Chapter 6
A Day in the Life, Continued
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Abby liked going to Vaux's market. She wasn't particularly sorry that Tommy didn't come along, but she would have liked Sara's company. On Thursday afternoons, Sara usually helped out her Mom in the family's restaurant, House of Fire.
Vaux's grocery store was about as far from the Shop-n-Save back on Earth as Abby could imagine. The only thing that might tell a visitor that it was a grocery was the large sign outside that announced simply 'FOOD' in six different languages.
Abby didn't know it, but the store had been designed by a famous artist, a Vannevar architect named Vaudi. The building itself appeared to be melting. The windows drooped as did the glass in them. The second story balcony gracefully curved downward at its midpoint, and the eaves of the roof looked like they'd been left too long in the hot sun. The entire building except the drooping roof was covered in thousands of mosaic tiles that sparkled and winked. Luke had said that you could see pictures in the tiles if you looked the right way, but Abby hadn't seen anything yet, and Luke wouldn't tell her what the pictures were.
This afternoon, Abby paused for a moment outside the store and squinted at the walls, but she still couldn't see anything except for the sparkle.
"Hello young buckaroo," Vaux greeted her in English as she walked in the door. He liked to practice his English on the Human customers. Today Vaux had chosen to wear a ten-gallon cowboy hat along with a subdued outfit of green velvet jacket and shimmering scarlet pants. Earth-produced velvets were particularly popular with the Vannevar right now, supplanting the Aeris gossamer-light fabrics that had previously been all the rage. The Aeris weren't happy about the change, but fashion was fickle.
"Hi Vaux," Abby said. She opened her sack and began browsing. As usual, the store had a good number of customers inside: mostly Vannevars and Humans, but also a sprinkling of Gracchus and Aeris and a Nawak picking out some bread.
The store was jammed with goods arranged more for artistic effect than efficiency. Sometimes Vaux grouped things together by color. Today, all the fruits and vegetables were arranged on a slowly moving conveyor belt, and there was music in the background. A sort of conga line moved in front of Abby: eggplant, onion, red pepper, strange red orbs, mangelwurzels, broccoli, broccoli again, grapes, blue turnips, lettuce, stinkberries, whortlefruit. As she watched the display, there was a shift in the music. The fruits and vegetables moved backwards for a few beats, then resumed going forward.
As the line moved by, Abby plucked out lettuce and a green pepper. Then she also chose one of the strange round red vegetables (or was it a fruit?). Dad would be happy that she had found something new. She wandered around the store until she came upon the coffee, the blue cans arranged in a pyramid. After looking for a while but not finding them, she asked Vaux where the crezzle nuts were.
"Right this way, varmint," Vaux said. Sounded like Vaux had been watching old movies from Earth. That was one way to learn English, Abby supposed.
Vaux had put the crezzle nut bags in a front window display. The bags had been clustered together, and a toy cowboy on a plastic horse watched over them. It appeared that the crezzle nuts had been rounded up, maybe for a rodeo, maybe just to keep them safe from wolves. Abby thanked Vaux and picked out a bag for Tommy. Vaux moved the other bags in to fill in the gap.
Vaux made a note of what Abby had purchased; next time Oliver was in, Vaux would charge Oliver's spike.
"I like the line of moving vegetables, Vaux," Abby said as she prepared to leave. "I think you should keep it."
"Many thanks, ma'am," Vaux said with a tip of the hat. Then he said in Vannevarian, "Not only has the display filled my higher aesthetic needs, but vegetable sales are up. Beauty and commerce together. It is a happy arrangement." The Vannevar language was full of trills and whistles. It sounded happy to Abby's ear.
Abby walked home with a light step. She loved going to the store.
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When Abby got home, Tom showed her a message they'd received in their 'whirlibox,' as Mrs. Whipple liked to call the device because the machine made a whirring, bripping sound when it was printing. Luke had already left to run some errands for his Mom.
The whirlibox was originally used by the Gracchus to project three-dimensional representations of a messenger for long distance communications. They had modified the machine for Humans' use to send and receive written messages. Telephones had never caught on with the Gracchus; they still used the whirliboxes. Besides, modern telephone systems required satellites, something the Gracchians would never permit. The whirlibox also acted as a news service, though not of the kind Humans were familiar with. The Ellsworths hadn't yet had much experience with the news function.
This message was from Prospero back on Earth. They received some communication from him every few days, sometimes just to tell the Ellsworths what he was doing on Earth, but more often to ask them questions or answer theirs. The messages couldn't travel across thousands of light-years, naturally; that would take, quite literally, eons. Instead, messages going to and from Earth were electronically stored on capsules that were attached to the freight going through a Gate. After the cargo had gone through, the message was re-transmitted on the Earth side to the recipient. It wasn't super quick, but it worked.
Prospero's message was chatty. Gemma had taken him water-skiing. Prospero hadn't particularly cared for it. He wrote, 'The combination of moving quickly across a large expanse of water while getting spray in my face was not pleasant. In fact, I became quite nauseated.'
"Poor Prospero," Abby said as she read the message.
"He's probably too small and close to the water," guessed Tom.
Prospero concluded, 'I am taking care of your lawn and cut it to regulation height yesterday. Please put some fish from Gruben in the courtyard pool.'
Then as an afterthought, 'How are your studies of Gracchian going? Let me know when I can write to you in my native language.' He signed it "Prospero" in phonetic Gracchian. Abby and Tom could just puzzle out the characters.
"Why do you suppose he wants us to put fish in the pool? And who is Gruben? Maybe he owns a shop that sells fish," Abby answered her own question.
Tom said, "I'll bet the fish eat the algae and help keep it clean. Or maybe he wants us to have them as decoration. We'll ask Luke. He knows everything about Gracchia."
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That afternoon, Oliver spoke with both of the participants in his current arbitration case. Cynwulf the Nawak trader was agreeable to the solution that Oliver proposed. Dannar Ericsson was a bit more difficult to persuade, but as Oliver was talking to him in the Human's office, the replacement notebook for the one the Nawak had destroyed arrived. This seemed to make the Human more amenable, and by mid-afternoon, Oliver had closed the deal. With an arbitration fee of one percent of the value of the deal, to be paid equally by both participants, Oliver had done very well.
The next case on his agenda was an Aeris client, Foraye, who needed to renegotiate the terms of an agreement to produce a vaccine for the Human common cold. Trials weren't going well. Oliver did some of the preliminary research. Given the persistent Human failure in this field, he thought he could get an extension for his client.
When he had done as much as he could on the Aeris case, Oliver spent some time puttering around his office. He checked the schedule for the next trade show to be held in Aurelia. While Oliver didn't have any merchandise to sell, the trade shows were an excellent opportunity to meet potential clients. There had already been one trade show since the Ellsworths had moved to Gracchia. Each one specialized in some aspect of trade goods: food, entertainment, weapons, self-embellishment. That last category included everything from jewelry and makeup to clothes and certain medical services.
Eventually Oliver decided to call it quits for the day and stop by and see his friend Macready on his way home.
He’d barely had time to talk to Macready since his arrival on Gracchia a month ago.
The city of Aurelia was roughly divided into sectors by the different species, though there was a great deal of intermingling. There was no rule about it; people just liked to live near others with whom they felt comfortable and shared cultural understandings. Macready was one of the exceptions; he lived in what was predominantly an Aeris neighborhood.
Macready's house was four stories high with a miniature tower on top, but narrow and graceful. It looked impossibly delicate and lacy, yet the materials were stronger than high carbon steel. Oliver wondered how the Aeris did it. Possibly they used some sort of nanotechnology engineering, though that was usually thought of as the province of the Nawak.
The sign over the front door read, "Macready's Kitchen." Macready ran a small school out of his house, never more than ten students, and classes were held around the huge table in the kitchen at the back of the house.
The door glided open in response to Oliver's knock.
"Hello?"
Oliver heard a voice from the back of the house, "Mansoor, you nitwit, you forgot your book again? At this rate, you're never going to find out who won the Punic Wars!"
A smile spread over Oliver's face. He'd recognize that voice in the middle of a London fog. He walked to the back of the house through a doorway into the enormous kitchen that held the aforementioned table and also a fireplace and a chalkboard with a map of Earth's Mediterranean Sea roughly sketched on it. Macready's back was to the room, and he was washing dishes at the sink while one of his students was packing up papers. Despite Macready's insults, Mansoor was laughing. "I'm sure you'll be able to give me a personal account of the Romans' ultimate victory, Mr. Macready," the student said.
"HA! I'll see you tomorrow morning, Mansoor. Give my regards to your mother," Macready said. Mansoor left, with a polite nod to Oliver on the way out.
"From the back, I see you have even less hair, old friend."
"Ellsworth! You tricky devil," Macready said, spinning around. "You should know better than to sneak up on an old campaigner that way."
"In the old days, I wouldn't have been able to sneak up on you. Running a school seems to have dulled your senses."
"These kids I teach should have their picture in the dictionary next to the definition of 'nefarious.' Never underestimate the deviousness of youth, Ellsworth."
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After the Blood War back on Earth, Macready had put in his twenty years and decided that he was ready to leave the military, try something else. Some Americans had seen an amazing lot of action for being officially noncombatants, getting caught in the fray while advising from a forward position. Macready went back to school and earned his teaching certificate. He couldn't believe the hoops the school of education made him jump through; it made the military look like a model of perfect logic. But his mother had been a teacher, and Macready felt the call. After a couple of decades of training recruits and then foreign troops, he wanted to help young minds. Only after Macready had earned his certificate and served his time as a student teacher, no one would hire him.
Before he left for Gracchia several years ago, Macready had stopped by the Ellsworths' house to talk to his old friend.
"They told me I needed a master's degree in psychology to deal with the troubled kids. But that was just an excuse. I think maybe they were afraid I'd bring an M-4 to class or a rocket launcher or something like that," Macready had said.
"Which would violate the school's no-weapons policy, I imagine."
"Some of those schools are so messed up, it would be standard battle gear, I swear. Anyway, long story short, I'm moving to Gracchia next month," Macready said.
Oliver was amazed.
Macready continued, "I took a long shot, applied for a resident visa. The day after I applied, one of the small furry ones showed up on my doorstep, a Gracchus named Desdemona. We talked for maybe an hour, and I told her my dream of being a teacher, perhaps opening my own school someday. She told me I was free to come to Gracchia whenever I was able and stay as long as I liked. I thought I was beyond surprise at this point in my life, but you could have knocked me over with a daisy."
Macready had cashed in his pension rights and left. But he’d still kept in touch with Oliver Ellsworth back on Earth.
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In Aurelia, Macready's Kitchen School was difficult to get into. It had a fine reputation as a tough school, one which produced students who could think on their feet. But in truth, there weren't any bad schools on Gracchia. Why would anyone send a child to a poorly performing school when there were other choices?
Now Macready brewed coffee for the two of them as they talked over old times.
Oliver took one sip of the coffee and his hair practically came off. Macready pushed the cream and sugar toward Oliver with a little grin but drank his black.
Eventually the conversation veered towards Ms. Tavish.
"Miranda?" Macready said. "No, she's not attached. Good woman."
"I think I'll ask her out," Oliver said.
"Courage, Ellsworth, courage."
"Speaking of which, have you ever tried kish-kish stew?" asked Oliver.
"You're not inviting me over to eat some, are you?" Macready said dubiously. He'd tried it in a Vannevar restaurant. He was still trying to forget it.
"No worry. But Abby made a batch for her class today."
"Now that will give her classmates an unforgettable experience." Macready poured more coffee.
Macready and Oliver talked about Tom and Abby, who Macready had known since Oliver had adopted them from the chaos of Europe, and Macready's students. Eventually it was time for Oliver to go.
"Tomorrow's Friday. Why don't you come out to dinner with Abby and Tom and me?" Oliver said as he was walking out the door. "I know they'd love to see you."
"Excellent." They made arrangements to meet at the House of Fire, Alex Vargas' Mexican restaurant, tomorrow evening.
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