Date Night on Union Station (2 page)

When the water stopped, she called for a pause to wrap her long red hair in a towel. Otherwise, the static electricity left over from the tornado drying sequence would turn her head into a giant red fuzz ball. She learned that the hard way her second day on the station when she walked out of the shower feeling ready to face the galaxy, looked in the mirror, and screamed. Come to think of it, that was how she originally made friends with Libby, who was always listening for anything out of the norm on the station.

Kelly rummaged through her one cramped closet and pulled out the black cocktail dress she always wore for diplomatic functions, an outfit Donna and the girls had locked her into by filling out all five of the Eemas encounter blanks in advance. The dating system was oddly inflexible, there were no videos or pictures, but Eemas was purported to have access to so much information that it knew people better than they knew themselves.

The application did give the subscriber an option to list any additional preferences, but Donna had wisely left those blank. Omniscience was the main point of the somewhat spooky ads for the service, and Kelly’s date would just have to spot her based on, “long red hair, black dress, green eyes.” The description Kelly received for Branch that afternoon was “tall, dark, beard,” which is why she was intent on showing up early and letting him get stuck playing detective.

A half hour later, she finished with her hair and makeup, strapped on her black pumps, and headed out the door. One good thing about living on Union Station, or any place under the direct authority of the Stryx, was that a woman could walk the corridors of even the worst neighborhood in the dim night lighting and not have to worry about anything worse than an unwanted business proposition.

Two

“Time,” Kelly subvoced, and Earth adjusted station time appeared in the corner of her eye. Great, her first big date was already twenty minutes late. She gathered up the loose locks of silky red hair that had crept forward over her shoulders as she slouched at the bar and threw it all over her back. Then she made a conscious effort to sit up straight. “Like a lady,” her mother would have said.

A few well-practiced eye movements triggered her holographic heads-up display to show the puzzling cable that Libby had forwarded from EarthCent after lunch. The content left her wondering if the diplomatic corps had started coding messages without supplying her with the key. That the budget conscious communications office insisted on the lowest cost tunneling telegraphic service didn’t help either.

Belugian contract invalid stop must stop mining fleet stopping union station stop penalty clause stop operations stop authorized negotiations stop

Kelly sighed and took another sip of the ice water with a slice of lemon that the bartender had obligingly provided when she admitted to waiting for a date. Earlier in the day she had tried calling the diplomatic hotline for clarification, but either everybody had cleared out of EarthCent for the weekend or they were too broke to accept charges. EarthCent ran about nine hours ahead of the arbitrary station time the human residents had become accustomed to, so it really was Friday night on Earth.

The problem with working for Earth’s Galactic Diplomatic Center was that it represented Earth without any cooperation or budgetary assistance from the endlessly bickering national governments, whose existence the Stryx barely acknowledged and clearly didn’t take seriously. EarthCent was basically imposed on the planet in a take-it-or-leave-it arrangement, a standard procedure the intelligent robots had evolved through hundreds of first contacts.

True, the Stryx recruited humans for all of the jobs at EarthCent, through a mysterious process that eliminated the need to apply for a position. Like Kelly, potential EarthCent employees were simply contacted out of the blue and offered a job. Everybody from the lowest paid spaceport courtesy shuttle driver to the top cluster ambassador was handpicked.

But other than the occasional indecipherable communication, EarthCent offered no guidance for employees in the field. It was more like an employment agency for an independent diplomatic service. In the last fifteen years, Kelly had received the drunken confidences of many an EarthCent diplomat at various embassy and consul functions, and the only explicit instruction any of them had received from EarthCent was in the initiation oath, to do their best for humanity.

So here she was, two years into her tour as Earth’s top diplomat on the most important space station in the sector, and Kelly still wasn’t sure about the boundaries of her job. When aliens contacted her office looking for information about Earth, she tried to answer their questions and generally point them in the right direction. When invitations to diplomatic events arrived, she dutifully strapped on her high heels, slipped on her black dress, and checked with Libby to make sure that the atmosphere at the party wouldn’t dissolve her lungs or melt her skin.

Kelly used to believe she was going through an extended trial period, after which EarthCent or the Stryx would cue her in on the big picture. Recently, she was beginning to suspect there was no overarching strategy. Instead, Gryph often questioned her about the misbehavior of humans on the regional galactic scene, and more than once she found her responses had been acted on as if she had the final say in all things human related. It was definitely a little humbling, and when people asked her what she did for work, she had to restrain herself from answering, “I’m sort of responsible for humanity within a couple hundred light years.” The consul’s job apparently encompassed the judicial, executive and legislative branches all in one, and her salary didn’t quite cover her living expenses.

authorized negotiations stop

Did that mean she was authorized to negotiate with these Belugians she’d never heard of before today, or was the message referring to some third party? All she’d been able to find out was that Belugians referred to a chartered mutual company that included members from various species. How was she to locate the contract holders, much less negotiate, when she didn’t know what they wanted or what she could offer? Kelly’s thoughts were interrupted and she jumped in her chair as a hot hand clasped her bare shoulder and spun her stool away from the bar.

“Long red hair, black dress, green eyes,” a raspy baritone pronounced. “Barkeep, I’ll have what she’s having.”

Kelly fought back the urge to stand up and leave. She hated when strange men put their hands on her without so much as a how-do-you-do, but she had promised Donna and the girls to spend at least a half hour with each date to give the man a chance. The service was so expensive, she intended to think of the dates as the best paying work she would ever have in her life. Instead of stalking out or throwing her ice water in his face, she reached up and removed his hand from her bare shoulder, returning it to him with a tight smile.

“I’m Kelly. You must be Branch,” she said, trying not to sound downright hostile as she surveyed his tall, dark, bearded form. Not unhandsome, she decided, in a piratical sort of way. But way too aggressive and overconfident, and probably one of those guys who figures conversation is a waste of time.

“Branch I am,” he replied, taking her first salvo in stride and settling onto the stool next to her. “Is this your first Eemas hook-up?”

“Actually, it is.” She regarded him quizzically, pondering his choice of words. “Did I do something to give it away?”

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “I just wondered, since it’s the first time I’ve done anything like this myself. Never needed help meeting ladies,” he concluded with a wink and a friendly leer.

“So what possessed you to shell out for tonight?” she inquired wryly.

“Shell out?” Branch appeared puzzled for a moment as he ran his eyes over her exposed skin, as if looking for seams. “Oh, you mean pay. No, I didn’t pay, I just got an invitation from this Eemas thing when we docked a few hours ago. I was going to visit a hostess house with the rest of the crew, kind of a tradition with sailors, you know, but when I saw your picture, I had to come.”

“Picture? You got a picture?” Kelly almost squeaked in aggravation. “And you didn’t have to pay?”

“Easy, Red, I just said that, didn’t I?” Branch took the ice water the bartender brought him and drained it in one gulp. An expression that combined amusement with distaste fled across his features, and he shook his head in mock despair as he returned the empty glass to the bar. “You really do know how to party, don’t you?” he commented, then continued without giving her a chance to respond. “So, shall we go back to your quarters or would you rather we rent a room? I’m feeling generous so it’s my treat.”

“What? Wait!” Kelly sputtered as Branch rose and started for the exit, as if her only logical option was to follow after him like a lost puppy. “What do you think this is? I mean, I came for a date!”

“A date?” Branch hesitated and stepped back to the bar. He fingered the wedge of lemon on his empty water glass and took a long look at the tray of sliced fruit on the bartending station. Then he shook his head and said, “Oh, a date! I can do that, sure. Would a half hour be enough?”

“A half hour would be perfect,” Kelly answered with a cold smile, and brought up a digital stopwatch display in the corner of her eye. Then she had a pleasant thought and advanced the countdown from thirty minutes to twenty-six, to account for her last four minutes on dating duty.

“Well, would you like something to eat, or should we just get some real drinks and talk?” Branch asked, settling back onto his stool with the ease of a veteran campaigner.

“Talking could be nice,” Kelly replied, swirling the ice in her glass for the reassuring tinkling sound it made. “You mentioned you just got in, so what brings you to Union Station?”

“Union has the best cross-galactic tunnel rates on this side of the lens,” he quoted from the repeating welcome message that greeted all approaching ships and signaled to the bartender. “And if you can keep a secret, we’re picking up some obsolete disintegrator projectors, good war surplus stuff left over from the Yeridum/Mudirey wars.”

“I’ve never heard of either—wait, that sounded like the same name spelled backwards,” Kelly ventured. She had always been proud of her aptitude for pattern recognition and ability with numbers, and she secretly believed that these were the talents for which the Stryx had plucked her out of obscurity halfway through her sophomore year in university for her first posting as a junior diplomatic aide.

The arrival of the bartender made a break in the flow of the conversation, and Kelly ordered a screwdriver, while Branch asked for a Divverflip. “One screwdriver, one Drazen Divverflip, coming up,” the bartender repeated the order and favored Kelly with a curious look of appraisal before retreating towards the collection of bottles at the center of the long bar.

“Of course, that’s why it’s also called the Mirror War,” Branch continued their conversation with just the slightest hint of condescension, not unusual from a man discovering that a woman lacks his enthusiasm for archaic conflicts. “The Yeridum accidentally broke into a parallel universe, but you aren’t really interested in all that.” He cut himself off to Kelly’s surprise, just as her features were beginning to go slack. Maybe he wasn’t that insensitive after all, she thought, or maybe he’s just that desperate.

“Are you some kind of pirate that you’re in the market for disintegrator weapons?” Kelly joked, or at least she hoped it was a joke.

“Not these days,” Branch replied and rubbed the side of his nose significantly while glancing around the lounge to see if anyone was obviously eavesdropping. Everybody knew that there was no true privacy on the station because the Stryx had built the place and probably kept every molecule under surveillance, but the robots were also famous for minding their own business and letting the biologicals have at it as long as they followed the local rules.

“Disintegrator projectors were lousy weapons since they work so slowly and most targets aren’t going to stay still long enough for them to do much damage,” he continued. “But they’re useful for peeling surface layers off a planet from space if you have enough power. A great tool for terraforming and such.”

The bartender returned with Kelly’s screwdriver and a smoking purple concoction which looked like toxic waste that had been remediated with food dye. Kelly took a sip of her screwdriver, which was excellent, and received a wink from the bartender who waited around to watch Branch sample his Divverflip. Branch tipped the glass up for a taste, and then drained half the contents at a go. The two males exchanged approving head nods, and then the bartender moved off to greet new patrons.

“I’ve always been interested in terraforming,” Kelly fibbed as she relaxed into bad date mode, thinking this was a subject that would get them painlessly through the remaining twenty something minutes. Besides, she found it paid to keep her ears open, as Libby was fond of hinting that human knowledge was limited more by laziness than by storage capacity. “Is that what you do?”

Branch considered the question and scratched absently behind his ear. “Well, it’s not really terraforming if you stop halfway through, more like strip mining. But what’s wrong now?” he demanded in annoyance, seeing that Kelly had turned white and was staring behind his head.

“What was THAT?” she asked in a hollow voice, as a feeling of dread climbed up her chest.

“What was what?” Branch sounded honestly perplexed, and swiveled his stool around to see if he was missing something behind him.

“That!” she cried, pointing at the movement under his jacket between the shoulder blades. “You have a tentacle! I saw you scratch your ear with it!”

Now Branch started to look angry. “Of course I have a tentacle, what kind of Drazen do you take me for? I’m beginning to see why this stupid hook-up service is free.”

“It’s not free, it’s expensive,” Kelly exploded. “And it set me up with an alien!”

“What are you, some kind of xenophobe?” Branch asked incredulously, as if interspecies dating was the norm in the entire galaxy.

“Xenophobe? Take that back,” Kelly hissed, her green eyes sparking anger of her own. “I’m Earth’s diplomatic liaison to Union Station, and I’ve been working with aliens for…”

“Oh, so everybody who isn’t from your precious Earth is an alien,” Branch interrupted her, and then he stopped and stared at nothing for a moment, as if he was reading from a heads-up holographic display of his own. “Uh, did you say, Earth?”

“Yes, I said Earth. What, are you getting your lame pick-up lines from a teleprompter? Wait, you don’t even speak English, do you? I knew there was something funny about you, but all that facial hair makes it hard to see your lips…” Kelly trailed off, blushing and biting her tongue before she tried to blame it on the light in the bar being poor, or her eyes being tired from overwork. 

“English? Why would I speak an archaic language from a strip mining claim?” Branch’s expression showed his frustration at the turn in the conversation. “And why would a world with diplomatic representation on Union Station bargain away mining rights to an entire continent in return for some old Drazen jump ships?”