Date Night on Union Station (13 page)

“An asteroid chaser?”

“Same thing. And I’ve done my share of that, along with carrying small cargoes, mainly resupplies to remote outposts. But I’ve been slowing down the last decade, can’t do as much of the maintenance work or loading as I once could. Trading in the smaller, high-value cargoes, is the only way I could keep her going.”

“Your ship?” Kelly asked, with a guilty look at the salad, most of which she’d polished off while he was talking.

“Yes. It’s funny. Most people actually hate space. They just can’t get used to the weightlessness on a small ship when it’s not under thrust, or they’re too careless to survive when a little mistake can translate into breathing vacuum. I reckon I’ve carried everything without asking too many questions, including some stuff I’m not real proud of, but I love it out here and I’d do anything to keep my ship going,” he concluded simply.

Kelly found herself touched by Alexander’s condensed life story. She poured him a glass of wine to cover her embarrassment as he tilted the empty salad bowl towards himself, perhaps in hopes of spotting an olive at the bottom. Fortunately, the waitress appeared with the potato pancake and a new set of plates.

“The paella will be out in five minutes,” she informed them. “Can I bring you another bottle?”

“Yes,” they answered together, and shared a guilty smile. Alexander cut the tortilla de patata like it was a pie and slid a wedge onto Kelly’s plate with his knife before cutting himself a piece.

“How about you?” he asked. “How does one become an acting ambassador?”

“In my case, by getting kidnapped and settling contract disputes out of my own pocket,” Kelly replied. “But don’t let me give you the wrong impression, I love my job as much as you do yours. It’s just nothing like diplomacy was back on Earth. I guess the Stryx put an end to that along with your navy.”

“I often wondered why the nations of Earth never put together a space navy, to protect our common interests,” Alexander mused between bites of potato pancake washed down with wine. “I don’t suppose you EarthCenters know anything about that.”

“I’m afraid it’s never come up,” Kelly told him. “Maybe the Stryx figure that not having our own fleet will keep us out of trouble until we get to the point that we can handle it. I haven’t seen much of the advanced species at war, thank the stars, but I understand that some of them have ships that can destroy planetary systems. And the Stryx mastery of energy makes the advanced species all look like children.”

“Yeah. Pax Stryxa, the Earth forces veterans call it. Not that any of us are wishing for the old days, war is always messy.” He helped himself to another slice of the potato tortilla, serving Kelly at the same time. The saltiness kept the wine flowing.

“So, let’s say you were in my shoes, and you were the only government representation for the human merchants on the station. What would you tell them when they complained that smuggling is ruining their profits, and bad quality counterfeits are giving Earth products a bad name?” Kelly intentionally kept her tone light so he wouldn’t feel like she was attacking him.

“I may be an old sailor, but I know something about business as well. If I arrived with a cargo of legitimate Earth goods and rented a booth down in the Shuk to sell them cheaper than my neighbors, they would chase me out, even if they had to hire some rough boys to do the job for them. There’s no such thing as a free market. It’s all fixed one way or another.”

“That may be true,” Kelly admitted, “I don’t really know much about it. But if you were in my shoes, I’m sure that’s not what you’d be telling them.”

“Touche,” Alexander declared, and poured them both another glass. It seemed to be growing warmer in the restaurant, perhaps from the ovens or the growing crowd, Kelly reasoned.

“I would tell them to concentrate on the merchandise that doesn’t put Earth at a huge cost disadvantage to start,” Alexander continued. “Forget about anything made out of metal unless it requires skilled hand assembly, like a genuine wind-up watch. Anything else can be manufactured on the orbitals by dumb robots, the mechanicals. Space rocks come in one side and finished goods go out the other. It’s just stupid trying to compete with that in an open market. You’d need to have one of those branded luxury botiques on the retail deck.”

“That’s pretty much what I’ve told EarthCent myself, but isn’t there anything else we could do?”

“Well, human labor is pretty cheap, of course, so the price differential isn’t really that big on a lot of Earth goods at the factory gate. If you could get goods off the planet and to the markets without spending ten times as much on shipping as on manufacturing, things wouldn’t look so grim. I heard that a consortium is building a couple space elevators on Earth, which should make the price of getting goods up to ships much more affordable. But the main cost has always been the tunnel rates, so tell it to the Stryx.”

“I will tell them,” Kelly said thoughtfully, as the steaming paella arrived. “That smells delicious, Alexander. I’m glad you chose this place.”

“Wait until dessert,” he said slyly and winked his good eye. “You’ll be begging to take me home.”

“Actually, that could be a bit difficult. The door of my apartment has been increasingly reluctant to allow me admittance in recent weeks. A bit of confusion over the rental terms,” she explained. “I’m sort of camping in my office.”

“If you need a place, you’re welcome to come bunk in my ship,” he offered generously. “I’m on the station until I can scare up a new cargo.”

“Why, thank you, Alexander. And this tastes as good as it looks.”

Alexander refilled her glass and showed his teeth in a wolfish smile.

“Just so you know, there’s only one bunk on my ship, and it’s narrow.”

Eighteen

By the end of the fourth day of the tournament, Paul had worked his way up to the ninth overall seed based on total points. The bookies who had taken Joe’s money against long odds that the boy would finish in the top ten weren’t happy. The atmosphere in the gaming room was growing tense, and Jeeves privately suggested to Joe that they all spend some time looking through the junk piles at Mac’s Bones before the next evening’s play, to take Paul’s mind off the coming match.

So the next morning, Joe led Paul, Laurel, Jeeves and Beowulf into the back forty of the junkyard. First they passed between the piles and aisles of parts and sorted scrap that characterized the area around the ice harvester module, junk which Joe had catalogued over the last three years. The organized chaos soon gave way to unidentifiable sections of hulls which had been rudely cut into chunks that would fit between the floor and ceiling, and barriers formed of smaller items that may have been remnants of space collisions or individual parts and machines.

“Stay together and don’t climb over anything that looks like it could shift,” Joe warned Paul and Laurel. “If Beowulf whines, that means he hears or sees a problem, so stop what you’re doing and be prepared to jump clear. We’re looking for anything that looks whole, that might be saleable if Jeeves can identify it. I don’t need help identifying scrap for the smelter. Any questions?”

“Where will you and Jeeves be?” Paul asked.

“We’ll be working the wide passage here, with the compact stacks. It’s mainly stuff that’s been crushed already, so it won’t be very interesting, and we should get through it quickly. OK?” Beowulf nodded in agreement and herded the two youngsters towards a low mound of large items, as Joe followed Jeeves down the aisle.

“Such treasures,” Jeeves commented as he rolled between the stacks of smallish, crushed mystery craft, and mounds of random parts. “Let’s see. I don’t suppose you read Bentlian, do you?”

“Never even heard of it,” Joe admitted with a groan, preparing himself for a long morning.

“Not surprising. They either died out or left this galaxy over a million years ago. The plate on the drive unit there translates, ‘Change filter every five hundred and seventy point two light years.’ Is that useful?”

“No, Jeeves, it’s not.” Joe struggled not to let the robot know it could get under his skin at will. “I’m really just looking for a general identification of what this stuff is, I don’t care about the specifics or cultural references.”

“Then let’s get started. Bottom of this pile, junk, melt it down. Middle of the pile, junk. Top of the pile, wait, that might be interesting.” Jeeves paused, playing his sensor attachment over the length of the accordioned metal. “No, that’s junk too.”

Joe marked a big yellow “X” on the stack with his grease pencil, as Jeeves rolled to the next pile.

“Junk, junk, junk,” the robot proclaimed. “You’ve got yourself some real winners here.”

Joe marked a big yellow “X” on the second stack, and the Stryx rolled on.

“Junk, junk, junk.” Jeeves seemed to be taking perverse pleasure in the sound of the word, and didn’t even slow as he passed the stack. “Junk, junk, junk. Junk, junk, junk. Junk, junk, junk.”

Joe chased behind the robot, marking piles for processing as bulk. And in less than fifteen minutes, they finished with the section. Not surprisingly, the junkyard was turning out to be full of junk.

“Pretty much as I expected,” Joe commented as they headed back to where the kids were working. “I’ll start towing it out into the station’s cold parking area and building a raft that I can drag to one of the orbital factories, or maybe I’ll hire that job out. Thanks for the help.”

“Joe, Jeeves! Hurry up. Laurel’s found something!” Paul called as they rounded the corner. Even Beowulf seemed excited, barking in impatience as the man and the robot approached the object that the girl had uncovered.

Studded with convex glass lenses surrounding an obsidian door, it looked like a cross between an alien movie camera and a commercial oven. Laurel had just finished rubbing the grime off what looked like a control plate, which featured a large circular dial and a blinking green light. Whatever the thing was, it appeared to be functional.

“Stand back here,” Jeeves commanded, indicating a spot on the floor. “No, a little further back and a bit to the right. I’m pretty sure I know what this is.”

The three humans and the dog watched in rapt attention as the robot rolled up to the device, inspected it for a moment, and then produced a series of high-pitched whistles. The blinking green light turned to a solid blue, and Jeeves reached out with a pincer and twisted the dial to the left. A loud ticking began as the line on the dial began to march back towards its base position, and Jeeves rolled back to rejoin the group.

“It’s a time displacer, and it appears to still be working,” Jeeves announced. “I’ve set it to displace us thirty seconds into the past, just as a test.”

“A time displacer?” Paul asked. “Wow, I always thought time travel was impossible.”

“It’s one of the technologies the older Stryx decided not to discuss with humans,” Jeeves explained rapidly. “But seeing that you have the equipment right here, it doesn’t make sense to hide it from you. Five, four, three, two, one,” he counted down as the dial slowed and the clicking stopped.

A series of brilliant flashes happened so rapidly that Joe thought it might have been a single long flash that ran through all of the colors. There was no other sensation, and Beowulf, who was always sensitive to jumps and tunnel transferences, didn’t even whimper. For a moment, everyone stood frozen.

“It’s a time displacer, and it appears to still be working,” Jeeves proclaimed. “I’ve set it to displace us thirty seconds into the past, just as a test.”

The humans looked at each other in shocked silence, then Paul broke into laughter.

“Stop kidding around, Jeeves. I pulled the station time onto my heads-up right before that thing flashed us, and it hasn’t gone backwards.”

Joe and Laurel looked a little chagrined that they hadn’t thought of it, but Joe was actually relieved to find he didn’t have a time travel machine in the back yard, whatever it might have been worth.

“So what is it, really?” Laurel asked. Jeeves rolled forward, whistling in some alien language, and the door of the device dropped down to reveal a glowing blue cube. The robot removed it and brought it back to the waiting group.

“Wow,” Paul said, examining the perfect holographic portrait of the grouping. “Hey, you can only view it from the front!”

“Of course, it only receives the light through those lenses. A real holographic camera requires a traveling lens or a fully equipped lens chamber,” Jeeves explained. “The Dollnicks use these for passports on their own worlds. The cube collapses into a flat picture if you push on the sides. I wonder how it ended up here.”

“Is it worth anything?” Laurel asked. She was actually a little disappointed to learn that she hadn’t uncovered the first time machine seen by humans.

“It’s a great find,” Joe reassured her. “I’m sure somebody in the tourist mall will want it, though I suppose I’ll check with the Dollys first.”

“I’m going to find a real time machine,” Paul declared, and turned back to the pile. The four of them, with Beowulf looking on, worked until it was time to get ready for the tournament without finding anything else in working condition. But Joe pointed out that they only made it through around ten percent of the mystery piles, so there was plenty of junk left to investigate.

When they arrived at the tournament, Joe took his place as Paul’s second, standing behind his chair to protect him from distractions and to provide drinks and energy bars on demand. Under the rules of Nova, if Paul needed a bathroom break or otherwise wore down, Joe could step in and continue the game for him. But in practice, the brief transition period would result in certain loss, so the seconds were typically bodyguard types rather than skilled players.

Jeeves attended the tournament unofficially, in order to watch Paul play. Mature Stryx had little interest in games, probably because they saw the outcomes as either certainties or random events, neither of which was very interesting.  But Jeeves was neither mature nor typical, and he enjoyed rooting for Paul more than he valued the opportunity to make observations on how humans interacted with the game and their opponents.

As the intensity of the game picked up, Joe found himself polishing off a second bottle of the apple juice that he’d purchased for Paul at the official tournament snacks booth. Just watching the game play was enough to make the sweat pour out of him. The number of individual ship skirmishes the boy could control was staggering, but his alien opponent was up to the challenge. Several times a minute there would be a small flash as a ship was lost by one side or the other. But they were playing evenly, and the main forces were held aloof in preprogrammed formations, while the opponents waited for an opening to exploit.

“Juice,” Paul pronounced tersely, and Joe twisted the top off a fresh bottle and began to hand it forward. His knuckles and the bottle clunked into something metallic that shouldn’t have been there, so he drew back his hand, puzzled.

“What was that all about?” Jeeves spoke over Joe’s implants to avoid distracting Paul. “Are you trying to get my attention?”

“Not sure,” Joe replied, and watching his hand carefully, tried again to place the juice in the cup holder attached to the arm of Paul’s chair. He watched his hand approaching the tray attachment, and was just starting to relax his grip when he hit his knuckles on Jeeves again.

“Let go, I’ve got it,” Jeeves commanded, and took the bottle from Joe. “Now take a step back, hold your arms out straight from your shoulders, don’t argue, just do it. That’s right, now touch your nose with your forefinger. No, no, don’t bother closing your eyes.”

Joe felt just funny enough to follow the robot’s version of a sobriety test, and he moved with exaggerated slowness as he brought his right forefinger in to touch the tip of his nose, watching it all the way.

“There,” he said, just before poking the finger into his ear. “What the hell?”

“Paul hasn’t had any of that juice yet, has he?” Jeeves demanded.

“No, it takes the kid forever to get thirsty. He never breaks a sweat.”

“Good. Stay here, but don’t give him anything, and don’t eat or drink anything more yourself. I’ve got to shut down the concession stand and get word to the other seconds. Don’t go anywhere.”

A general announcement to the tournament’s registered seconds came in over Joe’s implants, warning against consumption of the apple juice and suggesting strongly that all human compatible items from the concession stand were suspect. The announcement passed without public notice, as none of the seconds wanted to risk distracting their players.

Joe was a bit woozy on his feet, but things started firming up after a minute or two and he tried the sobriety test again, this time poking himself in the eye. Half-way to full recovery, he thought, and waited for another minute while studying the room for suspicious activity. Then he tried again, this time guiding his finger to his nose, and then a second time, with his eyes closed.

Whatever the drug was, it wore off as quickly as it took effect, the ideal weapon to use against a gamer. Joe imagined that he had drunk much more in a shorter period of time than Paul would have, so the effect on the boy would have been less marked. The dose might have caused him to fumble a few maneuvers and make things worse trying to correct them, all of which could have been attributed to cracking under pressure.

Jeeves returned with a different brand of apple juice he had obtained from somewhere and gave it to Joe to place in Paul’s drink holder. “I had a maintenance bot bring all the bottles from a machine in the next corridor,” he explained. “It hasn’t been serviced in weeks, so it will be safe. Whoever pulled this trick couldn’t have prepositioned the adulterated bottles or plenty of people would have noticed.”

“Thank you, Jeeves. That was a close call. It’s a good thing I’m such a juice head.”

Three hours later, the star went nova and Paul won on points, advancing to the semifinals.