Swap Night on Union Station Read online

  “Impressive,” Jeeves broke the silence. “Who helped you with this?”

  “Myst and Lancelot, of course. He took the history course too so they could do their homework together. Paul explained how math comes into it, and my dad pointed out the bit about the effect of gravity and oxygen since he visited so many worlds before he came to Union Station.” She tilted her head a little and squinted up towards the side as if she was trying to recall something. “You know, it might have been Dring who—”

  “I knew it,” Baa interrupted. “Without the Maker, this would have been the old tale about four blind men describing a dragon based on the part they happened to be touching.”

  “Well, Dring couldn’t have shown me what I had wrong if I hadn’t already gotten it mainly right,” Dorothy said defensively. “He just gave me a few pointers based on all of the sculpting he’s done.”

  “You’ve surprised me again, Dorothy, and I didn’t think that was possible,” Jeeves said. “Thanks to Dring’s involvement, the Cayl would never push an intellectual property rights claim, so this isn’t going to cost SBJ Fashions an arm and a leg to try. Shaina? Brinda?”

  “I can recognize the potential even though I’m confused over what it is I’m not seeing,” the elder Hadad sister said. “I suppose I don’t need to understand it to work on a marketing and production plan. If we can start recruiting alien entrepreneurs willing to represent our lines and equip them with the nanofabric, we’ll end up with more orders than we can handle.”

  “That’s the beauty of running a lean business,” Brinda said. “We can always take pressure off the hand-sewn tier simply by raising prices, and the rest of our manufacturing is contracted out, primarily to Chintoo, where the artificial people can rapidly ramp up to almost any production volume.”

  “As long as it doesn’t steal resources from my enchanted LARPing products, I have no objection,” Baa said. “But all I’ve seen so far are a few clever sketches on a tablet that I must remind you have already been stolen by a competitor. I’ll reserve my final judgment until I see models from those twelve species wearing a fashionable new outfit that creates the same effect.”

  “I forgot about the hack,” Dorothy said, her face falling. “What if somebody beats us to market? Can we file for a patent now?”

  “You didn’t ask Tzachan when you showed him your designs?”

  “I didn’t think of it because I didn’t know somebody else had already stolen them.”

  The baby suddenly woke up, perhaps triggered by the distress in his mother’s voice, and began to vent his disappointment at finding himself in a strange room with an uninteresting ceiling.

  Baa popped to her feet. “I have some bespoke enchantment orders to fill for a big raid. And don’t forget to bring that tab to your intelligence people,” she added over her shoulder as she fled.

  “Shaina and I should probably start on a business plan right away,” Brinda said, edging towards the door, only to bump into her sister who had come around the other side of the table. “Beautiful baby, when he’s not screaming.”

  Dorothy took Richard out of the bassinet and almost had her eardrums burst for her trouble. “Not afraid of a little crying, Jeeves?” she asked her Stryx boss, who remained floating at the end of the table.

  “I filter it out,” Jeeves replied. “I’m not sure how you Humans manage without going insane, or maybe it explains a few things. Besides, I have a surprise for you.”

  “You bought me that new Frunge cutting table I asked for?”

  “I have to show you. Bring the baby.”

  “Did you think I was going to leave him here doing his imitation of a siren?” Dorothy asked, and then, holding Richard in both hands, extended her arms and pulled him back to introduce a Doppler effect to his steady cries. “Pretty neat, huh?”

  Jeeves floated past and led the way to the mystery door next to the design room that Dorothy had never seen open. It slid aside at his approach and revealed a diaper changing station, a narrow bed, and the latest in crib technology, complete with a Frunge Fascination mobile.

  “Welcome to the official SBJ Fashions nursery,” Jeeves said. “I would have preferred if you stayed home for a few years, but if you’re going to insist on coming into work I need you to take care of yourself and the baby, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “It’s lovely, Jeeves,” Dorothy said. “But why does my voice sound funny?”

  “It’s the soundproofing. I want my other employees to remain sane as well. There’s a Dollnick audio suppression field built into the crib that you can switch on and off with the clown’s head. If you need to use it every day, you’re probably doing something wrong as a parent. Take your time settling back in, but try to talk to Tzachan today as the patent issue is time-dependent, and don’t forget to drop your tab off at EarthCent Intelligence.”

  Three

  “Good morning, Ambassador Crute,” Donna greeted the towering four-armed Dollnick ambassador when he entered the embassy. “Associate Ambassador Cohan is next door in our new space making a to-do list, and Ambassador McAllister should be here any minute. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “I’m set for the moment,” Crute responded as he strode past the reception desk. “I’ll just wait in my office.”

  “She’s not in yet,” Donna repeated as the Dollnick approached the door to Kelly’s office, which slid open despite the fact it should have been locked. Then his words sank in, and she jumped up and chased after him. “What do you mean, your office?”

  “We’re exchanging,” the alien said, setting his valise on Kelly’s desk and removing a device that reminded the embassy manager of a ping-pong paddle. “I’ll be working here this week and Ambassador McAllister will be taking my place.”

  “But we didn’t receive any notification!”

  Crute began moving the paddle over the display desk, staring intently at a series of status lights on the back. The device also emitted a steady tone until he reached the edge of the desk, and then the frequency rose to a shrill note and Donna winced.

  “Sorry about that,” Crute said, laying the paddle aside and kneeling to examine the edge of the desk. He took what looked like a jeweler’s loupe from his belt pouch, screwed it into his eye socket, and then used a pair of tweezers to remove a tiny speck of something from the underside of the desk’s edge. “Grenouthian, I believe,” he said, depositing the listening device into a plastic envelope.

  Donna squinted at the envelope, unconvinced that the Dollnick had found something. “EarthCent Intelligence swept the embassy last Friday.”

  “The Drazen detection technology they use might be good enough to find Horten and Gem bugs, but that’s about it,” Crute said. He picked up the paddle again and started doing a circuit of the office walls. “The Drazens are fine singers and relatively good at mining operations, but intelligence hardware?” He shook his head.

  “How did you get the door open just now?” Donna asked. “I’m sure it’s locked when nobody is in here.”

  “The station librarian updated my implant with all of Ambassador McAllister’s local access codes when the exchange officially started at 9:00 AM Human Standard Time,” Crute explained. “For all intents and purposes, I am she for the next week on your calendar. As soon as I finish scanning my office for bugs we can go over my schedule.”

  “Kelly,” Donna said with relief as the EarthCent ambassador entered the office. “Ambassador Crute is here for your exchange but I didn’t receive any notification.”

  “I just heard about it when I woke up this morning and I was going to tell you when I got here,” Kelly said. “I thought I had time because the exchange was set to begin after lunch.”

  “That’s when the staff will arrive at the Dollnick embassy, but the exchange runs on your clock,” Crute said. He removed a picture of Kelly’s parents from the wall with his lower arms and used the hands of the upper arms to extract a listening device embedded in the frame. “It’s traditional for these exchanges to go by the home ambassador’s schedule.”

  “You mean I’ll have to work a fifty-hour day?” Kelly asked in dismay.

  “In accordance with the standard rules, you remain the home ambassador even when you’re away,” Crute explained. “Didn’t you read through the information package?”

  “It only showed up on my heads-up display an hour ago. I haven’t had time yet.”

  “Then you can read it when you get to my embassy. Other than security, there won’t be anybody there to distract you.” The Dollnick replaced the framed picture of Kelly’s parents on the wall and resumed scanning for bugs with the paddle. “Was there anything else I can do for you?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “I’m not sure,” Kelly admitted, shooting a look at Donna, who shrugged. “Do you want to tell me what’s on your schedule for the next week?”

  “I haven’t discussed it with my embassy manager yet.”

  “Your people don’t know I’m coming?”

  “Do try to get into the spirit of the thing,” Crute said, and the slight note of impatience in his whistle was perfectly replicated in the translation Kelly and Donna heard over their implants. “As the temporary EarthCent Ambassador to Union Station, my embassy manager is standing next to you. Your embassy manager, Gruke, by name, is sleeping at home and won’t be waking up for another two hours. But the doors to your embassy on the Dollnick deck will grant you access, so if you want a quiet place to read the rules of the exchange, I suggest you head there.”

  “Is there any reason I should sit in an empty embassy rather than just reading the rules in our, I mean, the EarthCent conference room?”

  “Only that it would be an odd breach of protocol for the Dollnick ambassador to monopolize the EarthCent embassy’s c
onference room, not to mention that I’ll soon be conducting a confidential meeting there with all of my staff,” Crute said.

  “All right, I can take a hint.” Kelly sighed, wondering what she had gotten herself into. “Good luck, Donna. Ping me if you need anything.”

  “You prefer to be addressed without reference to your job title?” Crute asked the embassy manager.

  “Yes,” Donna replied. “And the associate ambassador will insist that you use his first name as well.”

  “Daniel, Donna, and Aabina,” the Dollnick recited as he slid the paddle back into his valise. “Very well, Donna. Shall we go over my schedule for the week?”

  “There’s really not much to it,” the embassy manager said apologetically. “I can tell you without looking that Kelly’s only appointment today is with an academic researcher from Earth who is writing his dissertation about EarthCent, and that’s not for another five hours.”

  “How about the rest of the week?” Crute asked.

  “Tomorrow and Thursday she has tunnel network committee meetings, but you would have them on your schedule back at the Dollnick embassy, and I suppose now Kelly will attend in your place.”

  “Exactly,” Crute says. “I hope she does a good job explaining why a new regulatory overseer for terraforming projects is a bad idea that would result in fewer worlds being made habitable.”

  “I believe she was going to vote in favor of that,” Donna said hesitantly. “We’re still hoping to purchase Earth Two, and the feeling is that we would benefit from some, uh, rules.”

  “Yes, well, I’ll take that into consideration when I cast my vote as EarthCent’s representative. Other than meetings, what are my duties?”

  “Kelly was intentionally keeping her time as open as possible this week to help Daniel get started with the renovations to the new office space,” Donna said. “When we expanded into the old travel agency next door a few years back to create our conference room it turned out to be more time consuming than anybody expected.”

  “It’s all a question of hiring and managing your contractors,” Crute said. “Why don’t you show me the space, and then if it’s convenient for everybody, we’ll hold an all-hands-on-board meeting to map where I can be of the most help this week.”

  Donna led the Dollnick out into the corridor and past the exterior conference room door to the new space. Just as they entered the anteroom, there was a blood-curdling scream.

  “Wait here,” Crute ordered, and as he dashed through the old-fashioned door, Donna had a glimpse of the hand on his lower right arm pulling something that looked suspiciously like a military-grade weapon from his belt pouch.

  “False alarm,” Daniel shouted, moving between the Dollnick and Kelly’s Vergallian assistant in case the former had an itchy trigger finger. “Aabina and I were discussing how this office reminded us of the haunted houses we visited as children,” he continued in his normal voice. “She mentioned performing in the haunted house her family sponsored when she was a teenager. We didn’t realize you came in, Ambassador.”

  “Very convincing, Aabina,” Crute said, slipping the weapon back into his belt pouch. He looked around at the walls and muttered, “Whoever came up with this decoration scheme deserves to be murdered.” Then he flinched and took a step back. “There’s something seriously wrong with this office.”

  “It does feel a bit off,” Aabina concurred. “At first I thought there was a high-frequency vibration coming from somewhere, but the station librarian assured us that no active power sources are operating in the office.”

  “I have a list of painters to contact for bids,” Donna said from the door. “Shall I stop at the first three who are willing to come in?”

  “The first three who are willing to come in for a quote today,” Daniel said. “But we need to cut through to the conference room and install a door before having the painting done. Who did we use for structural work the last time?”

  “Union Builders, but they subcontracted the cutting work to a Dollnick construction crew.”

  “Smart move,” Crute said, nodding in approval. “As your ambassador, I’ll ping a contractor I know and have him come take care of it.”

  Daniel and Donna exchanged a look, and then the associate ambassador said, “As long as they can get it done by the end of the week, I suppose we could skip the bidding process this once.”

  “End of the week? I expect to see plasma torches cutting through that wall before your coffee break. The Dollnick workday hasn’t started yet so I know they’ll be free for a little job like this. Just show me where you want the opening.”

  “It’s marked there with white chalk,” Daniel said, and then frowned when he realized the wall he was pointing at was pure black. “That’s funny. Did somebody come in and rub it off?”

  “Humans have no eye for this sort of thing,” Crute said. “I’ll take care of it.” He rummaged in his belt pouch and pulled out a silvery metal donut, then strode to the wall that was shared with the EarthCent conference room. After giving the donut a few shakes, Crute pulled a string out of the end. “Aabina, come hold this end up against the wall for me.”

  “I’ll tell you when it’s level,” Daniel volunteered.

  “As if you’d know,” the Dollnick whistled under his breath. He transferred the metal donut to his lower left arm, held the string against the wall with his upper left, and then reached out with his upper right hand to pinch the string in the middle of the span. “Does that look good to everybody?” he asked after snapping the line.

  “I guess it better since that looks like a permanent mark,” Daniel said.

  “The plasma torch will take it off. Now for the sides.” He passed the string container from the lower left hand to the upper, pulled out more slack with the lower, and crouched to hold the line against the wall where it met the deck. When Aabina moved over to hold her end in place, he reached up with his upper right hand and snapped. They repeated the process on the other side, and then he stepped back for a look.

  “I think you got it exactly in the center of the wall,” Donna said.

  “I adjusted for the anteroom and the office on this side by eye,” Crute said modestly. “Now, as long as we’re all together, why don’t we go around to the conference room. I’ll make a quick ping, and then you can bring me up to date on your plans for the week.”

  Daniel spent almost a half-hour telling the exchange ambassador about the latest developments in the Conference of Sovereign Human Communities, and then Aabina began doing the same with the current revisions she was processing for the All Species Cookbook. The corridor door to the conference room slid open and a Dollnick in coveralls carrying a large work bag asked, “Do you want me to cut from this side?”

  “The other side,” the exchange ambassador said. “I already marked it.”

  “I couldn’t get in.”

  “Meeting adjourned,” Crute declared. As he was leaving to let the workers into the new office space, the Dollnick turned back to Aabina and said, “Better close the doors to the embassy reception lobby and stay out of here for an hour. The cutting will go quickly, but there’s some pretty nasty soundproofing material inside the walls and it will take the ventilation system a bit of time to clear the smoke.”

  Daniel headed directly for Donna’s desk and waited for Aabina to catch up before speaking. “This isn’t going as I expected. I thought that the exchange ambassadors would only show up for the tunnel networking meetings. Crute seems intent on taking over Kelly’s job for the week, so you better let EarthCent Intelligence know what’s going on.”

  “I’ll ping Clive,” Donna said. “You missed Kelly this morning, but apparently the Stryx just sprung it on her at the last minute and she hasn’t even had a chance to read the rules yet. I should contact her now and see if she can fill me in.”

  Crute reentered the embassy through the main door, and on observing the little grouping at Donna’s desk, commented, “You can’t be planning a coup already. I just got here.”