Wanderers On Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 6) Read online

  “I visited them!” Samuel interrupted. The other children looked at him enviously.

  “I’ll just begin, then,” Aisha said. “Once upon...”

  “A TIME!” the children shouted.

  “A group of clever children from Union Station went to visit the Wanderers.” Aisha stopped there and pointed at the Dollnick boy, hoping to get his contribution before he nodded off.

  “The Wanderers asked the children for their money, but the Dollnick boy was a big hero and he hit them!” the Dolly child declared, shaking all of his fists in a five-year-old’s fearsome display of aggression.

  “Oh, dear,” Aisha said. “That’s not very friendly. What happened next?” she asked, pointing to Samuel.

  “And then the Wanderers put all of the children into sacks, and left them in the forest near the gingerbread house,” Samuel said, borrowing heavily from one of the scary picture books Dorothy had read to him.

  “That’s not very friendly either,” Aisha said, shaking her head mournfully. The story was hardly going as she planned, and she was beginning to expect she’d be hearing from some angry Wanderers when it was over. “Didn’t anything nice happen?” she asked, pointing to Ailia hopefully.

  “The children’s parents came looking for them, and the Wanderers told the parents where the sacks were for just ten creds each?” the Vergallian girl suggested.

  “Well, I guess that’s better,” Aisha said, and pointed to the little Frunge.

  “But when the parents found the sacks, they were all empty, and the Wanderers kept the children and the money,” the Frunge contributed.

  “For a whole day, before sending them home?” Aisha prompted, hoping to steer the story back towards a happy ending. She pointed to the Horten boy.

  “Forever after,” the Horten boy concluded. “They made the children pick up their dirty clothes and eat their blue vegetables, too!” All the kids shuddered at the horrible outcome.

  “Where’s Naina?” Aisha asked, looking around for the little Chert girl who tended to disappear when the going got rough. “It’s your turn, Naina. If the story is too scary, you can change the ending,” the host added hopefully.

  “Mommy says to hide when there are Wanderers around,” proclaimed a disembodied little voice. “They steal children!”

  “And what do you think happened to the children in the end?” Aisha asked the Verlock child. She’d been saving him for last, because the young Verlocks were too conservative in their imaginings and tended to put an early damper on stories.

  “I don’t know,” the Verlock replied. “Maybe the Wanderers ate them up?”

  The blue strobe in the studio began to flash, informing everybody that the show had just another thirty seconds to run. Aisha quickly found her mark and addressed the audience directly.

  “I hope today’s story doesn’t keep any of you out there in holo-land from sleeping tonight,” Aisha said. “But the important thing is to use your imagination, even if it sometimes takes you to scary places. Just remember that the things you imagine aren’t real, and with family and friends, you don’t have to face the dark alone.”

  The fifteen-second reel of the show’s theme music began, and the children, who had gathered around Aisha as she spoke, began to sing along in their native tongues. It had taken the help of Libby to come up with a little song that rhymed in so many languages and still made sense, though the meaning varied with the species due to anatomical and cultural differences.

  Don’t be a stranger because I look funny,

  You look weird to me, but let’s make friends.

  I’ll give you a tissue if your nose is runny,

  I’m as scared as you, so let’s make friends.

  “That’s a wrap!” the director announced. “Good show, kids. Loved the story.”

  The children’s parents swept down on stage and gathered up their suddenly exhausted offspring, the Dollnick’s father cradling the boy in his arms like a sack of grain. Joe usually accompanied Samuel to the studio when the boy was in the show’s rotating cast, but Kelly had brought him today to refresh her memory on Grenouthian production techniques.

  “How do you time it all so closely?” Kelly asked her daughter-in-law, who had slumped into a folding chair.

  “Just practice, I guess,” Aisha replied wearily. “Do you think the Wanderers will be really angry about that story? It’s a good thing I don’t work for EarthCent anymore, or I might have triggered a diplomatic crisis.”

  “The Wanderers have thicker skins than the Verlocks,” Kelly assured her. “Besides, they’ll probably take the whole thing as a compliment on their standing. I’m sure I told you about that extortionate dinner reception.”

  “They can’t be as bad as everybody makes them out to be,” Aisha protested, with a spark of renewed energy. “I should invite their children on the show to make friends.”

  Kelly was still trying to come up with a response that would discourage Aisha from the experiment without awakening her stubborn streak, when Samuel ran into her legs while yelling, “Stop following me,” over his shoulder.

  “I just want to be friends,” the angelic little Vergallian girl said tearfully. “Tell him to be friends with me,” she pleaded with Aisha.

  “You can’t tell people to be friends,” Aisha said, lifting Ailia onto her lap.

  “Daddy says that Vergallian women are scary!” Samuel proclaimed, holding onto Kelly’s legs.

  “I’m not a woman, I’m a little girl,” Ailia protested, to no avail.

  “Where are your parents?” Aisha asked. “Didn’t they come to see your first show?”

  “Nurse brought me, but she had to get back to work,” Ailia said. “She told me to wait here for her. We’re in exile.” The girl offered this explanation hesitantly, as if she was ashamed or unclear what it really meant.

  “Oh,” Kelly said, giving Aisha a significant look. “Maybe you should show her around the studio, Sammy, since it’s her first time. I’m sure Daddy was talking about some different Vergallians.”

  Samuel looked doubtful, but Aisha put Ailia back on the floor and gave him an encouraging nod, so he sighed in exaggerated fashion and tried his best to look world-weary. “Come on,” he said to Ailia. “Mommy wants to talk with Aunty Aisha in secret.”

  “Thank you,” Aisha said. The two children moved off, Ailia trying to put her feet in the exact places Samuel had stepped as she followed him. “The girl seemed a bit needy during the show. I couldn’t get her to let go of my hand for the first fifteen minutes, but we never found Vergallian parents willing to let their children mix with other species at this age before.”

  “It sounds like her family is involved in one of those endless wars of succession the Vergallian royals are always fighting,” Kelly explained. “Joe and Woojin could tell you about them, and Clive has probably fought in them too, for that matter. They use lots of mercenaries, and since the wars only end when one family is wiped out, parents often send their youngest daughter away in case of defeat.” Kelly paused and looked around to make sure the children weren’t in hearing distance. “If this girl’s guardian has to work to support them, I’d guess her family lost.”

  “Oh, no!” Aisha cried. “I’ll wait with her and talk to the nurse when she comes. Won’t the other Vergallians on the station help her?”

  “Not unless she’s related,” Kelly said. “You can tell just by looking at her that she’s from the ruling class, so the commoners won’t have anything to do with her, and with no family, the upper class will shun her. Joe always said that the Vergallians are a hard people, though Clive claims that one saved his life.”

  “Kelly?” Libby asked over the ambassador’s implant. “Do you mind if I speak to you and Aisha at the same time?”

  “No, that’s fine, Libby,” Kelly answered out loud. It was the first time she could recall the station librarian asking this question, and she wondered what it was all about. Apparently, Aisha also answered in the affirmative, because Libby con
tinued.

  “It’s about the Vergallian girl,” Libby said sadly. “I was listening in to your conversation because, well, I always listen in if you don’t tell me otherwise. I cross-referenced the girl’s story against our records to see where her nurse is working. It turns out she left the station twenty minutes ago on a Vergallian space liner, and they’ve already gone through the tunnel.”

  “She abandoned Ailia?” Aisha asked in shock, not thinking to subvoc. Fortunately, the children were still at the other side of the stage, where Samuel was now trying to stop the girl from following in his exact footsteps, though his mother could tell that he actually enjoyed the attention.

  “I’m afraid Kelly’s speculation about the girl’s family was correct,” Libby continued. “Either they failed to arrange for continued payments to the nurse after their demise, or, more likely, the nurse was a trusted retainer who simply took the first opportunity to abandon her charge. I could investigate further, but I don’t see the use.”

  “Can you contact the Vergallian ambassador?” Aisha asked Kelly. “Maybe she’ll help.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Libby interjected. “In any case, the Vergallians are swapping again. The latest ambassador is gone and I don’t expect the new one until next week.”

  “Is there any way to find her a temporary home with the Vergallians on the station?” Kelly asked Libby.

  “You might find some commoners willing to take her in for a substantial fee, but she would be ostracized by everybody around her,” Libby said. “It would be better to put her in our orphanage, where at least she would get a good education.”

  “I’m keeping her for the time being,” Aisha declared. “We’ll just tell her that her nurse got called away for an emergency.”

  Samuel returned, jumping from one foot to the next in huge steps, an impressive display of coordination for a five-year-old. All of the yoga exercises and the occasional dance lessons were paying off. Ailia did her best to dog his moves, but she lost her balance at the last leap and staggered into the arms of Aisha, who had quickly crouched to catch her.

  “Your nurse was called away on an emergency, so you’re coming home with us,” Aisha told the girl, holding her gently and looking directly into her eyes. “Okay?”

  “Nurse isn’t coming back,” Ailia said sadly, trying to blink away tears. “Nobody ever comes back.” She didn’t stop crying until she fell asleep in the Vergallian-style hammock that Paul quickly improvised for her in their bedroom on the ice harvester in Mac’s Bones.

  Seven

  “I can’t tell the difference, can you?” Shaina asked Chastity. She handed over the five-cred coin Ian had given her. The owner of Pub Haggis had closed the restaurant for the afternoon to host an emergency meeting of Kelly’s contacts from the Shuk, the Little Apple, and the business community. Kelly was attending in her official capacity as the EarthCent Ambassador, and she sat next to Stanley, who had taken over financial management for InstaSitter.

  “It looks good to me,” the co-owner of InstaSitter said. She rolled the coin between her knuckles, bit it, and then bounced it off the bar. Shaina watched these proceedings with amusement. “I saw it in an immersive once, but I guess it only works for gold,” Chastity explained.

  “We’ve been getting a couple of these a night,” Ian said. The pub owner was standing on the other side of the bar where he worked drawing beers for the attendees. “Not enough to really hurt yet, but we’re going to start running all of the small coins through the mini-register just to verify them, and that’s going to slow down every cash transaction. Most of the merchants in the Little Apple have mini-registers, of course, but it would be too big an investment for the corridor vendors and traders, so they’ll probably just pass the bad creds along.”

  “They won’t even know they’re passing bad creds,” Stanley pointed out.

  “Are we sure the counterfeits are coming in from the Wanderer visitors?” Kelly asked.

  “We had a Shuk-wide meeting last night, all species,” Peter said. “First time everybody has gotten together like that since I’ve been on the station, so they’re all taking this seriously. From what the aliens say, counterfeit coins always start turning up whenever a mob comes around, and there’s no way to stop it unless you search every visitor to the station.”

  “So much for the Styx cred being the ultimate currency.” Ian snorted disdainfully and pushed a couple of beers across the bar.

  “Don’t throw away the counterfeits,” Peter cautioned them. “The Shuk merchants said the Stryx will make them good and settle the issue with the Wanderers directly. In the meantime, Gryph has prohibited informal taxi services from bringing Wanderers onto the station. Any new arrivals from the mob have to take the scheduled shuttles and submit to a thorough scan when they disembark.”

  “I heard from Libby that Gryph put a quota on Wanderer visitors as soon as they arrived,” Kelly ventured. “I guess this explains it, though I don’t understand why the Wanderers would risk getting the Stryx angry. I mean, they must know that they’d be caught and punished.”

  “InstaSitter doesn’t accept cash payments, so the main problem for us has been that some customers are unwittingly tipping their sitters with bad coins,” Stanley said. “As far as sophisticated crime goes, these counterfeiters are on about the same level as shoplifters. Duplicating the appearance of the coins isn’t even advanced tech, they’re just replicas.”

  “Sorry I’m late,” Jeeves announced, floating into the room. “I wanted to pop out to the Wanderer mob for a look around before coming. It’s the first opportunity I’ve had to see one in person.”

  “Did you find the counterfeiters?” Shaina asked. Four years of working with Jeeves in their auction circuit business had brought home the fact that the only limitation on the Stryx’s ability to solve problems was the self-imposed rule not to interfere in the normal workings of the galactic community more than necessary.

  “Was I supposed to?” Jeeves asked. “It wouldn’t be so easy in any case. All they need is basic metal forming technology and a reasonable approximation of the alloy components for feed stock. It’s likely that the fakes are being produced on some of the ten thousand or so small vessels that just tow along with the colony ships. It’s the encryption they can’t duplicate, but biologicals have no way of checking that without using tools.”

  “That’s it?” Ian asked. “The Stryx response is that it can’t be helped, but you’ll exchange good creds for bad and try to collect before the mob leaves?”

  “Gryph is a little more proactive than that,” Jeeves said calmly. “But you have to keep this in perspective. It’s a small number of low denomination fixed-value coins, not the programmable creds which account for more than ninety-nine point nine percent of the Stryx cred money supply. Besides, according to the Grenouthian documentary about Earth’s old economic system, humans should view what the Wanderers are doing as a form of economic stimulus.”

  “Counterfeiting was supposed to be good for the economy?” Kelly asked in surprise. She turned to Stanley for confirmation, knowing he had been writing a PhD dissertation on economic game theory before he quit for a “serious” job in the gaming industry.

  “When the central banks printed extra money, they called it stimulus instead of counterfeiting,” Stanley said. “Of course, they had already given up on ever putting the cat back in the bag, and were engaged in a global devaluation race with negative interest rates when the Stryx stepped in and opened Earth. Towards the end, the banks were charging people to accept deposits and paying people to borrow.”

  “I think you’ve had too much to drink,” Ian said, jokingly pulling away Stanley’s beer. “What, were you serious?”

  “Your countries all used fiat money at that period,” Jeeves answered for Stanley. “For the purpose of creating economic activity, it theoretically didn’t matter whether the central banks created the money or whether people printed their own at home, providing it would pass as good and they
didn’t get caught. In fact, one of your dissenting economists of the day argued that counterfeiting by criminal gangs was more effective at stimulating economic activity than official money creation, because the criminal counterfeits got into the hands of people who would spend it, while the central bank money just caused asset appreciation, making the rich richer.”

  “If that’s the case, why isn’t the same true with the Stryx cred?” Kelly demanded.

  “Our currency isn’t fiat money, it’s all backed by real property,” Jeeves explained. “You know that we track the flows closely through the register network, and we keep the total Stryx cred supply far below the asset base, namely station real estate. Of course, we also maintain extensive reserves of all of the extent galactic currencies, so rather than redeeming creds for a piece of a station, we can exchange into the currency or commodity of choice.”

  “The same as the pension funds you run for InstaSitter and EarthCent Intelligence,” Chastity observed. “They’re backed by the cash flow from rentals of station real estate.”

  “But what if everybody stopped paying rent?” Kelly asked, still trying to get a handle on the system.

  “That hasn’t happened as long as the tunnel network has been in existence,” Jeeves replied. “But if it did, Gryph assures me that Stryx cred holders and pensioners could redeem their holdings for partial ownership in the stations, though for a variety of reasons, they would be better off accepting commodities or other currencies.”

  “And what prevents rich people from simply accumulating Stryx creds until they own everything?” A reflexive desire to defend Earth’s history drove Kelly to play the devil’s advocate. “I’d think that after tens of millions of years of everybody accepting the Stryx cred as the galaxy’s most trusted currency, you’d have created far more of it than the value of the stations.”