Guest Night on Union Station

by E. M. Foner

  “Don’t be morbid. You liked the rollercoaster, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but Joe says that Paul and Jeeves really outdid themselves this time. They combined a ride with a game, and it’s supposed to provide a better flying experience than the Frunge wings sets.”

  “I’m just glad Jeeves is keeping busy.” Shaina stopped and took a sip from her coffee before continuing. “Now that we’re only doing the four auctions a year, I know that he was getting pressure from the older Stryx to find something constructive to do with his time. Jeeves says they’re trying to groom him to be some sort of diplomat, and I know he was gone for a few weeks on a negotiating mission. Dring pointed out that the other young Stryx who attend Libby’s experimental school always leave to go traveling after a few years of close contact with human children, but Jeeves is originally from Union Station and he’s attached himself to the McAllisters.”

  “Do you think that working in a theme park is a constructive use of time for one of the most powerful sentients the galaxy has ever known?”

  “You have to remember that Jeeves isn’t any older than Paul or us, even if he does have instant access to the shared memory of the Stryx and an IQ higher than you can count. Besides, the first-generation Stryx still do all of the heavy lifting. They just want to see their offspring developing in positive directions.”

  “I guess I can accept that,” Daniel said, glancing over at their baby boy who was asleep in the bassinet next to Shaina’s chair. “I’ll tell everybody that you wanted to come, but when we called for an InstaSitter, all they had left were spies.”

  “Or reporters,” Shaina added, before blowing him a goodbye kiss.

  Daniel wasn’t sure exactly what to tell the lift tube after he got in, but then he remembered that Joe had referred to the new attraction as the “Physics Ride,” so he tried that. The capsule moved off smoothly.

  “Libby?” Daniel asked out loud.

  “Yes, Daniel,” the station librarian responded.

  “Any messages related to CoSHC this morning?”

  “There were some late booth requests for the trade show which I forwarded to Donna for processing. Two of the new communities you’re bringing in had questions about travel reimbursement from EarthCent Intelligence, which I sent on to Blythe. And there was a request from the Mayor of Floaters to arrange a press conference if possible. He’s bringing a prototype of a two-man sports floater to the conference and they’re hoping to get some free publicity, so I passed that on to Chastity.”

  “I’m beginning to think that Donna and her girls basically run things for the humans around here,” the junior consul observed.

  The lift tube capsule came to a halt and the door opened without a confirmation or denial from Libby about Daniel’s hypothesis. The deck area was crowded with young humans and aliens, most of them wearing, or in the process of donning, a tight wrap-around over-garment. The unmistakable sound of a fairground organ assaulted his ears, and the white puffs of steam rising from its pipes drew his eyes. He walked over to investigate.

  “Morning, Joe,” Daniel yelled over the din. “Where on Earth did you find this thing?”

  The owner of Mac’s Bones motioned for the new arrival to step closer. When Daniel came within arm’s reach of Joe, the sound faded into the distance, and the junior consul realized he had entered a personal acoustic suppression field.

  “Could you repeat the question?” Joe asked.

  “I wondered where on Earth you found this thing.”

  “Ohio. Kelly’s parents have taken to antiquing in their old age. Her dad spotted this circus calliope in a barn and thought I might enjoy fixing it up. It took a year’s worth of over-sized diplomatic pouches to get all the parts to us, but the Stryx were good sports about it.”

  “They fit the boiler in a diplomatic pouch?”

  “These organs are a chore to tune, so I went modern on the boiler to make sure the steam always comes out at the same temperature. That and a few other modifications should keep it happy for weeks at a time.”

  “If you say so,” Daniel replied, steeling himself to exit the audio suppression field. “Does it have to be so loud?”

  “That’s the whole point of the thing. When they played these at fairs or carnivals back on Earth, you could hear them for miles.”

  “Well, it’s a show stopper. I see it even makes its own confetti.”

  “Damnation!” Joe swore, diving for the emergency kill switch. An alignment spacer had slipped out of place and the paper roll which acted as a mechanical program for the music was in the process of shredding itself. “You’re in luck,” the frustrated mechanic told the junior consul. “It’s going to take a few hours to modify the feed so this can’t happen again. Tell Paul to have Libby play something.”

  “Will do,” Daniel said, setting off to find Paul and Jeeves in the crowd.

  “Over here,” Paul yelled, when he spotted Daniel. The proud co-creator of the new theme park attraction was standing on a small platform with Aisha, who carried their recently adopted girl in a baby sling. The baby wore a cute pair of pink ear protectors with a prominently displayed rating of 140 decibels over her little head.

  “Hi, Aisha. Paul. Quite a crowd you’ve got here.”

  “We’re almost at capacity, but I stashed a levitation suit for you,” Paul said. “Are you ready for the ride of your life?”

  “How come you aren’t suiting up?” Daniel asked, accepting the proffered bundle from Paul. “Do I put these on right over my clothes?” he continued, without waiting for an answer to his first question.

  “Just pull the flaps over and the magnets will seal everything tight,” Paul said. “There’s a towel on the belt if you need it. I’m not flying today because I’m in charge.”

  “I’m not afraid of flying,” Samuel announced, appearing at Daniel’s elbow. “Banger flies all of the time, and he says that it’s just like riding a bicycle.”

  “Have you ever ridden a bicycle?” Daniel inquired.

  “Of course,” the boy replied. “Grandma sent me one.”

  “In the diplomatic pouch,” Aisha added, answering the junior consul’s unasked question. “Shaina must have stayed home with your baby and I don’t blame her. I would never have brought Fenna if Paul hadn’t found her these cute ear protectors.”

  “I’m surprised anything short of a suppression field can keep out the sound of those steam whistles.”

  “The ear muffs are just a fashion statement,” Paul explained. “That volume of sound would go right through a baby’s skull without a suppression field, so I put a miniature Dollnick generator in the headset. Speaking of which, Joe must have ripped another roll or we’d be yelling to make ourselves heard right now.”

  “I know it’s a theme park and all, but does it have to be that loud?” Daniel asked. He finished securing his leggings and moved on to the long-sleeved top. “And Joe said it’s going to be a while to fix whatever went wrong, so you’d better have Libby play something over the station system.”

  “The music was actually Dorothy and Mist’s idea,” Paul told the junior consul. “We had them invite some of their friends to serve as beta-testers last week, and we ended up with hundreds of teenagers flying around in here. The girls asked Libby to pipe in some music because they said it was like watching an immersive without the sound. It hadn’t occurred to me that magnetic suspension fields would make the ride so silent, other than the screaming, of course.”

  “Well, I’m as ready as I ever will be,” Daniel said, flexing his arms in the garment.

  “Pull it all tight,” Paul instructed him. “You want the suit to act as a second skin. And put on the helmet. It’s not just to shield your eyes from spatters and to protect your head from accidental kicks. It also neutralizes the weight of your head.”

  “So your neck doesn’t get tired,” Samuel added.

  Daniel hesitated a moment, helmet in hand. “I get the bit about accidental kicking or a poke in the eye, but what kin
d of spatters are we talking about here?”

  “That’s from the game part,” Paul told him. “Swimming around in the air is fun, and we’ve got the magnetic fields all tuned so it doesn’t feel that different from being in a pool or an ocean, but that’s not enough to keep kids coming back. I’m going to start bringing up the power now.”

  “It’s great exercise,” Aisha told the junior consul. “I’ve been stopping in and swimming for a half-hour before going to the studio. Libby has already agreed to set aside two hours in the early morning on the human clock for grown-ups who just want to fly laps without getting shot at.”

  “Shot at?” Daniel suddenly felt light-headed, and then he realized his feet had drifted up off the deck and he was beginning to turn a slow somersault. Samuel flew a small circle around him, doing a modified version of the breast-stroke that his father had taught him a few years earlier on the wastewater treatment deck.

  “Put your helmet on,” Paul yelled, just as the deck came alive with the recorded sounds of a calliope from Libby’s library.

  Daniel pulled on his helmet, which didn’t do enough to cut down on the blaring carnival music. Then he stretched out his arms and legs like a skydiver, which had the effect of stopping his slow rotation. The feeling was very much like swimming in water, with none of the queasiness associated with weightlessness. The magnetic fields that held him suspended by attracting and repulsing the Verlock-manufactured monopoles threaded into the fabric of the levitation suit supplied both buoyancy and resistance.

  Samuel swam right up to the junior consul and went helmet to helmet for acoustic contact. “Where’s your basket?” he asked.

  “My what?”

  Samuel shook his head in pity and let Daniel examine the device that was tethered to the boy’s wrist by a short cord. It looked like a scoop with a button on the handle, except the mouth was shaped more like a funnel than a can. Oddly enough, there were colored streaks on the inside of the scoop, like the boy had dripped paint into it or something.

  A voice that Daniel immediately identified as belonging to Jeeves sounded through speakers integrated in the helmet. “Is everybody ready for the Physics Ride?”

  Thousands of voices, the vast majority of them a good decade younger than the junior consul, shouted “Yes.”

  Everybody in the crowd who had donned a levitation suit was now swimming through the air around Daniel, making him feel like a member of an undisciplined school of fish. Dispersed through three dimensions, the section of the deck set aside for the ride felt less crowded than it had been when they were all standing on their feet. The young human faces visible behind the face shields were full of anticipation. He couldn’t tell what the Dollnicks or the Frunge were feeling, though he spotted a Drazen holding an extra basket with his tentacle.

  “First round, warm-ups,” Jeeves announced. “Five points for a catch. Ten points for a return.”

  Daniel checked the standard information channel on his implant but there weren’t any instructions. He realized he must have missed a presentation on the rules by arriving so late, and perhaps there had even been a demonstration. He looked down and saw an unfortunate young woman who had only gotten as far as sealing one side of her leggings when the power came on. That leg was straight up in the air, like she was doing a high-kick, while she struggled to get the rest of the flying suit wrapped around her body.

  “Uh, Libby?” the junior consul subvoced.

  “Yes, Daniel,” the Stryx librarian replied.

  “You wouldn’t know the rules of this game, would you?”

  “Jeeves and Paul are still making them up, but I believe you’re just starting a warm-up round. The goal is to catch the incoming projectiles and to shoot them back at the appropriate color-coded targets. You have to pay attention to the color as you make the catch because you can’t see it once the ball is in the basket.”

  “I didn’t get a basket.”

  “Oh dear, that could be awkward. I suppose you could try catching with your hands, but it’s likely to be messy.”

  A brightly colored sphere about the size of a marble zipped past Daniel’s face shield, and he turned his head to see Samuel catch it in his basket.

  “Five points,” the boy mouthed, and then he pointed the open end of the basket at something over the junior consul’s shoulder and pressed the button on the handle. Daniel twisted his head to watch as the paintball shot the gap between two more flying bodies and splattered on a moving red target disc. “Ten points.”

  Daniel saw a blue ball coming towards him in a lazy trajectory and tried to contort his body so it would miss, but it shattered on his chest. The paint stuck to the levitation suit rather than spraying all over the place, which he supposed was necessary to prevent the air space from turning into a cloud of colored droplets.

  “What happens after the warm-ups?” he subvoced.

  “In their beta-testing, the second round involved shooting at other flyers after the catch. They were talking about doing something with teams as well. I could play back the instructions Jeeves gave the people who arrived on time, but if you don’t pay more attention to what’s happening, you’ll be declared a casualty and your suit will put you down.”

  “So each suit can be controlled remotely?” He tried a dolphin-style kick to work his way towards the center of the mob where he’d be out of the path of the paintballs, wherever they were coming from.

  “Yes. All of the pieces you’re wearing include transceivers to track the scoring and to allow Jeeves to override bad maneuvering decisions. You wouldn’t want a child running head-on into a speeding adult.”

  “How can anybody speed in this stuff? It’s sort of like being underwater, or maybe something a little less dense.”

  “You’re not wearing the booties either?”

  Daniel looked around again and saw that the other players all had plastic over their shoes. Then he noticed that some of them were moving pretty quickly without making swimming motions, as if something was thrusting them forward.

  “I guess they were out of booties,” he subvoced. “I really didn’t know it was going to be this crowded. I thought there would be a ribbon cutting and maybe a local reporter.”

  “Incoming,” Libby said.

  “What?” Daniel looked to one side and then the other. It hadn’t occurred to him that the paintballs which the players on the edges of the crowd didn’t catch would keep on traveling until they hit something. He had foolishly looked for safety in the center of the play space, but now he was alone and projectiles were coming in from every direction. He squirmed and twisted like a fish on a hook, but before he could find a Dollnick to hide behind, a little red light began blinking on the helmet’s visor. The levitation suit stopped responding and lowered him to the floor.

  Kelly was wandering around the deck below to watch Samuel, and she greeted her junior consul loudly as soon as he removed his helmet. “You look like a Jackson Pollock. Maybe you’re getting too old for this sort of thing.”

  “I didn’t get a basket,” Daniel shouted back. “Or booties.”

  Kelly shook her head to show she hadn’t understood and led the junior consul over to the calliope, where Joe had his upper body in the guts of the machine. She unclipped something from his belt and the canned carnival sounds faded into the distance. “At least now we won’t have to shout,” the ambassador said. “Anything new with your conference?”

  “Nothing Donna and the girls can’t handle. Oh, wait. I thought it would be a good idea to have a keynote speaker this year, and the delegates who took the time to fill out my questionnaire agreed. The thing is, they all wanted to give the honor to the ambassador from their host species.”

  “You mean the consortium world communities wanted the Drazen ambassador, the terraformed world communities wanted the Dollnick ambassador and the academies wanted a Verlock?”

  “Yes. The back-and-forth was getting a bit contentious, so I suggested you as a compromise.”

  “That’
s sweet of you, Daniel, but I’m going to be very busy preparing for the Stryx open house.”

  “Too late,” the junior consul informed his boss. “They already voted and you’re it.”

  Three

  “Wow! You’ve got so much cool stuff. I wish Metoo was here to see it all.” Dorothy gazed in awe at the ceiling-high row of deep shelves packed with a crazy array of every object imaginable. Most of it was obviously of alien manufacture, but beneath the counter, which ran the whole breadth of the gigantic room, she spotted some human-style luggage, sporting gear, and a pair of umbrellas, which was especially strange since it didn’t rain on Stryx stations.

  “It’s not our stuff, or at least, we don’t think of it that way,” Libby replied. “The purpose of a lost-and-found is to return lost items to their rightful owners, although that isn’t always possible for temporal and spatial reasons. Your job is to help anybody who comes looking for something they’ve lost, and to catalog items the maintenance bots bring in if nobody claims them.”

  “I understand, and I really appreciate that you hired me,” Dorothy replied, rummaging through the closest shelf. Unlike her mother, she never felt the urge to look at the ceiling while talking to the station librarian. “Just give me a little time and I bet I’ll get the whole place cleaned out.”

  “That’s very ambitious of you, Dorothy, but I should explain that most of the owners are long since deceased. And you are only looking at the first row of shelves. This storeroom is approximately the same size as Mac’s Bones.”

  “Oh,” the sixteen-year-old said, her mouth gaping. “Then there must be a gazillion things in here.”

  “I really wish that Jeeves had never introduced that term to my students. It’s very imprecise. This particular lost-and-found is for items abandoned on the nitrogen/oxygen decks of the station, and the bots bring in a few hundred items a day.”

  “So you’re adding a little over a hundred thousand pieces a year,” Dorothy estimated. “That’s at least a million items a decade, or more than ten million a century. Since Gryph built the station over fifty million years ago, I’d say it’s got to be near a gazillion by now.”