Wanderers On Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 6)

by E. M. Foner

  A soft thudding noise from the front of the stage caused both Kelly and Dring to pause and look over, where they saw the young assistant director jumping up and down in place. As soon as he was sure he had their attention, he began counting down from five, while pointing at Mist. The young clone held up a sign with COMMERCIAL printed on it.

  “We’ll be back right after this brief message,” Kelly adlibbed, having seen Aisha do it enough times. The blue light on the camera went out.

  “Long break,” the young Grenouthian declared. “You didn’t have a commercial after the intro, so we’re catching up.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kelly demanded, leaping up from her chair. “This is a public access show!”

  “Not anymore,” he declared, pointing up at the ratings monitor. “As soon as you got onto dragons, the ratings began climbing, and then the Stryx and war? We’re up to a six share of the live audience, and everybody is going to stream this. I sent an emergency recall for the LMF crew. It’s going to cost us, though.”

  A make-up artist rushed on and pushed Kelly back down into her chair. “Your nose is a bit shiny, dear,” the bunny declared, brushing powder over the ambassador’s face. “Glare comes across very bad in holograms.”

  Kelly looked over to the audience section, where Joe sat with Aisha and Paul. Samuel was between the two men, who could keep him from making a sudden break, and Ailia had glued herself to Aisha’s side. Donna, Stanley, Chastity and Blythe had all come, Clive was home with the twins, and the Hadads had settled in after delivering the cue cards. Bork’s family was there as well, and she saw Czeros taking advantage of the commercial break to visit the refreshments table. She heard a thump and looked over. The young assistant director was counting them back in.

  “Welcome back to Ask An Alien with Maker Dring as our guest,” Kelly picked up the thread. “Dring. You were just telling us that the Makers had been drawn into a war that was going badly, but you didn’t say who else was involved or how it started.”

  “The war crept up on us all,” Dring replied. “It began the usual way for such things, lost contacts with far-flung outposts and colonies, escalating military confrontations along a frontier. We weren’t directly involved at first, as the initial attacks came against a species which was allied with the Goss, one of our treaty partners. The attackers were from outside of what we considered the civilized regions of the galaxy, and their technology level wasn’t that high, except in one respect.”

  “Which was?” Kelly prompted.

  “They were artificial intelligence,” Dring answered. “Something akin to the artificial people many of the local species today have created. They were independent sentient beings, but built to fight, with the minds to match the purpose. Still, the Rojacks, they were the Goss allies who were the first attacked, held the AI off for thousands of years, considering them to be more of an aggravation than a serious threat. If the Rojacks had pursued an offensive strategy at the beginning, they might have nipped the war in the bud. But they weren’t an aggressive species so they settled in for a long defensive struggle.”

  “And the AI evolved, became more capable?” Kelly guessed.

  “In two ways,” Dring replied. “While they were fighting the Rojacks, they were likely fighting along their other frontiers as well. The disk of the galaxy is quite thick in that area, so they were surrounded by other species. Perhaps they made a temporary alliance with one of those species or merged with another AI, we never found out. But after millennia of a stable war of attrition which the Rojacks believed they were winning, the number of attackers suddenly began to grow rapidly, and their technology had improved to rough equivalence with that of the allied species. The Goss went to the aid of the Rojacks, and we sent an expeditionary force to support the Goss.”

  “And you couldn’t turn them back?”

  “At first, it went well,” Dring said. “We retook the systems the Rojacks had lost, reestablished the frontiers, and after much consultation, we launched another expeditionary force into the space controlled by the AI. This expedition included several more allied species, to see if we could bring about a definitive conclusion to the fighting.”

  “It didn’t work,” Kelly surmised.

  “It went very badly indeed,” Dring replied. “It turned out that the AI had been fighting conservatively all along, that they had vast reserves, perhaps released from victories on other frontiers. And for the first time, they began to communicate with us, which is why we suspect they might have merged with or been subsumed by a different species of artificial intelligence. They informed us of their conclusion that biological life was a disease and a hazard to the galaxy, and they made clear that if we didn’t get out of their way, they would destroy us.”

  The thumping had started a few seconds before Dring got to the end of this statement, and Kelly saw the assistant director jumping up and down to attract her attention. He was mouthing something in Grenouthian with his paws pressed together in supplication, and as soon as he was sure she made eye contact, he began another five-second countdown.

  “We’ll be back in a moment with Dring,” Kelly said, and the blue light blinked out.

  “Twenty share!” the assistant director shouted. “Where’s my lead camera operator? You, get a shot of me directing this show, top resolution. Done? Alright, now I want one with the talent.” The young bunny hopped onto the stage and got between Kelly’s seat and the spot where Dring was crouched on his haunches.

  “I think he likes us,” Dring commented to Kelly.

  “You’re doing great, you two,” the Grenouthian said, but his eyes were focused on the front immersive camera rather than on his unlikely stars. “Let me know if you need anything, and keep playing up the war, viewers love that.” Then he put on a serious expression and pointed off to the side, as if he were explaining something to the host and her guest. Then he repeated the charade while pointing to the other side, posing for a different set of immersive cameras. “They’re never going to believe this back home. Oh, choop! We’re back in three, two, one,” he exclaimed, diving frantically off the stage.

  Kelly was so distracted by the young Grenouthian’s career-building exercises that she lost her train of thought. Dring noticed her hesitation and came to the rescue, picking up where he had left off.

  “It turned into a drawn-out delaying action for the allied biologicals,” the shape-shifter continued his story. “Our scientists were able to maintain a technical edge, though I think that was at least partially due to the AI’s perception that time was on their side. Through analysis of contacts we had with specific enemy leaders over the years, we determined that at least some of their personalities were being duplicated for reinsertion into a new unit if the individual should die in battle. They were patient and relentless, and we became convinced that sooner or later, we would be extinguished.”

  “Why didn’t you run?” Kelly asked. “If you had the technology to fight a battle far from home, maybe you could have stayed ahead of them.”

  “Perhaps,” Dring replied. “But our projections showed that unless we could develop some new weapon, or learn to manipulate the multiverse in such a way as to allow us to flee to another galaxy or a different universe altogether, we were doomed. One of the drawbacks of being practically immortal is that my people tend to think of even the most distant future as being just around the corner, so we put what energy we could spare from the war effort into finding a permanent solution.”

  “And that solution was the Stryx!” Kelly intuited. “You created the Stryx to be the ultimate artificial intelligence that could develop the science and invent the weapons that were beyond your capabilities.”

  “Not exactly,” Dring replied, with a surprising twinkle in his eye. “We created the Stryx to replace us, to be the children who would inherit the future that we didn’t expect to see. We created them so they could learn and expand their minds indefinitely, a better version of ourselves. And when we achieved that goal to th
e best of our ability, we sent them off as far from the war as possible, hoping that by the time the conquering AI reached them, the Stryx would have found a solution for themselves. Then we turned all of our resources back to the war, and now we had something more to fight for than just slowing the inevitable.”

  “And you pushed them back?” Kelly asked, on the edge of her seat.

  “We held our own for a few thousand years, but one by one, our biological allies fell,” Dring said sadly. “The galaxy is a big place, and because of the resistance the neighboring species put up, I don’t think that AI ever conquered more than a few percent of the total volume. But time was on their side, and our numbers, which were never large, began to fall.”

  “What happened next?” Kelly demanded, barely restraining herself from reaching over and shaking her guest. She was normally the last person to rush somebody through a story, but the pressure of the Grenouthian assistant director with his commercial interruptions was getting to her. She kept her eyes focused on Dring and her ears closed against thumping.

  “Our Stryx came back for us,” Dring replied simply. “The one hard rule we had attempted to encode into their psyches, to keep themselves safe, they ignored. I remember now that they excused it by saying they had calculated the odds of victory to such a high degree that they weren’t putting themselves in danger, but the truth was, they returned earlier than they should have. Some of them fell in battle before they harnessed sufficient power to put a quick end to the war.”

  “A quick end to a war that had been going on for tens of thousands of…” Kelly began to say, but the assistant director cut her off.

  “Commercial, commercial!” he shouted. “Didn’t you see the blue light go out? We’ll pick it up again with the question when we come back. You don’t ignore the commercial breaks with this kind of audience share. Choop! I’m going to be famous.”

  “Are you going to read any more of the cue cards, Mom?” Dorothy called. “Mist’s arms are getting tired.”

  “I’m afraid we went off script, honey,” Kelly replied. “If you can find a question Dring hasn’t already answered, have it ready for if I get stuck. I think there are only a few more minutes left.”

  “Back in five,” the assistant director yelled, and counted them in.

  “This is Ask An Alien and we’re back with Maker Dring,” Kelly said, when the blue light came on. “So the Stryx returned and put a quick end to the war you had been fighting for tens of thousands of years. What happened next?”

  “Ah,” Dring said sadly, “I think you know the answer to that already. The Stryx saw that our numbers were reduced to a small fraction of what our strength had been at the time we sent them away, and they became overly protective. They wanted to be omnipresent in our lives, and their great obsession was keeping us from harm. Eventually, we had to ask them to forget us, to not see us even if we appeared on their sensors. And for the main part, we kept out of the areas of the galaxy for which the Stryx took responsibility after the war.”

  “But you kept watch over them,” Kelly stated.

  “What parents wouldn’t keep watch over their children, even from afar?” Dring asked. “Their knowledge and power rapidly outpaced that of any other known species, and after a few million years of learning and exploring, they began building themselves permanent homes, like Union Station, and established the tunnel network to encourage interspecies cooperation.”

  Kelly paused for a moment, and then glanced at the cue card Mist was holding up.

  “Can I ask how many of your kind are left, Dring? Did you ever rebuild your numbers after the war?”

  Dring shifted a little on his haunches and thought for a moment.

  “I don’t have a precise answer to your first question since I see my brothers so infrequently,” the shape-shifter replied. “In answer to your second question, we never felt the need to rebuild our numbers because, you see, we had the Stryx to succeed us. And we still do.”

  Thump, thump, thump. The assistant director was jumping up and down again, but this time he was doing the rolling gesture which, according to Aisha, meant she had about thirty seconds to wrap it up.

  “Dring, I want to thank you for appearing on our show and answering so many questions that I’m sure our viewers have been asking themselves for a long time. Is there anything you’d like to say to our audience before we conclude?”

  “I have seen many species come and go, both biological and artificial,” Dring said, as he fumbled for a moment behind his back. To Kelly’s shock, his arm came out with a sock puppet over the hand, and it began to speak in a high-pitched voice. “The future always arrives sooner than we expect, and nobody, not even the Stryx, can change the past. Oh, and never believe what you see in commercials, especially the ones selling miracle vegetable peelers.”

  The assistant director groaned as the blue light winked out. It was true what they said about the perfect broadcast not existing. He’d be hearing from the sponsors about the shape-shifter’s last remark, and it wouldn’t be to thank him for the audience share.

  Twenty

  “I was on my feet for nearly four months straight,” Chance explained, pushing the box full of hand-written receipts across the table to Blythe. “Buying ten pairs of shoes is hardly extravagant for almost three thousand hours of dancing.”

  “How come Thomas didn’t request reimbursement for even a single pair?” Blythe countered.

  “He didn’t spend a quarter as much time on Dance Hall as I did,” Chance retorted. “And men’s shoes are different. You can just put some hot-melt glue on the bottoms to keep them from wearing.”

  “Really?” Clive asked Thomas.

  “Well, I weigh quite a bit with some of the enhancements I’ve been buying,” Thomas said defensively. “It’s not that I’m cheap, but I’d go through shoes pretty fast if I didn’t skim coat the bottoms and the heels.”

  “My solution is not dancing,” Woojin commented. “Saves wear and tear on the knees as well.”

  “Wait until we’re married,” Lynx warned him. “I have certain expectations in a husband.”

  “I know you said this would just be an informal debriefing before our main event, but so far it sounds more like an advice column than an intelligence operation,” Kelly interjected. She was sipping her tea and keeping a wary eye on Blythe’s twins, who were running circles around the cluster of folding tables Joe had set out for the picnic. Beowulf was in hot pursuit of the pair, but due to poor traction, he spent as much time going sideways as forward.

  “What kind of information do you need?” Chance asked. “I bet I can tell you more about the Wanderers than they know about themselves.”

  “It would be useful to learn when the mob is leaving,” Kelly said. Everybody turned their heads and looked at her funny.

  “The last ship left this morning,” Chance told her. “That’s why I’m back here.”

  “I guess I must have been distracted all day with preparing the script for the Huravian thing,” Kelly said, reddening slightly. “I’ll have to put some more wine out for our guests. I’m sure they’ll be in the mood for celebrating.”

  “Come on, ask me something else,” Chance challenged the ambassador.

  “Well, how is it that so many of the ships broke down shortly after they arrived here?” Kelly inquired. “It seems that every ambassador I know whose species was part of the mob ended up spending a fortune on replacement piles, atmospheric recycling equipment, water treatment, you name it. The Horten ambassador even arranged for a whole new habitat to replace one they determined was scrap. If the Wanderer fleet is always falling apart at this rate, how do they stay away from the stations for hundreds of years at a time?”

  “That’s easy,” Chance replied. “When the mob is coming to a station, the elders of the different species get together and decide which of their craft to sabotage. I danced with a Drazen who was personally responsible for ruining a pile by shorting it through a plasma arc. He said that the hard
est part was getting the Zarents off the ship first, because they can’t stand seeing equipment abused, even if it means new replacements.”

  “You’re making this up,” Kelly said, looking skeptically at the artificial person.

  “The Horten Wanderers intentionally crashed two of their habitats together while everybody was conveniently on board the third one for a religious revival, and they were really disappointed when one of the two was salvageable. The Vergallians had a lab working full time putting stuff into their recycling systems that would destroy the permanent filters.” Chance paused for a moment, ticking species off on her fingers. “The Verlocks intentionally overflowed the lava pool in one of their habitats, though I heard that indirectly from a human who had bought a ticket for the event. The Dollnicks used some metal-eating bacteria they bought from the Farlings to wreck a colony ship that was getting old, and the Frunge, what did the Frunge do again?”

  “Grow-lights,” Thomas reminded her.

  “Yes, the Frunge burnt out all of the grow-lights on the main ag deck of their largest colony ship last month during the sun festival. The guy I danced with said that every adult Frunge spent the entire night on hover platforms turning all of the tubes around so they’d fry when the power came back online. They told the station Frunge that they saw on some habitat improvement show that you get twice the life that way, but of course, nobody is that stupid. Those lights are polarized, for heaven’s sake.”

  “That sounds like pretty good information for ten pairs of shoes,” Kelly said to Blythe.

  “You haven’t seen her bar tab,” the treasurer of EarthCent Intelligence responded.

  “How about the whole counterfeiting thing?” Kelly asked. “Did you find any of the producers?”

  “It’s a cottage industry,” Chance explained. “Nobody takes it seriously in the mob. They even use it on each other. I remember one of the other girls in the group I was sitting with asking a Drazen guy if he had change for the pay toilets. Boy, did she get angry when the smart aleck stall door wouldn’t accept any of the creds he gave her. The guy just laughed and said he’d come out that night with nothing but a counterfeit fifty-cred piece, so the bartender must have given him phony change.”