by E. M. Foner
Wanderers on Union Station
Book Six of EarthCent Ambassador
Copyright 2015 by E. M. Foner
One
“In conclusion, it is the view of Union Station Embassy that the remarkable success of ‘Let’s Make Friends’ in fostering intercultural understanding among the children of tunnel network aligned species, not to mention its jump to the top of the galactic ratings for pre-school edutainment series, is unlikely to be replicated in a new production aimed at adults, and I should therefore reject the Grenouthian offer to create a pilot for a new show.”
Kelly pushed back from her display desk and wondered whether she was making a mistake. Things had been so slow around the embassy, that three years after Aisha resigned her acting junior consul position to work on her show full-time, the ambassador still hadn’t requested a replacement from EarthCent. She barely had enough work to keep herself busy these days, and with Samuel starting at the Stryx school, Kelly was forced to confront the fact that she had too much free time on her hands. It was all the fault of EarthCent Intelligence, of course.
“May I say something?” Libby inquired over the office speakers.
“You already did,” Kelly replied glumly, toying with her half-empty cup of coffee. Was it possible she had accidentally bought the depressant-laced version again?
“Before I send your weekly report to EarthCent, I hope I can talk you into reconsidering your conclusion,” Libby said. “I think that the Grenouthian request is an interesting opportunity for you to present human culture and values to a broader audience than you could hope to reach through standard diplomatic means.”
“You want me to host a grown-up version of LMF?” Kelly asked incredulously, using the acronym for Aisha’s show that had caught on among the parents of preschoolers. “Am I supposed to read stories from picture books to a bunch of aliens sitting in a circle on the floor? Or maybe I’ll divide them into two teams, and then I’ll lie on the deck and have each team build one end of a bridge that meets over my stomach.”
“That show broke the galactic record for on-demand reruns,” Libby chided the ambassador. “I got a little choked up myself when that Horten boy helped the Drazen girl place the top block.”
Kelly bit back the urge to say something sarcastic about AI physiology, because the truth was, she had shed a few tears herself while watching that episode with her son. In addition to being one of LMF’s biggest fans, Samuel was part of the rotating cast. The show’s only real critic in the house was Dorothy, and the thirteen-year-old’s main objection was that none of her ideas to make the show more exciting ever got past Aisha’s filter for age-appropriateness.
“Don’t you think it’s beneath the dignity of an ambassador to get involved in the entertainment business?” Kelly asked.
“I can name at least a dozen ambassadors on Union Station who are currently involved with immersives or the broadcast networks, including Bork,” Libby replied. “And we wouldn’t be having this discussion if the Grenouthian ambassador didn’t own a well-deserved reputation for sniffing out new talent.”
“But Bork only acts during his vacations,” Kelly protested, rather feebly. “And then only in historical reenactments. It’s not like he’s clowning around.”
“Nobody is trying to force you to do something you don’t want to do,” the Stryx librarian told Kelly. “I just thought you might find time weighing a little heavy on your hands, now that I have Samuel in my school all morning and he’s working with Banger in the afternoon.”
“What kind of a name for a Stryx is Banger?” Kelly asked, then immediately changed her mind. “No, don’t tell me. And if you hadn’t manipulated us into starting an intelligence agency, I would still have more work than I could have handled. Things are so dead at the embassy these days that Donna is talking about cutting her own hours to part-time. It seems that all I’ve been doing the last couple years is attending official events, and I could push half of those off onto Lynx if I wanted.”
“Lynx won’t be the cultural attaché forever,” Libby reminded her. “Blythe has cut way back on working in the two years since she had the twins, and even though her husband is well-suited for the directorship, Jeeves says that Clive would rather be doing alien archaeology.”
“Now that EarthCent Intelligence is running a profit, Blythe probably figures her main job is done,” Kelly replied. “And with all of the resources they’ve built up, I can’t blame anybody for going to them for help instead of coming to the embassy. It’s just that the last thing I ever expected on this job was to be under-worked and bored.”
“So why don’t you consider the Grenouthian offer?” Libby reiterated. “If you can’t come up with a good concept that you want to be involved with, that’s another matter. But it’s not like you to quit without even trying.”
“Why are you so gung-ho about this, Libby?” Kelly asked, with a flash of suspicion.
“I’m just concerned for a friend, and I don’t want to see you waste an opportunity that you may regret later, if you aren’t regretting it already,” Libby replied innocently.
“I thought Jeeves was supposed to be the mind-reader,” Kelly replied, a tacit admission of the accuracy of Libby’s guess. “But what do I know about galactic edutainment? Aisha’s show is the only thing I watch, other than the occasional Grenouthian documentary.”
“But you know a lot about meeting aliens as an adult and learning to get along with them,” Libby pointed out. “Remember, the rest of the species on the tunnel network have been in contact with each other for thousands of years, and in most cases, much, much longer. They take each other for granted and forget that there’s still something to learn. The secret to Aisha’s show is that she’s very open-minded and she’s learning right along with the children. Everybody senses that it’s genuine.”
“I’ll think about it,” Kelly said. “I want to talk it over with Joe and Donna. But now I guess I have to come up with a new conclusion for my weekly report.”
“Why not say something about the Wanderers?” Libby suggested. “You weren’t here the last time they came by Union Station since it was well before we opened Earth. I know you’ve received an invitation from the Wanderer envoy to their traditional arrival ceremony because Donna checked with me to make sure it was legitimate.”
“I’ve only heard about them from the other ambassadors and Dring,” Kelly objected. “I still don’t understand if they’re more of a political movement, or just a group of galactic drop-outs who travel from place to place as they wear out their welcome.”
“The Wanderers have a continual presence in history stretching back tens of millions of years,” Libby said, slipping into her professorial voice. “Their mobs include members of most of the sentient species we’re aware of in this galaxy, though in some instances, their biological roots are barely recognizable to the eye, due to long periods of separation from their common ancestors.”
“Could there be Gem among the Wanderers?” Kelly asked, thinking what a wonderful surprise it would be for Gwendolyn and Mist to find long-lost relatives living in the mob.
“I’m afraid not,” Libby replied. “The Gem weren’t advanced enough to draw a visit before they took to cloning. Although humans may think of the Wanderers as a galactic version of the gypsies back on Earth, their paths are quite different. The Wanderer mobs are so large that they are really self-contained civilizations, capable of indefinitely sustaining themselves in interstellar space if necessary. The biologicals who created the template for the Wanderers were actually explorers and colonists from a species that never developed faster-than-light tra
vel on their own. But they were extraordinarily handy about creating sustainable environments in space using the technology they did have, and in the end, their species split between those who chose to colonize worlds and those who chose to live permanently on ships.”
“Dring told me that the original Wanderers still exist, and that they are a prime example of a stable biological species,” Kelly commented. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting them.”
“It’s very unlikely there are any in this particular mob,” Libby said. “The original Wanderers still eschew faster-than-light travel, since they view it as cheating. This mob began arriving through a one-time tunnel early in the week, a sort of an intermediate technology between jump drives and the permanent tunnel network we maintain. From what Gryph tells me, most of the ships coming in are from species you’re already familiar with, though of course, there’s usually a cultural split between those who join a mob and those who don’t.”
“How many people are there in this, uh, mob?”
“Do you mean humans or sentients?”
“Well, I meant sentients, but are you saying there are humans among them?” Kelly asked.
“It’s difficult to predict the final size of a Wanderer mob before they all arrive. Sometimes they come from different locations according to a prior arrangement, but this mob will clearly include millions of individuals, a small number of whom are human,” Libby replied.
“How can humans have ended up with the Wanderers when we’ve been in space less than a hundred years?”
“Between labor contracts and the tunnel network, humanity has spread much more thinly and rapidly than biologicals who develop interstellar space travel on their own,” Libby explained. “And your polyglot home culture, including hundreds of national identities, makes humans more comfortable living with other species than sentients who reached cultural homogeneity before venturing into space.”
“It sounds to me like a Wanderer mob is a sort of utopia for inter-species relations,” Kelly mused. “I don’t mean to belittle your achievements with the tunnel network, but face it. Some of the aliens on this station would be at each other’s throats if the Stryx weren’t in charge.”
“I’m sure the Wanderers get some things correct,” Libby replied, sounding slightly miffed. “But I think you’ll find that their utopia lives up to its literal meaning.”
“Is it true that they steal children from the places they visit to build their population?” Kelly asked.
“Not in the sense that humans use child-theft,” Libby replied. “I don’t want to spoil all the surprises for you before you get a chance to visit the mob in person.”
“Won’t they be coming onto Union Station as well?”
“Gryph and the rest of the first generation Stryx have long enforced a strict policy to limit the number of Wanderers they’ll allow on a station at one time,” Libby replied. “There have been incidents in the past that we don’t want to see repeated.”
“You’re speaking pretty mysteriously for a reference librarian,” Kelly complained. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re setting me up for something?”
“Joe’s here,” Libby announced, just before the door to Kelly’s office whooshed open.
Dorothy and Samuel both made it through the door before their father, who followed after them with a bottle in a paper bag gripped by the neck in one hand.
“We came to get you because Daddy said you’d forget,” Dorothy announced before Samuel could catch his breath.
“Can Banger come, Mommy?” the five-year-old boy pleaded. “He said he never gets to eat dinner.”
“Stryx don’t eat,” Dorothy reminded her younger brother in a weary tone. “And they don’t have to protect their eyes when somebody is welding because they aren’t really eyes. Banger isn’t a biological, you know.”
“Bye-logical?” Samuel repeated. Dorothy just rolled her eyes and started playing with her mother’s display desk.
“What did I forget?” Kelly asked Joe.
Without looking up, Dorothy answered before her father could. “We’re eating dinner with Ambassador Gem and Mist,” she said. “Aisha and Paul are at some Grenouthian network event. There! Mist holo’d me the main course.”
“Turkey,” Joe said, patting his stomach in anticipation after the hologram appeared over the display desk. “They must have ordered out from Fowl Territory, the new place in the Little Apple everybody is talking about. I hope Gwen has invited some other families, or she and Mist will be eating turkey all week.”
“You’ll have to ask Aunty Gwen if Banger can come, it’s her house,” Kelly told Samuel. The boy grabbed his mother’s hand and started pulling her towards the door. “And you’ll have to be patient. I haven’t finished my weekly report yet.”
“Is my implant time running fast?” Joe asked. “I thought I had your Friday schedule down to a science.”
“Well, I actually did my weekly, but Libby talked me out of posting it,” Kelly admitted. “She thinks I should give more consideration to the Grenouthian proposal that I produce a show promoting inter-species understanding, though you know the bunnies only care about the ratings.”
“Our own show?” Dorothy exclaimed, suddenly interested in the conversation. “I have lots of ideas.”
“Just hold onto them until dinner, Dot,” Kelly replied quickly. “In fact, why don’t you all go on ahead without me and I’ll catch up in a few minutes, just as soon as I finish the report.”
“Alright,” Dorothy said, deciding for the family before the others could offer their opinions. “But don’t be too late, because Mist and I are babysitting for the twins later.”
“You just turned thirteen, and Blythe has you working at night? I don’t like it,” Kelly objected, looking towards Joe for support.
“I seem to remember Blythe selling me flowers late at night in the Little Apple when she was younger than Dorothy, and Chastity couldn’t have been much more than ten,” Joe replied unhelpfully. “Besides, Mist is getting to be a responsible adult.”
“I’m a responsible adult too,” Dorothy declared, as she herded her younger brother out the door. “Just not all of the time.”
“You see the problems you cause?” Kelly directed her accusation at the ceiling after the door slid shut behind her family. “And how come the co-owner of InstaSitter uses her mother and my daughter to do her babysitting? Doesn’t she trust her own service?”
“Donna would pay to babysit her grandchildren if Clive would let her, and Blythe pays Dorothy and Mist directly to cut out my overhead commission,” Libby explained. “Have you decided on a new conclusion for your report?”
“I haven’t had time to think,” Kelly muttered, feeling something akin to writer’s block. “If Gryph and the other Stryx think the Wanderers are such a bad influence that they have a quota for letting them on the stations, why welcome them at all?”
“In a sense the Wanderers represent an alternative to the tunnel network. Even if we don’t always approve of their lifestyle, they offer an important back-up should something unforeseen occur.”
“What do you mean, Libby? Are they that technologically advanced that they can support the Stryx in an emergency?”
“Not at all,” Libby replied in exasperation. “Wanderer technology is derived from the constituent species of the mob, along with whatever they may pick up along the way as gifts. For example, the temporary tunnels this mob employs are created by a pair of robotic ships supplied to them by Stryx Dreel many millions of years ago.”
“So how do they support you as a back-up?” Kelly doggedly pursued the issue.
“Unintentionally,” Libby said, after an uncharacteristically long pause. “I don’t want to tell you more, because while not technically a secret, it touches on subjects that the advanced species tend to suppress within their own cultures for psychological reasons, meaning there’s a sort of competitive advantage involved.”
“Fine!” Kelly snorted “Hide behind your pho
ny noninterference principles and manipulate me into figuring it out for myself later. Now let’s finish recording my report so I can get to dinner.”
“I’m ready,” Libby said calmly. “Do you need me to play back what you said just before the conclusion?”
“Please,” Kelly replied, realizing she had no recall of the rest of the report whatsoever.
The embassy manager reports that we’re running out of paperclips again, and that we can’t obtain any in the local markets because the aliens don’t use paper. In fact, we’re running low on Post-it notes as well, the kind that don’t leave a sticky residue on tabs. And pencils, though I can probably get those through EarthCent Intelligence since they use them for secure messages. There really hasn’t been much going on lately, though I received a request from the Grenouthian ambassador to create a new show for their network, something along the lines of my former acting junior consul’s show, but aimed at adults.
“That was really me?” Kelly asked, after listening to her own voice played back. “I used my weekly report to complain about office supplies?”
“Before that, you went on for some length on the subject of creating a standard uniform for EarthCent ambassadors, including a hat,” Libby told her. “Do you want to hear it?”
“I want you to erase it!” Kelly exclaimed. “What’s happening to me? My reports used to be the gold standard at EarthCent. They even used them in the training course!”
“I’m sure it’s just the sudden change with Samuel starting school,” Libby reassured the ambassador. “Would you like me to encrypt the current report so that it can’t be decoded, and if they get around to asking about it, I’ll say that it was an experiment and that I lost the key?”
“You’d lie for me, Libby?” Kelly asked.
“Of course,” the Stryx librarian replied. “You’re my friend.”
“Then encrypt and send,” Kelly said with relief. “I’ll work on an idea for the Grenouthians this weekend. I guess I do need a new project.”
