Artists on the Galactic Tunnel Network (EarthCent Auxiliaries Book 4) Page 5

  “Why didn’t you just do the unlimited option and pay by the minute?” Fiona asked. “The Galactic Free Press is rich.”

  “The value of teleconferences is inversely proportional to their length,” Ellen explained to the girl, and across the table, Gerald nodded in agreement. “Wait until you attend our regular meeting on Tuesday. The syndicated journalists are all professionals, but we get hundreds of people attending most of these calls. If you’ve taken a few hours out of your day to participate in a teleconference, it’s human nature to want to speak even if you have nothing to say.”

  Fiona’s phone beeped and she checked for the incoming text before realizing it was a voice call and putting it on speaker. “Hello?”

  “It’s me, with the backstage passes,” Lena said. “Why do you sound so surprised?”

  “I never use my phone for calling,” Fiona admitted. “I thought you’d text or open a chat.”

  “Yeah, I usually do that too. But I went to my first press syndicate meeting last week, and everybody warned me that Ellen is, you know, and I figured since you’re with her...”

  “I know,” Fiona said, “but I’m from here.”

  “You know what?” Ellen demanded. Across the table, Gerald was cracking up as he packed his things to leave. “I’m practically a smartphone expert now.”

  “We aren’t laughing at you,” Lena said. “Hexes can’t help who they are.”

  “Did you just say that I’m cursed?”

  “It’s the latest slang for humans who are born and grow up somewhere other than Earth,” Lena explained. “Human Extraterrestrials. Hexes.”

  “It’s that obvious I’m a—Hex?”

  “Not being fluent with smartphones is one of the biggest tells,” Fiona said. “Another is the way you’re always sniffing the air like you smell something funny but you’re not sure what it is.”

  “That’s because it’s—”

  “It’s Earth,” Fiona interrupted, and through her phone, they could hear Lena laughing.

  “I’m going to get going,” Gerald said. “Nice to meet you, Fiona. Enjoy your concert and I’ll see you both on Tuesday.”

  “So, do you want to meet up before the concert or afterward?” Lena asked. “The real reason I’m going is to get some interviews with Atonement, the opening act. Cringe hooked me up, and the band wanted to talk before they go on because they aren’t staying for the whole show.”

  “The opening act is leaving right after they play?” Fiona asked. “Is that normal?”

  “They have a suborbital to catch to do a show in Australia tomorrow. Even though the flight is only a few hours, it’s like a half-day time difference, so they want to get there and crash.”

  “I’d love to meet up beforehand and watch you do the interviews. I’m sure I’ll learn a ton.”

  “I just try to be a good listener,” Lena said modestly. “And the catering for shows at the Triple N is great, so don’t eat dinner, and I’ll meet you out front of the main entrance at six. Bye.”

  “Bye,” Fiona said, and swiped the connection closed with a dreamy look on her face. “I can’t believe I’m going to meet Cringe.”

  “Where’s the Triple N?” Ellen asked. “I’ve been coming here for two years and I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Hexes call it The Garden, but it’s the third complete rebuild, the New New New Garden, so we call it the Triple N, or Sixes.”

  “Because it’s on Sixth Avenue?”

  “I just know how to get there walking or on the subway,” Fiona said. “Sixes is because it’s the New New New Garden located in New New York, and three times two is six.”

  “Just be careful, okay? I’ve heard of things happening backstage at concerts,” Ellen said.

  “Things? Do you think I’ll have a chance to sleep with Cringe?” Fiona asked. “What am I going to wear?”

  “I know you aren’t going to take my advice, but—”

  “I’m kidding,” the girl interrupted. “I just want to meet him and get a selfie. He’s almost as old as you.”

  “I’m thirty-eight,” Ellen said indignantly.

  “You’re right, Cringe is nowhere near that old yet,” Fiona said, sifting through screens on her phone. “Hey, I can get a fake student ID for the New University delivered to the ship in under an hour. Will the Galactic Free Press pay for it?”

  “Because you think that Cringe will ask to check your ID?”

  “Don’t be gross,” Fiona said. “I want to get a job as a proxy shopper for the aliens. I’ve never been on a shopping spree in my life.”

  “You wouldn’t get to keep any of it,” Ellen said, looking at the girl speculatively. “If they deliver in less than an hour, you could stop by the New University campus in Manhattan on your way to the concert and see if the proxy shopping people are there recruiting. If Lena doesn’t return to Europe right away, maybe the two of you can work on a piece together.”

  Five

  The willowy gallery assistant slid the empty eyeglass frames she wore for fashion’s sake down her narrow nose and glared over them at Marco. “Have you been trained to keep your hands to yourself?” she asked coldly. “Where are your pa—oh, Hello,” she cut herself off when Semmi entered. “Is the boy yours?”

  The gryphon gave a noncommittal “Scraw,” and keeping her wings carefully tucked in, moved past the assistant into the main room of the gallery. John, who had been holding the old-fashioned door for his two companions, entered last.

  “The boy and the gryphon are with me,” he told the woman, trying not to stare at her prominent collar bones, which in any other context would have indicated the final stages of starvation. “I’m in town for the month to do a little buying on behalf of an off-world client, and Hildy Grueun over at the president’s office suggested this gallery.”

  “Then I’m sure you’re in the right place,” the assistant said, her artificial smile displaying equally artificial teeth. “This month we’re showcasing works from Diana Hartberg, who recently passed away. As I’m sure you know, she was one of the original members of the Post Opening movement that was active from around seventy years ago up through the start of the last decade. Is there a particular—don’t touch that,” she screeched in horror as Semmi held up a paw with the claws extended in front of a painting of a desolate cityscape.

  Marco waved to get their attention, pointed at one of the hidden light fixtures, and then pantomimed holding up a prism in one hand and observing the imaginary diffraction pattern on the floor.

  “Whatever is he doing?” the woman asked John, her eyes going back and forth between the boy and the gryphon, who now seemed to be studying the back of her paw from different angles.

  “I think Marco is trying to tell us that Semmi is using her claws to break up the light reflected from the canvas,” John said. “The gryphon is an artist in her own right, primarily portraiture, and I trust her judgment implicitly when it comes to colors.”

  “Ah, so you’re one of the new breed of buyer’s agents who works with a team,” the gallery assistant concluded. “If you tell me which species your buyer is from, I’ll be able to serve you better.”

  “Human,” John said, which drew a thin frown from the underfed woman. “My client has a very successful business translating alien novels into English and she’s buying art for her headquarters.”

  “Maybe one of the smaller pieces we keep in the back. If you’ll just—don’t get so close,” she called nervously to Marco, who was examining a painting of a burned-out skyscraper.

  “Price won’t be an issue,” John said, recapturing the woman’s attention. He handed over the programmable Stryx cred that Blythe had given him, and added, “Feel free to confirm it on your register.”

  To be fair, the gallery assistant’s only visible reaction when she looked at the side of the coin displaying the current value was a slight widening of the eyes, but her voice underwent an immediate change.

  “That won’t be necessary, Mister…?”

  “Just John,” he said, and produced a plastic business card that he’d purchased at an instant printer down the street ten minutes prior. “Forgive me for not asking your name. I don’t know where my manners are.”

  “Danika, with a K,” she told him, stepping closer to get in range for the Drazen perfume she wore that was formulated to be unnoticeable by the human nose beyond arm’s length. “Your boy is such a handsome little fellow, and quiet. Is he an artist as well?”

  “Yes, he is,” John said, accepting the programmable cred in return for the card and slipping it back into his pocket. He was so surprised when Danika took his other arm that he barely restrained himself from flowing into a martial arts move and throwing her over his back. Instead, he asked, “So what else can you tell me about Diana Hartberg? I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with the Post Opening movement.”

  “I’d be delighted,” Danika said with a playful smile, leading him towards the largest canvas in the gallery. “These desolate cityscapes were painted in her early-middle period, approximately fifty years ago. When I was studying art history at the Sorbonne, we had a mnemonic for the order of emigration from Earth—RUSTED. First came the poorest Rural workers who signed up for alien labor contracts in agriculture, then the Urban poor taking labor jobs, followed by the Suburbanites as middle-class jobs disappeared. A generation later there was another round when people found out they could earn a decent retirement in thirty years or less, so the Technical workers and finally the Elites joined the exodus.”

  “What does the ‘D’ on the end stand for?” John asked her.

  “Deniers,” Danika said. “When the alien deniers began to come around and started taking jobs off-world, it signified the end of Earth’s transition to a modern planet. Now the populat
ion flow has stabilized between emigrants to tunnel network worlds and retirees who choose to return home for the inexpensive real estate and rapidly improving services. Hartberg and her contemporaries started out by painting abandoned fields and collapsing farmhouses, but those pictures haven’t appreciated in value as much as the condemned skyscrapers. Her empty villages also sell for a good price, particularly the ones with a leaking water tower or an overgrown cemetery, but she also wasted years painting run-down suburbs, which are just depressing. The final decade of her working life was given over to interior scenes from abandoned hospitals and empty bank vaults, but those are smaller pieces employing mixed media, so it’s a different market.”

  “I see. So she and the other Post Opening artists basically documented the consequences of the Stryx opening Earth in the order that they saw them.”

  “Exactly,” Danika practically purred. “Hartberg has always been very collectible, and her prices are achieving new highs with her unfortunate passing, putting her at the forefront of the movement.”

  “Her passing or her prices?” John asked.

  Danika laughed and playfully punched his bicep. “Oh, you’re so naughty,” she said, and then lowered her voice. “Her prices, of course. Hartberg was always very fortunate in her timing. If she had died a decade earlier, there wasn’t an alien market for contemporary human works, and if she had lived another decade, the peak might have passed.”

  “So you think if I wait, the price of this piece may come down?” John asked, waving his free arm at the post-apocalyptic image.

  “Oh, no,” Danika said, shaking her head vigorously to buttress her words. “All of her works will be in collections by that point, and from there they’ll continue to appreciate with the overall market. It’s the other artists from the Post Opening that I’m talking about. An artist’s prices are always relative to their most expensive sale, so timing the markets is critical.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. What is it, Marco?”

  The boy pointed at Semmi, who had moved to the door and was fiddling with her smartphone.

  “Already?” John asked. He gently pried Danika’s fingers from his arm and mustered up a fake smile of his own. “We have a list of galleries to visit today as we screen possible acquisitions, but I’m sure we’ll be back once we complete our quick survey. You were our first stop.”

  “Take my card.” Danika thrust a small plastic chit into his hand with a movement that seemed to start from her hips. She leaned in close at the same time to give him a final whiff of the perfume and whispered, “It has my personal contact information as well if you’d like to get together after hours and talk art, just the two of us.”

  “Er, thank you,” John said, backing through the door.

  As soon as they were all out in the street, Marco latched onto John’s arm and started making eyes at him in a perfect imitation of the gallery assistant. Semmi snorted in amusement and took a picture with her smartphone. The EarthCent Intelligence agent heard a muted beep.

  “Did you just send that to somebody?” he demanded, and then recalled that the gryphon already had her smartphone out before they exited. “Did you take a picture of me with that gallery vamp and send it to Ellen? What did I ever do to you?”

  Semmi dropped the phone back in the flight pouch she wore around her neck and gave him an innocent look.

  “Next time I’m leaving you both on the ship,” John threatened.

  Marco’s smartphone played its ringtone, a riff from some Apologist band that Fiona had picked out for him. The boy looked at the phone, grinned, and passed it over.

  “I never touched her,” John said into the phone. “She was trying to sell me art.”

  “You should have bought something,” Ellen said. “The poor girl looked like she hadn’t eaten in a month, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Something come up at your syndicate meeting?”

  “I have some good leads to work on, but nothing urgent. I’m calling because I got a message from Hildy that there’s an impromptu reception at Disunion and the artists will be there. She called me because you didn’t give her your number.”

  “I don’t have a phone,” John replied reflexively before realizing that he was playing right into her hand. “Disunion was on our list for later today but we’ll head there now. Do you want to meet up, or are you still out at the elevator?”

  “I came in with Fiona to visit a campus but I’ll fill you in about that later. I’m only ten minutes away from you if I can find a floater cab. I suppose I better come in case you need somebody to watch Marco while you’re getting busy with a salesgirl.”

  “What does that even—Hello?” John grimaced, passed the phone back to the boy, and scowled at the gryphon. “Thanks a lot. You got me in trouble with Ellen. And this next place is going to be crowded, so why don’t you get a little flying in and find us later.”

  Marco tugged on John’s sleeve and pointed at Semmi, his eyes pleading.

  “No, you can’t ride her, especially not in the city with all of the drones. We all agreed to wait until M793qK says that she’s up to your weight. You know that in Tyrellian gryphon years she’s not much more mature than you are.”

  Semmi shook her head, took a few bounding leaps, and launched into the air. The scattering of New York pedestrians who had grown blasé about aliens wandering around their city reacted quite differently to the gryphon when her wings were extended, whipping out their smartphones and capturing video. Semmi caught an updraft from a subway grate, let out an earsplitting, “Scraw,” and disappeared over the buildings.

  “I’m sorry, Marco, but she’s getting too big to bring inside places that aren’t set up for aliens, and a reception is likely to be crowded with people holding drinks,” John explained to the boy. “I’m going to depend on your help with aesthetic judgments now. I could tell back in the tunnel that you learned more from that art book my boss gave me than I did.”

  Marco straightened up at John’s statement and pointed across the street where a large silk banner featuring black capital U’s crossed out with red X’s was fluttering against a brick building.

  “Is that it?” John asked, and it occurred to him that Semmi had been the one who had navigated the way to the first gallery. “Alright, let’s take the underpass rather than waiting for the light.”

  The pair headed down the stairs into the short tunnel which was lit as bright as day by Verlock glow-stones embedded in the ceiling. A blinking message on a wall panel informed them that the next autowash would start in eleven minutes, which explained why it didn’t smell like urine and there were no signs of even temporary residents. The stairway on the other side exited right in front of the gallery which featured another black U crossed out by a red X on the glass door, and in small lower case print, “disunion.”

  A heavily tattooed man who looked more like a bouncer than an art gallery attendant held out an arm to stop them. “Special event,” he said politely. “Regular clients and invited guests only.”

  “We’re with—we were told to come by Hildy Grueun from the EarthCent president’s office,” John said, handing over another of his new cards.

  The attendant sniffed the card, grinned, and said, “Today’s vintage, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and check the list.” He stared off into space for a moment, a sure sign that he had an implant with a heads-up display, and then nodded. “John, Marco, Semmi, and Ellen. The other two will be along?”

  “Ellen is coming. Semmi is a large Tyrellian gryphon and I was worried there wouldn’t be room.”

  “We’ve never had a gryphon but we’re set up for all of the tunnel network members weighing less than a ton. We even have an all-species bathroom. This gallery used to be a warehouse before the conversion.”

  “I didn’t realize aliens were so important to the gallery business,” John said. “Have you worked here long?”

  “I’m the owner,” the tattooed man said, and he smiled at John’s surprise. “Long story involving Hortens, a gaming tournament, and a run of luck that scared me into returning to Earth. Go on in, and if the gryphon shows up, I’ll tell her you’re here. I’ve never seen one in the flesh, or the feather, as it were.”