Vacation on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 7) Page 13

  A gold line popped into existence between the woman and her paid activist. The man quickly purchased the loyalty of another passerby, and a green line was established between the two. The hologram sped up, and the space above the conference table rapidly filled with multi-colored lines. Finally, the cameras zoomed back in on the masked woman, who gathered all of the gold lines in her hands and pulled. All of the people in the marketplace fell flat on their faces.

  “I’m ready for the election,” she said cheerfully. “In the next cube, I’ll show you how to convince your paid supporters that they are choosing you of their own free will.” The hologram dissolved.

  “I quit!” Walter howled. “This is worse than going to graduate school and being forced to pretend that I agreed with everybody’s conflicting theories about non-events, all for a lousy stipend.”

  Blythe put a saucer on top of her coffee mug and then she placed the assembly on the sideboard for safe keeping. Later she could ask Tinka to send it to Herl for analysis.

  “I really wanted to give HEEL the benefit of the doubt, but they do seem a bit nefarious,” Daniel said. “If their idea of self-government is bribing people to vote for their paymasters, I don’t see how EarthCent can support their call for free elections.”

  “Funny, but I was thinking just the opposite.” Clive said. He winked at his wife. Blythe flashed him a look of comprehension and began to fish around in the drawer of the sideboard. Whatever she was searching for was buried by a variety of bottle openers, stirrers, disposable chopsticks, and lots of take-out packages of ketchup, mustard and duck sauce. “I’m convinced that you’re a good guy, Walter, and I respect a man who quits a job over ethical considerations. But what if you could do the right thing and earn twice as much as you’re making now?”

  “That doesn’t sound possible,” Walter replied. The sudden grins of his companions made him suspicious he was being set up as the butt of some insider joke. Blythe returned to the table and dropped something right in front of the former HEEL organizer.

  Walter looked down at the button and read, “I’m a double agent for the humans.”

  “You’ll keep drawing your salary and expenses from HEEL, and we’ll match it,” Clive told him. “I wouldn’t have interfered with a genuine self-government movement whether I agreed with it or not, but there’s something going on here that needs to be investigated.”

  “But even if I wanted to do it, I don’t know anything,” Walter protested. “It’s like being an undergrad again. I get my marching orders from on high, and now they even require video evidence that I’m toeing the line.”

  “I see it as a classic two-way operation,” Thomas said. “Disinformation in, information out. We need to turn Walter into HEEL’s top organizer.”

  “Agreed,” Blythe said, and the EarthCent Intelligence crew began discussing their potential new asset as if he weren’t in the room. “Walter does a pretty good job with the public speaking, but as soon as he begins telling people what they don’t want to hear, he loses them.”

  “Even the best salesmen have trouble selling something they can’t make themselves believe in,” Shaina commented.

  “Maybe you could hypnotize him,” Jeeves offered helpfully. “I saw it in one of your old movies.”

  “I think Clive has something much simpler in mind,” Daniel said, observing that the director of EarthCent Intelligence was sporting a grin like the cat that just swallowed the canary.

  “What about it, Walter?” Clive asked. “Are you onboard? All we ask is that you do your best for humanity.”

  “I don’t know anything about being a spy,” Walter said, toying with the button. “We looked down on all that stuff in school.”

  “I’ve got room in the training class if you want to come,” Thomas offered. “One of our candidates dropped out during first aid training. I guess she couldn’t stomach it.”

  “Were you doing gross stuff with fake blood and broken limbs?” Shaina asked.

  “Not at all,” Thomas replied defensively. “We had just finished with emergency reboots and Chance was demonstrating how you can do field repairs to skin with a special two-part epoxy the Sharf make. They put the same stuff in lifeboats for in case there’s a meteor breech.”

  “You were going to put epoxy on the poor woman?” Daniel asked.

  “Not on her, on me,” Thomas replied in frustration. “One of the deficiencies in the training program Joe and Woojin put together is that it’s so human-centric. If Chance or I ever lead a mission into hostile territory, it would be nice to think that at least a few of our fellow agents could deal with a simple skin rupture. It’s not like artificial people can heal themselves, you know, and these bodies are expensive.”

  Thirteen

  “It’s a good thing we’re traveling on the expense account because it’s going to cost a fortune in fuel to get off of this big rock,” Lynx complained to her husband. They had just exited the Prudence on the Verlock world of Fyndal and the gravity made her feel as if she had gained ten or twenty pounds overnight. “Oh, no. You hear that pump whining? Prudence can’t raise her ramp in this gravity.”

  Woojin turned back to the ship and saw that the ramp of Lynx’s two-man trader was trembling and hesitating. Then it gave up with a hydraulic sigh and sank back down to the ground.

  “What do you have for a manual bypass on this ship?” Woojin asked, examining the ramp.

  “I’m looking at him,” Lynx replied pointedly.

  Woojin shook his head in mock despair, crouched down like a weight lifter preparing to clean and jerk, and worked his fingers under the end of the ramp. At first it barely budged, but then the ramp began moving upwards, the speed directly proportional to the amount of blood swelling the veins in the straining man’s face and neck. By the time he had it chest-high and shifted his hands to push from the bottom, the center of gravity of the ramp had moved inwards enough that the hydraulic pistons were able to handle the load.

  “Lynx marry strong man,” he said, thumping his chest in imitation of the actor in the twentieth remake of Tarzan which they had watched the previous day in the tunnel. Then he made the mistake of pursing his lips like an ape who expected a kiss for his troubles.

  “Save it for Jane,” Lynx dismissed him curtly. She scanned the tarmac for signs of activity, but no vehicles or people were in sight. “Did I hear wrong over the comm or did they promise to have somebody come and meet us? I’d hate to have to hike all the way to that terminal carrying this extra weight.”

  “Gravity is only about ten percent above nominal here. Humans wouldn’t willingly settle on a world where it’s a lot higher. There are too many health complications in the long term, especially on the heart and with pregnancy.”

  “How come the whole time we were dating I never heard you mention pregnancy once, and now that we’re married, it’s in every other sentence out of your mouth?”

  “You’re exaggerating, as usual,” Woojin said, brushing the dust off his hands. “Look, here comes our ride.”

  “An ox cart?” Lynx asked in disbelief. “The Verlocks are one of the most advanced species on the tunnel network. Good grief. It will take that thing twenty minutes to get here.”

  “Do you want to wait or walk to meet them?”

  “Wait,” she replied, and began looking around for something to sit down on. The only nearby objects on the tarmac were her ship and her husband. “Or, we could walk to meet them.”

  “Whoa!” the burly driver called to his beasts, when the two parties finally met halfway between Lynx’s ship and the terminal building.

  “Hello, friend,” Woojin said in greeting. “I’m Pyun Woojin and this is my wife Lynx. We spoke with administrator Hep a few hours ago, and he said somebody would be out for us.”

  “That’s - me,” the driver said, pausing strangely between his words as if English wasn’t his natural language. “Welcome - aboard.”

  The honeymoon couple carefully climbed into the old-fashioned transport wh
ich they could now see was carved out of a giant stone. The wheels were also stone, as were the unpadded benches. The driver flicked the leads and the oxen began the long walk back to their stable.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Woojin said, trying to strike up a conversation with the taciturn driver.

  “Ner,” the man grunted after a pause, as if the single syllable required a special effort.

  “Ner,” Woojin repeated, offering his hand to the driver. “Interesting vehicle you have here. I’ve never had a ride in a stone cart before.”

  Ner looked at Woojin’s hand for a moment as if he was puzzled by the ancient human greeting, and then he slowly reached over and clasped it. The ex-mercenary was impressed by the driver’s strong leathery grip.

  “Stone - doesn’t – rust – and – resists – acid - rain,” Ner said, proving he was fluent in English after all.

  “Isn’t it incredibly heavy for the poor oxen?” Lynx asked.

  “Weighs – less – than - us. Verlock – skimmer - technology. Wheels – for - show.”

  “This thing can fly but you’re using oxen to pull it around?”

  “My – oxen – get - airsick,” Ner said, and then his mouth opened wide and he began to laugh with a deep heaving sound, “Hah – Hah - Hah.”

  Despite the lava-like delivery, it took Woojin and Lynx a few seconds to get the joke, but Ner gave them plenty of time to join in.

  “Alright, I’ll bite,” Lynx said after they all stopped laughing. “Why use oxen at all?”

  “For - guests,” Ner explained. “Ceremonial - occasion.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “Second – time – this - month,” the driver added, or maybe he had never stopped talking and Lynx’s reply had fallen during one of his pauses.

  “So the hours are good. How about the pay?” Woojin asked in jest.

  “Hah - Hah. The – hours – are – very - good,” Ner agreed. “It’s – lucky – I – have – a – paying – hobby – for – my – free - time.”

  “What’s that,” Lynx inquired.

  “Mathematician – third - rank,” Ner replied modestly. “Hep – is – our – only – first – rank - mathematician. The – Verlocks – invite – him – to – lecture – in – their - academies.”

  “I wondered how humans ended up living on a Verlock world, and one with high gravity to boot,” Lynx said. “You’re all mathematicians.”

  “Not - all,” Ner corrected her. “Some – are - mages. Verlocks – know – words – of - power. Whoa - there.”

  The oxen responded to the driver’s cry and halted in front of the terminal building.

  “It – was – nice – to – meet - you,” Ner said. “My – daughter – waits - inside – to – bring – you – to – the - academy.”

  The small terminal building only had the one door and it slid open at their approach. Just as Ner had promised, an athletic teenage girl was waiting to greet them.

  “Hi. You must be Lynx and Woojin,” she said. “I’m Tac, and I’ll be your guide.”

  “Tac, what a relief you speak at a normal speed,” Lynx replied. “Your father was very nice, but he talks like a…”

  “Like a Verlock,” Tac finished Lynx’s sentence. “All of our parents do that now. Who knows, maybe I’ll slow down when I get older, but I don’t really see the benefit. Talking slow at home isn’t a useful skill, like, say, sculpting.”

  “Are you a sculptor?”

  “Everybody is on Fyndal. Sculpture and math, that’s why we’re here. Well, a little bit of magic, but not many humans have the aptitude to become a mage.”

  Tac led the visitors to an elevator as she spoke, and the car began descending as soon as the three entered.

  “Implant controlled?” Woojin asked.

  Tac looked at him oddly.

  “The elevator. It started as soon as we entered and you didn’t have to push any buttons or tell it where to go.”

  “Oh, I get it,” she said. “No, we don’t use implants here. The controller detects people entering the elevator and it only has the one destination.”

  “The academy?”

  “The subway,” Tac replied. “We mainly live underground on Fyndal. Human lungs aren’t equipped to deal with all of the dust and sulfur in the atmosphere. There’s an enormous canyon not too far from the spaceport terminal where we filter the atmosphere and keep the herds.”

  “Just how large is the human community here?”

  Tac made an elaborate hand gesture, something like sculpting an invisible ball out of clay and then tossing it upwards.

  “It’s unlucky to count sentients,” she said, after performing the Verlock cleansing ritual. “We’re about the only thing we don’t count. I can tell you that the dining services provided just under thirty thousand lunches today,” she added slyly.

  “And you live side by side with the Verlocks?” Woojin asked.

  “Oh, no. They like it too hot, and they’re so bulky and move so slowly that we’d get stuck behind them in narrow passages all of the time. Some of our parents move kind of slowly too, but that’s more age and gravity than anything else.”

  “So the grown-ups imitate the Verlocks but the kids do their own thing?” Lynx inquired.

  “Imitate? Oh, you mean the slow speaking. It’s just that our parents learned Verlock when they were adults. It’s such a powerful language, especially with the slow pacing, that it sort of rewired their brains. I started learning when I was seven so I’m native bilingual and it’s easy for me to switch back and forth. It’s the same with all my friends and their families.”

  “I can see we’re going to have a long conversation with Mr. Hep,” Woojin commented.

  “Hep still speaks normally,” Tac said. “They say he learned the language from a Stryx librarian when he was growing up. Then he impersonated a Verlock kid on a station in order to take their correspondence courses in math.”

  The elevator came to a halt and their weight returned to normal, or ten percent above normal. They exited onto a brightly lit platform in front of a trench that was paved with odd ceramic tiles.

  “Magnetic monopoles,” Tac explained, pointing at the ceramic tiles like a professional tour guide. “The Verlocks synthesize them at the elementary particle level and lock them into ceramic substrates. There’s a limit to the density, of course, but they get enough field strength to levitate a decent train without the need for an external current supply.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Woojin said. “You pull the train with oxen.”

  “The cars run on a continuous cable loop,” the girl replied straight-faced. “The oxen prefer to ride underground.”

  There was a restrained squealing sound as a low-slung train car that reminded Lynx of something from an old movie pulled into the station and stopped.

  “There’s no hurry, it will wait as long as there are people on the platform,” Tac told them. “Look up above it. Do you see the clamp thing on the cables? The cable nearest to us is always moving through the tunnel, and the other one is the brake cable, which only runs for the length of the platform. When the car enters the station, it shifts its clamp from the tow cable to the brake cable.”

  “What holds the moving cable suspended up there?” Woojin inquired, squinting against the lights.

  “Magnets,” the girl replied. “The Verlocks do all sorts of neat things with magnetic fields. Some of their worlds use a moon with an iron core deliberately placed in a low orbit around the planet to generate electricity.”

  “Wouldn’t that result in a tremendous amount of atmospheric lightning?” Woojin asked, trying to picture how the system could work.

  “Oh, yes,” Tac replied enthusiastically. “The Verlocks love lightning.”

  After the three humans entered the car, it shifted its clamp and began to accelerate gently. Lynx plunked herself down on a bench and immediately regretted that she hadn’t sat in a more controlled manner. The benches were stone.

  “Next
stop, Bath,” an artificial voice intoned.

  “The Verlocks make fun of us for cooling the water in our hot springs and filtering out some of the chemicals,” Tac told them conversationally. “Personally, I’m not interested in tanning my skin while it’s still attached to my body.”

  “Tanning? Oh, you mean, like leather,” Lynx said.

  “Yes, I forgot that some humans use the same word for exposing themselves to the sun to darken their skin,” the girl replied. “The Verlocks intentionally tan their own skins to toughen them up for volcanic environments, starting when they’re babies. You could dissolve plastics in the baths they like to soak in.”

  “Bath,” the artificial voice repeated, and the car came to a gentle halt. A party of noisy kids wearing towels and flip-flops got on, and the subway started out again. “Next stop, Academy.”

  “How do the humans here generate the money to pay for all of this?” Lynx asked the girl.

  “All of our parents are on scholarships,” Tac explained, looking a bit embarrassed. “I think it’s some kind of experiment the Verlocks are running, but my friends who were born on stations think that the Stryx are paying for the whole thing. They say that the ‘Ask an Alien’ show proved it.”

  “So the Grenouthians must have already broadcast Kelly’s interview with Srythlan,” Woojin commented. “How was it?”

  “Brilliant!” Tac said enthusiastically. “I learned more about Verlock history in an hour than I have in the eight years we’ve been living here. They aren’t secretive, but they think that saying anything about their own achievements is the same as bragging. I’ve tried reading some of their history books, but they explain everything in terms of math and I’m not advanced enough to follow the proofs yet. Oh, and the EarthCent ambassador who asked the questions was so funny. We couldn’t stop laughing.”

  “I’ll tell her when we get back,” Woojin promised.

  “Academy,” the artificial voice announced as the subway car slowed to a halt.

  “Oh, wow. Hep came himself to meet you,” Tac said, making it clear that the visitors should consider themselves greatly honored.