by E. M. Foner
“She’s almost as bad as Dorothy was after David left,” Kelly complained. “I take that back. She’s much more animated than Dorothy was, and she’s kind of interesting to talk to, though I have difficulty following her. Are you sure she’s fully recovered from the entropy thing? I can’t even get her out to look around Mac’s Bones or visit Dring’s gravity surfer.”
“Teragram mages are a bit like the vampires of your legends,” Libby explained. “They won’t enter a house unless you offer them food and invite them in.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Knowing that they are unlikely to receive a second invitation when the first one wears out, they can be reluctant to leave. I believe the record for a tunnel network species playing host to a Teragram mage was over a hundred generations for the Verlock royal family.”
“You mean the mage stayed inside as a houseguest for thousands of years?”
“Several hundred thousand years,” the station librarian replied. “Verlocks are excellent hosts and slow breeders.”
Kelly retraced her steps with the refilled mug, accepted Baa’s thanks, and headed out to meet Dring. The Maker had almost reached the ice harvester by the time Kelly got to the bottom of the ramp, and the two of them made their way towards the lift tube.
“Do you have any experience with Teragram mages as guests?” Kelly asked him.
“We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream,” Dring responded.
It took Kelly a moment to realize that the Maker was testing her with a quote. “Don’t tell me,” she said, closing her eyes in concentration. “Not an English author, right? Not even a novelist?”
“Correct.”
“But it’s from my library.”
“It’s from your shelves,” Dring hedged. “I’ve noticed that Joe’s taste in books is less romantic than your own.”
“Thoreau?” she hazarded a guess.
“Very close. Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
“American authors it is, then,” Kelly said, and challenged the Maker with a quote of her own. “I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house, I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited.”
Dring came to an abrupt halt in front of the lift tube and gave his friend a searching look of concern.
“I did it again, didn’t I?” Kelly let out her breath like a deflating balloon. “I gave you the title in the quote. Do you think my mind is going already? My mom is still sharp as a tack and I hoped I’d take after her.”
“It’s impressive that you could recall an American quote related to guests at all,” Dring comforted her. “I was sure you’d go with an old standby from Benjamin Franklin.”
“I can’t get used to the fact that most of the alien ambassadors I know were alive at the same time as Franklin,” Kelly responded, hoping to cover up the fact that she couldn’t recall the famous saying in question. “Some of them were even serving on Union Station when Franklin was writing his autobiography.”
“Lynx and Woojin’s house,” Dring told the lift tube as they stepped inside. “What you lack in longevity you make up for in fertility. It all works out the same in the end, except for it being different individuals.”
“That seems like a pretty big difference to me,” Kelly objected. “The concept sounds familiar, though. Is it from the Higher Determinism belief system that Dorothy’s Vergallian friend tried explaining to me?”
“They just copied it from us,” the Maker replied. When the capsule stopped, he politely ushered Kelly out into the corridor. “I’ve only been here once before. Which way is it?”
“Stop trying to make me feel good,” the ambassador said, but she couldn’t help smiling as Dring pretended to be perplexed over the location of Lynx’s apartment. “It’s two corridors down and then the, uh, the fifth door on the left.”
Three corridors down at the fourth door on the right, Kelly located the right apartment by reading the nameplate. She touched the lock pad and the door slid open.
“No question about your being welcome here as a guest,” Dring told her.
“We’re in the other room,” Woojin’s voice called. “Is that you, Kelly?”
“Yes,” the ambassador replied, heading for the bedroom with the Maker in tow. Lynx was sitting up in bed, looking wan but happy, and her husband was holding the baby like it was a hot piece of delicate crystal that he was simultaneously terrified of dropping or crushing.
“Do you know anything about this burping stuff?” Woojin asked. “No manual included.”
“I just patted mine on the back, maybe bounced and rubbed a little, but I didn’t bottle feed, and neither of them were big burpers. Didn’t the midwife go over this with you, Lynx?”
“Wooj likes to ask everybody who visits,” Lynx said. “I’ve never seen such a nervous man.”
The ex-mercenary stood ramrod straight with the baby held against his shoulder, bouncing gently on his heels and patting like he was shaping a hamburger. “Just make sure you’re supporting his head, Woojin.” Kelly added.
“You haven’t heard?” Lynx asked, breaking out in an enormous grin. “The Farling got it wrong.”
“I told you that watch was just a gag gift.”
“Not the watch. My delivery time was just two minutes late and I won the bet. But our baby is a girl.”
“A girl? What did the doctor say when he found out?”
“Oh, you know Farlings. He said something critical about our chromosomes and implied that he wasn’t really paying attention because it’s all too primitive to hold his interest.”
“You look quite happy with the outcome,” Dring commented.
“I am. I always wanted a girl, and Woojin actually kept telling me that we would have one based on my dreams. Plus, the doctor visited this morning and returned double his fee!”
“We’re not keeping the money, Lynx,” her husband said sternly. “I would happily pay him ten times what he charged.”
“I know, I know. I just want to make the beetle sweat it out for a few days.”
“So what’s her name?” Kelly asked.
“Em,” Lynx announced, beaming at her infant.
“For Emma? Emily?” the ambassador guessed.
“M793qK,” the new mother replied. “I’m never going to let the Farling live his mistake down. Besides, it will give me a chance to tell the story about how I won fifty creds whenever somebody asks who she’s named after. I just wish he had a waiting room so I could tell his other patients when I bring her in for immunizations.”
“You’re sticking with him as your pediatrician?”
“He got us this far, and she is perfect. We counted her toes and everything. If she gets any more beautiful, I’ll have to hide her face with that ugly mask that Dorothy’s Vergallian friend gave me.”
Woojin returned the infant to her mother, and said, “Visiting hour is up. The midwife said five minutes maximum per customer. Lynx is supposed to be resting.”
“You’re worse than a mother hen,” his wife grumbled, but she didn’t protest further. Kelly and Dring offered their congratulations again and headed back to the lift tube.
“Would you like to come over and meet our new houseguest now, Dring?” Kelly offered. “She’s very interesting and I think you have a lot in common.”
The Maker halted and stared at the ambassador for the second time that morning. “Should I assume you mean that in the sense of shared experience and longevity, or are you hinting that I’ve overstayed my welcome in Mac’s Bones?”
“Silly,” Kelly said, borrowing her daughter’s favorite expression. “I just meant that both of you have been so many places and seen so many things. Baa must be the only sentient on the station who doesn’t seem like an infant to you, aside from Gryph, I mean.”
“The Teragram mages are long-lived compared to the tunnel network species, though it’s hard to pin down their lifespan as they spend thousands of years at a time
in entropy cocoons. Much of their technology is focused on nanobots, and they are able to effect repairs to their bodies at the cellular level, not entirely unlike what we shape-shifters do as a natural process.”
“Mac’s Bones,” Kelly instructed the lift tube as the door slid shut behind them. “She did some kind of dematerialization thing right in front of us. I’ve never even heard of that outside of science fiction.”
“I’m sure you’ve seen the Cherts disappear in front of your eyes more than once.”
“But they use those shoulder projectors to fool the eyes.” The door opened and Kelly exited the lift tube along with the Maker. “Are you saying that she didn’t really dematerialize? She just turned invisible and snuck past us?”
“The Teragram mages have more tricks up their sleeves than any other species I have encountered. Deception and misdirection are their stock in trade, in part because their numbers are too few to accomplish anything by force. Their civilization reached its peak tens of millions of years ago, but an increasing tendency towards complete independence from one another prevented them from achieving stability, and their population went into a steep decline. They would have gone extinct altogether if some of their number hadn’t stumbled into the occupation of playing gods together on primitive planets.”
“And the Stryx allow it?”
“On the balance the mages do more good than harm. I’m not aware of a single case where a species they took under active management failed to reach the next level of development.”
“What comes after accepting alien techno-mages as gods?”
“Generally a loss of faith in pantheons and a shift to monotheism,” Dring replied.
“Why does the galaxy have to be so weird?” Kelly complained, and then shouted, “Down,” at the remaining unnamed puppy, who practically knocked her over with his enthusiastic greeting.
“Kelly,” the Stryx librarian spoke over the ambassador’s implant. “The results of our review are in.”
“You can tell me out loud. I don’t have any secrets from Dring.”
“Humans will continue on probationary status for the foreseeable future,” Libby announced, her voice echoing through the hold. Then she added at her normal volume, “That was an all stations public address announcement, so don’t worry that you have to tell anybody.”
“We failed? What are we doing wrong? Was it all the alien criticism?”
“No, the tunnel network ambassadors on all of the stations voted unanimously to welcome you into full membership. It’s simply that you haven’t met the criteria of developing your own faster-than-light drive and establishing a workable system of governance for your homeworld.”
“But you knew that before the review started!”
“These things take place on a schedule,” Libby replied evasively.
“What schedule? When’s the next review?”
“I’m afraid that information will only be available when you come off of probation.”
“I had to go through listening to all of my friends criticize me for nothing?” Kelly demanded.
“I hope it wasn’t for nothing. And I do have some good news for you on the home front,” the station librarian added, as Kelly and Dring approached the ice harvester. “Baa’s remittance came in.”
“But the other ambassadors told me that she was making it up. They said that the Teragram mages who visit your stations always talk about waiting for a remittance, and then they hang around eating you out of house and home.”
“Jeeves is on his way to deliver it right now.”
“This I’d like to see,” the Maker said. “I’ve never heard of a Teragram mage actually receiving a remittance. Normally they dig in their heels until they hear about an employment opportunity in the god market.”
The pair reached the ice harvester just as Joe, Paul and Kevin emerged after their morning coffee break. “What happened to you, Kevin?” Kelly asked. She tried to keep a straight face, but found herself unable to hold in her laughter.
“That’s it,” the young man declared, turning around on the ramp. “I’m not wearing this.”
“You promised my daughter,” Joe said, blocking Kevin’s way back into the ice harvester. “Besides, I’m curious to see how the big pocket in the front works out. I saw a Grenouthian mechanic at work once, and you can keep a lot of tools handy in a belly pouch.”
“Nobody laughs at giant bunnies,” Kevin pointed out.
“Dorothy ambushed him during our coffee break,” Paul explained to Kelly and Dring. “She’s working on a new line for traders and she has a whole branding theme planned. What was it again?” he prompted Kevin.
“I.M.P.,” the embarrassed young man replied, displaying the little imp embroidered above the breast pocket. “It stands for ‘Improved Mobility and Protection.’”
“Spin around,” Kelly ordered, and Kevin complied good-naturedly. “Have you ever seen anybody else wearing a green jumpsuit with shoulder boards?”
“Jeeves suggested I start using green fabric for prototypes because it’s cheap,” Dorothy explained, coming out of the ice harvester and slipping past her father and Paul. “The shoulder boards aren’t just for aesthetics. They protect the wearer from, uh, shoulder injuries. I’m going to work with them to observe. So how are Lynx and the baby doing?”
“They’re both fine,” the ambassador replied. “And I haven’t forgotten that you still owe me five creds from betting on Lynx’s delivery time at the baby shower.”
Dorothy suddenly became very interested in adjusting the angle of one of Kevin’s shoulder boards in an effort not to see her mother’s outstretched palm as she passed it. While Kelly and Dring waited for the ramp to clear, Samuel and Vivian appeared from the direction of the training camp. The two young teens were carrying fencing gear and arguing about something.
“It only counts if you get me with the tip,” Samuel reiterated. “And the time you got me in the side was only because I was still extended from scoring on you, so it would have been waved off.”
“That’s dumb,” Vivian said. “Who doesn’t use the edge of a blade in a duel? And I only let you graze my side to create an opening. If we were really fighting, you would have been dead at least three times to my one!”
“But the Vergallian rules…”
“Do you see any Vergallians?” Vivian demanded, making a show of looking around the hold. “Does anybody see any Vergallians?”
“She’s a tough one,” Dring whispered to Kelly. “Do you think he knows what she’s doing?”
“They’re both still children,” the ambassador whispered back, drawing a skeptical look from the Maker.
“Hey, Mom, Dring,” Samuel said, finally noticing that they had an audience. “How’s Lynx’s baby?”
“She’s a beautiful girl,” Kelly replied. “Well, a bit red and wrinkly at the moment, but they all start like that.”
“Cool. I’ve got work after dance practice today, so I’m going to eat with the Oxfords rather than coming all the way home. And Nigel will be by later to see if the last puppy wants to go with him and Vivian’s aunt Molly.”
“They’re leaving already?”
“My dad rented a ship for his sister to finish her survey contract,” Vivian answered. “She says the job is mainly done, and the work is just visiting a bunch of dead worlds and taking pictures from orbit, so they won’t be gone for more than a few cycles.”
Jeeves arrived, the lights on his case twinkling in a display of humor. “Did you see Kevin’s shoulders?” the Stryx asked. “If I still worked for Libby’s dating service, I’d say that any man who would wear something like that for a girl is a goner.”
“That’s my daughter you’re talking about,” Kelly said in a show of indignation. After confirming that Samuel and Vivian had continued on inside, she added, “Are you sure? I can never tell what she’s thinking.”
“Would you like to place a small wager?” Jeeves asked.
“Enough with the bets, already. I
thought that the reason the Stryx opened Earth to start with was because we ran our economy like a casino.”
“You ran your economy like a crooked casino,” Jeeves corrected her. “There’s a difference. Are you here to witness my punishment, Dring?”
“I suspected it might be something like that,” the Maker replied with a toothy smile. “Shall we?”
The three made their way into the living room area of the ice harvester where Baa was sitting upright in a narrow space at the end of the couch. She was scowling at Beowulf, who had apparently asserted his property rights.
“My closest Human friend, a Maker and a Stryx,” the mage said, rising to her feet and wiping her nose with one of Kelly’s tissues. Beowulf immediately stretched out a little further, taking up the vacant space. “To what do I owe this visit to my temporary home?”
Jeeves extended his pincer to present the Teragram with an ornate box. She eagerly accepted the gift, opened the lid, and stared at the programmable cred resting on a velvet-like substance.
“Are you proposing, Jeeves?” Samuel asked. He already was on his way back out with Vivian, both of them having stored their fencing gear in the boy’s room.
“In a manner of speaking,” the Stryx replied, though the kids didn’t even slow down for an answer as they passed. “Is this the remittance you were waiting for, Baa?”
“Oh, yes,” she purred. “This will set me up just fine.”
“Where did it come from?” Kelly asked.
“Wherever remittances usually come from, I imagine,” the mage replied happily. “Who cares? I’d love to stay and chat, but I have quite a bit of shopping to do before I leave the tunnel network. These high-value programmable creds positively erode in value if you don’t spend the balance quickly. You’ve been a lovely host, Ambassador, but I’m afraid I’m allergic to your dog so I won’t be able to return.” Upon concluding her speech, she swept out of the ice harvester without a backwards glance.
“Allergic to Beowulf?” Jeeves thundered.
“You didn’t know?” Libby countered. “I doubt she would have lasted another day.”
“That was half of my savings!”
