Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2) (17 page)

“You’ve just exhausted my knowledge of Roman festivals.”

“Not mine, sorry to say—May Hestia bless your hearth.”

“Not Vesta? You switched from Roman to Greek.”

“So sue me,” said Pomy, smiling again. “I liked the alliteration.”

Our waiter must have been waiting for the drama-level at our table to decrease. He served our meals and vanished silently away. My Belgian-style frites were served in a paper cone supported by a coiled wire stand. I dipped a long stick of fried potato into homemade curry ketchup and fed it to Pomy across the table. She ate it like a hungry baby bird and gave me another genuine smile, wider this time.

“Want a taste of my salad?” she asked.

“Just a bite of mock tuna,” I said.

She feed me a small piece of fish the same way I’d fed her, but with a fork, not her fingers.

“Yum,” I said. “Keep talking. You’re on a roll.”

“Speaking of rolls,” she said, reaching for the bread basket.

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“Okay,” she said.

“You were saying you’re a poor little privileged girl whose parents don’t love her and whose sister isn’t there for her.”

“Hey,” said Pomy, “my
father
loves me.”

“What’s the field of study for your doctorate?”

“Classics.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“You’re saying he wouldn’t love me if I was earning an MBA or a degree in engineering?”

“Poly. Q.E.D.”

“At least Mom loves
her.
”

“That’s why Poly’s working four jobs to pay for graduate school.”

“She’s what?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I thought Mom was paying her tuition.”

“Think again,” I said. “Poly’s translating menus at the Teleport Inn, teaching Galactic Languages classes at Georgia State, temping as a receptionist at a fabrication company and correcting machine translations of GaFTA tech manuals to pay her own way.”

Pomy’s fork was in her hand but it wasn’t moving. It was halfway between her salad bowl and her mouth, frozen in place. Her brain was churning over what I’d said.

“Do the members of your family ever talk to each other?”

“Ummmm…” said Pomy, her fork still frozen.

“Asked and answered. I get it. But what I
don’t
get is what you were trying to prove by throwing yourself at me.”

“I wasn’t…”

“Hello handsome,”
I said, mimicking her original tone.
“Poly’s told me so
much
about you.”

“I did say that, didn’t I.”

“You sounded like the girl next door trying to be Jessica Rabbit.”

“That bad?” said Pomy.

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

Pomy dropped her fork in her salad and put her hands on either side of her head.

“O, Hera,” she laughed. She looked appalled.

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

“Ow,” she said. “Stop hitting a woman when she’s down. I wasn’t very good at playing the seductress, was I?”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“Don’t even say it. I’m afraid you’ll use negative numbers.”

“Not that bad,” I said, “but what could you possibly have hoped to accomplish?”

“I thought I might steal you away from my sister.”

Now it was my turn to look puzzled.

“Why would you want to do that?”

Pomy sat back up and pretended to concentrate on eating her salad. Her movements were mechanical.

“Quit stalling,” I said.

She put her fork down, squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. Then she spoke.

“It worked when I did it before. Sort of.”

I looked at her. She didn’t say anything. I stared at her and made a “go on” motion with my hands. She was still silent.

“Sort of?” I prompted.

“Poly paid attention to me.”

She sounded about six. My burger and fries were cold.

“Were you and Poly close when you were little?”

“Uh huh,” said Pomy. “We were inseparable. Poly and I shared a bedroom until I was twelve, and Mom had to tell us to stop giggling and go to sleep almost every night. She was more my twin than my big sister.”

“Were you still close in high school?”

“Yes, except when Poly was traveling off-planet with Mom.”

“Was she gone a lot?”

“Sometimes,” said Pomy. “But when she came back to Cambridge it was like she’d never left and we picked back up just like before.”

“When did things change?” I asked.

“My junior year.”

“Poly’s senior year?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s when I was stupid.”

I dipped a cold frite in curry ketchup and made the same “go on” motion with my hands, using the fried potato stick for emphasis.

“Poly and James, a boy in her math class, started dating,” she said. “He was a nice guy, really smart.”

“And?”

“Poly stopped paying attention to me. She spent every spare minute with James. It hurt.”

“Sometimes people you love, leave,” I said.

“Sometimes people you love leave because you do something stupid,” said Pomy.

“How were
you
stupid?”

“I seduced James.”

I knew that would be the answer, but like a train wreck I could only stand by and watch it happen.

“You
slept
with him?”

“Uh huh.” She shook her head from side to side sadly. “Neither one of us really knew what we were doing.”

“Just how innocent
were
you?”

“On a scale of one to ten?” she said, between bites of salad.

“Will you need negative numbers?”

“No, but probably somewhere between a three and a five.”

“You led a sheltered life?”

“Very. You’ll understand when you meet my father.”

I filed that away for future reference.

“What did you
think
would happen?”

“Poly and I would fight
.
She’d yell at me and I’d yell at her. We’d talk and then we’d hug and she’d forgive me.”

“What actually happened?”

“Poly and I fought. There was a lot of yelling. Then she stopped speaking to me. When she went off to college, she shut off communications entirely. She wouldn’t accept my texts, wouldn’t take my calls, and blocked me on SpaceBook.”

Quite a few things were becoming clearer. Poly wasn’t with me to pick up her family at the airport just because she needed to finish her academic paper. Poly was avoiding her sister—and probably her father and mother, too.

“So what did you think would happen if you’d been able to seduce
me
?”

“Poly would talk to me again.”

“To
yell
at you.”

Tears started to flow, leaving wet tracks on her cheeks.

“Yes,” Pomy said between sobs, “but we’d be talking, and maybe it would be different this time.”

I didn’t have a response. I looked at Pomy’s tear-streaked face and marveled at her ability to reach such a misguided conclusion. Love can make us stupid, I guess. I should know. At least now I could do something to help.

“I’m not going to say a word about this to Poly,” I said.

Pomy sat back in her chair and seemed to regain her dignity.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry to put you through that.”

“Through what?” I said.

She smiled, the broadest and most genuine one I’d seen today. She reached out across the table and took my hands. It wasn’t a romantic ploy this time. She squeezed them and then let them go.

“I hope we can be friends,” she said.

“Count on it.”

“Can I count on you for some help?”

“With what?”

“My father said that Mom has a scheme for Poly and me to share a room in their suite at Ad Astra, just like we did when we were children.”

“I think I see where you’re headed,” I said, “but Poly’s got her own place.”

“Mom’s going to talk her into staying with the rest of the family for a few days. She may be overly optimistic about what’s likely to happen, but it’s worth a shot.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing specific. Just tell Poly how much I’m looking forward to seeing her and how sorry I am.”

“What if she asks me what you’re sorry for?”

“Tell her I didn’t tell you.”

I wasn’t so sure about that part. I don’t like shading the truth in dealings with my partner—but it was in a good cause.

“You’ll be seeing her face-to-face yourself in a few hours.”

“Yes, but I’m scared,” she said. “Having you around for moral support will help.”

I could appreciate that. I’d be glad to have Pomy’s support when I met her parents today.

“Moral support I can do,” I said, smiling.

“And Jack?”

She looked at me. I looked back.

“Put in a good word for me with Poly when you can.”

“I’ll try, but you’re going to have to apologize on your own.”

“I will, I will. Seventeen is a special kind of stupid. I’ve been regretting it ever since it happened.”

“I expect Poly has, too.”

I didn’t know for sure if that was true, but I hoped it was.

“You think she misses me?”

I hadn’t a clue.

“You’ll have to ask her—after you apologize.”

Pomy nodded.

I wondered if the fact that Poly had invited her family to her graduations meant that she was also looking for an opportunity for reconciliation.

Or was her family’s arrival part of a plot hatched by her mother or father? Probably her mother, though a classics professor would have a thorough academic knowledge of complex family dynamics. Look at
The Oresteia
and its stories of the curse on the House of Atreus
.

My musings on Poly and Pomy and their parents were interrupted when my phone chirped.

“Professor Jones’ flight arrives in five minutes.”

“We’ve got to go,” I said. “Waiter!”

Chapter 19

“My will is mine... I shall not make it soft for you.”
— Aeschylus,
Agamemnon

Pomy and I were waiting at the top of Hartsfield’s arrival escalators only five minutes after her father’s plane had landed. It would take at least another quarter of an hour for him to make his way from Terminal D, Gate 38, to our location, though it could take twice that long if there was a gate delay or the underground shuttle was overcrowded. From what Poly and Pomy had said, and
not
said, their father wasn’t the easiest person in this corner of the galaxy to get along with, so I thought I’d get more details from Pomy.

“Tell me about your dad,” I said.

“He’s the chairman of the Classics Department at Harvard and the world’s foremost authority on Homer
and
Virgil.”

“I read that on Galnet,” I said, “It’s on his faculty profile page.”

“That faculty profile page
is
my father.”

“Do tell?”

“His Homeric trilogy,
The Ten Year War, The Ten Year Journey,
and
The Blind Bard
are considered definitive—the best books about the
Iliad,
the
Odyssey,
and their reputed author in three generations.”

“I’ve read them,” I said.

“You’ve read all twenty-five hundred pages?”

“Even the appendices,” I said.

“I’m impressed,” said Pomy.

“I was nine,” I said.

“I’m
really
impressed,” she said. “I was eight and a half.”

“Show off.”

“I was so jealous of those books,” said Pomy. “Every time I wanted attention from my father when I was little, he said he had to work on one of his books.”

“Sibling rivalry?”

“Pretty much,” said Pomy. “It felt like they were the children he really loved. We asked him to teach us classical Greek and Latin when we were five and six, hoping that would please him.”

“How did that work out?” I said.

“He criticized our verb forms.”

“That sucks. Was he writing books throughout your childhood?”

“Yes,” she answered. “After the Homeric trilogy, he switched to Virgil and wrote
The Augustan Commission.”

“Right, because Caesar Augustus was supposed to have hired Virgil to write
The Aeneid.”

“I suppose you read that one, too? When you were ten?”

“Nine and a half,” I said.

“Show off,” said Pomy.

“Virgil is cool. Some of the stuff he wrote is really derivative, though.
The Aeneid
is just a fan fiction the guy pulled together after reading
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
.”

“Don’t let my father hear you say that.”

“Don’t let me hear you say what?”

Pomy and I had been caught up in conversation. We were standing behind the wide fabric ribbons that separated the waiting section from the top of the escalators that delivered arriving passengers to baggage claim. A man who looked like a younger, less rumpled version of Dumbledore with a well-trimmed salt and pepper beard stood in front of us on the other side of the ribbon. He was tall, wearing heavy wool pants, a forest green turtleneck sweater, and a tweed sports coat with leather patches on the elbows. All he needed was a pipe in his hand to be the complete picture of a male Harvard professor.

“Daddy!” said Pomy, hugging her father across the tape barrier.

“Pumpkin!” said her father, returning the embrace enthusiastically. “How were your flights? Was your paper accepted by
Current Archeology?
How is Professor Piacentini? Is he a grandfather yet? And who is this young man?”

I was impressed. Pomy’s father hadn’t taken a breath during his list of questions.

“My flights were fine, I’m waiting to hear if my paper was accepted, Marcello’s daughter had a baby boy last week, and this”—she put her hand on my shoulder in a friendly gesture—“is Poly’s boyfriend, Jack Buckston.”

Pomy didn’t take a breath during her reply, either. Must be a family trait.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” I said, extending my hand.

Pomy and Poly’s father took it and shook it firmly.

“And I’m very pleased to meet you, Jack,” he said. “Call me Perry when you want to be friendly or Professor Jones when you think I’m too full of myself.”

His manner was jovial and his voice was light. It would be a pleasure to listen to him lecture. This man was
not
the ogre I was expecting.

“Thanks, Perry,” I said, somewhat overwhelmed.

“Thank
you
for picking me up,” he said. “Which way to baggage claim?”

The stanchions and fabric ribbon barriers were still separating us, so Pomy and I had to step back and move a few yards off to one side to get around them before we could join Perry.

When we were out of earshot I whispered, “I thought your father was supposed to be some sort of child-abandoning, soul-destroying monster?”

“Just wait,” said Pomy.

We joined Perry on the other side of the ribbon and walked over to the carousel where his bags would be appearing. He was holding his claim check in his hand and waved it at me to show me that it had already turned yellow.

“That one’s mine,” he said, pointing to a medium-sized battered leather case covered in Latin and Greek phrases someone must have burned into it with a heat gun. There were also a few illustrations. I recognized a line art version of the famous picture of a dog from Pompeii above the Latin phrase
Cave Canem
and wondered if I’d need to beware Pomy’s father, if and when this pleasant teddy bear ever turned into a grumpy grizzly. I lifted his case from the rotating carousel, raised its handle and headed for the passenger pickup area. My phone, which had been quiet and well-behaved for the past few hours, had notified my van to pick us up. It was just pulling to the curb in front of us as we arrived.

“Let’s take my van around to the spaceport terminal,” I said. “It will be faster than taking the shuttle.”

“Eminently sensible,” said Perry as I carefully loaded his bag in the back.

“Good idea,” said Pomy, grabbing the shotgun seat.

My van opened the sliding door on its right side and Pomy’s father got in.

“Welcome to Atlanta, Professor Jones,” said my van.

It was a polite welcome, but I didn’t remember programming or authorizing that sort of greeting.

“Thank you,” said Perry, “though I seem to be dressed more for Boston’s climate than Atlanta’s at this time of year.”

He put his finger to the collar of his turtleneck and pulled it out half an inch. He did look hot in his tweed coat.

“Air conditioning adjusted,” said my van. Then, almost as an afterthought, “Seat belt.”

“Certainly, kind conveyance,” said Perry.

I could see his smile in the rear view mirror. We all buckled up and my van left the domestic air terminal and headed south toward the spaceport.

Twelve years ago, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport had largely run out of room to grow. Airline passenger increases required a sixth runway, but there was no practical place to put one. Then Earth joined GaFTA and suddenly the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia, rolling in dotstar boom revenue, thought big and bought up two dozen subdivisions south of the airport’s existing footprint, paying exorbitant sums to get residents to leave quickly. The airport authority built three new aircraft runways, more than a hundred starship landing pads, new passenger and cargo spaceport terminals, and the Jackson Teleportation Nexus on the additional five thousand acres.

Galactic building techniques let them get the new facilities finished in less than five years and generous amounts of baksheesh, spread at the local, city, county, state and federal levels, cut down on regulatory delays. The authority
made
money on the deal by selling parcels around the periphery to shipping and logistics companies that wanted to be close to the spaceport or the nexus. That bold move had locked in the combined Jackson Nexus and Hartsfield Port as the largest transportation hub on the planet, by passenger
and
freight volume.

We had an excellent view of the nearer starship landing pads as we drove to the spaceport’s passenger terminal. Poly and Pomy’s mother was coming in on a scheduled starliner from Neue Staddam, the capital of Nic
ó
s, that was due to land in ten minutes. We were still in good time, though. It would take a while for her to get through customs.

“I understand you’re some sort of mechanic, interested in all that engineering nonsense that intrigues my older daughter,” said Perry from the back seat. “Are you the kind that gets into the greasy gears and twisted wires and such?”

I looked at Pomy. She looked at me.

“I’m more of a consultant and troubleshooter,” I said.

“Dealing with the technological plumbing, so to speak?” said Perry.

“That’s not how I’d put it.”

“But you are repairing machines? Fixing copiers, adjusting looms, and so forth?”

“Modern technology is as much a noble calling as ancient literature,” I said.

“I’m sure that a pig looks noble to another pig,” said Perry, in the same tone he’d use to say, “The sky is blue.”

Pomy looked at me and watched me try to suppress my desired response.

“Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles,” I said, reciting the opening of
The Iliad
in classical Greek.

“The horse can sing. How amusing,” said Perry, still smiling while wielding his verbal stiletto.

“I sing of arms and the man…” I said, in classical Latin this time—the open line of
The Aeneid
.

“So the horse can both sing
and
bray.”

It was lucky for him that I was wearing my seat belt. Now I knew why Poly was closer to her mother.

“Professor Jones,” I said. My voice was tight. I was about to say more, but was interrupted.

“Spaceport Passenger Terminal,” said my van.

“Everybody out,” said my phone.

“Thank Hera,” said Pomy.