by E. M. Foner
Twenty steps away, Thad had pretty much given up on pronouncing Drazen words without permanently damaging his vocal chords, and was instead peppering his trainer with cultural questions in English.
“What’s it mean when you scratch your head with your tentacle like that?”
The Drazen actor absently scratched his head with his tentacle before replying, “I have an itch?”
Next to them, a young woman accidently coughed up a ball of phlegm while trying to say the Drazen word for ‘pleasant’, which could only be pronounced from the back of the throat. Thomas leaned in and caught the projectile with a handkerchief that he whisked out of the breast pocket of his suit. He looked at the silk handkerchief sadly and called the group to attention.
“Fine effort, people. Trainers also. We’ll swap groups tomorrow and try it again so our trainees can see if they have an aptitude for sounding out the other language. For now we’re going to move on to the loosely scripted scenarios, and if you can’t make yourself understood with the transliteration, just speak English and let the implants do the work for both sides. Pull up your scripts and let’s see how you do.”
The Drazen working with Thad had memorized the script and launched into his role immediately. He took a step back and raised both of his hands to his face, turning them flat so it looked like he was creating a shelf for his chin.
“What are you doing?” Thad asked, not sure if this was part of the scenario. The other trainees and actors turned to watch.
“This is a restricted area, Human,” the Drazen snarled, at the same time making little head nods towards his hands, which Thad now gathered must be an alien analog to holding out an arm with the palm raised. “State your business.”
“I’m a foreign correspondent for the Galactic Free Press,” Thad replied in English, one of the suggested responses from his own script. “I’m here to report on the launching of your new colony ship.”
“The colony ship dry dock is on the other side of the orbital,” the Drazen snapped in response. “This is a closed military facility.”
Here the script on Thad’s heads-up display presented options rather than instructions. Giving up sounded like an attempt to winnow out spineless reporters, and trying to dash by the guard seemed a bit extreme, so he chose the middle path of attempting to persuade the Drazen to let him in.
“I’m sure they’re expecting me,” Thad ad-libbed, putting on a friendly smile. “The newspaper I work for is practically an arm of EarthCent Intelligence, and I hear they have a close relationship with Drazen Intelligence.”
The actor playing the guard narrowed his eyes and reached behind his back for an imaginary weapon slung over his shoulder. Gripping the shaft of what was now clear was supposed to be an axe with both hands, the Drazen asked Thad, “Did you just say you’re a spy?”
The reporter trainee took a step backwards, holding his hands out in what he hoped would be seen as a placating gesture as he stared at the invisible axe head. “I think there’s been a mistake,” he said hastily. “You know how inaccurate translation implants are. I’ll just head over to the other side of the orbital where I’m supposed to be.”
“Halt!” the Drazen commanded. “I’m contacting my superior officer for instructions.”
Caught up in the scenario, Thad turned and began to sprint in the opposite direction, leading the Drazen to reach way back and execute a two-handed overhead throw of his imaginary double-bladed battle axe.
“Dead,” Chance proclaimed, stopping Thad in his tracks. The Drazen actors all burst into cheers and congratulated their fellow on his accurate throw. “Could you tell the rest of us why you chose to run from a suspicious alien guard rather than walking away from a polite rejection?”
“I thought you wanted me to show initiative,” Thad said. “I was worried I might fail the training if I didn’t get the story.”
“That was last week when you were learning about reporting from the editorial staff,” Chance scolded him. “This is the week we try to teach you not to get kidnapped or axed in the back while running away from a guard.”
“I think that was instructive,” Thomas told the group. “Would anybody else like to demonstrate their technique before you all begin practicing?”
“We’ll try it,” Gail called, volunteering herself and her Horten trainer.
The actors and trainees formed a loose arc on either side of the pair, like living parentheses, and the Horten launched into his part.
“Welcome to planetary decontamination control. Place your clothing in the deposit chute and step into the shower booth.”
“I’m afraid there’s been some mistake,” Gail replied in her sounded-out Horten. “I went through decontamination on your orbiting platform and was given a clean bill of health before I took your shuttle service to the surface.”
“There are space rules and ground rules, and I make the ground rules,” the Horten replied firmly, not bothering to lift his eyes from the imaginary passenger manifest he held.
“I understand what you are saying and I appeal to your empathy as a fellow sentient,” Gail said, choosing the ‘humble negotiation’ option from her script. “Disrobing in front of others is uncomfortable for many members of my species and I’m afraid I’ll turn bright red if I try.”
The Horten looked up, and his own skin began shifting from a neutral beige to take on a golden hue. “It does seem unfortunate that you must go through decontamination twice in one day, but like all civilized species, we fund our customs and immigration services with fees. Since you aren’t importing anything…”
“I see,” Gail replied instantly. “How much would you charge for a thorough decontamination from a visitor who required the procedure?”
“Shall we say, a hundred Stryx creds?” the Horten suggested, the golden hue of his skin becoming more pronounced.
“As a working reporter, all of my expenses are paid through a programmable cred coin,” Gail responded, watching the Horten closely. His hopeful expression became surly and the golden hue began to dull.
“We’ve had problems with programmable creds creating unnecessary audit trails,” the Horten said, looking back down at his tab. “Place your clothes in the chute and step into the shower.”
“I do have some cash,” Gail hastened to say. “Just not a hundred creds.”
“How much?” the Horten asked bluntly.
“Maybe twenty?” she ventured.
“Maybe forty?” the Horten counter-offered.
“Maybe thirty, so I’ll have ten left for emergencies,” Gail pleaded, guessing that his imaginary tab might include imaging capability that was seeing into her imaginary change purse. The Horten immediately turned a cheery brown.
“Please deposit your foreign currency in the chute for decontamination,” he said with a broad grin. Gail opened her imaginary purse, counted out some imaginary coins, and dropped them in the chute. “Your decontamination procedure is complete,” the actor continued. “Welcome to Horten Four. Enjoy your stay.”
The gathered humans and aliens all burst into applause at the performance, causing Gail to blush again, leading the Hortens to point at her in amusement.
“How did you do that?” she asked her trainer afterwards. “I thought adult Hortens couldn’t control their skin colors.”
“I’m a professional actor,” the Horten explained. “When I submerge myself in a role, my skin response is just reflecting what I’m feeling. You really seem to be a natural at this yourself. I shouldn’t wonder if with sufficient practice we couldn’t teach you to turn some new colors.”
Eighteen
“You know, it’s not really considered proper for a girl my age to go into business with, uh, aliens.” Flazint nervously twirled a stray hair vine onto one of her fingers and then let it go. The vine retained its spiral shape as if it had been trained on a trellis. “You’re saying that we three will be the design department and that you have some other people lined up to handle all of the business issues?�
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“Two humans and a Stryx,” Dorothy confirmed. “If you watched the Kasilian auction like ten years ago, you saw them all on stage at the same time running the show. Shaina and Brinda are sisters who grew up selling stuff in the open-market, and Jeeves is, well, Jeeves.”
“He’s the Stryx robot who came and took you home after you passed out from inhaling Kraken stick,” Affie said. “I wasn’t sure how long you’d sleep since you’re Human and all, so I pinged the station librarian for help. Before Stick and I even finished our drinks, Jeeves showed up and carried you off in a manipulator field. He was pretty cool for an AI.”
“Jeeves brought me home?” Dorothy cringed in embarrassment. “I didn’t remember anything after the Drazen bar exhibit, but I guess I assumed you put me in a lift tube and I made it home by myself. I hope my parents didn’t see me.”
“You shouldn’t inhale that stuff, especially if we’re going to be in business together,” Flazint admonished her.
“Once was enough for me,” Dorothy promised. “So what do you say, Affie? Can you spare the time from your studies, or are you in a big hurry to finish these?” The human girl swept her arm around the Vergallian’s sculpture studio where they were meeting to discuss the new business. The room was filled with pieces of various sizes crafted from different materials, and all of the works resembled blobs connected by cubes.
“These are all finished already,” Affie replied with a smile. She was tickled to find that her new friend was familiar with abstract art humor. “What do you really think of them?”
“They’re inter—uh—interrogative,” Dorothy said desperately. The two other girls waited expectantly for her to explain. “I mean, like, they ask a question about the galaxy, you know, uh, or at least, that’s how I see them. How about you, Flazint?”
“The colors are nice,” the Frunge girl replied. Affie looked pleased by this assessment, and the human girl filed it away in her memory as an acceptable reaction to alien art.
“So, are you onboard with the cross-species fashions idea?” Dorothy prompted Affie, anxious to move on from art criticism.
“Sure,” the Vergallian girl replied. “I came here to be on the cutting edge and Humans are the current disrupters. So is the idea to stick with hats for now, or are we going to start working our way down towards shoes?”
“Shoes are way too complicated for a near-term goal. We’ll have to work our way up to them,” Dorothy corrected the Vergallian.
“But hats are at the top and shoes are at the bottom on all of the humanoids I’ve seen,” Flazint objected. “Feet are down by definition.”
“I’ll bet it’s another translation thing,” Affie guessed. She’d already learned that limitations of the Human dialect Dorothy spoke prevented the nuances of High Vergallian from carrying over, but this was the first time she’d noticed a problem with such a simple phrase. “I just assumed that all sentients had an expression that corresponded with ‘working your way down,’ to get to something more important. You know, like, working your way down to be boss.”
“It’s ‘working your way up,’ with us,” Dorothy told them.
“Weird,” Affie said. “So if you want to find out what’s really going on, do you say, like, I’m going to get to the top of this?”
“The bottom of this,” Dorothy admitted.
“At least we’re all agreed that the important stuff is at the bottom,” Affie said, and Flazint nodded her agreement.
“Oh, alright, I don’t want to get hung up on semantics. I just meant that we should move beyond hats, but let’s save thinking about shoes for when we have more experience.”
“As long as I get to work with metal,” Flazint interjected. “I don’t care if it’s just buckles and clasps or the occasional mesh, but I want to apply something from my education. Besides, if my family thought I was going over to fibers they would disown me.”
“You see, that’s exactly why I said that designing cross-culture requires a multi-species team,” Dorothy continued. “If we’re going to come up with a line of clothing and accessories we can sell to all of the humanoids, we have to go beyond aesthetics and look at the whole sentient.”
“The Horten hat trick you pulled off by sorting through the last six thousand years of their fashions in the lost-and-found was genius, but will it apply cross-species?” Flazint asked.
“If it was just the hats, I would have dumped the whole business off on Jeeves and company for a royalty. But when Chance and I returned to the lost-and-found to look for other examples of evolving fashions, she got discouraged because we kept coming up with look-alike products that were actually from unrelated species at different time periods.”
“So you gave up on the idea and now you want to design things from scratch,” Affie concluded.
“Just the opposite. I realized that humanoid fashions repeat across all the bi-pedal species, just not at the same times. I was talking about it with Aisha since her parents are in the specialty clothing business back on Earth, and she pointed out something I’d missed entirely since I don’t watch her show anymore.”
“They do a really cool feature once a cycle on the mystery of children’s clothing,” Flazint interrupted. “I couldn’t believe some of the memory metal items the Verlocks make for their kids. They even have a type of mitten that if you lose one, you can manipulate the survivor into a hat or a pair of thin socks.” The Frunge girl caught herself sounding uncool and mumbled, “It’s not that I’d watch it myself, but my little brother is afraid to be alone when there are Grenouthians in the hologram.”
“I didn’t even know that Aisha was doing clothes,” Dorothy admitted. “What she told me is that the feel of the show has completely changed since she started. It turns out that the alien children she recruits these days have watched LMF for at least a year before they join the cast. So they already know that all the other little aliens aren’t going to eat them and that they can all be friends.”
“And you think that her show is starting a galactic trend in tolerance?” Affie asked.
“Maybe the show is part of a trend rather than the root cause, but there’s clearly something going on,” Dorothy insisted. “I checked with Libby, and interspecies tourism is up like a thousand percent over the last decade. She says there’s always an uptick when they bring a new species onto the tunnel network, but that’s a thousand percent on top of the boost from when the Stryx opened Earth, and it’s accelerating. Don’t forget you’re the one who told me that humans are like cat lists before I, like, fell asleep and Jeeves took me home.”
“Catalysts,” the Vergallian informed her, and Flazint burst out laughing so hard that her hair vines were in danger of losing a few leaves.
“You were high on Kraken stick and it made sense to you that Humans are like cat lists?” the Frunge girl asked when she caught her breath.
“Well, there are all kinds of cats and people bring them on colony ships to catch mice,” Dorothy defended herself. “I thought Affie meant that even though we’re not as advanced as some species, we come in all shapes and colors and we contribute when you least expect it.”
“No, I really meant catalysts,” Affie said seriously, sending the Frunge metallurgy student off into fresh gales of laughter. “It’s like you make certain reactions possible just by being there and providing some missing element. Flazint could explain the importance of catalysts if she could stop laughing. I bet someday a Verlock xenosociologist will come up with a mathematical proof of what I’m saying, not that anybody other than the Verlocks and the Stryx will understand it.”
“But my cross-species fashion idea isn’t an attempt to start a movement or anything,” Dorothy protested. “It’s just a way to break into the business so that later we’ll be able to get our original designs into production. I have lots of good ideas for jumpsuits.”
“So we all understand each other then,” Flazint said, finally regaining control over herself. “You’ve already transferred your book of hat ord
ers to the management team, right? How come you didn’t invite Chance to our meeting?”
“I did, but she wasn’t interested. She says that clothes are for wearing and she already has one job more than she wants. I did ask Jeeves if he’d be available to talk with you both. Can I ping him and tell him we’re ready?”
“Sure,” Affie said, and Flazint nodded.
Dorothy barely finished subvocing the invitation when the studio door slid open and Jeeves rolled in.
“Are you grounded for something, Jeeves?” Dorothy asked. She still felt guilty about getting her friend Metoo banned from floating for two days after he fixed the Carnival election for the EarthCent ambassador at the Dorothy’s request.
“I knew that young Affie is sculptor and I thought she might be uncomfortable with a bulky metal object such as myself floating around amongst her works,” Jeeves replied. “The pieces are interesting. You should invite Dring to see them some time.”
The Vergallian girl practically burst with pride at the compliment from the Stryx, and Dorothy kicked herself for changing her own initial reaction.
“I do seem to have a talent for going into business with lovely young females,” Jeeves continued, causing Flazint’s hair vines to brighten with the Frunge equivalent of chlorophyll. “Let’s just get the contractual stuff out of the way and then I’m anxious to listen to your ideas.”
“What sort of contractual stuff?” Dorothy asked.
“Your employment agreement with SBJ,” Jeeves said casually. He projected a hologram of a dense document in an unknown language, which reminded Dorothy of the cuneiform tablets from a Grenouthian documentary on Earth’s history. “It’s just the standard boilerplate for being in business with a Stryx partner and I’m sure you’re all familiar with the terms. Just give your verbal acceptance and I’ll file it away.”