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

  “Paul!” Aisha exclaimed in shock, expecting the others to join in condemnation. “These are supposed to be friendly competitions.”

  “Then nobody will mind a little friendly cheating,” Ian observed. “But I assume we’re at a severe technical disadvantage here. Some of the station species must have millions of years of practical experience in rigging elections of different sorts.”

  “I’m hoping to get my friend Jeeves to help,” Paul answered. “The Stryx wouldn’t normally be willing to interfere in something like this, but Jeeves grew up with humans and he’s practically one of us. He’s currently away on the auction circuit with Mr. Hadad’s daughters, though, and I’m not sure he’ll be back in time.”

  “We could raise money and buy votes,” Stanley suggested. He was there in lieu of Chastity to represent InstaSitter, the biggest human employer on the station. “Where there’s election fraud, there should be vote contractors willing to deliver blocks of votes for a price.”

  “Mr. Doogal!” Aisha remonstrated.

  “I’m with the kid on this one,” Ian objected immediately. “It would be too expensive. We can’t hope to compete with the aliens on funds, and since the vote-sharing agreements are already in place, the aftermarket for votes from unaffiliated species will be sky-high. I’d rather invest the money in trying to hack the voting technology.”

  “I do have some information on that,” the senior Hadad said. “The first thing I did on accepting this position was to contact the Carnival planning commission for credentials, after which I was given holo-recordings of the meetings held to date. The delegates have already narrowed the polling technology down to two proposals. The first is a statistically based extrapolation model being pushed by the Verlocks, and the second involves paying a Thark gambling consortium to handle a direct election through a special interface to their tote board for off-world betting.”

  “We’ll have to vote for the Verlock method,” Aisha said. “I don’t trust anybody involved with gambling.”

  “Why haven’t they settled on the Tharks already?” the Little Apple entrepreneur asked, taking the opposite tack. “The Verlocks are clearly too good at math to expect them to be honest with statistics.”

  “Unfortunately, it appears that the election planning process is as open to fraud as the election itself. The committee seems to be leaning towards the Verlock proposal, despite its obvious flaws,” Peter said apologetically.

  “What exactly are the Verlocks proposing?” Aisha inquired.

  “They claim to have perfected a mathematical model for elections that allows them to determine the choice of a hundred million sentients based on the preferences of just three voters.”

  “Just three voters per species?” Aisha asked in astonishment.

  “Three voters total,” Peter replied, looking sadly at his empty coffee cup. “And of course, they get to pick the three. The Verlocks presented mathematical proofs for the veracity of their model and offered to give up their perpetual chairmanship of the pre-Carnival committee if anybody could find an error in the equations.”

  “Who gave them the perpetual chairmanship to start with?” Paul asked. “I’m beginning to see how they win so many of these elections.”

  “According to the official history, when the Stryx last modified the bylaws for Carnival around a half a million years ago, they thought it would be a good idea to distance themselves from the process, and let the ambassadors decide the chairmanship by a simple challenge contest,” the senior Hadad replied. “Apparently, the Stryx had become frustrated with the previous methodology of electing a chairman, which required another commission to determine the election rules for the chairmanship, which required a chairman, ad infinitum.”

  “Committees all the way down,” Stanley commented.

  “Exactly,” Peter confirmed. “Unfortunately, there was a Verlock in the chairman’s seat when the change was made, and it’s the prerogative of the seated chair to define the challenge contest. Ever since, it’s been whoever can stand naked in a pool of molten rock for the longest time.”

  “Ouch!” Stanley winced at the thought. “Well, we won’t have a chance if it comes down to three electors picked by the Verlocks, so I vote we go with the betting parlor proposal.”

  “Agreed,” Paul and Ian concurred. Aisha sank a little lower in her chair.

  “So we’re back to the issue of recruiting humans to enter the Carnival events,” Peter said. “In addition, each species is allowed to suggest one traditional event, unique to their culture, to be voted on at the same time as Carnival King or Queen.”

  “The same three voters?” Aisha inquired.

  “Or everybody via the tote board,” Peter reminded her.

  “Well, I suggest caber tossing,” Ian said.

  “Throwing food is a sport?” Aisha asked. “I use capers in cooking sometimes, and they’re too light to go very far.”

  “Caber, not caper.” Ian seemed genuinely surprised that the others weren’t up on his favorite sport. “It’s an old Scottish game.”

  “I think I saw that in a late-night filler on one of the sports networks once,” Paul said. “A pole about three times as tall as the thrower, must have weighed as much as a man too. The point was to get it to land upright or fall straight, something like that?”

  “That’s the ticket,” Ian said. “I’m a little out of practice, I admit. I brought a caber when we originally moved here, but due to the low ceilings at the local park area, I haven’t thrown since last time we visited Earth. I’ve been trying to organize a Highland Games on the docking deck for years.”

  “Where are the aliens who want to compete supposed to find a wood pole the size of a small tree on a space station?” Aisha asked.

  “Now you’re seeing the light, lassie,” Ian replied with an exaggerated burr.

  “I don’t understand any of you,” Aisha objected, shaking her head angrily. “Isn’t the whole point of Carnival for people from different species to get together and have fun?”

  “As a man who spent most of his adult life working in the gaming industry, I can assure you that all other things being equal, winning is more fun than losing,” Stanley commented.

  “I’m fine with caber tossing, unless you wanted to suggest traditional Hindu dancing?” Paul asked his wife.

  “Me?” Aisha’s eyes went wide. “No thanks. I hung up my competition slippers at sixteen. I guess we can go with the giant stick thing, but shouldn’t we be consulting the other humans on the station about this?”

  “Not enough time,” Peter answered decisively. “The final committee vote on the election methodology is in less than twenty-four hours, and we have to submit our candidate for an elective cultural event before then. EarthCent really missed the boat on preparation for this thing for some reason. We knew in the Shuk that there was a Carnival coming, but humans just assumed that the details were all handled by the Stryx, and none of our alien friends saw fit to fill us in.”

  “So what do we know about the permanent events?” Stanley asked. “Are there preliminary rounds scheduled? Do contestants have to register in advance? Are we expected to put up a single human champion for each contest?”

  “All good questions,” the Shuk vendor responded. “The schedule for the permanent events has already been released and we have just over a month to get ready. There are no preliminary rounds. Each species is expected to present a list of contestants through its embassy, one per event. When a species can’t produce a candidate for an event due to physical or mental incompatibilities, the Stryx allow that species to designate an unaffiliated sentient to fill the roster. Did I cover everything?”

  “So we need to move quickly to draw up a list of humans who want to compete, and then to arrange some sort of competition of our own to pick the human champions,” Stanley summed up. “I suggest we immediately post a list of the events and announce that we’re holding trials starting next weekend. If we run some display ads here in the Shuk and in the Litt
le Apple, that and word-of-mouth should do the trick.”

  “What are the permanent events we can compete in?” Aisha asked.

  “They’re primarily judged competitions, rather than contests of speed or strength,” Peter answered, and consulted his notes. “Singing, two-dimensional art, three-dimensional art, four-dimensional art, cooking, beauty contest, poetry, bartering, dancing, juggling, knife throwing, clowning and best costume.”

  “Four-dimensional art?” Paul asked. “Is that like clocks or something?”

  “No idea,” Peter admitted.

  “Bartering?” Ian asked.

  “I suspect we’ll have a lot of candidates trying out for that one,” the senior Hadad replied with a smile. “Oh, and here’s the fun part. All contests are judged by a panel of ambassadors who are randomly assigned to the events by the Stryx.”

  “Are the judges expected to cheat?” Aisha asked with trepidation, as if she were almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “I’m afraid it’s traditional,” Hadad told her sympathetically. “The judges for each permanent event are announced in advance of the competition, which gives participants time for, er, lobbying.”

  “First spying, now election fraud and cheating,” Aisha complained in frustration. “When I signed up for EarthCent, I thought I was joining an incorruptible diplomatic mission to an enlightened galaxy. But the longer I’m here, the more it seems like Earth!”

  “It’s just for a week or so every fifty years,” Paul told her. “Maybe the point of Carnival is to remind people what things would be like without the Stryx, but in a fun way, without the bloodshed. Kind of like your parents agreeing to let you stay up all night as a child to teach you that you need sleep.”

  “And there are prizes,” Peter added. “It’s not just a cycle of free rent for the species whose ambassador wins the election. The Stryx always give the individual winners of the competitions something to commemorate the occasion.”

  “Are we talking about permanent rent remission?” Ian asked hopefully.

  “According to the official history, the Stryx tend to get a little creative with Carnival prizes. Nothing harmful,” Peter added quickly, to reassure their potential caber tossing champion.

  Three

  It was Kelly’s first visit to the former Gem ag deck that had been taken over by the other humanoid species when the clones halted natural food production in favor of a manufactured all-in-one nutrition drink. She had missed the fundraiser for replanting the deck and sent Aisha in her place to represent EarthCent, an event that Paul and her daughter-in-law now referred to as their first date. So when Kelly emerged from the lift tube, pushing Samuel before her in the reproduction Victorian perambulator she’d received as a baby gift from the Doogals, she didn’t realize that the sparsely planted deck was a major improvement over how it had looked a year earlier.

  “Not very impressive for a park, is it?” she murmured to her baby, who being sound asleep, didn’t reply. There was nobody in sight near the tube lift, though a trash container full of candy bar wrappers proved that the Free Gem had been there since the last time a maintenance bot came around. Kelly thought she could hear singing coming from somewhere up the deck, where the curvature of the station obscured her view. She reviewed the cryptic note from the Free Gem on her heads-up display to make sure she was in the right place, but what jumped out at her was the station time, which appeared in the top right corner of the virtual display. It was an hour behind the time displayed on her faux-mechanical wristwatch!

  “Libby?” Kelly subvoced. “Am I an hour early for my meeting or is my implant malfunctioning?”

  “Have you forgotten about the daylight savings time feature on your decorative timepiece again?” the station librarian asked in response.

  “Drat!” the ambassador exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “They really shouldn’t have designed it so that holding in those two buttons at the same time toggles that one-hour thing on and off. I’ll bet Sammy did it by mistake when I let him play with the watch while I was dressing this morning. Why did people on Earth ever invent such a weird system?”

  “It was introduced during your twentieth century when artificial lighting was a substantial part of the electrical demand, though the idea was first proposed over a hundred years earlier to conserve candles,” Libby explained patiently, and not for the first time. “Changing the clocks twice a year was an attempt to maximize the amount of natural light during the standard school and work hours.”

  “Doesn’t seem right, changing time,” Kelly grumbled. “If I go all the way back to the embassy now, by the time I finish explaining myself to Donna and Aisha, it will be time to turn around and come back again. Can you tell me if the Free Gem I’m supposed to be meeting are here already?”

  “They are probably part of the labor party working not far from your location, perhaps a ten-minute walk,” Libby told her. “Your early arrival may actually be a good thing, in case the Empire Gem have been able to penetrate the Free Gem underground.”

  “So I just head in the direction of the singing?” Kelly asked. “Are you sure it’s the Gem laborers I hear and not some other species?”

  “Affirmative,” Libby replied. “Although many species, including humanity, have pledged funds to pay for remediation and replanting of this humanoid-shared park deck, actual payments have lagged, and the Dollnick construction management firm has had to keep a tight lid on labor costs. The project is currently the single largest employer of Free Gem on the station because they work for peanuts.”

  “So I’m going to be meeting with a whole mob of clones?” Kelly asked nervously.

  “No. The humanoid-shared park deck is now a designated public space. If Gryph had charged rent, it’s unlikely that the reclamation committee could have raised sufficient funds to pay for tearing up all of the cloned plantings and starting over again. Being designated a public space means that workers on the deck are employed under Stryx labor laws for biologicals, which include mandatory shifts off for rest and recuperation. The majority of Gem workers are off today.”

  “Then I guess I better go and face the music,” Kelly punned. Fortunately, there was a trodden path in the direction she chose, and the pram wheels rolled along smoothly enough, rather than trying to bury themselves up to the axles in the dirt.

  The sound of the singing gradually rose in volume until the work crew came into view. Their backs were turned to her as they moved in a straight line, sowing some kind of seed from shoulder bags. Even before she was close enough to hear the soulful music without the aid of her implant, two things jumped out at Kelly. First, none of the dozen or so clones she was approaching shared the same hair color. Second, the music sounded oddly familiar, more human than alien, as if the Free Gem were imitating a spiritual from one of the innumerable alien documentaries on human history.

  “Hello there!” Kelly called loudly when she came within hailing distance. It wouldn’t do to risk startling the women by waiting until she was too close. The singing ended abruptly and the clones turned with that eerie synchronization she remembered from her dinner at the Gem embassy. After a moment of hesitation, the women all lifted a hand or waved, and one with bright green hair came forward to meet her.

  “I am she who sent you the message,” the Gem declared earnestly. “My sisters and I are honored that you accepted the invitation.”

  “Thank you for inviting me,” Kelly replied diplomatically, doing her best to suppress her natural distaste for clones. “I’m curious to hear why you’ve contacted me specifically. I didn’t realize that the Gem, the Free Gem, I mean, were interested in humanity.”

  The green-haired woman looked disappointed, then took a deep breath and said, “I’m afraid I could not understand you. I have been studying your English language since it was decided that we should approach the humans, but it is very difficult for me. Perhaps you could speak slower?”

  “You don’t have a translation implant?” Kelly asked in astonishment. />
  “Ah, I think I understood that time,” the Gem declared in relief. “You asked about our implants. Of course, we had to have them removed when we left the Empire. All Gem implants can be monitored by the security apparatus.”

  “You should have told me,” Kelly said slowly. “I could have brought an external voice box.” The Gem shook her head in frustration, so Kelly tried again. “I can bring a machine that translates English into Gem.”

  “Bring, brings, bringing, brought,” the Gem recited by rote in an attempt to jumpstart her memory. “Yes, I understand. Please use this machine.”

  “I don’t have it with me today.” Kelly spoke slowly, pausing between her words. “I will bring it next time we meet. Today, I will ask the Stryx to translate for you.”

  “No Stryx!” the woman objected violently, backing away from Kelly at the same time. The other Gem moved up closer to support their leader. “The Stryx are at the top of the power structure that includes the Gem dictatorship.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” Kelly protested, but seeing an expression of fear on the face of the Free Gem representative, she fell silent. It was obvious that the clone she was speaking to had been educated or indoctrinated with a view of the galaxy that suited the Gem elite, and Kelly doubted she could overcome that in a single meeting using a limited vocabulary. She breathed in and started over again, slowly. “Why did you want to see me?”

  “Yes,” the clone replied, relaxing visibly. “When we first heard that your EarthCent spy agency was willing to employ individuals from nonhuman species, we thought it was a trick. But our sisters who signed up have reported that they were treated with respect, even though they had little useful information to offer. We believe that you humans are so new in the galaxy that the other species have not had time to corrupt you.”

  Kelly was trying to puzzle out how to respond to this when the baby began making waking up noises, so she fished him out of the carriage and began bouncing him gently in her arms.