Freelance On The Galactic Tunnel Network by E. Foner (best beach reads of all time TXT) 📗

“It’s stuck,” Myka said. “I did poke some holes in it along the edge to make sure she can breathe, but I don’t really know how her head is shaped. I’ve never really seen a gryphon in the flesh before.”

John crouched down in front of the winged lioness, who was acting very nonchalant about the whole affair, though that might have been the aftereffect of knocking her head into a table. “You really can’t get that thing off yourself?” he asked.

The bucket shook from side to side.

“I can try pulling it off, but it might hurt. Less risky than cutting, though.”

The wings shrugged.

John sat on the ground and braced his feet against the gryphon’s shoulders, then grabbing the lip of the bucket on each side, began to pull. The bulge in the plastic wall of the bucket began to move slowly back from the bottom, and then the whole thing came free at once, propelling John into a backward somersault that he somehow ended on his feet.

Everybody at the front of the tent burst into applause, and Semmi began to preen her ruffled feathers back into place.

“You’ve got my vote,” a trader shouted, though John didn’t know if the pledge of support was for him or the gryphon.

Another one of the diners matched John’s face to the candidate list on his tab and called out, “Does everybody who signs up with EarthCent Intelligence get a killer pet?”

The gryphon snapped her beak at this remark, and John hastened to calm her. “He wasn’t talking about you, Semmi.”

Larry tapped John’s shoulder to get his attention. “Putting your name in the hat? It looks like all thirteen anti-CoSHC candidates are already signed up, plus most of our side.”

“Where’s the hat?”

“Here,” Larry said, passing over a tab with a picture of a hat on the screen. “Just take a selfie and it will figure out the rest.”

John held the tab in front of his face, angling it self-consciously for the least distorted image, and then he staggered as a heavy weight pushed on both shoulders and a beaked face with a lolling tongue appeared next to his own. He tapped the blinking button anyway, handed back the tab, and then pried the gryphon’s paws off his shoulders.

“Down, Semmi,” he said, to reinforce the message.

“Are you taking her on stage with you for the speech?” Larry asked.

“Do you think it would be a good idea?”

“People will certainly remember you,” the other trader said, returning the tab to the woman running the event desk. “If I was you, I’d swap that picture for the one they took at the registration desk.”

“Can we do that?”

“I already did it for mine. You just go to the page on your own tab, hit the ‘edit’ option, and scan your face for the password.”

“I’ll do that tonight. When do we find out who speaks when?”

“Right now,” the woman at the desk said. She swiped an option on the tab and the two dozen or so pictures all swirled together before rearranging themselves in a grid in ranked order. Then the event coordinator tapped a pin on the collar of her blouse and began to speak in the professional-announcer voice they had heard over the public address system a few minutes prior.

“There are twenty-three candidates registered to speak tonight, and as this event is scheduled for two hours, each will be given five minutes maximum.” Then she began reading off the order, and John found himself stuck in the last slot, immediately following Larry.

“What kind of random drawing was that?” Larry asked the women. “We were the last two candidates to sign up, and the first thirteen are all from the anti-CoSHC party.”

“The early Dolly gets the Sheezle bug,” she replied philosophically. “You can always complain to the outgoing council.”

The speeches didn’t start for another half hour, by which time at least two-thirds of the crowd had wandered off to the fair. The thirteen candidates from the anti-CoSHC party all proved to be attractive younger traders, and they offered up impressive, if somewhat similar speeches, every one of them starting with a joke and ending with a promise of independence and prosperity.

The next eight speakers were all current council members standing for reelection, and they spoke in favor of joining the Conference of Sovereign Human Communities. By the time Larry’s turn came, the tent had begun filling up again for the storytelling contest that would follow, so going on near the end proved to be a blessing in disguise. Larry spent a couple of minutes talking about growing up in a trading family and his years operating his own ship. He concluded with a well-reasoned argument for why the best way for traders to ensure their continued independence was to have representation in CoSHC, which was one day likely to become the off-Earth government for most of humanity. Then he left the stage and John took his place, the gryphon following at his heel.

“I’ll be the last candidate before we move on to the Tall Tales contest that I know you’re all really here for, so I’ll try to be brief,” John began.

Semmi yawned ostentatiously, then curled up and covered her head with a wing, drawing a roar of laughter from the crowd.

“Thank you, Semmi,” he continued. “There’s a story about a village on Earth, hundreds of years before the Stryx opening, where parents tried to choose who their children would marry. There was no greater shame in this community than when a child rejected that choice and ran off to escape parental control. When young people began disappearing from the village one after another, their families tried to keep it a secret so as not to be shunned by their neighbors. Nearly a year passed before a young woman made it home after escaping