Guest Night on Union Station (8 page)

A young Dollnick came in looking for the missing mitt from a paddle-cup-mitt-ball set, which he had last used on the all-species park deck that had formerly belonged to the Gem. He couldn’t remember exactly which day it had been, but Dorothy recalled seeing a Dollnick mitt fairly recently and found it in a bin halfway down the counter. The Dollnick boy tried it on to make sure it was his, thanked her, and left without tipping.

An hour after she had given up on ever seeing David again, he appeared suddenly, a bag with two drinks dangling awkwardly from the finger of one of the hands supporting the pizza box.

“Sorry it took so long,” he apologized, before she could speak. “They weren’t open yet when I got there, I guess they don’t get enough business in the morning on human time. I looked around for somewhere else, but the only places I found were full service restaurants that didn’t have a pizza for five creds. I was passing Fabio’s on my way back just as the owner got there, but it took a long while for the oven to heat up. It wasn’t a free drink day, but he gave me these for waiting.”

“I knew it was something like that,” Dorothy said, bending the truth for second time in less than two hours. Her mother always said that the only time it was alright to lie to people was to spare their feelings, so she figured neither of her transgressions counted. Her father said that lying was also permissible to save a life, play poker, or to keep her mother from getting upset.

“I didn’t know what you would want to drink, so I got an orange soda and a cola,” David continued, removing the covered cups, napkins, and even a packet of pepper from the bag.

“I like them both,” Dorothy said, even though she preferred water to soda. “Open up the box and let it start cooling. Pizza stays hot forever in those things.”

David pulled back the cover and the smell of fresh baked pizza flooded the room. The appetite Dorothy thought she had lost came roaring back, but she had experienced enough blisters on the roof of her mouth to force herself to wait. She had a hundred questions she wanted to ask the boy, but she was afraid he was so sensitive that he might run off before he ate. She bit the inside of her cheek and waited for him to speak first.

“Have you lived on Union Station a long time?” he finally asked.

“I was born here. My mother is the EarthCent ambassador and my father runs all sorts of businesses in the hold we rent. My older brother is an engineer, and he’s currently designing rides for the Libbyland theme park with Jeeves, his Stryx friend. I came up with the Libbyland name when we vacationed there before it opened. I have a little brother too, but he’s only nine so he still goes to school. Did you go to school?”

David shook his head, still processing the information dump.

“Did you have a teacher bot? Paul’s wife, Aisha, grew up on Earth, and she came from a poor village where they had teacher bots, since the Stryx provide them almost for free. She’s really smart, and she has a popular show for kids on the Grenouthian network, ‘Let’s Make Friends,’ though she never uses any of my ideas. She says they aren’t age-appropriate.” Dorothy concluded with a head toss, indicating what she thought of her sister-in-law’s judgment.

“Oh,” David replied.

He looked a little strange, and suddenly it occurred to Dorothy that he might think she was making it all up. Now that she put herself in his shoes, it did seem a bit hard to believe that a girl working in a lost-and-found would be the daughter of the ambassador and sister-in-law of the most famous human in the galaxy. She wondered for a second if people from Union Station who had never met Aisha claimed to know her.

“It’s funny how people clump together,” Dorothy said, introducing her favorite theory without realizing she was digging a deeper credibility hole. “Lynx, one of our spy friends, says that if everybody kept track of all the coincidences in our lives, we’d end up believing that we’re guided by an unseen hand. But Uncle Stanley says that the whole invisible hand business is part of a disproven economic theory from centuries ago. Of course, my mom thinks she sees the hand and it belongs to the Stryx.”

“I don’t think I understand,” David replied honestly, but she saw that he was staring at her like she had hypnotized him.

“Oh, let’s eat the pizza before it gets cold!”

“You first,” the boy insisted, so she pulled out a slice, taking part of the toppings from the slice next to it in her haste. David took a slice from the other side, folded it, and began chewing energetically. He finished before she was halfway through her slice, and trembled like a horse in the starting gate while he waited for her to catch up before taking his next serving.

When she realized what he was doing, Dorothy said, “You don’t have to wait for me. I can only eat three slices at the most, anyway.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, even as he lifted and folded the next piece.

Dorothy nodded, and the pizza rapidly disappeared. They finished at the same time, even though he ate five slices to her three.

“Thank you,” Dorothy said, keeping up the fiction that he had done her a favor. She tried to recall all of the lessons about getting information out of people she had gleaned from watching Chance train spies for EarthCent Intelligence. Start by asking something innocuous so he doesn’t get defensive, she remembered. “So, are you planning on staying on Union Station for a while?”

“If I can find a job,” David replied. He turned serious, a full belly having done wonders for his confidence. “You can tell that I’m contract runner, can’t you?”

“I guessed. You’re safe on the station, though. The Stryx don’t allow bounty hunters to work here. It’s only until you’re eighteen, right?”

“I’ll probably be clear in another year. It seems like forever.”

“Well, getting a job is easy,” Dorothy declared confidently, “I know lots of people. Would you rather work in a restaurant, an open market or a theme park? You’re too young to be a spy.”

Eight

“It looks a bit like the Coliseum in Rome, but in better condition.” Kelly’s mother surveyed the Galaxy room of the Empire Convention Center with a critical eye and tried to estimate the capacity. “What does it seat? Ten thousand?”

“Maybe half that with a mixed alien crowd, I’m not sure about the count when it’s all humans,” Daniel replied. “I have no idea how many people will show up this morning, but I think we’ll get the majority of the official delegates.”

“How many official delegates are there?”

“Just over two hundred, Marge,” the junior consul replied. “Most of them are mayors from open worlds with a number of sovereign human communities. But the first priority with all of these people is growing their economies, so they send trade delegations as well. EarthCent Intelligence picked up the tab for up to five additional attendees for each official delegate, meaning we could get over a thousand people this morning.”

“And the other panel members are all Kelly’s friends?”

“Yep. My wife Shaina is going to be on the panel. She arrived with me but she’s checking on the setup for the trade fair in the galleries under the seats.”

“I think they’re called arcades,” Marge replied. “Kelly? Is that right?”

“You’re asking me about a vocabulary word, Mom? Uh, I think they’re only considered arcades if it’s real stone architecture, because the builders used arches to support the seats.”

“No arcades without arches,” Marge replied agreeably. “Makes sense to me.”

Shaina emerged from one of the passages, carrying the baby in a sling across her chest, and came over to where her husband was talking with Kelly’s mother. “Hi, Marge. I haven’t seen you in ages. Is your husband along this trip?”

“Yes, he is, but he doesn’t have the patience for this sort of thing anymore. He’s back in Mac’s Bones with Joe and my grandson, and they’re all practicing casting with his new fishing rod.”

“Sounds like fun,” Shaina said. “How long do we have?”

“Another fifteen minutes,” Daniel replied.

“Don’t disappear at the last minute,” she warned him. “You have to take the baby when I’m on.”

“Ahem,” Jeeves announced himself, floating up to the small group. “Are you sure you don’t want me on your panel? I’m very good at questions and answers.”

“You’re very good at avoiding questions and making up answers,” Kelly retorted. “This is going to be an all-human discussion panel, probably the first one I’ve been involved with since I came here.”

Shaina’s father arrived and read the place card for his seat on the panel. “Peter Hadad – Kitchen Kitsch President. I’ve been promoted from a hawker to a president. Great way to start the morning.”

“Donna made up the titles,” Kelly replied. “Did you see my mom’s?”

“Marge Frank – Investment Club Chairman.”

“You don’t think it sounds a bit too grandiose?” Marge asked.

“Why not chairwoman?” Peter inquired.

“Donna said the two extra letters would force her to shrink the font,” Kelly explained.

“Shaina Cohan – SBJ Auctioneers,” Peter read his daughter’s place card. “I still haven’t gotten used to the name change.”

“How do you think I feel?” Stanley asked, coming up and putting an arm around Peter’s shoulders. He read the place cards for both of his daughters out loud. “Blythe Oxford – EarthCent Intelligence. Chastity Papamarkakis – Free Press. I guess Donna couldn’t fit the whole name of the paper after my son-in-law’s family name took up all the space.”

Delegates began trickling into the Galaxy room to secure seats near the stage facing the panel. Two-thirds of the amphitheatre’s seating was taped off to discourage attendees from sitting in areas with bad viewing angles. There was nothing left to do but wait for the starting time, and Kelly took Daniel aside while the panel’s elder members began competing over who could tell the most embarrassing story about one of their grown children.

“Did you read my introduction?” she asked her junior consul. “I’ve been so busy with preparing for the open house that I just dashed something off and sent it to you.”

“I’m glad to hear you didn’t put in a lot of effort because I think you should drop all of the parts about governing. I know that we’re supposed to be helping the sovereign communities build a political alliance, but they barely have governments of their own in place, and they’re primarily interested in business ties. I don’t think any of them feel like they can take their eyes off the ball and start devoting resources to politics.”

“Thank you for being honest,” the ambassador said. She pulled out her tab and skimmed through the brief introduction she had written. “Welcome to the Third Annual Conference of Sovereign Human Communities. Uh, scratch this next paragraph, skip that, no, delete, no. Ah. There will be a free luncheon sponsored by EarthCent Intelligence in the food court between noon and 1:00 PM, local human time. Uh, skip, redact, drop, no. Ah. There will be a cocktail reception at 6:00 PM this evening sponsored by the Galactic Free Press. And now, let me introduce our panel members who will be taking questions from the audience.”

“Powerful,” Daniel said. “You might want to not say anything out loud about the bits you’re skipping over.”

“Thank you, Daniel. I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Twenty minutes later, with her brief opening speech and the panel member introductions out of the way, Kelly fished in the wicker basket filled with questions collected from the official delegates, and pulled one out at random.

“Got any money?” she read.

“Why don’t you take this one,” Blythe said, nudging Kelly’s mother after the laughter died down.

Marge began to speak into the floating microphone, which automatically maintained the optimum distance from her mouth. “Yes, we have money. Investment clubs on Earth have a surprising amount of capital available, thanks in large part to the low cost of living on a half-empty planet. What we lack is a well-regulated market for making off-world investments. A number of prominent club members worldwide have been burned in deals with various species, and it’s led to a general reluctance about investing in alien enterprises. But if any of you are interested in visiting Earth and speaking to investors, I’m sure we can put you in front of an attentive audience. Convincing them that you’re trustworthy will be up to you.”

“I’d like to add something to that,” Stanley said. “Most of you are from open worlds controlled by Dollnick merchant princes, Drazen consortiums, or the Verlocks. The merchant princes control their own capital, the Drazen consortiums work through personal relations to gather stakeholders, and the typical Verlock clan will provide backing to any enterprise that presents a mathematical proof of profitability. Humans have traditionally funded new businesses using all three of these methods, but in addition, Earth-based businesses are generally required to provide proof of accountability. I doubt any of you employ Certified Public Accountants to do your books, but they played a big part in convincing human investors in the past that the numbers had something behind them.”

“A lot of good that did before the Stryx came,” somebody cried out. The thousand-strong audience indulged in a round of laughter.

“Too true,” Stanley acknowledged. “But human psychology is a funny thing, and the best mistakes are the ones we repeat over and over again. It would be nice if every potential investor could visit your factories and communities, live with your families and learn to trust you. But a retiree on Earth looking for diversified investments can’t justify spending that sort of time or money on off-world travel. I would definitely encourage you to visit Earth and talk to investors, but I would also suggest you start thinking about establishing an agency that could certify your books for humans who will never visit your worlds. I don’t have to tell you that such certifications live or die by their track record.”

“Hear, hear,” somebody called out. A number of whispered conversations started in the audience, accompanied by a lot of nodding heads.

Kelly looked at her panel to see if anybody else wanted to comment, and then fished out the next question.

“Do you have any money?”

The audience burst out laughing again, and the delegates nudged each other in the ribs. Apparently they all had the same thing in mind. Kelly silently read and disposed of a half-dozen randomly selected slips before she found a new question. “What does EarthCent Intelligence get out of all of this?”

“That’s me,” Blythe said. “We took a bath on the first conference, came near breaking even on the second one, and we expect to be in the black this year. Basically, we’re pedaling your contact information to a select and limited group of alien vendors, which will explain for some of you why you’ve been getting unsolicited sales calls. In addition, the business and demographics information you provide for our database saves a lot of payroll expenses we would otherwise be forced to spend on field agents to gather the same facts. Without this information, our ambassadors would be at a severe disadvantage when negotiating with the very species which control your worlds.”

“I’d like to add something to that,” Chastity said after her sister finished speaking. “The Galactic Free Press and EarthCent Intelligence are essentially in the same business. Our paper delivers information to subscribers, while EarthCent Intelligence packages and sells data to the business community and retains sensitive political information exclusively for EarthCent. The Galactic Free Press subscribes to EarthCent Intelligence’s basic database so that our reporters and editors can quickly locate the facts to back up their stories.”

“Give us an example,” Shaina suggested.

“Today we’ll be publishing a piece about the two-man floaters manufactured on Chianga, which are being unveiled at this conference. Without the EarthCent Intelligence data on Chiangan manufacturing, pictures from agent visits to that factory, and an intelligence synopsis of the Dollnick technology the floaters are derived from, the story would be little more than a public relations announcement.”

Kelly waited a moment to make sure nobody else on the panel had anything to add, and then she withdrew another slip of paper. After glancing at the question, she sighed in an exaggerated fashion. While the audience chuckled, she went through three more entries before finding a question that wasn’t about the availability of money or the conference sponsors.

“Here’s an interesting one. Do all of the Stryx stations have large human populations, and are there any special requirements to market goods on the stations?”

“Me first,” Shaina said quickly, getting the jump on her father. “I’ve visited over twenty Stryx stations in the last few years to conduct auctions, and I’d say that most of them had larger human populations than we have here. It’s mainly a question of proximity to systems where large numbers of humans are working for aliens, though the stations nearest to Earth on the tunnel network also have higher populations.” She turned to her father, and for the first time in her life, addressed him by his first name. “Peter?”

“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Cohan,” he replied facetiously. “The Stryx enforce very few regulations about commerce in and around their stations, most of these having to do with selling harmful substances such as banned Farling drugs, or weapons of mass destruction that they don’t allow onboard in any case. They collect no taxes, but doing business on a station generally requires that you rent space, which always includes utilities. Wholesalers, which I imagine most of you to be, can operate directly out of their ships from rented docking space on the station core.”

“How about middlemen?” somebody shouted out from the crowd.

“Do you have any middlemen on your world?” Peter shot back.

A loud “No!” was followed by another round of laughter.

“It’s largely the same here,” Peter continued. “Those of you who get a chance to visit Libbyland may wonder at the amount of underutilized space on Stryx stations, but the rents for warehousing goods are relatively high. The only distributors serving human businesses here deal in perishables, primarily food. Retail on the stations is split between high-rent boutiques and all-species market decks, which are patterned after the outdoor markets that are common throughout the galaxy.”

“What would it take to get our goods into an auction?” another delegate called out.

“Bankruptcy,” Shaina replied. She waited a long minute for the laughter to die down before continuing. “I don’t know if any of you have had a reason to hold auctions on your worlds, but we deal almost exclusively in bankruptcies, sales of large estates, and occasionally in salvage from accidents involving cargo vessels. Most of the merchandise that would have gone to an auction house back on Earth gets snapped up by independent traders on the stations.”

“Anybody else?” Kelly asked. She had taken the opportunity to read through a number of slips while Shaina was talking and was primed to go. “Next question, and this one is directly tied to what Mr. Doogal was speaking about earlier. Will the Thark insurance brokers on the stations underwrite contracts?”

This time it was the committee members who shared a laugh.

“The Thark bookies will underwrite anything,” Stanley said. “You can bet on whether humanity will go to war with the Stryx, and if you want to bet on the humans to win, you’ll get fantastic odds. But if you’re looking for the Tharks to guarantee something less predictable than, say, goods lost to piracy, you’ll find that they charge a stiff up-front fee for underwriting research before making the odds. They have limited experience dealing with humans, but if those of you living on Dollnick worlds are strictly following the Princely Standards, or applying the Consortium Scales on Drazen worlds, they might make you a good price.”