Date Night on Union Station (6 page)

Seven

None of the mercenaries who had fought behind Joe’s leadership would have believed he could ever be so nervous, but speaking to a roomful of children was not the sort of challenge he relished. He was only there because Paul had practically begged Joe to appear as his parent or guardian for the career show-and-tell, one of the group classes the Stryx offered so the children could socialize.

Despite Paul’s usual shyness, he was eager to introduce his stand-in parent to the class, and Joe waited his turn in the corridor for Paul to come out and get him. The door slid open and a well-dressed woman stumbled out, swabbing the sweat from her face with a handkerchief.

“That was brutal,” she muttered to Joe. “It made my dissertation defense seem like a cake walk.”

“What do you do,” he asked her curiously.

“I’m an astrophysicist with the Stryx singularity prediction labs,” she answered with a groan. “The questions those kids ask. Nobody warned me. Well, the shoe will be on the other foot when my little angels come looking for dinner tonight!”

Joe wilted a little, and began to wonder how mad Paul could really get if he just made a run for it. He was shifting his weight to the balls of his feet when the door slid open again and he saw Paul’s face.

“Hey Joe, what are you doing? It’s time,” he said and made a beckoning gesture.

Joe drew himself up, squared his shoulders, and followed Paul into the class. It turned out to be a friendly-looking room with some sort of grass on the floor, he couldn’t tell if it was real or fake. There were more than forty kids there, ages ranging from around eight to fourteen, along with at least twenty little robots of a type he had either never seen or never paid attention to before. Paul led him to the front of the room and launched right into his introduction.

“This is Joe. He’s been filling in for my parents since I was eight. I live with him in the crew module of an ice harvester down at Mac’s Bones, which he won in a card game. He teaches me how to use all sorts of cool tools, like torches and molecular shears. He’s not going to give a speech like that physicist, so you can just ask him questions and stuff. Joe?

“Hi, kids,” Joe began, trying to sound confident and ending up almost yelling. “Uh, Paul has told me how great the school is and how hard you all work. He already told you that I own Mac’s Bones, so that makes me a sort of a recycling engineer,” he added on the spur of the moment, hoping that would keep him from being entirely outclassed by the other parents. “Any questions?”

Every hand in the room shot up, including some metallic ones, and for the second time in as many minutes, Joe fought a sudden impulse to flee. He stared at the sea of eager little faces for a moment, and then thought he recognized a small girl and pointed in her direction.

“How much do you make selling junk?” she demanded. Joe recognized too late the older of the two flower girls.

“Uh, it varies a lot from cycle to cycle. And sometimes I get paid for doing nothing, like last cycle when I got twenty-five hundred Stryx creds as an order cancellation settlement.”

“Wow!” Blythe marveled. “That’s a lot!”

“And of course, I mainly do barter,” Joe added in relief, thinking this might not be so bad after all.

“Barter is better,” the kids all answered in chorus, and the hands shot back up again.

“Yes, in the front there, with the green hair.”

“How long did you have to go to school to become a recycling engineer?” asked a gangly looking boy who was around the same age as Paul.

“Yeah, about that, uh, I’m, uh, self-taught. Next question?”

“Did you ever find a dead body in an old spaceship?” asked a little boy, his eyes round with excitement. All of the children ooh’ed.

“Uh, no,” Joe lied, figuring it was just a white lie since they were asking about the junk business and not his fighting career. But there was a collective exhale of disappointment from the class, so he embellished a little. “But I’ve had to clean up my share of sudden decompressions stains.” The kids all ooh’ed again, and up came the hands.

“Yes, with the black hat.”

“Why is it called Mac’s Bones?”

“Oh. Well, Mac is me, my whole name is Joe McAllister. And bones is sort of a tradition from Earth, where junkyards were often called boneyards, because they are full of the bones of old vehicles. Does that make sense?”

“Are you married?” asked a little girl in the moment of silence that followed.

“Uh, no, I’m not married,” Joe answered, and looked for another hand to pick, but the little girl was too fast.

“Why not?”

“I, uh, I just never found the right woman. Or maybe she never found me,” Joe stumbled through the explanation.

“Do you have any children, other than Paul I mean?” asked another girl without waiting to be picked.

“I, no, Paul’s it right now.”

“Don’t you LIKE children?” asked a different little boy.

“Uh, yeah. Of course I like children,” answered Joe, who was beginning to sense that the kids were circling like sharks, or maybe piranhas. “My dog likes children too.”

“Ooh, you have a dog? What’s his name? How big is he? Has he bitten any robbers?”

“His name is Beowulf, but I call him Killer. He’s about as big as I am, but he’s shaped differently. He hasn’t bitten any robbers because they run like crazy as soon as they see him.”

“Why didn’t you bring the dog with you?” asked a little girl.

“When I’m here, he has to guard the junkyard,” Joe explained.

“Oh,” the children all chorused in disappointment. A few of them eyed Joe speculatively, as if they were thinking of requesting a personnel change, but apparently that fell outside the guidelines of proper conduct for a parental show-and-tell. Joe noticed again that some of the little robots had a pincer raised, so he pointed in the direction of a couple of them and said, “Yes? The little robot, er, Stryx in front?”

“If you’re in the recycling business, why do people call it junk?” asked the little robot in the squeakiest, most mechanical voice Joe had ever heard coming from a Stryx.

“Ah, that’s a good question. I guess we call it junk because when it comes to me, it’s because nobody wants it any more, or they don’t want to spend the money and time to make it into something they could easily sell. I usually buy stuff for the scrap value, what I can sell the materials for after taking stuff apart, but sometimes I’ll pay more or barter for something that I can fix up.”

“Thank you,” the little robot responded, and Joe pointed to the Stryx behind it.

“How do you ensure that the ships and equipment you buy aren’t stolen?”

“Oh, uh, that’s a good question too,” Joe replied automatically to gain time. “I, uh, well, for entire ships, I always check with the station library to see if they’re listed as stolen, but most of the galactic civilizations don’t code the individual parts, so if the markings on the hull are painted over and the ship’s transponder is gone, I’m sort of in the dark. But you have to remember that the salvage value is pretty low for most of this stuff and there’s not a lot of local demand, so it doesn’t make sense for criminals and pirates to steal things just to sell them for scrap.

“Thank you,” the second little robot responded, and Joe reluctantly pointed at the third.

“Do you buy some things without knowing what they are?”

“All the time,” he answered, relieved to get a softball question. “Some of the junk I get has been in space so long that even the station library doesn’t recognize the language stamped on the parts. And sometimes I get stuff that comes from outside of Stryx space. Junk has a way of moving around.”

“But what if you cut into a gravitational vortex mine leftover from the Founding War, or opened a tri-folded universe that sucked in the whole station, or even the whole galaxy?” the little Stryx followed up. All the children ooh’ed again, and Joe would have sworn that the little robots sat up a little straighter as well.

“I, uh, I try to be careful,” Joe answered lamely. “Besides, anybody who could seal up a galaxy-eating thingy in a can probably wouldn’t lose track of it, and I doubt it would be anything I could cut open either. Little children, er, young Stryx, shouldn’t worry about things like that. It can give you nightmares.”

“Well, that’s time,” Paul exclaimed, coming to Joe’s rescue. “If anybody wants to come meet Beowulf, just ask me later and I’ll bring him out to the park.”

“Thank you, Mr. Joe,” the children chorused.

“Thank you, kids,” Joe replied, giving a weak wave and practically running for the exit. It wasn’t until he was in the corridor that he realized how relieved he was to be out of the room. A woman with a collapsible easel and a stack of posters, the first of which showed a large pie chart, was waiting in the hall.

“Rough audience, huh?” she asked sympathetically. “What do you do?”

“I’m a recycling, I mean, junk man.”

“Oh, kids like stuff like that. Do you have a dog?”

Joe nodded in the affirmative.

“I wish we had a dog,” the woman continued mournfully. “I’m an economic historian. How am I going to explain monetary policy and fiat currency to kids who believe that barter is better?”

The door slid open, a little girl came out, and she looked up and down the hall.

“Where’s Daddy?” the girl asked the woman.

“Daddy ran away,” her mother answered grimly, then she picked up her easel and followed her daughter into the room.

Eight

Armed with twenty creds from petty cash, Kelly installed her nose plugs, snorted through them once or twice to activate the filters, and set off for the importers market. The embassy had recently been inundated by complaints from human merchants that the station was being flooded with counterfeit kitchen gadgets, and even worse, that they were junk. So not only were the legitimate merchants getting undercut on pricing, they were worried that Earth’s carefully nurtured brand value was being destroyed.

The humans on Union Station referred to the importers market as the “Shuk”, after the famous Jerusalem market with its piles of goods and noisy, often aggressive, vendors. But the Shuk was probably the busiest meeting point for species that could tolerate the atmosphere on the deck, with or without the aid of filters, and human vendors occupied less than five percent of the floor area.

There were no corridors or rooms in the Shuk. The deck was wide open except for the structural members, or spokes, that pierced the floor and ceiling at regular intervals on all of the decks. Food stalls were mixed in amongst the dry goods and vendors selling everything from clothing and rugs to advanced weaponry. But for the main part, the Shuk vendors specialized in selling imported goods from their home worlds to buyers from other species.

Even the least observant visitor to the human area of the Shuk would quickly realize that the main products for sale were gadgets and games. As a backwards world only recently arrived on the galactic stage, Earth couldn’t export any high technology products, since they looked like crude antiques in comparison to the poorest offerings from the next world up the pecking order.

But the galaxy was full of game players, and it turned out that human war games translated well to many cultures. And then there were the flashy kitchen gadgets, a phenomenon unique to Earth that had caught the eyes and imaginations of many species.

Kelly heard that the most complicated and expensive gadgets had even started selling to aliens who didn’t eat, in any normal sense of the word. Some saw the gleaming stainless steel hardware with gears, spinning handles and pincers as a form of primitive artwork, others might have been purchasing can openers as torture devices. The important thing was that Earth had finally begun to move towards a more balanced trade, but it was being undermined by counterfeits.

Kelly quickly located the stand of Peter Hadad, one of the Earth Merchants Council members who had attended the meeting at the embassy the previous week. Peter was the proprietor of Kitchen Kitsch, a sprawling collection of shelves and tables manned by his extended family, including at least one daughter who obviously shared his lung capacity.

“Can openers, bottle openers, cork screws and juicers. That’s right, Kitchen Kitsch has them all at the best prices on the station. Did I say on the station? I meant in the galaxy. Come see the miraculous egg slicer in action, Kitchen Kitsch offers demonstrations every ten minutes on the hour. Can openers, can openers, can openers.” The girl’s sharp alto cut through her tenor and bass competition like a Ginsu knife through a tin can.

“Hi there, I’m Kelly Frank from the Embassy,” Kelly introduced herself to the waif of admirable volume. The girl was short like her father, with the same black hair, black eyes and a humorous, animated face. Her colorful garb might have been a traditional costume from an old Earth nation, or it could have been assembled from closeout pieces bought on the cheap. Nobody would know the difference.

“I’m Shaina,” the girl replied, and she bumped Kelly with an outstretched elbow, apparently intended as friendly greeting. “My dad told me to watch for you. He’s down on the docking deck trying to clear up some problems with a shipment, so I’ll be taking you around if that’s OK.”

“I’m sure that will be fine,” Kelly said with a smile. “I’m not taking you away from the business?”

“Briiiiiiindaaaaaa,” the young woman called, and a girl who could have been a clone who left the vat one or two years after Shaina appeared out of nowhere. “You’re on, girl. I’m taking the diplomat lady around on a counterfeits tour.”

Brinda grinned happily, threw Kelly an elbow, and started right in with the same piercing alto. “Nutcrackers, nutcrackers, nutcrackers. Kitchen Kitsch has the best collection of genuine Earth nutcrackers this side of the universe. Whisks great and small. Whisk your eggs, whisk your potatoes, we have them all. Nutcrackers, nutcrackers, nutcrackers.”

Shaina led Kelly away through the labyrinthine paths between piles of goods, formal stalls, and random collections of display cases and tables. One of the obvious differences between the Union Station Shuk and its outdoor equivalents on worlds around the galaxy was the lack of inclement weather. Without that threat, there was no need for roofs, or for walls to support them.

Security wasn’t necessary when the Shuk was closed as the Stryx offered zoned motion alarms throughout the deck, backed up by cameras and maintenance bots. The sharp-eyed vendors were proof against most shoplifters when the market was open, so the main theft problem was pickpockets operating in the thick press of the crowds during the high traffic periods.

“I’m sure my father told you that we police ourselves against counterfeits,” Shaina began her explanation of the situation. “There are plenty of humans here who would happily sell the junk for a quick profit, but we run them off if they try it.”

Although there were no barriers or lines on the floor, it was obvious when they crossed the border between the human area of the Shuk into the next section, which happened to be populated by Dollnick merchants. As they penetrated deeper into the narrow alleys formed by the vertical carousels favored by Dollnicks for displaying merchandise, Kelly’s translation implant was overwhelmed by the ceaseless cries of the vendors, and eventually it reached its noise limit and stopped trying. Without the translation and simultaneous cancellation, it sounded to Kelly like they were striding through a tropical jungle pierced by birdcalls and screeching monkeys.

Shaina moved a little closer to Kelly as they walked and pitched her voice lower, so she wouldn’t be competing directly with the higher frequency chatter.  “But the aliens, some of them only care about making a quick score off the tourist trade. Pretty much any non-humans you see selling Earth products are selling fakes. It’s only in the retail stores on the residential decks that you’ll find legitimate Earth stuff in alien-owned stores, and even then, sometimes it’s just higher quality fakes.”

They halted in front of one of the vertical carousels and Shaina grabbed the edge of a shelf, which brought the slow revolutions to a halt. A dazzling collection of shiny devices that Kelly wouldn’t have recognized in a kitchen were displayed on trays, along with the blue/green globe logo that was the trademarked emblem of the Earth Export League.

“Here, try this,” Shaina suggested, handing Kelly a complex mechanism that looked a little like two spoons with raised spikes in their bowls, held apart from each other in a heavy “U” shaped guide with a wheel on the end like an ancient printing press.

“Uh, what is it?” Kelly hefted the device in both hands, not even sure how to hold it.

“It’s a nutcracker, of course. Don’t you like nuts? Here, try this one. I keep my pockets full for our demos.”

Kelly accepted the hefty Brazil nut, studied the nutcracker, and finally placed the nut between the two opposing spoons. “Is that it?” she asked, as the tall Dollnick vendor, attracted by the halted carousel, appeared at her side. A couple of other shoppers stopped to look on as well, since visiting the Shuk was as much about entertainment as shopping.

“Yup. Now hold the handles of the spoony things in one hand and turn the wheel with the other.”

Kelly turned the wheel, which thanks to the fine threading on the screw, went quite easily. But rather than cracking the nut open, the two spoons slowly deformed as if they were melting in high heat or being manipulated by a mentalist.

“That’s enough lady!” Kelly froze at the bellow as her translation implant came back to life. The giant Dollnick was glowering down at her. At least, she hoped it was only glowering. “You broke it, you buy it.”

Kelly reflexively let go of the failed nutcracker with one hand and began fishing in her pouch for money, but Shaina elbowed her way past and jabbed a finger up into the chest of the Dollnick, who towered over her.

“Now you listen to me, you seller of schlock. You’re giving all of us merchants a bad name with your counterfeit trash,” she ripped into the vendor, all this with her head tilted back as far as her neck would allow so she could stare him in the face. “Show me your Dolly license. NOW!”

The Dollnick who had appeared ready to eat Kelly for lunch now backed away, crossing all four of his arms in front of his chest in a gesture of pacification.

“I didn’t realize she was with you, Hadad,” he pleaded. “I don’t want any trouble with you. I just bought this stuff at the docks. The ship captain assured me that it was all genuine Earth cargo.”

“Like hell,” Shaina snarled at the Dollnick, jutting out her elfin chin. “I’m making a citizen’s confiscation for station management. Do you want to make something of it? Do you?”

The Dollnick mumbled something about “Stryx pets,” and hastily reactivated the carousel to carry the rest of the counterfeit kitchen gadgets on the shelf out of view, but he didn’t protest when Shaina tapped Kelly on the arm and motioned her away.

“You have to keep them off balance,” the girl explained to Kelly as they continued their inspection tour. “The Dollnicks live in a rigidly hierarchical society based on traditional combat, though I’ve heard it has as much to do with putting on a show as with actually fighting to the death. In any case, they only challenge each other when they are confident of victory, so they aren’t very good at up-close confrontations with other species who are used to getting in each other’s faces.”

“You mean that hulking monster backed off because he thought you were going to beat him up?” Kelly asked incredulously.

“I’m sure he didn’t think it so much as feel it in his bones, that’s how social conditioning works.” Shaina broke into a wide smile. “Maybe I would have gotten away with a knee kick and toppled him. They come from a low-gravity planet so they aren’t as stable as they look. We learned some pretty good tricks in Stryx school.”

“You know, this nutcracker thing really looked like it could break rocks before I started turning the screw,” Kelly commented. She held it up for a closer look as they wound their way through the Dollnick stands.

“That’s just the problem,” Shaina sputtered angrily, as she took the mangled nutcracker from Kelly and bent back one of the spoons to retrieve the hard nut. “We sell the same nutcracker, except ours is really imported from old Sweden, and you can crack rocks with it. Of course, it costs us more than ten times as much as this fake made out of pot metal with a twenty-atom-thick layer of chrome. That Dolly would have offered it for five creds, maybe settled for two, while the real thing costs us six creds wholesale!”

“Who would buy from him a second time?”

“Nobody, but he doesn’t care because only tourists would buy his garbage in the first place, and they aren’t coming back again anyway. No, that’s not entirely true either, because a lot of the aliens buying fancy mechanical gadgets are just using them as decorations. If you hung this thing on the wall and never touched it, it would hold up just fine. Oh, these are great,” Shaina interrupted herself, grabbing at a shelf displaying wrist watches, one of the many glittering carousels in what looked like a high-end jewelry shop.

“Oh, those are beautiful. I wish I could afford something like that.” Kelly pictured herself with one of the watches on her wrist while she was wearing her black dress, and sighed.

The girl gave Kelly a curious look of pity, though whether it was for her financial situation or her ignorance of prices, Kelly wasn’t sure. “Anybody can afford one of these watches. They’re brilliant, and they aren’t copies. Try one on.”

“But I thought that mechanical wrist watches were one of the few exports we had that were entirely safe from counterfeits. Libby told me that with all the little gears and springs, it’s just not worth the effort for advanced civilizations that don’t have any similar technology or skills to use for a starting point. But look, there’s no watch face on any of these, you can even see all of the internal parts working,” Kelly exclaimed as she modeled one on her wrist.

“That watch looks like it was made for you, human,” boomed the voice of a Dollnick who, at nearly twice Kelly’s height, made the last vendor look like a child. “For a friend of the little one, I will make you a price of fifty creds.”

Kelly shook her head sadly, thinking of the twenty creds she had taken from petty cash to buy fakes, and the three creds in small coins in her pouch, which were all she had to her name until payday.

“Hey Rupe,” Shaina greeted the giant, whose mass must have been greater than that of her entire family, with plenty of neighbors thrown in. “Make it two creds and I’ll buy it for her.”

“Two creds! You would steal the food from my nestlings, little one. Perhaps I could come down to forty creds, since your friend and the watch are so obviously suited to each other.”

“Forty creds would buy a gross of those watches,” the girl countered, her eyes smiling joyously. “Do you want I should get a batch and go into the business? But I do agree that the band matches her hair, so I would consider offering you two and a half creds.”