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They’d been waiting in the Quarantine Scanning area for hours, Apollonia thought. Her system said it had been over two since they’d gotten off Urle’s shuttle.
The docking itself had taken awhile, over half an hour, and she had been happy to disembark.
Brooks had dawdled, talking to Urle in a low voice, and she had moved away to give them privacy.
But she still glanced back, just out of curiosity.
The two men shook hands, and then Urle hugged Brooks.
She looked away again, feeling like she’d just seen something private.
Stepping away, she toed at the floor, noting how clean it was, and that for some reason that annoyed her. Couldn’t anything be grimy in the Sapient Union?
Brooks walked up next to her. “There’s a routine Quarantine Scan for anyone coming in from outside the system,” he said. “It won’t take long.”
But it had taken long, she thought. Two hours was long. And her tablet was deactivated. “It protects it from the scans,” Brooks had explained, but that hadn’t made it less boring.
A lot of time in her past had been spent just waiting for nothing. She hated reliving it.
And even now, once they’d gotten out, Brooks told her;
“We’re going to have more of a wait. “I received a message that there was an issue with our transport.”
“An issue? Like it blew up or something?”
Brooks gave her a surprised and confused look, but she wasn’t sure why.
Transports had blown up rather often going between Vitriol and New Vitriol. Sometimes it was even an accident.
“No, they didn’t tell me,” he said. “But I’ll get it sorted out.”
He began walking, his long strides forcing her to hurry to keep up.
“Slow down a little! When is our new flight?” she asked.
He measured his pace somewhat. “Tomorrow,” he replied.
“Is there a place we can stay?” she asked. “Like a hotel?”
Hopefully not the one the hookers all used, she thought.
“Yes, but we won’t have to use them,” Brooks replied. “I’ll talk to someone and we’ll find another transport that will take us sooner.”
Maybe he did have the clout to pull that off, she didn’t know.
The area they’d gotten out in was a star-shaped boarding platform with space for five shuttles to dock. They seemed to be the only ones in this part, and it was as cramped and narrow as she’d have expected of a space station, though there was at least gravity, even if it was spin.
And she had just been starting to get used to water falling straight instead of a coriolis curve . . .
The area quickly widened into a check-in terminal with elevator banks. Everything looked extremely nice, she thought, the floors were made of marble with an almost mirror shine.
Brooks ignored the terminals and went straight to the elevators.
Even this was nice, she thought. Gold leaf was arranged in dazzlingly fine detail, and she leaned over to try and look at them.
“This is the first point that anyone coming to Earth will see,” Brooks noted. “So a lot of effort went into it all.”
“I’ll say. I think I see people in this. Working with the ground?”
“It’s a visual history of humanity,” Brooks told her. “So they’re probably tilling, from the dawn of agriculture.”
She stood upright again. “I can’t imagine working with my hands in the dirt,” she said. “Have you ever done that?” she then asked, turning to look at him.
Brooks seemed to hesitate a minute, but something she said seemed to have made him happy. “I’ve never done agriculture, but yes – I’ve worked in the dirt. Planting flowers.”
“You don’t seem like the kind of guy to grow flowers,” she said. “No offense.”
“I don’t anymore,” he replied. The door dinged and opened, and they stepped out into a vast area.
The ceiling was four floors above them, and hanging from it was an incredible chandelier made of what must be ten thousand crystals. Within many of the central crystals were embedded symbols that she didn’t know.
“What are-” she began.
“There’s 15,000 crystals, for all the colonized human systems when we first joined the Sapient Union,” Brooks noted.
“And the symbols?”
“There existed several factions of system alliances that we still recognize as autonomous even if they did join with Earth.”
“That was like fifty years ago, right?” she asked, still gazing at it. “I bet there’s a lot more now, aren’t there?”
“No, actually,” Brooks said. “But let’s go.”
He led the way again, taking them through a crowded visitors area, snack bars, and past some entertainment venues to a set of very official-looking doors. A scanner drone checked him, then her, making a few quizzical beeps as it did so.
“She doesn’t have a system,” Brooks said to it.
“It asked about that?” she asked him, once they were in.
“It thought it was odd,” he said. “But it was just curious.”
“Drones get curious?”
“It’s just the eyes for an AI security system.”
Brooks went up to a desk and spoke to a woman behind it.
“I need to get a call through to Admiral Temohee Vandoss,” he said.
“I’m afraid our lines are currently in use, sir,” the woman said. “There will be a wait of-“
“Use this override code,” Brooks said, showing her a piece of paper, of all things.
The woman looked at it, pursing her lips, but then nodded.
“What is that?” Apollonia asked.
The woman looked to her, then back to Brooks, pausing.
He turned to Apollonia. “I need you to go wait out in the visitor’s area. Take this card – it’ll let you get some food if you want.” He pressed a thin card into her hands.
“Ah, sure,” Apollonia replied, feeling horribly self-conscious.
Other Terrestrial 