by E. M. Foner
“Of course,” the girl told him, with a look that suggested he had just arrived from some backwards mining colony with no running water. “The Stryx always balance their books.”
“But what does that have to do with it?” he began, then remembered he was on his way to a date. “I wish you and your sister luck with the baby brother thing.”
“Thank you, sir.” The girl bobbed her head and dropped a cute curtsey that took the sting out of the transaction.
Five minutes later, Joe strode into the Camelot with his monster bouquet of flowers, wondering if he should have just picked out the nicest single daisy and thrown the rest into a disposal chute. He was ashamed to admit, even to himself, that the only thing stopping him from doing so was the suspicion that one of those little girls would pop out from nowhere and catch him in the act. Joe wasn’t sure if he was more afraid that their feelings would be hurt or that they would sell him a new batch.
The notification from Eemas had described his date as “regal, blue veil, silver spurs,” so Joe assumed she would be easy to spot. Looking around the faux stone hall with the giant artificial fireplace, fake torches in sconces, and the dinging of slot machines in the distance, he was struck by the number of blue veiled damsels jangling about in silver spurs. As he stood trying to decide his next move, a particularly regal figure separated herself from the mob and approached him.
“Welcome, our hero,” she spoke regally, extending her arm with the hand hanging palm downwards. Joe had fought on enough feudalisticly governed worlds to guess that she expected him to take her hand and either drop to one knee or bend deeply at the waist and brush her knuckles with a kiss. He went with the second option, and after releasing her hand, extended the overstuffed bouquet.
“Joe McAllister at your service,” he introduced himself. “I’m glad you were able to spot me from my description,” he continued. “I didn’t expect to see so many blue veiled women with spurs.”
“But we are the only queen here! Queen Ayre, you may address us,” she said imperiously. “Surely you were looking directly at us before we approached, as befitting the lady of the castle in greeting a suitor.”
“Uh, yes, of course,” Joe answered, trying to deconstruct the implant’s interpretation of a speech pattern which he had the nagging feeling he had heard in the past. On impulse, he triggered the mental switch to put the implant on hold and waited for her to begin speaking again.
“I can see by these flowers that you have journeyed a long way over a difficult path,” she continued with just a hint of regal sarcasm. “Let us remove to the dining hall where a repast awaits hungry travelers.”
Vergallian! The language came back to him in an instant, and he silently thanked his deceased mother who had opened his mind to the love of learning languages in his childhood. Joe had spent nearly three years in Vergallian space, and as he followed Queen Ayre to the dining hall, he wracked his memory for details about their culture.
The Vergallians dominated nearly a hundred star systems with a strange mix of feudal society and advanced technology. A general on Hwoult Five once mentioned to Joe in passing that an invasion fleet was being prepared to add Earth to the Vergal empire at the time the Stryx stepped in and took the humans under their metallic wing. While the Vergallians were not pleased with the interference, neither did they consider Earth any great loss.
Silver spurs jingling, she led him into a narrow dining hall with a long table running down the center. Minstrels near the entrance plucked at crude stringed instruments, which had the beneficial effect of softening the casino noises into what could have been expected from a distant street carnival or a joust. Queen Ayre halted next to an empty spot at the table, and Joe moved quickly to pull out a chair, into which she settled with regal grace. He took the seat at her right, which he now recalled was traditional for a man of arms. The left-hand seat was traditionally saved for the wise man or the fool, he couldn’t recall which.
“We are pleased to find a well-bred knight so far from home,” Queen Ayre spoke as she turned to him. She lifted her veil and threw it back over her hair, revealing the chiseled, symmetrical features typical of the Vergallian elite. “Are you familiar with our lovely domains?”
“Can’t say I am,” Joe replied in English, since speaking Vergallian would put lie to his words. She did specify “our” domains, after all, and he had never heard of her before. An inkling of a half-remembered rumor made him play his cards close to the vest, as the Vergallians hadn’t amassed an empire without chewing up and spitting out the unwary. “Is this your first Eemas date?”
Queen Ayre lost her regal bearing for a split second, and behind the mask of her exquisitely formed features flashed a look of irritation. “Nooo,” she drawled slowly, taking a moment to formulate a reply. “We have not been pleased with the heroes selected by Eemas to this point. We have very high standards.”
“I see.” Joe nodded his acknowledgement as a waiter, or was he a serving man, placed two mugs of foaming ale before them. “Well, what are you doing so far from home?”
“We are seeking a hero,” she proclaimed, recovering her poise and fixing him with a hypnotic stare. Joe began to feel highly vulnerable as he remembered that some Vergallian women could produce human compatible pheromones that would put a queen bee to shame. “Are you a hero, Joe?”
“Well, I’m still alive, so if I am a hero, I must be pretty good at it,” he joked as he set down his mug and attempted a roguish smile, the impact of which was blunted by the heavy foam sticking to his upper lip.
“Are you afraid of death, Joe?” she asked, watching him intently. “Would you not gamble all to win a kingdom and a lady fair?”
“I might at that,” Joe answered, intending it as a compliment to her beauty rather than as a commitment. Her smile hit him like a flash grenade, and the afterimage made him wonder if he’d actually been strobed by a mini-blinder. After a couple blinks, his vision cleared, just in time to see her stowing away a small blue vial in her boot.
“You have led cavalry in war, yes? We detected signs in your walk and the way you hold yourself that you are at home in the saddle.”
“It’s been a few years since I worked as a horse soldier,” he admitted, taking another sip of ale. It seemed to have gone flat already, or maybe ale brewed to an authentic old recipe changed flavor and lost fizz rapidly after it was drawn from the barrel. Joe also began to wonder if the pheromones were getting at him, since he suddenly felt hazy. He took another pull at the ale in hopes it would clear his head.
“In these wars where you led cavalry, did you win?” she pressed on. Somehow, coming up with the answer she wanted to hear took on a sudden urgency. But if there was one thing Joe couldn’t lie about, it was fighting.
“Won some, lost some, never got killed,” he mumbled, thick-tongued. “Hey, how about we go somewhere a little quieter? I can show you my scars.” But he flubbed the attempt to stand up because both legs felt like they were falling asleep, except the pins-and-needles sensation in the left leg included something that felt more like a nick from a dagger. “What ‘zactly are you offering, lady Queen?”
“Ourselves!” she spoke proudly, striking a regal pose in her chair. “The Vergallian Cycle is coming to completion on Terwell, and we require an off-world hero to retain for us our rightful inheritance.”
Vergallian Cycle, Joe repeated to himself. Wasn’t that the reason he had been fighting on Hwoult Five, a battle for succession that took place according to some astronomical schedule? There was something about it that he just couldn’t quite put his finger on, but what was it? Something related to immolation? He reactivated the translation implant in hopes it would do a better job with the details.
“Only once every thirty-two years is the competition for supremacy on Terwell open to outsiders. We requested Eemas to find us a hero with the courage and experience to lead a unit of cavalry in the competition for our hand in matrimony,” she continued, and each word seemed to drive a warm spike
through his heart. Yes, here was a woman to fight for, to wager one’s life against a kingdom.
“Yes,” he said aloud, barely aware of the fact, at which point she whipped a parchment scroll tied with an ornate silken ribbon out of her sleeve. Queen Ayre rapidly unrolled and smoothed the somewhat stained and abused document before him on the table. Next she pulled a messy inkpot from a hidden pocket, followed by a wicked looking quill.
“Just sign here at the bottom,” she instructed him, as she primed the quill with red ink and forced it into his hand. “Sign, and it’s off to the honeymoon suite, where we will open a world of pleasures to our hero.”
“Just sign,” he repeated thickly, as his eyes tried to focus on the proper area of the parchment and he struggled to read calligraphed letters from an alphabet he hadn’t seen in years. “Where it says, ‘sacrificial king?’”
Queen Ayre’s face went white with rage as she snatched back the scroll and rapidly rolled it up into a tight baton. Joe swayed in his chair, unclear what he could have done to upset the most desirable woman he’d ever met in his life, then he slumped forward onto the table and passed out. Nobody took any notice as the Queen rose, replaced her veil, and swept regally from the room.
The effects of the drugged ale wore off in less than a half hour, which gave the pheromone-induced clouds time to clear from Joe’s head as well. When he came to, he had to peel the side of his face from the table where a previous customer had spilled mead and oatmeal. The moment he levered himself back into an upright position, a serving man carrying a nasty looking mace appeared with the check.
“That’s two Galahad Ales at 1 cred, plus 50 centees for sleeping on the table and a 25 centee suggested gratuity,” the serving man recited, twirling the heavy mace idly by the wrist loop.
“I wasn’t finished with my ale,” Joe protested out of pride, but he knew he wasn’t recovered enough from whatever had happened to take on the tavern heavy.
“I think you’ve had quite enough, sir,” the serving man replied dryly.
Joe mulled that over for a long moment and decided the serving man’s assessment was accurate, even if was based on a misreading of the situation. So he reached in his pocket without rising from his seat and fished out a handful of bloody coins.
“Allow me, sir.” The serving man produced a finger bowl, filled it with water from a carafe on the table, and indicated that Joe should drop in his coins. The serving man swirled the water in the bowl a few times like a prospector panning for gold, then poured most of the pink liquid off onto the floor, without losing a centee.
Watching this operation reminded Joe that the bloody coins had come from his clean dress uniform pocket, and looking down, he found the leather over his left thigh crusted over with dried blood. A small cut that looked suspiciously like a prick from a lady’s dagger or a sharp quill went right through the pocket. So that’s where red ink comes from, Joe thought sourly, annoyed that his only flawless uniform had been bloodied on a date, of all things.
When he looked up again, the serving man bowed deeply and intoned, “That was very generous of you, Sir.” Then the man retreated, leaving the bowl with a few small denomination coins on the table.
Twelve
“I’m not bailing out on the subscription,” Kelly told Donna, trying not to sound like she was asking permission. “But it would look pretty odd if I didn’t show up for the first consulate-sponsored mixer, which, if I may add, was my idea.”
“Why didn’t you just put in a change request to Eemas for a date to meet you there?” Donna asked skeptically.
“Maybe my decade and a half of experience doesn’t make me a singles expert, but I know you don’t bring a date to a mixer.”
“So you could have pretended that you met by chance.”
“Do I really look so pathetic that I need to arrange a back-up date for a mixer?” Kelly asked. “Anyway, it’s too late now, and based on the dates I’ve been on when Eemas had a week to think about it, I don’t want to see who I would get on one hour’s notice after a cancellation.”
“Well, you can explain it to the girls when they ask how your date went. They’ve been nagging me about getting them a baby brother lately and I had to explain that it wasn’t as simple as just ordering one from a catalog.” Donna looked away guiltily and added, “So, uh, don’t be surprised if they start in on you about having a baby.”
“Donna!”
“Well, you’re not getting any younger, and you did have an offer, even if it was a little creepy.”
“A little creepy? That man wanted to pay me to have a baby for HIM, or barring that, to sell him my eggs!”
“I have to go make dinner for the girls,” Donna said, choosing not to extend the conversation. “I’ll see you at the mixer. If it doesn’t work out, you can help me with the nametags and the messaging list, but I won’t be able to get you overtime pay.”
“You get paid overtime?” Kelly asked in dismay.
“Of course, I’m hourly.” Donna sounded exasperated with her friend’s thick-headedness as she rushed for the door. “See you.”
Kelly decided against returning home for another shower before the mixer, in part because her morning ablutions had been an experience in terror as the landlord program was turning downright nasty. If Mr. Right showed up for the mixer, he’d have to take Kelly as she was. Besides, duty called.
“Libby? Do you have anything new on those invasive black vines that were discovered growing on the open ag deck? The farmer denied all knowledge, and he was afraid to touch the stuff himself, so he’s asked the embassy for help.”
A short pause ensued, enough to make Kelly wonder if Libby wasn’t listening, but as usual, the Stryx hadn’t missed a word.
“We ran tests on samples and it’s been positively identified as a new strain of Blanker, which is banned in Stryx space. Maintenance bots have eradicated the vines and are in the process of inspecting the ground level on all of the ag decks,” Libby reported.
“What exactly is Blanker?”
“It’s a bio-engineered mind altering drug,” Libby explained. “I don’t believe you’ve encountered any of the Farlings in your travels, but they are one of the most technologically advanced biologicals in this part of the galaxy, especially in genetic engineering. A few of the outer Farling systems are connected to our tunnel network, but most Farling worlds are beyond our influence. They are not aggressive themselves, but they have been known to provide advanced technology to other biologicals. In short, Blanker gives the user a false sense of confidence, of being in complete control of the situation, while simultaneously slowing reaction times by a few percent.”
“What’s so horrible about that?” Kelly asked. “Does it have long term effects, or do the users build up resistance and need to buy more and more of the stuff?”
“No. It’s specifically designed to be non-addictive and nearly undetectable so it can be introduced into food supplies for a whole community without being discovered.”
“Then I really don’t get it. There are humans all over the galaxy addicted to substances that destroy their minds and their bodies. To buy another dose they’ll steal from their parents or sell their children into slavery. Who would care about a drug that makes people a little overconfident while slowing them down just a hair?”
Then Kelly’s analytical side took over, and without waiting for Libby to reply, she began thinking it through out loud.
“If there was a war on and you could get it into enemy supplies, but no, they’d be testing for that. It sounds like it could shift the odds a little in a sporting event, help the gamblers against the spread, but there aren’t any professional Earth leagues on this side of the galaxy. The only humans around here I can imagine having a problem with Blanker are the competitive gamers,” she concluded.
“Exactly,” Libby confirmed her hypothesis. “From Phalnyx to blitz chess, from Nova to Artellian poker, the one thing humanity excels at is playing games. The Natural League is founded
on the premise that the biologicals who developed space travel without Stryx intervention are superior in every way to the species we’ve fostered. But you humans have an unexpected knack for games, and I’m sure you’re aware that the rise of human champions at competitive tournaments has boosted Earth’s game exports by several orders of magnitude. Outside of Stryx space, the most common cause of shooting wars is market share.”
“I guess I’ll have to take your word for that,” Kelly replied. “So you’re suggesting a conspiracy between alien game manufacturers and Natural League members with fragile egos to cheat at the Union Station tourney?”
“The probability is in excess of 99.94%,” Libby answered modestly.
“Why does the universe have to be so weird?” Kelly complained. But then again, it made perfect sense, in an alien sort of a way.
“Speaking of our weird universe, I hear that somebody cancelled on her dream date tonight.”
“Why don’t you just admit that you run Eemas. I promise I won’t tell anybody.”
“Alright, I run Eemas, and I had you set up with the perfect match tonight. Why did you cancel?” Libby sounded genuinely annoyed.
“Libby, I may not be a maestro of relationships, but those first three guys you picked for me were the worst. I understand that compared to all of the other Eemas clients, working with humans is new to you, but I’m beginning to wonder if you just don’t get us,” Kelly vented. “I mean, what kind of success rate do you have with humans compared to everybody else?”
“You’ve got a point there,” Libby admitted, and Kelly could almost hear the smile in the Styrx’s synthesized voice. “Before I extended the Eemas service to humans, the success rate was so close to perfect that publishing a percentage didn’t even make sense. Humans have single-handedly dragged down my success rate by almost a full point, which means over half of my attempts at human matchmaking are failing. I’ve issued more refunds in the last two decades than in the previous millennia.”