Vacation on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 7) Read online

  Vacation on Union Station

  Book Seven of EarthCent Ambassador

  Copyright 2015 by E. M. Foner

  One

  “In conclusion, the recent review of EarthCent’s policy on earned vacation time, conducted by embassy manager Donna Doogal at the request of our new junior consul, has brought to light the fact that my maternity leave of six years ago was charged against future vacation days, and that the six months I believed I had saved up for a sabbatical existed only in my imagination!”

  “You tell them, Ambassador,” the aforementioned junior consul egged her on.

  Kelly wasn’t used to having a human audience for her weekly reports to EarthCent, but somebody had suggested it would be good training for Daniel. Now that she thought about it, that somebody had been Daniel himself. What really set her off about the retroactive policy change was the way it had been discovered. After working just a month, her new assistant had asked Donna to find out if there was a way he could be credited for earned vacation time early, or on credit, as he put it.

  “Hopefully, I just did tell them,” Kelly replied. “I like to think that less is more when it comes to stating an official grievance, and I doubt it would melt the icy hearts of those human resources fiends to hear how much my children were looking forward to going somewhere.”

  “That’s why I used up all of my vacation time and unpaid educational leave before I began working here,” Daniel told her. “I’m an EarthCent brat, you know. My father worked for them until I was nearly ten, so I heard all about the whole pay and benefits thing before I even started.”

  “I don’t think I ever met your father,” Kelly said. “Cohan doesn’t ring a bell, but if you were ten, that means he retired around twenty-two years ago. I’ve been with EarthCent for, uh, for a while, and we might have overlapped a couple of years. Just when I was starting out, I mean.”

  “He didn’t retire, he got fired,” Daniel told her, though he made it sound like a joke. “My dad was in charge of the bid process to select a terraforming contractor for Venus, and my mom ran a little public relations agency that specialized in representing alien construction consortiums in the Sol system.”

  “Oh, I may have heard something about that,” Kelly said, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “After EarthCent awarded the contract to the Dollnicks, some of the other aliens complained to the president that they had been promised the work in return for cash payments.”

  “Yeah, that was my parents.” Daniel sounded almost proud. “The Stryx didn’t care, since my mom was the one who took the money and she didn’t work for EarthCent. But old President Lin was worried that spouses selling influence would set a bad precedent, so he and my dad worked out the firing story.”

  “So he wasn’t fired?” Kelly asked.

  “Well, he accepted being fired, but he could have refused since he hadn’t broken any rules at the time. The truth is, my mom cleared so much money selling imaginary influence that they could afford to retire and see the galaxy. My dad still writes long reports about the places they visit, and he sends them back to EarthCent as if he were still working for them. I mentioned it to Clive and Blythe, and after reading the reports from the archives, they told me they have a retirement job for him if he wants it.”

  “I wondered how you could be so poised with all of the aliens at your age, but that explains it. You spent your youth traveling.”

  “I met more plants than aliens, though sometimes they’re the same thing,” Daniel replied. “My parents married while they were still in graduate school, where they were both studying to be evolutionary biologists. My dad still regrets not deferring his start at EarthCent until he finished his degree, but not many people can turn down that invitation. Anyway, he’s the one who told me you should always use up your vacation time between postings or they’d come up with a way to take it back.”

  “Where are your parents now?”

  “On some world with breathable air and decent tunnel access. My mom has a theory about meteor-borne microbes that she’s trying to piece together by visiting as many planets as possible. I have a hard time imagining that all of the science wasn’t sorted out by some species or other a long time ago, but I guess you never know.”

  “So you went to visit your parents between leaving Middle Station and finally arriving here? I have to admit that I never knew EarthCent would grant unpaid educational leave before the president told me you were taking several months of it. I guess joining your parents in studying alien plants would qualify.”

  “No, I used my vacation time to visit them. The educational leave was for a study of casino gambling I’ve been working on since before I joined EarthCent. It’s not a degree program or anything, but I was talking about it with Jeeves, and he thinks the Stryx might grant me some sort of certification through their Open University. He also helped me publish my draft findings for alien gambling journalists, and I’m already getting some really good feedback from the Verlocks and the Tharks.”

  “Is there really anything left to learn about casino games?” Kelly wasn’t a fan of gambling, and though she’d finally gotten used to Joe hosting poker games and taking the children to the occasional horse race at the off-world betting parlor, she drew the line at casinos. “I thought the people who owned the casinos had the games all worked out to the last decimal place.”

  “There aren’t many casinos left running house games, like the roulette or blackjack you see in old Earth movies,” the junior consul explained. “Well, I take that back. Most casinos still have a version of the slots, basically lottery machines, though every once in a while somebody figures out how to break the latest technology and the manufacturers have to reinvent them from scratch. Between mind control and telekinesis, not to mention out-and-out magic, it’s too tough to keep up with cheaters. Most casinos today just provide bonded dealers and a safe environment for gamblers to play each other.”

  “How does that eliminate cheating?” Kelly inquired.

  “It doesn’t,” Daniel said. “It ensures that the casino makes a steady profit on the table rake and the drinks. Whether or not there’s cheating going on is up to the players to figure out. That’s where casino security comes in, to keep the gamblers from killing each other.”

  “Well, I guess if the Stryx recognize your work as educational…” Kelly was dubious about the whole thing, but she wanted to give her new assistant the benefit of the doubt.

  “I study how gamblers change their play depending on who else is at the table,” Daniel explained. “I lasted almost three months this time with a starting stake of less than a thousand creds. I‘d make a good living playing cards if I could figure out a fool-proof way to spot the ringers.”

  “The professionals pretending to be amateurs?”

  “More like the species pretending to be other species,” Daniel replied. “I busted out on the last run to an artificial Dollnick who could count into more decks than me. The time before that, it was an old Vergallian woman passing as human. She and my money were two hours gone when the pheromones wore off and I realized she wasn’t just making a suggestion when she told me to bet the pot.”

  “I never really thought about how unscrupulous aliens might be able to take advantage of each other at gambling,” Kelly admitted.

  “Listen,” Daniel said, satisfied that he had successfully defended his hobby and returning to the prior subject. “If the home office won’t reverse their decision about maternity leave, you should just go on vacation and not tell them. Anything I can’t handle, I can always take to InstaSitter.”

  “You mean EarthCent Intelligence,” Kelly
corrected him.

  “They should change the display in the corridor if they want me to call it that.” The junior consul shot her one of his patented boyish grins. “Besides, every time I go there, I get mobbed by three-year-olds.”

  “My two godchildren do not constitute a mob,” Libby interjected over the office speakers. “Nor can their actions in welcoming you in any way be construed as mobbing.”

  “That’s my cue.” The junior consul got up, brushed the wrinkles out of his suit pants, and headed for the door. “See you all on Monday.”

  “Bye,” Kelly called after him. Daniel Cohan was such a complete change from Aisha that she sometimes forgot that he worked for her and not the other way around. A young-looking thirty-two, he never seemed to lack confidence in what he was doing, and unlike Kelly, he had no problem with forgetting about work the moment he walked out the embassy door. Maybe that would change some day if he became an ambassador, but she wouldn’t bet on it, and not just because she disapproved of gambling.

  “I’m sorry to hear you’ve been impacted by the retroactive changes to EarthCent’s vacation policy,” the station librarian told Kelly once they were alone. “We’ve been trying to shift some of the EarthCent personnel decisions to humans, and part of that process involves not looking over their shoulders.”

  “Well, I wish you’d go back to the old system, then,” Kelly said. “I’d head for Earth myself and give whoever created that policy a piece of my mind, but it appears I can’t afford the time off.”

  “What about Daniel’s suggestion? Take a vacation and don’t tell anybody.”

  “I don’t want to set a bad example for my children, or Daniel for that matter. Besides, as much as I hate to admit it, we were having a hard time coming up with somewhere we really wanted to go. I guess Joe and I have become Union Station homebodies.”

  “There are worse things,” Libby said, and the ambassador clearly heard a smile in the Stryx’s synthesized voice. “I haven’t gone anywhere in hundreds of thousands of years myself. Why don’t you take a month off from work without leaving the station? Under the current EarthCent rules for ambassadors, it doesn’t count as a vacation as long as you remain onboard your posting.”

  “Are you serious, Libby? I could stop coming into the embassy every day and they’d have to keep paying me?”

  “Ambassadors are officially on call twenty-four hours a day as long as they’re on the station. That’s how the job is defined. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend telling EarthCent that you aren’t coming in to the office, but Daniel and Donna can handle any visitors to the embassy. If anything comes up that really does require your presence, you’re no further away by lift tube than you would be if you were at home.”

  “Where would I be if not at home?” Kelly asked. “I mean, we both know that EarthCent owes me that vacation time and I’d just be taking back what’s really mine, but I can’t leave the station, and it would be silly to go stay in a hotel. I doubt we could even find one that would accept Beowulf.”

  “Jeeves tells me that Dorothy and Samuel are both a good age for camping and exploring, and I’m sure Gryph would give you access to some of the uninhabited areas of the station. You know that he keeps plenty of decks in reserve against biological emergencies, and when a sentient race abandons a section for whatever the reason, he doesn’t hurry to recycle it for another species. You never know if their descendants might make a comeback and return to the tunnel network, not to mention that it would be a crime to simply dispose of viable flora and fauna.”

  “Are you telling me that I’ve lived on this station for nearly seventeen years and I never knew that it was half empty?” Kelly demanded.

  “I seem to recall that you lived on the station for at least a dozen years before you found out that the deck above this one is occupied by the Cherts,” Libby reminded her. “Of course, it’s not like you could have stumbled across any of the areas I’m talking about on your own, since the lift tubes wouldn’t take you there without Gryph’s permission.”

  “But would the children really enjoy it? If this deck was unoccupied, I wouldn’t want to come here on vacation. What would we do? Wander around the empty shops and corridors? I suppose an unoccupied ag deck might be nice for hiking, but it would be awfully quiet.”

  “Talk it over with Joe and the kids,” Libby suggested. “Most of the children on the station tell each other scary stories about the hidden decks, the same way you might have talked about haunted houses when you were young.”

  “You wouldn’t have a, uh, brochure I could show my family for any of these places, would you?” Kelly thought she managed to keep the suspicion out of her voice and substituted “brochure” for “something in writing” at the last second, but Libby noticed her hesitation.

  “You don’t trust me to pick out a nice vacation spot for you.”

  Nothing made Kelly feel as guilty as when Libby intentionally flattened out her artificially generated voice to remove the emotional content. It was as if the Stryx librarian was throwing up barriers to hide being hurt.

  “Of course I trust you, Libby. It’s just that picking out a place to go is one of the best parts of a vacation. I remember my parents telling me that when they were children, there used to be regional tourism offices you could write away to, and then you would get brochures in the mail from dozens of campsites and local attractions. That was more than seventy years ago, but it sounded really fun.”

  “Would you settle for a holo presentation?”

  “Of course,” Kelly replied, realizing she’d trapped herself. It wasn’t that she thought the station librarian would misrepresent the possible destinations, but Libby had a way of staging her presentations so that there didn’t seem to be any doubt as to which option was the correct choice.

  “I’ll have something ready for you by the time you get home from Chastity’s house-warming party,” Libby said, instantly back to her usual, cheerful self.

  “Drat! I knew I was late for something!” Kelly cried, jumping up from her desk. “And Donna reminded me to get ready right before she went home. They’re very happy with the influence Marcus is having on Chastity. She left Tinka in charge of InstaSitter during the honeymoon, and she hasn’t rushed back into working seven days a week.”

  “I think you’ll be impressed with their home,” Libby commented. “It’s the only human residence on the station with a full dance floor. Chastity got permission from Gryph to cut in a separate entrance so Marcus can give private lessons.”

  “I don’t think I’d want my new husband teaching a bunch of single women how to dance,” Kelly said. “She must really trust him.”

  “The studio features the latest in immersive recording technology so that the students can practice the same steps at home with a hologram. Of course, Chastity will have a live feed to her office, just in case she misses her husband while she’s at work and wants to check in.”

  “Doveryai, no proveryai,” Kelly quoted over her shoulder on her way out of the office. “Trust, but verify.”

  “She did go to my school, after all,” Libby said proudly.

  Two

  “I’m fine with taking care of Mac’s Bones while you’re gone, as long as somebody else handles all of the training camp stuff,” Paul assured his foster father. “Maybe we’ll join you for a whole weekend here and there if Aisha can get the time off from the Grenouthians, but she’s in the middle of the season. How long do you have before Kelly needs to be back for her next show?”

  “She decided against doing any more live broadcasts and they already prerecorded the next episode,” Joe replied. “She was in the studio with the Verlock ambassador working on it all day yesterday. I don’t know why it never occurred to me, but it turns out that Ambassador Srythlan can only keep up with alien conversations thanks to special training. Even with the best implants, most Verlocks can’t easily participate in back-and-forth discussions with other species because we all talk too fast.”

  “I tho
ught they only spoke slowly, but I guess it makes sense that they’d be accustomed to hearing language at the same speed they grew up speaking it. So how do the Grenouthians work around it?”

  “The Verlocks don’t move much faster than they speak, so for some shows, the Grenouthians can just slow the whole thing down and nobody complains. But for immersives where the motion has to take place at full speed, the Verlocks prefer captions to audio translations. Apparently they’re very fast readers.”

  “Which approach did ‘Ask An Alien’ go with?”

  “Kelly said that a large part of the audience for this interview is likely to be Verlocks, so the Grenouthians decided to do two versions. Srythlan answered the questions at his native speed, and for the non-Verlock broadcast, they’ll just speed him up. For the Verlock edition, they’ll slow Kelly down. Since it’s not live, it doesn’t matter that the Verlock version will be three times as long.”

  “The bunnies are probably thrilled with the extra commercial time,” Paul said.

  “You’ve forgotten the second law of thermodynamics,” Joe pointed out. “The Verlock commercials run three times as slow.”

  “You’re applying the conservation of energy to advertising?” Before he even finished asking, Paul realized that his foster father was just teasing and decided to get him back. “Anyway, how are you going to get beer while you’re off on station safari?”

  “You’re going to send it to me,” Joe replied seriously. “Libby asked Gryph to assign us a maintenance bot for the duration, sort of a private delivery service. It’s not like we could have carried along a month’s worth of food or foraged off of alien agriculture.”

  “You’re calling it a camping trip but you’re planning to live on take-out?”

  “I already made a deal with Ian to send us their catering leftovers at a discount, so it should be an adventure in eating as well.”

  “Which deck are you going to start with?” Paul asked, now that it was clear that the family would be vacationing in style. “I saw the choices when Kelly replayed them for Aisha, and some of those abandoned alien sections looked pretty interesting. I asked Jeeves about them, but he said he didn’t want to spoil any surprises.”