Story Excerpt
The End of the Line
by William Paul Jones
The stars flow beneath my slippers. Each of my steps blots out a new part of the sparkling void; I am a carefree god treading on the secrets of heaven on my way from kitchen to table. Walking on the unblemished glass of our viewing floor gives most people vertigo at the very least or night terrors at worst, but this is my home and my sanctuary. I see only potential and plenty in the infinite.
The feeling is rubbing off on our guests. “I could not envision it before,” Charan says with that million-watt smile of his. “But this is why we research our roles, is it not? Rise of the Void Guard could well be the crown jewel of my career.”
“Capital!” says the jaunty producer across from him. “So glad we could come to an accord!” While the rest of the party is toasting their productive negotiations, the producer gives me a mouthed Thank You and a small bow.
“Mr. Charan,” I respond. “I’m glad that your time at the End of the Line could be so enlightening. Your films are among the staff’s very favorites. I’m sure the world will be thrilled to see you take the reins of space.”
I have to hand it to Charan; he’s putting on a brave face for a man who turned green the instant he set foot on my floor. He is stunningly handsome and strapped with all the lean, buttery muscle that you’d expect from a movie star, but for much of his meal he’s been trying to crawl through his chair into an alternate dimension to escape the yawning void below the table.
His reaction is common to visitors to Apex Station, and more specifically to those lucky enough to dine at the End of the Line, the only five-star restaurant in space. The hundred-thousand-kilometer tether of the Ndjolé Space Elevator—more commonly called the Vine—extends overhead all the way to Earth’s surface, while the centrifugal force of the station itself keeps our local perception of gravity pointed toward the star-sprayed beyond. Disorienting to say the least, even with all the literal orientation videos that visitors are subjected to.
He wasn’t too squeamish to enjoy his meal, at least. Traditional filter kaapi, lentils served hot in jaggery, chickpeas stewed in menthi kura, six different preparations of spiced lamb. . . It’s a feast fit for a star among the stars; I hear no fewer than four different members of the entourage make that exact joke.
“Great job, team,” I tell my staff behind the closed doors of the kitchen once the party has cleared out. “Nalgonda Charan will in fact be making his space shooter movie. All its joy and profits can no doubt be attributed to we humble few successfully wining and dining the star.” My little cadre all laugh and cheer, even though it’s only half a joke. With the caliber of our clientele and the drama inherent in even arriving at my table, my job is as much international dealmaker as it is restaurant manager. “Maybe they won’t fling us into the asteroid field this week after all.”
My tab pings and I frown at it. An emergency meeting of all the station’s department heads is thankfully rare, but stranger is that this one coincides with an express freight car unexpectedly launching from Earth. What’s so urgent about that?
I’m in the briefing room ten minutes later, and the answer has me burying my face in my hands.
On the big screen is a live video feed from inside the rising freight car. Surrounded by barrels and boxes all strapped to hardpoints is a makeshift acceleration couch, and lying on the couch is Hollis Askew, Chairman of the Gulf Coalition, pressed downward by gravity and snarling through obvious discomfort.
“Yeeeeeee-haw!” he shouts to nobody. I didn’t know anyone actually said that.
“He chose to do this?” asks Mathilde, the station’s Transit Manager; the complex ballet of Apex’s arrivals and departures are her purview. She spills out of her chair, all gangly arms and legs; in the old age of rocketry she probably would have been scrubbed just for height. “Of his own free will?”
A passenger car on the Vine typically takes over a week to climb all the way to Apex Station, sliding on frictionless electromagnetic rails at a comfortably demure acceleration. A freight car, though, doesn’t have to contend with puny human bodies that wouldn’t enjoy getting liquefied by sustained high-G acceleration, so it can make the same trip in under a day.
“Chairman Askew,” grinds Kieran, the Station Chief, presenting from the front of the dim room, “does not wish to suffer a delay, and he apparently convinced Mathilde’s counterpart groundside that, ‘a real man ain’t afraid to go fast.’”
The live feed cuts in favor of a mashup of news footage: Chairman Hollis Askew, at various lecterns delivering fire and brimstone speeches, his bald head beet red, spittle flying from his furious lips. He looks like a brick outhouse and acts like one too, and now he’s apparently braving tissue-deforming acceleration so he can arrive at the top of the space elevator a few days before his appointed time.
“Those who control shipping, control the world!” he shouts to a crowd of his sunburned countrymen. “We took Tampa, we took the Big Easy, we took Havana. It is the will of all god-fearing Gulfers to continue . . . To Panama, to the Pacific, across the globe and to the heavens themselves!” The dozen department heads in the room with me groan at the prospect of that festering twit visiting our home at Apex.
My mind flashes with logistics. The Vine is the lynchpin of virtually all transterrestrial travel, handling everything from military hardware to live animals, volatile fuels to homewares, supporting tens of thousands of astronauts, colonists, and tourists. A few taps show me that there are 516 kilograms on that freight car that are designated Fine Dining: Various, including some items earmarked for Askew himself.
Each of my guests has a specially designed menu, Askew included. The peaches arrived via catapult from Mars yesterday and are already denaturing. The cornmeal is incoming via hydrazine transport from the Monsanto Cylinder in lower orbit later today, no problem there. Most of the other ingredients we already have on board, but the chilies and alligator tails will be arriving on the same cargo car as Askew himself, too late for proper prep. It rankles me to potentially serve under-tenderized meat, but my true artistry will likely be lost on someone like Askew anyway.
Kieran changes the feed again. Now the screen shows a distant external angle on the space elevator, a slender silver thread sprouting from west Africa and piercing the gauzy blue corona of Earth on its way to nothing in particular. That freight car is roomy enough for thousands of kilograms of supplies, but from this distance it’s just an aphid on the deceptively massive stalk of the Vine.
“Now, as much as we’re all looking forward to hosting dear, sweet Mr. Askew,” Kieran says to half-hearted jeering, “his early arrival does present us with a double-booking issue.”
Now the screen shows the inside of another rising car on the Vine, but this one has none of the antiseptic darkness of the freight car. Instead, the wide-angle view shows passengers riding in the lap of luxury; leather couches and foil-packaged margaritas.
Mathilde’s eyes bug out. “Is that Felipe friggin’ Vallarino!?” She checks the numerical readout attached to the corner of the video. “He’s the principal for passenger delivery 161-L?” She slumps forward and bangs her head repeatedly on the table in front of her. “All I remembered was twelve guests in a luxury car on this timetable. I’d forgotten it was Los Panameños.”
“Are either of them transiting off-planet?” the Security Chief asks.
“Negative,” Kieran answers. “Just photo ops, fact-finding, glad-handing, and fine dining.”
Frustration rumbles around the room until Kieran gets us all to pipe down. “Yes, these two definitely hate each other, and at least one has a good reason. Hollis Askew is exactly the kind of person who would commandeer an orbital climber just so he could stunt on his rival by getting here first, so get any hopes of a friendly visit out of your head. Whatever preparations your respective departments need to make to grease the skids, start preparing.”
We’re all dismissed, and I’m at the tail end of the line out the door when Station Chief Kieran pulls me aside. “We’re about to have a diplomatic incident on our hands,” she says. “You’re gonna need to put on a hell of a show.”
“Me? We have a dozen diplomatic officials living on this station. The Commission debated for three months about hauling that god awful single-slab conference table up the Vine; use it.”
Kieran levels me with that watery gaze of hers. “Leonora, the French and Surinamese didn’t bury the hatchet around that conference table; neither did the Twin Caliphs or the Oceania League. They came to your table. Hell, the Ndjolé Sky Charter itself was ratified around a spread of your millet stew, of all things. Whatever it is about that restaurant of yours, now’s not the time to doubt it.”
It’s hard to argue with history. “Fine,” I sigh. “I’ll give it a shot, but I formally object to placing the stability of the planet at the mercy of stew and a good view of the stars.”
“It’s not just the planet I’m worried about,” she says softly. “The Vine is and must remain a neutral body, but Hollis Askew sees every issue as ‘us versus them.’ You heard what he said; if his Coalition takes the canal from Panama, we could be next on the chopping block.”
We both take a moment to appreciate an ultra-wide, augmented view of the Vine, drifting beyond the reach of Earth’s atmosphere like the lone tentacle on a deformed jellyfish. A bright yellow diamond shows the location of Capitán Vallarino’s luxury car crawling toward Apex Station, nearly here but taking its sweet time. A blue circle tracks Chairman Askew’s commandeered freight car, blitzing the formidable length of the space elevator without restraint. It’s nearly to Balance Point Station, the bulbous metal onion a third of the way up the Vine that marks geosynchronous orbit.
“Maybe he’ll stop at BPS for a zero-g ballet,” I say. “People get lucky.”
“Not that lucky. Get to it.”