by E. M. Foner
“Where did you find all of the folding tables?” Shaina asked Donna. “I thought we’d just be laying all of the books out on blankets like traders.”
“I’m guessing we’ll draw a lot of older buyers, and readers tend to be nearsighted anyway, so getting the books up closer to their faces seemed like a good idea. Chastity asked the Dollnick who manages the Empire Convention Center to loan us the tables for the week. I think she made it part of a package deal when she rented the Nebulae Room for the Union Station book awards, but I didn’t ask for details.”
“I’m more interested in where you found all the volunteers,” Daniel said.
“I pinged everybody on the notification list for the embassy’s monthly dance mixer. It’s really gratifying how many people are showing up, and quite a few who couldn’t make it today came yesterday and dropped off books for the sale. I contacted Ian to arrange catering for lunch, and he rounded up a bunch of restaurateurs from the Little Apple to do it for free. I only hope the work holds out long enough so people don’t wander off before the food gets here.”
“I guess even twenty thousand or so books get laid out pretty quick when you have over two hundred pairs of hands on the job,” Shaina observed.
“Can I go look for Fenna and Spinner?” Mike asked.
“I think I see Paul over on the box brigade,” Daniel told his son. “Fenna and her mom are probably nearby.” The boy darted off in search of his friends while the associate ambassador surveyed the park deck, looking for an activity that wasn’t already overstaffed. “Who are those alien kids?”
“You’ve never met the students from Vivian and Sam’s committee?” the embassy manager asked in surprise.
“It’s all been correspondence so far. That Dollnick kid can sure empty a box of books in a hurry. Where’s my brother-in-law?”
“He and Chastity are meeting right now with representatives of the alien publishers to finalize the award categories.”
“How are the judges going to have time to read the books and vote on the winners?” Shaina asked.
“Chastity said not to worry about it, which means she’s not telling.”
“And what’s Blythe doing over there with Jonah?” Daniel said, pointing to a nearby table. “Setting up to recruit more intelligence analysts? I suppose she could do worse than starting with avid readers.”
“She brought copies of some translated alien books she printed to give away for the sake of feedback. I don’t know why she got so caught up in competing with Chastity’s new publishing business,” Donna added. “I guess with the twins almost grown she doesn’t have enough to do with her time.”
A few tables away, Kelly crouched protectively over a box of Victorian hardcovers which included all six volumes of Trollope’s Palliser novels and a nearly complete set of the works of Thomas Hardy. “Fenna,” she whispered loudly, motioning to the girl who was crawling through the grass under the next table over. “Do you have Spinner with you? I want to ask him if he can carry something for me.”
“Mikey, Spinner,” the girl called. Shaina’s son crawled through a forest of adult legs to join Aisha’s daughter under her table, and Spinner came floating around a stack of empty boxes, skimming just above the grass. “Grandma Kelly wants help moving something.”
“Nuh uh,” Mike said, crossing his arms. “I’m eight.”
“But you’re a big strong boy,” the ambassador cajoled him. “I bet you and Spinner could move this box easily.”
“Mommy said you told her that children under nine don’t have to work, ‘cept for acting, like me and Spinner did on Aisha’s show,” the boy explained.
“Spinner and I,” Fenna corrected him, a habit she’d acquired from her own mother.
“Your mother told you I said acting—you must mean the Factory Act,” Kelly interrupted herself. “It’s illegal for you to work in a factory at eight years old, or it would have been around two hundred and fifty years ago, but it’s okay to help an old woman move a heavy box.”
“I can do it,” Spinner volunteered. “I’ve been practicing picking things up in a suspensor field. It’s safest if I know the exact weight, though. Do you have a scale with you?”
“What are you doing down there, Mom?” Samuel asked, coming around the table. “Do you need help putting out the books from that box?”
“These aren’t going out. I’m invoking, uh, ambassadorial privilege.”
“As long as you pay Donna for them. I’ll carry the box to the register for you.”
“It’s heavy,” she warned him, but the seventeen-year-old easily lifted the box to his shoulder and carried it to the check-out table.
“Your first customer,” he said, setting down the box.
“Does that mean I get a special discount?” Kelly asked her office manager.
“For everybody else it’s a cred for hardcovers and fifty centees for paperbacks, but I can let you have ten of each for fifteen creds total,” Donna offered.
“Thanks. Wait, that works out the same!”
“It’s a benefit, Kelly. You’re lucky I’m not charging you the early-bird fee. You spent the whole morning picking out books rather than helping.”
“I’ll come back and take the box home in a minute, Mom,” Samuel said. “I’ve got to go tell my committee members so they don’t think I disappeared.” He headed over to where he had left the other students arranging books on the tables and found the Horten girl engaged in an argument with the Drazen student, as usual.
“The ones that are all the same size have to go together,” Jorb was insisting. “You’re messing up my arrangement.”
“You’re mixing fiction and nonfiction,” she told him. “Lizant said that Humans have enough trouble figuring out the difference without the books being jumbled together.”
“Like you know which is which.”
“I read English, unlike some tentacled—”
“Hey, guys,” Samuel interrupted just in the nick of time. “There’s a heavy box of books over at the checkout that we need to deliver, Jorb, and I thought with your teaching at the dojo and all…”
“I’m on it,” the Drazen said, seizing the opportunity to show off his physical prowess to the Horten. “If I’m not back before lunch comes, save me something with hot sauce.”
“You’re getting to be pretty good at managing aliens,” Vivian observed, as Jorb departed and Marilla returned to rearranging the books the Drazen had set out. “Maybe you should consider a career in EarthCent yourself.”
The Grenouthian student signaled Samuel and Vivian to come over to where he was unloading a fresh box of books onto a table and using a hand-held translation wand to scan the titles. “There may be some mistake here. I’ve counted fifty copies of what appears to be the same book, though some of them are obviously from different printings.”
“That’s funny, let me see one.” The ambassador’s son accepted a paperback from the alien and read off the title, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
“It must have been pretty popular,” Vivian observed, “but then again, maybe stocking fifty copies of the same book is how the store went out of business.”
“Do you think anybody will mind if I borrow one to skim through?” the Grenouthian student asked, gesturing with his translation wand. “It sounds surprisingly practical for a Human book.”
“Keep it,” Vivian said. “I’ll put fifty centees in the donation jar for you. I’m just surprised you’re interested in anything published on Earth.”
“Thanks,” the student said, tucking the book into his belly pouch. “There’s a rumor going around that you guys might actually know something about marketing. It makes sense if you think about it. Other than InstaSitter and the newspaper, none of your products or services are any good, but you still manage to sell them to each other.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Samuel acknowledged the backhanded compliment.
“It looks like we’re pretty much finishing up here,” Vivian said. “I’ll ping Lizant an
d tell her that all the book handling is done so she can come for lunch and we can go over some more proposals.”
“Good timing. That’s Ian coming out of the lift tube with those mule bots, and I saw Shaina and Brinda setting out plates and silverware over on the tables we set up for food.”
The volunteers held off mobbing the buffet until the cling wrap was removed from the trays, and then they claimed their reward for a hard morning’s work. Samuel fulfilled his promise to the Drazen student by loading a plate with anything that looked chewy and then dumping over it the entire contents of a bottle of hot sauce Ian had thoughtfully provided. There were a few folding chairs for the older volunteers, but everybody else sat on the park deck grass and attacked the food with gusto.
The caterers were just beginning to clean up when the first group of early-bird shoppers stormed the cashier’s table and queued up to pay ten creds each for the chance to shop before the sale officially opened the following day. Kelly flagged down Paul to take another boxful of books to the register for her, and congratulated herself on her decision to skip lunch in order to beat the competition.
“How did you hear about early entry to our benefit sale?” Donna asked each of the eager shoppers as she took their donations and gave them a badge fashioned from the supply of nametags she kept for the EarthCent mixers.
“Galactic Free Press,” the first woman answered tersely, and practically ran for the loaded tables.
“Some bookish-looking guy in the corridor told me,” the next shopper said, handing over his ten creds and accepting the early-bird badge. “Didn’t know him.”
“I heard about it from one of the other parents as I left our school meeting just a few minutes ago,” another woman replied as she paid. “At least, I think he was one of the parents, but I didn’t really recognize him.”
“Libby,” Kelly subvoced while she waited for her turn to pay for the box of books that Paul was holding, and to buy a badge so she could get back to shopping. “Are you using holo spam to send people to our book fair?”
“Just doing my part for the cause,” the Stryx librarian replied modestly.
“Couldn’t you have waited a couple more hours?” Kelly complained. “They’re going to buy all of the books!”
“You look a bit jittery,” Donna said to her friend as the ambassador stepped forward to pay. “I think I should cut you off.”
“What!”
“Two boxes of books is plenty for one day, especially when we both know you have no shelf space. Why don’t you go home to relax a bit and you can always come back tomorrow. Besides, I thought you said you were starved for free time to finish writing your manuscript.”
Kelly looked over at the rows of tables laden with books, back to the box Paul held, and chewed her lower lip. “One more box,” she promised, shaking off the embassy manager’s skeptical expression. “I’m not an addict. I’ll prove it. One more box and I’ll go home.”
“Libby,” Donna said. “You heard that, right?”
“The ambassador promised to limit herself to one more box,” the station librarian confirmed.
Kelly handed over an additional ten creds and snatched the badge, favoring her friend with a glare before heading back into the scrum. She retrieved an empty box from under a table and resolved to take her time and select only the choicest gems of English literature, but strictly in paperback, so she could fit more of them.
A half an hour later, a loud noise like a loose sail flapping violently in the wind cut through the quiet murmur of conversation and the rustling sounds of books being examined and replaced on tables. Somebody shrieked in alarm. The ambassador pushed her half-full box of books under the table where she hoped it would be safe and headed for the commotion.
“What is it?” she asked Blythe, who had abandoned her own post to investigate.
“I think it must be the Farling,” she replied. “I saw him browsing the books, and then suddenly he was gone.”
Kelly stayed behind the younger woman who pushed through the crowd, and there on the ground, between the tables, the alien doctor was flat on his back, his wings beating against the grass.
“I think he’s having a fit,” a man gripping a stack of books told them. “We called for a med bot, but it seems to be taking a long time.”
“The Farling doctor is sick,” Kelly subvoced the station librarian. “Why haven’t you sent a med bot?”
“There’s nothing wrong with M793qK,” Libby replied. “He’s just a bit—hysterical.”
“Hysterical?” Kelly cautiously extended a hand to gently touch one of the antennae on the giant beetle’s head. “Are you all right, Doctor?”
The wing-beating ceased the instant her fingers made contact, and for a moment, the ambassador was afraid that she had somehow killed the Farling. Then he levered himself onto his side by opening just one of his hard forewings, rolled onto his legs, and slowly rose.
“Oh, my,” the insectoid physician rubbed out on his speaking limbs. “I haven’t laughed so hard since I heard that Gem changed her mind about being a clone and was soliciting us for genetic samples of her former race. I made my retirement nut on that one.”
“What are you doing here?” Kelly demanded.
“Shopping. A finely rendered holographic representation of a high status Farling approached me as I left my office and told me about the early-bird sale. I shall miss the excitement of Union Station.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I have accepted Gryph’s offer to accompany Flower on her maiden voyage in the service of your people. Thus, my visit to your charming book sale.”
“I get it now,” the ambassador said. “You figure the more money we raise, the more you’ll get paid.”
“Hardly,” the beetle replied, rubbing out the equivalent of a long suffering sigh. “Once aboard the Dollnick colony ship I will not have the same access to the resource materials useful in conducting a medical practice that I enjoyed here.”
“You came looking for medical books?”
The Farling clamped a limb to the underside of his carapace as if he had been shot through one of his major organs, and weaved drunkenly in an attempt to remain upright on his hindmost legs.
“Stop it. You’re killing me. I was looking at one of your so-called medical texts when I suffered my undignified loss of control. How did your people ever survive when they think everything is a disease, including their moods?”
“You seem to have made quite a stack for purchasing,” Kelly observed, pointing to the pile of medical books. “Besides, since when do you read English?”
“I picked it up reviewing the charts brought by patients who wisely fled the barbaric care on your Earth,” the alien doctor explained. “As to these books, I’m buying them as gag gifts for my friends when I eventually return home. Even advanced biologicals such as Farlings get sick on rare occasions, and laughter is the best medicine.”
“I’m surprised to hear you have any friends,” the ambassador muttered.
“I also require books for my patients,” M793qK continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Perhaps you would enjoy explaining the process of biological reproduction to adolescents of an alien species, but I’ve always left that to your station librarian while working here. She informed me that I would likely find a number of books that do a reasonable job illustrating the procedure for youngsters whose parents aren’t up to the task.”
“You’re here to buy sex education books?”
“Yes, and old magazines if I can find any. I understand that they are an expected accoutrement in the offices of Earth physicians, and I want to make my patients feel at home.”
Kelly couldn’t help but be impressed by the giant beetle’s sincerity and offered a suggestion of her own. “I saw several tables of children’s books over near the cash register. I bet you can find a copy of The Very Quiet Cricket or The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Come to think of it, anything by Eric Carle would be good. My children loved the same books their
grandmother and I read at that age.”
“Do all Human children enjoy reading about insects?” the Farling inquired.
“I just thought that with you being a, uh…” she stumbled to a halt.
“Were you about to compare me to Earth bugs?” the doctor rubbed out in disbelief.
“There is a certain superficial resemblance,” Kelly backpedalled, figuratively and literally before the towering alien. “It might help the children get comfortable with you.”
“I should think that nothing would relax them more than discovering they will be treated by a physician from an advanced species rather than a Human quack!”
“Of course, of course,” the ambassador agreed in hopes of mollifying the doctor, but then another thought occurred to her. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you might want to consider hiring a human nurse.”
“A nurse? For the suckling infants?”
“No, for all the patients,” Kelly replied.
The Farling stared at her for a moment and began to sway on his hind legs. The hardened forewings that formed the top of his carapace began twitching rapidly.
“Easy, big boy,” Jeeves said, floating up to the pair. “It’s just a translation glitch. Humans also call trained medical personnel nurses.”
“Thank you, Jeeves,” Kelly said. “What are you doing here?”
“Helping to fit out Flower seemed like a worthy cause,” the Stryx replied, though he sounded a bit squirrelly. “I’ll be over there if you need me for anything.”
The ambassador suddenly recalled her half-full box of books waiting under the table where some other unscrupulous early bird might poach them, and left the Farling to his own devices. A short distance away, a trio of Fillinducks were holding up leather-bound volumes, whispering to each other, and placing them in large shoulder baskets. After quickly exhausting the available supply, they began creating stacks of books by color, alternating red, white and black in one pile, and light blue, light green, and other subdued pastels in another.
Hours later, the ambassador was engaged in the third repack of her box to make room for new prizes at the expense of the old when Donna made the announcement that the book fair was closing for the day. Kelly found herself last in line behind the Fillinducks, who discreetly held perfumed handkerchiefs to their noses to mask the odor of humanity.