by E. M. Foner
“So what’s the problem?” Dorothy asked. “Samuel isn’t going to give you a hard time about changing your major. He’s pretty confused about what he wants to study himself.”
“That’s why I don’t want to just drop it on him, like I’m all set and he’s still struggling. I know he’s getting frustrated with Space Engineering, but he can’t decide what else to take.”
“Don’t they have any diplomacy courses?” Judith asked. “He’d be good at that.” Then she picked up a slice of pizza and began blowing on it so vigorously that a slice of pepperoni broke free and forced Vivian to duck. “Sorry.”
“You know, this has never happened to me before,” Dorothy remarked suddenly.
“Being pregnant?” Vivian asked.
“Being the person who other people come to with questions about life,” the ambassador’s daughter replied seriously. “It’s kind of neat.”
“Thanks for making me feel worse,” Judith said.
“So how are the ponchos going?” Vivian asked.
Dorothy looked around and motioned to the two women to draw in closer before whispering, “I gave up on them as soon as I saw myself in the mirror, but don’t tell anybody. I’ve kept it alive as a bargaining chip to get Jeeves to accept my fashion show idea. You two are modeling, by the way.”
“Is this part of your sponsorship deal for the LARPing league?”
“It’s an add-on. I got the idea when Baa, Affie and Flazint went to hand out our bags-of-holding at the first LARP of the season. Then I caught Baa randomly enchanting some of our other bespoke fashions just because she thinks it’s funny, so now we have travel cloaks that will stop a fireball and hats that will stand up to a spiked mace. It’s all based on armor percentages that I don’t really understand, but it’s a great way to get exposure for our brand.”
“I remember when I asked you to build offensive capabilities into the command-and-control interface for your heels you refused,” Judith rebuked the ambassador’s daughter.
“Enchantments for LARPing are different, and Jeeves only agreed to one-offs for marketing. The problem is that role-players dress in character, so while we can work in a cloak or a hat, who wears a halter top into combat?”
“An Elf dancer,” Vivian said. “I’ve been reading through the guides that Jonah brings home, and there’s a dancer class that can buff the whole group with morale and health by doing certain dances.”
“Really? That’s great. Now all we need is a character who wears heels.”
“Plenty of female players equip high heels, though there’s a lot of controversy about it. It’s not out of the question for magic wielders, who are glass cannons in any case, to go for a fashion statement. I also remember seeing one assassin-specific class whose high heels have built-in spring technology that increases jumping ability by a factor of five, both taking off and landing. I guess if you spend a lot of time ambushing targets in dark alleys or forests, jumping can be pretty important.”
“Our heels can practically do that without enchantments,” Dorothy said excitedly.
“Assassin doesn’t sound that bad,” Judith said, snagging another piece of pizza from the box. “Maybe I can do that in your fashion show.”
“Check with the beetle before Flower leaves the station,” Dorothy ordered. “You’re not showing much yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe for you to be jumping off roofs.”
Fifteen
“Everybody please be on their best behavior,” Aisha addressed the group of excited nine-year-old Junior Station Scouts. “We’re about to enter the EarthCent Embassy where Mike’s father is the associate ambassador. They do very important work here, so we need to remain quiet and respectful, as if we were in a library.”
“What’s a library?” one of the children asked.
“Grandma Kelly’s house,” Fenna piped up. “And she’s the ambassador too.”
“But we’re here to see my dad,” Mike said. “I’m going to earn my ‘Visit a parent at work’ merit badge today.”
“Just keep your hands in your pockets and don’t run around inside making a mess,” Aisha pleaded with the children, some of whom still had an excessive number of sparkles in their hair from an eventful visit to the workplace of a parent who operated a hair salon and hadn’t realized one of the children would be tall enough to reach that shelf. “I’ll just ping Mike’s father and let him know we’re here.”
The embassy door slid open and the scouts were met with the high-pitched whine of power tools. There were scraps of metal paneling everywhere, along with several sets of saw-horses set up in the reception area, which was littered with packing materials. Daniel almost tripped on his way to meet the visitors after getting his foot stuck in a loop of discarded strapping from a crate.
“Sorry about the noise and the mess,” he yelled. “Just give me a minute and I’ll ask the crew to go on break.”
“This is so cool,” a boy with straw-colored hair said to Mike. “I thought you said your dad had one of those boring talking jobs.”
The construction crew put down their cutting tools, making sure that the biometric safeties were engaged so the children couldn’t accidentally trigger them, and then moved through the open wall into the old travel agency to work on panel installation.
“What’s going on, Daniel?” Aisha asked. “I thought the job was supposed to be finished today.”
The associate ambassador grimaced. “Somebody messed up on the measurements for all of the custom fit panels we ordered. They’re too short and too narrow.”
“How does cutting them help?”
“That’s the lucky part. The distributor accidentally shipped twice as many as we needed so the crew is custom fitting them horizontally rather than vertically. It means a few more seams, but it should work out fine.”
“Didn’t you measure?” asked a little girl.
“Measure twice, cut once,” a boy recited, having just earned a merit badge in measuring.
“The original contractor did measure, and they used a Dollnick laser system that’s accurate to the wavelength of—smaller than a human hair,” Daniel substituted at the last second. “The problem is that the room changed.”
“How can the room change?” Mike asked his father. “It’s all metal and stuff.”
“It has to do with the lease. Does anybody know what a lease is?”
One of the scouts tentatively replied, “Like for dogs?”
“That’s a leash,” Daniel corrected her. “A lease is a contract, an agreement between two parties, I mean, people, where the owner transfers the rights to use something like an office in return for a periodic payment.”
The children stared at the associate ambassador like he’d been speaking an alien language, so Aisha interpreted for them, “It’s like renting.”
“Oh,” the children chorused, and then Mike followed up with, “But how does renting change the size of the room?”
“In the lease, in the rental agreement that we made with the Stryx, there are conditions, rules about what we can do with the office,” Daniel explained. “One of the rules is that anybody who wants to remodel the inside of the office has to remove any previous construction first. That’s what the main part of the job has been, taking out the false walls and ceiling from the last renovation.”
“But why?” Fenna asked.
“It’s because Union Station was built a long, long time ago and it will be here for a long time to come,” Daniel said. “If the Stryx let every tenant add new walls, ceilings, and floors inside their space without taking out the old ones, pretty soon every home and office would be a tiny little box that nobody could fit in.”
The children didn’t appear to be very convinced by this argument, so Aisha elaborated with, “Think of an office like a lift tube capsule. Every time somebody enters, there’s room for one person less. Remember how we had to squeeze to all fit in at the same time?”
“That’s because Greg brought his backpack,” Mike said.
“We’re only Junior Station Scouts,” Fenna reminded him. “The manual is for older kids.”
“I want to be ready early,” Greg retorted. “Early is on time.”
“So who wants to see my office,” Daniel asked, clapping his hands to get the children’s attention. “It’s where I have holo-conferences with humans from all over the tunnel network.”
“Why?” a girl asked.
“We have an organization, the Conference of Sovereign Human Communities, and my job is to make sure that everybody knows what everybody else is doing so we can work together smoothly.”
“So it’s just talking after all,” the boy with the straw-colored hair said in disappointment. “I thought you got to cut metal panels and make lots of noise.”
“No, but the people I talk to ship millions of tons of metal panels a year,” Daniel told them. “And floaters for ground transportation, and machines, clothing, and furniture. We’re expecting the table and chairs for our new conference room to arrive from one of the CoSHC worlds today.”
“What’s a conference room?” another scout asked.
“It’s where they talk,” Mike supplied the answer, “and eat Gem catering.”
“I’m hungry now,” Fenna said.
“That’s because we’ve been walking all morning visiting parents and now it’s time for lunch,” Aisha said brightly. “Does everybody know where we’re going next?”
“The Little Apple!” the scouts shouted.
“My dad’s pizza place,” the straw-haired boy said, and the other children all looked at him enviously.
“I guess diplomacy can’t compete with pizza,” Daniel commented to Kelly, who emerged from her office just in time to see the children leaving. “When did Aisha become the troop master for the Junior Scouts?”
“The Grenouthians are major supporters of scouting so they let her skip studio prep if the troop needs her,” she told him. “And with two kids of your own, you should know that nothing trumps pizza, except maybe dogs. What happened to our construction crew?”
“They’re all next door installing the re-cut panels. Going by the stack, I think they only have a few left and then the walls will be done.”
“I almost wish we had just washed the old walls and lived with the weird shelving and cabinets,” Kelly admitted. “Who would have thought that one little construction project could be so much work?”
“Just concentrate on the benefits when the conference room is finished. You’ll finally be able to start paying back the other ambassadors for their hospitality over the years.”
“I know,” Kelly said with a groan. “Ortha and Crute already sent me lists and I have the feeling that the Grenouthian ambassador won’t be far behind.”
“Lists of meetings they want you to host?”
“Worse. Lists of all the meetings I’ve attended at their embassies over the last twenty-seven years, plus the meetings of the two previous EarthCent consuls who served here before the consulate was upgraded to an embassy. I didn’t think anybody kept track.”
“They all keep track of everything, or at least their intelligence services do. And now that you know, you can start keeping track of how many meetings they attend here, right from the beginning.” Daniel escorted Kelly back towards her office as a woman with a claw hammer hanging from a loop on her tool belt appeared with a recycling cart and began gathering another load of debris. “So how many meetings do we owe them?”
“I remember Ortha’s number because it was low, exactly a hundred and one. The Hortens don’t host many meetings, and the ambassadors from the other species don’t like going there because of all the decontamination procedures. Crute’s number was over five hundred, and that might be the highest of any of the species. The Dollnicks are always willing to host because they see it as an opportunity to control the agenda.”
The heavy plastic curtains that the workers had installed to prevent dust from invading Donna’s space parted, and the embassy manger slipped through the gap.
“We just received a live address alert from the president’s office,” she informed them. “Starting in five minutes.”
“A live address as in a speech?” Kelly marveled. “He’s never done that before.”
“I pinged Blythe and asked if she knew what’s going on. She said it’s nothing to worry about, but the president specifically asked EarthCent Intelligence not to spoil the surprise. She and Clive are on their way here to discuss it with you after the broadcast.”
“I bet it means that the Stryx have approved a new recruitment system for EarthCent,” Kelly speculated. “Either that or the president is going to publicly congratulate me for finally turning in my sabbatical report. Let’s go in my office and watch.”
“I’ll grab an extra chair,” Daniel said. “Just think. Another week or so and we’ll be doing this in the conference room. No more carrying chairs around.”
Donna followed Kelly into her office, where the ambassador asked the station librarian to bring up the president’s feed as soon as it was live.
“I wonder how many of the aliens will be tapping in?” Donna asked.
“And I wonder how many humans will be watching,” Kelly replied. “After all, we just found out about it three minutes ago.”
“For humans on the tunnel network, it will be the only show playing,” Libby informed them. “President Beyer invoked the preemption clause in your Stryxnet contract.”
“Wow,” Daniel said, setting down the spare chair from Donna’s desk and taking a seat. “That’s going to make a lot of people angry.”
“It’s a short speech and we’re going to try to fit it into the first commercial break on the hour, before viewers get up for snacks or to use their facilities.”
“Do you mean that everybody in the galaxy who’s getting live broadcasts over the Stryxnet sees commercials at the same time?”
“Of course, it’s the only way to run a fair auction system for ads,” the station librarian responded. “Starting in five, four, three, two, one—”
“I’m President Stephen Beyer of EarthCent and I’m interrupting this commercial broadcast to bring you a special announcement. As of next month, EarthCent will begin conducting regular civil service exams for all new job openings. Details will soon be available through your local embassy or our official information site accessible through any teacher bot. We believe that competitive exams will help us build a stronger and more independent diplomatic service moving forward towards the day when we achieve true self-government.” He glanced at somebody off camera and added, “Thirty seconds, not bad.”
“Does he know he’s still live?” Kelly asked.
“You’re getting a direct feed now, like a regular holo-conference,” Libby said. “We released the main broadcast channels to their regularly scheduled programming as soon as he finished.”
“So the Stryx inform me that I’m only speaking to embassy staff at this point,” the president started in again. “I’m sure this announcement comes as a surprise to all of you, but Hildy and I have felt for some time that the only way to increase our credibility with alien governments is to show that we are moving away from total dependency on our benefactors. I know, I know,” he said, holding up his hands as if he could hear the objections, “many of you have the respect of the local alien ambassadors and participate in important multi-species initiatives on the tunnel network. But there’s a difference between making a positive impression on one diplomat serving far from home and gaining credibility with a whole species.”
“What kind of civil service exam are we talking—” Kelly began, but the president started speaking again.
“I’m sorry if I cut a number of you off, but I was just inserting a significant pause,” he continued. “This is actually a one-to-many communication so I can’t hear what any of you are saying, but Hildy projected that eighty-three pe
rcent of you would want to know further details about the exams. The baseline test criteria have been provided by the Stryx in accordance with the methodology that was used to choose all of us, myself included. We will be establishing working committees of diplomatic personnel and support staff to supplement the basic exams with questions from your work areas. We’re currently accepting volunteers for these committees, and if we fall short, I’ll cast lots. That’s it for today. Everybody remember to do your best for humanity and the rest is commentary.”
The hologram flickered out and the embassy staff all took a moment to digest what they’d heard. Kelly spoke first.
“I can’t believe how quickly Jeeves reached an agreement on a new system with EarthCent human resources.”
“The president did say that they’re still working out the details,” Donna said.
“Sounded to me like they’re just intending to add a vocational gloss to the new tests,” Daniel said.
“Blythe and Clive are here,” Libby announced.
Daniel went over and swiped open the security lock, allowing the director of EarthCent Intelligence and his wife to enter.
“So you two knew what the president was going to say ahead of time?” Kelly demanded. “I’m the Minister of Intelligence!”
“The president swore us to secrecy, and the only reason we were in the loop was because he needed Blythe,” Clive said. “I was as much on the sidelines as you were.”
“Blythe?” Kelly addressed Donna’s elder daughter. “How were you involved in this?”
“Jeeves dragged me in. Chastity too.”
“The president wanted to keep this a secret so he and Jeeves brought in the publisher of the Galactic Free Press?”
“Chas promised to keep quiet in return for an exclusive. She published it as soon as the president began his speech.”
“But why the two of you?” Daniel asked.
“InstaSitter,” Donna guessed immediately.
“Right,” Blythe acknowledged. “The recruitment process the Stryx have used to date for EarthCent candidates wouldn’t really transfer to an exam because they take everything into account.”