Space Stations

Flynn's eyes narrowed. “A point we were just discussing, in fact. Why didn't the ambassador have a priestess in her entourage?”

Chzan's eyes blinked slowly. “The priestess failed to obtain a flight health certificate.”

“What?” Flynn laughed aloud. “A right-rum pox-dog fair bursting with bacteria and viruses would get a health cert— as could each and every one of the buggies infesting him. How did she fail?”

“Clerical error. It has been corrected.” The Qian accepted the small device from Claire.

“Again, Father Yamashita, thank you.”

Claire sat back, wrapping her right hand around the mug. She let the tea's warmth fight the chill shivering its way up her spine as the Qian exited the room. “What just happened? I was put in the Haxadis pod at the insistence of the Qian crew. Did they fail the Haxadis priestess deliberately, then not tell the ambassador I would be available, yet have me there just in case? Why would they do that?”

Flynn frowned. “Their station, their Commonwealth, their rules.”

“But what did they gain?”

“Knowledge. How you functioned under stress. How the Haxadissi functioned under stress.” Flynn grinned, and cocked his head to the right. “And now they have a powerful Haxadis family beholden to a human for the birth of a grandchild. At the cost of a little anxiety relieved, they build some stability for the Commonwealth.”

“But they didn't know how I would react. No one did.”

“Save God, Father Yamashita.”

“You're right, He knew.” She nodded. “And it's Claire.”

“I suspect He knew that, too.” Flynn smiled. “As for what the Qian might have known, doesn't matter. Now they know more, and likely more than either of us could figure out.

Still, that's part of what keeps life here on Purgatory Station so interesting.”

Claire smiled. “The Qian and knowledge. Perhaps they're the serpents in the garden.”

“Could be, but this is their garden, Claire. From their point of view, it also likely a fair viper's nest, within which we're just two.”

“And your friend, Meresin?”

Flynn smiled. “Oh, a serpent, definitely, though not the worst here. Don't you be minding that, though, Claire, for it's still a garden here, beauty abounding. Welcome to your new home.”

Home. So far away and yet… Claire sipped her tea, then nodded. “Thank you. Home it shall be, Father, serpents and all.”

FIRST CONTACT CAFÉ

by Irene Radford

Irene Radford is a member of an endangered species, a native Oregonian still living in Oregon. She is best known for her fantasy series The Dragon Nimbus, The Dragon Nimbus History, and Merlin's Descendants. Most recently she has begun the cross over into space opera and space stations with The Hidden Dragon, Stargods #1, published by DAW Books in 2002.

A SCREECH from the station monitors stabbed through the perceptions of Ab'nere Ll'byr Wyn'th (pronounced Abner Labyrinth in that new language working its way around the space station). She tongued a control built into her dentalia. One of the ten screens built into her spectacles that nearly reached her earlobes displayed the scene from A 108, the ammonia atmosphere arm close to the hub of Labyrinth, her space station, where gravity was low.

She gasped in horror as she watched a nearly transparent Pentapod, its visible heart beating a rapid and erratic rhythm even for a Pentapod, fling a spindly barstool over its head into the mirror behind the bar. Ab'nere's Number Eight Son—fathered by an ammonia breather and thus possessing gills to breathe a veritable cocktail of different atmospheres—ducked out of the way of the stool, arms shielding his neck and those vulnerable gills from shattering glass. His daughter and her spouse flung aside their trays filled with noxious drinks only an ammonia breather could love and dove beneath the tables they had been serving. The silica and lead globules filled with liquid and vaporous chemicals smashed into walls. Before the rainbow puddles slid to the floor, two patrons slammed their arm joints, simultaneously, into the offender's mid-region.

The first combatant stumbled backward. He collided with yet another patron. That being's drink flew out of his hand. The splashee's foot jerked into a delicate leg joint of yet another patron. This next victim retaliated by breaking a drink globule over the nearest head—that of Number Eight Son.

Before Ab'nere could blink, all twenty imbibers in the bar had joined the fray. Flippers and pseudopods lashed out. Limbs tangled and internal organs pulsed. Defenders leaped aside and slammed into no longer innocent bystanders.