Xenotech Rising: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 1)

by Dave Schroeder

  When I stepped inside I was pleased to hear my 3D printer fabbing along and no click-click-click from my Orishen knitting machine. That should mean my knitting project was finished and the hilts and sheathes and belts should be done before Poly arrived in an hour or so. I double-checked and confirmed that gremlins hadn’t caused any dropped stitches on the interlocking patterns of translucent Orishen pupa case silk. I was pleased that the output was perfect. Orishens know how to build high quality equipment. I removed the knitted surprise for Poly and its mate for me from the machine, found two old shirt-sized boxes on the top shelf in my closet and neatly folded both items and nested them in tissue paper in the boxes. I wrapped Poly’s present in aluminum foil to make it special and fastened the pink rabbot’s foot to one corner of the box to provide a bit of color. I hoped it would add a touch of whimsy and make her smile. I rubbed the rabbot’s foot for luck, then put both boxes on the coffee table in my living room and surveyed my domain.

  Entropy was winning, but the level of chaos wasn’t insurmountable. I put the knitting machine and pupa spindle back in my project alcove then folded up the plastic drop cloth on the dining room table and put it in a bottom kitchen drawer. I put the mugs Poly and I had used into the dishwasher, emptied the garbage can into the recycler in the service corridor behind my apartment and did some general straightening. I changed my living room wall screen from the Bodleian Library to a more romantic view of Lake Como in Italy. My whirrbot and dust drones were doing their thing and keeping my carpets and flat surfaces clean. The public spaces in my apartment passed muster.

  I closed the panel that blocked my project alcove from view. There weren’t enough hours by two orders of magnitude to straighten up that space in time for Poly’s visit—and besides, she’d already seen the interior last night and hadn’t run in terror. I went into my bedroom and looked things over. I had some chaos reduction work to do here, too. My engineer boots went into my walk-in closet along with the laundry basket and diverse items of attire that hadn’t made it all the way to the basket earlier in the week. I also thought it would be wise to change my sheets—not out of any plans to be less than a gentleman, but in case Poly ended up staying overnight while I slept on the couch—at least that’s what I told myself. The old sheets went in the laundry basket and it was time to face the bathroom.

  I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t as bad as I’d remembered. Thank goodness my whirrbot handled tile as well as carpet and the dust drones could polish glass and porcelain. I moved the three 5 gallon containers of green goo into the back of the closet and switched out my old bath towels for new ones. I dug around in a bottom dresser drawer and found a set of white hand towels I’d embroidered with clever sayings in Orishen, Nicósn and Tigram when I was thirteen. Poly might find them amusing. I confirmed that my Too-D’Loo bot was functioning properly and was keeping my porcelain throne spotless. There was plenty of TP. The voice activated toilet seat and lid went up and down on command. Everything was ready for Poly’s visit. All I needed to do was take a shower and change.

  My front door chimed.

  “Delivery,” said my cell phone.

  “Good timing.” I thought about how much fun it wouldn’t have been to answer my front door dripping wet and wearing only a towel.

  A FedExAmazon delivery drone waited patiently outside my apartment floating chest-high on four quiet rotating fans. It was supporting a package shaped like a foot-tall ice cream cone beneath its central body.

  “Mr. Jack Buckston?” said the drone.

  “That’s me.”

  “Please acknowledge receipt.”

  “Who’s it from?” I said.

  “Miss Terrhi Kauuson,” said the drone.

  “Acknowledged,” I said, touching my cell phone to the drone’s housing.

  “Thank you,” said the drone. “Delivery receipt sent. It was a pleasure to serve you.” The package dropped into my hands and the drone flew off to receive its next assignment.

  “What is it?” said my phone as I started to unwrap the delivery.

  “Flowers,” I said. “Terrhi’s being thoughtful again.”

  “They’re Nicósn,” said my phone. “Put them in some water with half a cup of rum.”

  “Right.” I had some rum I used for baking in the kitchen and put the flowers in a Tigrammon crystal vase in the middle of the dining room table. The arrangement featured purple, yellow and white flowers with wildly different blossoms. I didn’t know their names but the individual blooms soon filled my apartment with wonderful smells like baking cinnamon rolls, summer thunderstorms and crisp Saturday afternoons in Vermont in the fall. I had a faint memory that some Nicósn flowers gave off pheromones with aphrodisiac properties and wondered if Terrhi might be going a bit too far in encouraging my relationship with Poly. I’d do some research and talk to Tomáso if necessary.

  Now I really needed to hit the shower. I went back to my bedroom, emptied my pockets and tossed my corporate uniform, socks, undershirt and underwear into my laundry basket. I remembered, too late, that I’d wanted to keep the fresh bath towels clean in case Poly needed to use one, so I pulled one of the used towels out from underneath the most recent items in the laundry basket and walked to my shower.

  “Chamomile,” I said. “Make it so.”

  My command fell within my shower AI’s limited range of understanding and I was soon enjoying a gentle and soothing flow of warm water that made my worries fade into so much steam.

  Then my front door chimed.

  “Jack, it’s Poly. I’m a few minutes early. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Be right there,” I said. I told my shower A.I. to belay the previous order and frantically tried to dry my body and my hair before hopping to the front door in bare, wet feet with a towel wrapped around my waist.

  “Sorry about being early,” said Poly as I opened the door. Her eyes went wide. She started to smile and tried hard to keep from laughing. With an exaggerated leer at my state of undress she carried several take-out bags from the Teleport Inn into my apartment. “But not that sorry.”

  “Someday the tables will be turned, dear lady,” I said, dripping on the carpet.

  “Promises, promises,” she said. “If my hands weren’t occupied…”

  “But they are,” I said, “and I was promised intelligent dinner conversation with a beautiful woman this evening.”

  “That can be arranged.” Poly walked to the kitchen and put the bags down on the counter. “Go finish your shower and get dressed before I’m tempted to use my hands for more than carrying a gourmet meal.”

  I made a hasty exit, scattering water droplets in all directions as I returned to the bathroom. It only took me a few minutes to get ready and I rejoined Poly wearing comfortable jeans and a soft, saffron-colored open-necked cotton shirt. I’d almost forgotten to brush my teeth but caught myself in time and did an extra-thorough job of it. My breath was minty fresh and my worries were on temporary hold. I promised myself to relax and enjoy dinner.

  Poly was wearing jeans, too, and a deep green satin blouse with a key neckline. She gave me a very nice hug when I entered the kitchen. I hugged her back.

  “I found your plates and glasses and silverware and set the table,” she said. “I also put the Dauushan caviar in your refrigerator so it will still be good for breakfast.”

  “Thanks. What can I do to help?”

  “Fill the glasses with ice water, please, then we can review what we’re having for dinner, said Poly. “The flowers are beautiful, by the way.”

  “They are, aren’t they? Terrhi sent them.” Poly looked at me sideways as if she wasn’t sure she liked my honesty or would have preferred me to lie and say I bought them myself.

  “I’ll have to thank her, then.”

  “You’ll meet her tomorrow morning, for the First Contact Day parade.”

  “Great,” said Poly. “She has good taste.”

  “So you’ll have that in common.”

  After I f
illed our glasses I came back into the kitchen. Poly had laid out six different numbered take-out containers on the counter but hadn’t opened any of them.

  “Now we can to see what Pierre and Françoise put together for us.”

  “I thought we were having salad, steaks and baked potatoes?”

  “Pierre and Françoise said the items in that menu wouldn’t reheat well, so they said they’d surprise us.”

  “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Poly and I started by each of us opening one of a pair of bowl-shaped plastic containers labeled #1 and #2. The contents were some sort of Galactic fusion version of pho swimming with tiny Nicósn crustaceans that looked like shrimp but tasted like lobster. The broth had the sharp tang of lemongrass and the lids of the bowls were domed and hollow. Thai basil leaves, bean sprouts, a lime wedge and a packet of sriracha sauce were inside. I found two Asian-style soup spoons and chopsticks in one of the take-out bags and we shifted to the dining room table to enjoy our first course. The biggest surprise once we dug in was the noodles. Instead of the kind typically found in pho these noodles were different thicknesses and came in a rainbow of colors and textures. You never knew which flavor you’d get next. Between bites I filled Poly in on what I’d learned from Tomáso last night and provided more details about the events at Morphicouture this morning.

  “So Mike didn’t screw up?” said Poly, between slurps of noodles.

  “No, it was part of what Jean-Jacques bought from Factor-E-Flor. The rabbot specs and the exponent lock key ‘error’ were a scam to collect large quantities of grass to make grajja.”

  “Thank goodness you’ll be reprogramming the rabbots to eat kudzu.”

  “There’s more to the story.” Poly distracted me by guiding a particularly tasty-looking bit of Nicósn seafood to my mouth with her chopsticks.

  “Tell me next course. And that poor intern…” she said. I returned the favor with a piece of exotic mushroom.

  “I’m sure Shuvvath will be okay, even if he was forced into pupating prematurely.” Note to self—contact the Orishen embassy and find out Shuvvath’s status.

  “What about the Earth First Isolationist business card you found?” said Poly.

  “You mean this?” I said, pulling the card from my wallet and handing it to her.

  She took the card and rubbed her fingers over the red circle-slash and black galaxy.

  “It’s laser printed.”

  “There’s more to that story, too,” I said. We’d reached the bottom of our respective soup bowls.

  “Later,” said Poly. “What’s next from Pierre and Françoise?”

  We walked into the kitchen and stood side-by-side bumping shoulders and hips playfully as we looked at boxes #3 and #4. Poly got #3 open first. I could smell something wonderful even before she had the lid all the way off.

  “Boeuf bourguignon,” said Poly. “It’s nice and warm.”

  “Haricot vert here,” I said, popping the top off #4. We both looked at box #5. It was long and skinny. Poly pulled off the lid while I held the bottom. As we both expected it was a crisp baguette—with a bonus, a small tub of herbed butter.

  “You get a bread knife and a butter knife,” said Poly. “I’ll carry these out to the table. And a serving spoon for the beef and tongs for the green beans if you have them.”

  I collected the required implements plus a breadboard and brought them to the dining room. Tongs are a common utensil for Orishen cuisine so I had several pairs. I also found a candle in a Mason jar that some vendor trying to influence my purchasing habits had sent me as a holiday present. Perhaps I could put it to good use now. Poly took everything from my overloaded hands and associated the appropriate implements with the relevant foods.

  “Light the candle, please,” said Poly. I felt in my pocket for something to light it with. I knew I didn’t have any matches in the house. Then I remembered Cornell’s stun phone. It might do the trick. I pulled it from my pocket, slid the electrodes out of the phone’s case and inserted the device into the Mason jar with the wick between the electrodes. Then I pressed the activation button on the stun app. With a crack and a whiff of ozone the wick caught and I removed the stun phone. At least now Cornell had been good for something.

  “That’s what he was going to use on you?”

  “Cornell? Yes,” I said. “You can see why he was unhappy when I turned the tables.” I put the stun phone back in my pants pocket and focused on dinner. I sliced the bread while Poly dished out the boeuf and beans. Poly picked up the container of herbed butter and brought it close to her nose.

  “There’s garlic in this,” she said.

  “Yum.”

  “Okay,” she said, “so long as we’re both having some.”

  I hoped that meant what I thought it meant. I was feeling so happy and comfortable that I’d almost forgotten about the abrupt way Poly had ended our call earlier.

  “How was your day?” I asked.

  “Not as exciting as yours, clearly,” she said. “Four hours at the front desk at WT&F, two hours translating menus for the Teleport Inn, and four hours working on research for my master’s thesis. It’s a light day because of the holiday weekend.” I took a deep breath and stared admiringly over the candle flame at Poly. There was no question about her work ethic.

  “No language classes at Georgia State?” I said.

  “Not on Fridays. I teach those on Tuesday and Thursday nights.”

  “What about your M.B.A. classes?”

  “They’re on spring break and start again on Tuesday. It’s only six more weeks until the end of the semester, and then I’m done.”

  “With everything?”

  “Yes. An M.B.A. with a focus on Galactic Business from Emory, and an M.S. from Georgia Tech in Applied Galtech. I’ve also got an undergraduate degree in Galactic Languages.”

  This felt like half of a job interview. If she wanted to be part of Xenotech Support Corporation she had me with “Yes.” But she’d have a million opportunities with larger and more established companies. She was every bit as smart and as competent as I was. Why would she want to join Xenotech Support Corporation?

  “Where did you do your undergrad?” I said, remembering to ask questions instead of just looking at her.

  “In Cambridge.”

  “The one in England.”

  “No, the one in Massachusetts.”

  “M.I.T.?”

  “The other one.”

  Why didn’t she want to admit going to Harvard? Oh, right, her father the classics professor. Sore subject.

  “Got it,” I said and stopped talking. Poly changed the subject.

  “Tell me about the rest of your day,” she said. So I did.

  I told her about Oscar Mosley and the Gutenberg press in his basement, protesting the Galactics’ presence with his senior citizen friends for exercise and supplemental income. I told her about Cornell’s role in recruiting Mosley and the interlocking ownership patterns between the James K. Polk Group, Factor-E-Flor, EUA Corporation and VIGorish Labs. I told her what Chit saw inside the production facility near Hartsfield Port and what I saw underneath VIGorish Labs’ corporate headquarters. I told her my thoughts on Tony Zed’s plans and showed her photos of the pink camouflaged troops he was training for some as-yet-undetermined purpose. She listened. She asked insightful questions. She teased me by eating haricot verts in a highly suggestive manner. She also used her chopsticks to share bits of beef and carrot and potato and onion from what would have probably been the best beef stew I’d ever tasted if I hadn’t been distracted by a beautiful woman and intelligent conversation.

  When I’d finished telling her about my day, Poly didn’t respond with more questions. She just sat quietly for a minute, her head tilted to the side and an expression of focused concentration on her face. I could almost hear gears turning. I was wise enough to stay quiet until her look changed and she turned back to face me. Poly had come to some sort of decision and I didn’t want to get betwee
n her and whatever she wanted.

  “Jack,” she said. “Let me see if I understand things correctly.”

  I nodded as if to say “Go on.”

  “Since yesterday morning you’ve thwarted a major drug supply deal, prevented sabotage aimed at the capitol building’s communication systems, headed off an ecumenical relations disaster, rescued a kidnap victim, kept a dozen innocent diners from bodily harm, saved a fashion company’s business, uncovered a retiree-based false flag operation, reconnoitered a grajja factory and faced down a megalomaniac with a private army.”

  She looked hard at me.

  “I also helped get a little girl’s cat down from a tree,” I said. Her gaze softened and she smiled.

  “And that, too.”

  Okay, what was coming next? Was this a breakup speech because my life was too chaotic? Poly and I weren’t even together together unless you were a prepubescent Dauushan female with romantic matchmaking aspirations. Would ending it now even count as a breakup?

  Poly pushed the Mason jar candle to one side and gently held my hands in hers. They were warm and strong and slender and I didn’t want to let go for at least a geologic age.

  “Jack,” she said, her eyes locked with mine, “why haven’t you picked up on my cues yet and invited me to join the fun?” She made a mock grimace at me that quickly turned into a smile and she squeezed my hands. I squeezed back.

  “What do you mean?” I wasn’t feeling quite so slow on the uptake right now but wanted to make sure I knew what she wanted.

  “Why haven’t you asked me to be part of Xenotech Support?”

  “I didn’t think you’d be interested in a small start-up,” I said. “With your background in languages, business and technology you’ve probably got dozens of job offers from multi-stellar corporations.”

  “Try hundreds.”

  “Right. And every one of them would pay you five times what you’d make at XSC.”