Book Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassasor 13)

by E. M. Foner

  “That’s not half as bad as the time I picked up the Drazen ambassador’s three-year-old at a private dinner party,” Svetlana said. “I didn’t know that his white nightshirt meant that he was in his tentacling phase where they instinctively latch onto anything and squeeze to build up the muscles. He wrapped his tentacle around my throat, and at first I was afraid to pull it off for fear of hurting him. Then it was so tight that I couldn’t even work my fingers underneath, and if the ambassador’s dog hadn’t started barking to get everybody’s attention, I would have died right there in the playroom.”

  “How did they get him off you?” Raj asked.

  “You just hold the kid’s hands down and blow in his ear,” the president contributed. “Same thing happened to me once at a picnic back when I was an ambassador.”

  Kelly checked “tentacle choking” off her list of requested anecdotes and asked, “Does anybody have a story about getting trapped in a bathroom at an alien embassy?”

  “Did you have to bring that up again?” Ambassador White complained. “It wasn’t an embassy, it was the Verlock ambassador’s yacht, and nobody told me that I’d have to solve the equation displayed on the inside of the door to get out again. It’s their version of a privacy lock.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen those equation locks on office doors in the Verlock embassy on our station,” Ambassador Oshi said. “It’s their equivalent of swiping to the left.”

  “I tried pounding on the door but the sound insulation was perfect, and there was a whole row of bathrooms on the yacht, so I couldn’t count on being discovered by somebody else needing it. Fortunately, my diplomatic implant has serious range, and I was able to ping our station librarian. The Stryx discretely notified the Verlock ambassador and he was able to override the lock from the bridge.”

  “Why didn’t you ask the station librarian to solve the equation for you?”

  “I did, but you know how subtle those Verlock numerals are. You have to draw them on the pad with a finger and I just couldn’t do it accurately enough.”

  “It looks like our time is almost up,” the president said, glancing at the counter in the corner of the hologram. “Good luck with the book, Ambassador McAllister. Would you mind running it by Hildy before submitting the manuscript to the publisher? As a public relations professional, she might be able to steer you away from accidentally harming EarthCent’s reputation. If nothing else, I’m sure she’ll appreciate being asked.”

  “I’ll do that. Thank you all for the stories and the ideas for the colony ship. As soon as we get a better idea of what Flower is willing to go along with I’ll submit a full report.”

  “Isn’t this supposed to be an Eccentric Enterprises project?” the Void Station ambassador inquired.

  “Only on paper,” the president replied. “I thought that EarthCent could use a level of deniability just in case Flower turns out to be more eccentric than the Stryx are letting on. Did you know that the Grenouthians did a documentary about her almost two thousand years ago? One of the local bunnies involved in the media partnership we set up mentioned it to me.”

  “I didn’t,” Kelly replied. “That sounds like it would be a valuable resource.”

  “Unfortunately, the Dollnicks paid the Grenouthians an arm and a leg, or maybe two arms and a leg, to pull it from circulation. But if you asked around the station, maybe somebody has a copy.”

  Ten

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice,” Blythe greeted her guests. “I’ve never eaten here before, and I hope that the all-species cuisine is acceptable.”

  “Acceptable?” Flazint said, her hair vines rustling in excitement. “This is the most expensive restaurant on the station. I’ve never even met anybody who’s been here.”

  “That’s what the girls on my student committee all said when I invited them,” Vivian told her mother. “Marilla and Yvandi both stopped home to change, but Lizant can’t make it because of a class.”

  “Going by the names, that covers Hortens and Sharf, and we already have Flazint here to represent the Frunge,” Dorothy said, grinning at her friend. “We’re up to six species including us, assuming you got Tinka to come.”

  “She’s stopping on the way to pick up a couple of classic Drazen romance novels,” Blythe said. “She claims that the cover art is almost as important as the story.”

  “Did you skip the Grenouthians, the Dollnicks and the Verlocks to save space?” Affie asked in jest, naming the three bulkier species.

  “I’ve been going through their catalogs, and based on the book descriptions there just aren’t many promising candidates. The Verlock conception of romance involves creating mathematical proofs together, and bunny literature requires way too much context.”

  “What do you mean?” Dorothy asked.

  “I have a good intelligence report on the subject if you want to read it, but basically, their fiction is all set in an imaginary universe that doesn’t resemble ours at all. You have to start with the children’s books for it to make any sense, and our analyst estimated it would take humans about twenty years of reading day and night just to get to the point where they could understand a novel intended for adult Grenouthians.”

  “It wasn’t always like that,” Affie told them. “I took a comparative literature course at the Open University, just the works of the older species, you understand. The whole imaginary universe thing is a fad that only started twenty or thirty thousand years ago, and these things come and go in regular cycles.”

  “How about the Dollnicks?” Vivian asked.

  “You wouldn’t be here if we were going to discuss Dolly romances,” Blythe told her teenage daughter. “In fact, if you ever see one in a store, I forbid you to look at the cover.”

  “Are you talking about Dollnick novels?” a bright yellow Horten girl asked, hesitating before taking a seat. “I’ll have to leave if you do because my mom made me promise to wait until after I have children.”

  “Now we have something in common,” Vivian said, patting the chair next to her.

  Tinka arrived and reflexively selected a seat as far from the Horten girl as possible. “Where’s Chas?” she asked.

  “I didn’t invite my sister and I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell her about our meeting,” Blythe said.

  “Are you still mad that she’s poaching your intelligence agents for the Galactic Free Press?”

  “That actually worked out well for us in the end since she pays the salaries and we still get the intel. But lately she’s been hiring our analysts part-time to ghost books in the For Humans series, and you know they sneak in most of the research during regular work hours.”

  “Sibling rivalry,” Affie commented, nodding knowingly. “You should like Vergallian romance novels because power struggles between sisters is right up at the top of our required tropes.”

  The tall Sharf student arrived and peered at each of the women at the table as if committing their faces to memory. “Yvandi,” she introduced herself, and began eagerly flipping through the holo menu the moment her bony bottom settled on the padded seat.

  “I love your dress,” Dorothy said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “My funeral dress,” the girl stated simply without looking away from the menu. “I don’t have anything else fancy enough for a place like this.”

  “Everybody order whatever you want,” Blythe encouraged them, activating her own holo menu. “The kitchen can supposedly get every entree to come out at the same time, regardless of how many species are dining. I’ve already ordered some wines that I think you can all drink,” she added.

  “There aren’t any prices shown in the menu,” Marilla pointed out nervously, her yellow color deepening.

  “Don’t worry,” Vivian reassured the girl. “Mom’s got so much money that she doesn’t know what to do with it. She and my aunt actually provide financing for most of the Eccentric Enterprises start-ups, and she’ll be with our associate ambassador whe
n they negotiate the final deal with Flower.”

  “Now that everybody is here, the reason I asked you all to lunch is because I’m interested in buying the translation rights to novels from your respective species,” Blythe informed them. “I grew up believing that your literature wouldn’t make any more sense to us in translation than our literature would to you, but thanks to the ambassador’s book club, I’ve learned that some of our novels can make the transition with appropriate cultural rewrites. I want to do the same thing in reverse, translating your books into English.”

  “Before Chastity does,” Tinka added mischievously.

  “We’re starting with romance novels since they’re at least half of the market,” Blythe continued. “I can get all the plot synopses I can read from the EarthCent Intelligence staff, but I wanted an outside perspective from non-publishing professionals who have experience with humans. Maybe we could just go around the table while we’re waiting for our food and you could give me your thoughts on the problems I’m likely to encounter.”

  Yvandi finished making her selections in the menu and gestured it out of existence. “For starters, I don’t think that Sharf aesthetics will translate well into Humanese, and physical descriptions play a large part in our romance literature.”

  “I expect that will be a problem with all cross-species translations, but could you give us an example?”

  The Sharf girl drew her university tab from her handbag and quickly brought up a page of alien text. “His protruding ribs and the bony neck made her eye stalks quiver with desire, and two of her three hearts began diverting blood into her dmogliverfs, which jookled with anticipation.”

  “Did the rest of you miss a couple of words in translation?” Blythe asked. All the women around the table nodded in agreement.

  “Which words?” Yvandi asked. “It’s basic Sharf, nothing fancy.”

  “The bits that get the blood pumped in and what happens to them in anticipation,” Affie said.

  “You guys don’t have dmogliverfs?” The Sharf regarded her lunch companions with a mixture of pity and horror.

  “We don’t even know what they are,” Dorothy told her. “Libby?”

  “The reason your implants don’t offer an equivalent translation is because it would require several minutes of explanations,” the station librarian informed her. “Dmogliverfs are unique to Sharf physiology. Would you like me to begin the technical description?”

  “It’s not important,” Blythe decided. “The translator would just rewrite it in English that made sense for the situation. I’m more worried about cultural disconnects that affect the overall plot, Yvandi. Things like character motivations and resolutions to conflicts that just wouldn’t make sense to us.”

  “I think the plot of this book is pretty universal,” the Sharf girl said. “It’s about two brothers who mate with the same woman, despite the fact that her father is a chemist and the sibling’s grandmother comes from Gurandi Prime.”

  “What wrong with chemists and Gurandi Prime?” Vivian asked.

  Yvandi blinked slowly and half rose from her chair. “I don’t think you’re going to have much luck translating Sharf romances. Is it too late to cancel my order?”

  “Sit, sit,” Blythe said. “That’s exactly the sort of feedback I’m looking for. Maybe there are other Sharf works that will make more sense to us, but I want to start with the low hanging fruit and you may have just saved me a lot of time and money.”

  “Well, I guess I’m next, but you already know something about how Drazen romance works from all of my arranged dates,” Tinka said, sliding a few books across the table for Blythe to see the cover art. “Around half of the story is about matching up financial statements with family trees, test results—”

  “You guys have tests too?” Flazint interrupted. “I thought it was just us.”

  “Hardly,” the Horten girl jumped in. “Most of my relatives stayed with the colony ship where I was born to work on the terraforming project. I’m putting off studying all that marriage stuff until I’m finished at the Open University because I don’t want to forget it before we can get together for the tests.”

  “Your whole family has to be there?” the Frunge girl asked.

  “They have to take the test at the same time,” Marilla said, looking surprised by the question. “Don’t your family members have to take tests?”

  “What sort of tests are we talking about?” Blythe asked.

  “Personality, compatibility, intelligence,” the Horten girl ticked off on her fingers.

  “Ancestral knowledge, financial acumen, professional competence,” Yvandi added.

  “Don’t forget the health exams,” Tinka said. “There’s no bigger turn-off than when the matchmaker shows you a scan of your suitor’s insides and tries to hide something with her opposing thumb.”

  “I know,” Affie said. “That’s why the royal families all do our own scans.”

  Vivian, Dorothy and Blythe all exchanged looks of disbelief.

  “So, doesn’t anybody elope in your romances?” Blythe asked.

  “I think my implant is glitching,” Marilla said in distress. “Are you really talking about a couple that runs off and gets married without their families approving?”

  “Who would perform the ceremony?” the Sharf girl demanded.

  “Humans are funny that way,” Flazint said. “They let just about anybody perform ceremonies, including ship captains.”

  “Who are you to point fingers?” Dorothy objected. “You’re the one who made me get the companionship contract with Kevin!”

  “I was sort of acting as your parent or guardian,” the Frunge girl admitted. “Normally, our marriage negotiations start with the ancestors and work their way down through the grandparents and parents. If everybody agrees, then the potential bride and groom are introduced, and they can get a temporary companionship contract if they’re in a hurry to go out together. We kind of skipped all of that for you and went right to the carving in stone.”

  “So do all of the romances in your novels require prior family consent?” Blythe inquired without directing the question at anybody in particular. “That could be a problem.”

  “A lot of the old novels from Earth that mom reads are like that too,” Dorothy said. “Not so much with the testing, maybe, but definitely with the permission.”

  “You probably want to stick with our bedtime books,” Flazint suggested. “They’re much shorter than regular romances because they cut out the whole financial auditing process and barely even touch on test results. But some of the family interactions are pretty funny. One of the best romances I’ve read lately had the parents of the guy being in law enforcement and the parents of the girl being criminals. There was a scene where the kids are being introduced for the first time and the boy’s father’s tracking dog wouldn’t stop barking because the girl’s mother is wearing the same shoes she had on when cutting into a vault.”

  “How did they ever get to the point of introducing the children if they were so incompatible?” Blythe asked.

  “Cops and robbers go together like politicians and money launderers,” Flazint explained.

  “My dad was a pirate when he met my mother,” Marilla confessed. “Mom’s father is a customs agent so they just naturally hit it off. Mom says that grandpa cried when he heard that she was joining a colony ship after the wedding. He even offered to give my dad a place to live if he wanted to stay behind.”

  “How do they work all the tests you guys were talking about?” Vivian asked. “Are they like multiple choice, or oral examinations—”

  “Oral examinations come before we even get to the tests,” Affie cut her off. “Vergallians take teeth very seriously.”

  “I meant where an examiner asks questions and you have to answer them.”

  “Like hearing tests? Even tech ban worlds allow implants for that so it’s not a big issue.”

  “No, I meant oral examinations as an alternative to a written exa
m,” Vivian persisted stubbornly.

  “She’s just teasing you,” Dorothy told the younger girl. “Be nice, Affie. Her mom is buying.”

  “Let me think then,” the Vergallian girl said. “When my oldest sister went on the market, I had to—”

  “Went on the market?” Blythe interrupted.

  “That’s what all the girls call it. In the Empire, negotiations for the oldest daughter usually start in her teens, like forty years before she’s ready for marriage. But we don’t follow all those crazy old traditions in Fleet.”

  “So you won’t start your marriage negotiations until you’re actually marrying age.”

  “Ten years before,” Affie said. “I mean, a girl wouldn’t want to be so rushed that she ends up marrying just anybody.” She took a sip of the wine Blythe had ordered, smiled appreciatively, and continued. “So when my sister went on the market, I had to take the standard battery of tests, which are loosely based on our school curriculum. The groom’s representatives sent their own medical team to do the scans, of course, and our own family repeated them to make sure there wasn’t any funny business.”

  “What sort of funny business?” Dorothy asked.

  “If the family attorney doesn’t have a friendly scan available at the negotiating table, the other side can start pulling recessive genes out of their hats to try to beat down the price,” Affie explained matter-of-factly. “And then there’s the whole younger twin scam the groom’s side has to keep an eye on.”

  “Royal families with twins try to pass off a younger twin as the older?” Flazint asked, her eyes shining. “That’s incredible. Even I could write a novel around a plot like that.”

  “Except it hasn’t worked in like a million years because everybody is watching for it,” Affie said.

  “That’s why they won’t expect it,” the Frunge girl insisted.

  “What difference does it make?” Dorothy asked.

  “The older twin inherits the throne,” the Vergallian explained. “The younger twin doesn’t have any more market value than a younger sister who isn’t a twin. But if they’re identical twins, it gives the family the opportunity to sell the same cow twice.”