The Muffin was oblivious to all this, and to everything else, as the car pulled out of the fast-speed “lanes” and chimed at her father for him to take control back to do local approach. She was singing “We have a cousin, we have a cousin!” at the top of her none-too-small lungs as Maj’s dad slipped into the airport parking approach and brought the car around into the access circle, where once again the local remote control computers took it off his hands and guided it into the parking facility. Nothing was allowed to randomly circle within a kilometer from the airport center. There were too many things cycling through the neighborhood at the best of times to allow parking-place anarchy in, too.
“We’re running early,” Maj’s mother said, somewhat surprised, from the other front seat, as the car settled gently into the parking place that the local space control had assigned it.
“Welcome to Dulles International Aerospace Port,” said a pleasant male voice through the car’s entertainment system. “To better serve our visitors, please note that parking rates in short-term are now thirty dollars per hour. Thank you for your cooperation in keeping our airport running smoothly.”
Her father grunted, a sound which Maj knew concealed a comment that would have been much more vigorous if the Muffin hadn’t been in the car. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get in there and fetch our guest before we have to go into escrow to get out again.”
A couple of rows from their space was the shelter for the maglev car that ran to the main terminals, and they all made their way to it, wincing a little at the sound of cars all around them parking or winding up their engines to take off again. Maj looked with some dry amusement at the poster inside the shelter as they climbed into the maglev car which almost immediately slid up to meet them — GROWING AGAIN TO SERVE YOU BETTER! This was Dulles’s third “refit” in the last twenty years, almost finished — so the airport kept promising — now that the fifth runway, the one for the aerospaceplanes, was finished, and the additional wing to Terminal C was almost done being extended and overhauled to service it. It wasn’t entirely ready, though, and so it came to pass that the place where they met Niko looked more like a building site than a terminal.
And Maj, all too ready to be annoyed with him, caught the first sight of the youngster standing over near the “designated meeting” area with the AA flight services lady, and immediately felt all her annoyance drop off her in embarrassment. It was impossible to be angry at anyone who looked so small and lost and scared, and who was trying so valiantly to hide it.
He really was kind of small for his age, his dark jeans and sober sweatshirt and plain dark jacket like something left over from a school uniform, suggesting that he had somehow been trying to avoid notice, and indeed he looked uncomfortable, standing there out in the open, as if he would have preferred to be invisible.
Maj’s dad made straight for him, and Maj hung back a little, watching the kid’s face as he registered this tall, balding man heading in his direction, waiting to see his reaction. The boy looked at her father with dark, assessing eyes. He was himself shadowy — dark hair, a little bit olive of complexion, and had sort of a Mediterranean look, though with high cheekbones. As Maj’s dad came up and paused there, towering over him, the slightest sign of a smile appeared, and it was a relieved smile.
“Martin Green,” her father said to the flight services lady. “And this would be Niko. Grazé, cousin.”
“Grazé…” said the boy as Maj and her mother and the Muffin came along behind her dad.
“Professor Green, can I get you to look into this, please?” said the flight services lady, holding up a “little black box” with an eyepiece.
“No problem.” He took it from her, took off his driving glasses, and fitted the eyepiece to his eye. Then, “Ow,” he said, and handed the box back. “Can they make that light any brighter?”
The flight services lady laughed, turning the box over to check the LCD readout as it came up. “Probably not. That’s fine, Professor. Can I get you to sign this, please?” She held out an electric “pad” and a stylus to him.
He scribbled his name, handed the pad back. “Thanks, ma’am. Where’s his luggage?”
“There wasn’t any,” said the flight services lady, glancing down at Niko. “Some kind of problem with the onload from the train at Zurich…The baggage people are trying to track it down. They have your number. They’ll deliver it to your house as soon as it’s found.”
“Oh, my gosh, that’s awful,” said Maj’s mother immediately. “What an awful way to have a trip start! We’ll sort something out for you. Welcome, Niko, I’m Rosilyn. And this is Madeline. Maj, we call her. And this is Adrienne—”
“I’m not Adrienne, I’m Muffin!” said the Muf in defiance, and then — apparently startled out of her wits by having actually spoken to her “cousin”—the Muffin did the impossible and came down with an acute case of the shys. She actually hid behind Maj’s mother and looked around the side of her, as if she were a tree. “Hi,” she whispered, and hid her face in Maj’s mother’s trousers.
Her mother and father looked at her in astonishment. Maj took the moment to hold her hand out. Niko reached out and shook it. “Hello,” he said, and then looked up at her father and mother. “Thanks for letting me stay with you.”
“No problem at all,” said Maj’s father. “Look, if your luggage is lost en route, there’s no point in us standing around here trying to second-guess these people. Let’s get home and have some breakfast. Or lunch, or dinner, or whatever your body clock is up for…”
They headed out of the torn-up terminal, past the posters with pictures of how it would look when it was finished, and Maj noticed that her father seemed to be rather more in a hurry than usual. Normally he liked poring over the details of new construction when they came across it. Then again, there was always the possibility that thirty dollars an hour for short-term parking was on his mind.
On their way back to the parking lot, Maj noticed how politely Niko seemed to be trying to pay attention to everything her mother and father said, while at the same time looking at absolutely everything around him as if he had never seen anything like it before. The Muffin was beginning to get over her shyness and had made her way around her mother, while the maglev car was in transit, to sit closer to Niko. He had noticed this and was smiling at her while he answered Maj’s mom’s questions about how things were in Hungary, the weather and so forth. By the time they got to the car and started to get in, the Muffin had apparently decided that there was no further need for shyness, and insisted on being belted in beside Niko.
“I thought Hungry was something you got,” said the Muffin as the car lifted off.
Maj rolled her eyes in amusement, listening with one ear as Niko tried to explain the difference between a country and something that happened in your stomach. With the other ear she was amused to hear her mother going with unusual speed into full maternal mode.
“That’s terrible about his clothes,” she said. “And we haven’t kept anything of Rick’s that would fit him. And God knows when his luggage will arrive, or what continent it’s on at this point. Never mind that. Maj, when we get in, why don’t you take him over to GearOnline and pick up a few things for him? Jeans and so on. Put it on the house charge, and we’ll sort it out later.”
“Sure, Mom.” This raised some interesting questions for Maj, as she had never taken a boy clothes shopping before and wasn’t sure if the online protocols were the same as they were for girls. Next to her, the Muffin’s conversation was rapidly gaining in speed and volume as the car fed itself into the traffic stream heading back toward Alexandria. “Our car is old,” the Muffin said. “Mommy says it’s an antique. It’s a big car. Is your car like this one?”