Party Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 10) (21 page)

“How’s Vivian taking the return of the prodigal Vergallian?” Joe asked his wife.

“Better than you might expect,” Kelly replied. “Blythe told me that she explained to the girl about Vergallians maturing so much slower than humans and that Ailia will likely be forced to make a political marriage to preserve her family’s domain. I think Vivian’s strategy is to wait and see. She’s only twelve, after all.”

“I’d add ten to that for being Blythe’s daughter.” Joe rubbed his stomach. “You wouldn’t believe how hungry I am. I wonder what the hold-up is,” he added, as they came up against the backs of a crowd of aliens.

A large, leathery figure loomed up beside them. “Follow me,” Srythlan boomed, and moved off at his top speed, which left Joe thinking they would have been better served waiting in the slow-moving line. The Verlock ambassador led them out of the ballroom, and then through a side entrance into the large hall, which was now filled with hundreds of round tables. “We are at the head table,” he explained ponderously as they approached the dais at the front of the room.

Most of the guests had indeed found their seats while the slow-footed Srythlan was taking the McAllisters on his shortcut, but Kelly used her implant to zoom in on the main entrance and saw a few aliens lingering around tables there, searching through the remaining name cards. “Donna must have been up all night arranging the seating,” she said with grudging admiration. “I hope that she had help.”

“I’m sure that Libby pitched in to tell her if any of the off-network aliens are currently at war,” Joe said. He pulled out the closest chair at the head table for Kelly, and then slipped into the seat next to her with a groan of relief. “Maybe I will go see that Farling doctor tomorrow.”

“Speaking of doctors, did you know that you were carrying around Woojin’s contribution to Lynx’s baby for the last two weeks? Apparently he’s the oldest son in his generation, and his family made him freeze a sample before they let him join the military in his teens.”

Joe’s jaw dropped, and he stared at Kelly in surprise. “But when Wooj asked me to stop by that bank, I swear he said something about the family jewels.”

“You men just can’t talk about the important things in life without making jokes, can you?”

“Look who I found,” Czeros said, approaching the head table with Gwendolyn in tow. Her friend looked so different from Kelly’s memory that she wouldn’t have recognized the clone if she had passed her in a corridor.

“Gwendolyn!” Kelly jumped up to hug her. “How long has it been? I didn’t see you dancing.”

“I’m too out-of-practice,” the Gem replied. “I watched you and the children until the floor got so crowded that I couldn’t see anything, and then I found a game of eight-handed Flonk going on in the card room and lost track of time.”

“Is Mist still in stasis?” Kelly asked. “Dorothy is in the fashion business now and she’s saving a spot for her.”

“I’m sure that Mist will jump at the prospect when she wakes,” Gwendolyn said, slipping into the seat next to Kelly.

Dring leaned in over Kelly’s shoulder and whispered, “I have an award to present if you would join me at the lectern for a moment.”

Kelly wanted to ask what it was about, but the Maker had already moved away, so she rose and followed him to the little raised platform with the speaker’s stand at the center of the dais. Loud conversations in dozens of languages came to an abrupt halt when the guests saw that Dring intended to speak, and an eerie silence filled the giant hall.

“My friends,” the Maker addressed the audience. “You’ve all danced and played hard, and I won’t keep you from your supper any longer than necessary. We are gathered here today to honor the achievements of a diplomat who you may never have heard of from a species that some of you have yet to encounter. I have seen many civilizations come and go, and it is my fondest wish that the Humans prove to be more than a passing fad. I am presenting this award on behalf of my own species to the ambassador who restored our relations with the Stryx.”

Dring reached into the interior of the lectern and brought out a hand-crafted trophy that reminded Kelly of something that her father had won at a fishing tournament back on Earth. Instead of a bass, it featured a thick golden book open on a pedestal, like the dictionary in the living room of her mother’s home. There was a round of polite applause as the Maker handed over the award.

“Perhaps you could read the inscription for our guests?” Dring suggested.

Although she couldn’t think of anything that would be more embarrassing, Kelly didn’t see any way out of it, so she read out loud, “Best Human Ambassador to Union Station.”

There was another smattering of applause, and a few wise-acres began crying “Speech! Speech!” and tapping their silverware on anything that would make noise.

Dring stepped down and returned to his place at the head table, gesturing for the Best Human Ambassador to Union Station to say something. Her implant pinged with a level-ten alert from the Galactic Free Press, only the second one she had received as a subscriber, but she couldn’t afford the distraction and mentally waved it off.

“I’m speechless,” Kelly began, and was immediately drowned out by a roar of approval from the guests, whose translation implants had taken the two words at face-value. As the ambassador moved away from the lectern to return to her seat, she caught a glimpse of her mother, who was sitting next to the EarthCent president at one of the nearby round tables. Marge was shaking her head in disbelief.

“I don’t see why Dring had to be so specific about the inscription,” Joe groused as his wife sat down. “You’re the only human ambassador Union Station has ever had.”

“You know he hates to offend anybody,” Kelly said absently, still watching her mother’s table where an active discussion was taking place among several of the guests. Then Chastity and Walter both rose from their seats, to a mixed chorus of boos and laughter from the humans present, and approached the head table.

“We want to apologize and to assure you that a correction has already been issued,” Chastity told Kelly.

“It was just a bit of harmless fun, but the intern we left in charge of the newsroom made a small error in judgment,” Walter added. “We’ll make sure it’s never repeated in the future.”

“What are you talking about?” Kelly demanded, and then it occurred to her to check the level-ten alert on her heads-up display. The story featured a close up of Dring handing her the trophy, and the large caption read, “Ambassador Meets Maker.” She snorted. “That’s pretty clever.”

“Read the story,” Chastity urged her.

Kelly got through two sentences before she stopped and exclaimed, “But this is my obituary!”

“We keep them current for the famous humans on the tunnel network,” Walter explained. “It’s just that all of our staff is here tonight, and the intern misinterpreted my caption and triggered our emergency coverage protocol. It seems we have to rewrite those guidelines.”

“Look on the bright side, Ambassador,” Chastity said. “Everybody you know is here. By the way, my mom said to tell you that you’re not in your assigned seat.”

“We came in the back way, with Srythlan,” Kelly explained. Chastity just shrugged and then returned to her own place, a chagrined-looking Walter in tow. The waitstaff of the Empire Convention Center, both biological and bot, flooded into the hall with serving trays.

“Hey, I ordered the chicken,” Joe complained, pushing away a plate of barely congealed jelly. “What’s this yellow glop?”

“Send it this way,” an alien four seats to his left called.

Kelly looked down at her own plate and barely contained her gag reflex at the squirming pile of larvae. She rose to her feet and looked down the row of ambassadors to locate Crute, whose seat she had inadvertently taken. With any luck, the Dollnick ambassador would have her spaghetti.

“For you, Joe,” Gwendolyn said, passing along a plate with chicken and green beans that had been delivered fire-brigade style down the long table.

“Thanks,” Joe replied, accepting his supper from the clone. “It’s still better than the service at that hotel we stayed at in Manhattan.”

“You took the words out of my mouth,” Kelly said, as she spied the Grenouthian ambassador returning a plate of spaghetti to a waiter. “There’s no place like home.”

Party Night on Union Station
is getting a sequel because I’m addicted to my own characters. I recently published a fantasy novel,
Meghan’s Dragon
, which I wrote between EarthCent books over the period of a year while taking a break from the near-omniscient Stryx. In Meghan’s Dragon, none of the characters have perfect information about their magical world, and they may even mislead the reader from time to time. You can
sign up for notification of the next EarthCent release
on my website, IFITBREAKS.COM.

If you believe there is still a place in science fiction for stories that aren’t all about death and destruction, please help to get the word out. Posting an Amazon review on the first book of this series,
Date Night on Union Station
, will help new readers discover these books, even if you only write a few words.

About the Author

E. M. Foner lives in Northampton, MA with an imaginary German Shepherd who’s been trained to bite bankers. The author welcomes reader comments at [email protected].