Soup Night on Union Station

by E. M. Foner

  “That’s crazy,” Joe said. “You should rent from us.”

  “That’s the other option,” Jeeves acknowledged. “I’ll have to see what the prices are like.”

  “What would a round trip rental for overnight cost me, Dad?” Samuel asked. “I’m thinking of asking Vivian to go on a short hop to one of the other stations to look around.”

  The corners of Joe’s mouth twitched up, and he said, “So it’s a working vacation after all.”

  “What do you mean?” his son replied, trying and failing to meet his father’s eyes. “I’m officially off the clock until Tuesday at two fourteen in the morning.”

  “It sounds to me like the Vergallians are sending you on a mission and you’re inviting Vivian along for cover. Have you forgotten that I ran the EarthCent Intelligence training camp for over a decade?”

  Samuel hesitated, unable to choose between lying outright to his father and keeping his oath to Aainda. He compromised by saying nothing.

  “Interesting,” Jeeves said. “Do you have a destination in mind or is that an Imperial secret as well?”

  “Just one of the stations on the network,” the young man replied sullenly. “I want it to be a surprise.”

  “Did Baa have a chance to do that thing for me, Jeeves?” Joe asked.

  “Now who’s keeping secrets,” Samuel complained. “What could you want from a Terregram mage?”

  “I have it right here,” the Stryx said. A small panel in his casing slid open, and reaching inside with his pincer, he brought out a sheathed boot knife. “She says you’ll be hearing from her about the bill.”

  “As long as it works,” Joe said, accepting the knife from the Stryx and handing it to his son. “The day that Baylit came and took Ailia she asked me to keep this for you until you came of age. The crest on the hilt belongs to Ailia’s father’s family and it will serve as a passport in Vergallian space.”

  Samuel inspected the hilt and then drew the knife partway out of the sheath. “It’s a throwing dagger,” he identified the weapon. “Thomas tried to teach me how to throw one but the balance is way off compared to regular throwing knives.”

  “My greatest hope is that you never need to use it as a weapon,” his father said.

  “So why did Jeeves have it?”

  “You know that I spent some time on Vergallian worlds and I’ve had a few bad experiences with high caste females exerting control with their pheromones. If Baa did her work correctly, as long as you have the sheath on your person, you’ll be immune to those games.”

  “Thanks, Dad, Jeeves. This could be a real life-saver. I can’t wait to tell Viv. She worries about me being around Vergallians.”

  “Don’t forget who she works for now,” his father cautioned.

  “Would you keep a secret like that from Mom?”

  “If she was an alien intelligence agent, I might,” Joe said with a laugh. “Can you show us a hologram of that ship-carrier Jeeves? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one, and they’re more impressive from a distance than up close.”

  “We’re already too close to see the whole vessel unless I employ some imaging tricks,” the Stryx replied. An enormous hologram appeared, filling all of the empty space on the technical deck, and for a moment the humans couldn’t even tell what they were looking at. Then the view pulled back and the mega-structure became identifiable.

  “That’s incredible,” Samuel said. “It must be half the width of Union Station.”

  “Sharf ship-carriers have just enough structural integrity to maintain the crew quarters and handle the low acceleration needed for course changes. The bulk of what you see is little more than open latticework with air lines and power. When they require access to a given section, they turn on the atmosphere retention fields and pump in air.”

  “I hope the latticework includes catwalks,” Joe said.

  The hologram zoomed in on a section of the Sharf megastructure until a segment of lattice with several individuals shuffling through it appeared at actual size. The Dollnick in the holographic projection towered over Joe and Samuel, who were sitting on the couch.

  “At least the catwalk is fully enclosed so we can’t float off,” Samuel said. “Why are they shuffling along instead of giving a good push and floating through twice as fast?”

  “I’ll take the control of my feet sticking to something over speed any day of the week,” Joe said. “When you’re floating down the middle of what amounts to a tube and you can’t reach the walls to change course, what are you going to do if a giant mouth appears at the end?”

  “Get eaten, I guess,” Samuel replied. “Okay, I see your point. Hey, I can feel us slowing down.”

  “Because we’ve arrived,” Jeeves said, and the hologram was replaced by a view of a large docking bay, though again, it consisted of a latticework of light structural members and catwalks with no solid bulkheads in sight. “We’re within an atmosphere retention field, so as soon as the Nova stops moving and Paul gives the word, you can drop the ramp.”

  Samuel and Joe found themselves again weightless, meaning that the ship was no longer decelerating. They unstrapped the safety restraints and pushed off the couch gently, arriving at the main hatch that doubled as a ramp at the same time. A few seconds later Marilla joined them, followed by Paul.

  “I’m surprised Beowulf didn’t insist on coming along,” Samuel said. “He usually enjoys these short trips.”

  “But he hates being left behind, and the Sharf don’t allow dogs on the carrier,” Joe said. “Ready, Paul?”

  “Lower away,” the acting captain said.

  Joe hit the button, and the main hatch, which was hinged at the bottom, descended with a faint hydraulic sigh. Since there was no deck in the docking bay, Joe hit the button a second time to stop the descent when the hatch was basically parallel with the Nova’s technical deck, making it a ramp to nowhere. There was a curtain of cargo netting not far off that was anchored to a catwalk, and Paul shuffled off the end of the ramp, letting his momentum carry him across the gap.

  “Did he turn off his magnetic cleats so they wouldn’t pull him off course?” Marilla asked.

  “They aren’t strong enough to have much effect over a short distance,” Joe replied. “If we were shooting for a small target and it was going to take a minute or more to get there, it would make sense to cut the magnetic field, but in this case, you can’t miss.”

  The Horten girl nodded and walked right off the ramp, followed by Joe, who chose a slightly different angle so he wouldn’t land on top of her. Samuel wasn’t thinking that far ahead, but fortunately, Marilla had already pulled herself out of the way by the time he arrived. The four of them climbed down the net to the catwalk where Jeeves was already waiting.

  “I can see Union Station through the lattice,” Samuel said. “Is the station’s mass exerting enough gravity that we’d eventually be pulled over there if we weren’t standing on the catwalk?”

  “The whole carrier would move with us,” Marilla pointed out. “We’re part of the same system.”

  “Not if we turned off our cleats,” Samuel argued. “This reminds me of one of those homework problems from first year Space Engineering at the Open University.”

  “You’re falling behind,” Joe called over his shoulder. “Talk while you walk.”

  “Or shuffle,” Samuel said, sliding one foot in front of the other without ever completely losing contact with the catwalk. “How do you know where we’re going?”

  “Just following everybody else,” Paul said, pointing at the figures on other catwalks who were all moving in more or less the same direction. “My guess is that the auction lots will be right on the other side of the next cargo net. There wouldn’t be any point in having us all dock an hour’s walk from the merchandise, and the only thing the Sharf have to do to create a docking bay is to make room and stretch nets.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for getting your dad to take a co-op student,” Marilla said to Samuel. “
Have you seen my card?”

  “Tunnel Trips has cards?”

  “Brand new.” The Horten girl fished out the silver case Joe had given her and carefully extracted a single card without letting any others float loose. She gave it a little push in his direction and put the case back in her suit pocket, buttoning the flap just to be safe.

  “Vice President,” Samuel read after he snatched the free-floating card. “Wow! And I was beginning to feel bad about seeing you cleaning rentals when the rest of us all got government jobs.”

  “Cleaning rentals is just as important as installing propulsion systems—it’s all part of the same business,” Marilla said philosophically. She pointed ahead to where Paul was just ducking through a break in the netting to a different catwalk that was partially enclosed in screening. “Look, those must be the ships up for auction. There have to be thousands of them.”

  “They’re the right size,” Samuel said, running his eye over the neat rows of short-distance, single-cabin craft. “I bet the Sharf auction off the similar ones in big lots to save time or we’ll be out here all day. Dad told me that most of these big auctions offer a couple of typical sample craft for inspection. Not random samples, but chosen to represent the average condition.”

  “Wouldn’t that be something if Paul could buy a hundred or so? It would quadruple the size of our fleet, or we could resell them to the franchises.”

  “Look at those moving symbols. I’ll bet they’re numbers and it’s a countdown to the start of the auction.”

  “Twenty-two minutes,” Marilla said. “Where did everybody go?”

  Samuel turned all the way around before it occurred to him to tilt his head back. “There they are, directly above us. We walked right past the turn they took.”

  “It’s funny how in Zero-G a turn can go up or down as well as side-to-side. Hey, do you want to cheat?”

  The EarthCent ambassador’s son checked that his father wasn’t looking, then he winked at Marilla. Clicking his heels to turn off his magnetic cleats, he pushed off the catwalk and launched himself up the vertical segment. The Horten girl followed too closely, and Samuel hadn’t managed to get completely out of the way at the other end before she sailed into him and they got tangled up.

  “Enjoy it while you’re young,” Joe called, though his voice lost force in the cavernous space that was cluttered with latticework and ships. By the time the two got themselves reoriented with their magnetic cleats stuck to the right surface, Samuel had to admit to himself that it probably would have been faster to just shuffle up to the next level.

  “So, it’s between these two lots, Jeeves,” Paul was saying when the youngsters finally caught up. “I like the Drazen daytrippers, and even though they’re a few thousand years old, they look like they’re in great shape. But we have no way of knowing whether they were stored away from damaging radiation or if the hulls have lost half of their strength. On the other hand, those Dollnick taxis look pretty beat, but the maintenance records were in the bid package, and paint is cheap. It doesn’t matter that the upholstery is shot because we’d have to replace the chairs anyway. People don’t like it when their feet can’t reach the deck.”

  “It wouldn’t be right for me to provide technical insight that isn’t available to the other bidders, but since I’m shopping for SBJ Fashions, I think the taxis are worth a closer look,” Jeeves said.

  Marilla put a hand on Samuel’s arm to hold him back as the other three entered one of the Dollnick taxis that had been chosen as a representative sample.

  “How was what Jeeves just did different than cheating for Paul?” she whispered. “He probably x-rayed those Drazen ships, or did magnetic resonance imaging or something.”

  “You never know,” the EarthCent ambassador’s son replied. “Jeeves might be cheating, or the Stryx may have some reason that they want us to build a bigger rental fleet using the Dollnick taxis instead of the Drazen Daytrippers. I went to the station librarian’s experimental school and grew up with young Stryx, and all I can tell you for certain is that it’s impossible to know what they’re thinking.”

  Nine

  “Are you sure you got the time right?” Kevin asked. “Tzachan and Flazint have never been late to a date before.”

  “This is the first time we’re chaperoning on their clock so I rounded off a bit,” Dorothy admitted. “It might have worked out to six or seven minutes past the hour, but who can remember that?”

  “Maybe we’re waiting in the wrong place.”

  “How many botanical gardens could there be on the Frunge deck? Libby?”

  “Fourteen, but I had the lift tube bring you to the right one,” the station librarian replied. “Flazint is just arriving.”

  A few seconds later the Frunge girl appeared, wearing a long dress and walking with mincing steps as if there was a rope tied between her ankles.

  “Flaz?” Dorothy asked as if she didn’t believe her eyes. “What are you wearing?”

  “It’s a first-year dating dress and you wouldn’t believe how much I had to pay for it,” Flazint replied angrily. “I feel like I’m trapped in a sack, and it took forever to weave my hair vines through this low-rise trellis I borrowed from my grandmother.”

  “But when I asked you about all of those dating apparel rules I read about in Frunge for Humans, you told me that they don’t apply on Stryx stations.”

  “They don’t, unless the matchmaker is doing a site inspection. Where’s Margie?”

  “It’s too early in the morning for her, she would have cried the whole time,” Dorothy explained. “We tried to get Alexander to come, but he did this big growling act like he had to stay and protect the baby, even though I know he went right back to sleep after we left. You never realize how big those Cayl hounds really are until you try to get them to do something they don’t want to do.”

  “I brought the chaperoning contract,” Kevin said, displaying the carrier bag for the stone tablet. “I’ve got the calendar in here too.”

  “Let me see the calendar, quick,” Flazint hissed. She accepted the device from Kevin and scrolled through a series of Frunge menus before finding what she was looking for. “Grains,” she swore. “Keep a lookout for Mizpah. I have to fix this.”

  “Something’s wrong?” Dorothy asked.

  “I wanted everything to look symmetrical for you when I translated to the Human calendar, so I substituted units rather than reworking all of the math. Grains,” she cursed again. “There’s a password.”

  “But after adjusting for the length of the day and the days in our respective weeks, wouldn’t that have doubled your number of permissible dates?” Kevin asked.

  Flazint turned the calendar over, spotted a plastic peel-off strip on the back, and gently pulled it off. Then she studied the underside of the strip and breathed a sigh of relief. “You were supposed to remove this sticker and keep it in a safe place,” she lectured Dorothy while entering the password. “It’s so nobody can tamper with the calendar other than the chaperone.”

  “Like you’re tampering now?”

  Flazint thrust the strip with the printed password into Dorothy’s hand. “Don’t lose that, but if Mizpah asks, say you left it at home.”

  “You want me to lie to your matchmaker?”

  “This is important. Did you even read your chaperoning contract?”

  “It’s in Frunge, and you said it was all standard legalese.”

  Flazint gave the calendar a final tap and invoked the safety override. The device let out a loud beep of protest and the screen began flashing bright red, but after she powered it down and then on again, everything looked normal. “Here,” she said, returning the calendar to Kevin. “If Mizpah asks, just hand it over as if nothing happened.”

  “Did you just make us accessories to some sort of Frunge dating felony?” Dorothy asked suspiciously. “I mean, you know I’d do anything for you, but it would have been nice if you asked first.”

  “No time for that, we’re almost
late. Just act normal and don’t volunteer any information.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing. How come Tzachan didn’t arrive with you? At least we could have gotten his legal opinion.”

  “How could two Frunge who only meet on chaperoned dates show up together?” Flazint asked innocently. “He’s waiting inside.”

  “Shall we?” Kevin said, offering his arm to Dorothy. She looked at him in surprise, and then realized they were supposed to be on their best behavior for the date inspector, who might be lurking behind any bush in the garden.

  “Shoulders back,” Flazint whispered to the EarthCent ambassador’s daughter. “Posture is an important part of the grading process.”

  “Mizpah will be giving us grades?”

  “Remember, we aren’t supposed to know she’s watching us, so act natural. And smile.”

  “There’s Tzachan,” Kevin said, easily spotting the Frunge attorney, who was standing next to a metal picnic table surrounded by a low privacy hedge and waving some sort of banner on a long pole. “What’s with the flag?”

  “We always carry a flag on chaperoned dates,” Flazint said quickly. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Uh, right. Got it. Is there a special reason he’s just standing there rather than coming to greet us?”

  “This garden is very popular and he’s staked out a good spot. They don’t accept reservations.”

  “It’s a restaurant too?”

  “Juice bar,” Flazint explained. “Don’t worry, I called ahead and they have some Human-safe options on the menu. Listen, Dorothy. The best thing is for you to talk with Tzachan about work.”

  “Really? You’re not going to get mad at me for monopolizing him?”

  “Of course not,” the Frunge girl replied, and managed a smile that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a corpse. “Try to remember what we’re doing here today.”