Last Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 16)

by E. M. Foner

  Twitchy’s pincer was snapping open and closed so rapidly that it sounded like an old-fashioned door buzzer, and after floating unsteadily to the center of the stage, the little Stryx settled to the floor with a clunk.

  “Are you okay?” Aisha asked.

  “Nervous. So many sentients watching.”

  “My brother said to imagine them counting on their fingers,” Grace suggested.

  “They all look silly now!”

  The loud buzz from the chattering pincer came to an end and Aisha breathed a sigh of relief. The next cast member to be introduced was a confident Dollnick boy, who immediately dropped to the floor and did a set of four-armed pushups.

  “Do you want to tell the audience your name?” Aisha asked.

  “Brule, and I’m a gymnast.”

  “Are not!” a voice cried from backstage, and a Drazen girl rushed out. “I told him that’s what I was going to say. He stole my line!”

  “What’s your name?” Aisha asked her.

  The little Drazen girl sang a few clear notes that didn’t translate to anything, but Grace seemed to get something out of it, because she ventured, “Binka?”

  “Close enough,” the alien said.

  A Vergallian boy came out next, his poise and finely chiseled features giving away his ruling class status. “I’m Pietro,” he introduced himself with a bow.

  “And our first Vergallian cast member in a long time,” Aisha said. “Can you tell us why you wanted to be on the show?”

  “Just following orders,” the little boy replied with a shrug.

  The final two cast members came out together, a squat Verlock boy with a Frunge balanced on his shoulders.

  “Careful!” Aisha warned. “You could fall and hurt yourself.”

  “I’m very steady,” the Verlock boy said, shuffling slowly towards the center of the stage.

  “We’re gymnasts too,” the young Frunge added.

  “And what are your names?” Aisha asked.

  “Plynyth,” the Verlock grunted.

  “Gzera,” the Frunge shouted, then promptly lost his balance and did a belly flop on the stage. “I’m okay. I’m okay,” he said, scrambling to his feet.

  “I’m the gymnast!” Binka reiterated.

  The status light on the front immersive camera began to flash. Brule pointed and asked, “Is that broken?”

  “That’s our cue for a commercial,” Aisha told them, and then spoke to the audience. “We’ll be right back after these brief messages.”

  The assistant director hopped up on the stage and crouched low on his haunches. “Does anybody have to use the bathroom?” he asked. The little Frunge hesitated and then raised his hand. “It’s always the shrubs,” the bunny muttered under his breath. “Go quickly,” he said, waving for a furry stagehand to accompany the boy. “The stage manager will send you back out when you return.”

  “Is ‘Princess’ your real name?” Pietro asked Grace.

  “It’s one of my names,” the girl replied.

  “That’s what her father calls her,” Twitchy informed the Vergallian.

  “Where are the actors doing the commercials?” Binka asked, looking around in confusion.

  “The commercials for the different species are all prerecorded and the Grenouthians show them according to who is watching,” Aisha explained.

  “Doesn’t everybody like hot peppers in their breakfast porridge?”

  “Yuck,” several of the other cast members chorused in reply.

  The new assistant director placed the children where he wanted them for the opening shot, quietly threatening to glue their feet to the floor if they moved. Then he hopped down off the stage and began the countdown. Aisha waited to speak until the status lights on the immersive cameras went from blinking to solid.

  “Welcome back to Let’s Make Friends. It’s fun to start a new rotation by asking our cast members what they want to do when they grow up, and today, we have some special guests who want our help with a new attraction they’re building for Libbyland. First allow me to introduce my husband, Paul McAllister.”

  The audience applauded loudly as Paul came out on stage, pushing a cart with high canvas sides before him. He left the cart behind the children and went to stand next to his wife, trying not to show how nervous he felt.

  “Working with Paul is somebody you all know from his time filling in as one of the hosts when I was on maternity leave,” Aisha continued. “Stryx Jeeves.”

  The studio audience made even more noise than they had when the bunny insisted on testing the applause sign, and large sections began chanting, “Spiral Slide of Death,” the name of a physics-defying playground apparatus that Jeeves had introduced on the show during his tenure. The stage manager took advantage of the chaos to send the young Frunge back out without anybody noticing.

  “Thank you. Thank you,” Jeeves acknowledged his fans. “As Aisha told you, Paul and I are working on a new game for Libbyland which we hope will help young sentients learn about career options. It’s never too early to get started.”

  “But there’s also no rush,” Aisha felt obligated to tell her audience.

  “Right,” Jeeves unexpectedly concurred. “So who wants to start us off?”

  “Me,” Brule declared, raising all four of his hands. “I want to be a construction engineer.”

  “Excellent. Can you tell us why?”

  “Because my whole family are construction engineers going back forever. Well, I have one uncle who is a musician, but we don’t talk about him.”

  “Would you like to play an engineering game?” Paul asked the young Dollnick.

  “Sure.”

  Aisha’s husband pulled a case labeled “Engineering” from the box and opened it up to display a colorful construction kit.

  “Who would like to go next?” the host prompted.

  “Me,” the Drazen girl said. “I want to be a composer.”

  “Could you tell us why you want to be a composer?” Jeeves asked her.

  “All girls want to be composers,” Binka replied matter-of-factly. “Don’t you?” she asked Grace.

  “I don’t know. I’m only six.”

  “How about you?” the Drazen boldly asked Twitchy.

  “I don’t know either,” the little Stryx admitted. “What do composers have to do?”

  “Write music, I think.”

  “Would you like to play a composition game?” Jeeves asked.

  “Yes,” Binka replied. “You guys can play too if you want.”

  Paul retrieved another case from the cart, this one labeled “Music.” He removed an instrument that resembled a xylophone from the padded case and plugged in a two-sided display panel that would show the musical notes being played.

  “Do you want to explain the games that my husband is setting up for the children, Jeeves?” Aisha asked.

  “We tried to come up with fun ways that children can find out what it’s like to work in the careers they think are interesting. Paul and I did a lot of homework ourselves to generate ideas, so I’ll give you an example. Every species on the tunnel network has toys like building blocks. Sometimes it’s fun to just pile the blocks as high as you can and knock them down, but we can also ask children to build something they think would be useful, like a house to live in.”

  “That does sound like work,” the hostess said cautiously. “Do you really want to put limits on their imaginations like that?”

  “Our staff will watch how the children play their games and tell them about the related careers,” Jeeves continued, choosing to ignore Aisha’s question. “When they return to Libbyland the next time, we’ll give them new games to help them explore the areas they like, always taking into account what was learned on the previous visit.”

  “We want to play too,” Gzera said.

  “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” Aisha asked.

  “A metallurgist,” the Frunge replied immediately.

  “A scientist,” his Verlock
companion said.

  “I’ve got a kit you can work on together,” Paul told them, hauling out another case. “It’s important in science and technology to learn how to work as part of a team.”

  “How about you?” Aisha asked the young Vergallian boy. “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

  “Serve my queen with honor.”

  “I’m not sure they’ll have a game for that.”

  “Of course we do,” Jeeves said, and pulled a case out of the cart, keeping the label side turned away from Aisha.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Let Pietro play and see if you can guess.”

  The assistant director gestured frantically at the production crew, and it was a miracle that none of the cameras crashed into each other as their controllers maneuvered them about trying to capture the action as the children played with the kits. The studio audience began growing restless after a few minutes without any of the cast saying anything, and only a few random notes played on the xylophone to break the silence. Finally, the assistant director called an emergency commercial break, barely giving Aisha enough time to say, “And we’ll be right back.”

  “What is this?” the bunny wailed. “It’s so quiet on set that I can almost hear our ratings falling. Is there some law nobody told me about where finding careers for the children means you have to sacrifice mine?”

  “It’s actually going very well,” Jeeves said. “In a few hours—”

  “We don’t have a few hours! Aisha, go to ‘Storytellers’ after the break.”

  “Jeeves is just teasing you,” Paul said. “The children have already done enough to start asking questions. That’s where the learning happens.”

  “I never knew you agreed with me,” Aisha whispered to her husband as the furious bunny began counting them back in. “Children do learn best when they’re encouraged to ask questions.”

  “Actually, Jeeves is going to do the asking,” Paul replied just before the immersive cameras lit up.

  “And welcome back again,” the hostess said in a bright voice. “The children played right through the commercial break so you know they must be having fun. It looks like Brule is building quite the tower.”

  The young Dollnick barely looked up as Aisha examined his construction, but Jeeves got Brule’s attention by pulling out a column from the twisting triangular tower and tossing it back in the case.

  “What are you doing?” Brule demanded, followed immediately by, “Why didn’t it fall down?”

  “That column wasn’t supporting any weight,” Jeeves explained. “Do you remember why you put it there?”

  “I thought I needed it.”

  “Why is that?”

  The young Dollnick shrugged. “I remember seeing something built this way, and it had extra columns, maybe on the top.”

  “Like this?” Jeeves asked, and moving at blinding speed, he rearranged most of the components of the construction. The resulting building consisted of twelve stacked triangular floors, where each story was offset by a five-degree angle from the slightly larger floor below.

  “That’s it,” Brule said excitedly, as the Dollnicks in the audience broke out in loud whistles of admiration. “I see it when I’m sleeping sometimes but I can’t remember where it’s from. What is it?”

  “That’s the traditional cake served at the wedding of a prince.”

  “I remember now,” Brule cried. “I got a piece and it was soooo tasty. I wish I could make cakes like that.”

  “You could, if you became a baker.”

  “That’s what I want to be when I grow up. A baker.”

  “You don’t have to decide right now,” Aisha reminded him, but the young Dollnick was already deconstructing the tower and returning the pieces to the case. Jeeves floated over to where Binka was hesitantly striking notes on the xylophone, aided by Grace and Twitchy.

  “Composing music is hard,” the Drazen girl piped up. “The notes don’t want to go together.”

  “That’s good,” Jeeves told her. “A feel for which notes don’t fit with each other is just as important as understanding which ones do. How do you like being a composer, Princess?”

  “I just wanted to help,” Grace said. “It doesn’t sound like the music mommy plays.”

  “I like the harmonics, the counting, and the scales,” Twitchy contributed nervously. “They remind me of math. I like math.”

  “You’re all set then because you’re going to get plenty of it,” Jeeves told the little Stryx.

  “How are you two progressing?” Aisha asked the young scientists.

  “He’s so slow,” Gzera complained, and to illustrate his point, made a series of moves in the string game related to cat’s cradle they were playing. The Verlock was unable to keep up. “It keeps getting tangled.”

  “You skipped the fourth sequence,” Plynyth replied slowly. “I don’t think you read the instructions.”

  “Did you read the instructions?” Jeeves asked the young Frunge.

  “Maybe not all of them,” Gzera admitted. “They were so long, and there weren’t enough pictures.”

  “Do you think that metallurgists have to follow lots of instructions?”

  “I never thought about it. Do they?”

  “I’m afraid they do,” Jeeves said. “But you can work with metal without becoming a metallurgist. There are blacksmiths, and welders, and sculptors—”

  “I want to be all of those,” Gzera interrupted.

  “What are you working on?” Aisha asked the Vergallian boy. She crouched down to look at the small figurines Pietro was arranging on the deck. “Are those soldiers?”

  “They’re alien mercenaries. I’m setting up a defensive perimeter,” he added, stumbling over the last two words.

  “What are the mercenaries going to eat?” Jeeves asked.

  “Food?”

  “But where is it? All I see are soldiers and weapons.”

  “Do you mean the supply train? I didn’t take any of those pieces out because they’re boring.”

  “And so they are, but your soldiers still have to eat,” Jeeves said.

  Pietro chewed on his lower lip and nodded. “I’ll do better next time.”

  The assistant director started counting them to another commercial break, and Jeeves rushed to say, “Free entry to the Career Game at Libbyland this cycle for anybody who mentions my name.”

  Aisha helped her husband and Jeeves repack the toys during the long commercial break, and when the cameras went live again, she led the children through a successful round of Storytellers, one of the show’s most popular features. Then it came time for the closing segment, and Jeeves reappeared with the xylophone from the career kit and began playing the theme music. The cast members, all of whom had watched the show countless times, launched into their song:

  Don’t be a stranger because I look funny,

  You look weird to me, but let’s make friends.

  I’ll give you a tissue if your nose is runny,

  I’m as scared as you, so let’s make friends.

  “That’s a wrap,” the assistant director concluded when the camera lights blinked off. “New rule, and this is from the booth. No more career planning on the show—we’re already getting complaints from the parents.”

  Eleven

  Joe finished stacking the used breakfast dishes on a tray and asked his wife, “What are your plans for today, Kel?”

  “I have to write my keynote speech,” she replied grumpily.

  “You don’t have anything you can recycle?”

  “I wish. The last time I reused a speech at a conference the Galactic Free Press reporter left out all of the parts the paper had already reported.”

  “Bob did that to you?”

  “Judith’s husband takes being a correspondent a little too seriously sometimes.”

  “When’s the last time you wrote a speech from scratch?”

  “Ugh,” Kelly groaned. “Decades? I don’t want to think about
it.”

  “Take your tea out to the patio and I’ll finish cleaning up,” Joe offered. “And it’s the weekend, so don’t work too hard.”

  “I really should start putting prices on our things for the tag sale. Donna found me a huge roll of sticky labels.”

  “There’s no hurry. It’s not like we have to worry about rain, and you haven’t even submitted the ad yet. Prices can wait until the kids are available to help.”

  Kelly rummaged around the living room until she found a pad of paper and a couple of EarthCent Intelligence branded pencils that somebody had liberated from the training camp. Joe’s stepping in to clean up after breakfast had blown her procrastination plans out of the water so there was nothing left for her to do now other than to get down to business. The lawn furniture in the patio area in front of the ice harvester proved to be more comfortable than she remembered, and a few minutes later, she dozed off with a pencil in her hand.

  Her dream of finding a lucky rabbit’s foot that magically wrote speeches was interrupted by a voice insistently repeating, “Ambassador. Wake up.”

  “I’m just resting my eyes,” Kelly lied reflexively as she jerked awake.

  “Are you going to stab me with that little spear?” the Grenouthian ambassador inquired.

  “It’s a pencil. I was just working on my keynote speech for the CoSHC convention.”

  The large bunny picked up the blank notepad and flipped a few pages to make sure he wasn’t missing something. “So you’re going the minimalist route.”

  “I compose everything in my head before writing it down,” Kelly lied again. “It saves a lot of editing.”

  “Whatever you say. Where should I put my things?”

  “What things?”

  “A few items from the embassy I brought for your tag sale. My cultural attaché suggested this morning for the drop-off. Did he get it right?”

  “I guess so,” Kelly replied, looking around to see if the Grenouthian ambassador had set a box somewhere before waking her. “Do you have the things with you now?”

  “My secretary is waiting in the corridor. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t changed your mind.”