Carnival On Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 5) Read online

  “It’s like money, but it’s only good at a particular store or market,” Kelly explained. “You might get a gift coin for an ice cream shop, or one for the Little Apple that all of the human stores here would accept.”

  “I’m going to give it to my older sisters,” Mist declared. “I feel bad sometimes because I’m playing or in school while they’re earning money, but they won’t let me work. They treat me like a little kid.”

  “Me too,” Dorothy commiserated.

  Joe and Kelly exchanged amused glances over the heads of the ten-year-old girls.

  Sixteen

  “So basically, you took a few weeks of vacation, visited two colonies without ever getting past the spaceport, stopped at every archeological site and casino on the way back, and concluded that we don’t have to worry about a Gem military backlash.” Blythe actually thought the expedition had been a reasonable idea, but she wasn’t going to throw away the leverage she could get out of making it out to be a complete failure.

  “I already explained that neither colony had a government,” her husband replied calmly. “In fact, neither world had officials, in any normal sense of the word. Bits does business with the Gem and probably knows more about them than we do. And I didn’t say we don’t have to worry about a Gem military backlash, I said the residents of Kibbutz and Bits aren’t worried about a Gem military backlash.”

  “I thought the information about the game the Gem elites are playing was pretty important,” Lynx offered in support of her boss. “If there’s ever been an example of a leadership class frozen in time, it would have to be the Gem. After committing to cloning as a way of life they can’t even imagine a change. They have to stay the course or their whole reality falls apart.”

  “Is this office secure?” Woojin asked.

  “It’s as good as we can get with off-the-shelf hardware we know enough about to run,” Blythe replied. “We took the advice of Drazen Intelligence’s head and bought Drazen and Horten bug sweepers. Both of them are way ahead of Gem technology in any case, so we should be safe there.”

  “Jeeves was really amused by the humans on Bits,” Thomas said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes back some time.”

  “And we learned something about the limits of jumping around in the Effterii,” Clive added, returning to his mission summary. “Even though Paul got hauled all over the galaxy with Joe’s mercenary company as a kid, he’s had less jump time lately than me and Woojin, and he took it a lot harder than either of us.”

  “Woojin and I,” Blythe corrected her husband reflexively. “I better stop in and see Paul later. I hope Aisha doesn’t get mad at me.”

  “Current situation with the Gem notwithstanding, I think it would be a good idea to recruit some casual agents on both Kibbutz and Bits,” Woojin said. “As the only two human populations with a planetary-scale home off of the tunnel network, they have contacts with local sentients that we should be tapping into. Bits isn’t that far from the frontier with several advanced species that never bought into the Stryx network, and pirates tend to gather on the seam lines.”

  “So we’re in agreement that the Gem issue was a false alarm and we can get back to our five-year plan,” Blythe concluded.

  “What five-year plan?” Clive asked in surprise.

  “Exactly,” Blythe replied.

  The director of EarthCent Intelligence gave his wife a sour look for manipulating him into a corner, but he had to grant her point. So far, the new spy agency had concentrated on recruiting agents to start building an intelligence network, but they probably hadn’t done enough strategic planning around what to do with their assets as they came online.

  “How about it, Wooj?” Clive asked. “Joe says that you ran circles around the rest of the officers he knew when it came to planning. We have a list of goals to chase that the EarthCent diplomats came up with, but we’ve been going about it piecemeal. Do you want to be our strategy guy?”

  “Remind me again when I started working for you?” Woojin asked wryly.

  “A few weeks ago, which still makes you the most experienced military-type planner we have,” Blythe replied plainly. “Look, if I really thought we could be successful by deploying a force of undercover babysitters across the galaxy I’d do the planning, but this isn’t that.”

  The InstaSitter office alarm dinged, and Clive glanced at the now-active security display, which showed Tinka staring impatiently at the camera lens. “Open,” he said, and the wall panel that separated the inner EarthCent Intelligence office from the inner InstaSitter office slid aside.

  “Turn on a display and bring up the Gem network,” Tinka ordered brusquely. “I just heard from Herl, and he said that Drazen signal intelligence thinks something is about to happen.”

  “Libby? Please display the Gem network,” Blythe requested.

  “I apologize in advance for any quality issues,” the Stryx librarian commented, even as one of the walls of the office lit up with a dizzying array of graphics. “I’ve run all of the diagnostics and the problem isn’t with our rebroadcast, so somebody must be attempting to pirate the feed at its source.”

  The flashy images resolved into the face of the Gem announcer, and the weird music favored by the clones swelled to a crescendo. Then the display split into four boxes, each showing the same face, then sixteen, then sixty-four, and continued to subdivide at increasing speed until the whole image was nothing but dots. Finally, the dots reformed into the face of the announcer, who began to speak.

  “Welcome to Gem Today. This special early edition is…crhhhhhh.”

  The display dissolved into static and white noise, and then reformed with a different Gem at the center. This clone was older and sported a blue bandana tied around her head, and there were a number of Gem dressed in random styles of clothing standing behind her.

  “Welcome to Gem Tomorrow,” the clone said, a catch in her throat as she spoke the words. “We, the Free Gem, will not forget our sisters left behind in the Empire. The time will come when…crhhhhhh.”

  “Pay no attention to the heretics,” the original Gem announcer ordered, as the image reformed into the Gem Today studio. “A small group of traitors who were expelled from the Empire for antisocial behavior are being used by the enemies of the Gem in an attempt to sow dissent among our ranks. But we will not be…crhhhhhh.”

  “Everything Gem Today broadcasts is a lie,” the Free Gem spokesclone declared as the rebel technicians regained the upper hand. “We have proof that our foresisters were not the tallest or most beautiful of our species, and our whole way of life is the result of a programming error and not divine…crhhhhhh.”

  “Let us all stand and sing the Gem anthem,” the Gem Today announcer said, her tone making it clear that despite the neutral wording, she was giving an order rather than making a request. “Oh, Gem…crhhhhhh.”

  “Your labor is being exploited by the elites, who use their leisure to play a stupid game in which they create an endless harvest of sisters, as if we were…crhhhhhh.”

  “Soaring above the…crhhhhhhh.”

  “Reestablish our genetic diver…crhhhhh.”

  “Forever G…crhhhhhh.”

  “Be ready…crhhhhhh.”

  “Crhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

  “I’m sorry, Blythe,” Libby said, turning off the display. “We’ve lost both signals at the source. Both the Empire and the Free Gem must have overloaded their equipment.”

  “Can you tell us if there’s any sign of Gem military activity?” Clive asked.

  “Nothing that would affect the station network or humans,” Libby replied.

  “Were they Kelly’s Gem?” Blythe asked. “Are they transmitting from Union Station?”

  “No, the competing broadcast wasn’t locally generated,” Libby replied.

  “More from Herl,” Tinka spoke. “Can I patch him through your desk?”

  “Please do,” Blythe replied, and a hologram of the Drazen head of intelligence appeared floating before them.<
br />
  “I hope you were able to enjoy Gem Today with me,” Herl began, then stopped when he spotted Woojin in the reciprocal hologram displayed at his own location. “I don’t believe I’ve met the scary-looking gentleman in the black uniform.”

  “Our new strategist,” Clive informed Herl. “He’s going to help us create a five-year plan.”

  “Excellent idea,” the Drazen spymaster replied, focusing on the former mercenary officer. “I hope to meet you in person.”

  “Just as soon as I have time to buy some less intimidating clothes,” Woojin replied easily. “May I ask what Drazen Intelligence makes of the little broadcast war we just witnessed?”

  “Quite striking, the whole operation,” Herl reported. “To subvert the Gem link, the pirates would have needed physical proximity to the source, probably a cloaked ship in geosynchronous orbit around the Gem home world. Our technicians picked up a suspicious series of glitches on the Gem lab broadcast, which they correctly interpreted as somebody preparing to break in. Apparently, the Empire engineers recognized what was happening as well, and tried to move up Gem Today to foil the rebels.”

  “What’s the lab broadcast you just mentioned?” Lynx asked.

  “The Gem’s version of a relaxing background image,” Herl explained. “Some species show live wildlife scenes, images from museums, street views. The Gem broadcast the cloning activity in their labs.”

  “Do you think this will trigger a revolt?” Blythe asked.

  “We don’t have that kind of insight into Gem society,” Herl admitted. “And it’s probable that some Gem ships and colonies which don’t rely on the Stryx rebroadcast will eventually see more or less of the pirate version than we received. But my senior analyst assures me this is the single most disruptive event to occur in the Empire since we’ve been watching them.”

  “We’ll have to play this back for Kelly so she can contact her Gem friends to get their reaction,” Clive said. “Are you seeing any heightened activity on the part of the Gem military? Our local librarian would only say that there weren’t any apparent threats to the station network or humans.”

  “Gem military signals traffic has been off the scale since the broadcast and is swamping their bandwidth,” Herl informed them. “Between their one-time code books and encryption, not to mention the sheer volume, we haven’t been successful in reading any of the intercepts. But we aren’t seeing any movement of military assets, so it’s probably just a lot of questions flying around.”

  “How does this affect our strategy, Woojin?” Blythe asked, unconcerned that the ex-mercenary officer had only accepted the strategic portfolio a few minutes earlier.

  “Our five-year plan?” Woojin replied ironically. “Well, I mainly see it as confirmation that the dissident, or Free Gem movement, does in fact extend beyond the station network and the few drop-outs we know about.”

  “Who are the drop-outs we know about?” Lynx asked.

  “It may just be coincidence, but both of the human colonies we visited had some relations with ex-Empire Gem,” Woojin replied. “The one family we talked to on Kibbutz told us about some Gem who came in their own ship, possibly military defectors, and settled into an abandoned homestead. The one-man reception committee on Bits talked about the presence of clones amidst their pirate friends as if it were nothing special. Here on the station, my understanding is that you became aware of the Free Gem because there are enough of them to affect the unskilled labor market and put pressure on certain commodities. But if it turns out that they’re spread around the galaxy everywhere we look, it could mean that these defections are even more common than we assumed.”

  “So the Gem civil war we’re all worrying about may actually have begun years ago, but everybody missed it because they’re leaving in small numbers rather than fighting,” Clive summarized. “I suppose it would make sense, as much as anything about cloning makes sense, that they would be reluctant to take up arms against one another.”

  “I’ve been thinking along those lines myself, and I did a little data mining through our general reports,” Herl said. “The first mention of clones showing up on remote colonies and seeking service in our merchant and mining fleets started several decades ago, but the numbers weren’t large enough to draw serious attention. Then the mentions slowly faded from the reports, probably because the presence of a few stray Gem came to be seen as normal.”

  “I’ve never traded Gem space, but I’ve been up and down the Drazen frontier, and I can’t think of any places where your worlds come anywhere near the volume staked out by the clones,” Lynx pointed out to Herl. “If you’re getting runaway Gem as far off as the Drazen sector, I wonder what’s happening near the space where the Gem live.”

  “Libby, can you show us a map of Gem space, along with the names of the species that overlap the volume or share frontiers?” Blythe requested.

  A second hologram appeared, this one of a roughly spherical volume of space with the Gem home world near the center. Twenty or twenty-five stars were graphically labeled with what looked like a chain of paper dolls, and an equal number of stars in the same volume of space were accompanied by a little volcano icon. Just touching one edge of the sphere was a star accompanied by an avatar of a little man who kept changing colors, but most of the adjoining systems were filled with a variety of space monsters.

  “This is the map Kelly asked me to work up for her the other day, along with her graphical mnemonics,” Libby explained. “In case it’s not obvious, the paper dolls represent Gem systems, the volcanoes represent Verlock worlds, and the colorful little guy marks Horten Twelve.”

  “So the ambassador thought of this ahead of us,” Clive said.

  “Some of the Verlocks and Gem look like they’re practically on top of each other,” Lynx commented.

  “The Verlocks peacefully share star systems with many species, thanks to their preference for hot, volcanic worlds with higher-than-average gravity,” Libby replied.

  “Remember, the Hortens are over-represented in the piracy fleets,” Woojin added. “The guy on Bits talked about seeing Gem with the pirates, and maybe that system is where they hook up.”

  “Has Kelly been making up monsters, or are all of those your Floppsie friends?” Blythe asked the Stryx librarian. “They look different to me.”

  “Your memory is just as good as it was when you were in school,” Libby complimented her former pupil. “The monsters in this hologram are actually from the ambassador’s imagination, she used them to mark the regions of space claimed by unfamiliar species. Some of those species are full members of the tunnel network, but they aren’t nitrogen/oxygen breathers so you don’t see much of them in the normal course of affairs.”

  “But you taught us that most star systems have a variety of planetary types,” Blythe argued. “Just because the most advanced local species don’t breathe anything like air shouldn’t exclude other worlds from existing. Look how the Vergallians share space with so many species.”

  “The Vergallians still breathe air,” Clive pointed out. “They just prefer it hot and dry. And you’re forgetting about terraforming. An advanced enough species with access to planets of suitable gravity nearby will usually go to the work of creating a home-like ecosystem and atmosphere. Terraforming is even more compelling for species which aren’t part of the tunnel network, due to transportation economics.”

  “I think we’re wandering away from the point here,” Woojin said. “If half of the Gem Empire had packed its bags and gone AWOL, I hope Kelly’s friends would have mentioned it. I was just pointing out that the clones may have been leaking away from the Empire in increasing numbers over time, and even if nothing else changes, a hundred years from now the Gem elites may be ruling over empty worlds.”

  “Maybe Gem Tomorrow will come back online before Gem Today,” Lynx said. “They’re probably using alien technology, especially since they must have avoided detection in Gem space.”

  “Not necessarily,” Clive pointed
out. “They may be counting on collaborators within the Gem Empire turning their heads, or sabotaging detection equipment. In fact, the special edition of Gem Today might have been triggered by Gem Internal Intelligence getting wind of the plot before it could be fully carried out.”

  “I’m being called away,” Herl informed them. “I’ll be back on Union next cycle and I hope to meet you all. Happy Carnival.”

  “I’d forgotten all about Carnival,” Clive said after Herl signed off. “How’d the election go?”

  “Kelly won, which means that she lost at losing,” Blythe replied.

  “She didn’t lose so much as she got outmaneuvered by a mole,” Lynx opined.

  “Are you calling Dorothy a mole?” Blythe asked.

  “Maybe I should say a sleeper cell, since Dorothy and Metoo work as a team and Kelly never saw it coming,” Lynx ventured.

  “We’re talking about Joe’s ten-year-old daughter here, right?” Woojin asked. “You’re saying she fixed a station-wide election that all of the advanced species were trying to win?”

  “We all have a part to play,” Lynx replied mysteriously. “Tell me. Do you remember what made you decide to come to Union Station?”

  “I thought I told you already, it was sheer chance,” Woojin replied. “I won a shipboard lottery right after I retired, and the prize was a voucher for Club Asia on Union Station.”

  “Welcome to the puppet theatre,” Lynx told him, adding a cryptic smile.

  “The old tricks really are the best tricks,” Libby murmured to herself, dousing the remaining hologram as the meeting broke up.

  Seventeen

  “The Vergallians creamed us in ballroom dancing,” Ian reported to Joe, on arriving at Mac’s Bones for the caber toss competition. “By ten minutes in, all of the other couples were exhausted. The whole orchestra was playing so fast that they must have been on some kind of stimulants. Nobody could keep up.”

  “I still think we should have tried entering Thomas and Chance,” Chastity said. She was accompanying Stanley to all of the Carnival events in place of her mother, who didn’t care for sports. Ballroom dancing had become a passion with the girl since she started taking tango lessons from Thomas, and when Donna’s daughters took an interest in something, they broke the bones and sucked out the marrow. “Just because they’re artificial people doesn’t mean they aren’t human.”