Date Night on Union Station (4 page)

Four

“Congratulations, Kelly.” Stanley welcomed her with a hearty handshake as he let her into the condo he shared with Donna and their girls. “From acting consul to full consul in two years. That must be some kind of record.”

Kelly couldn’t figure out if this was intended as a compliment or a consolation since she didn’t know how long it usually took to make full consul, but she knew Stanley meant well in either case.

“Thank you, Stan.” Kelly dipped her head in acknowledgement and followed him into the kitchen, where Donna was working on some complicated dessert.

The ambient apartment lighting was much brighter than the hall outside, about as bright as early afternoon on Earth, so she assumed the girls had talked their parents into a modified schedule. Blythe and Chastity were engaged in artistically smearing something that looked like burnt molasses onto each other’s faces, which struck Kelly as a little immature for girls their age.

“Grab a seat, Kelly, I’ll just be another minute. If I don’t mix in the Thorian spice-starch at the precise temperature and time, the tarts could burst into flames,” Donna explained, then paused to think. “Or maybe they’ll turn green, which would be even worse.”

“No hurry. I’ve got a half hour before my date,” Kelly replied. “So what are my silly girls up to?”

“We’re not silly!” the girls replied in chorus, followed by gales of laughter and the impromptu chant, “You’ll never guess, you’ll never guess.”

“Are you fighting?” Kelly asked, always a good first guess when engaged in a game of twenty questions with children on the station.

“No,” the girls squealed, wiping their hands on dresses that looked like something from a history book, which drew Kelly’s attention to the fact that they weren’t wearing their typical one-piece jumpsuits.

“What’s going on?” Kelly directed her question to Donna since Stan had already retreated to his sports room. Despite his expertise as a knowledge trader for a gaming guild, Stan was always the softest touch for family information since he was oblivious to the value of secrets that didn’t advance game play.

“Have you seen the immersive release of My Fair Lady yet?” Donna answered her question with a question, a habit that drove Kelly nuts at work almost every day. Guessing games and making up stories were extremely popular with the children on the station, much more so than she remembered from her own youth.  The problem was that it seemed to rub off on their parents, so Kelly found it difficult to get a straight answer from anybody who had kids at home.

“You know I avoid the immersives,” she replied. “Smelling and tasting things that aren’t there, feeling weather that isn’t real, giving the projectors direct access to my implants. The whole thing is too creepy, and it just makes me dizzy.”

“Poor Aunty Kelly,” said Blythe, and the twelve year old shook her head in mock despair. “I guess you’re never going find out our secret.”

“I think I remember the story,” Kelly said hopefully. “A lower class woman learns how to speak nicely in exchange for chocolate. Right?”

Donna slid the tray of tarts into the oven and told it “Thorian spice tarts.” The oven thought it over for a microsecond before loading the proper program and displaying a countdown to completion.

“The lower-class woman was Eliza Doolittle and she was a poor flower girl,” Donna explained, as she pulled out a chair and sat down across from Kelly. “The girls liked the idea of being poor flower girls so much that they convinced one of the nursery owners from an ag deck to let them try selling flowers on consignment around the cafes in the evening.”

“Except we aren’t poor,” Chastity said, holding out a handful of change. “Look!”

“We made more in two nights than you pay mommy for a whole week,” Blythe added, half accusing, half proud.

“You know that your mom doesn’t really work for me,” Kelly defended herself. “We both work for EarthCent, which really means the Stryx, and your mother is actually the one whose job it is to pay me!”

“Oh, speaking of which, you got a raise to go with your new title,” Donna told her brightly.

“They didn’t tell me,” Kelly spoke excitedly and held up her hands with fingers crossed. “How much can I expect next payday? I’m behind on the rent again, and the smart aleck landlord program has been fooling with the water temperature when I take a shower. It’s just a matter of time before it starts in with varying the room temperature and piping in nasty odors.”

“Ah, I think it will come to a hundred and twenty creds,” Donna replied, sounding a little embarrassed.

“But that’s less than I’m making now!” Kelly wailed, causing the girls to stop what they were doing and look on in interest. “It’s less than you make. It’s less than the poor flower girls are making!”

“It will go up again eventually, but there was a garnishment order from EarthCent. Something about paying a contract cancellation fee to a junkyard called Mac’s Bones?”

“Oh, no,” Kelly groused. “I thought I was authorized to negotiate a settlement. I guess the EarthCent version of negotiation doesn’t include hard cash.”

“Anyway, I put you on a payment plan so you’ll still have some walking around money,” Donna added sympathetically. “Otherwise, you would have had no income for ten months.”

“Barter is better,” piped up a begrimed Chastity, echoing one of the cheery mantras of the Stryx school system, which offered a full range of educational opportunities to anybody who was willing to exchange work. The labor the Stryx demanded from young children involved playing with small robots for a couple hours a day, but the children all seemed to take their duties seriously.

“We could give you a loan, Aunty Kelly,” Blythe offered. When she saw the crestfallen expression on Kelly’s face, she added generously, “You don’t really have to pay it back.”

“You’re just making it worse,” Donna chided the girls gently. “Aunty Kelly has a very important job, and someday she’ll make a living at it. Now run along to work or you’ll miss the dinner rush.” The girls immediately recovered their high spirits and flounced out of the apartment trading lines in imagined cockney accents.

“Don’t look so glum, Kelly,” Donna continued. “You know the last thing the girls would want is for you to feel bad about earning less in a week than they make in a few hours on the weekend.” Kelly buried her face in her arms, and Donna had to add, “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way either. You’re really getting too sensitive lately. What do you know about tonight’s date?”

“I know it has to be better than last week’s,” Kelly responded, perking up. “At least, it can’t turn out as expensive, can it?”

“Well, the Stryx have an odd way of running a dating service, that’s for sure. But I’ll bet the children who grew up here would take it all in stride. I guess it’s their education system, too late for us, of course,” Donna concluded with a smile.

“I love my job, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. I just wish I could get Libby or EarthCent to give me a little more guidance,” Kelly grumbled. “I mean, I’m happy they upgraded my status to full consul, at least I won’t have to keep explaining to aliens that ‘acting consul’ didn’t mean I was pretending. You’d think somebody would have fixed the translation algorithms by this time.”

“You’re married to the job, and that’s your problem. You care more about getting in the middle of every problem that comes up than you do about finding a man. I think you’re actually embarrassed by the fact that the humans who come out here act just as badly as they did on Earth.”

“I’m the one who gets stuck explaining it all to Gryph,” Kelly argued. “And I’m taking this dating business very seriously. Did I tell you I’m meeting him in the excursion ship section and we’re taking a core and cylinder tour? I’ve never been.”

“Stan took me for an anniversary date a couple of years ago. It would have been very romantic except the weightlessness made us both queasy. Then the excursion craft looped against the station rotation and all of that spinning made me throw up. Stan saw it coming and caught it all in his cap before it reached the bulkhead, and later I found out that he bribed the tour operator to give him the video of it from the cabin camera. Hey, do you want to watch it?” Donna asked cheerfully.

“Thank you for the lovely memory and for offering me an instant replay of you sicking up just before I board,” Kelly replied sarcastically. “I think I’ll take a pass on coffee and dessert now.”

“I’m sorry,” Donna apologized. “I guess I wasn’t thinking. But you have yourself a good time, and remember that behind every unopened door lurks a monster.”

“What does that even mean?” Kelly asked, but then she decided not give Donna a chance for an explanation that would ruin the date before it even began. “Never mind. I’ll ask Libby about it if I’m too early. See you in the office.”

“I expect you to let me know how it went the minute you get home,” Donna reminded Kelly, as she followed her to the door. “I’ll be up late helping the girls count their change in any case.”

Donna’s comment reminded Kelly of something that had been bothering her since she entered the apartment, so she stopped just short of the proximity field that activated the door. “I noticed when I came in that your apartment lighting seems to be on a different schedule than the corridor areas on this deck. Don’t you worry about the girls being tired for school?”

“You’re still thinking in Earth terms, with all those school buses and early schedules that had nothing to do with what suited the children’s natural rhythms. Here, the kids follow their own schedule since it makes no difference to the Stryx when children want their lessons or put in their service time. If you want to scare the station kids into behaving, just hint that they might be happier back on Earth or some other planet.”

“Funny, I never really noticed,” Kelly admitted. “I guess it’s because my previous postings were on planets. This is my first extended stay on a station. Thanks, wish me luck.”

“Luck,” Donna offered enthusiastically as the door slid closed.

Kelly slowly worked her way down towards the excursion dock, thinking about her own childhood on Earth. Billions of people had voted with their feet before Kelly was born, making humans the latest wave of colonists and cheap labor migrants to compatible worlds circling thousands of stars. Wherever the Stryx had influence, intelligent robots enjoyed the same legal status as biologicals. So human labor only had to compete with non-thinking robots, and those “mechanicals” weren’t flexible enough to do many jobs. Intelligent robots had few needs and could always find better work than harvesting crops and doing manual labor, not to mention a strong preference for the clean environment of space.

The excursion bay on the inner docking deck featured lower apparent gravity than Kelly was used to, so she had to walk gingerly to avoid bouncing off her feet. Any other time she would have worn deck shoes with their magnetic sticky cleats, but the black pumps practically belonged to the cocktail dress. She was on the lookout for “black suit, black tie, black hat,” which made her date sound like either a country western singer or an undertaker.

Kelly’s date had arrived before her and was fidgeting about nervously next to the gangway of an expensive looking cabin cruiser, which made her feel a little better after Donna’s uninspiring tourism tale. The ship appeared much more spaceworthy than she had expected for an excursion craft, and she was also glad that she wasn’t the only one who looked a little nervous.

“Welcome, welcome. I’m Olaf Thorgudsun,” he greeted Kelly energetically as he extended his hand. “You’re the last one, come aboard, come aboard.”

“I’m Kelly,” she said as she reached for his hand, and was surprised when her date held on and basically yanked her into the craft. Of course, he was wearing sensible boots with magnetic cleats, and maybe he had noticed she was a little hesitant on the ramp.

Olaf led her to a luxurious reclining seat pod, the sort of first-class accommodation that was equipped with a glass privacy cover that the occupant could activate to shut off all sound from the outside world. “Please strap in until you adjust to zero gravity after launch. You wouldn’t want to kick somebody in the head by mistake.”

“Wow, this is the nicest ship I’ve ever been on,” Kelly gushed, smoothing her black dress over her thighs as she settled onto the plush cushions. The dress wasn’t really meant for lying down, she reflected. The fashion designers expected you to take it off at that point of the evening. “Are all these pods taken by people going on the tour?”

“Yes, yes. We’ll have time to chat after the launch. I have to take my place.” He sounded much more excited than somebody going on a two hour cruise around the station, which Kelly took as a compliment to her appearance. Olaf vaulted into the pod next to Kelly, and she heard him mumble in the manner of somebody who had never quite mastered subvocalization, “Let’s get out of here.”

The ship lifted gently and passed soundlessly through the atmosphere retention field as the seat pods all pivoted in unison, orienting themselves against the direction of the thrust. Acceleration was just noticeable at first, and then Kelly felt herself slowly sinking into the cushions as her full weight returned and then continued to increase as they shot out the end of the station’s cylindrical core.

“Aren’t we going a bit too fast for a tour, Olaf?” Kelly ventured to ask her date, though her voice came out weakly since her chest felt like it was wrapped in heavy bands.