by E. M. Foner
“And will you present it to her unaltered, or are you going to edit what I said.”
“I would never change your words,” Jeeves hedged. “Some editing for brevity, perhaps.”
“Erase it,” Kelly demanded. “I know what you’re up to and you’re wasting your time in any case. Dorothy isn’t planning on leaving the baby at home. They’re portable, you know, and she has the full line of transportation accessories.”
“Is that what they’re calling perambulators these days?”
“Just swear to me that you aren’t going to edit our conversation so that Dorothy hears you asking if she’s ready to go back to work and me saying, ‘I don’t think so.’ Libby, make him promise.”
“You’re requesting my help in an argument between you and my offspring?” the station librarian asked. “Very well. Jeeves, don’t edit the ambassador’s words in a misguided attempt to influence Dorothy against coming back to work and spending your money.”
“You haven’t heard the last of me,” Jeeves uttered in a villainous voice and floated out of the conference room.
Two
“Next, please,” the Dollnick clerk behind the counter called out.
“Hi. I’m Samuel McAllister and—”
“I remember you,” the four-armed alien interrupted the ambassador’s son. “You were in here last year changing your major from space engineering to diplomacy. Let me guess,” the Dolly continued, whistling louder as he went to draw the attention of his fellow clerks. “You’ve decided you want to drop out of the cooperative education program before you even begin.”
“What did I ever do to you?” Samuel demanded. “No, don’t even tell me. How about you do your job without the commentary and give me my co-op assignment.”
“Can’t handle a little joke and he thinks he has the right stuff to be a diplomat,” the Dolly commented loudly. Then he activated a holographic controller and with a few quick gestures, brought up Samuel’s file. “Report to the Vergallian embassy after the Queen’s Day holiday. Next, please.”
“Wait,” Samuel said, trying to make sense of the hologram from the wrong side but getting nowhere with the backward Dollnick characters. “There must be some sort of mistake.”
“A mistake?” the clerk whistled in disbelief. All conversations in the Open University’s administrative office came to an abrupt halt and every head pivoted to see who had blasphemed. The Dollnick did some manipulation with his hands to rotate the hologram one-hundred and eighty degrees, and at the same time, the alien text morphed into English. “I’m prevented by the school’s privacy laws from defending myself by reading out your record, but I’m sure a future diplomat such as yourself will be happy to correct that deficiency and acknowledge that the mistake is yours.”
“Samuel McAllister, currently enrolled in Diplomatic Studies,” the ambassador’s son read out loud. “Report to the Vergallian embassy after Queen’s Day holiday.” He looked up in disbelief. “But I can’t work for the Vergallians. My mother is the EarthCent ambassador. I have a conflict of interest.”
The Dollnick exploded in a volley of untranslatable whistling and the other clerks joined in the laughter according to the forms of their own species. Even the students waiting in line couldn’t help chuckling at Samuel’s discomfort. The ambassador’s son realized that arguing with the clerk would accomplish nothing and decided that the only diplomatic option was to beat a hasty retreat. Out in the corridor, he considered contacting the station librarian over his implant, but decided to wait until he had a chance to talk with his family and friends. He almost ran into a Horten student at the entrance to the cafeteria and mumbled an apology.
“Samuel,” the Horten girl said. “What’s wrong?”
“Marilla? I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you. You’re, uh…”
“My skin is bright blue,” she said for him, not in the least bit embarrassed. “I know it’s unusual, but it’s no big deal. I’ll explain while we’re eating.”
The two students took trays and entered the fast-moving cafeteria line. Samuel passed by the pre-wrapped Vergallian vegan salads that most of the humanoid species could digest, if not enjoy, and stopped in front of the human-safe selection.
“Pssst,” a Drazen working behind the counter whispered, hiding his mouth with his hand as he spoke. “I’ve got Earth wedges today.”
“How many?” Samuel asked.
“Four left. It’s two creds for one wedge or three creds for a pair.”
“I’ll take two.” The ambassador’s son handed over the coins, received the slices, and artfully concealed them on his tray with a napkin.
“Any meat on those?” Marilla asked the Drazen.
“Naw, but there’s lots of other stuff. My connection said that they’re Mediterranean, whatever that means.”
“I’ll take the other two,” the Horten girl said. Samuel waited for her to be served, and the friends continued down the counter to pick up coffees and dessert. They paid at the register and began looking for seats in the packed cafeteria.
“Hey, Blue Girl,” a loud voice called. “Over here.”
Enough of the students turned in the direction of the disturbance to make locating the voice easy, and Samuel spotted the Drazen student who ran the dojo waving his tentacle in the air just to make sure they saw him.
“I suppose you want to sit there,” Marilla said, affecting a long-suffering tone.
“It looks like he saved us the last two empty seats in the place,” Samuel replied, heading towards the back corner of the cafeteria. “Besides, Vivian will kill me if I don’t sit with her.”
“Where is your girlfriend?”
“Across from Jorb. She must have ducked out of sight when he yelled.”
“Hey, guys,” Vivian greeted the newcomers. “You got the pizza too? We could reassemble the whole pie—at least, we could have before Jorb inhaled his slices.”
“They make a great appetizer,” the Drazen said. “If the cafeteria put Earth wedges on the menu, they’d be a hot seller.”
“What I don’t get is that everybody is in on it,” Samuel said. “The workers who sell outside food for cash have to be paying off the cashiers to look the other way.”
“And the Open University no doubt figures it all into the compensation package for cafeteria help. The only way the school loses out is if students bring their own food to the cafeteria.”
“I thought that was banned,” Vivian said.
“You can bring homemade food,” Marilla told her. “The ban only applies to take-out.”
“Meaning we can’t save money by bringing in a whole pizza and splitting it up between us,” Samuel concluded. “So, why are you blue?” he asked the Horten.
“Mornich asked me,” the girl said, and her skin tone grew even brighter.
“You’re engaged?”
Marilla’s skin briefly turned purple before fading into pink.
“Nice going, Sam,” the Drazen commented. “You triggered her blush response.”
The ambassador’s son found himself apologizing to the Horten for the second time in five minutes. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. I seem to be having a bad diplomacy day.”
“It’s all good,” Marilla told him. “I should thank you. Our skin color gets stuck sometimes with a strong emotion and I’ve been waiting for something to get the pigments moving again. And no, Mornich and I aren’t engaged. He asked me to make a doily for his grandmother.”
“Huh?”
“We already have permission from our families to see each other on a provisional basis, so now we have to convince the elders that it’s worth their time to start negotiations.”
“By making a doily?” Vivian asked.
“It’s basically a test of how my aesthetic sensibility and attention to detail matches with his family’s,” Marilla explained. “I tend to turn a little blue when I use that part of my brain and I guess I overloaded thinking about geometric patterns. Now I’m waiting for my grandparents to give me a task to assi
gn to Mornich.”
“Sounds complicated,” Samuel said. “Couldn’t you just take a written test?”
“Those come much later,” Marilla told him.
“You seem pretty out of it yourself,” Jorb said to the ambassador’s son. “Did you fail a competency test or something?”
“I’m not taking any this semester,” Samuel replied. “I signed up for the co-op program and there’s been some kind of mistake.”
“You too?” Vivian jumped in. “I’m not sure I’m allowed to say anything because, you know, but I didn’t get the co-op job I expected.”
“Your major is Intelligence and your parents run the Human spy service,” Marilla said. “If you wanted to work there for a semester, why didn’t you just ask?”
“The Open University gives credit for co-op jobs, plus you get paid. I was sure that they’d assign me to EarthCent Intelligence, especially after I talked my dad into filling out all the forms for them to accept co-op students. My mom warned us that it was too good to be true,” she added ruefully.
“But what other intelligence agency would be willing to take on a Human intern?”
“Must be ours,” Jorb said, rubbing the side of his nose. “I know someone who knows someone and we work pretty closely with Humans on the station.”
“So did you get my slot in EarthCent Intelligence?” Vivian asked her boyfriend.
Samuel held up his index finger while hastily chewing and swallowing a mouthful of pizza. “I wish it made that much sense. I have to report to the Vergallian embassy right after Queen’s Day.”
“This is starting to sound like that musical chairs game my little sister played when she was on ‘Let’s Make Friends,’” Marilla said. “If both of you guys ended up sitting in chairs that belong to the other species, who is going to sit in yours?”
“My mom’s going to kill me,” Samuel groaned. “Our embassy only has three full-time employees and she signed up for the cooperative education program so I could work there. What if the school sends her an alien?”
“Actually, that reminds me of a favor I’ve been meaning to ask,” the Drazen said. “I’m pretty much done taking courses and I’ve passed all of my competency exams so I’m going to have to get a job. Strangely enough, the main thing I’ve learned at the Open University is that I like teaching in a dojo. I’ve been thinking that if there isn’t a martial arts studio on EarthCent’s circuit ship yet, maybe you could put in a good word for me the next time it stops here?”
“You want to open a dojo on Flower? I’m pretty sure that they’ll be happy to have you. You sat on the student committee so you know that the ship took on Open University alumni to start a theatre, a blacksmith shop, an academy—”
“A remedial choral school,” Jorb interjected.
“This is about that girl, isn’t it,” Marilla said. “I should send her a warning.”
“Don’t do that!” the stricken lover begged. “I figure if I open the dojo on Flower and start getting students, she’ll find out there’s another Drazen onboard and come to see me. You know that nothing can come of it if I go to see her first.”
“I’m aware of your bizarre courting rituals. I suppose I could consider keeping my mouth shut in return for—”
“Just name it,” Jorb implored as the Horten girl let the silence stretch.
“Let me have my doily party in the dojo. It’s traditional to celebrate and I don’t have the money to rent a place.”
“I’m not the only instructor there, you know. It’s open around the clock. I reserved a four-hour block at the next minor convergence, but there’s nothing else available for several cycles.”
“Minor convergence?” Marilla asked. “Which species?”
“It’s the equivalent of a Friday or Saturday night for Drazens, Hortens, Dollnicks, Vergallians, and Humans,” Jorb rattled off. “That’s why I snagged it for my competency completion party.”
The two aliens glared at each other across the table.
“Why don’t you share?” Samuel suggested. “I know you guys like everybody to think that you hate each other, but you share a lot of the same friends, and it’s not like either of you are so popular that there won’t be enough room for the friends you don’t have in common.”
“Did you really just say that?” Marilla asked. “I’m beginning to see why the school administration assigned you to the Vergallian embassy. You’ll be a quick study at gunboat diplomacy.”
“He’s right, though,” Vivian said, looking down at her student tab. “Even if you found somewhere else to have the party, it’s the only calendar convergence for our species in the next two cycles. Either you host the party together or all of your mutual friends will have to run back and forth between two locations.”
“What does admin charge for the dojo rental?” Marilla asked.
“With my discount, it’s fifty creds an hour,” Jorb said.
“Wow, that’s still pretty steep,” Samuel observed.
“Are you going to have dancing?” Vivian asked.
“I could get Mornich and his band if Jorb pays for the room,” the Horten girl offered.
The Drazen grimaced, then shrugged and extended his hand across the table. Marilla looked at it, ostentatiously reached in her purse for a dress glove, pulled it on, and finally shook Jorb’s hand.
“What are you scowling about?” Samuel asked Vivian, seeing that the corners of his girlfriend’s mouth had turned down. Then he realized that she was glaring over his shoulder and turned to see the Vergallian ambassador’s gorgeous daughter approaching.
“Hey, everybody,” Aabina said. “No chairs?”
“I was just finished eating,” Samuel said, grabbing his plate with the unfinished pizza and dessert and popping up. “Please sit.”
“Don’t be silly,” the Vergallian girl said, favoring the ambassador’s son with a dazzling smile that set Vivian’s teeth on edge. “You should save your manners for work. I just wanted to see if you got the news.”
“We heard,” Vivian practically growled. “Sam is considering turning it down.”
“He can’t,” Aabina protested. “My mom is counting on him to fill in for me.”
“Where are you going to be?” Samuel asked.
“I did the cooperative education option too. I’m starting at the EarthCent embassy the Monday after orientation. The thing is, I asked the station librarian to change my implant to the Human clock so I can get accustomed to your schedule, but it seems like there’s something wrong with the way you keep time.”
“We’re in the process of changing over to Universal Human Time on the tunnel network to match the time at the president’s office back on Earth. The station librarian is creeping the clock forward for us so we don’t have to jump seven hours all at once.”
“Why would you want to be on the same time? I doubt there are two worlds in our entire empire that share the same clock.”
“But we’re not living on a world,” Samuel pointed out. “The change only affects our people living on Stryx stations or space habitats where the time is arbitrary.”
Two other students at the table rose from their places and headed off to class, allowing Aabina to take the seat next to Samuel.
“Aren’t you eating?” Marilla asked the wasp-waisted Vergallian student.
“I had a piece of fruit for breakfast. I can eat after I’m married.”
“When will that be?” Vivian asked eagerly.
“Another twenty or thirty years, I guess. I’m just a girl.”
“Hey, everybody,” a Dollnick student announced himself, settling his bulk onto the chair next to Vivian. He reached below the seat and hit the height adjustment, bringing it up so his knees weren’t higher than his waist. “I was hoping to catch you all in one place. I finally got approved for the visiting alien student slot at the leading Sharf naval architecture firm and I’ll be leaving Union Station at the end of the cycle.”
“Congratulations,” Samuel told Grude. “T
hat’s great. It’s a fourteen-year commitment?”
“A hundred cycles,” the Dollnick confirmed. “I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get a job with one of the princely shipyards after I have some experience under my belt, but if not, I can stay with the Sharfs for the full internship of five-hundred cycles. Anyway, I want to invite you all to my going away party. I was thinking of renting a room at a restaurant.”
“That’s crazy expensive,” Jorb told him. “You should split the dojo with me. I’ve got it reserved for the next minor convergence and a hundred creds will cover your half.”
“Or you could pay for the catering,” Marilla said. “I’m getting Mornich to play, but his guys are picky eaters.”
“I’ll split the room rent,” Grude said. “Have you decided to start doing advanced work at the Open University, Marilla?”
“I haven’t quite worked it out yet,” the Horten admitted.
“I thought you took a minor in terraforming along with space engineering so you could go back to that colony ship that your extended family owns shares in and help prepare the new world,” Samuel said.
“I guess I still might, but my parents want to stay on Union Station for at least another ten years while my little sister finishes school.”
“But you said you need to start earning money and there aren’t a lot of entry-level jobs in space engineering on the station,” Grude said doubtfully. “I’ve been working part-time in our repair facility just to get my hands dirty.”
“I’ve pretty much given up on getting technical work here,” Marilla admitted. “I don’t want to get stuck in a desk job, but my parents would kill me if I started working in retail or food service after passing my competency exams in Space Engineering. If I had any fashion sense, I’d ask Samuel’s sister to hire me, but I can’t even color-coordinate an outfit.”
“That’s because you keep changing colors,” Aabina observed.
“Do you really want to fool around with repairing old spaceships?” Samuel asked the Horten girl. “I could talk to my dad and my brother. They’ve got a huge backlog of restoration work from when Gryph auctioned off the abandoned ships in long-term parking around the station.”