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

by Schroeder, Dave

  We had an excellent view of the nearer starship landing pads as we drove to the spaceport’s passenger terminal. Poly and Pomy’s mother was coming in on a scheduled starliner from Neue Staddam, the capital of Nicós, that was due to land in ten minutes. We were still in good time, though. It would take a while for her to get through customs.

  “I understand you’re some sort of mechanic, interested in all that engineering nonsense that intrigues my older daughter,” said Perry from the back seat. “Are you the kind that gets into the greasy gears and twisted wires and such?”

  I looked at Pomy. She looked at me.

  “I’m more of a consultant and troubleshooter,” I said.

  “Dealing with the technological plumbing, so to speak?” said Perry.

  “That’s not how I’d put it.”

  “But you are repairing machines? Fixing copiers, adjusting looms, and so forth?”

  “Modern technology is as much a noble calling as ancient literature,” I said.

  “I’m sure that a pig looks noble to another pig,” said Perry, in the same tone he’d use to say, “The sky is blue.”

  Pomy looked at me and watched me try to suppress my desired response.

  “Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles,” I said, reciting the opening of The Iliad in classical Greek.

  “The horse can sing. How amusing,” said Perry, still smiling while wielding his verbal stiletto.

  “I sing of arms and the man…” I said, in classical Latin this time—the open line of The Aeneid.

  “So the horse can both sing and bray.”

  It was lucky for him that I was wearing my seat belt. Now I knew why Poly was closer to her mother.

  “Professor Jones,” I said. My voice was tight. I was about to say more, but was interrupted.

  “Spaceport Passenger Terminal,” said my van.

  “Everybody out,” said my phone.

  “Thank Hera,” said Pomy.

  Chapter 20

  “It is better to travel well than to arrive.”

  — Buddha

  I took the lead when we entered the spaceport’s passenger terminal so I wouldn’t have to look at Professor Pericles Agamemnon Jones. Pomy walked between us as a buffer. She’d seen how angry I was, for myself and for the years of hell he must have put Poly through. I would have happily teleported the Professor into interstellar space if we’d been at the Jackson Nexus instead of the spaceport. No, scratch that. My personal ethics and respect for the rule of law wouldn’t allow me to do such a thing, but it felt wonderful to think about it. Pomy was making small talk to diffuse the tension.

  “Mother is coming in on Gate K-42,” she said.

  She looked at the terminal map we were passing on our right.

  “That’s down at the far end of the K Concourse,” she said.

  “All arriving flights you’re meeting are at the far end,” I said, slowing my heartbeat. “That’s one of the corollaries of Murphy’s Law.”

  “Another of your technological superstitions?” said Professor Jones.

  “Shush, Daddy,” said Pomy.

  No wonder she was getting her doctorate on another continent.

  The specific gate didn’t matter much to the three of us. The only implication of Pomy’s mother’s ship landing farther out meant there’d be more of a delay as Dr. Barbara Lowell Keen, CEO of Keen Travel Publishing and author of Keen’s Guides to the many planets of the Galactic Free Trade Association, walked to baggage claim, then stood in line for Terran customs.

  Barbara Keen had a PhD in Linguistics—she’d met her “charming” husband when they were both graduate students at Harvard. Shortly after First Contact, Dr. Keen had gone off-planet to start compiling English translation dictionaries for Dauushan, Orish, Tigrammath, Nicósn, Pâkk dialects, Pyr speech and more. She sent back travel advice to her friends, telling them about the best restaurants, sights to see, and places to stay. She also wrote about other species’ social mores and things to avoid, like showing fear on a Pâkk planet. Her friends passed them around and they proved popular, so Barbara self-published them as Keen’s Guide to Dauush, Keen’s Guide to Nicós, Keen’s Guide to the Ruins of Old Pyr, and so on. She took a leave of absence from her academic appointment at Harvard and rapidly became the head of a multi-million galcred travel publishing empire.

  Later, she branched out and created species-specific guides to Terra. Dauushans and Musans have quite different concerns, for example, and face different challenges. The chapter on cats in Keen’s Musan Guide to Terra is forty-seven pages long. Keen’s Dauushan Guide to Terra has one section on the dangers of low overpasses and another on how to avoid stepping on native sapients.

  We found a place to wait with a good view of the wide, well-lit hallway leading from Terran customs. Pomy and her father found seats, but I excused myself to locate a men’s room and get away from Dr. Jones for a few minutes. The man was an unmitigated ass. I splashed cold water on my face and went through a dozen repeats of Tallis Canon on the soundtrack in my head to calm myself down. If Poly had invited her father to her graduation and was willing to try opening channels of communication, I didn’t want to get in her way. I also didn’t want to end up in jail. It might reflect poorly on Xenotech Support Corporation’s reputation.

  When I got back to Pomy and Perry, Pomy’s phone was buzzing.

  “Mom just sent me a text. She finished going through customs and will be here any minute.”

  That old go to the bathroom if you want something to happen trick still works.

  I could have picked Barbara Keen out of a crowd even without memorizing her photo from the back of my copy of Keen’s Guide to Orish. She had three times the poise and twice the savoir faire of any other passenger in the corridor. Poly and Pomy’s mother had a lithe build, like her daughters, but was only five foot five. She was in her mid-fifties, but her hair was still Poly and Pomy’s gorgeous auburn color, cut in a short, professional, easy to care for bob. She was wearing a well-tailored navy pantsuit and carried a medium-sized purse over one shoulder. Three feet behind her, staying close in “heel” position, rolled a smart, Follow-Me brand self-guided suitcase about the same size as one of Pomy’s large bags. Two smaller suitcases were neatly stacked on top of it. Barbara Keen didn’t look up from her phone as she walked down the corridor.

  “Mom, Mom!” shouted Pomy.

  She had to yell one more time before her mother looked up and smiled. The two women, mother and daughter, met where the hallway opened up into the waiting room.

  “Hello, Pomy,” she said, giving her daughter air kisses on both cheeks. “How’s Daddy’s little girl?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Mother.”

  “Pericles,” Pomy’s mother said to her husband, nodding slightly.

  “Barbara,” said Pomy’s father with a minimal bow.

  The warmth between them seemed on a par with the temperature of Pluto’s nitrogen atmosphere, and with about as much chance of thawing. I hoped Poly knew what she was doing.

  “Where’s Poly?” said Pomy’s mother.

  “She’s finishing up a research paper and asked me to pick you up,” I said.

  Barbara’s manner changed when she realized that I wasn’t a random stranger. She looked me over and must have found me at least minimally acceptable, then turned to Pomy.

  “Who is this handsome young man?” she said, now in full polite meet-and-greet mode.

  “Jack Buckston, mother,” said Pomy. “Poly’s boyfriend.”

  “Is he, now?” said Barbara. “In that case, I’m very pleased to meet you, Jack.”

  “Very pleased to meet you, too,” I said.

  We shook hands. Barbara’s grip was firm, but her hand wasn’t warm.

  I wanted to ask if Poly had told her a lot about me, bu
t I knew that Poly and her mother didn’t talk and was too polite to rub it in. I wasn’t going to take out my anger at Poly’s father on her mother. It looked like her parents were doing a good job of directing their emotions at each other, anyway.

  “Did you have a nice flight?” said Barbara to Pomy. The words were right, but the tone was distant.

  “Flights, Mother,” said Pomy. “There was some turbulence over the north Atlantic and a baby crying in Italian in the row in front of me—the poor thing’s ears wouldn’t pop and she was miserable for most of the trip.”

  While Pomy was talking, Barbara had pulled out her phone and was staring intently at something on the screen, ignoring her daughter.

  “How did you figure that the baby was crying in Italian?” I said, trying to fill the awkward silence.

  “I thought you said your flights were fine, Pumpkin?” said her father. “I wouldn’t think eight hours of sitting behind a crying baby would count as ‘fine’ for anyone.”

  “Compared to what I was expecting when I arrived in Atlanta, my flights were fine,” said Pomy, who was staring at her mother. Barbara Keen was still checking messages, or sales figures, or her horoscope.

  “I really want to know,” I said.

  Pomy didn’t change the direction of her gaze, but answered.

  “The vowel sounds are different. Italian sounds musical, even when people are speaking. There’s a reason it’s the first language of opera.”

  I thought of the Rossini music that my phone had used to wake me that morning.

  “So a baby’s ‘waaaa’ and ‘maaaaa’ in Italian sound different from the equivalent in English?”

  “Uh huh,” said Pomy. “Italian babies’ vowel sounds are more pure, somehow. Let me show you.”

  Pomy pulled out her phone and started typing, imitating her mother. Her father decided that it was a good time to visit the men’s room and walked off. Wise move.

  “Here,” said Pomy, holding her phone where we could both see the screen.

  She turned it sideways and I saw a split screen with babies, perhaps three months old, centered in each section. An American flag was below the one on the left and an Italian green, white and red tricolor was under the one on the right. Pomy pressed the Stars and Stripes and I heard the American baby cry. Then she pressed the Italian flag and I could hear the difference. The second baby really was crying in Italian.

  “Fascinating,” I said.

  “You can compare babies from lots of different countries,” said Pomy. “You can easily tell if an infant is from a country that speaks a tonal language.”

  At my request, Pomy gave me the URL of the babies cry comparison web site and I made a mental note to check it out. She played me a northern Chinese baby crying and the American baby crying again, to illustrate her point. A small child walked near us, clutching his mother’s hand, and started crying himself. It was part of that same sympathetic magic that makes yawns contagious. His mother gave us a dirty look and hurried by.

  “It’s clear you’re the daughter of a linguistics professor,” I said.

  Pomy just looked at her mother, who was still heads down, focused on her phone. My new friend shook her head back and forth, resignedly.

  “Is she always like this?” I said, indicating Pomy’s mother.

  “Ever since her company took off,” said Pomy. “Before then she was a great mom. She read us stories, baked us cookies, took us to the zoo, built us a tree house, and was even our Brownie troop leader. She had her own research and was serious about it, but she was always there for us.”

  I smiled at the thought of little Poly and Pomy in Brownie vests climbing up to their tree house to eat cookies or tugging their mother this way and that at the zoo.

  “When did things change?”

  “After Keen Travel Publishing broke three million.”

  “Units, or galcreds?”

  “Does it matter?” said Pomy.

  “No,” I said, shutting up to let her continue.

  “Mom was spending all her time on the company. I was eleven and Poly was twelve when we got a live-in nanny and housekeeper. Then Mom started taking Poly with her on her trips off-planet and I had to compete with grad students for Daddy’s attention.”

  “I’m beginning to see why Poly spending all her time with James had the effect on you that it did,” I said.

  “That’s still no excuse,” she said.

  “Tell it to Poly.”

  “I will.”

  “Why didn’t she take you with her off-planet, too?”

  Pomy looked thoughtful.

  “I don’t really know. Looking back on it as an adult I wondered if my mother and father hadn’t worked out some sort of dynastic deal. Mother would get Poly to train as the next CEO of KTP and Daddy would groom me to be the next holder of the Marcus Aurelius Endicott chair.”

  “That’s exactly what we agreed to,” said Barbara, who was putting her phone back into her purse. “There, that’s done.”

  “It was a formal agreement?” said Pomy, surprised that her mother had noticed our conversation.

  “Not in writing.”

  Barbara looked around.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “He went to the men’s room,” I said.

  “I hope he can find his way back,” said Pomy’s mother. “He’s easily distracted.”

  Pomy and I shared a glance and she rolled her eyes. Barbara was looking directly at me, so I just nodded.

  “You and Daddy decided to split us up like Solomon and the baby?” said Pomy.

  “Hardly,” said Barbara. “There was no bisection involved. You were separate people. It made sense for each of us to take one of you.”

  “But Poly and I were so close. It felt like you were ripping us in half.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Pomy. You two girls needed time apart.”

  “But it felt like you loved Poly best!”

  “Nonsense. Your father and I love you both equally. We flipped for it.”

  “Who won?” said Pomy.

  “At present, it seems like your father did,” said Barbara. “You’re getting a doctorate in classics from Oxford and Poly and I aren’t speaking.”

  “About that… “ said Pomy.

  “I’m back. Now we can go,” said Dr. Jones, who had just rejoined us.

  “My van… “ I said.

  “Will be waiting at the curb,” said my phone.

  “Follow me,” I said.

  We got passengers and luggage into my van without incident. Barbara sat up front with me and asked me prying questions that I sidestepped by providing a running travelogue on the city of Atlanta. Professor Jones sat in the back talking with Pomy and didn’t offer any additional disparaging comments on my chosen profession. We’d be at the Ad Astra complex in an hour.

  Then Poly would join us—perhaps to supply the blasting caps to go with her family’s collection of high explosives.

  A week in Maui was looking more and more appealing.

  Chapter 21

  “We put on formal wear and suddenly

  we become extraordinary.”

  — Vera Nazarian

  I dropped Barbara, Perry and Pomy off at the Star Palace, Ad Astra’s most luxurious hotel. Highly efficient bellhops removed their luggage from the back of my van and didn’t try to take the octovacs. I got out and gave Pomy a quick hug, but her parents ignored me and left for the lobby. I was glad to see their backs.

  “Thank you, Jack,” said Pomy.

  “For what?” I said.

  “For being a good guy—and a friend. My sister is lucky to have you.”

  She touched her phone to mine to exchange numbers.

  “Call me if you have any updates on
what we’d talked about.”

  She gave me a gentle peck on the cheek and followed her parents into the lobby.

  Tension drained from my body like a bathtub whose plug had been pulled. I felt so limp that I was surprised I wasn’t a puddle of protoplasm on the expensive bricks of the hotel’s porte-cochère. Somehow I managed to get back in my van. It was only a few minutes after five.

  “Home, please,” I said.

  “Seat belt,” said my van.

  “Override,” I said, too tired to do one more thing.

  “As you wish,” said my van in a reproving tone.

  “Okay, okay,” I said.

  I buckled up and was asleep before my van had gone a hundred yards.

  I woke up when two octovacs delivered me and my backpack tool bag to my apartment, carefully carrying me to my bed and tucking me in.

  Thank you phone, thank you van, thank you octovacs.

  Hello, Morpheus, my old friend. Long time, no see.

  * * * * *

  “Jack, Jack, wake up, Jack.”

  It must be my phone imitating Poly’s voice to get my attention, I thought. It seemed like I’d only been asleep for a few minutes. Then I felt warm human fingers stroking my cheek. It really was Poly.

  “Hi there,” I said in a sleepy voice. “Nice to see you.”

  I raised myself up on one elbow. Poly sat on my bed. I held her hand.

  “I’m the one who’s supposed to be sleep-deprived,” said Poly. “What’s your excuse?”

  She looked as tired as I felt.

  “I picked your family up at the airport,” I said.