Carnival On Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 5)

by E. M. Foner

  “Is that one for real or some kind of simulation?” Ian asked, poking Stanley in the ribs with an elbow.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Vergallian woman dancing solo before,” Donna’s husband replied. He didn’t have to ask who Ian was referring to, and most of the eyes on their side of the arena were on the perfect humanoid female, whose movements were hypnotically erotic in a non-species-specific sort of way.

  “Don’t look, Pop,” Brinda said, covering her father’s eyes with a hand. He pulled it down and held onto it, but Shaina covered her father’s eyes from the other side, and then he ran out of hands.

  “It’s the Vergallian seduction dance,” Shaina urgently addressed Stanley and Ian. “You guys better look away or you could end up following her out of here like a couple of lost puppies.”

  Just then, a sort of bubble of activity swelled up in the central mass of dancers, and many of them stumbled outwards in a domino effect. An enormous bunny backed into the Vergallian dancer, causing her to momentarily lose her balance and step over the rope. The attempt of those dancers at the expanding edge to retain their balance led to a push back in the direction of the center, and more contestants were forced over the rope at the opposite side of the circle, setting off another reaction. In less than a minute, more than half of the dancers had been disqualified, and many of those who remained were nursing accidental injuries from the scrum.

  “So far so good,” commented a Grenouthian fan seated in front of the humans. “Now we’ll see some real dancing.”

  Sure enough, with ample space cleared for the remaining dancers to maneuver freely, the contest was transformed from a late-night brawl at a dance club into a more artistic event. The human tulip bulb germinated, reached for the sun, and burst into bloom. Then a Verlock flame dancer scorched one of her petals and she kicked him in the head.

  “Intentional paralytic contact!” boomed a Verlock from the host’s booster section on the other side of the arena.

  “He attacked her costume,” Ian yelled back.

  The Grenouthian judge consulted with his colleagues and threw penalty flags at both dancers. Jingjing wilted gracefully, then she accepted her fate and followed the Verlock off the stage.

  “That was unfair,” Brinda objected. “We should lodge a protest.”

  “The judges are the ultimate authority for each contest, that much of the rules I understood,” her father replied. “I’ll give Jingjing credit, though, that was quite a kick. Must be the Chinese opera training.”

  The humans didn’t stay for the rest of the dance competition, which was rapidly being reduced to a five-way contest between the dancers who were represented by a judge on the panel.

  “What’s next?” Ian asked, as they exited to the corridor.

  “The only live competition left today is four-dimensional art,” Brinda replied. “Cooking is in the tasting phase by now, and I’ve seen enough projectile vomiting brought on by cross-species cuisine to give it a pass. The two-dimensional and three-dimensional art contests are just static installations, no different than going to a gallery, so we can stop in any time.”

  “What is four-dimensional art, exactly?” Stanley asked. “I know we gave our slot to Dring because there weren’t any human contenders, but I didn’t get a chance to ask him what’s involved.”

  “I think it has to do with creating a sculpture that expresses motion in a timed trial,” Aisha replied. “I know that Dring does a lot of metal constructs, and he can work pretty quickly when he wants to, so maybe he’ll have a chance.”

  “Will the ambassador be coming?” Ian asked. “I’m sure the rest of you have noticed by now that having a friendly judge on the panel is half the battle.”

  “She said she would come, but I don’t know if she intends to judge or not,” Aisha replied. “All of this nepotism and speciesism, it just doesn’t seem to fit the spirit of Carnival.”

  “First of all, if speciesism is really a word, it shouldn’t be,” Ian retorted. “Second of all, what do you know about the spirit of Carnival? All of the aliens on the station except for the Chert have competed in plenty of Carnivals, and the Chert have at least watched them from the shadows. We’re probably the ones everybody is pointing at, saying that the humans are bad sports.”

  “Four-dimensional art contest,” Shaina intoned, after the humans again crowded into a single lift tube capsule. When the doors slid open, they found themselves in a cavernous hold on the core. There were a few ships undergoing maintenance in the distance, but the real action was taking place behind a temporary wall of curtains, from beyond which bright flashes of welding lit up the surroundings.

  “Wow, I’ve never been in a full maintenance bay before,” Aisha commented. “The deck curvature is the same as Mac’s Bones, but it seems to go on forever.”

  “Everybody take safety goggles,” Stanley commanded, as they approached the end of the curtain wall. A series of bins with labels showing the compatibility for various species formed a blockade, to remind vulnerable biologicals not to enter the area without eye protection. The humans fished out a variety of goggles and full-face protectors, and took turns peeking around the edge of the curtains to make sure that the filters actuated properly.

  “It looks more like a shipyard than an art competition,” Ian observed, as they headed towards the hissing, sputtering and flashing arcs and flames. “Doesn’t anybody work in stone anymore?”

  “Probably takes too long,” the Hadad patriarch replied. “Creepers! What’s that thing?”

  The humans gaped at the nightmarish sculpture of some sort of prehistoric Dollnick-eating insect that the towering Dolly was rapidly welding together out of rod stock, all four of his arms in continuous motion. If the pieces were to be judged on emotional content, it would be hard to beat this one for fear.

  The next artist was moving ponderously back and forth between a giant cauldron and a dully glowing mass that bore a vague resemblance to a spacecraft.

  “That Verlock is working with stone,” Shaina pointed out to Ian. “At least, I guess it will be stone when it cools.”

  “Is he squeezing that lava out with just his hands?” her sister asked.

  “No, he’s using a piping bag,” their father answered. “I’ll have to check the temperature rating of the ones we’re selling in Kitchen Kitsch. A molten-rock and fire rated bag for squeezing out frosting might make a good novelty item for chefs.”

  The humans continued moving through the area with the circulating crowd, keeping a safe distance from the artists and marveling over the technical competence on display. Some pieces were aesthetically pleasing through their symmetry or use of different colored construction materials, but none of them impressed the humans like the Dollnick nightmare.

  “Hey!” called a helmeted figure, waving a hand. When he flipped up his visor, the human Carnival committee members all recognized Joe, who had brought his own welding helmet. Kelly moved out from behind him, holding a dark shield on a stick like an opera mask. Both were dressed in practical fireproof overalls from Mac’s Bones.

  “Are you judging?” Ian asked Kelly, dispensing with small talk.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, sounding miserable. “If I do vote, Dring already made it clear that he’ll expect my support, and that’s not fair to anybody either.”

  “You and your daughter-in-law are the only sentients on the station who think that way,” Ian scolded her. “Do you know what that means when it’s a hundred million against two? It means that you’re both crazy!”

  “Have you found Dring yet?” Aisha asked the McAllisters, hoping to diffuse the confrontational atmosphere.

  “We were just pointed in his direction by a trio of Fillinducks who were packing up their tools,” Joe replied. “They said they knew when they were beat.”

  Forming a little clump of humanity, the committee members and the McAllisters followed Joe in the direction that the Fillinducks had indicated, and ended up on the fringes of a large crowd
gathered around a sputtering light source. The flashes were visible off of the high ceiling doors of the bay, and the sounds of Dring’s welding became audible as the noises produced by the remaining contestants began to fade out.

  As the humans looked for an opening, they were surprised to see that some of the taller aliens who could watch Dring working were beginning to weep, groan, or wave their moveable parts, expressing grief and distress in a hundred alien ways. Kelly was dying of curiosity when she finally found a vantage point on top of a metal stairway, which she later found out was a Drazen artwork that had been abandoned mid-construction.

  Dring’s piece evoked universal memories of childhood trauma, of the tyranny of the strong over the weak, of the loss of innocence. It spoke to the common mythology of all sentients, the yearning to be free, the horror of being caged. The impression was somehow concrete and abstract at the same time, and gave Kelly the distinct feeling of being a bird with clipped wings.

  As word spread, the other four-dimensional artists paused on construction of their own works to gather around and watch Dring put the finishing touches on his masterpiece. The light metal sculpture somehow expressed such a weightiness that it was a wonder to all present that it didn’t fall through deck after deck until exiting to the vacuum of space at the station’s outer skin. The judges, when they were able to catch their collective breaths, unanimously awarded Dring the first prize without their usual posturing and bickering, saving Kelly from the need to make up her mind.

  “Does your piece have a name?” Ambassador Crute asked Dring respectfully.

  “Metoo unjustly grounded for helping his human friend,” Dring recited, in a voice that expressed the utter exhaustion of spent creative forces, colored with the satisfaction of a job well done.

  The crowd applauded, and a couple of towering Dollnicks insisted on raising the little dinosaur onto their shoulders. A crew from the Grenouthian galactic news service captured it all with immersive equipment.

  “It was just two days,” Libby complained through Kelly’s implant. “Besides, it was Firth’s suggestion, and Metoo agreed that it was an important lesson.”

  Knowing how Dorothy could turn being sent to bed without dessert into a tragedy to rival the ancient Greeks, Kelly sympathized with the Stryx.

  Twenty

  The EarthCent embassy office wasn’t large enough to host the meeting Kelly requested to get the other ambassadors caught up on the Gem situation. In order to thank Ian for his work on the Carnival committee and to console him for losing at his national sport, Donna scheduled the meeting at Pub Haggis in the Little Apple. Aisha went on ahead to discuss the menu details with the Ainsleys, and by the time that Kelly arrived with Samuel, Ian and Torra had laid out a full spread of food, none of which appeared to be Scottish.

  Czeros was the first ambassador to arrive, quickly followed by Apria and Crute. Since all three represented species who had won a Carnival event, caber toss, ballroom dancing and knife throwing respectively, Kelly immediately assumed they arrived early for the sake of extra time to gloat. She was correct.

  “Our man was very impressed that a human could be so competitive at ancestor worship,” Czeros started in on Ian immediately. Behind the bar, Torra got her bagpipes off the shelf and began looking for her earplugs.

  “Please, Czeros. As a personal favor, let’s not talk about the caber toss competition,” Kelly whispered to the Frunge ambassador urgently, as Ian’s ears turned red. “The poor man left his stick behind in Mac’s Bones, he was so disappointed.”

  “Besides,” Apria commented, stretching like a cat preparing for a big night out, “I doubt his wife would have approved of the prize I gave the winner.”

  “I’d rather talk about knife throwing in any case,” Crute said. “Now there’s a sport we can all enjoy.”

  Ortha arrived next, glared the other ambassadors into silence, and started eating without waiting for the others to arrive. He’d been getting a hard time at home and at work for ruining his son’s chances of winning hide-and-seek, and his patience was exhausted. Ortha’s attack on the food proved a wise strategy for putting the taunting on temporary hold, because the other ambassadors were too experienced to waste their time talking while the best bits disappeared into the Horten’s stomach.

  Bork showed up next, able to hold his head high thanks to the Drazen victory in singing, a competition they won more often than not. When he saw that the other ambassadors were already eating, he threw Kelly a hurt look, and then hurried to get his share. The Grenouthian and Verlock ambassadors followed soon after. Now that the other members of the ad-hoc group were all in place, the Chert materialized right in front of the fruit bowl and started snatching at toothpicks to transfer some choice bits to his plate.

  “Thank you all for coming on short notice,” Kelly announced over the sounds of alien ingestion and mastication. “I think the recent developments with the Gem Empire and the Free Gem movement have leant urgency to our meeting. Also, the local dissidents asked me to arrange for negotiations with Ambassador Gem on this station.”

  “I was about to request a new meeting myself,” the Verlock ambassador droned slowly, tapping the table. At first Kelly was relieved that somebody was paying attention, but then she remembered that the Verlocks didn’t find human food palatable, though their digestive systems were Drazen-like in their robustness. “As a species which shares a number of star systems with the Gem Empire, we have seen a large and sudden increase in the number of Gem seeking transit through our space stations and tunnel connections.”

  “Did the surge begin with the broadcast of Gem Tomorrow?” Kelly asked.

  “Exactly,” the Verlock replied. “Our intelligence analysts now believe that the majority of the Gem wish to see the end of the current Empire, a view that was unimaginable to us just a cycle ago.”

  “Why isn’t that one eating?” Ian muttered in an aside to Aisha. Despite his recent humiliation at the hands of the aliens, the Scotsman was first and foremost a victualler, and it bothered him to see a guest ignoring the food.

  “The Verlocks don’t like watery or sweet food,” Aisha told him. “Don’t worry about it. Kelly said he never eats at these meetings.”

  “Did everybody receive a syllabus for the negotiation workshop EarthCent will be hosting in my home for the Free Gem delegation?” Kelly asked. She received a few skeptical looks in return, and Apria loudly spit out a seed. Surprisingly, the Grenouthian ambassador pushed his plate away and cleared his furry throat.

  “I showed your treatment to some local producers of children’s entertainment,” the giant bunny replied. “They would like to meet with you to discuss creating a humorous immersive for pre-school edutainment. And before any of our esteemed colleagues spill the beans, I want to disclose that I will receive a finder’s fee if your script is adapted, but I assure you I was motivated by my love for children, not the money.”

  Kelly turned bright red and bit her tongue. She and Aisha had worked for hours on the workshop outline, recalling all of their favorite exercises from EarthCent’s diplomatic training course.

  “Excellent skin color,” Ortha complimented her between bites. “How very Horten of you.”

  “I know that all of the so-called advanced species take negotiation skills for granted, but that didn’t stop our man from winning the bartering competition, now did it!” Kelly retorted, her jaw jutting out.

  The ambassadors fell uncharacteristically silent, even pausing in their demolition of the finger food. For the humans to win one of the permanent Carnival events in their first outing was considered a major upset. When Mr. Clavitts had not only walked away with the bartering prize but had done so in record time, the aliens couldn’t help being impressed.

  “Perhaps if you included that man in your workshop plan?” Crute suggested.

  “The Gem have no tradition of bartering or negotiation in their culture,” Kelly continued with renewed confidence. “This also applies to their ambassadors, whose tra
ditional role on the Stryx stations has been to complain about how all the other species envy them. We, Aisha and I, believe that with the proper preparation, our local Free Gem have a good chance of changing the course of the Empire without resorting to force.”

  “How very human,” Ortha muttered darkly.

  “Let us accept, for the sake of argument, that our absent colleague Ambassador Gem has both the authority and the bad sense to conclude a deal that would result in her immediate dismissal,” the Vergallian ambassador posited sweetly. Kelly flinched, since she knew from experience that Apria only smiled when she was about to sink in her claws. “That would make the proposed negotiations the most important event for Gem civilization in tens of thousands of years. Why, if everything goes as you intend, the rest of us may even stop thinking of them as nasty clones.”

  “What’s your point, Apria?” Bork grunted, coming to Kelly’s defense.

  “I just want to lend my support for her workshop idea,” Apria replied innocently. “Perhaps the best possible use of our time today would be to ask the ambassador and her assistant to stage the workshop for us here, so we can offer a helpful critique.”

  “I suppose that might be useful,” Kelly said cautiously. “But there’s only the two of us to act at least three parts, and I think it would make the most sense if I played myself.”

  “I shall be honored to accept the role of Ambassador Gem,” Apria said graciously. “And perhaps your sidekick will take the part of a Free Gem negotiator?”

  “It won’t work.” Aisha spoke directly to the Vergallian ambassador, surprising Kelly with her assertiveness. “Our workshop plan is tailored to the fact that the Gem share a form of clone empathy or partial telepathy, you’d know that if you had reviewed the materials. There’s no point in acting out the scenarios when you and I have no clue what one another is thinking or feeling.”