“If that’s everything, I have a party to finish planning,” Aluria announced, rising from her seat. “We in the Empire of a Hundred Worlds are always happy to do our part for the Stryx.”
“Likewise,” Crute declared, pushing back from the table. “Can I assume that nobody else intended to partake in this gourmet platter of Sheezle bugs? Good. I’ll just take it with me then.”
“Yes. I just remembered I have something as well,” Ortha stated. He didn’t rise from the table immediately because he was busy wrapping Horten delicacies in napkins and slipping them into his pockets. “For the children,” he added, addressing no one in particular.
“Since everybody else is leaving,” the Grenouthian ambassador said. His pouch looked strangely lumpy as he hopped away, and Kelly noted that the platters in front of his seat were swept clean, even though the ambassadors had only been seated for a couple of minutes.
“Where’s the fire?” Czeros called after them. He uncorked a second bottle of California Cabernet, and shocked Kelly by pouring glasses for Bork, Gwendolyn and herself before filling his own. A sound like stones being crushed into gravel came from the end of the table, and everybody turned to see the Verlock caught in a rare fit of laughter, his massive shoulders heaving.
“Am I missing something here?” Kelly demanded. “I know that Vergallians and the Dollnicks do a lot of business outside of the tunnel network, that the Hortens are a bit slippery and the Grenouthians think they’re smarter than everybody else, but why did they all agree to help me?”
“Your little speech was a marvel of underhanded motivation, though it took a moment for them to figure it out,” the Chert ambassador explained. “They aren’t used to subtlety from humans.”
“But I was being perfectly honest,” Kelly said. “By taking home an alien dignitary, they’re doing a favor for the Stryx.”
“Why would they do favors for the Stryx?” Bork asked. “Will the Stryx give them special treatment in return? It was your remark about the station librarian that woke up Aluria, and the rest of them figured it out as soon as she spoke.”
“Figured what out?” Kelly asked in frustration.
“That their best chance of affecting the decisions of the visiting emissaries is to get them alone, on their own turf,” Czeros said. “The Cayl Empire is a completely functional entity that’s been around for millions of years. Do you know what that means?”
“They’re stable?” Kelly said.
“They’re competition,” Srythlan boomed.
“Imagine what will happen if the Stryx push a permanent tunnel through to the other side of the galaxy,” the Chert ambassador continued. “All of a sudden, the members of the Cayl Empire with expansionist tendencies will be able to send their colony ships to the systems on the fringes of the tunnel network for little more cost than expanding the edges of their own empire.”
“The Dollnicks and the Vergallians are the most expansionist of the oxygen/nitrogen breathing species on the tunnel network,” Bork explained. “The Grenouthians practically have a monopoly on news, documentary entertainment and several other business verticals with high entry costs, and the Hortens operate in the gray areas of tunnel network membership through the agency of their off-network pirate cousins. All of them have counterparts doing the same thing in the Cayl Empire. The last thing they want is competition.”
“But it’s not a zero-sum game,” Kelly protested. “Whatever opportunities the Cayl Empire members find on our side of the galaxy, our species can pursue on their side.”
“That assumes a level playing field, which is highly unlikely,” Czeros said. “No matter what the agreed-upon terms, the Cayl Empire will not transform into the tunnel network overnight. For the duration of the transitional period, which will likely stretch for thousands of years, the advantage will go to the members of the former Cayl Empire.”
“And I just handed over the visiting emissaries to the four species on the station who want them to reject joining up?”
“Try a glass of this Cabernet,” Mist suggested. “It’s pretty strong.”
“Don’t feel bad,” the Verlock rumbled. “The visiting diplomats aren’t from the nicest species. I doubt any of them would have survived this long without the Cayl making all of their important decisions for them.”
Seven
“You’re so lucky,” said Hert, the Drazen boy who Dorothy relieved at the lost-and-found. “The new shelving unit is nearly in place. I bet it furls its dustcover on your shift.”
“Really?” Dorothy said. She ran down the space behind the counter to see if Hert’s prediction was accurate. Sure enough, the shelving unit which had been inching its way up from the back and had been well into the final turn during her last shift was now almost parallel with the other shelving units in the front row. As soon as it moved into place, the dust cover would retract and the unit would become available for stocking. She tried a tentative push to encourage progress, but there was no give in the mechanism.
“Not much came in today,” Hert continued, after following her down the counter at a more leisurely pace. “The top shelf of the current unit is practically empty, but the rule is to start at the bottom of the next one as soon as it becomes available.”
“Why’s that?” Dorothy asked.
“Just the way the system is set up, I guess. The Verlock kid who used to have the shift before me claimed that the Stryx will speed up the whole train to keep the value of the items on any one shelving unit from getting too high. I guess they aren’t that happy with the prices they get when they put the back row out to bid.”
“But I thought that auctions were supposed to be the ideal mechanism for price discovery,” Dorothy said. The Drazen boy started at her in bewilderment, as if his implant had failed to translate her words into anything sensible. “My family has friends in the auction business and that’s what they always say. It means that the only price that matters in the market is what people are willing to pay.”
“Thanks, that makes sense now. Well, I’d stick around to see the new unit open up since we’re lucky to get two a year, but I have a presentation tomorrow so I’ve got to get going.”
“Alright. Bye, Hert.”
After the Drazen boy left, Dorothy put her lunch in the small refrigeration cabinet provided for the staff. She checked the plastic bins at the end of the counter to see if Hert had left her any items to catalog and shelve, but they were empty. Dorothy had already reached the point where she preferred catching a shift after some of the lazier kids so that she’d have something to do when she came in, but she supposed that getting used to boring jobs was part of being a grownup.
A loud ‘click’ sounded behind her, and she spun around to see that the new shelving unit had fully arrived. The dust cover began to retract, a small motor furling the previously taut fabric towards a cavity at the very top of the case. Dorothy sat on the counter and watching in excitement as the receding cover revealed clean, bare shelves. In a few minutes, it was all over.
“Well, that was something,” she remarked, half laughing at herself for having sat enthralled by the show. Not having anything else to do, she stepped onto the small lift platform for the shelving unit and took it up to the top to examine the furled roll. Something strange about the angle of the top shelf where it met the back of the unit caught her eye, and she reached all the way into the corner to identify the anomaly. Her hand found a rounded metallic shape, cool to the touch. She felt that the center of the object was hollow, and hoping that it wasn’t a manual pull-cord to activate a fire suppression system or trigger the emergency ejection of the shelving unit from the station, she gave it a tug.
Out in the light, the piece turned out to be a strangely carved bracelet, though the details were difficult to make out since the whole thing was black. She turned it over in her hand and felt a sort of a tingle in her fingers, as if the object was generating some sort of energy field. Dorothy repeated the English translation of the Verlock nomenclature for the location on the shelf several times so she wouldn’t forget it. Then she ordered the lift platform back down and placed the object on the turntable for scanning.
“Bracelet discovered on shelving unit LEV, location 20/27,” she said, giving the turntable a spin.
“Item not in inventory,” the cataloging system’s voice replied.
“What do you mean it’s not in inventory? I just took it off the shelf.”
“Shelving unit LEV is empty,” the voice insisted.
“Libby? Can you explain to our cataloging system that I found something on the top shelf of the new unit that must have been missed by whoever cleaned it out.”
“The cataloging system isn’t sentient,” Libby replied. “I’ll take over for a moment and perform a scan.” A beam of light traced the contours of the object, and then several more beams of different colors which Dorothy hadn’t seen utilized before joined in the analysis. A minute went by, and then two.
“Libby? Don’t you know what it is?” Dorothy asked.
“It’s a bracelet,” the Stryx librarian replied dryly, but the light beams continued to flicker and probe. “There. It’s safe now if you want to keep it.”
“I can have it? But what if the owner comes looking for it?”
“The bracelet was left behind on the shelf, either accidentally or intentionally, by the Frunge who purchased the lot at auction more than twenty-three years ago. There are exactly two hundred and fifty rows of shelves in the room, so how long is an item on the shelves before it goes to auction?”
“Does it always take twenty-three years for a full row to move back one rank?”
“You can assume twenty-three as an average.”
“So two hundred and fifty rows means almost fifty-eight hundred years. That’s a long time.”
“While there are many advanced species with life-spans in excess of that number, we feel no obligation to hold onto every lost item against the chance somebody might come around six thousand years from now looking for it.”
“But how about the Frunge who bought the auction lot?” Dorothy asked.
“The purchase agreement specifies that all buyers must clean out any shelving unit for which they are the high bidder. We could penalize the Frunge who purchased the lot for not fulfilling his obligation, but he’s no longer on Union Station, and it’s hardly worth pursuing in any case.”
“Did you say something about the bracelet maybe being left behind on purpose?”
“The Frunge may have recognized it as a protective amulet of the Teragram cult and decided it was safer not to touch it. Although they rarely visit the tunnel network, the Teragram mages play an outsized role in the mythology of some of the advanced species, including the Frunge.”
“You mean it’s magic?” Dorothy retrieved the bracelet from the turntable and held it up for closer examination. The black metal it was formed from seemed to drink in the light and not let any escape. She could feel the runes carved into the surface, but they seemed to swim together before her eyes when she tried to pick out the specific shapes.
“The Teragram mages relied primarily on technological tricks to impress less advanced species. I’ve disabled the bracelet’s offensive capabilities so you can’t accidentally cause any harm.”
Dorothy slipped the alien artifact over her hand and was somewhat surprised to find that it felt lighter on her wrist. She swung her arm around a few times, admiring the contrast between the unknown metal and her own fair skin. Then she heard a polite cough from the intake end of the counter.
“Coming,” Dorothy sang, and practically skipped across the room.
A skinny human boy, perhaps a year older than herself, waited patiently for her. He was dressed in a worn set of coveralls which had the bleached look of laundered work-clothes from the take-it-or-leave-it booth that EarthCent sponsored on the Shuk deck for needy humans. A deep tan suggested that he had spent a good deal of his life outside before arriving on Union Station.
“Cool bracelet,” the boy said, his sharp eyes having followed Dorothy’s own repeated looks at her wrist.
“Thank you. Have you lost something?”
“Yeah,” the boy said, his eyes shifting from the girl, to the shelves behind her, and back to the girl again in rapid succession. “Can I look through the shelves for it?”
“That stuff has been here for years,” Dorothy said with a smile. “You have to tell me what it is you’ve lost and I’ll find it for you if it’s here. If you remember when you lost it, I’ll know where to start looking.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just looked myself?” the boy said smoothly, though Dorothy thought she saw a disappointed look flee across his face.
“We can’t let anybody behind the counter. It would help if you tell me your name and describe the object.”
“My whole name?” the boy asked suspiciously.
“Your first name is fine. It’s just so I can call you something. I’m Dorothy.”
“David.” He hesitated for a moment, and then he extended an arm over the counter. The two teenagers exchanged an awkward handshake. “I lost my, uh, I had ten creds this morning and, uh…” he trailed off.
“Let me look,” Dorothy said, feeling her face turning hot as she grew embarrassed for him. She had heard from the other employees about space bums coming into the lost-and-found to look for supposedly lost wallets and purses. Normally they had the sense to window-shop at a few boutiques first so they could at least describe a popular change-purse, though they usually tripped up when questioned about the contents.
“This bin has the smaller stuff that’s come in so far today,” she continued, lifting it onto the counter. “We don’t get a lot of money coming through here though. I guess that’s because there are plenty of dishonest people who would just pick it up and keep it.” She glanced up at the end of the sentence without really meaning to, and caught the boy looking like he wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
Dorothy turned her attention back to the bin, hiding her own face as she pawed through the contents. “There’s some sort of tool kit, you wouldn’t want that. Alien something, alien something, alien something. Dental floss? Alien something, alien something, oh, here’s a change purse.”
“It’s not mine,” the boy mumbled.
Dorothy looked up and saw that he had edged halfway to the door, as if he was preparing to make a run for it.
“It’s not very heavy,” she said, weighing it in one hand. Without looking down, she thumbed open the magnet seal and poured the contents out in her hand. “Look, it’s six coins. A five-cred and five one-creds.”
“It’s not mine,” David repeated in a choked voice, looking truly miserable. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”
“Wait,” Dorothy said, setting the coins down next to the change purse and coming around the counter to catch him at the door. Up close, she was surprised to find that he was a half a head taller than her. She kept forgetting that the floor behind the counter was raised. “I want—I need a favor. Can you do a favor for me?”
“What?” The boy sounded like he had just witnessed somebody being beaten and had not intervened.
“I’m here for another five hours and I forgot to bring my lunch today,” Dorothy lied. “I thought maybe I’d send out for a pizza, but I only have five creds, and with the delivery charge and tip, it leaves me short.”
“I don’t have any money,” David said in the same monotone.
“I’m not asking for money,” Dorothy said, instinctively omitting her trademarked “Silly,” at the last second. “If you go and get it, I’ll have enough and we can split it. I can’t eat a whole pizza by myself.”
“I’m not a charity case,” the boy mumbled, his ears flaming.
“It’s not charity, you’ll be doing me a favor,” Dorothy insisted, her voice rising forcefully. She reached in her own change purse, rapidly sorted through the coins by feel, and prayed that the one she pulled out was a five-cred, and not the twenty-cred her mother insisted she carry for emergencies. Dorothy glanced at it to make sure she had guessed right and pressed it into his hand. “Fabio’s Fabulous Pizzeria. It’s in the Little Apple, like ten steps from the lift-tube bank.”
David lifted his head a little, but he wouldn’t look directly at her. “What do you want on it?”
“The five-cred special, it’s loaded with stuff. Some days it comes with free drinks, but I forget which. It doesn’t matter since we have water here.”
David looked at her full in the face now, and his mouth worked but he didn’t say anything. His eyes were wet.
“Go!” she said, pushing him into the corridor. After making sure he left, she went back behind the counter, returned the six coins to the change purse, and replaced it in the bin. Then she looked through the rest of the items just to familiarize herself with what had come in, and put the bin back in its place below the counter.
Forty-five minutes went by before somebody finally came in, the leader of a Drazen choral group looking for her ornate pitch pipe. The woman had left it unattended for just a minute in a public access practice room, where it was collected by an overeager maintenance bot. The Drazen was so happy to find the instrument that she insisted on voicing her thanks to the girl, who struggled to look enthusiastic as the singer attempted a piece that was intended for a full choir.
Once she was alone again, Dorothy fought against the urge to ask Libby for news about David. She knew that the Stryx librarian could easily locate him through the surveillance system, but she had never requested that sort of favor before and didn’t know if it was really appropriate. She didn’t care about the five creds, but she would have liked to see the boy eat something. Thinking about food made her feel hungry herself, but she had already decided not to touch her lunch in the refrigerator since it would be too awful if he did return and caught her in a lie.