Last Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 16) Read online

  “We want to improve our relations with the local humans and explore the possibility of acting as a waystation for homesteaders interested in setting up communities on Vergallian worlds.”

  “Sovereign communities?”

  “We’re working on that part, but some of the queens on the outlying worlds are willing to give it a try. You’d just be a drop in the bucket of our populations as there are over a trillion of us.”

  “So why bother with humans at all? There are plenty of Vergallians to go around.”

  “There’s plenty of work to go around too. Do you have any idea how many available planets there are in the galaxy?”

  “But how many of them are already occupied?”

  “Fewer than you’d think. And you’d probably be surprised how many species automate everything and then end up dying out from lack of a reason to get out of bed in the morning. You can laugh at our use of manual labor and draft animals for farming, but the Empire of a Hundred Worlds has seen steady growth for over a million years.”

  “So what sized groups are you looking for?” Bob asked.

  “If we could recruit a whole community coming off of a long-term labor contract on one of the alien ag worlds that would be great. We don’t have a precise number in mind in terms of population, but the demographics would be important. The queens all plan for the long term, so they’ll want communities that are at least producing children at the replacement rate.”

  “Are you getting any takers?”

  “No solid commitments if that’s what you mean. My job was to gather contact information, and I’m getting plenty of that. The embassy has marketing people who will do a better job closing the deal than I ever could.”

  “What’s the embassy’s official position on—excuse me,” the reporter cut himself off, pointing at his ear to indicate an incoming ping. “Sorry, I have to run. We’ll talk later.”

  Samuel found the afternoon to be pretty much the same as the morning until the session on rumors in the Galaxy Room amphitheatre caused the trade show to empty out. He cleaned the booth again, doing a more thorough job than he had after lunch, and then used his student tab to start capturing images of the old-fashioned business cards collected in the fishbowl. A strange feeling that he was being watched intruded on his concentration, and he kept snapping his head around to see if he could catch Vivian in the act, but the room had gone unnaturally still. Then the Imperial Vergallian intelligence agent strode into the booth.

  “Ajalah,” Samuel greeted her cautiously with a slight head bow. “What brings you to our humble booth?”

  “Don’t talk smart with me, Human. I know that you’re secretly working for EarthCent Intelligence against the empire. Just admit on the record that Aainda and Aabina are part of the plot and I’ll let you slink back home with your tail between your legs.”

  “You’re interfering in the lawful operations of the Vergallian embassy,” Samuel replied, putting as much edge in his voice as he could muster. “It’s obvious that you don’t care about Ambassador Aainda’s authority, but this badge means that I’m currently on the clock for my co-op job. I don’t know what power you think you wield here, but I can assure you that the Open University administration is out of your league.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ajalah said in a mocking voice. “Did I scare the little Human so much that he wants to run and hide behind the Stryx? I promise this won’t hurt a bit.”

  Samuel stepped back and fell into the guard position of one of the mixed martial arts styles Thomas had tried to teach him, but he had always been more interested in sword fighting than hand-to-hand combat, and he had no doubt that Ajalah could wipe the floor with him. Then he noticed the odd look of concentration on her face and realized too late that she could simply dose him with pheromones and instruct him to make a false confession implicating the Vergallian ambassador and her daughter. His legs refused to answer his command to flee, and he found himself staring into the intelligence agent’s beautiful eyes, waiting for her command.

  “You will—ughh…” Ajalah gasped in pain and collapsed to her knees.

  Baa stepped around the intelligence agent and snapped her fingers in front of Samuel’s face. His mind cleared as if the upper caste Vergallian had never commenced chemical warfare and he found himself free to move. Ajalah continued to groan, her lovely features so contorted that it was hard to believe she was the same woman.

  “Let her go, Baa,” he said. “I’m okay now and there’s no reason to make this into a big deal. It’s just politics.”

  “Vergallian politics is a big deal,” the Terragram mage retorted, but she grabbed Ajalah’s upper arm and pulled her into a standing position. “Listen to me, little queen. You can hide behind the Stryx on the station, but if I ever run into you out in space, we’re going to have a talk that you really don’t want to have.” Then she glanced towards the ceiling and asked out loud, “Just this once?”

  Ajalah intuited what was going on and turned to flee, but Baa must have gotten the answer she was hoping for because she performed an intricate casting. The Vergallian was suddenly transformed into a creature that looked like a large, hairless rat. It squealed piteously while fleeing the trade show floor.

  “What did you do to her?” Samuel demanded. “If she goes missing on the station, my ambassador could get in trouble.”

  “Aainda would thank me for putting Ajalah permanently out of her misery, but the effect will wear off in a few hours. It’s just a bit of holographic trickery, not that different from what happens in the LARPing studios with Non-Player Characters.”

  “You turned her into an NPC?”

  “I meant it in the sense of binding a hologram to a physical form to give it substance. Your station librarian is using the holographic advertising system to maintain the illusion at this point. I can only do it when the target is in sight.”

  “Did Libby send you to help me?”

  “I was already on my way to tell you that I finished enchanting your noodle weapons and Jeeves wants you and Vivian to practice with them at Mac’s Bones after work. Apparently he doesn’t trust me.”

  Sixteen

  “What do two Frunge in the initial stages of courting do if they accidentally find themselves waiting for the same lift tube capsule?” Dorothy asked Kevin.

  “Do you not know the answer or are you testing me?”

  “It’s in the quiz at the end of the chapter.”

  “One of them takes the stairs.”

  “There are no stairs on Union Station.”

  “So one of them waits for the next capsule.”

  “Correct,” Dorothy said, making a little check mark in her freshly printed copy of Frunge for Humans. “Name three common foods from Earth that the Frunge won’t eat.”

  “Bread, pasta and pizza crust.”

  “Isn’t pizza crust just another kind of bread?”

  “Not in my universe,” Kevin replied indignantly.

  “Huh, they have it as an answer,” Dorothy said, making another note. “I wonder who wrote this book.”

  A heavyset man whose skin looked like it had been baked under a hot sun shuffled up to the table and addressed Dorothy.

  “Need noodle weapons?”

  “Yes. SBJ Fashions is seeking a wholesale relationship with a manufacturer because we’re on the brink of creating an entirely new market, but we need a supplier aligned with the Grenouthians.”

  “Why?”

  “The Grenouthians have a deal with the professional LARPing league that we need to respect.”

  “Fraction of the price,” the man offered hopefully.

  “You’re from one of the Verlock open worlds?” Dorothy asked, and received a nod in return. “I really wish we could work with you on this, but it’s more about the marketing potential than the cost. I’m sure that your noodle weapons are every bit as good as the ones made by the Grenouthians, but our contract has us locked up.”

  “Bunnies,” the man grunted scornfully and shuffl
ed off.

  “If I was wearing a blindfold that guy could have passed as a Verlock,” Kevin said. “It’s funny how all of the humans living on open worlds end up going native.”

  “Why do you say that? Look at your own family and the Kasilians.”

  “Fair point. Oh, I think Marilla hooked somebody. Talk to you later.”

  Kevin crossed the interior space of the booth, which consisted of eight folding tables set up in a square at the start of a vendor row just inside the entrance to the Nebulae room. The booth could be accessed from three sides, one of which was taken by Dorothy for SBJ Fashions, another by Thomas and Chance recruiting for EarthCent Intelligence, and the third by Mac’s Bones for the new spaceship rental business.

  “We can sell you a modest number of ships, but you can also purchase your own, either used or new,” Marilla answered a woman’s question. “Each franchise buys its own ships, but you may not see them again for months at a time, depending on where one-way-trip customers drop them off.”

  “You mean I’m expected to make a huge investment in ships and then they’ll just be sitting around some other franchisee’s lot wasting space?”

  “No, not at all. Every franchise must agree to FIFO scheduling, First In, First Out, and since all of the ships will be equipped with Stryx controllers, it’s easy to monitor for compliance. When I worked at a Horten rental agency, we literally kept the ships in a line, like a taxi queue, so there was never any confusion about the order.”

  “But I’m responsible for cleaning every ship that comes into my franchise…”

  “And handling regularly scheduled maintenance at a mutually agreed upon standard rate,” Marilla said. “Of course, the other agency locations will be doing the same for your rental fleet, and it all tends to work out even in the end.”

  “My rental fleet,” the woman repeated. “I like the sound of that. I’ll talk it over with the rest of our delegation at dinner and get back to you.”

  “You’re really good at this,” Kevin said to the Horten girl after the woman left. “Are you sure you didn’t study business at the Open University?”

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this at all. I’m usually really shy around strange aliens, but somehow it’s different with Humans.”

  A man wearing a four-armed suit that marked him as a businessman from one of the Dollnick open worlds approached the booth. The extra set of arms were sewn to the sides of the jacket, with the sleeves terminating in the lower pockets, as if he had another pair of hands that were hidden from view.

  “Hule,” the man introduced himself. “I’m the mayor of Equipment.”

  “Is that a place?” Kevin asked.

  “On Chianga,” Hule replied. “We follow the Dollnick practice of naming towns after their functions. I’ve visited a number of worlds with CoSHC communities and I can’t tell you how frustrating it is that they all name their cities ‘Spring-something,’ as if they were bouncy.”

  “I think it’s an old Earth name. People were always happy to have a source of clean water.”

  “Then why didn’t they build purification plants? But I’m going off subject. The delegates from our group who visited the trade show yesterday have been whistling in my ear about your plans to set up a rental network for small ships. Do I have the right place?”

  “Tunnel Trips,” Kevin confirmed. “The name is tentative until we can line up some potential business partners or franchisees to vote on it. Did you try one of our simulators in the lobby?”

  “Yes. Makes me wish I could install Stryx controllers in all of the equipment we supply to the other communities on Chianga, but the Stryx don’t produce them for ground-based navigation and operations.”

  “You supply equipment to the other Human communities and it gets lost?” Marilla asked.

  “No, we have excellent tracking capabilities, but the controls are all manual, and some operators act like hydraulic pistons are indestructible. I’d like to bring them all up on charges of machine abuse.”

  “I spoke to a few delegates from Chianga yesterday. They said that space-liner service to your world is excellent, but only for connections to other Dollnick systems.”

  “That’s right,” Hule said. “Our delegation traveled here on a cargo ship that’s on its way to deliver floater hardware to Earth and they’ll pick us up on the way back. The local Dollnicks are able to bypass the Stryx stations on the vast majority of their liner routes thanks to their superior planning abilities. Practically all of their travel arrangements are nonstop.”

  “So that leaves your salespeople and field service engineers scrambling to make connections in order to reach Earth or the other sovereign human communities,” Marilla said sympathetically. “It sounds like a perfect match for our Tunnel Trips business model.”

  “Almost too good to be true. The thing is, and please don’t take this the wrong way, ma’am, I don’t understand why we have to work with Hortens on this. If we’re going to be dependent on another species in this business, doesn’t it make more sense to stick with the Dollnicks?”

  “Marilla is an Open University co-op student,” Kevin explained. “She’s working for my father-in-law’s ship repair facility, and it happens that he and my brother-in-law have enough small craft available to dip a toe in the rental business. We can set up roundtrip rentals without any partners, but it’s incredibly inefficient for all parties involved.”

  “I get it now,” Hule said. “If your customers can’t drop off the ship at the other end, you need to charge much more for the rental because your inventory is just sitting in orbit, or worse, docked at an elevator hub with expensive parking fees.”

  “Exactly. Right now we’re just talking with people, but we’ve scheduled a meeting for the last day of the convention where we hope to iron out a basic deal with enough partners to launch a beta test this year.”

  “Will all of your partners or franchisees be required to buy ships from you?”

  “We couldn’t supply them all even if we wanted to. Since the ships we’ll be committing are second-hand, we thought it would be best if everybody followed the same model for now, plus it will cut way down on capital expenses. As soon as we settle on the branding, we’re going to find somebody to supply full-ship wraps.”

  “What are those?”

  “You’ve seen the protective film the Sharf wrap around new ships to keep the paint jobs from getting scratched by micro-meteors and space dust?”

  “Yes, but they always have Sharf advertising on them so everybody tears the film off as soon as—I get you.”

  “In addition to branding the rental agency, we can sell ad space on the wraps to help juice the profits.”

  “You’ve sold me,” Hule said. “My only remaining question is whether I can see some of the actual rental units before the meeting.”

  “Just ask the lift tube to take you to Mac’s Bones,” Kevin told him. “I’ll ping my father-in-law and tell him to expect you. And don’t be put off by the fact it looks like a flea market. My mother-in-law is holding a multi-species tag sale after the convention and it’s gotten a bit out of hand.”

  Three steps to Kevin’s left, Chance was telling an artificial person who had asked about seeing the EarthCent Intelligence training camp, “—and ignore all of the junk. The ambassador is holding a multi-species tag sale, and some of the other diplomats have been taking advantage of her good nature.”

  “You allow aliens to wander in and out of your secure facility?” the prospective spy asked.

  “It’s not secure,” Chance explained. “If you want a tour of EarthCent Intelligence’s office space, that’s different. There’s not much to see at the training camp this week since there aren’t any classes scheduled. I’ll ping Judith and tell her that you’re coming. She’s down there playing with the holograms.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Thomas and I are the primary trainers, and while we’re tied up at this trade show, Judith is taking advantage of the time to pr
actice holographic design. Humans can have a lot of difficulty programming in 3D,” Chance said, and continued in a lower voice. “Poor math skills.”

  Dorothy chose this moment to ask her fellow booth staffers, “Do any of you guys know what ‘Discounted cash flow’ means?”

  “Traders use a discounted cargo value to reflect theft losses at port facilities, but it doesn’t sound like the same thing,” Kevin replied. “Why do you need to know?”

  “It’s part of the basic financial workup the Frunge matchmaker will expect from all of the immediate family members on both sides.”

  “Not just the parents?” Marilla asked. “That seems a little extreme.”

  “The way the author explains it, profligate siblings are both an early warning sign and a future liability.”

  “Let me see the context,” Thomas said, coming over and taking the book from Dorothy. The artificial person studied the section pointed out by the girl. “In this case, the author is talking about the difference between the simple rate of return on an investment and the discount you have to allow for the time value of money and inflation.”

  “Do you think the matchmaker would include an accounting problem in my test?”

  “Frunge kids study finance from childhood on, so I doubt she’ll even think to ask anything so basic.”

  “Stick with what we need to know to chaperone a date,” Kevin suggested. “That’s probably what Mizpah will question us about.”

  “It’s just harder than I thought it would be,” Dorothy said. “How’s recruiting going, Thomas?”

  “I’m not sure whether the personality enhancement from QuickU that I’m testing is helping or hurting,” the artificial person admitted.

  “What was it supposed to make you do?” Kevin asked.

  “Personality enhancements don’t work that way. It’s not like becoming somebody else, or only a deeply troubled AI would ever want to try one.”

  “Then what did you get?”

  “The module changes the way I perceive external stimuli. So when I see somebody passing the booth, instead of assessing their potential threat level like an intelligence agent, I recognize them as possible customers. I’ve also noticed a difference in the way I read their body language and process vocal cues. The enhancement is intended to help artificial people who want to work as sales associates, but I’m not sure the same techniques are really applicable to recruiting.”