily.”
True to the ambassador’s word, a cylindrical glass tube descended from the ceiling of the booth. The bottom of the cylinder contained a variety of plated entrees, which looked like they had been unceremoniously dumped out of take-out containers onto glass plates. Still, the Chinese food smelled delicious, and Joe promptly claimed the franks-and-beans. After they each withdrew what they intended to eat, the cylinder rose back into the ceiling.
Unable to see what the rest of the company was doing and receiving no further word from the ambassador, Kelly and Joe began to eat. The meal passed in a sort of uncomfortable silence, so perhaps the Hortens had disabled their au
dio feed, or maybe it was customary for the aliens to eat without conversation. Having no desire to prolong the evening, both of the humans ate quickly.
Kelly finished first for a change and pushed away her plate, in case the serving staff was watching from above for clues. Joe wiped up the last of the beans with a heel of pumpernickel a minute later and followed suit. Almost immediately, the soapy whitewash began disappearing from the walls of the isolation booth in broad swathes, revealing the same Horten serving men, this time wielding squirt bottles and rubber squeegees. Whatever their quirks, the Hortens sure knew how to clean glass. They also knew how to make themselves scarce, because other than the serving men, the only Hortens remaining were the ambassador and a few other hat wearers.
“Thank you for respecting our customs,” the ambassador said with what sounded like a tinge of sarcasm, but Kelly could never be sure with the implant technology. The angry red tint had vanished from Ortha’s skin, and he now showed a neutral beige. The other Hortens were similarly colored, though perhaps with a hint of yellow that made them look like old ivory.
“Misunderstandings are the rule when members of different species sit together for the first time,” Kelly replied, placing a slight stress on “together.” Let’s see what your translator makes of that, she thought with satisfaction.
“I don’t want to spar with you, so let’s get down to business,” Ortha replied. “The Earth fleet, managed by humans under your direct control, is planning an attack on Horten space. Our intelligence reports confirm that the admiral is the adopted son of your military attaché, and the owners of InstaNavy are the daughters of the EarthCent embassy office manager. Do you dare deny it?”
Kelly immediately felt her eyelids begin to droop and she kicked herself for drinking that last glass of wine. Then she recalled her duty and pulled herself together enough to ask, “What’s to deny? You’re talking about the gameverse. EarthCent has no policy about gameverse activities whatsoever. And in my case, EarthCent has no interest in gameverse activities!”
