Last Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 16) Read online

  Samuel found the Drazen on the travel concourse, sitting on a large backpack with an axe strapped to the outside. The two immediately boarded one of Flower’s giant shuttles, and luckily for them, it was almost at capacity and departed within minutes.

  “Wake up,” the Drazen said, poking Samuel with his tentacle after Flower’s shuttle docked. “How can you fall asleep during a fifteen-minute trip?”

  “Long day. Let me see if I can still reach the ship’s AI over my implant. Flower?”

  “Young McAllister. Are you here as a Human or a Vergallian?”

  “You heard about that?”

  “Technically, Lynx heard about it, but I may have been listening in.”

  “I’m off the clock so I’m here as me,” Samuel subvoced. “I brought Jorb to see—”

  “—about getting him space to open a dojo so he can woo my pretty Drazen choir mistress,” Flower interrupted. “I’ve already picked out a room for him, but I’ll let the captain show it to you so he can feel like he’s involved. I understand that your friend has accepted a field internship with Drazen Intelligence, and Woojin makes a point of personally greeting all of the alien spies who come aboard. I alerted him to your presence on my shuttle when you left Union Station so he’s waiting at the front ramp.”

  “Thanks,” Samuel said out loud, and gave Jorb a thumbs up. “We’re meeting the captain and he’ll get you squared away. It sounds like he knows about your second job.”

  “I’m not sure what Drazen Intelligence really expects from me, but apparently the agent I’m replacing made so much money in his cover job selling women’s clothes in Flower’s bazaar that he quit to open a boutique.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll get instructions. We probably shouldn’t talk about it anyway since our people aren’t on great terms.”

  “We cooperate on intelligence at the highest level,” Jorb protested. “Vivian couldn’t be working for us otherwise.”

  “I didn’t mean me-me, I meant the Vergallian me. In fact, I may have already slipped and mentioned to Aabina that you were applying for an intelligence agent slot. I’m kind of sleep-deprived.”

  “Which is probably why you forgot that Aabina works for EarthCent, so it’s all in the family,” the Drazen reminded him. “Wow! What a cool uniform.”

  “Captain Pyun,” the EarthCent ambassador’s son formally greeted his father’s oldest friend while performing a crisp salute. “Permission to come aboard.”

  “Permission granted,” Woojin replied, returning the salute in the spirit in which it was offered. “I see Joe taught you our traditions from the mercenaries but we don’t stand on formalities here. You know the only reason I wear the uniform is to get Flower to acknowledge my authority.”

  “If it was my uniform, I’d wear it all the time,” the Drazen said.

  “And you must be Jorb,” Woojin said, offering a firm handshake. “I’m going to miss talking with your predecessor, and my wife did all of her clothes shopping with him. He was a great help to me in keeping all of the other alien spies in line.”

  “I’ll do what I can, Captain, but I’m brand new to this, so I doubt they’ll pay me much mind.”

  “Bring your axe to the meetings. That will get their attention.”

  “We have regular meetings with the other intelligence agents?”

  “Most of the aliens on board have families, but the spies are on their own so they tend to eat in a small cafeteria Flower set aside for non-humans. I’ll take you to your quarters and then bring you there. If you’re willing to sit around and drink coffee for a day, you’ll meet most of your colleagues.”

  “Will you be visiting Mac’s Bones, Captain?” Samuel asked. “I’m taking the next shuttle back because I’m falling asleep on my feet, but I’m sure my dad is waiting to see you.”

  “Lynx is busy going through our quarters looking for things to bring to the tag sale as we speak. We’ll be there in a few hours.”

  “Get back on the shuttle before it returns for another load, Sam,” Jorb suggested. “You really do look tired. We’ll catch up the next time Flower stops at Union Station.”

  “Take care of yourself, Jorb,” Samuel said. “See you tomorrow, Captain.” He went back aboard the shuttle and passed out in a seat.

  Alerted by Flower that the EarthCent ambassador’s son had slept through three round trips without disembarking from her shuttle, Libby dispatched Jeeves to claim him. The young Stryx used a suspensor field to carry Samuel home, by which time it was already six in the morning and Joe was up making coffee.

  “Cleanup on aisle two,” Jeeves announced, setting his load down on the couch.

  “Where did you find him?” Joe asked.

  “Riding back and forth to Flower on her shuttle. If it was anybody else, she would have charged him for three round trips.”

  “I’m tempted to wake him up to ask how it—Dring! Welcome back.”

  “And glad to be back,” the Maker said, showing his blunt teeth. “Thank you for holding my space while I was gone.”

  “Gryph would evict me if I didn’t. How was the trip?”

  “You know what they say about gravity wave surfing. It always gets you where you want to go if you can just live long enough. I started back five months ago.”

  “Ugh!” Samuel cried, sitting bolt upright on the couch. “Stop that, Beowulf.”

  “You know the rules,” Joe said. “You sleep on his couch, he gets to lick you awake.”

  “I must have been sleepwalking when I came home because I don’t remember anything. Welcome back, Dring.”

  “And it’s a pleasure to see you again, young McAllister. It’s strange to think that being away for six months I missed two and a half percent of your life to date. Speaking of which, isn’t this the big night?”

  “It’s morning,” Samuel said, reflexively checking his implant. “Mom is planning a party for after the tag sale, but she’s going to change it to a welcome home party as soon as she sees you.”

  “I meant your proposal to Vivian. Did I get the date wrong? I normally have an excellent memory for calendars, and I made a mental note of the date when you told me your plans.”

  “That’s right,” Joe said. “What did she think of your grandmother’s ring?”

  Samuel’s face turned pale. “I am so dead.”

  “You forgot to propose? I better loan you my old body armor.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dring said. “You have another hour. Are all of your clocks running fast?”

  Samuel stared at the Maker, uncomprehending.

  “Dring’s right,” Joe exclaimed when the solution dawned on him. “Technically, it’s still last night on Union Station. Universal Human Time doesn’t officially take effect for another hour. That’s the reason your mom is giving out for throwing a party after the tag sale, to celebrate the days returning to normal.”

  “Still last night?” Samuel repeated, groggy from lack of sleep.

  “I know you read all of my old Jules Verne novels when you were a kid. It’s like ‘Around the World in Eighty Days,’ and you’ve crossed the international date line, except this one is only good for seven hours. You’ve got fifty minutes until we make the jump from midnight to seven o’clock in the morning, but you better take a shower and change first. Besides, Vivian’s family may still be sleeping.”

  “Shower,” the young man repeated, and ran for the bathroom.

  “Why didn’t you tell him?” Dring asked Jeeves.

  “I was going to wait another half an hour so he could drink a coffee. He’s going to need his wits about him.”

  “Let me whip you up a vegetable smoothie,” Joe offered the Maker. “Mike and Fenna have been harvesting your garden and sharing the produce around. It will just take me a few minutes.”

  By the time Samuel rushed out of the ice harvester, clutching a small box in one hand, Paul had arrived and was bringing Dring up to date on the rental business. The tardy lover sprinted out of Mac’s Bones to the ne
arest lift tube, practically shouted, “Vivian’s”, and slid into the corner when the capsule took off with unusually strong acceleration. When the doors opened less than a minute later, he cursed himself for not taking his mother’s advice and writing something down beforehand, and then he ran all the way to the Oxford’s apartment. The door opened just as he arrived.

  “Morning, Sam,” Vivian’s twin brother said. “I’m taking the dog for a walk if you want to come along. You don’t want to go in there.”

  “I do. I have to. Is she mad?”

  “Let’s just say when I told her ‘Happy Birthday’ this morning, she tried to decapitate me with her noodle sword.”

  “It’s not your birthday for another twenty minutes. We haven’t switched to UHT yet.”

  “If you say so. Good luck convincing her of that.”

  Samuel shook hands with Jonah and received a pat on the shoulder from the soon-to-be eighteen-year-old before entering the apartment. Blythe and Clive were seated at the breakfast table, and both looked up in surprise when the EarthCent ambassador’s son entered.

  “This might not be a great time,” Clive told him. “Viv’s not in the best mood.”

  “It’s a mistake,” Samuel insisted. “I still have nineteen minutes. Can I just talk to her?”

  “I told her she was being silly getting so excited about the exact date to start with, but you know how Vivian is,” Blythe said. “She must know you’ve been working crazy hours for the Vergallians because the Drazens had her watching you enough times. Just knock before you go in.”

  Samuel started briskly for Vivian’s room, though his steps grew slower as he approached her door. He almost subvoced Libby for help on proposals, but then all of his years of dancing, dueling, and going to school with the girl flashed before his eyes, and he felt a surge of confidence. It lasted for exactly seven seconds, which was the amount of time it took Vivian to open the door and glare at him. He dropped to one knee, still in the hall, and held up the jeweler’s box.

  “What’s that?” she growled.

  “My grandmother’s engagement ring. She wanted you to have it.”

  “You’re proposing for your grandmother?”

  “No. I’m proposing for me. I know that I almost messed up, but Dring pointed out that it’s still the day before your birthday, or it will be for another eleven minutes. I don’t know why you care about that anyway, but I ran all of the way here because if you do care about something, I have to care about it too.”

  “And?”

  “And I’ve known you since you were a baby, and we danced together for almost ten thousand hours—”

  “You were counting?” Vivian demanded, her voice rising.

  “Not like that. It’s an estimate. I look forward to seeing you every day, even when you have me under surveillance for the Drazens, and you’ve always said that we’d end up together and—what?” Samuel broke off, seeing that her face was just getting scarier.

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Vivian. I don’t even know how I got home from Flower. I don’t believe that you’re really angry at me about dancing with Aabina, and, uh, Ailia, or for that time I was lying next to Marilla to get her sleeve unstuck. I’ve been thinking about this moment ever since you said you wanted a proposal the day before your eighteenth birthday, but I ignored my mom when she said I should write out what I was going to say before-hand, and I’m sleep deprived, and I love you—”

  “You love me?” she interrupted.

  “Yes, I love you,” Samuel half-shouted, feeling that he had finally hit on the magic formula. “I love you, I love you, I love you. Take the ring.”

  “You didn’t have to shout,” Vivian said, accepting the box. To her suitor’s surprise, her next words came out in a sob. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that you love me out loud? Was it really that hard?”

  “If it’s so easy, how come you never said it to me?”

  “I didn’t want to put any more pressure on you. It’s not like you didn’t know I’ve always loved you.”

  “Oh,” Samuel said, realizing that was true. “Sorry. Can I come in now?”

  After the door closed behind the young lovers, Clive commented to his wife, “It’s a good thing Jonah took the dog for a walk or that scene might have put him off of marriage forever.”

  Twenty

  “How much is this vase?” a young woman asked Kelly.

  “Is there a sticker on the bottom?”

  “Yes, but I can’t make out the amount.”

  “That looks like Dollnick script to me. Libby?” Kelly subvoced, flipping the vase upside down and inadvertently dumping ashes all over the deck. “Can you see the price on this vase through your security imaging?”

  “It’s an urn, and the tag reads, ‘Please hold for Ambassador Brule’s family.’ The ambassador served on Union Station approximately forty thousand years ago.”

  “So it’s too late to send it back. Does ten creds sound—Hey, where are you going?” Kelly called after the woman, who was making her way rapidly towards the exit from Mac’s Bones. “Oh, well. Maybe I can use it for dried flowers.”

  “Or you could scrape up the ashes and return the urn to Ambassador Crute,” Libby offered an alternative. “He just entered the hold, along with the Horten and Grenouthian ambassadors.”

  “Cleanup on aisle three,” Jeeves muttered, gently pushing Kelly out of the way. He took the urn in his pincer and employed some sort of field manipulation to scoop up the ashes and dump them back in the glazed ceramic container. “A little ionization in the right quantity works miracles with dust.”

  “Is that really all that remains of Ambassador Brule?” Kelly asked.

  “His last feast,” the young Stryx explained. “The Dollnicks traditionally celebrate funerals with a banquet and then they burn all of the leftovers to feed the departed soul while it waits for reincarnation. I wrote a detailed section about this practice in the second edition of Dollnicks For Humans. I thought it was on the required reading list for EarthCent diplomats.”

  “I’ll pick up a copy,” Kelly promised. “Dorothy is really enjoying your book about the Frunge.”

  “I’ve watched her read and she’s skimming,” Jeeves said dismissively, handing the urn back to the ambassador. “Did my old games sell?”

  “A collector paid five hundred creds for the lot. Paul said that it was an excellent price.”

  “Enough to cover a quarter of your daughter’s latest fabric purchase. I’ll be selling my accessory limbs by the time she’s through.”

  “But I thought that SBJ Fashions just landed a monopoly on the enchanted noodle business. I know that after we all woke up on the trade show floor, the president closed a deal with the bunnies to allow our first sovereign community on one of the Grenouthian open worlds.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Jeeves said, turning towards the ice harvester. “I need to pick up Samuel’s sword and have Baa remove the enchantment.”

  “Don’t tell him I had anything to do with that,” Kelly called after the Stryx. “Samuel loved being able to fly. And feel free to wake him up if he’s in there. I haven’t seen him all day.”

  “Ambassador,” Crute greeted her. “How did my items sell?”

  “You did very well, but I’m returning this,” she said, handing the urn to the Dollnick ambassador. “Don’t turn it upside down!”

  “I have a hand under the mouth. Did you think my lower set of arms is just for show?” He squinted at the tag. “Oops. I wonder how a funeral urn got mixed up in the tag sale lot.”

  “Probably the same way my staff accidentally dropped off all of the contents of our embassy’s paint closet,” Ortha said. “Did any of it sell? I don’t see much left on the tables in our section.”

  “I think Joe found a few cans of enamel he could use,” Kelly told the Horten ambassador. “Libby has been keeping a running total for everybody and you only owe her twenty creds.”
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  “I owe the Stryx librarian? How did that happen?”

  “Some of the larger cans from your paint closet turned out to be hazardous waste and she had to send a couple of maintenance bots to take them for incineration. Still, you came out way ahead of where you’d be if you hadn’t sold everything else to cover the costs.”

  “Did you decide to hold onto that sink after all?” Crute asked, pointing at the object that had originally inspired the tag sale.

  “Nobody was interested. I told Joe to leave it there and I’ll use it as a planter.”

  “Begonias would be nice,” the Vergallian ambassador announced her presence. “Happy Universal Human Time.”

  “Is that today?” Ortha asked. “What a relief. Mornich has been driving us crazy with creeping schedule changes ever since his girlfriend started working for Joe, I mean, doing primitive outreach work for our Peace Force. I don’t understand why you didn’t just move your clock forward in one chunk and get it over with.”

  “All’s well that ends well,” Kelly said. “I hope the four of you are staying for the picnic. Joe is going to start the grill at any time now.”

  “I suppose it will give me a chance to see my son for more than two minutes, assuming that his girlfriend is here somewhere,” the Horten ambassador grumbled.

  “Marilla insisted on coming in on her day off to finish up work on the first restored rental ship. It looks like that business is really going to happen.”

  “It’s five o’clock,” the station librarian alerted Kelly over her implant.

  “That’s it,” the EarthCent ambassador declared, clapping her hands. “Can you put me over the public address system, Libby?” She paused a second, and then placing her hands over her ears to block feedback, subvoced. “Attention all shoppers. The tag sale is officially closed. If you see anything left on the tables that you want, the price has dropped to free, but you have to take it with you as you leave.”

  “Free?” Crute demanded.

  “Would you rather pay for disposal?”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” the Grenouthian ambassador said, hopping off between the tables.