Guest Night on Union Station

by E. M. Foner

  “Without telling the emperor?”

  “Jeeves said that the emperor seemed a bit touchy on the subject of colonists. We’re talking about the expeditions the Cayl sent out over the past few million years to settle the far reaches of the galaxy. The farther from the Cayl Empire, the closer to us.”

  “Emperor?” Kelly asked politely, interrupting his interrogation of the young reporter, who didn’t have any of the answers the Cayl was seeking. “I’m told that the Stryx brought in some of your people from the colonizing groups you sent out long ago. I guess Jeeves had something to do with it.”

  “I should have foreseen this outcome after we talked about colonists at the poker game. Will you take me to visit one of the places these Cayl are policing?”

  “Right away,” Kelly replied. “I’ll ping you if we won’t be back for lunch, Joe. I’m taking him to the Shuk.”

  By the time they reached the lift tube, the young reporter managed to convince the EarthCent ambassador and the Cayl emperor to let him tag along. Brynt gave Steelforth a brief rundown on the Cayl colonization movement, which left the reporter so confused that Kelly had to explain the Cayl’s singular conceptions of honor and respect. In the back of her mind, she registered that the one-minute ride to the Shuk stretched out to at least ten minutes, but there would be time to ask Libby about that later.

  “So once or twice every million years, you finish construction of a colonization fleet, load it up with a quarter of your population and treasure, and send them off never to be heard from again,” Steelforth recapped, checking the notes on his tab.

  “There’s no treasure in the sense you mean,” Brynt informed him. “We make copies of our libraries and share our laboratory equipment, along with all the usual things colonists would take. We divide everything equally.”

  “And you don’t even try to pick up their communications traffic?”

  “We intentionally don’t monitor the volumes of space our expeditions have selected for colonization, and I’m sure they avoid listening in on us for the same reason,” the Cayl explained. “It would be a violation of their privacy.”

  The young reporter looked at Kelly helplessly. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Am I asking the wrong questions?”

  “You’re doing fine,” Kelly told him. “It’s just that the Cayl are aliens and they don’t think like us. You weren’t around ten years ago for the Kasilian auction, but there’s an example of an advanced species which had to let its population collapse and give away everything they owned to regain their youthful optimism and a chance to start over.”

  The capsule door finally slid open, and contrary to his usual deferential attitude as a guest, the Cayl was the first one out. The market seemed completely normal, which immediately struck Kelly as suspicious, since it had been anything but since the open house began.

  “This way,” she suggested, leading the Cayl and the reporter towards Kitchen Kitsch, in the human section. They hadn’t gone twenty paces before a giant dog, which looked amazingly like Beowulf, trotted up and growled at a group of Shugas shopping at a Gem collectibles booth. One by one, the aliens emptied their pouches of the knickknacks they’d been shoplifting.

  “I recognize the Cayl by the paw print of his dog,” Brynt muttered. “Just a saying,” he added, when Kelly gave him a questioning look.

  As they continued through the Gem booths toward the human section, they found themselves approaching another, slightly smaller Cayl hound, which was blocking the path of a Tzvim. The dog sat upright on its haunches and had placed a paw in the middle of the alien’s turtle-shell chest, like a crossing guard stopping a rambunctious child from running into traffic.

  “I didn’t do anything,” the Tzvim protested.

  The dog shook its head, almost sadly, Kelly thought, and didn’t remove the paw.

  “But they’re Dollnicks,” the turtle-like alien tried again. “They do stuff like that to other species all the time.”

  The dog pulled back its upper lip, revealing a display of enamel that would make a shark jealous.

  “I’ll buy it back,” the Tzvim offered in defeat. The dog dropped its paw and indicated the way back to the Dollnick section by raising its muzzle. The two set off, the Cayl hound obviously in charge.

  “Your dogs really seem to have a way with your empire’s species,” Kelly commented.

  “We couldn’t have run the empire so long without them,” the emperor replied. “Supervising the behavior of adults isn’t a job I would wish on my worst enemy, but our hounds were bred to the task and they actually enjoy it. Every world in our empire has a Cayl garrison and a large contingent of hounds to watch over the local authorities.”

  “So you police the authorities rather than the people?” Steelforth asked.

  “Of course,” the emperor replied. “Back in ancient times, when our empire only included a dozen stars, we determined that the most effective system was to leave the existing governments in place on the worlds we conquered. All of our occupation efforts went into forcing the local leaders to obey their own laws, with a few additions that we impose on all of our worlds for fairness. Once the system is up and running, it tends to be self-perpetuating, and we’ve never had a serious problem with revolts.”

  “Here we are,” Kelly said, as they crossed into the human section near Kitchen Kitsch. “I don’t see any shimmering around the booth, so Peter must have stopped paying for the Stryx security field he told me he rented.”

  The Cayl emperor stopped and sniffed the air with an intensity that rivaled Beowulf on a visit to the Little Apple, and then he started off suddenly between a confectionery shop and a linens seller. Kelly and the reporter had to break stride several times to keep up with Brynt, and Beowulf emerged from a side passage and began trotting along with them.

  Suddenly, they found themselves face-to-face with a pair of Cayl warriors wearing green tunics with a Union Station emblem. The two Cayl stared at Brynt in shock, and Kelly noticed that their eyes were not on the emperor’s face, but the heavy gold chain around his neck. Then their knees just seemed to buckle and they prostrated themselves on the deck.

  “Rise, rise,” the emperor ordered, but they stayed on the deck, one wrapping his arms over his ears. Brynt strode forward, bent down, and grabbed each by a wrist. Then he straightened up rapidly, like a weight-lifter completing a competition lift. One of the strange Cayl found his feet, but the other curled up in the fetal position and dangled by his wrist.

  “Is he dead?” the young reporter whispered to Kelly, all the while tapping frantically on his reporter’s tab.

  “I think he’s embarrassed,” Kelly whispered back.

  “Stop that!” the emperor ordered, shaking the suspended Cayl in an impressive display of strength. “Put your feet down and stand up like a warrior.”

  “We didn’t know any First Cayl were here, much less the First among Firsts,” stuttered the other warrior, who had recovered more quickly from the shock of the meeting. “We never would have accepted the job from the Stryx had we known you were in charge here.”

  The emperor let go of the wrist of the second Cayl and turned to reply to the speaker. In that instant, the newly released warrior drew a device from his belt that looked like a hilt without a sword, and stretched his arm out in front of his body. As Kelly watched in shock, a fiery blade of red light leapt from the hilt, pointing towards the holder’s own chest.

  “Accept my life to atone for the offense given by our column,” the warrior declared, but before he could impale himself or fall forward on the blade, a massive pair of jaws closed on his wrist, snapping the bones like tinder. The blade disappeared as the hilt fell to the deck.

  “Good dog,” the emperor said to Beowulf, who was in fact astounded by his own deed, never having bitten anybody before. Beowulf wasn’t really sure what it was all about, but he didn’t like seeing a weapon pulled in front of his ambassador or the emperor, even if it was pointed the wrong way. Kelly would have sworn the dog ga
ve her a wink before resuming a fierce expression and staring at his victim. The pain of a broken wrist seemed to be just what the doctor had ordered. The warrior’s stoicism took over and he stood at attention.

  “Both of you stop acting ridiculous,” Brynt barked. “You’re Cayl warriors doing a job and that’s what your honor depends on. This station belongs to the Stryx, and I am merely here as a guest while representatives of the species from our empire attend the open house. The outrageous behavior of our citizens has been a great shame for me, but as a guest, I couldn’t think of interfering with the Stryx administration.”

  “Yes, First,” the two warriors said, though Kelly suspected it was the only acceptable reply the Cayl had for any pronouncement of their emperor.

  “How many of you are on the station?” the emperor followed up.

  “One column from Second Cayl and one column from Fourth Cayl,” the uninjured warrior answered promptly. “It was a great shock meeting our brothers here, and the Stryx tell us that columns from Third, Fifth and Sixth Cayl are on the way.”

  “You,” the emperor growled, turning to the injured Cayl. “Go to the column surgeon and have your wrist repaired.”

  “It’s fine,” the Cayl protested. “I’m perfectly capable of carrying out my duties.”

  “I heard the bones crack and you’re dripping blood on the floor,” the emperor said, but he relented after taking a moment to put himself in the warrior’s shoes. “At least wrap something around it so you don’t make a mess.”

  “Yes, First,” the warrior snapped in response.

  “Inform your column leader that I will visit your field headquarters this evening,” the emperor continued. “As the two of you are the only colony Cayl I have ever met, I request you join me after your shift in a meal to honor the occasion.”

  “Yes, First,” the pair responded.

  The emperor gave them a stiff head nod of dismissal, but stopped them with a question when they started to turn away. “Which colony are you from?”

  “Fourth Cayl, First,” the more loquacious of the pair replied.

  “Carry on,” Brynt said.

  “Will he be all right?” Kelly asked as the injured Cayl moved off, his wrist tucked into his armpit to prevent dripping.

  “He’s a Cayl warrior,” the emperor replied. “I can’t understand why the Stryx would hire five columns for this job. A dozen warriors and their dogs would have been ample.”

  “How many warriors in a column,” the reporter asked, his fingers poised over his tab.

  “Two-hundred and eight,” the emperor replied absently, watching the backs of the departing Cayl. “That includes the surgeon, cook, and command staff. It’s the standard size of a planetary garrison.”

  “Do you mean you’ve been keeping the peace in your empire with just a couple hundred warriors per planet?” Kelly asked in astonishment. Beowulf gave a sharp bark. “And their Cayl hounds?”

  Brynt absentmindedly scratched the giant dog behind the ears as he sniffed the air. “Warriors need to eat, as do their dogs. At the prices the planetary governments charge for hosting the garrisons, we can’t afford to make them larger. Besides, the ground troops are just there to keep the local politicians honest. Our strength is our warriors, but our weapon is our fleet.”

  A strangely delicate Cayl hound hurtled around the corner with her nose to the deck and then skidded to a halt. Beowulf made sure she was watching him, and then he blatantly knocked back the flap of one of the emperor’s belt pouches with his nose and fished out a couple of biscuits with his tongue.

  “Don’t get into the habit,” Brynt remonstrated.

  Beowulf scraped one of the biscuits off his tongue against his front teeth so it dropped to the deck. Next he slid it over to the pretty hound with his nose. She picked it up, crunched, and eyed him speculatively. Then she trotted off, Beowulf following on her heels.

  Twenty

  The going-away party for Mist and Gwen might have turned out to be a depressing event if it had been limited to family and friends. Instead, both clones insisted that the McAllisters combine it with an end-of-open-house celebration, which brought the aliens out of the woodwork. Not only did Aluria put in a showing, but she offered grudging applause when Samuel and Vivian gave a brief demonstration of Vergallian ballroom dancing. After that, Thomas and Chance did an Argentinean tango interpretation which left no doubt that the artificial people had officially become a couple.

  A lull in the dancing followed while the females of various species waited for the males to absorb enough alcohol to feel the rhythm. Dorothy and Mist dragged the unfortunate David onto the improvised dance floor and began teaching him the basics of couple dancing, while simultaneously making him feel like a third wheel by reminiscing about their best times together before he came into the picture.

  “I wish they’d stop telling me that I wasn’t so bad for a clone,” Gwen complained half-jokingly to Kelly. The EarthCent ambassador had insisted that the Gem ambassador stand with her in front of the drinks table, forcing all of the other ambassadors in attendance to say something civil if they wanted to be served.

  “A decade ago they would have snubbed both of us,” Kelly pointed out. “Besides, did you hear what the Fillinduck said to me?”

  “You don’t smell as bad as he’d been warned.” Gwen laughed. “At least now we know why he kept skipping the emergency meetings. Then he got a pint of beer from Joe and drank it like it was water. He’s been standing over there staring at his stomach and hiccupping ever since.”

  “As long as he keeps it down,” Kelly responded philosophically. “You’re going to miss some exciting times if those Cayl Empire species decide to sign up for the tunnel network.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough. According to Gem Today, the Stryx will be making an announcement any time.”

  “Gem Today covers events on Union Station? I didn’t even know they had foreign correspondents.”

  “I helped them negotiate a deal for a syndication feed from the Galactic Free Press. Chastity isn’t looking to go into competition with the Grenouthians on covering news for all of the species, but a lot of the stories from Stryx stations affect everybody. Oh, look at Chastity dancing with her husband. They’re almost as good as Chance and Thomas.”

  “I have to admit that Marcus is a great teacher.” Kelly checked over both shoulders and lowered her voice. “The truth is, I wasn’t that happy when Samuel started training for ballroom dancing with Blythe’s daughter. It just seemed like too big of a time commitment at their age, though sometimes I think that Vivian is six going on sixteen. But Chastity’s husband makes it fun for them, and if I had to choose for my son between three hours a day of dancing and three hours a day of playing holo-war games, I’d take dancing every time.”

  “Ah, my favorite species,” Walter declared, approaching the pair of ambassadors. As the city desk editor for Union Station, he’d been the point man for the Gem syndication negotiations. “May I request the next dance?” He theatrically extended his hand to Gwen, who accepted with an elaborate curtsey she’d learned from Mist.

  “Don’t say anything on the record,” Kelly warned her friend in jest. Then she drifted back a couple of steps to the temporary bar, where Joe was in his usual role operating the tap, and Paul was handling the mixed drinks.

  “Party is off to a good start,” Joe said. “Is the emperor still busy catching up with his long-lost colonists?”

  “He had Libby ping me a few minutes ago to say he’d be back soon and to tell you to save him some beer,” Kelly replied. “I haven’t seen Beowulf all day either.”

  “He must be out courting again.”

  “Is that what you men call it? I just hope that in a couple of months we aren’t overwhelmed with legal actions for puppy support.”

  “Can I get this refilled?” Czeros asked, setting down an empty wine bottle. Paul reached under the table for a new bottle and extracted the cork. “Thank you,” the Frunge ambassador enunciat
ed, with the exaggerated care that indicated he’d been drinking for some time.

  “Long day, Ambassador?” Joe asked.

  “Long night,” the Frunge replied, after pausing to take a gulp directly from the bottle. “I’ve never understood why the Stryx didn’t create a standard day and night schedule for the whole station. This business of everybody following their own clocks on their own decks makes it impossible to properly schedule parties.”

  “But your day is more than twice as long as ours,” Kelly pointed out. “Or look at the Verlocks. They intentionally halt the rotation on some of their worlds and just live on the hot side.”

  Czeros looked at her bleary-eyed. “That’s the sort of objection I’ve grown to expect from a species whose members have more than one name. You like to make things as complicated as possible.”

  “Good morning,” Bork said, winking at Kelly behind the Frunge’s back. “I can’t really imbibe since I have to go into the office later, but perhaps one Divverflip?”

  “Coming up,” Paul said, pulling on thick rubber gloves and reaching for the thermos of acid he kept specifically for making Drazen drinks.

  “And where is your lovely and talented wife?” Bork asked, while the mixologist donned protective eyewear for in case the reaction was too strong.

  “She’s recording a special episode at the Empire Convention Center with the children of the open house guests who haven’t left yet. None of the local species would agree to have their kids on the same set with those aliens, and the Grenouthians refused to even let them in the studio. But Aisha can be pretty persuasive when she has to be, so the bunnies agreed to try it with a mobile rig.”

  “Bob Steelforth, Galaxy Free Press. Nobody charged me at the door. Do we pay somewhere for the beer?”

  “It’s a party, Bob,” Kelly replied. “We’re sending off the Gem ambassador and her sister, and we’re celebrating the end of the open house.” The young reporter continued looking at her and nodding, and she realized he was waiting for a definitive answer. “No, you don’t pay for the beer.”