Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2) (16 page)

“Can you snip the fabric and free him?” I asked my phone.

“No pro-bl
é
-mo.”

My phone must have picked that phrase up from an old movie—or from Chit. Crap. I’d forgotten about Chit completely. She wasn’t going to be happy about being left out, since she could have buzzed in and spotted Mike in seconds.

“Got it,” said my phone.

“Thanks,” said Mike. “Now I can move my leg, not that I’m going anywhere.”

“The fire department says the heavy-left jack will be available in an hour or so,” I said.

“It might be sooner than that,” said my phone.

“What do you mean?”

“Check the parking lot,” my phone replied. “I called as soon as I heard you needed heavy lift capability.”

I turned to look. A flatbed eighteen-wheeler marked “Wide Load” and decorated with pink Dauushan planetary flags was just pulling in. Tom
á
so and another, even larger member of the consulate’s staff were aboard. With nine sub-trunks each to grab the slab and enough muscle to shift it easily, the two elephant-sized diplomats moved the slab out of the way without more debris falling from the floor above. Tom
á
so lifted the Model-43’s service door off Mike’s upper body and Mike got to his feet on his own. He spotted his phone blinking on the edge of a pile of dust a few feet away and put it in his pocket. Too bad it hadn’t been closer.

Mike was covered in black feedstock powder, but was able to walk out under his own power. He thanked Tom
á
so and the larger Dauushan before turning and spotting CiCi. The two of them ran toward each other in a romantic, choreographed, slow motion dance. I could almost hear the schmaltzy theme music. When they intersected, a puff of black feedstock powder rose above them. I turned my head away when they started kissing. The paramedics were hovering, waiting to check out Mike, but CiCi seemed to be doing a thorough job of that herself.

“Thanks,” I said to my phone, via the feed from CiCi’s phone. I also thanked Tom
á
so and his associate personally.

Tom
á
so didn’t hug me—and I was grateful. He introduced me to the other, even larger Dauushan, whose name was Di
á
go. The three of us chatted for a few minutes. This was Di
á
go’s first time on Terra. He was the head of Queen Sherrhi’s security team and had worked with Tom
á
so for many years. The Queen had arrived on Monday evening, along with a sizable—no pun intended—entourage and Di
á
go had been up to his three huge elephant ears in logistical details. His top deputy was currently on duty, so Di
á
go was glad to take a break and see new Terran scenery away from the Ad Astra complex. I got the distinct impression that Tom
á
so may have worked
for
Di
á
go sometime in the past. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time someone being guarded had fallen in love with her bodyguard.

When our conversation ended and I stepped away from the Dauushans, Clarisse approached.

“CiCi was right,” she said, tipping her firefighter’s hat. “You
are
resourceful.”

A voice by our feet spoke up.

“
He’s
resourceful? Who do you think
did all the work?”

Clarisse laughed. I picked up my phone and hugged it as best I could with all its squirming legs.

“Hey,” said my phone, concerned for its dignity. I snapped it onto its usual spot on my belt.

Clarisse shook my hand, thanked me for my help—and my phone’s—and walked purposely toward her engine to arrange for the arson investigation. Her team was already taping off the building’s entrances. It would be unsafe to enter until the integrity of the remaining structure had been confirmed.

Tomáso pulled me off to one side for a semi-private conversation,
shielded, in part, by his own bulk.

“Do you think this is the work of Columbia Brown?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “or one of her henchmen. I think it’s a payoff on the threats directed at Jean-Jacques.”

Tom
á
so moved his huge head up and down slowly. “Odds are good,” he said.

I nodded, too.

“What about the inscription photos and translation details I sent you last night?”

“The inscription is identical to the one my associates found on the capsule in the mud wallows at Willow Bay State Park,” he said, “though your translation was a little off from the one we received from a noted scholar on Nicós. The details on how to program the plague’s bio-cybernetic nanoparticles were different.”

“I’d trust your scholar’s version over Professor Murriym’s,” I said. “At least in this case. Niaowla thought the inscriptions were a practical joke, so she may have taken liberties when she made her translation.”

“That makes sense,” said Tom
á
so, his large mouth smiling. “I wonder if Columbia Brown’s side got a second opinion.”

“Let’s hope not,” I said. “Confusion to the enemy.”

“Because they’ve done a good job confusing us and turnabout is fair play,” said Tom
á
so.

“Right,” I said. “And by the way, thanks for the electronic picture frame.”

“What electronic picture frame?”

So much for
that
theory.

Tomáso put three sub-trunks around my shoulders and gently guided me back toward my van. My phone directed the octovacs to follow, open my van’s back doors, hop in, close the doors, and deactivate. I climbed into the driver’s seat and caught my breath for a moment.

I heard a knocking sound from my backpack tool bag so I unsnapped an outside pocket and removed Chit’s bottle. My little friend opened it, climbed out, and perched on the dashboard, wearing a design on her wing cases that looked like Hello Kitty. Was that her equivalent of pajamas?

Chit rubbed her compound eyes with both forelegs. She shifted her thorax in a peculiar way and if she’d had lungs instead of spiracles I would have sworn she’d just yawned.

My seat was feeling particularly comfortable and I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Yawns are contagious.

“I stayed up too late watching Turner Classic Movies,” said Chit. “Some real good ones, from forty-five years ago.”

“You mean back in the far off days of nineteen eighty-five?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “
The Breakfast Club
is one weird movie.”

“That it is,” I said.

“But the dream I had last night was almost a nightmare.”

“Do tell?” I put my hand over my mouth. I didn’t want Chit to think she was boring me.

“Instead of a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal in detention, I dreamed it was three humans, a Tigrammath, a Pyr, a Pâkk and a Murm having breakfast at Waffle House.”

“That wasn’t a dream,” I said, struggling to stay awake.

My phone pulled on my shirt.

“What?” I said. “I’m just resting my eyes.”

“Pomy’s plane lands in less than an hour.”

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.

I was supposed to pick up Poly’s sister!

So much for any chance to wash my van.

Why would my phone take the initiative to call Tom
á
so, but wouldn’t tell my van to start driving to the airport?

“Seat belt,” said my van.

Oh.

My van took off at slightly less than hovercar speeds and headed for Hartsfield. We should arrive just in time for me to be waiting to greet Poly’s sister at the top of the escalators. Maybe I could grab half an hour’s sleep while my van did the driving. I closed my eyes.

“So, buddy boy,” said Chit, sounding more awake. “What did I miss?”

Chapter 18

“If I never saw another airport again, I’d be happy!”
— Emm Gryner

I have a love-hate relationship with airports. On the one hand, I love the sense of possibility, the potential to launch myself into new adventures, to boldly go somewhere I’ve never been before, to seek out strange, well, anyway, they’re gateways to exciting new places and experiences. On the other hand, they’re loud and crowded and filled with queues of people, humans and Galactics, who would rather be home or at their destinations, instead of stuck in hellish terminals known for overpriced stores, unappetizing food, and cryptic public address system announcements.

If you’re the one traveling, there are thousands of indignities to deal with, from humorless, false sense of security agents, to restrooms that smell like piles of T
ō
don dung left in the sun too long. Waits are interminable, chairs are uncomfortable, and overbookings are unconscionable.

If you’re meeting a flight, you have to be cordoned off away from
real
travelers and aren’t allowed out to the gates where you can greet people as they arrive. My grandmother said that when she was young, her mother and father would be waiting at the gate when the plane doors opened every time she came home from college. Hugs and happy chattering made returning to the main terminal to get her bags a delight. Now, family goodbyes are just a prelude to an hour-long line for document inspection and tearful reunions have to wait until
after
travelers are released from the “secure zone.”

Airports can be hell, and the domestic arrivals area at Hartsfield leveraged that metaphor to the hilt. Travelers ride on shuttle trains from terminal to terminal, forced to make this stage of their journey in cattle car-like “barges,” guided by a single-minded Charon whose limited vocabulary only includes phrases like “Now approaching Terminal D.” Once escaping passengers reach the limbo of the shuttle’s Baggage Claim station, giant escalators carry them, and hordes of others, up slowly ascending stairs to light and air and hope and, for some, a smiling face.

I pasted a smile on my own face as I waited for Poly’s sister Pomy to arrive. It turned out that I hadn’t needed to hurry. Pomy’s flight from Rome to New York had been on time, but the second leg, from New York to Atlanta, was delayed half an hour. Pomy had spent a semester in Rome, working on a dig near the Forum, according to a Galnet search I did on the way to the airport. She had been in the Eternal City as part of her joint doctoral program in classical languages and archeology at Oxford.

My girlfriend Poly’s first name is really Polyhymnia. She was named for the Greek muse of sacred poetry, hymns, dance and eloquence. She’d told me on our first date that her name was pronounced like Polly, but spelled Poly, like polytechnic or polymer. Her younger sister, born thirteen months later, is Melpomene, named for the Greek muse of tragedy and singing. Her nickname, Pomy, rhymes with “mommy,” not “foamy.” Poly’s father, Pericles Agamemnon Jones, is the Marcus Aurelius Endicott Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at Harvard, which helps explain his daughters’ names. Poly said her dad wanted to collect a full set of nine Muses, but her mother drew the line at two.

I couldn’t understand why someone whose parents had saddled him with two odd names would do the same to his children, but perhaps it would come up in conversation.

Poly had sent me a family photograph, so I’d know who to look for. The photo was from a few years back. Poly and Pomy looked like they were still in high school. It was one of those formally posed pictures where the father, as
paterfamilias,
was seated, with the women in his life arrayed around him. Dr. Jones was wearing a dark suit and his wife and daughters were in long, matching jewel-tone chiton dresses. Poly was in emerald, the same shade as the dress she’d worn on our first date. Her sister was in sapphire and her mother wore a ruby shade so dark it was almost garnet. Barbara Keen’s right hand rested on her husband’s shoulder. Was it put there because the professional photographer told her to, or were there control dynamics at work as well? Time would tell.

Poly and Pomy looked enough alike that I expected they were frequently mistaken for identical twins. Both were tall and lithe with auburn-red hair. Poly’s was straight and shoulder-length, while her sister’s hair was much longer. I couldn’t tell how long it actually was because the photo was one of those static, American Gothic, face-the-camera shots. Poly’s smile was confident, but Pomy’s smile sparkled, as if she knew secrets she wasn’t telling. Whatever the answer, the picture was old. A lot could change.

I didn’t think I’d have any difficulty spotting Pomy, however. She looked too much like Poly, though she’d probably be disheveled and exhausted after an international flight from Rome to JFK, and the shorter hop from New York to Atlanta.

All that being said, I almost didn’t recognize her. Pomy bounced off the top of the escalator, radiating energy. Her hair was cut to the same shoulder length as Poly’s, but more stylishly, to my uneducated eye. Maybe it’s layering? She was tanned, or as tanned as redheads tend to get. Pomy was wearing khaki shorts—the kind you’d wear on an archaeological dig, but new and clean—and a thin, white, cotton button-front shirt with several buttons undone at the neck. A necklace of small, variegated Nic
ó
sn shells rested on her collarbone and the straps of a brown canvas backpack were over her shoulders.

My eyes went wide when I figured it out and recognized Pomy. Then I was nearly knocked off my feet by her reaction when
she
recognized
me.
I had stepped around the stanchions and ribbons of fabric separating the waiting area from the space at the top of the escalators and had extended my hand to shake Pomy’s when she took a running start, crossed the fifteen feet between us, and gave me a hug that was right up there with the enthusiastic embraces I’d received from Dree.

Pomy’s hug was different, though. She wasn’t a puppy-like carnivorous plant. Pomy was a
very
healthy young woman and the way she squeezed herself against me made it clear she was glad to see me. My ribs didn’t appreciate her enthusiasm. She rested her head on my shoulder and didn’t seem to be in any hurry to end her embrace. My face started to turn red, so I disengaged and took two steps back.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello, handsome,” said Pomy, showing her sparkling smile. I noticed that she had amazingly cute freckles across the bridge of her nose, and wondered if Poly would have them too, if she got more sun.

“Did you have a good flight?” I asked, keeping her at more than arm’s length.

“It was
great,
Jack,” she said. “It’s
so
nice to finally meet you. Poly’s told me so
much
about you.”

“She has?” I said.

“Of course,” said Pomy, her eyes twinkling. “Sisters talk, you know.”

“Okay,” I said. My cheeks were still red. “I’m surprised Poly’s had much time for conversation. She’s been really busy.”

“We trade texts,” said Pomy. She stepped closer, put her hand on my forearm, then slid it down to take my hand. “Now be a dear and take me to where I can find my bags.”

“Ummmm… okay,” I said. I gently extricated my hand and guided her toward the South Baggage Claim. “It’s this way.”

We found the carousel where the bags from her flight would be arriving and waited until Pomy’s claim checks turned yellow, which meant her bags were within thirty feet. I lugged two large bags and a smaller one over to where she was waiting. Each time I carried a bag, Pomy made a comment about how strong I was and used it as an excuse to put her hand on my arm again. She touched a claim check to the appropriate bag tracking tag as I delivered them. When each check had turned from yellow to green we had everything and could leave the baggage claim area.

My phone told my van to circle by passenger pickup and I maneuvered both large roller bags out to the curb while Pomy carried the small one. I loaded the three pieces of luggage into the back of my van and sent it back out to the airport’s waiting area.

We wandered over to the main terminal’s rotunda to see the fifty-foot skeleton of a juvenile Dauushan
Pseudophuschiasaurus
on exhibit, a loan from the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. Dauush once had its own age of extra-extra-large sized dinosaur-like creatures and they’d overtaken the Terran variety in the public imagination.

“Your dad’s flight from Boston isn’t due for over an hour,” I said. “Would you like to have a late lunch? Dinner’s not until eight.”

“That would be lovely,” said Pomy. “My stomach doesn’t know what time zone it’s in and it’s the fashionable dining hour in Rome.”

“Great,” I said. “Where would you like to eat?”

I waved my arm to indicate the restaurants surrounding the rotunda.

Pomy didn’t say anything. She just smiled mischievously and pointed up, over our heads. Five years ago, the top of Hartsfield’s main terminal rotunda had been remodeled to add an intimate rotating restaurant called the Aerie. It had three hundred and sixty degree views of all the takeoffs and landings at the airport and the spaceport. It also had great views of the Atlanta skyline. I’d read that you could even see the dome of Stone Mountain off to the northeast. After dark, it was considered one of the top two most romantic places to eat in Atlanta. Poly and I had already dined at the number one spot—a river view table at the Teleport Inn. It seemed like an odd request, but this was Poly’s sister and I wanted to be a good host.

“We can see if they can fit us in without a reservation,” I said, “or if they’re even open.”

“I looked it up,” said Pomy. “They open at noon and don’t take reservations on weekdays before five. It’s a Wednesday afternoon. How busy can they be?”

“Won’t it take too long?”

“They have a forty-five minutes or less ‘make your flight’ menu during the day,” said Pomy.

“We can give it a try,” I said, hiding my reluctance as Pomy led us to the Aerie’s special elevator.

She
had
done her research.

Of course, the
ma
î
tre d’
had no trouble finding us a table for two by a window. They were
all
by windows and the place wasn’t busy. Only half a dozen parties were visible on this side of the circular restaurant.

Our waiter—and he was definitely an old school
waiter
in a black suit and white shirt, not a server—seated Pomy. I sat down across from her and nodded my thanks. He handed us menus, filled our water glasses, and moved thirty degrees to spinward around the circumference to check on other patrons and give us time to figure out what we wanted. Our view was currently looking out at one of the busy main runways and its associated feeder taxiways. The planes were lined up like kids waiting for tickets to a Rolling Stones reunion concert on the Moon. For octogenarians, Mick and Keith can still rock.

Pomy flipped to the back of the menu, then reached out and stroked her fingers across the back of my hand. I froze.

“Would you have a glass of chianti with me?” she said. “I always have a glass with lunch in Rome and I hate to drink alone.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t drink. Feel free to have one yourself, though. I’ll enjoy it vicariously.”

“That’s no way to live, Jack,” she said. “May I call you Jack?”

“Sure.”

“And you can call me Pomy, or Pomette, or your little Pomato, or whatever your heart desires.”

That was weird. Was that her jetlag talking?

“I think I’ll stick with Pomy,” I said. “Though if you’re bad, I may call you Mel.”

I thought the first syllable of her real name wouldn’t go over well. I was right.

“Anything but Mel,” she said. “That sounds like a sixty-year old plumber whose pants ride down or a cross-country truck driver with no teeth.”

“I’ll save it for when you’re particularly bad,” I said, playing along for once, and wondering just what was going on.

She dimpled.

“Then I’ll just
have
to give you cause to use it,” she said.

I may be slow, but I was beginning to think Poly’s sister had issues.

I looked down at my menu and found the forty-five minute ‘make your flight’
section.

“What looks good to you?” I said.

“I’m sure it’s
all
delicious,” said Pomy, running her tongue around her lips sensuously.

“I’m having the
delectable ground faux aux fines herbes avec pommes frites belge,
” I said. “And a salad.”

This place could use Poly’s help with its menu descriptions.

“A faux-burger and fries,” said Pomy. “How manly.”

Did she really say that?

“Tastes like lamb,” I said. “What are you having?”

I was getting tired of this nonsense.

“The
salade niçoise,
with Nic
ó
sn mock tuna.”

“How womanly,” I said.

“Are you mocking me, Jack?”

“Uh huh,” I said, looking directly at her.

Pomy lowered her eyes to look at the weave of the tablecloth. Then the waiter returned with a basket of rolls and butter. He took our orders and disappeared to antispinward.

I took Pomy’s hands across the table this time and held her wrists lightly to get her attention. After a few seconds she looked up and faced me. I released her hands.

“What’s going on?” I said. “You’re coming on to me like a
femme fatale
in a B-movie.”

“Sorry,” she said, head down again.

“Please look at me,” I said.

She lifted her head, reluctantly.

“Why?” I asked.

She hesitated, then lowered her head for a few seconds and spoke.

“I think I need that glass of wine first.”

I caught our waiter’s attention.

“A glass of chianti, please.”

He returned promptly with the wine.

I pushed it toward Pomy.

“Drink this, and then tell me.”

Pomy drained her glass in three swallows. The waiter brought another. She sipped at this one, taking deep breaths in between each sip.

“My sister and I are very competitive. In everything.”

“Okay,” I said.

“She’s got it all. Two advanced degrees, after this weekend. A cool new job, a smart, hot boyfriend…”

I knew I was intelligent, but the hot part was news to me.

“…and attention from Mom.”

“Okay,” I said again.

I really didn’t know what to say. I just wanted her to keep talking.

Pomy sniffed and lifted her napkin to her eyes. They were as red as my face had been earlier.

“And worst of all,” she said, “I miss her. I
really
miss her.”

“Poly?” I said.

“Of course, Poly,” said Pomy. “We’re sisters, but this is the first time we’ve been within fifty miles of each other in four years.”

“You don’t celebrate holidays together?”

“No. Not Easter. Not Thanksgiving. Not Christmas, not anything.” she said. “Poly’s always at school and never comes home. Mom’s usually off-planet, working on her guidebooks, and Daddy thinks any holiday not celebrated by the ancient Greeks or pre-Christian Romans is beneath his dignity.”

“Happy
Lupercalia
,” I said.

She smiled. It was the first one I’d seen that was genuine. It looked good on her.

“Thanks,” she said. “Though
Saturnalia
and
Dies Natalis Solis Invicti
are closer to Christmas.”