Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

Dairine shrugged. “Sure they can. Gigo tells me they could pull a hundred million people off the planet and into safe storage within an hour. But it’s not gonna happen unless the Tevaralti change their minds about leaving real fast: it’s not a solution that you can employ on just fractions of the population, at least not right now. And if they wait much longer for their change of heart, the on-planet gates won’t be able to get them all out in time. The Mobiles wouldn’t have any choice but to render them down as storable data.”

“Not the best solution,” Ronan said.

That struck Kit as a pretty mild way to put it. “Especially if they’re still just in alpha testing…”

“Yeah,” Dairine said, and started scrolling along through the menu that had presented itself in front of her. “Oh, come on now, what is this, have they stopped carrying sildwif all of a sudden?”

Ronan peered around the counter at her menu, having taken delivery on something that looked like a burrito but smelled more like fish and chips. “You miss the announcement? They’re having a run on manganese today. Should have had some pumpkin seeds before you left.”

“Oh please spare me,” Dairine muttered. “How close can they get to bologna here?”

Sensitive to what she was discussing, the menu in front of her shifted immediately. Dairine peered at it.

“Don’t get the chifemda,” Nita said without even looking up from her noodles. “Doesn’t matter what the flavor algorithm says it’s going to be like. It always comes out tasting like clams.”

“Ewww, no thank you,” Dairine said. She glanced over at Kit. “Something blue again. What a surprise. How is it?”

Kit actually had to stop and think about that, despite the fact that he was in the middle of eating it. Describing alien flavors was always a problem for him, even more when they were ones he liked than when they were ones he didn’t, and it was all too easy to fall back on the “Tastes like chicken” solution. “Not bad,” he said. “Kind of a fish stick flavor, but spicy.”

“Fine, that’ll hold me,” Dairine said, and tapped on the menu.

Within a few moments everyone was eating, or getting back to it, while the louder-than-normal hubbub of the Crossings went on around them. But even through this, Earth-human voices stood out, especially when they were speaking English. Not far away, even through the din of voices talking in the Speech and in many other languages all up and down the vocal scale, Kit heard somebody down the concourse saying, “It was right around here the last time…”

“You could always just check the diagram.”

“No, seriously, it should be here. Or maybe just a little further up—”

“What is it with you and not wanting to look at the map?”

The voices were familiar. Kit had to smile. “When I don’t need the map and I know perfectly well where it was last time—”

“I know! Let’s ask them. They look like people who know where the good food is.”

And when Kit turned around, sure enough, there were Tom and Carl coming along up the concourse from the same direction he and Nita had come. Carl was in a dark suit, and over it a long dark navy-blue midlength coat of the kind a businessman might wear on a city street in the winter; he looked overdressed for someone going out on a rescue mission. Tom, on the other hand, was in hiking gear—waterproof trousers and a fleece shirt, and a down overvest with a big bold logo that said BANFF-JASPER ICEFIELDS PARKWAY.

Nita looked up from her noodles. “Thought you two would’ve been through here and gone by now,” she said.

Tom shook his head. “Late to the party, but not by choice. Carl had a late meeting in town this afternoon, and then he had to sort some Grand Central business out with Rhiow before we left. The usual drill when an Advisory goes off planet.” They leaned up against the counter. “So we’ve got a while yet—we know the gate’s been assigned, but it’s not ready. What looks good?”

“Try the blue meatloaf,” Dairine said.

Carl glanced innocently down at the menu that was presenting itself to him. “What, not the frogspawn?”

Kit leaned over and thumped his head gently a couple of times on the counter, causing the subsurface menu (possibly in an attempt to console him) to start displaying desserts. “Is there anybody on Earth who doesn’t know that story by now?”

“Possibly somebody in the Marianas Trench,” Tom said. “Those tubeworms, maybe. You should check with S’reee. Nita, where are those noodles from?”

She shook her head: he’d caught her with her mouth full, and it took a moment before she could say, “Sastaphare, I thought? I mean, the dish is always called that, but seems like a lot of the planets in the Sast Commodium have them…” She peered down at the menu. “Uh, sorry. ‘Produce of more than one planet…’”

Tom shrugged, hailed the Rirhait. “I’ll have what she’s having…”

For a while there wasn’t much conversation while people concentrated on stuffing their faces and watching the ever-changing crowds moving around them. Kit in particular was used to finding the Crossings a lot quieter, and the bustle was acting to keep him slightly on edge. For the moment, though, Tom and Carl seemed not to be paying it much mind. Carl acquired himself a bowl of some kind of vegetable stew in what struck Kit as alarming colors of yellow-green and orange, then glanced around that part of the concourse and back to Tom. “Coffee?”

Tom looked around in surprise. “Real coffee? Thought the Galactibucks or whatever it is was all the way up by the 600 hexes. By the Chur legacy gate or some such.”

Carl shook his head and nodded off to one side, where yet another kiosk was suddenly in evidence, having appeared without so much as a breath of displaced air (or if it had made one, Kit had missed it). “Crossings Retail has started doing some tailoring at the retail end. The popups have started targeting customer profiles. When they’re not busy they consult the master census system to seek out transients who match the kiosk’s product offerings, then transit to where they are.”

“That could get expensive…” Tom said.

“When you run a worldgating facility and can factor the energy cost into the retail overheads? Just another business expense.” Carl shrugged. “Meanwhile, what a surprise, there’s the coffee place’s pop-up, and yes, they have your mocha, and it’s real mocha for a change! You’d start to think we were getting preferential treatment because we’ve got an in with the local chocolate cartel.” He raised his eyebrows at Kit. “Or because we know somebody who shot the place up once.” He glanced sideways at Nita with a smile.

Still working on her noodles, Nita just shrugged and smiled. “Why would I complain about that?” Tom said. “As long as she doesn’t seem likely to start shooting again without reason. Yes, a large mocha, please. Anybody else?”

Heads were shaken generally, and Carl went off to see about it.

“He’s here a lot more than I am,” Tom said, “as he loves to remind me.”

“Maybe you should get out more,” Ronan said.

Tom chuckled at that. “When you make Advisory,” he said, “let’s see you manage it.”

“You said once it was like not wanting to get out of a car you were driving…” Nita said.

Tom sighed. “More like you’re not allowed to get out because the kids keep needing to be taken places. Soccer practice. Little League. Dancing lessons…”

Kit had to snicker at the put-upon act. “And then you have to help them with their homework,” Tom said, giving him a restrained side-eye. “Hundreds of them. Math, science, civics, saving the universe. It never ends…”