She sighed. Since her mom died, the prospect of Thanksgiving at her house was still feeling fairly abnormal. Mostly—and somewhat guiltily—Nita hated it and wished it would go away. Christmas, strangely, was easier to deal with. It had always been a kind of lightly celebrated holiday in her family, more about relaxation and visits from relatives than extravagant giftgiving or crazed levels of decoration. And Christmas dinner had always been something different from year to year (because her Mom had loudly proclaimed to anyone who’d listen, “One damn turkey a year is enough!”). So when her Dad had made sauerbraten last Christmas when her Mom was too sick to cook, it had still seemed strangely normal. This year, when the subject came up, he’d announced he was going to do a standing rib roast, which was fine with Nita. But she was dreading Thanksgiving, which had been the one holiday her Mom had willingly made a song and dance over in terms of food.
“You’re really not up for Turkey Day,” Carmela said.
“Nope,” Nita said.
“Dodgy holiday anyway,” said Carmela. “Never mind. Let’s skip it and go straight to Christmas.”
“If only,” Nita said.
“No,” said Carmela. “I’m serious! Why spend any more time on it than we have to? Eat the stupid turkey and move right on. Christmas!”
Nita smiled at the thought. “I wish they gave out timeslides for this kind of thing,” she said. “Because boy, would I requisition one right this minute.”
Carmela turned and looked her up and down. “You sound tired,” she said. “Enough walking! Let’s do the wizardy thing and get hoverscoots.”
Nita blinked. “How’s that so wizardy?”
“Well, it’s all about not wasting energy, isn’t it? No point in wasting perfectly good shopping energy on walking.”
It occurred to Nita that this was one of the more interesting takes she’d recently heard on the concept of not speeding up the heat-death of the Universe. Carmela, though, plainly wasn’t concerned about such details. She merely paused where she was and stamped on the shining white floor.
Immediately two long pieces of the floor material smoothly detached themselves upwards from it, deformed out into long hovering skateboard shapes, and sprouted tall slender grips from their fronts. Underneath the scooters the surface reformed seamlessly and went back to being shining and white.
Nita blinked. “That’s new…” she said. “Used to be Crossings staff had to call for one of these.”
“I’m that,” Carmela said, “more or less. Or anyway I’ve got a similar level of permissions.”
Which was no surprise. To everyone at the Crossings from the highest managerial levels on down these days she was Carmela Rodriguez of Earth, Defender and Protector of Transients and Staff… not to mention Occasional Personal Shopper to Interplanetary Royalty (which counted for a little more on the strictly retail side). Nita had of course spearheaded the defense that had been instrumental in saving the Crossings from the aliens attacking it, and was if anything honored even more highly than Carmela, to an almost almost embarrassing extent (at least it embarrassed her). Carmela, though, had absolutely no embarrassment about casually reminding the Crossings staff how much they owed her (and Nita), and as a result had for some time now been pulling down a range of increasingly impressive perks.
“Come on, mount up,” Carmela said, “there’s a lot of new stuff on this side of the wing we haven’t seen yet.”
Nita climbed onto the scooter, and both of them started to move along the broad corridor, absolutely shocklessly. She recognized the motive force as another implementation of the frictionless, inertially-dampered transport system the Crossings used for moving people and cargo in and out of the satellite terminals to the major gate clusters at high speed. These scooters, though, were gliding along at just a few miles an hour, with no more fuss or sense of motion than if the two of them were standing still together.
Carmela was studying a diagram of the local shopping space that had begun displaying on the plaque that spanned the graceful handlebars of the scooter. Nita’s display had synced up with her manual—all the Crossings’ systems being alert to the presence of wizards and having a raft of custom routines to make their work easier—and was displaying “smart” advertisements for various stores in the area and travel advisories tailored to her point of origin, all translated into English for her convenience.
“Okay,” Carmela said, tracing a route on the scooter’s display, “right there.” The scooter chirped in acquiescence. “Meanwhile,” she said, turning to Nita, “I know exactly what we need.”
“Yeah? What?”
“A Christmas party.”
“Mela,” Nita said, and laughed. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet!”
“And you were just complaining that you didn’t want it to be.”
Nta blinked, as that felt like it should have made some kind of sense. Just possibly not Earth sense.
She sighed and glanced down at the scooter’s display, which was now showing some amusing promotional material. After a moment she raised her eyebrows at the slugline of one feature. “NASA’s going to be glad to hear we’ve got a ruthless and terrible space fleet.”
Carmela snickered. “So will Richard Branson, when he gets the memo,” she said. “And frankly, I know which of them’s going to do better marketing.”
Nita snorted. “Yeah, but Mela, you know as well as I do it’s not true! Is putting something like this out there smart?”
“Why not? If everybody thinks Earth has a big aggressive space fleet, no one’ll bother turning up on our doorstep with one, will they.”
There was something to be said for that line of reasoning, but Nita still had misgivings: some of the more assertive species she knew of might take it as a challenge. “And anyway, who put that in here?”
“I’m sure I have no idea,” Carmela said, airily waving a hand.
Nita began to sweat a little, because she knew from experience what it meant when Carmela started handwaving. “Are you trying to tell me that— What did you get Sker’ret to let you do?” For it couldn’t escape anyone’s notice who knew the present Master of the Crossings that there was just about nothing he wouldn’t do for Carmela. Installing a worldgate in her closet had merely been a small sign of things to come.
“Who, me? Nothing! …Much. I mean, the small print was such a nuisance to start with…” She glanced over at what Nita was still reading.
Nita squinted to read the block of tiny, tiny print at the bottom of the promotional feature, again displayed in English to ease the handling of some of the more obscure Rirhait idioms. “…Wait. ’Earth’, ‘Mysterious Earth’ and ‘Mother Earth The Legendary Home Of Humankind’ are licensed trademarks of Gaia Protectorate CRLLC, terms and conditions apply, planetary descriptions may change from time to time without notice at management’s discretion—” And then in the tiniest print possible, “—battle fleet not included’??”
“Legalese,” Carmela said, craning her neck to see ahead of them. “It’s not like the disclaimers actually have any force in law, really, once you’ve—”
“I can’t believe this,” Nita said. “CRLLC? Did you incorporate the entire planet Earth somewhere?!”
“Here, actually,” Carmela said. “The corporate tax rate here is reeeeeeeeallly low. Especially if you’ve saved the place from alien invasion. At which point it drops to zero. …If not lower.”
Nita’s mouth dropped open.
“Why are you looking so shocked? You cosigned the incorporation documents when we were here last.”