Empire Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 18)

by E. M. Foner

  “My husband is the money manager in our family, and the girls keep Stanley busy handling the finances for InstaSitter,” Donna said. “I’m sure he’ll be willing to give you all the advice you want for the price of dinner.”

  “This body is the only significant investment I’ve made in my life,” Dewey informed the ambassador. “It took all of my savings.”

  “I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to talk about investments at the tradeshow,” Daniel said. “Businesses in our sovereign communities are always looking for capital.”

  “That reminds me,” Kelly said. “Who’s doing the keynote for the tradeshow?”

  “It’s on my to-do list to ask you.”

  “It will be my pleasure, and I know that Aabina likes to keep her speechwriting skills sharp.”

  “Where is your special assistant?” Daniel asked. “She’s usually the last of us to leave on Fridays. Is there some special event at the Vergallian embassy she needed to attend?”

  “She’s with my son on the travel concourse seeing her mother off,” Kelly said. “Samuel wanted to travel with the Vergallian ambassador, of course, but Aainda said he needs to stay on Union Station to represent her embassy at the trade-show. Until then, she’s loaned him to EarthCent as a goodwill gesture.”

  “If Samuel is going to be working here, who’s going to be left at the Vergallian embassy?” Daniel asked. “We aren’t losing Aabina, are we?”

  “We need Aabina more than her mother does, and I didn’t offer her in trade,” Kelly said with a laugh. “The Vergallian embassy is basically on standby during Jubilee since their whole empire practically shuts down for three months. Dorothy’s friend Affie, the princess under contract to handle Alt affairs on Union Station, will fill in for their ambassador if the need arises.”

  “So Aabina will be back at the embassy this evening?” the associate ambassador asked hopefully.

  “I invited her to come eat with us,” Kelly said. “That’s why I’m still here after five on a Friday evening. The ambassador’s ship leaves at six, and then Samuel will be able to join us for dinner for the first time in weeks. You shouldn’t be working late either, Daniel. You have a wife and two children at home.”

  “No, I have a wife and two children spending the afternoon at Libbyland with Aisha for the Let’s Make Friends cast rotation get-together, which included a banquet at the medieval castle.”

  “Was that today? How old is Grace now?”

  “Eight. This will be her last season.”

  “Anyway, it looks like I know how I’ll be spending my weekend,” Kelly said mournfully. “I’ll try to arrange an emergency meeting with my Intelligence Steering Committee on Sunday to get the input of the president and the other senior ambassadors. Do you have somewhere to stay, Dewey? We have plenty of room at home.”

  “Flower wanted me to return and report after delivering her message,” the artificial person said, and pressed the button on the back of the Farling device. The shimmer in the air disappeared. “It was very nice meeting you all, and I suspect Flower will send me back to talk again after you reach a decision on accepting empire status.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Daniel said, offering Dewey another handshake. “I think I’ll stop by EarthCent Intelligence and see what they’ve come up with so far. Maybe Clive has an analyst available who has actually read the tunnel network treaty.”

  “It’s a good thing I invited Aabina tonight for dinner,” Kelly said brightly. “She probably knows the treaty by heart.”

  Two

  “Wow, it feels like forever since I’ve been back here,” Dorothy told Flazint while removing a backpack from the shelf. “I’d almost forgotten that my idea for designing cross-species apparel came from working in the lost-and-found while I was studying fashion at the Open University.”

  “You and Chance searched through the lost hats accumulated over thousands of years trying to spot how fashions repeat themselves,” the Frunge girl said. “Eventually the two of you realized that different species were actually copying from each other. I was working that day. Remember?”

  “I do, and I had a dream about it last month when Kevin and I got home from chaperoning your date at four in the morning on our time. I’ve been meaning to bring it up ever since.”

  “I’m sorry about the time difference, but you’re the one who insisted we alternate inconveniences.”

  “Not that,” Dorothy said. “My dream was more like a flashback. It started with the first time we met, when you had that big hair-vine trellis that forced you to walk sideways behind the lost-and-found counter, and ended with the guy who bought you a grow lamp for your birthday. How is it that you were dating left and right while you were in school, and then all of a sudden it became this serious thing with contracts and chaperones?”

  “You mean my practice dating?” Flazint asked. “That doesn’t count.”

  “What do you mean it doesn’t count?”

  “It’s just kid stuff. Did you take it seriously when your little brother and Vivian began practicing ballroom dancing three hours a day?”

  “Actually, everybody who saw them dance was sure they would end up together. That is, if my brother ever got over Ailia, the little Vergallian orphan who Aisha brought home when the girl’s nurse abandoned her on set.”

  “Oh. Well, it’s not like that with us. When our hair vines begin budding, our ancestors give us permission to start practice dating so we can learn how to behave in mixed company. It’s highly choreographed and we’re graded on the results.”

  “You never told me that!”

  “It’s kind of embarrassing,” Flazint admitted. “The Drazens have practice dating too, but they start later than we do, and they don’t have to fill out exercise books.”

  “You mean there’s a physical element, like you have to wrestle with the boys or something?”

  The Frunge girl’s hair vines flushed dark green and she pretended to take an interest in a Huktra egg-carrier with a long shoulder strap before replying. “I wish you wouldn’t say such things, Dorothy. I meant an exercise book like the ones you showed me from when you went to the station librarian’s experimental school.”

  “You spent your practice dates doing story problems?”

  “Not exactly, but sort of. Like when that boy gave me the grow lamp, he was learning how to purchase an expensive gift and I was learning how to receive one. I had to return the grow lamp when we completed that set of lessons.”

  “And all those hours you spent training your hair vines on new trellises for big dates, that was just make-believe?” Dorothy asked.

  “Not make-believe, practice. I never understood how you could just start dating that David boy who came into the lost-and-found when you never had any formal training. Affie and I were terribly worried that it would end badly.”

  “It did end badly—he eloped with that woman my Mom brought back from Earth. I was always suspicious that was Libby’s doing, getting him out of the way so I’d be free when Kevin returned to Union Station.”

  “Tzachan really enjoys hanging out with your husband on our dates. Sometimes I’m jealous. Kevin didn’t mind taking off work in his chandlery to watch your baby today?”

  “It’s Sunday on our calendar, my whole family is watching Margie. Kevin says we better hurry up and give her a younger sibling or she’ll grow up spoiled.”

  “But she’s only two! How close together can you make babies?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Dorothy said, pulling a strapless soft-sided case from the shelf. It looked like it might have been intended as a screen protector for an oversized tab, and there was some alien branding with a logo embossed on the side. “What do you think of this one?”

  “Didn’t we agree that handles are a must,” the Frunge girl said. “You know how many free samples there are at tradeshows.”

  “If you ask me, designing a swag bag is beneath the dignity of SBJ Fashions,” the EarthCent ambassador’s daughter
said, tossing the case back on the shelf. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Affie claimed she had to meet an Alt delegation in the Vergallian embassy today just to get out of it.”

  “I know. Swag bags don’t even have clasp hardware. I mean, CoSHC could hand out shopping bags at the tradeshow and nobody would know the difference.”

  “Are you planning on showing your latest puzzle clasps at the tradeshow?”

  Flazint grimaced. “Shaina and Brinda say that they’re too hard for Humans to solve. I guess there have been some issues with customers not being able to get their purses open again after putting in all of their stuff.”

  “But you always include a cheat sheet!”

  “It seems that some buyers thought that the safest place to keep the cheat sheet was in their purse. I don’t even know if Jeeves is going to pay for a booth this year. Stick hasn’t mentioned anything.”

  “Just because Stick’s the sales manager doesn’t mean he knows everything that’s going on,” Dorothy said. “I just wish that we had something new to show. Sometimes I wonder where the last year went.”

  “It’s just not the same with Affie out so often, and you know that little Margie keeps you too busy to take work home the way you used to,” Flazint said.

  “Maybe we should just—what’s this?”

  “What’s what?”

  “This,” Dorothy said, pulling from the shelf an attractive tote with a message embroidered in Horten script. “What’s it say?”

  “I only know a few thousand words in Horten and I don’t recognize those,” Flazint said apologetically. “The color scheme is very attractive.”

  “Libby?” Dorothy asked, holding out the bag with a hand underneath to present the embroidered side to the ceiling. “Can you read this?”

  “Better safe than sorry,” the Stryx librarian translated the words. “It’s in the Old Tongue, which is why you didn’t recognize any words, Flazint.”

  “How about the printing around the outside of the circle with the—what is that—a beckoning hand?” Dorothy asked.

  “It says ‘Come home to Gortunda.’ That’s the official trademarked logo of the Horten religious revival that’s been running on Stryx stations for over four hundred thousand years.”

  “That’s a really good logo,” Flazint said. “I wonder what they did to the fabric to give the bag that full look. It would work well for a tradeshow because the visitors coming in would think that the ones leaving had found all sorts of great stuff to take home.”

  “It doesn’t look full, it is full,” Dorothy said. “Somebody probably set it down in a corridor and a maintenance bot grabbed it as abandoned. You know how they are.”

  “What’s in there?”

  “Don’t make a mess,” Libby warned them. “You have to keep it all together in case the owner returns to claim it.”

  “How long has it been here?” Dorothy asked.

  “That shelving unit was last stocked fifty-four hundred years ago.”

  “I don’t think Hortens live that long, Libby.”

  “Perhaps the bag belonged to a longer-lived visitor. Gortunda welcomes all comers.”

  “Look,” Flazint said, drawing a small case out of the swag bag. “It’s a grooming kit, with scissors, a razor, nail clippers, and a file.”

  “What a waste,” Dorothy sighed. “I could use a file.”

  “And a thermos,” the Frunge girl continued, shaking the container. “It’s still full.”

  “I wonder if the liquid is still warm.”

  “After fifty-four hundred years?”

  “Libby?” Dorothy asked.

  “Horten travel thermoses are only rated to retain ninety percent of their content’s heat for three cycles,” the Stryx librarian replied.

  “What’s that printed on the thermos?” Flazint asked.

  “Fifty percent tithing reduction for aliens, this week only,” Libby translated for them.

  “Is that a fifty percent reduction for life, or fifty percent for the week?”

  “The message leaves that open to interpretation,” the Stryx librarian explained. “The Old Tongue isn’t the most precise language for commercial offerings but it works well for prophecy.”

  “I don’t know,” Dorothy said, holding the bag open for Flazint to replace the ancient freebies. “I think something more modern looking is what we want. Is there another example of a revival swag bag in the lost-and-found, Libby? Maybe something with metallic thread?”

  “Oh, yes. Metallic thread is the best,” the Frunge girl enthused.

  “I shouldn’t do your work for you, but in the interest of limiting the mess you make in here, try the shelving unit at 1 SM 10/22,” the station librarian advised.

  “It must be old with that prefix number,” Dorothy said. “I’m not sure I remember how the system works.”

  “It’s easy,” Flazint said, running her finger along the shelves. “Look, we’re in 2 SM now, so it’s that way.”

  “Are you sure?” Dorothy called back after turning the corner. “This unit starts with 1 KGS.”

  “Oops, then it’s somewhere in between.”

  The former lost-and-found employees navigated to the end of the row where the Frunge girl quickly found the location that the Stryx librarian had suggested.

  “Wow! That’s a serious piece of baggage,” Dorothy said, admiring the suitcase Flazint pulled off the shelf. “You could hide a person in there, but it’s a bit much for a convention giveaway.”

  “Behind it,” Libby instructed.

  “This?” Dorothy pulled out a dull black blob of cloth. “It looks like a dishrag.”

  “Shake it open. It’s been crumpled up for over five millennia.”

  “I like it,” Flazint said immediately. “See how the corners hold their shape even though there’s nothing in the bag? And the Gortunda trademark is just an iron-on patch, which means if we can find a supplier, all we have to do is supply the artwork.”

  “I hate the color, but the fabric is interesting,” Dorothy said, crumpling it up, and then snapping it open again by jerking on the handles. “It doesn’t weigh any more than it would if it was made out of silk, and it’s pretty useful to have a tote bag that you can ball up and stick in a pocket or a corner of your purse.”

  “It must be a variation on Verlock memory metal, but in a weave,” the Frunge girl said, rubbing the fabric between her thumb and forefinger. “I’ve never seen it before, though. Do they still manufacture it, Librarian?”

  “There’s a distributor on the Verlock deck with over a hundred thousand units left over from an order that was never picked up. I’m sure they would have gotten rid of the bags by now if not for the fact that they take up so little storage space when you put them under compression. And you can change the color by running the bags through an electromagnetic field of the proper frequency. It was considered quite a fashion engineering feat around twenty thousand years ago.”

  “I don’t understand how fabric that combines color programmability with shape memory could ever go out of fashion,” Dorothy said. “I’ve got to get Jeeves to buy me some.”

  “There was a minor problem with the color programming that the inventors never quite overcame.”

  “Does it fade with time or in the wash?”

  “Nothing as crude as that,” Libby said. “The Frunge Metallic Fibers Manufacturing Association wasn’t happy about losing business to the Verlocks, so they put their scientists to work on countermeasures and developed a low-cost disposable color programming unit.”

  “How come I never heard about this?” Flazint demanded.

  “It happened some time ago, and I don’t think your ancestors were particularly proud of their solution.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dorothy said. “Wouldn’t a low-cost color programming unit make the fabric even more attractive?”

  “The color of the crystalline metallic fibers is controlled by the frequency of the applied electromagnetic field,” the station librarian expla
ined. “A prankster with a small parabolic dish antenna could reprogram the color from across a large room. After the Frunge scientists figured out the frequency combination to turn the fabric transparent, it was relegated to uses like packaging, or swag bags.”

  “What a tragic waste of a wonderful material,” Dorothy said mournfully. “Couldn’t the Verlocks come up with a version where the color could only be changed by an authorized user?”

  “I’m afraid that changing colors under an applied electromagnetic field is an inherent property of the crystalline metallic molecules.”

  “I guess it will work fine for a swag bag if the Verlocks give us a good price,” Flazint said. “As long as we’re here, are there any other examples of chameleon materials you could show us, Librarian? Maybe something that was just too expensive for everyday use?”

  “Jeeves isn’t going to like this,” Libby said as if to herself. “Check the shelves at GN 37/3.”

  Dorothy stuffed the Gortunda revival swag bag back on the shelf and raced Flazint around a series of switchback turns in the shelving until they reached the proper section. The Frunge girl got to the unit first and pulled out the only item at that designation, a black sash.

  “Is this it?” Flazint asked. “It looks like something a Grenouthian might wear, but it’s heavier than I’d expect for the length.”

  “The sash is woven from Gem nanofibers and was a luxury item in their old empire.”

  “How do we change the colors?” Dorothy asked, feeling the fabric. “Oooh, it’s softer than the Verlock crystalline metallic cloth.”

  “The feel is also programmable to a large extent,” the station librarian informed them, “but the nanobots are currently quiescent, so the first step in making alterations is to recharge their power with ultraviolet light.”

  “Will the grow lamp I use for my hair vines do it?” the Frunge girl asked.

  “Set the frequency to the Lyman-alpha line of hydrogen and leave it for a few days.”

  “You’re letting us take it?” Dorothy asked eagerly.

  “Not to keep,” Libby said. “The Gem are trying to rebuild their pre-cloning economy. They’ve submitted an official request to station librarians across the tunnel network asking us to check our lost-and-founds for potentially viable technology that the previous Gem government abandoned as having no dual-use applications.”