Word Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 9)

by E. M. Foner

  “And I thought that my date was boring,” Tinka interrupted, putting a hand on Dorothy’s shoulder for balance. “Is this really what Humans do on dates? Talk about monetary policy?”

  “Where’s Jord?” Dorothy asked.

  “I woke up to some Horten percussionist screeching his head off like he’d never tried to sing before, and Jord said it was too painful to walk out on,” the Drazen woman replied with a heavy sigh. “I think he knew if we came in here I’d expect him to move with the rhythm. Hey, who’s that dancing with Chance?”

  “Mornich, the Horten ambassador’s son. He’s the lead singer for the band.”

  “That explains a lot.”

  Six

  “Many of you are seeing each other for the first time, and you’re probably wondering who’s left out there getting the stories if you’re all in here,” Chastity said, speaking loudly to be heard over a dozen conversations. A sudden hush fell around the crowded newsroom and heads nodded in agreement. In addition to the thirty or so editors, rewrite specialists and layout artists who staffed the Galactic Free Press headquarters in shifts around the clock, two dozen correspondents were squeezed into the room, sitting on display desks and standing against the walls.

  “The Grenouthians!” somebody called out from the back. There was a nervous laugh in response. A rumor was going around that the publisher wanted to cut headcount to save money and that the only question was whether the reporters in the room were the survivors or the road-kill. The smart money in the hastily arranged betting pool was on road-kill, since it didn’t make sense to buy passage for correspondents from all over the galaxy just to tell them that they still had a job.

  “In the last year, we’ve had to pay ransom to recover reporters in four separate incidents. Three of these were due to run-ins with pirates, which has led us to rethink our coverage of piracy between the frontiers of the tunnel network and the neighboring advanced species.”

  “But that’s where the pirates gather,” a woman’s voice protested.

  “Yes, and everybody knows that. What we’re rethinking is whether it makes sense to cover piracy like it’s some kind of sport, especially when ransoming three of the kidnapped correspondents back from pirates used up all of the money in this year’s bonus pool.”

  The employees let out a collective sigh. A few correspondents were disappointed to hear that bonuses were out the window, but most of them were sighing from relief, since the publisher wouldn’t be telling them this if they were fired.

  “What about the fourth ransom?” another reporter asked.

  “Our insurance paid that one since it was on a Vergallian world, but the local Thark bookmaker doesn’t cover planets and volumes of space off the tunnel network. Four incidents in one year suggested to me that we’ve been doing something wrong, so I asked EarthCent Intelligence to assess our operations. Their conclusion,” Chastity paused to theatrically brandish a tablet that she had borrowed from Tinka a few minutes earlier to use as a prop, “is that we are providing insufficient training for reporters entering danger zones, and that we should put you all through boot camp.”

  “John Daggert,” a tough-looking man wearing a black uniform without any insignias spoke up. “I cover the Empire of a Hundred Worlds. Are you telling me that after a twenty-year stint in the mercenaries, I’ve got to go to boot camp with these kids to keep my job?”

  “I’m aware of your background, John, and one of the recommendations from EarthCent Intelligence was to get you involved as an instructor, if you’re willing. As it happens, the EarthCent Intelligence training facility is between classes, so we’ve scheduled a crash course for several of the lucky reporters in this room who were recalled for just that purpose.”

  “I’ve already been through Mac’s Bones,” a woman called out.

  “Me too,” chorused another voice from the back of the room.

  “Everyone we hired away from EarthCent Intelligence gets a waiver. We didn’t bring in so many of our senior foreign correspondents at the same time just to discuss ransom insurance and a change in editorial policy. The president of EarthCent is officially arriving on the station in two days and we want to show the Grenouthians and the rest of the galaxy that we take him seriously. Between training, reporting on the president, and meeting to come up with new coverage guidelines, I think we can keep you all busy for a couple of weeks.”

  “I thought Union Station was exclusively Steelforth’s beat,” a woman called out. The whole room dissolved in laughter as the young reporter turned bright red. The two most famous headlines in the history of the Galactic Free Press, ‘EarthCent Ambassador Kelly McAllister Thinks Humans are Aliens,’ and ‘Alien Bites Dog,’ had both appeared with Bob Steelforth’s byline, even though they were penned by Walter.

  “I’ll take that as compliment to our city desk,” Chastity said after the laughter died down. Just as the Galactic Free Press had adopted the archaic term “newspaper” to describe its business, the employees had fallen into randomly applying other newspaper terminology where it seemed to fit. Most of the lingo came from watching black-and-white movies from the 1930’s that were part of the orientation package for new employees.

  “Speaking of the city desk,” Walter said, rising and facing the crowded room, “while you’re on the station, you’ll be submitting your copy to the Union Station editor in addition to your regular editor. We’ll decide on a case-by-case basis whether it makes more sense to add a story to local coverage of the president’s visit, or to treat it as special correspondence for your regular beats. Many of our subscribers only pay for ad-free regional coverage, so if you believe a story fits in with an ongoing theme you’ve been developing, make sure to let us know.”

  “We’ve reserved Pub Haggis in the Little Apple to treat you all to lunch,” Chastity announced. “That’s still a good hour off, so I’m going to ask our Stryx librarian to ping the twenty of you we’ve registered for kidnapping school, that is, hostage avoidance training, and somebody will be available in Mac’s Bones to explain the schedule and put you at ease. John, I wasn’t kidding that we’d like to have you as an instructor while you’re on the station, so please consider stopping by. Does anybody have any questions?”

  “Katy Hicks. I cover the Dollnick ag worlds in the Echo Station sector.”

  “Yes, Katy?”

  “I filed a story last month that got spiked and I want to know if that was a management decision or if somebody thought I was joking.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” Chastity said, glancing around the room at her editorial staff. “Anybody?”

  “Is this about the potato thing?” an irate voice asked.

  “It’s not a potato, it’s a Dollnick Tan tuber,” the reporter retorted. She reached in her shoulder bag and drew out a brown object, then made her way through the press of bodies to the front of the room. “What’s the first thing that comes into your head?” she asked, handing it to Chastity.

  The publisher of the Galactic Free Press looked at the tuber dubiously, turning it slowly, and then her jaw dropped. “It’s Aisha,” she declared.

  “A human laborer on Dolag Twelve dug that up last month and it almost brought production to a halt. Their children all watch ‘Let’s Make Friends,’ so they wanted to save it for a novelty, but the Dollnicks have a strict rule about laborers not holding anything back from non-terran crops. The workers took up a collection and bought it for a hundred creds, so this is the most expensive tuber you’re ever likely to see.”

  “It does look just like Aisha,” Walter agreed.

  “So why do you have it here?” Chastity asked.

  “I was in the area covering a story about a major contract expiration, but all anybody wanted to talk about was the tuber,” Katy explained. “I wrote up the story with pictures, but it didn’t run and I couldn’t get an explanation why. The woman who dug up the tuber was so disappointed her picture wouldn’t be in the paper that she let me have it to push for publication.”

&n
bsp; “It’s a potato!” the irate voice repeated, and this time, the ag worlds editor got up from his desk and strode to the front. “Look, I worked with the Grenouthians for fifteen years before I signed on with the Free Press, and I swore to put all those ‘Silly Humans’ stories behind me. So somebody found a potato that looks a little—,” he stopped and peered disdainfully at the Dollnick Tan, “a lot like Aisha McAllister, and it’s supposed to be galactic news?”

  “The laborers pooling their earnings to buy it from the Dollnick supervisor gives it a strong human interest angle,” Walter said. “A hundred creds is a lot of money to people working a labor contract where the majority of the pay is deferred compensation.”

  The editor continued to stare at the tuber. “It really does look just like her,” he said. “Did you take the picture from a bad angle or something?”

  “The picture was perfect and I sent a half a dozen versions,” Katy insisted. “I’ll bet you glanced at the text and didn’t even look at the images.”

  “Maybe so,” the editor admitted. “I mean, what do you do with a thing like this? Even if humans could digest Dollnick Tans, who would eat it after seeing the face?”

  “So you’ll run the story?” Chastity asked.

  “I’ll go back and look at the copy,” the editor said. The newsroom burst into applause. “You know, you should try to get it on her show for Surprise Day. My kids love that segment. I know the Grenouthian producer if you want me to ping him.”

  “That’s what we need more of in the news business—happy endings,” Chastity declared. “So I hope to see you all at Pub Haggis for lunch, and if there are any questions or complaints, please feel free to approach me at any time. And I was kidding about cancelling the bonuses. I just wanted to make sure I had your attention.”

  The newsroom broke into cheers, which spontaneously morphed into a rousing chorus of, “For she’s a jolly good publisher,” causing Chastity to blush for perhaps the second time in her adult life. She slipped out the exit and headed across the corridor to InstaSitter, where she returned her speaking prop to Tinka.

  Two hours later, Joe and Paul found themselves unable to enter Pub Haggis through the front door because of the overflow crowd.

  “Let’s try around the kitchen side,” Joe said. “I don’t want to rupture somebody’s Achilles tendon by running into the back of an ankle with the hand-truck.”

  “Why didn’t he rent a delivery bot?” Paul asked. “I thought the Little Apple merchants had established a co-op that owned a whole stable of them.”

  “They’re prone to sudden stops,” Joe explained. “The bots are programmed to put the safety of station inhabitants first, so they can slosh the beer around pretty badly. Ian said he’s never been caught so unprepared and he’s going to need to tap these without giving them much time to settle. He’s lucky I happened to have two kegs left from my last batch, and I’m lucky you came home for lunch or I’d have been stuck making two trips.”

  The kitchen door was open and Joe cautiously wheeled in the first keg, Paul following after him. Ian’s wife, Torra, was so intent on the dozen or so orders she had going simultaneously on the grill that she didn’t even turn her head as they came in. There were twice as many people as usual working in the modest-sized kitchen area, three of whom were wearing aprons that identified them as employees of nearby establishments. David was the first person to notice the beer delivery, and he called to his girlfriend’s father, “Go straight through to the bar.”

  The swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room burst open as Joe approached, missing the leading edge of the keg by a hand’s breadth. The bus boy barely avoided barreling into the keg, and it was fortunate he was using a tub rather than a tray, or his load of dirty dishes would have ended up on the floor. Somehow, Ian heard the sudden clatter of the dishes shifting in the plastic tub over the noisy conversations in the pub and stuck his head through the door.

  “Just in time, boys,” he cried in relief. “There’s no room up here until I pull the empties. Hold on a minute.” He withdrew his head and then reappeared two minutes later, an empty keg suspended by the rim in each beefy hand. “Take these,” he said, handing the well-used aluminum kegs to Joe, who had already maneuvered the hand-truck out of the way of the swinging door, and stood it up so the bottom rested on the floor. Ian lifted the new keg easily, proving he hadn’t finished second in the caber toss for lack of strength.

  Joe turned to put down the empties and steeled himself to hoist the second keg, but Paul already had it aloft, a hand gripping each end. “I got it,” he grunted. He carried the half-keg which weighed almost as much as he did close to his body, and followed Ian through the swinging door.

  After moving the hand-trucks and the empty kegs back out of the kitchen, Joe joined Paul and Ian behind the bar. He was surprised to see Chance pulling pints for the customers and Thomas artfully juggling liquor bottles as he concocted mixed drinks. With the three humans and two artificial people in the narrow space, it was impossible to take a full step in any direction.

  “I thought Thomas and Chance were back on the parade grounds meeting with the reporters we’re going to put through the crash course,” Joe yelled in Paul’s ear.

  “Chance said that the ones who came by told her that they would all be here for lunch, so she talked Thomas into coming and working the crowd rather than sitting around and waiting. Ian couldn’t keep up with the orders, and they both have a lot of experience in bars, so they offered to help out.”

  “The bunch I’m going to be training must be included in this group. They sure aren’t shy about drinking at lunch. I think I recognize that woman.”

  “She probably went through the camp for EarthCent Intelligence and then jumped ship for the Galactic Free Press,” Paul responded.

  Ian straightened up from the crouch he had assumed to get the keg connected and began filling pitchers with foam. “Just push that one under the counter there,” he told Paul. “It’ll settle out fine.”

  “Hey, guys,” Chastity shouted over the bar. “Thanks for bringing reinforcements. I didn’t know my whole staff drank like this.”

  “It’s the old movies you give them for training,” Joe shouted back. “Kelly has borrowed them all from those new reporters you keep sending to her office because she thought that watching them might help her prepare for press interviews. My favorite was ‘It Happened One Night,’ but Kelly went for ‘His Girl Friday.’ We both wondered why you didn’t have anything more recent.”

  “I liked ‘Nothing Sacred,’ and I couldn’t get any later movies because they’re still in copyright,” Chastity yelled through cupped hands. “It didn’t matter to them that I was willing to buy a few hundred copies. They don’t work that way on Earth.”

  “Has the paper made it to break-even yet, or is InstaSitter still covering the bills?” Paul shouted. Coincidentally, there was a sudden lull in the conversation when he began the question, and the last few words fell on dead silence.

  “We would have been in the black this month if it hadn’t been for those last two ransoms,” Chastity replied in her normal tone of voice. The staff must have taken her answer to mean that she could afford to pay for more drinks, because they all began queuing up at the bar to shake her hand and order a refill.

  Joe tapped Paul on the shoulder and spoke into his ear. “We’re just in the way back here. How about helping me get the empties home?”

  Paul nodded, waved to Chastity, and followed Joe out the kitchen door.

  A woman wedged her way up to the bar next to Chastity and asked, “Wasn’t that Joe McAllister from Mac’s Bones?”

  “Yes,” Chastity replied. “I stole you from EarthCent Intelligence, right?”

  “I still feel bad about that,” the woman replied, gazing sadly at her empty glass. “But it’s a tough racket, right? They should have known better than to share their break room with the newspaper. It’s practically the same business, after all, but we get to go to more inte
resting places and meet important people as reporters.”

  “We don’t have a policy against double-dipping,” Chastity said in the woman’s ear, which with all the conversations going on, passed as a whisper. “If you come across anything you think they can use, go ahead and let them know. I’m pretty sure that some of the reporters I recruited from down the corridor are actually undercover agents in any case.”

  “You mean EarthCent Intelligence is planting agents in the paper?”

  “It makes sense if you think about it. There’s no better cover for spies than working as reporters, and this way, I get stuck paying all of the expenses,” Chastity replied.

  Seven

  “Come in, come in,” Bork said, rising to meet Kelly halfway between his desk and the door to his office. The walls were decorated with an impressive collection of axes and crossbows, and a complete set of the metal-studded leather armor favored by the old Drazen berserkers was arrayed on a life-sized dummy.

  “Thank you for squeezing me in on such short notice,” Kelly replied, exchanging a ceremonial hug with the ambassador. “I’m a bit embarrassed to be asking this, but our EarthCent president is visiting the station, though he’s taking a vacation at the moment. He complains that he doesn’t get to talk to any alien diplomats on Earth since none of you bothered opening an embassy and he’s hoping you can make the time to meet with him after his official reception.”

  “Of course,” Bork said. He guided Kelly to the couch in front of his desk and then settled back into his own chair. “We were all a bit puzzled that there was no official reception when your president arrived, but then he took the honeymoon suite at the Camelot hotel and casino, so we assumed he was on vacation.”

  “Your intelligence people told you?”

  “I saw it in the Grenouthian feed, they’re very good about tracking diplomats. There was also something in my translated edition of the Galactic Free Press, though it wasn’t as detailed.”