Vacation on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 7)

by E. M. Foner

  “Hard to believe it now,” Lynx replied. She did a deep knee-bend to see if her joints would be making embarrassing cracking noises now that her body weighed something again. Fortunately, gravity on the open world of Chianga was barely two-thirds of Earth standard, as the towering Dollnicks preferentially focused on terraforming worlds that didn’t give them backaches and flat feet. “You killed my old record on the tie-down treadmill,” she added grudgingly.

  “Running the recruits around Mac’s Bones keeps me in shape. I wonder how Thomas is doing with the new group. He didn’t seem very enthusiastic about following the basic training program Joe and I developed.”

  “Now who’s bringing up my old boyfriends?” Lynx asked playfully. She licked her index finger and chalked a mark on an invisible blackboard. “Besides, you’re the one who jumped at Blythe’s offer to pay for the honeymoon in return for stopping by a few of the human settlements that were advertising for cops. We’ll be lucky if we only spend three out of the four weeks on my ship.”

  “And you’re the one who’s been talking about getting her ship out of mothballs ever since we met. Besides, given our age difference, I thought I’d make a better impression in Zero-G.”

  “I’m just saying, if everything goes wrong and we have to eat worms or something, it’s your fault.”

  “Are we having our first argument?”

  “What are you talking about?” Lynx retorted. “We argue all of the time.”

  A barely audible hum announced the arrival of the floater, which came to a hovering stop just in front of the recently arrived visitors. A young boy wearing a sort of a sun-helmet sat at the controls, and a girl who looked like his sister occupied the other front seat. The Dollnick floater resembled a spaceport courtesy transport with four rows of seats and no visible means of propulsion.

  “Climb in,” the girl told them. “If we set down in the sand too often the filters will get clogged.”

  Lynx swung a leg over the edge of the craft and then accepted a boost from Woojin, who followed by vaulting into the next row back. The floater dipped alarmingly at his sudden entry, but then recovered. He clambered over the low seat-back to join Lynx in the row behind their young drivers.

  “I’m Sephia and he’s Raythem,” the girl told them. The floater spun about on the spot and began to accelerate rapidly. A lack of wind in their faces showed that the craft employed some type of force field technology, without which conversation would also have been impossible. “You’re the first people from Union Station who have ever come to visit us. We know all about your home from LMF. It’s my favorite show.”

  “I’m Lynx and he’s Woojin. I’ll make sure to tell Aisha that you watch.”

  “I haven’t watched that show in two years,” the boy said haughtily, lest they get the wrong idea. “It’s for little kids.”

  “You know Aisha?” Sephia asked, wide-eyed in astonishment. “Dianna says that she’s just a hologram created by artificial intelligence. Nobody could really be that nice.”

  “I eat with Aisha all the time so you can tell Dianna that she’s wrong,” Lynx replied. “How old are you two?”

  “I’m seven, and Raythem’s ten,” Sephia said. “Daddy only lets him drive the floater if I come because Raythem knows I’ll tell on him if he goes too fast.”

  “I’m a good driver,” Raythem asserted.

  “I didn’t know the Dollnicks made floaters sized for humans,” Woojin said. “The ones I’ve seen were more than twice as big as this one.”

  “We make them in our own factory, with Dollnick parts,” the boy explained without looking over his shoulder. “Daddy says that people who won’t use alien technology are just dumb.”

  “I guess I can agree with your father there,” Lynx replied. “Is that dome up ahead your town?”

  “That’s the factory,” the girl said. “Daddy says the dome keeps out all of the dust, and when we visit, we have to go through a little room where the walls blow on us. Then we have to put on plastic clothes over our real clothes. Everybody inside looks really funny. What do they call it, Ray?”

  “A clean-room,” the boy replied. “Daddy says it’s because the Dollnick parts are so small and fit so close together that a bit of dust you can’t even see could ruin a floater drive unit.”

  The floater raced past the dome and the sandy surface gave way to agricultural fields. At one point, they saw a group of humans in the distance working with what looked like a giant spool of black wire or pipe.

  “Drip irrigation,” Woojin commented. “They manage their water carefully on this world.”

  “Water is money,” the little girl said reflexively, repeating something she must hear from adults all the time.

  The floater began to slow as they came over a small rise, and a strange settlement sprang into view before them. The houses were all cookie-cutter prefab structures that looked like they had been delivered directly from a factory with only the slightest aesthetic modifications. Lynx counted more than twenty concentric circles of grassy streets before she gave up and asked the children, “What’s that metallic tower in the middle?”

  “It’s our rock zapper,” the girl told her without hesitation, since it was obvious that Lynx couldn’t have been referring to anything else. “Sometimes it lights up at night to shoot meteors and stuff. It’s real pretty, but it makes the air smell funny while it’s working.”

  The boy slowed the floater to the speed of a galloping horse as they approached the outermost houses.

  “Press the button,” the girl told him.

  “I did already,” the boy replied, a little too quickly.

  “Did not. I watched you. And the green light isn’t on.”

  “But I know how to get there,” Raythem protested.

  “I’ll tell Daddy,” Sephia warned him.

  “Alright, alright,” the boy said, pushing the autopilot button. The floater immediately sped up, but Lynx relaxed. She knew that kids on outposts and ag worlds learned how to operate equipment early, but that didn’t mean she wanted a ten-year-old driving her through town traffic. The autopilot navigated too fast for her liking, but at least it had a built-in collision avoidance system, probably.

  “Home,” the boy said sullenly, after the floater came to a rather abrupt halt. It settled onto the grass, and the four occupants were able to exit easily by simply stepping over the gunwales. A deeply tanned man wearing shorts and a T-shirt waited for them.

  “I’m Bob Winder,” he introduced himself, at the same time tossing a coin to each of his children. They eagerly caught the money and ran off without saying where they were going. “I hope my son didn’t scare you with his driving, but I thought it would be a more important use of my time to talk a couple of other mayors into coming. They should be arriving any minute.”

  “I’m Pyun Woojin and this is my wife, Lynx. Please call me Wooj.” The two men shook hands.

  “Lynx Edgehouse,” Lynx said, shaking Bob’s hand.

  “You’re married but you use different names?” Bob asked.

  “I’m keeping my options open, just in case,” Lynx replied. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice. We were originally planning to contact you from at least a day out, but the tunnel controller dumped us in such a low orbit that landing immediately was the only thing that made sense.”

  “The Dollnicks prefer it that way,” Bob said. He ushered them into the house through an odd double-door and led them into a sunken living room, indicating that they should seat themselves. “Very efficient people, might have something to do with the four arms. Of course, I’ve never been off Chianga myself, so I’m not familiar with planetary approach methodologies.”

  “You were born here, Mayor?” Lynx inquired.

  “Born and raised,” the mayor responded proudly. “My parents came out in the first wave from Earth and never went back. I grew up on the main continent, but when the Dollnicks declared Chianga an open world and offered financing to humans willing t
o colonize the outlying land masses, I signed up immediately.”

  “You’ve certainly done a lot in a short time,” Woojin said, looking around the well-appointed home. “Are these structures manufactured by the Dollnicks?”

  “Everything you see in my home was made by human hands, though we use a lot of Dollnick equipment in the factories,” Bob said. “The mayor of Houses will be here tonight, so you can ask her about the process yourself.”

  “You named a town Houses?” Lynx asked.

  “All of our towns are named for their factories,” the mayor replied, making it sound like the only logical possibility. “Is there some other way of doing it?”

  “On Earth, cities and towns are named after local geological features, or the place the settlers came from, or for the people themselves,” Lynx said. “In fact, the two times I visited Earth, it seemed that half of the places I went had a prefix, as if they ran out of ideas.”

  “Like New Houses, or West Houses, or North…”

  “He gets the idea,” Lynx interrupted her husband.

  “Nope, makes no sense to me,” Bob said, shaking his head. “We live in Floaters because the factory makes floaters. That’s how the Dollnicks name their towns and it’s good enough for us. But where are my manners?” he cut himself off and rose. “What can I get you to drink?”

  “Anything distilled is fine by me,” Woojin said.

  “Make mine with plenty of water,” Lynx added.

  “Best water on Chianga comes from our deep wells,” the mayor boasted. “You’ve made a wise choice.”

  There was a loud hiss and a skittering sound from the other room which made Lynx’s hair stand up on the back of her neck. She turned to Woojin to see if he was preparing to fend off an attack of giant insects, but he looked completely relaxed.

  “Could you trigger the door, Martha?” the mayor called. He turned back to his guests with a conspiratorial grin. “My wife is in the kitchen trying to make take-out look home-made. She commutes to Furniture, which is down south a ways, and she got home from work later than me today.”

  The front door opened and two women entered.

  “So the two of you came in one floater,” Bob commented. “What can I fix you for drinks?”

  “You’d ask ME that question?” said the taller of the pair. She carried what appeared to be a doctor’s bag, and when she pressed a hidden button on the handle, the sides flopped down, exposing a salesman’s display of small liquor bottles. “I’m not one to waste a trip out of town just to talk politics. We’ve got some new products coming out, including a fair version of dark rum.”

  “I was about to tell our visitors that we don’t stand on formality around here, so Wooj, Lynx, let me introduce you to my closest mayoral colleagues. The booze hound there is Terri, the mayor of Distilling, and her designated driver this evening is Sheila, the mayor of Houses.

  “Great to meet you, Wooj, Lynx,” the shorter woman said. “Let me have one of those Scotch samples, Terri, and that will be it for my evening. The last one you tried on me was the right color, but it tasted like medical alcohol mixed with tea.”

  “How many factory towns do you have on Chianga?” Woojin asked their host, accepting a short tumbler full of oily yellow liquid and passing on to Lynx a glass with a diluted version of the same.

  “We’re up to forty-seven now, and some of them are practically cities,” Bob replied. “I could have invited a couple more mayors from the closer factories today, but I thought it made more sense to check you out first, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  Lynx coughed, turned red, and spit her drink back out into her glass. The mayor of Distilling leapt up and pressed a sample bottle into her hands.

  “Drink this,” she ordered. “It’s branch water, or at least, that’s what we call it.”

  Lynx took the small bottle greedily, gargled, and swallowed.

  “It’s my fault,” Woojin said to their host. “Lynx worked as an independent trader for ten years, so I just assumed she’d have developed a taste for Dollnick tequila.”

  “Try the Scotch,” Sheila suggested. “It’s a big improvement over the last batch.”

  “Don’t everybody ruin their appetites,” cautioned a black-haired woman as she maneuvered a service floater into the room. “Hi, girls,” she said to the visiting mayors before introducing herself to the visitors from Union Station. “I’m Marge. Sorry I wasn’t out earlier but I was busy in the kitchen. You must be Woojin and Lynx. I’m honored you made us the first stop on your honeymoon tour.”

  “Everything looks wonderful, Marge,” Sheila said. “I don’t know how you do it with your schedule.”

  “Yes, I’m dying for something to chew on,” Lynx added, having recovered her voice. “We’ve been eating out of squeeze-tubes the last week.”

  “Get it while it’s hot,” Bob suggested in his hearty manner. “We won’t have to worry about competition from the kids this evening. They’re off spending their chauffeur earnings on a combination pizza with fungus and Sheezle bugs, no doubt.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t encourage them,” Martha reprimanded her husband. “I know the baked Sheezle bugs are a good source of calcium, and the insoluble fiber won’t hurt them either, but some of the fungi make it impossible to get them in bed on time.”

  “You guys eat Sheezle bugs?” Lynx asked in astonishment.

  “Mainly for the crunch,” Sheila said. “Kind of like chocolate-covered ants.”

  Lynx had barely made a dent in her meal when Woojin polished off his first plateful and went for seconds. She hoped that Marge hadn’t noticed how she was examining every forkful for signs of anything suspicious in the pasta sauce. Maybe she should make something up about food allergies?

  “I see you know how to eat,” the mayor of Floaters said to Woojin approvingly. “I was afraid you were going to be a repeat of the political organizer who came through last week. He started by telling us that it was his first time off of Earth, and then he asked if we could let him have a bit of water to add to some dehydrated junk he’d brought from the mother world.”

  “He worked for HEEL,” Marge added helpfully.

  “I’ve never met a HEEL agent myself, but I hear that one showed up on Union Station recently,” Woojin said. He swallowed another forkful of the Italian/Dollnick fusion cuisine and smacked his lips in loud appreciation. “Supposedly they’re popping up all over the tunnel network.”

  “That man talked the strangest mixture of sense and insanity I ever did hear,” Marge said, watching out of the corner of her eye as Lynx finally began eating like a normal person. “Self-government, self-sufficiency, earning our place amongst the advanced species, all things we believe in. But he kept bringing up how we have to break away from the Stryx and stop letting them run our lives. I’ve never met a Stryx and I wouldn’t know one from any other AI if I did. But without their opening Earth, we’d probably all have killed each other by now, unless the Vergallians had moved in and taken over the planet.”

  “The HEEL guy showed up at our distillery dome last week asking if he could address the workers and hand out some informational holo-cubes,” Terri said. “I gave him permission to talk in the cafeteria at lunch since we don’t get much in the way of entertainment at work, unless your idea of a good show is watching our quality control tasters staggering around. He didn’t say anything about the Stryx, but after talking about self-determination and holding free elections, he made some mysterious references to a Big Brother.”

  “Probably us,” Woojin said, polishing off his second plate of pasta. “Are those spoon worms for eating, or did you just put them out for display?”

  “Dessert,” Marge informed him. “They’re the closest we can come to Dollnick Snakees, which are unfortunately toxic to humans. We imported some starter worms from Earth and farm them in the salt marshes. You’ve cleaned your plate twice, so I guess you can go ahead of us.”

  “Have mine,” Lynx muttered, looking rapidly away from the bowl o
f creepy-crawlies which she hadn’t noticed previously.

  “I grew up on these,” Woojin said with a happy grin, adding a bit of salt to a worm before slurping it down. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  Lynx gagged on her linguini, which suddenly felt alive in her mouth. The Chiangans regarded her with a mixture of pity and amusement.

  “Do you mind my asking if the two of you are undercover agents?” Terri inquired. “Bob just told us to expect a recently married Union Station couple from EarthCent, but the holo-cubes that HEEL man distributed included some pretty strong accusations about humans spying on humans and running a shadow government.”

  “That’s us,” Woojin told her cheerfully, ladling a generous dollop of spoon worms onto his plate where he dressed them with oil. “We aren’t undercover though, or I’d have to kill you all. That’s a joke,” he added, when the other diners froze. “I haven’t killed anybody in years.”

  “It’s not very exciting,” Lynx said, realizing she had better interrupt before Woojin’s sense of humor dug them a hole they’d never get out of. “We’re mainly focused on business intelligence to pay the bills. I’m actually the cultural attaché at the Union Station embassy, so maybe that’s our shadow government.”

  “You’re not here to help us organize elections, maybe put your own names in as candidates?” Shelia suggested playfully.

  “We’re really here on a fact-finding honeymoon,” Woojin said, pausing to slurp up a choice morsel of spoon worm flesh. “I worked a couple of police assignments for aliens in my previous career so I’m supposed to be the expert.”

  “So you saw our advertisement for a part-time marshal, and even though you aren’t getting into the business, you thought you’d like to see who was hiring,” Bob summarized.

  “We’re still feeling our way forward,” Woojin told him. “Most Earth expatriates live under alien control of one type or another, mainly business consortiums. The few truly independent human colonies we’ve visited in the past were able to scrape by without official governments, thanks to special circumstances. But with, what did you say, forty-seven factory towns and a growing need for policing, you seem to be moving towards a real government here.”