Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2)

by Schroeder, Dave

  “You’re funny, Uncle Jack.”

  “Not intentionally.”

  “Daddy said I should check with you before I went to school.”

  I made a mental note to play some sort of practical joke on Tomáso in the near future.

  “Check with me about what?”

  “About whether you and Poly and her family are coming to my mom’s dinner tonight. At the Teleport Inn.”

  Skip the practical joke. I deserved this.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “So much happened yesterday that I forgot to RSVP.”

  “That’s okay. You must get a lot of dinner invitations from Queen Matriarchs,” teased Terrhi.

  “First one this week,” I said.

  “And?” said Terrhi.

  “And, what?”

  “And are you and Poly coming?”

  “Of course. We’re honored to attend and are really looking forward to meeting your mother.”

  “Mom’s cool. You’ll like her.”

  “I’m sure we will.”

  “What about Poly’s family? Are they coming, too?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Poly left me a note to say they’d love to come, but I forgot to get back to you. It’s all my fault.”

  “That’s okay, Uncle Jack.” Terrhi’s nine sub-trunks bounced in excitement. “We thought that’s what happened.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You do tend to get distracted, Uncle Jack.”

  “You have no idea…” I said, my voice trailing off as my brain started riffing over everything that had happened yesterday.

  Something ran between my legs, bumping my right ankle in the process. It was my phone, in its “let’s pretend I’m a tiny human” mode.

  “My apologies, Princess,” said my phone, bowing as best it could with a rigid, rectangular middle. “I should have reminded him, but I was focused on learning how to use my new case.”

  Terrhi giggled. I love the sound of little girl giggles in the morning.

  “It looks good on you,” she said. “Now you can help Spike chase squirrels.”

  “Speaking of Spike,” I said, “where’s my favorite tri-sabertooth?”

  “He’s down that way, sniffing the bushes.” Terrhi gestured to her right with three sub-trunks. “I think he’s tracking something.”

  “More squirrels?” I said. “Or perhaps a chipmunk?”

  “Something else, I think,” said Terrhi. “But I don’t know what. I haven’t seen him behave this way before.”

  “I hope he doesn’t frighten some poor woodland creature half to death.”

  “He won’t,” said the girl. “He’s a big sweetie.”

  She turned her head to the side and shouted.

  “Spike! SPIKE!”

  So much for not annoying the neighbors at this hour. The big cat came bounding up the courtyard, made a ninety degree turn, and slid past Terrhi to head-butt me, knocking my phone into a comical somersault in the process. I’d braced myself—this wasn’t the first time Spike had given me an enthusiastic greeting—so I didn’t land on my posterior. I did have fun watching the video of my phone’s back flip when I checked my front door security camera later, though. Now I just gave Spike the scritches he was expecting.

  “Hi Spike,” I said. “Did you spot something unusual?”

  Spike stepped back to stand by Terrhi—he was as much royal bodyguard as pet, I considered—and shook his head slowly from side to side. He hadn’t been able to figure it out, whatever it was. I felt something grab on to my t-shirt and realized that my phone had climbed up my back to ride on my shoulder. That was a much better place to be than ground level when Spike was in the vicinity.

  “It’s been great to talk with you, Uncle Jack,” said Terrhi, “but school starts at eight-thirty and I don’t want to be late.”

  “Isn’t your school in the complex?” I asked. There were several schools for the children of Galactics in Ad Astra.

  “Yes, but Daddy only lets me walk to school by myself if I remember to be on time.”

  Given all the temptations on the way for a young Dauushan and her pet, I can understand why Tomáso imposed that restriction on his daughter. Then Spike’s ears popped up. We heard a high-pitched whine.

  “Incoming!” said my phone, a bit too loud and right in my ear.

  Five drones had arrived at my front door, where they hovered above Terrhi and Spike.

  “Delivery for Jack Buckston,” each drone said in turn, dropping off five different-sized packages after I acknowledged receipt.

  “Oh, I’m glad they came before I had to leave,” said Terrhi.

  “You’re behind this?” I said, gesturing to the packages.

  “Just this one,” she said, pointing to a tall square box the size of a very large bottle of liquor. “Open them, open them.”

  I was curious, so I started with a rectangular box as long as my arm and about four inches thick. When I opened it, I found a top of the line black tuxedo jacket and matching pants. The other boxes held shoes, shirts, vests, two cummerbunds, bow ties, cuff links, shirt studs, socks and all the other trimming that go with a tuxedo.

  “Am I to assume that your mother’s dinner tonight isn’t a typical informal Dauushan get-together?”

  “Uh huh,” said Terrhi, “Mom’s in full Queen Matriarch mode. It’s formal, and Daddy and I wanted to make sure you look sharp.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I’d always wanted to own a spiffy tux but never had anywhere to wear one.

  “Open my package,” said Terrhi.

  I’d moved the tux and accessories inside and put them on my coffee table so they’d be safe from Spike’s curious investigations.

  “Okay,” I said, opening the box and finding an elegant silk top hat. I tried it on.

  Terrhi giggled, then covered her mouth with three trunks.

  “Sorry, Uncle Jack,” she said. “I do like how it looks on you.”

  “But maybe with the tux instead of a t-shirt and sweatpants?”

  “Maybe,” said Terrhi, still suppressing giggles.

  I tipped my hat at her, did a brief two-step and hummed a bit of “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” I made myself a mental note—I’d have to get a cane.

  Terrhi gave up on suppressing anything. She just laughed.

  “Time for school,” she said, skipping off down the courtyard with Spike as only young hexapods can.

  I waved to my departing friends and was about to close my front door when another delivery drone arrived carrying a box the same size and shape as my tuxedo’s container. This time, I recognized the logo on the side of the package. It was from Morphicouture, the high fashion house that was also one of my clients. I’d helped them find some missing fabric six weeks ago, and Mademoiselle Ellie, their CEO, had promised me something special as a way of saying thank you.

  Inside the box was a gorgeous Orishen morphic silk dress, custom made to Poly’s measurements. Another, much smaller box, rested at the bottom of the larger one. I opened it and saw that it held a matching pair of morphic shoes. Ellie and her team had outdone themselves.

  Now I didn’t have to worry about how I looked in my tux—with Poly by my side, nobody would be paying any attention to me.

  * * * * *

  I carried all my new finery into my bedroom, carefully hung what belonged on hangers in my walk-in closet, and arranged my suspenders, bow tie, cuff links, studs and socks on top of my dresser so they would be at hand when it was time to get ready tonight. I lined the shiny patent leather shoes up neatly on the floor in my closet. Somehow, they made all my other shoes feel drab by comparison. I left Poly’s dress in its box, nestled in tissue paper, on the coffee table in my living room, but had my phone take a picture and text it to Poly with a not
e.

  “A beautiful dress for an even more beautiful woman to wear for dinner with a Queen,” it said. “Where do you want me to send it?”

  Poly’s reply came back quickly.

  “Wow! You’re amazing! Thank you! XOXO. Keep it at your place.”

  “Great!” I texted back.

  I hadn’t known where Poly’s family was staying. I’d assumed it would be one of the hotels in downtown Atlanta or maybe the Ritz Carleton in Buckhead, but it would make logistics a lot easier if they were in a hotel here in the complex.

  “How’s it going?” I wrote.

  “Good,” responded Poly. “Gotta run. Bye.”

  I guess she was really pushing to get her paper finished. I hoped she’d had enough rest to be coherent for dinner tonight, then kicked myself for not asking for details about her warning earlier. Now I hoped that I would have enough rest to be coherent for dinner tonight. I looked at my bed longingly, but realized that I had a lot to do before I left for the airport and had better get started doing it.

  I had my phone instruct my whirrbot and dust drones to get busy vacuuming and dusting, then lifted the lid on my toilet to ensure that my Too-D’Loo ’bot was continuing to polish the porcelain. I picked things up around the place, fighting the good fight against entropy, and put our tea mugs from last night in the dishwasher. That reminded me to eat. I had a light breakfast, just a cup of tea and a toasted Nicósn tortilla fish, since I planned to have an early lunch at the airport. Then I put my cup and plate in the dishwasher and set it to run in a few hours when I’d be out.

  Finished in the kitchen, I walked to my living room where I programmed my wall screen. I configured it to show a rotating collection of scenes from the galaxy’s top one hundred destinations according to the Keen’s Guides, for Poly’s mother, and photos of famous structures from the ancient world, like the Colosseum, the Parthenon, and the Great Pyramid of Giza for her father. I didn’t know what scenes would appeal to Poly’s sister.

  Then I moved to my bedroom, and laughed. The poster-sized electronic picture frame to the left of my bedroom door had abruptly switched from a highbrow Impressionist painting, Edgar Degas’ Ballerina in a Red Dress to a tacky painting from the Dogs Playing Poker series. That image slowly dissolved into an even more tacky velvet Elvis painting of the King in a white, rhinestone-encrusted jumpsuit. The transition made me laugh again. The electronic picture frame had been a convalescence gift from one of my friends or clients. When more than one person was in my room, it stayed classy, showing well-known paintings from Earth’s top art museums. But when I was alone, it switched to kitsch. Along with the dogs and velvet Elvis, the frame had entertained me with Miss Piggy as Mona Lisa, a paint-by-numbers version of Michael Jackson’s glove, a cat wearing an Elizabethan ruff, pink flamingos wearing top hats, and several of Margaret Keane’s big-eyed children.

  I didn’t know who had given it to me. The card on the drone delivery just said “Get Well Soon,” and wasn’t signed, but I had my suspicions. Ellie Schwartzfield, the CEO of Morphicouture, was a candidate. She was a patron of the arts and had a wicked sense of humor. Ram Patel, the head of the North American Caribbean Cricket League, was another, but I thought his taste in tacky pictures would include bejeweled depictions of the Goddess Kali, and so far none had appeared. Droopy, Ram’s formerly depressed ecommerce server, might have done it, but the disembodied brain would be more likely to send me something music-related. Martin had given me a law enforcement edition of The Manual of Physical Security. He’d said it was to help me sleep, but I enjoyed it. And Mike had brought me a treasure: actual ink-on-paper comic books—thank you Mike. After their thoughtfulness, I didn’t think either Mike or Martin would spend over three hundred galcreds on an electronic frame. Terrhi’s gift of a top hat this morning, along with the hat-wearing flamingos’ pink color, made me believe I might finally know the identity of the frame’s sender. It had to be Tomáso. He had a low sense of humor. It certainly wasn’t Shepherd—he didn’t do tacky.

  It didn’t really matter who had sent the frame. It had done its job and lightened my mood while I was stuck in bed. Speaking of beds, I remade mine with clean sheets, picked up odds and ends, and looked carefully to confirm that there were no signs of Poly spending time in my apartment visible to a casual inspection. She had a drawer filled with her stuff—t-shirts, underwear, jeans and such—in my tall bureau, but you’d have to be really nosy to find it. Once my bedroom passed inspection, it was time for a shave and a shower.

  I spread depilating foam on my face, avoiding my mustache, and triggered it with a few seconds of UV light so the nanites suspended in the bubbles would give me a close shave. Then I got in the shower. I stayed with my standard Earl Grey program, since I wasn’t feeling like I needed to be pummeled by Chinese Gunpowder. Despite only getting five hours of sleep, I was feeling pretty good. Maybe I’d head out early and check on my robot while I was close to Hartsfield. I grabbed my backpack tool bag and left my apartment.

  Carpe diem, as my mother used to say. It was time to seize the day before the day seized me.

  Chapter 17

  “It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead.”

  — William Goldman, The Princess Bride

  I walked down to my reserved spot in the underground parking garage, instead of having my van meet me on Peachtree Street, because I needed to reconfigure my van to carry passengers. Normally, there were just two bucket seats up front. The Orishen-built front seats could slide together and meld into a single bench seat to fit in an extra person, if necessary. However, I needed to pick up three people and their luggage on my airport run, and that meant major modifications to my van’s interior.

  My van was neatly parked in my assigned spot, nose out for a fast departure. A row of lockers, twice as deep and three times as wide as the ones you see lining the halls in high school movies, was bolted to the wall at the back end of my parking place. I used the lockers for storage and asked my van to pull a few feet forward so I could open its back doors and remove most of the parts and equipment filling up its cargo compartment.

  I like to be prepared for anything, which means I’m reluctant to throw away any surplus technology I come across that might be useful for solving clients’ problems. In practice, that means the back of my van is chock full of junk I think might come in handy, from a tiny Musan-sized Orishen scent-organ to a Tōdon smart watch as big as a beer keg. Come to think of it, maybe it was a beer keg. I don’t drink, but I’ve been known to help transport supplies for clients’ parties. I like to pretend that everything in the back of my van is well organized, but I’m fooling myself. When I slide open the partition separating the driver’s area from the cargo compartment and survey the semi-structured chaos, my superego just shakes its head and makes disapproving tsk-tsk-tsk sounds.

  I didn’t have time to sort and organize things as I removed them—I just pulled items out quickly and shoved them into my lockers wherever they would fit. Thank goodness there was enough room. I’d dropped off several hundred kilograms of “surplus equipment” at Fry’s Galtech Salvage a couple of months ago, because I couldn’t talk the tenants holding the parking places on either side of mine into letting me install lockers in their spaces to handle my overflow. At least moving my junk was an upper body workout, so I didn’t have to feel guilty about skipping the gym.

  Then I noticed the two dormant octovacs I’d stowed at the very front of the cargo compartment. They were flat round disks that looked like they’d extrude into extra pop-up seats at my command. I rolled them out the side cargo door and around to the back of my van. Unfortunately, when I tried to find space for them in my lockers, the “No Vacancy” sign was on. I really should have returned that beer keg. I sighed and realized I’d have to put them back in my van after it shifted modes. Maybe they could help carry luggage?

  Once the back of my van was em
pty, I instructed it to reconfigure its interior to six passenger mode. After a cheerful “As you wish,” a second row bench seat flipped up from the floor and metal panels along my van’s sides descended to reveal tinted windows. It wasn’t as slick as a full-blown Orishen mutable interior, but it was Terran-made and a lot less expensive than the off-planet alternative. I’d wanted the six-passenger option in case I needed to pick up clients or take them out to dinner, but seldom used my van for anything except support calls. I was glad to give my “faithful steed” a change of pace.

  “Looking good,” said my phone, back in its normal spot on my belt.

  “Woo hoo hoo!” said my van, clearly pleased.

  “Wasn’t that what… ?” I started to say, but my van cut me off.

  “It’s what Miracle Max said to his wife.”

  “How many times have you watched The Princess Bride?”

  “It’s on a continuous loop. Part of me is always watching it.”

  “While you’re driving?”

  “According to a 2029 report from the National Highway Safety Board, self-driving vehicles are very good at multitasking,” sniffed my van.

  It was the longest sentence I’d ever heard it say.

  “If you ask me, you need to go through a car wash,” said my phone.

  “Look who knows so much,” said my van.

  “Wasn’t that also what…” I said.

  “Uh huh,” said my van.

  “Time to go,” said my phone.

  I looked at my van’s exterior and agreed with my phone’s assessment. I’d stop at a car wash on my way south. I’m glad I’d gotten an early start on the day—errands were piling up. I stowed my backpack tool bag between the front bucket seats, climbed in, and headed toward the airport.