Artists on the Galactic Tunnel Network (EarthCent Auxiliaries Book 4) Page 3

  “That’s perfect,” Chastity said. “Didn’t Roland tell me you’re teaching her journalism?”

  “We’re still working at the writing part, but she’s got street smarts that put me to shame.”

  “Send her to as many concerts as her ears can take and save the receipts,” Roland said. “We could use a teenager’s perspective.”

  “Fiona finally let M793qK give her an implant, so she can always block out the sound if it gets too loud,” Ellen said. She turned back to the publisher. “I think I’m beginning to see what you want here, but what was that you said earlier about funding?”

  “My sister gave John a programmable cred to shop for art that he can take to show at the Aarden Arts Festival,” Chastity said. “That’s the second part of your assignment, and ten million creds worth of paintings will give your husband cover as a dealer.”

  “But he doesn’t know the first thing about paintings!” Ellen exploded. “John thinks holograms of alien warships are high art. If I let him decorate our cabin we’d be living in a barracks.”

  “From what I saw of Earth’s art galleries on my honeymoon, they push nonrepresentational art, so his lack of aesthetic sense may be a plus,” Chastity said. “Anyway, it’s my sister’s money.”

  “If John concentrates on paintings and Fiona covers popular music, you can cover sculptures and stand-up when you get to Aarden,” Roland said.

  “Comedy?” Ellen asked in surprise. “Does that even count as culture?”

  “Stand-up comedy often leads society, at least in terms of breaking taboos,” Chastity said. “And unlike abstract art, you can figure out what stand-up comics are talking about without having to be told. Nobody thinks that modern art will cause humanity to join hands and march off a cliff.”

  “Wait a second. Is that really what this is all about? You’re afraid that if one of the other species masters our arts, they’ll be in a position to influence humanity in ways that are awfully hard to detect or prove.”

  “If the people who say that art imitates life are right, there’s no problem. But if life imitates art, the last thing we need is to have Earth’s art replaced by something calculated to manipulate humans. It’s bad enough that so many of our contract workers wish they were aliens.”

  “And don’t forget to take in an opera if you get a chance,” Roland added.

  “Do you think opera has an especially strong effect on people?” Ellen asked.

  “I just thought you’d enjoy it. My wife dragged me to an opera about a mine disaster put on by a touring Drazen company. I couldn’t understand a word, but I cried all the way through.”

  “And that’s good?”

  “I’m not sure,” Roland admitted, “but the next day I saw somebody in the Little Apple collecting for some mine-related charity and I gave them five creds, so it was effective.”

  Three

  “M793qK says that it’s safer than a bath,” Larry told his wife. “Flower Shipyards has already sold hundreds of these baby centrifuges, and nobody has reported even a minor mishap.”

  “I can’t believe I let you talk me into buying it in the first place,” Georgia said. “If babies were meant to sleep in centrifuges, they’d be born with—oh, I don’t know.”

  “You’re the one who put us on the waiting list to buy a nursery upgrade for our ship, and you couldn’t stop talking about how you were looking forward to having a healthy way for the baby to travel in Zero-G,” Larry protested. Then he saw her anxious expression hardening into something more stubborn and began to backpedal. “I mean, it was a decision we made together because we knew the only other option would be to stop traveling until Jimmy is old enough for the exercise equipment.”

  “My son’s name is James.” Georgia turned slightly away as if to shield the baby in her arms from both the centrifuge and the nickname. “And I’m not being irrational. I get that the Cayl developed a breathable gel that acts like a semiconductor for oxygen and carbon dioxide all while providing internal cushioning for high acceleration maneuvers, but does it really make sense that it would be safe for human babies? I want to see more data.”

  “I’m sure it’s hard for every mother the first time. Just pass Ji—James to me and I’ll put him in. We both went through the training course.”

  Georgia took a backward step towards the ladder that connected the bridge of the Sharf two-man trader to the cargo deck. “What’s the rush anyway?” she asked. “Flower is going to stop at Earth in a few weeks, and I promised my parents we’d visit so they could get to know James. We’ll get a spot in long-term parking at the elevator authority and rent a floater to go up and visit them on the weekend. My parents still work full time on the commune, and I just heard from Ellen and she’s got research work for me on Earth.”

  “Whatever happened to maternity leave?” Larry asked. “I thought the Galactic Free Press based their benefits package on tunnel network standards.”

  “I’m not an employee, I’m a freelancer. If I was still back on Union Station writing the food column, I’d get six months with full pay, plus free InstaSitter babysitting. But then I never would have met you.”

  Larry sighed. “I guess we don’t have to start getting him accustomed to the centrifuge today. But if we aren’t going to be able to travel for the next two years, I’m going to have to find somebody to replace me as the head of the Traders Guild.”

  “I just need a little more time,” Georgia pleaded. “Maybe if I could see somebody else’s baby try it first.”

  “I suppose I could ask Samuel and Vivian to loan us Rose, but she’s probably never been in a centrifuge.”

  “I’ve got one,” Flower announced over their implants. “Is now a good time?”

  “What do you mean you’ve got one?” Larry asked. “Have you started adopting orphans or something?”

  “Laura is still on maternity leave from managing the shipyard but she seizes every excuse to come in to visit. Her behavior is quite the opposite of what I was told to expect from Humans, and little Iris enjoys a good spin in a centrifuge.”

  “She enjoys it?” Georgia looked doubtfully at the newly installed device which reminded her of the giant industrial clothes driers from her university days, except the drum was double-walled, with an empty interior cylinder and a gel-filled crawlspace around the outer section. “I still don’t get why the gel doesn’t fall out when the door is opened.”

  “Because the gel preferentially sticks to itself and it’s no heavier than the ambient air. You can think of it as a room-temperature solid-state. When the gel is exhaled into the air, it reverts to the gaseous state, which is no different from what you’re breathing as we speak.”

  “But how is that possible?”

  “If I understood the chemistry, I could earn a fortune manufacturing the stuff, but the Cayl are the only species who know how to make it,” Flower replied. “My shipyard is one of the few facilities outside of Cayl space authorized to resell breathable gel, and that’s only thanks to the emperor’s granddaughter living on board to mentor the Human Empire.”

  “What do you say, Georgia?” Larry asked. “If Laura wants to come in and let Iris demonstrate, we can get this out of the way and take her and Don out to dinner.”

  “You’re just in a hurry to get back to trading,” Georgia said, but it was obvious that her sudden bout of anxiety was fading. “If it really won’t be any trouble for Laura…”

  “I already pinged her,” Flower said. “Iris just got up from her morning nap so your timing is perfect. They’ll be around five minutes.”

  “Maybe she’d like a Frunge Fascination.” Georgia thrust the baby into Larry’s arms and stepped over to the hatch that led to the cargo deck. “I’m going to pick something out for Laura from my stock. I never gave her a baby gift.”

  “We weren’t on board when she had the baby,” Larry called after his wife as she disappeared down the ladder.

  “So, are you planning to stop at the Aarden Arts Festival?” Flower
asked him. “I have a consignment going there.”

  “I thought you were stopping at Aarden immediately after Earth this circuit.”

  “I am, but if Georgia lets you put James in the centrifuge and you take the tunnel to Earth yourselves rather than remaining on board, you could get to Aarden before me.”

  “I’m not crazy about making deliveries,” Larry said. “I’m a trader, not a teamster.”

  “But I happen to know that your cargo deck is largely empty,” Flower said. “I’ll pay double the standard freight rates.”

  “Why?”

  “The consignment is artwork and the owners don’t trust just anybody to handle it.”

  “I don’t want to be tip-toeing around my own ship for fear of damaging some fragile shipment,” Larry said. “And you never know, I might come across a great deal on Earth for something in bulk form.”

  “The works are all packaged in Dollnick road-show cases and ready to go,” Flower said. “You could use them as the base for a load of iron ore and they’d be fine. The only complication is that the Aarden Arts Festival runs a tight schedule, and if the consignment is late, the works won’t be accepted for display.”

  “Is there a penalty clause for me?” Larry asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing like that. It’s just that the artists wanted somebody especially trustworthy.”

  “How much of the cargo deck are we talking about?”

  “Barely a quarter if you stack the cases efficiently, and I can send a bot to help since you got rid of Genie,” Flower said.

  “Georgia was afraid to have a bot without artificial intelligence on board with the baby,” Larry explained. “I gave Genie to my parents for their ship since they’re getting too old for pushing around cargo. Alright, you have a deal. Ping me with the delivery instructions and I’ll make sure we get to Aarden with time to spare.”

  “In time for what?” Georgia asked as her head reappeared through the hatch.

  “After we leave Earth we’re taking a consignment cargo of artwork to Aarden for Flower’s delivery service. Double rate,” he added smugly as if he had negotiated the premium price.

  “Did she know that we were already scheduled to go there?” Georgia asked. “I’m looking forward to it myself. Two weeks of covering the festival food scene, sunshine, and fresh air, with all of it paid by the word. It’s a freelancer’s dream job.”

  “A deal is a deal,” Larry said to head off any renegotiation efforts by the Dollnick AI. “Is there a Frunge Fascination in that box?”

  “I decided to go with a Verlock Sky. It’s what I plan to start James on as soon as his vision is better developed, probably around three months. Right now I don’t think he can focus on anything much farther than my face.”

  “Anybody home?” a woman’s voice called up the ladder.

  “Is that you, Laura?” Georgia shouted back. “We’re up here.”

  Thirty seconds later, the manager of the shipyard climbed through the hatch, a baby in a hands-free carrier strapped across her front. “Thanks for giving me an excuse to come in to work,” Laura said, her face colored from the quick climb up the ladder. “I bring Don his lunch every day, but when I pushed too hard with snacks for coffee breaks, Flower banned me outright for a week. Three more months to go,” she added wistfully.

  “You want to return to work that badly?” Georgia asked. “I’m enjoying being on vacation.”

  “You sent the Galactic Free Press an article about foods for nursing mothers five days after giving birth,” Larry reminded her. “And how many afternoons did you spend at Flower’s bazaar selling your educational games this week?”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Georgia said, crouching to open the box she had set on the deck just a minute before. “This is for Iris,” she told Laura. “It’s a Verlock Sky, and I think she’s old enough for it now.”

  “I’ve heard of those but I’ve never seen one,” Laura said. “Isn’t it a holographic projector that does something like a planetarium show right over the crib?”

  “Better,” Georgia declared, removing the device which resembled nothing more than a melted blob of volcanic glass. “It has settings for every tunnel network species, and it starts with a static display of the night sky from the appropriate homeworld and surface location. As soon as the baby can identify the planets and the primary constellations, it—”

  “Wait a minute,” Larry interrupted. “How are babies supposed to identify planets and constellations when they can’t even talk?”

  “They can point, can’t they? And did you expect James to teach himself to read as well? There’s such a thing as parental participation.”

  “You have to let me pay you something for it,” Laura said. “I can’t imagine what the Verlocks charge.”

  “A lot less than you’d think, and I stocked up on them wholesale the last time we stopped at a Verlock academy world,” Georgia said, waving off the offer. “They only charge for the holographic projector and the interface. The content is all free from their open-source educational network.”

  “Enough about the Verlocks,” Flower put in. “I said fifteen minutes, Laura, and I meant it. I won’t have you hanging around the shipyard and word getting out that I don’t respect tunnel network labor laws.”

  Laura rolled her eyes, but rather than arguing, she headed for the custom nursery upgrade that the shipyard had just finished installing and opened the door of the centrifuge. When she lifted Iris out of the carrier, the baby reached for the Cayl gel with two pudgy hands, gurgling with glee. Laura gently placed Iris on her back in the gel at the bottom of the drum and closed the door.

  “Now, if you were doing this in Zero-G, the centrifuge would spin faster,” Laura said, tapping on the control pad. “But since we’re already at around eighty percent of Earth normal on this deck, it will be spinning fairly slowly.” Then she pressed the green start button and the centrifuge began to turn.

  “Why isn’t Iris sliding down the space between the cylinders?” Georgia asked, clenching her fists from nerves. “Isn’t it going too slow for the centrifugal force to hold her in place?”

  “You’re forgetting about the gel,” Laura said. “See how she’s reaching for her toes? It doesn’t restrict her from moving because of her body temperature, but where the gel is only in contact with itself or metal, it stiffens to the point that it’s practically a solid. The centrifuges are designed for Zero-G operation. When you run them on a ship like Flower, essentially a centrifuge inside a centrifuge, it’s more like riding a roller coaster, but the babies enjoy it for short spins.”

  “It makes my brain hurt just thinking about it,” Georgia said, watching through the glass as the baby played in the gel. “Doesn’t she know that she’s in a centrifuge? What if she looks out and sees the world going around?”

  Laura laughed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘centrifuge’ is her first word, though she’ll probably shorten it to ‘fugey’. It’s just normal to her, like being in a playpen. She’s becoming our official show-baby for nervous centrifuge owners. I don’t know what we’re going to do when she’s too big.”

  “Have another one,” Flower contributed. “Children do better with siblings.”

  “Is she waving to us?” Georgia asked, her eyes following the baby through its circular path. She began waving back with both hands like an excited adolescent girl. “She is waving. Hello, Iris.”

  “I think she’s just trying to grab her toes,” Larry said. “Are you ready to give James a turn?”

  “Check his diaper first.”

  “Just take it off,” Laura said, pressing the red ‘stop’ button. “Have you forgotten that the drum is lined with the same permeable material that the Hortens manufacture for reusable diapers? It wicks away the moisture and any solids pass directly into the recycling system.” The drum stopped with the baby at the bottom and the door unlocked. When she lifted Iris out of the gel, the baby squirmed around and reached back for the centrifuge.

&nb
sp; “I guess she really does like it,” Georgia said, accepting her now-naked infant son from her husband. She carefully supported his head as she laid him on his back in the bottom of the drum. “But what about the gel that’s lost every time the baby comes out and exhales it?”

  “There’s a reservoir good for making up at least two hundred uses, and the centrifuge won’t operate if the level gets too low,” Laura told her. “The caution light comes on when the reserve is eighty percent depleted.”

  Georgia grimaced as she closed the door, and immediately crouched down to look at James through the glass.

  “He’s fine,” Larry reassured her. “I bet you when we run the centrifuge in Zero-G he’ll fall asleep within a minute.”

  “I forgot to enable the monitor when Iris was in,” Laura said and touched the screen over the ‘start’ and ‘stop’ buttons. “Some of our customers have told me they’ll put their baby in the centrifuge just to check if he has a temperature because it’s super accurate.”

  “I remember that part from the training course.” Georgia steeled herself and then pressed the green start button. The centrifuge began to spin and the lines tracking the baby’s vital signs barely changed. For the next two minutes, Georgia’s head pivoted back and forth from the monitor to the baby as if she were watching a tennis match. “I can’t believe it,” she muttered.

  “Believe what?” Laura asked.

  “He’s asleep. It must feel like one of those bouncy seats with his weight changing all the time. I wonder if it will work when he’s crying?”

  “It’s a centrifuge, not a surrogate parent,” Flower cautioned. “If you remember the rest of your training, it’s best to let the baby nap for at least five minutes the first time he’s spun up. If you take him out too quickly you can transfer your anxiety to him.”

  “Just what I need, childrearing advice from an alien artificial intelligence,” Georgia groused.

  “The centrifuge isn’t making any sound at all,” Larry said, stepping up close and putting his hand on the glass door to check for vibrations. “You’d think his weight would unbalance it enough to make some kind of periodic sound.”