Freelance On The Galactic Tunnel Network Read online

  “I never accept alien life forms in trade,” John cut him off. “Don’t you have anything other than chemicals?”

  “I wouldn’t have dragged you out here if I didn’t think I had something you would want. Those bulk carriers are packed with cyanide salts, and I have plenty of hydrochloric acid.”

  “You think I want to go into business extracting gold from ore?”

  “I heard a rumor you were heading for Borten Four.”

  “Where do you get your intelligence?”

  The Huktra shrugged, basically raising and lowering the tips of his folded wings.

  “So maybe I am,” John allowed, “but I hate carrying bulk. You know my ship has a fraction of your cargo capacity, plus a quarter of the acorns belong to a friend. I’ll need to pay her in cash.”

  “So how many nuts are we talking?” Myort asked.

  “I’ve got ninety-four standard sacks, the Frunge medium size. I mean, I actually have a hundred and forty-three, but two-thirds of them are half-full.”

  “This is why I hate dealing with Humans,” the Huktra complained, and John’s translation implant imparted a long-suffering tone to the alien’s words. “Everything with you is a story-problem. Okay, I’ll bite. Why are two-thirds of the sacks half full?”

  “They belonged to my partner on the job and the full sacks would have been too much for her to carry around. Then she asked me to get rid of them all for her and I didn’t bother repacking.”

  “You know, that’s more nuts than I thought you’d have. I saw plenty of them on the ground on Earth, but still…”

  “We were days just packing them all,” John said. “Would you rather I take a sample back to the bar where I met you and—”

  “No, no,” Myort cut him off. “Maybe I have some cash after all. You’ll take as much cyanide and acid as you’re comfortable with and I’ll make the rest up somehow. But I’ll need some samples from your cargo to make sure the quality is uniform.”

  By the time John closed the deal with the Huktra and arranged to meet the next day for the exchange, it was already nine in the morning on Universal Human Time, and he hurried to a lift tube to make his other appointment. The security at EarthCent Intelligence waved him past, and he wound a path through the familiar maze of cubicles to Clive Oxford’s office.

  “Just in time,” the director of EarthCent Intelligence greeted John. “I have a meeting with the ambassador, but you can walk with me.”

  “I should have pinged ahead but I had some business to take care of. By the way, the Huktra I was dealing with knew that I’m on my way to Borten Four.”

  Clive winced. “We’ve upgraded our security to Drazen standards, but that hasn’t stopped the more advanced species from slipping a bug past us from time to time. I’ll have to have my whole office zapped again. Who was it?”

  “Myort. Do you know him?”

  “He’s a handler with Huktra Intelligence, runs all of their field agents in this sector. It’s not a big operation because they don’t have large populations on any of the Stryx stations.”

  “Myort told me that if his species has to spend extended time in space, they prefer Zero-G.”

  “I guess a lot of the winged aliens are like that. Did you make any progress?”

  “The money trail on Earth led back to MORE, just like the analysts predicted, but I can’t figure out why they’re spending so much on discouraging traders from joining the Conference of Sovereign Human Communities. I blew through my bribery budget in just two days to get this much information.”

  “I’ll tell Blythe to make another transfer to your programmable cred,” Clive said. “Our business analysts have noticed a sharp increase in foreclosures since the Sharf packaged all of the mortgages they held on human-owned ships as securities and sold them. We’ve spent some serious time looking into the source of MORE’s financing to make sure they aren’t backed by some alien group looking for a competitive advantage. It appears that they are raising all of their capital on Earth, which came as a surprise.”

  “Maybe it’s the retirees,” John speculated. “Quite a few people who do two full terms as contract workers for one or another of the advanced species end up flush with creds from completion bonuses or balloon payments and decide to buy a retirement place on Earth. MORE sells a number of financial products that guaranty a monthly income, so they probably soak up a lot of retirement savings.”

  “But there could be criminal funds in there too,” Clive said. “When we gave the local governments the information they needed to act against the drug syndicate last year, everybody got a lesson in how cutting off the head doesn’t always kill the beast. Selling alien drugs purchased from pirates had pushed aside all sorts of other criminal enterprises because it was just so profitable. The enforcement sweep focused on the leaders and the most violent gang members, but plenty of the lower ranks managed to grab a lot of cash and dodge the police.”

  “You think that organized crime is getting into financial services?”

  “I know that they are, it’s not a new thing for them. It’s just that breaking up the drug syndicate created a lot of unemployed accountants.”

  “I suppose it makes sense that they’d look for cleaner work. Do we have a response plan?”

  “The problem is that EarthCent doesn’t have any financial regulatory power on Earth, that’s left to the patchwork of governments the people there live under.” Clive approached a set of doors with a blue-and-green globe emblem and they slid open at his approach. “Early,” he said, observing that nobody was waiting in the embassy’s conference room. He motioned for his companion to enter with him. “Are you going to stand for the council?”

  “I still haven’t decided,” John said. “I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I’m connected with EarthCent Intelligence, but I doubt many people know that it’s my main career and that the trading is just a cover job.”

  “I’d be surprised if there’s an alien intelligence service that doesn’t know,” Clive said. “It’s probably why Myort started doing business with you in the first place.”

  “Which explains some of the winks he’s given me, but I meant other traders. If it came out after I got elected to the council, the conspiracy buffs would have a heyday claiming that I was sent to infiltrate the Traders Guild.”

  “You could tell them before the election.”

  “I thought you wanted me to be discrete.”

  “That made sense when you were a field agent, but since you were promoted to a handler, there’s something to be said for going public. Every sentient on the tunnel network knows that if they have intelligence information that may be important for their species, they can go to their embassy and ask for the cultural attaché. But lots of traders have reasons for avoiding the Stryx stations, and those are some of the people we’d be most interested in hearing from. If all the traders knew that you work for us…”

  “I’ll lose some friends and I may not be welcome in certain places.”

  “I won’t push you, but think about it. Did you go over the Borten Four material?”

  “Yes, but other than the capital letters, I don’t see the connection with my MORE investigation.”

  “It started after the Drazens invited the local humans coming off a long-term contract to lease the mining habitat. As soon as the big creds started rolling in, SHARE showed up on the scene and began buying out or leasing asteroid claims. They bring in their own miners on contracts.”

  “If the claim owners wanted to cash out, what’s that to us?”

  “That’s the way the Drazens see it, and I don’t blame them, but according to our information, SHARE has been managing their properties as if the habitat didn’t exist. They shuttle in new miners from out-of-system, drop them at the claims, and supply all of their needs.”

  “I still don’t see the problem.”

  “It’s the company store system, John. The miners are dependent on SHARE for not only the food they eat and the water they drin
k but the very oxygen they breathe. We’ve obtained copies of the contracts SHARE is offering workers, and while there’s nothing illegal about it, you’d never see terms like that in an alien contract.”

  “The Stryx have standards for interspecies hiring.”

  “And the aliens have ethics. We have a Verlock co-op student who has been reading up on human history, and he suggested that rather than being an acronym, SHARE is just short for sharecroppers.”

  “And the crop is gold.”

  “Nickel, mainly, but gold as well,” Clive said. “I want you to see if you can recruit any of those sharecroppers for us so we can figure out what’s really going on.”

  “Could be tricky if they never come in to the habitat. Even in Zero-G, hard rock asteroid mining involves moving a lot of mass around. The miners can probably keep up their muscle tone for a while without sleeping and exercising on the habitat at Earth-normal weight, or whatever they spin the thing at.”

  “See what you can do, and let me know if you decide to stand for the council. Rendezvous starts in two weeks?”

  “I figure I can spend ten days in the Borten system and still make it,” John said. He looked around the conference room and nodded in approval. “I like the globe and the table, but I’ve got to catch some sleep and move a ton of acorns.”

  Ten

  “Are you ready to order?” the waitress asked.

  “I think so,” Georgia said. She glanced across the small table at Larry, who nodded and waved the holographic menu out of existence. “I’ll have the Trader’s Special and a small salad.”

  “What will you have to drink?”

  “Is the Frunge tea safe for humans?”

  “Everything we serve is safe for human consumption. I’ve worked here almost a year and I’ve never seen an alien in the place. I don’t think there’s been a Frunge on the habitat since they leased it to us.”

  “Then I’ll try it.”

  The young woman made a note on her tab and turned to Larry.

  “I’ll have the spaghetti and meatballs and whatever you have on draft,” the trader said.

  “We’re out of draft beer, the only brewer on the habitat had something go wrong with the last batch. We just got in a shipment of red wine from somewhere.”

  “What kind of red wine?” Georgia asked.

  “The red kind,” the waitress said, turning back to the reporter. “What other kind could there be?”

  “You know, the type of grapes, where it’s from, the vintage?”

  “You can get red or white, but we’re out of the white.”

  “How about cans?” Larry asked.

  “I’ve never seen wine in cans, though it wouldn’t be a bad idea,” the waitress mused. “If you want water with a shot of vodka, it gets rid of that yucky recycled taste.”

  “I’m not really a drinker, just a beer now and then. Do you have any fresh juice?”

  “Does it count as fresh if I let you stir in the powder yourself?”

  “Close enough,” Larry said.

  “It will be a few minutes,” the waitress told them. “Everything is precooked, but we only have one microwave.”

  “Too much information,” Georgia said to her dinner companion as soon as the waitress was out of earshot. “I’m sorry I dragged you in here. I’m a sucker for décor.”

  “You mean the tables made from old crates and the netting hanging from the ceiling?”

  “It reminds me of a seafood place where I went on a date once while I was in university.”

  “How was it?”

  “The date? A disaster. The food wasn’t that great either. I wonder if all the restaurants on Poalim are this bad.”

  “It’s a service habitat for the ice harvesting fleet, Georgia. I’m surprised they grow enough fresh food to even be able to offer a salad. Most places like this have to import all of their food because there’s no room for raising crops.”

  “It didn’t look that small when we came in for docking.”

  “The closer you get to a space structure, the bigger it looks. It’s tough to judge the size of these places unless you cheat and ask your ship’s controller for help. We’re on the commercial deck, and the innermost deck houses the repair facility, but the outer decks are all cabin space.”

  “Wow, I’d go nuts.”

  “You’re spoiled from living on a Stryx station,” Larry said. “People are pretty adaptable, and they come to a habitat like this to make money, not to make a home. Right now this place is sort of a boomtown. Once the easy pickings are gone, most of the population will move on to the next hot ice harvesting play, and the people who remain for the long term will have more space and improve the quality of life here.”

  “You’re kind of a philosopher, do you know that?”

  “If I say anything intelligent, it’s probably stolen from my dad. The only reason I have a good chance of being elected is because everybody respects him so much.”

  “Sounds like you’re not sure you want the job.”

  “I do and I don’t. The council used to be mainly an honorary thing, their only responsibility was managing the next Rendezvous. There were years my dad had to hunt around on election day sweet-talking friends into running so there would be enough candidates. It’s funny, but the main reason he’s retiring is because he knows that joining the Conference of Sovereign Human Communities means getting involved in politics.”

  “You mean CoSHC politics.”

  “Exactly. The Traders Guild has always been a laid-back organization, and for a lot of the old trader families, Rendezvous is the one time a year they get together to see relatives. But a lot of first-generation traders are expected this year, and they’re putting up their own slate of candidates who are against joining CoSHC.”

  “What do traders have against the Conference of Sovereign Human Communities?”

  “It’s the whole independence thing. Plenty of traders never sign up with the Guild, even though the dues is just a few creds a year and there aren’t any binding laws. If the Guild joins CoSHC, which many think is on its way to becoming the government for humans living away from Earth, that would commit our members to follow their rules.”

  “Wait a second. You’re saying that traders are lawless?”

  “We’re subject to the laws of whatever jurisdiction we’re working in, which usually means alien laws.”

  “Here’s your tea and juice,” the waitress said, setting down a tray with a small teapot, a teacup on a saucer, a glass of water, a long-handled spoon, and a small foil packet with a picture of an orange printed on it. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Then we better get cracking,” Larry said, tearing open the foil packet and pouring the brownish powder into the water. “Please change colors,” he muttered as he stirred the mixture vigorously.

  “I think I’ll pour off a bit of tea now in case it gets too strong steeping,” Georgia said. She removed the teacup and saucer from the tray, and keeping a finger on the teapot lid for safety, poured three-quarters of a cup of the brilliant blue liquid. “This looks interesting.”

  “I guess this is as orange as it gets,” Larry said, setting aside the spoon and taking a sip from his rust-colored drink. “I’ve had worse.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. I could tell you stories that would make you lose your appetite for a week.”

  Georgia blew on her tea and then tried waving a bit of the steam towards her face to sample the aroma. “It doesn’t smell like anything.”

  “That means it’s still good,” the waitress said, returning with their meals. “Food smells when it goes bad. That’s the first thing they taught me on this job.”

  “I’m not sure it works that way with tea.”

  “Tea never goes bad. The owner found a case of old Frunge tea in the storeroom when he rented the place and it hasn’t killed anybody yet.” The waitress placed a large plate of spaghetti and meatballs in front of Larry and set a sandwich on a plastic dish in front of th
e reporter. Then she reached in the pocket of her apron and pulled out two forks, giving one to each of her customers. “Will there be anything else?”

  “My salad?” Georgia asked.

  “You wanted it at the same time as the meal? Everybody on Poalim eats salad for dessert since it’s such a treat.”

  “Whenever you get a chance.”

  Larry wound some spaghetti onto his fork, stabbed a meatball, and attempted to assume a contemplative expression while chewing. Georgia cautiously lifted the top slice of her sandwich’s bread to check how the payload comported with the menu description.

  “I’d have to say that they play fast and loose with the ingredients in this place,” she said. “If this is a Trader’s Special, I’d hate to see a Trader’s Regular.”

  “Don’t make me laugh while I’m eating,” Larry complained, coughing something into his hand

  “How’s yours?”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “You’ll never get a job as a food reporter with that attitude.”

  “What’s wrong with your sandwich?”

  “It’s missing the avocado, the dill, and the Spanish olives. I’d say what I’ve got here is a cheese sandwich on white bread.”

  “That’s what the Trader’s Special always amounts to. It’s traditional to build it up on the menu, sort of an inside joke.”

  “Here’s your salad,” the waitress said, putting a bowl of thinly sliced tomatoes with a sprinkling of pepper and some type of oil on top. Bon appétit.”

  “Am I missing something here?” Georgia asked. “Like, I don’t know, lettuce?”

  “On Poalim?” The waitress shook her head. “Hydroponic tomatoes are it for fresh veg on this habitat, though somebody told me they’re actually considered fruit.”

  “Good thing I’m not allergic to them.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. That’s cold-pressed peanut oil and some folks have a problem with it.”

  “Better late than never,” Georgia said. “If you can bring us the check, we’re leaving for the Colony One presentation as soon as we’re finished and I don’t want to be late.”