She understood why species just venturing beyond their own solar system for the first time liked a neutral meeting point before giving out their home address. They also liked a sense of quiet privacy while they labored through the first delicate negotiations with others. Ab’nere acted as a neutral referee between alien prejudices, preconceptions, needs, attitudes, and languages.
And Ab’nere earned a very generous fee for providing the service and the meeting place.
Most of the time. The brawl in A 108 threatened the first contact as well as the fee.
(Each quarter cycle when the loan payments came due, the bankers of D’Or looked closer and closer at her bookkeeping. She had to work harder and harder at hiding the true numbers. She refused to allow them to increase her debt in direct proportion to the profit margin.)
A brief look into the monitor showed the fight in A 108 winding down. Ab’nere should not have worried. Ammonia breathers did not have the concentration to sustain anything long enough to incur real damage.
Except perhaps mating. Then they lost interest as soon as gestation could be confirmed.
Just as well. Ab’nere did not appreciate interference from any of her eighteen spouses in the raising of her offspring.
Males just did not appreciate that no matter what species they came from, Ab’nere’s children were always fully Labyrinthians. The other species rarely contributed more to the genetic makeup than a useful trait like ammonia gills, or heavy gravity adaptability.
The Magma Giants were an unknown quantity as sires. She should not worry about the size of her child. Every one of her offspring had weighed the same at birth and grown to equal her in height. Still…
The docking manifest showed the infant species arriving at Oxygen/nitrogen/hydrogen 3—about halfway to the end of that spoke and therefore at a mid level gravity. A huge ugly ship that had to slow its rotation to dock. Until they completed that delicate operation, the spacers would be without gravity. Their FTL drive was primitive, probably their first. Must have taken several of their years to reach Labyrinth. Had they resorted to suspended animation to survive the long trip? Ab’nere shuddered at the thought of the primitive travel mode.
Civilized species did not subject their people to such dangerous indignities.
“Number Six Daughter, please open ONH 321 for the isolated use of the new arrivals. Provide fermented grains and distilled spirits for their consumption while they await completion of first contact.”
“Honored Mother, do we truly wish to encourage the consumption of distilled sprits?”
Number Six had the audacity to ask.
If the ammonia breathers drank toxic chemicals, this infant species polluted themselves at higher levels (much as their language had already polluted Labyrinth).
“These infants will either abandon liquor while in space or they will not survive as a species long enough to become a threat to civilization,” Ab’nere replied. “Do not question my orders, Number Six. I have watched species rise and fall a dozen times over during the past two hundred five cycles. I know how to run this station.”
She really needed to supervise the mopping up in A 108, 109 and now up to A 112, and make sure the computer recorded Ab’nere’s estimated repair costs rather than actual numbers. Instead, she waited on a very late infant species and an elder who should know better. Etiquette had been breached by all parties involved.
This mode of affairs must not continue. Etiquette ran Labyrinth and kept misunderstandings to a minimum. She firmly believed that her etiquette prevented war.
A new screen on her spectacles flashed an alarm. “Number Fifteen Son,” she called.
“Aquatic 893 just lost three points of pressure. You must swim in and check for leaks.”
“Oh, Mother, I was just going to bathe,” came the rebellious reply.
“There is plenty of water for bathing in the aquatic arm. And I can see ice forming around portal HO 891C. You must seal that leak now.”
“Can’t you do it, Mother?”
“Not if you want to continue living on this station!”
Number Fifteen sighed as if the weight of the universe rested on his shoulders. Then he shuffled along to his assignment.
Ab’nere kept a corner of one lens reserved for Number Fifteen and his minor repair. Like his father, he could repair anything and breathed HO liquids as readily as OH gases. But he was of an age to question everything and withdraw into his own head for amusement to the exclusion of all else.
A Glug, oozed into ONH 323, rotating its midsection to indicate its search for a new contact. Frequent visitors like the Glugs had terminal jacks wired directly into their brains. The creature bellied up to the bar—that is if the amorphous blobs of sludge had a belly—and plugged in to the translation port of the central system.
Those species not interested in hardwiring their brains usually carried portable jacks that fitted in or over whatever passed for ears.
Ab’nere prided herself on not needing a jack. She learned the new languages as quickly as communications opened up new worlds. Each of her eighteen mates had communicated in a different manner, some of them most interestingly.
But then Labyrinthines tended to have DNA as flexible as their tongues, their ears, and their double-jointed limbs.
“Methane, straight up. Double shot,” the Glug ordered.
Ab’nere suspected this one was Ghoul’gam’esth, their chief negotiator. Glugs were a communal species. What one ate, thought, suffered, the rest of the colony thought, suffered, ate. Identifying any individual proved a challenge to non-Glugs. Only slight differences in coloration separated them. Shape and size constantly varied within each individual. If this one was the Ghoul, then they sent the big guns for the negotiation, showing a bit of desperation. Methane was getting harder to find in its raw state. The greedy Glugs recklessly sought out infant species in search of new sources of their primary food. Often they violated contamination protocols in their never- ending quest for methane. (Galactic scientists had yet to figure out how the species thrived on methane but breathed oxygen.) Rumor had it, this new infant species had an excess of excrement that broke down into large amounts of methane. (Most inefficient.) A trade agreement would benefit them all.
And Ab’nere would collect the commission on the trade agreement, and the docking fees for the transfer of cargo, and library fees for dispensing information on both species. Not to mention what the traders spent on comestibles and ingestibles.
Hopefully, the bankers had not heard of this infant yet and would not know how to compute the trade agreement to their own benefit. How long could Ab’nere keep it hidden?
About as long as she could hide a pregnancy by a Magma Giant. But for now, both were her secrets.
She placed an enclosed globule of methane with a straw and a bright green swizzle stick in the shape of a plumbing plunger on the bar where the Glug could reach it. The useless decoration added refinement to the noxious brew. The new species liked useless ornamentation, too.
A tendril of sluggish brown mass wove up to the bar. The vessel disappeared within. A moment later it reappeared. The Glug expanded to three times its normal size, becoming a denser brown. Ab’nere ducked behind the bar, bracing herself. The Glug belched like a thunderclap followed by a gush of air as strong as the atmosphere from an entire arm of the station rushing to fill a vacuum. The accompanying stench had been known to revive those on the brink of passing on—or cause healthy athletes to drop into a dead faint. The automatic air scrubbers kicked in. Ab’nere emerged from her crouch with a misting bottle. She sprayed the space around the Glug to make sure the odors died an ignoble death. Her favorite acidic sweet smell, the computer said the infant species called mint, replaced the stench of the Glug. Actually this “mint” smelled a lot like the pernicious “sweet on the tongue” or sott plant that had started on Ab’nere’s home world and grew on every known oxygen atmosphere planet, with or without gravity. A horticulturist had once told Ab’nere that if she wanted to start an herb garden in Labyrinth’s hydroponics lab, she should plant a little sott and step out of the way.
“Another, please.” The Glug’s voice appeared on the translation monitor even as Ab’nere’s mind processed the grunts and moans into language.
Ab’nere set out another double shot of methane, keying in a nice tip for herself on the Glug’s tab.
She had just cleansed the next belch when the door whooshed open. A tall, loose-jointed being ambled in. Its lower limbs were encased in a sturdy fabric of dark blue with hints of white in a complex and interesting weave. A finer fabric in a complementary paler shade of the same weave covered its upper body. It removed a large head covering made from some kind of animal leather. It had an amazingly small head for the size of the body. Not much brain capacity there. Pale fur with golden highlights tumbled to where the creature’s neck and arm joints met. It
