Vacation on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 7) (2 page)

“I think you’ll be impressed with their home,” Libby commented. “It’s the only human residence on the station with a full dance floor. Chastity got permission from Gryph to cut in a separate entrance so Marcus can give private lessons.”

“I don’t think I’d want my new husband teaching a bunch of single women how to dance,” Kelly said. “She must really trust him.”

“The studio features the latest in immersive recording technology so that the students can practice the same steps at home with a hologram. Of course, Chastity will have a live feed to her office, just in case she misses her husband while she’s at work and wants to check in.”

“Doveryai, no proveryai,” Kelly quoted over her shoulder on her way out of the office. “Trust, but verify.”

“She did go to my school, after all,” Libby said proudly.

Two

“I’m fine with taking care of Mac’s Bones while you’re gone, as long as somebody else handles all of the training camp stuff,” Paul assured his foster father. “Maybe we’ll join you for a whole weekend here and there if Aisha can get the time off from the Grenouthians, but she’s in the middle of the season. How long do you have before Kelly needs to be back for her next show?”

“She decided against doing any more live broadcasts and they already prerecorded the next episode,” Joe replied. “She was in the studio with the Verlock ambassador working on it all day yesterday. I don’t know why it never occurred to me, but it turns out that Ambassador Srythlan can only keep up with alien conversations thanks to special training. Even with the best implants, most Verlocks can’t easily participate in back-and-forth discussions with other species because we all talk too fast.”

“I thought they only spoke slowly, but I guess it makes sense that they’d be accustomed to hearing language at the same speed they grew up speaking it. So how do the Grenouthians work around it?”

“The Verlocks don’t move much faster than they speak, so for some shows, the Grenouthians can just slow the whole thing down and nobody complains. But for immersives where the motion has to take place at full speed, the Verlocks prefer captions to audio translations. Apparently they’re very fast readers.”

“Which approach did ‘Ask An Alien’ go with?”

“Kelly said that a large part of the audience for this interview is likely to be Verlocks, so the Grenouthians decided to do two versions. Srythlan answered the questions at his native speed, and for the non-Verlock broadcast, they’ll just speed him up. For the Verlock edition, they’ll slow Kelly down. Since it’s not live, it doesn’t matter that the Verlock version will be three times as long.”

“The bunnies are probably thrilled with the extra commercial time,” Paul said.

“You’ve forgotten the second law of thermodynamics,” Joe pointed out. “The Verlock commercials run three times as slow.”

“You’re applying the conservation of energy to advertising?” Before he even finished asking, Paul realized that his foster father was just teasing and decided to get him back. “Anyway, how are you going to get beer while you’re off on station safari?”

“You’re going to send it to me,” Joe replied seriously. “Libby asked Gryph to assign us a maintenance bot for the duration, sort of a private delivery service. It’s not like we could have carried along a month’s worth of food or foraged off of alien agriculture.”

“You’re calling it a camping trip but you’re planning to live on take-out?”

“I already made a deal with Ian to send us their catering leftovers at a discount, so it should be an adventure in eating as well.”

“Which deck are you going to start with?” Paul asked, now that it was clear that the family would be vacationing in style. “I saw the choices when Kelly replayed them for Aisha, and some of those abandoned alien sections looked pretty interesting. I asked Jeeves about them, but he said he didn’t want to spoil any surprises.”

“Kelly and the kids couldn’t agree, so they decided to let Libby pick for them.”

“You didn’t get a vote?”

“I’ve already been to more places than I care to remember,” Joe replied. “I’m just happy to be able to take Dorothy and Samuel on vacation without having to get them a bunch of inoculations against flesh-eating bacteria. And thank you for talking your wife into letting us bring Ailia along.”

“It wasn’t a hard sell in the end. It wouldn’t have been any fun for the girl to hang around Mac’s Bones after school with just me and Dring for company. Aisha doesn’t think it’s appropriate to take Ailia to work when she’s not in the cast rotation.”

“Now that’s all settled, are you going to be around for the game?” Joe asked. “Herl is coming tonight, and he always has a couple interesting tricks up his tentacle.”

“Aisha and I are taking the kids out to dinner and an immersive,” Paul said. “It’s supposedly the first Earth production to gain any traction with the alien audiences, something about children and dragons bonding together as warrior pairs to fight an invasion.”

“I hope it’s not too scary for Samuel and Ailia,” Joe said. “Samuel only turned six a couple weeks ago.”

“Aisha got all of the details from the Grenouthian distributor. It’s based on the first part of some old series that’s seven books long, and the invasion doesn’t happen until the last book. They’re only making one every other year so they can show the actors growing up. Samuel will be done with school by the time it gets bloody.”

“I sort of remember seeing a movie series when I was a kid that had been made that way,” Joe said. “My parents told me that there was a time when the release of a new sequel was a big event, with people lining up outside of theatres in the middle of the night to be the first to get tickets.”

Paul put a hand to his ear, a courtesy gesture many humans used when carrying on a subvoced discussion over implants. He seemed to be listening more than replying, and finally he said out loud, “I’ll be right there.”

“Something wrong?” Joe asked.

“Just my brain,” Paul replied. “Aisha and the kids are waiting for me in the Little Apple. I thought we were meeting here. See you later.”

Paul jogged off towards the exit from Mac’s Bones, and Joe busied himself setting up for the poker game. He put out the chips and found a fresh deck of cards. Then he remembered that Kelly had volunteered to help Donna set up for the monthly EarthCent mixer and would no doubt fill up on free finger food from the caterers. He went into the kitchen and made a meal out of leftovers for himself, though most of it ended up in Beowulf’s stomach. Then the man and the reincarnated dog took a stroll around Mac’s Bones to see if there were any last-minute emergencies before the card players began arriving. Three hours later, Joe was beginning to wish that one of the campers had flagged him down for an urgent repair.

“Are you two playing teams or something?” Lynx asked Shaina, throwing down her cards in disgust. “Every time Jeeves drops out of the bidding, you take the pot, and every time you drop out, he takes it.”

“We just know each other’s style from playing countless hands on the auction circuit,” Shaina explained. She raked the pot into her large pile, leaving a ten millicred chip in the middle of the table to ante for the next hand. “You’re lucky Brinda isn’t here tonight because she and Jeeves are practically telepathic.”

“You’re just making excuses because you can’t accept that your sister has a better poker face than you do,” Jeeves told his business partner. “It’s a wonder she doesn’t bluff every hand, given your inability to read her.”

“Can I deal this time, or am I still on gofer duty?” Daniel asked. It seemed that whenever the cards came his way, Joe sent him to refill the pitcher, explaining that the house went by mercenary rules, where the youngest did all of the running. When the junior consul returned from his last trip to the brew room, he found Beowulf sitting next to his chair, glumly shaking his massive head. Fortunately, the Huravian hound had folded Daniel’s hand rather than trying to draw to an inside straight, so the beer run only cost him his ante.

“I guess we can let you give it a try,” Joe replied. “My luck can’t get any worse. Just don’t call any of that one-eyed jacks and suicide kings nonsense.”

“Actually, I was kind of hoping to talk you guys into a hand of Rainbow,” Daniel insinuated. “Any objections?”

“I don’t have a Horten deck,” Joe said.

“I brought my own.” The junior consul pulled a fat box out of an inner pocket and shook out the alien deck. He smiled self-consciously before springing all of the cards from one hand to the other in a magician’s arc.

In his best imitation of a Wild West saloon gambler, Woojin drawled, “I think we got us a card sharp, Joe. Last time I saw anybody do that at a poker game, it ended in a knife fight.”

“Not in my house,” Kelly called from the couch, without looking up from her book. Joe and Woojin exchanged glances. Neither of them missed the bad old days, but there were times when the poker games in Mac’s Bones with the ambassador in the wings seemed just a little too tame.

“Does everybody know the rules?” Daniel inquired, pausing before he dealt.

“What kind of Drazen would know the rules to a Horten card game?” Herl asked, doing his best to look offended.

“The spymaster kind,” Lynx retorted. “I’ve seen you in the casino.”

“Rainbow it is,” Daniel announced, and began dealing the cards around to the eight players. “In deference to my elders, I won’t call any wilds, but these are genuine Horten cards, not the cheap Dollnick knock-offs.”

“You mean they can change color spontaneously?” Shaina asked. “I’ve heard of them, of course, but I’ve never played with the genuine article.”

“It’s not exactly spontaneous, they’re just trying to blend in,” Woojin explained. “If you have four red ones, a blue one and a white one, they might all turn pink after a while. So if you keep the bidding going long enough, a garbage hand could turn into a flush, or a straight into a straight flush.”

“Don’t help her,” Lynx said gruffly. “She’s already got half of our chips.”

“Now who’s playing teams,” Shaina replied archly. “Thank you, Woojin. I’ll keep that in mind when your fiancée is bidding.”

“Hang on,” Herl said. “Somebody didn’t ante.”

“Dealer doesn’t ante in Horten games,” Daniel informed him. “Are you sure you’ve played this before?”

“Of course, of course,” the Drazen spymaster said, but he looked and sounded rather like a confused old man. Five minutes later, he looked like a happy, middle-aged gambler raking in a pot.

“I can’t believe I fell for that,” Lynx groaned. She began stacking her remaining chips by color to see how far she was down. “Of course, of course,” she mimicked the Drazen. “I’m just a poor old spymaster in over his head who doesn’t even know the rules to the game.”

“My cards never changed color,” Jeeves complained. “If the white one had just turned blue, I would have had a higher straight flush than Herl.”

“Maybe you didn’t want it hard enough,” Shaina suggested.

“I don’t think it’s fair that I have to abstain from using my natural talents while the rest of you are allowed to affect the color of the cards with your emotions. I vote that artificial intelligences at these games be allowed to employ one non-memory-related advantage.”

The humans and the Drazen all extended a hand with a thumb pointed down.

“It’s not like you ever go home a loser,” Lynx said. “If we let you start reading skin temperatures or applying facial analysis algorithms, you’d have a catalog of tells as good as reading our minds. Besides, you could just skip any future Horten hands or let Beowulf sit in for you.”

“Nix on that,” Joe interrupted. “If I have to choose between Jeeves reading my skin temperature and Beowulf sniffing out my emotions, I’ll go with Jeeves every time. Besides, you don’t want to be in the same room if that hound loses a big pot. He never could stop himself from going all-in on aces.”

“It’s my deal,” Woojin said, retrieving the standard deck of cards and shuffling. “Five card stud, everyone antes, no blinds.”

“Did I mention that some guy tried to get me to sign an anti-EarthCent petition in the Little Apple at lunch today?” Daniel asked. The game stalled while Woojin picked up the cards after misfiring on an attempt to imitate the junior consul’s card trick. “He seemed to think we’re collaborating with the Stryx to repress him.”

“Here, on the station?” Kelly looked up from her book again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You and Donna were out all afternoon setting up for the dance thing,” Daniel reminded her. “I invited the guy to come to the embassy next week and talk to us about it, but who knows if he’ll show up.”

“Did he sound sane?” Kelly asked. “We’ve had complaints about EarthCent from time to time, but never a petition.”

“He was very polite, and his suit looked expensive,” Daniel said. “Do you get a lot of political protests here?”

“This is the first one I’ve heard about,” Kelly replied. “I don’t get it at all. If he doesn’t trust us or the Stryx, what’s he planning to do with all of the signatures? I remember reading about petitions somewhere, and the whole point was to deliver them to whoever is in authority.”

“I guess I should have taken the time to read it, but I was too hungry,” Daniel said. “He mentioned that he only arrived yesterday, so it’s hard to imagine that he has anything against the Union Station embassy in particular. He did say some pretty harsh things about the tyranny of the unelected, though.”

“Did you hear that, Joe?” Kelly asked. “Somebody told Daniel that I’m a tyrant.”

“I’m sitting right here, Kel, you don’t have to say everything twice,” Joe responded in exasperation. “Are you sure you don’t want to try a hand?”

“No. You know how I feel about gambling,” Kelly replied, looking down at her book again. It seemed like she’d been on the same page for a half an hour.

“This may be a red herring, but I watch the mercenary job boards just to keep up with the flow, and I’ve seen a number of human settlements posting requests for police contractors in the last few days,” Woojin said. He paused to deal out the first two cards. “I was going to bring it up with Clive when I had enough data points, but the interesting thing is who was placing the ads.”