by E. M. Foner
“Do you think I’m crazy?” The boy exhaled in relief that it wasn’t something serious. “I saw enough of that life before I was ten. But if I could turn pro at Nova and make some money, that would be cool. Maybe I’ll buy you a new tug,” he added with a grin.
“All right, I just wanted to ask. Hey, don’t forget to give the consulate the ceiling coordinates for this patch.” Joe squinted against the lights to read the numbers and letters. “It looks like N5045 by E732.”
“I make it N8048 by E132,” Paul corrected him. “When’s the last time you had your eyes checked?”
“At my last fitness board,” Joe replied. “Let’s see, that was, oh, four years ago?”
“It’s a good thing you don’t have to shoot stuff for a living anymore,” the boy teased Joe. “It’s not like an eye test is a visit to the dentist. Anyway, I’ll see you later.”
“Not if I see you first,” Joe retorted.
“Yeah, that’s really likely,” Paul answered with a laugh. “And if you do stop and get your eyes checked, don’t use your implants to magnify the charts. That defeats the whole purpose.”
Ten
After the last two dates, Kelly was beginning to think of her black cocktail dress as a suit of armor to don before combat. She decided to wear her hair up for a change, since she was sure there would be no difficulty in connecting with a man who was wearing yellow pants. Did some evil ex-girlfriend tell him that the pants matched his hair? They were meeting at the People Bowl, in the high rent section of the Little Apple, and she was looking forward to seeing how the other half lived.
Kelly arrived just a little early and entered the People Bowl through a spooky tunnel that glowed with soft blue light. Her date was already waiting for her, yellow pants and all. He approached with a confident stride and produced a dozen roses from behind his back, like a conjuring trick.
“Thanks, I think I know these roses,” she said and accepted them graciously. “I’m Kelly, and you are?”
“Sangrid Khan,” he replied and indicated their table. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to our date.”
“That’s so sweet of you.” Kelly favored him with a warm smile, after which he shocked her by pulling out her chair to make it easier for her to take her place in the cramped restaurant. All of the restaurants and cafes on the station featured sardine tin seating due to the space constraints, but the People Bowl took crowding to a new level. A good third of the floor space was taken up with the broad base of a glass dome filled with a bright, translucent blue gas. As soon as she adjusted to the light, Kelly noticed that there were some darker blue stains floating within the gas, which circulated with an unseen current.
“Looks like the filter system for their fancy lighting is clogging up,” Kelly ventured to break the ice, as Sangrid studied the menu like it was a prop in a play. “Still, it’s a neat idea. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Ah, so this is your first time here. Those are Harrians floating about in the plasma. The gas is tetrafluoromethane, I believe.”
“Alright, never mind the tetrafloor-whatever, let’s focus on the Harrians. Are they animal, mineral or vegetable?”
“Hmm, I don’t think they fall into any of those categories, but they are definitely sentient. They pay to come and watch us eat. Apparently they find it refreshing, but only people with excellent vision can pick them out,” Sangrid explained complacently as he completed his perusal of the menu. “The pasta is very good here, and all of the salad ingredients are fresh from the ag decks. Do you have any special dietary constraints, or would you like me to order for you?”
“You can order, thanks. I eat pretty much everything,” Kelly replied.
“Omnivorous with stable digestion, that’s very good,” he praised her. “No food allergies that you’re aware of?”
“No, none at all,” Kelly replied with a grin. “My family tree looks like a forest. I have that hybrid vigor.”
“And a healthy immune system, I’ll bet,” Sangrid said approvingly, as he tapped on the menu icons to place their order. “I thought a bottle of wine would be nice as well. I hope you don’t have any problems with alcohol?”
“No, no,” Kelly replied, and took up the game. “I know some people believe that redheads can’t handle their booze, but I assure you it’s an old wives tale.”
“I knew that color was natural!” Sangrid practically beamed. “I’ll bet that those perfect teeth you flashed earlier are your own as well.”
“I do what I can,” Kelly replied and laughed outright at the direction of the conversation. If he thought she wouldn’t sit there all night accepting compliments, he was going to find out just how wrong he was.
“I must apologize in advance for the service being a bit slow here,” Sangrid told her while he fished inside his dinner jacket and pulled out a red velvet sack. “I brought along a little game to help pass the time,” he continued, pouring the contents out on the table and picking out a little wooden block with symbols on the sides. Suddenly he tossed it to her with a flick of his thumb, saying, “Have you ever seen one of these?”
Kelly’s hand shot up and she caught the game piece right in front of her nose, a feat that surprised her so much that she decided to play it cool and not say anything about the appropriateness of flinging something at your date’s face without warning.
“I think I’ve seen my friend’s daughters playing this game. Something to do with taking turns building a tower?” she guessed.
“Excellent. That’s exactly it,” he said as he bobbed his head approvingly. “The trick is, you have to stack them with the surface glyphs matching, but you can’t cover more than two of the red dots on the outline of the glyph at any point.”
“Oh, I see.” Kelly did a quick survey of the game pieces out on the table. “Do we get to pick them from the pile, or do we pick blindly from the bag?”
“I’m beginning to think you’re hustling me,” he joked, looking more pleased by the minute. “Flopsie can be played open face or closed face. The gamblers play closed face of course.”
“Shall I just start then?” Kelly asked. The she carefully balanced the piece he’d thrown at her, positioning its glyph against the identical glyph of a block on the table, leaving two dots exposed.
“Ah, I won’t give you such an easy one.” He grinned wickedly and stacked a matching block over her play, so that almost half of its weight was hanging over the edge in thin air.
“Cruel, cruel,” Kelly protested, studying the faces of the blocks for options. Then she made her choice and balanced the block gently on the stack, bringing the mass of the whole back towards the center.
“Perfect, not a hint of a tremor,” Sangrid proclaimed, then suddenly swept the little tower and the remaining blocks back into the bag. “Wine’s here.”
“You certainly keep things moving right along,” Kelly observed, as a waiter poured wine into their glasses, then paused to give them a chance to approve of the vintage.
“Thank you. I’m sure it’s fine,” Sangrid spoke bruskly to chase away the waiter. “I propose a toast,” he continued, raising his glass so high that the bottom of his face was concealed as he whispered, “Can you hear me now?”
“Yes.” Kelly laughed, then she narrowed her eyes conspiratorially and whispered in an even lower register, “Can you hear me now?”
“Very good, very good.” Sangrid took a long sip of wine, and set the glass back on the table, his smile broader than ever. Without the slightest show of self-consciousness, he placed his right elbow on the table, the hand open, and then he laid his left forearm on the table so the left hand was directly below the right. “Arm wrestle?”
Uh oh. The warning bells went off in Kelly’s head. This has just moved from a little eccentric to very weird. But he looked happy and, well, normal, so she hated to decline. Who knows? Maybe he spent the last few years in some place where this was acceptable behavior. She forced a chuckle, crossed palms with his right
hand and grasped the left on the table.
“Go,” he said, and she reflexively tried to push his hand down, but she could feel he was only pushing back hard enough to keep their arms vertical, not trying to beat her. That was better, but a little insulting, so she shifted her chair a little and tried harder, putting her shoulder into it. He looked a little surprised as his arm was forced backwards, but also happy, as he exerted himself more strongly and forced her arm back to the vertical. Kelly made another effort which met with the same result, and then she slacked off, and he released both of her hands.
“Great, just great,” Sangrid enthused, as if he were a physical trainer who was helping her rehab from an injury. “Quick reactions, nice balance of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles. You really exceed all expectations, Kelly.”
“Thank you, Sangrid, but I’m beginning to have a strange feeling about all of this.” She kept her tone light, but there was no mistaking that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the way the date was going. “I’ve never been on a job interview, but I imagine it would be something like this.”
“You’ve hit the nail right on the head,” he confirmed her guess and slapped his hand on the table. “You have an excellent grasp of analogies and pattern recognition.”
Kelly felt herself starting to blush on hearing the high points of her self-image acknowledged and played back by a stranger, but she had no path other than forward. “So you see our date as a job interview?” she asked hesitantly, as the worm of doubt burrowed into the positive impression she had started to form of this cheerful, if somewhat peculiar man.
“Why, of course courting is like a job interview,” he replied, sounding almost surprised. “What could be more important than picking the right person to contribute half of the genes to your offspring? And would you want to accidentally fall in love with somebody you wouldn’t have chosen as a partner in a business?”
“You make the whole thing sound like a business,” Kelly complained. “Don’t you want romance, mutual attraction, that special spark?”
“We’re neither of us children, Kelly,” he remonstrated her, the beginnings of a frown appearing on his jovial countenance. “When people are well-matched, love may follow. But even if it doesn’t, they’re still well-matched, aren’t they?”
Kelly opened her mouth to reply and then closed it. She wasn’t going to debate him on the merits of love matches on a first date, but something about his vibe didn’t exactly match his words.
“It seems to me that well-matched needs to go beyond physical characteristics,” Kelly said slowly. “I get the feeling that you’re more focused on the offspring side of the issue.”
“Amazing, perfect, you really read my mind, Kelly,” he said, recovering his good humor. “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about, but I couldn’t quite see how to bring it up. You see, I would be perfectly willing to pay you to have my child. I wouldn’t even insist on natural conception, as attractive as that proposition appears.” He concluded this speech with a charming smile, as if she should receive his proposition as the ultimate compliment.
Kelly slumped in her chair for a moment, then she pushed back from the table and rose to her feet. “I really don’t have anything else to say to you Sangrid. Thank you for the wine.”
“Wait, wait,” he objected frantically, reaching across the table and grabbing her wrist. “Just hear me out. If it’s pregnancy that scares you, we could arrange for a host mother. I would pay you for your eggs.”
She regarded him in horror, made more acute by the dawning fear that Eemas had set her up with this guy because their profiles matched. Sangrid mistook her momentary paralysis for second thoughts, and continued with his pitch.
“I can’t offer top dollar of course. You’ll have to admit you’re a couple years past prime for egg harvesting, but I guarantee it will be worth your while,” he pleaded.
Kelly jerked her wrist away, fixed him with a fierce stare, then grabbed the roses and rushed blindly from the restaurant. From aliens, to bride-stealers, to this jerk. Was it possible that her options were really this bad? Finding her way to the main drag of the Little Apple, she spotted Blythe working the outside tables of a café.
“Flowers for the lady, sir,” she heard Blythe’s practiced patter. “Buy a flower from a poor girl, Missus.” Kelly caught her eye and motioned her to come over.
“How’s business?” Kelly asked the girl, unable to suppress a grin at the begrimed face and the shabby dress.
“Great, Aunty Kelly,” Blythe answered. “I’ve only got these left, and Chastity ran out a while ago. It’s a big date night.”
“Do you want to buy these?” Kelly proffered the dozen roses she’d received from Sangrid.
Blythe bit her lower lip, and then glancing around as if she was worried somebody could be paying attention, she led Kelly into the doorway of a clothing store that was closed for the evening.
“We don’t really accept returns, Aunty Kelly, but since it’s you, I could go 10 centees,” she offered. “That’s almost what we pay the wholesaler for new, and yours are used.”
“You really are good at this, aren’t you?” Kelly grimaced and handed over the roses. “Are you girls saving up for anything special?”
“Can you keep a secret?” Blythe whispered, her eyes shiny with excitement.
“That depends, Blythe. If I thought you were going to do something that impacted your family, I guess I’d have to tell your mother.”
“Well, never mind then,” Blythe replied shortly. “If you’ll excuse me, I have flowers to sell.”
“Hey, what about my 10 centees?” Kelly protested.
“Oh, see Chastity about that. She handles the accounts payable,” Blythe replied matter-of-factly before starting back in on her pitch. “Fresh roses, 25 centees a dozen.”
Kelly started after her, then turned and headed off in the other direction, towards the Burger Bar. She had just enough money to treat herself to a normal dinner, one without voyeuristic plasma creatures watching her chew. It was probably bad for karma to sell date flowers in any case, no matter how rotten the date.
Eleven
Joe dispensed with the silver suit for his second Eemas date in the theory that it had brought him bad luck. Instead he wore an old dress uniform with all the identifying marks removed. The buttons were a little tight across his gut, but sorting through metal scrap helped keep him in shape, especially since mass doesn’t disappear with weight in lower gravity and his tendency was to just lift more. Chasing Beowulf around the scrap yard to get back his gloves helped also, though he couldn’t get over the feeling that the dog was exercising him like a four-legged drill sergeant.
The date was at Camelot, a medieval-themed hotel casino that was primarily popular with humanoid species who favored edged weapons. Most sentient beings who retained personal weaponry ended up eschewing the advanced hand weapons that could slice a building in half in favor of sharp and pointy things that cut and stabbed. You never knew if the other party would have defensive technology in place that could turn your energy or projectile weapons against you.
Hereditary rulers preferred not to have a lot of high-tech weapons that could turn every peasant into an army rattling around a planet. Sticking with old-fashioned weapons on the ground meant that trained soldiers had a tremendous advantage over rabbles and militias, but as soon as spaceships were involved, victory went to the technically advanced. Most interplanetary and interspecies conflicts were fought and decided with words, before any large-scale bloodshed took place.
Joe’s dress uniform was really a standard officer’s uniform that didn’t have any repair patches on it, patches which frequently aligned with scars on his skin. It was primarily recognizable as a military uniform by the number of pockets and loops for holding various weapons and other field necessities. Stripped of combat survival gear, it resembled something an upscale tradesman might wear.
As he cut through the Little Apple on his way to Camelot, wearing t
he uniform brought Joe’s senses onto high alert and he spotted the ambush laid by the flower girl in time to cross to the other side of the main drag. Chuckling to himself, he looked back over his shoulder to see how she reacted to being outsmarted, then came to a dead stop as something soft bounced off of his long legs. A tearful little face looked up at him.
“Please excuse me,” Joe stammered, finding he had almost run down a petite ten-year-old girl in an old frock with smudges on her face.
“Oh, sir, look what you’ve done to my flowers.” The girl stared up at him pathetically while pointing at the mound of yellow daisies on the walkway. Joe was no horticultural expert, but they looked slightly wilted to him, perhaps leftovers from a slow evening the night before. But he knew when he was beat.
“How much for the lot?” he asked, trying to sound cheerful about it.
“All of them?” Her eyes opened so wide that they seemed to stretch from one side of her head to the other, with just the thinnest strip of nose to keep them apart. “We usually get 15 centees a dozen for daisies, but since you’re taking all of them, I could make you a special price of 50 centees for the lot.” Without waiting for an answer, she squatted down and rapidly aligned the stems of the fallen flowers into a bulging bouquet, which to Joe’s eye, looked like it contained less than three dozen daises. He sighed and fished a handful of coins out of his pocket.
“Are you related to the girl selling flowers across the corridor?” he asked to cover his embarrassment as he separated out two 25-centee pieces for her.
“She’s my older sister,” the girl replied, taking the money. “We’re saving to buy a baby brother.”
“Buy a baby brother? Is that even legal?” Joe asked in surprise, not being all that well informed about family law on the station.
