Book Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassasor 13)

by E. M. Foner

  Samuel felt the blood rushing to his face as he pulled the ring from its holder, but he hesitated at putting it on. “We’re friends. Right?”

  “Of course we’re friends,” Vivian said, and watched as he slid the band onto his ring finger before continuing. “You’re my boyfriend and I’m your girlfriend. What’s so complicated about that?”

  “It’s just—”

  “Ailia gave you to me and I have the paperwork to prove it. Are you going to make her into a liar?”

  “I just think I should have a say since I’m, you know,” the boy muttered.

  “The party of the first part?” she prompted, giving him a playful shove.

  The lift tube door slid open on a brightly lit deck where a group of students stood waiting. Yvandi started off without greeting the late arrivals, and the others all fell in behind the long-legged Sharf girl, some of them finding themselves forced into a jog to keep up.

  “Is she mad about something?” Samuel asked Lizant.

  “You’re two minutes late,” the Frunge replied. “The rest of us were early.”

  “It was the long lift tube ride, over three minutes.”

  “Really? Did you ask it to go slow for some reason?”

  Samuel turned sharply to question Vivian, but she had conveniently sped up to ask the Sharf girl something.

  “Is that a new couple’s ring?” Marilla asked the ambassador’s son. “You guys seem kind of young for that.”

  “Oh, they’ve been together for a long time,” Lizant said. “Didn’t you know?”

  “I don’t see how she could when I didn’t know either,” Samuel objected.

  “Men are always the last to find out,” the Frunge girl said.

  “Presents?” the Verlock student huffed from his trailing position.

  “Good question,” Grude said. “We wouldn’t want to offend them.”

  “No presents,” Samuel insisted, feeling like he was losing control over his destiny. “She just gave me the ring since we’re going to the Vergallian deck later and she’s got a thing about them.”

  “SHE gave the ring to YOU?” Jorb tripped over his own feet when he turned back to deliver this remark and would have hit the deck if he hadn’t managed to grab one of the Grenouthian’s arms with his tentacle. “Humans are weird.”

  “Halt,” Yvandi declared, holding up a bony arm, and the group of students came to a disorderly stop. “I had to call in some family favors to get us into EOD, but you’re still all going to have to sign the confidentiality agreement or they won’t let you beyond the reception area. This is proprietary stuff.”

  The bunny sniffed loudly at the idea the Sharf could have developed anything the Grenouthians would possibly want, and the Dollnick exchanged an eye roll with the Verlock, but the students from the other species nodded seriously. Yvandi led them past a heavily armored door into a bland-looking reception area where a Sharf awaited them with a tab/clipboard combination in one hand and a pin cushion in the other.

  “Use the Thark stylus to sign the tab, then prick a finger and put a drop of blood in the circle next to where your name is printed,” he ordered.

  “I can’t read this,” Samuel complained, feeling he’d been pushed around enough for one day. “Libby? Should I sign this?”

  “It’s a standard Sharf non-compete and confidentiality agreement,” the station librarian informed them. “As the Sharf are not tunnel network members, it’s nonbinding outside of this factory unless you visit Sharf space.”

  “What’s the point of that?” Lizant asked the Sharf.

  The skinny alien shrugged. “Procedure.”

  Eight signatures and pinpricks later, the students were allowed to enter the factory proper, which turned out to be a vast empty space at least as large as Mac’s Bones.

  “I don’t get it,” Grude said, staring about suspiciously. “Where’s the equipment?”

  “Outside the projection chamber,” Yvandi told them. “I couldn’t describe the technology to you before you signed the nondisclosures, but what you’re about to see is the fruit of a collaborative project between my people and our AI that is being adapted for our colony ships. Engineering On Demand is still in Beta testing, but I have a classmate whose mother is the local sales rep, and she might be persuaded to send a prototype out with Flower for field trials.”

  “Engineering On Demand?” the Dollnick student asked. “How is that even possible? You have to know how to properly describe a problem in order to start working towards the solution. It takes a higher order of AI than your artificial people to figure out what’s needed.”

  “Surprisingly astute,” the Grenouthian concurred.

  “Proof,” the Verlock demanded.

  “Very well.” Yvandi checked something on a wrist controller and looked up with a smug expression. “What engineering problem do you want solved?”

  “Say I have a river I need to cross,” Vivian said.

  In a blink the students found themselves in a life-sized hologram featuring a placid river winding through a flat plain. They were standing near the bank, and two parallel blue lines extended from just in front of them to the opposite bank, which was at least a two-minute walk away.

  “Is the location appropriate?” Yvandi asked, consulting the wrist controller again.

  “You didn’t give me time to describe the problem,” Vivian protested. “I was thinking more of a river with steep banks and a rocky cliff on one side, plus barge traffic.”

  As soon as she spoke, the hologram morphed to adapt itself to her description, and the projected bridge location shifted slightly to make room for access roads.

  “I don’t get the point,” Grude complained. “Who uses bridges when they can license our floater designs?”

  “I forgot,” Vivian admitted. “I just remember my grandpa talking about the suspension bridges on Earth being some of our best engineering before the Stryx opened the planet. A few of the oldest ones are still standing.”

  “Give me something else,” Yvandi suggested after glancing at her wrist again. “It knows how to do suspension bridges, but they take a long time to model because of all the wires.”

  “What difference does it make?” the Grenouthian asked.

  “What you see isn’t just a pretty picture,” the Sharf girl explained. “The projectors use manipulator fields to mimic the physical properties within the hologram for testing purposes. Plus, you get a complete set of engineering drawings and mechanical plans. We don’t use construction bots ourselves, but if you did, you could feed them the data, go away for a couple of years, and come back to a completed bridge.”

  “Dangerous,” the Verlock student commented, taking a step back.

  “How about a faster-than-light drive?” Samuel asked hopefully.

  “Very funny. Think of something your colonists might need.”

  “A faster-than-light drive.”

  “For which you’re more than welcome to buy our ships.”

  “A bowling alley?” the Dollnick suggested.

  “Too simple, unless you want pin-setting machines,” Yvandi replied.

  Grude waved the idea off and the students all hesitated, trying to imagine what colonists might do with EOD. They came up with and dismissed a number of ideas as being too complex for an isolated community to manufacture, even with perfect plans.

  “How about a school?” Vivian suggested. “Say it’s a cold planet so it has to hold up in the ice and snow, with classrooms for a thousand students, all the usual stuff.”

  “EOD excels at architectural plans,” the Sharf girl declared with obvious relief. A hologram materialized depicting a school thronged with tall, emaciated-looking students with bony crests. “Oops, I’ll make them Human.”

  The image wavered and was replaced with a structure and holographic students that wouldn’t have looked terribly out of place on Earth, other than the peculiar roof design. As the Sharf girl gestured with her wrist controller, the hologram began peeling off layers,
showing the sheathing, the insulation, the structural members, cabling and plumbing. At each level, a riot of numbers appeared, some of them measurements, others referring to specific Sharf part numbers for items that would be available in a colony ship’s stock.

  Samuel noticed what looked like a puddle forming in the hologram and nudged Grude, who looked in the direction the boy was pointing and frowned. A moment later the peeling process reached the heating plant, and the whole hologram exploded outwards as the boiler failed with a tremendous sonic blast that almost knocked the students from their feet.

  “Very realistic,” the Grenouthian remarked dryly.

  ‘I told you it’s in Beta,” the Sharf student retorted. “I’m glad you saw that, though. The system is always testing its own assumptions in various ways, so it makes sense that the boiler blew up when the vessel grew too thin.”

  “Could the system damage Flower?” Vivian asked.

  “It’s highly unlikely,” Grude said. “The force, or the simulated force of any explosion would be limited to the energy being fed into the system, since there’s no storage capacity. As long as it ran off of the ship’s power, Flower would be able to set safe levels for herself.”

  “And for the people in the room?”

  Grude and Yvandi both shrugged.

  “I think it’s fascinating,” Lizant said. “I didn’t realize you were so far advanced in field manipulations.”

  “The projection technology is licensed from the Stryx,” the Sharf girl explained. “It’s the application that’s novel.”

  “Been there, done that,” the Grenouthian said, affecting a yawn.

  “Anyway, the Vergallians are expecting us and we better be on time since they’re already offended by not having a member on the committee,” Lizant pointed out.

  “I don’t see why that means we have to go to them,” Vivian said.

  “It’s in the addendum to the student handbook as a right that any species without a committee presence can invoke,” Lizant explained, as she led the group back towards the lift tube. “I thought they were joking at first, but when I checked with our admin contact, the Verlock told me that as the committee secretary, I actually had the duty to approach unrepresented species with an offer to tour their business incubators.”

  “Does this mean we’re going to have to visit the Cherts and the Fillinducks as well?” Samuel asked.

  “I already checked with them. The Cherts said it wasn’t necessary and the Fillinducks said it wasn’t desirable.”

  “Do humans have any tech-ban colonies?” Marilla asked.

  “There’s Kibbutz, which Paul has been to,” Samuel replied. “It’s not so much tech-ban as geologically active to the point that the kind of infrastructure we can build just gets shaken apart. Other than that, there may be some people living with minimal technology for environmental or religious reasons. I think Daniel mentioned a few groups, but they aren’t members of the Sovereign Human Communities conference because they try to avoid unnecessary space travel.”

  “Flower can go to them,” Wrylenth suggested.

  “I could always get in touch with the student who presented the blacksmith’s wagon,” Lizant offered.

  The committee members crowded out of the lift tube when the doors slid open and were met by a waiting delegation of Vergallian students.

  “Welcome,” the flawless beauty who was obviously in charge of the reception said in a flat voice. “You’re barely on time.”

  “Sorry,” Lizant apologized for the committee. “There was—”

  “No need to offer excuses,” the high-caste Vergallian spoke over her. “I have an appointment with my hairdresser, but these gentlemen will take you around.” Without a backwards glance, she walked away from the group.

  “But her hair is perfect,” Marilla pointed out needlessly.

  “Sorry about Arinda,” one of the Vergallian males said. “We only got here a minute ago ourselves but she’s mad that we mistimed it. She’s Empire, by the way, but we’re Fleet. I’m Keena and he’s Pojee. We think we have some really exciting ideas for your colony ship.”

  The student committee members all introduced themselves, and then the two guides led them down a long corridor to a section that looked surprisingly low-rent for the normally upscale aliens. Keena halted in front of a statue depicting a trader sitting cross-legged on a blanket and counting coins, an old fashioned beam balance by his side.

  “Union Station Business Incubator,” Samuel read the Vergallian inscription out loud.

  “I see our information about you was correct,” Pojee said. “I understand that both you and the young lady were competitive in our junior ballroom championships, and I hope that your experiences there don’t prejudice you against our business offerings.”

  “We’re honored by the opportunity,” the ambassador’s son responded diplomatically. Vivian scowled.

  Keena took over from Pojee in what was apparently a rehearsed presentation. “We put a lot of thought into the sorts of businesses that might make sense for a circuit ship serving your scattered communities, and even though we’re both Fleet, we concluded that low-tech might be a better match for your mission.”

  “We have a lot of isolated outposts of our own, and we’re always sending out new groups of colonists, even though our ships aren’t as big as Flower,” the other Vergallian picked up the thread as he steered the group towards a curtained-off area. “You may be surprised to know that new colonies often adopt technology from tech-ban worlds because they don’t require extensive infrastructure to be effective.”

  “How can you talk about technology on tech-ban worlds?” Vivian demanded.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Keena said, smiling broadly at the committee members, “I give you the humble windmill.”

  The curtain drew apart as if of its own accord, and the students gaped at a life-sized windmill that might have been copied from a landscape painter of Earth’s Dutch Golden Age. The four sails consisted of fabric on wooden latticework, and the round tower was improbably constructed from dressed stones.

  “Is this a joke?” the Sharf student demanded. “You expect space travelers to spend their time hand-building obsolete structures?”

  “I like the stonework,” Lizant commented.

  “Wind!” Pojee cried, dramatically raising his arms, and a stiff breeze suddenly blew down the corridor, catching the sails and putting the whole mechanism into motion. “Lights,” he declared, and the corridor lighting in the immediate area dimmed.

  Marilla let out an “Oooh,” as a string of colored lights arranged on the deck around the windmill flickered to life and then began to glow steadily.

  “The modular construction and interchangeable parts of our windmills make them the ideal match for isolated farms or communities on outposts with irregular supplies,” Keena said. “You don’t need the full stone tower kit, of course. The most basic module consists of a rotor head, shaft, and transfer case. Add-ons, which are interchangeable through hot-swapping, include electrical generation, well-pumping, belt drive for machine tools, even a millstone kit for grinding grain.”

  “Aren’t millstones a bit heavy to be transporting in shuttles?” Grude asked skeptically.

  “The kit consists of templates for quarrying your own millstones from local resources,” Pojee jumped back in. “The manufacturer offers standard mounts for the core mechanism that can be adapted to anything from a skeletal steel tower to the traditional stone building before you. The arms can be fabricated onsite using native materials in a nearly infinite number of shapes and sizes, or you can purchase premade arms in materials ranging from magnesium to carbon fiber.”

  “If you only care about electricity generation, they make all-in-one units that mount on the top of a tower with a vane to head them into the wind,” Keena said. “But the flexibility of the standard kit is why it’s the go-to back-up power system for our own outposts.”

  “Back-up?” the Grenouthian inquired.

&nb
sp; “Well, you’d need a lot of windmills to power an asteroid protection system,” Keena admitted.

  “Thousands,” the Verlock grunted. “Big ones.”

  “I think windmills could make a lot of sense in the right applications,” Samuel said. “There are probably Earth manufacturers—”

  “We checked,” Pojee cut him off. “There used to be quite a number of them, but they all went out of business after the Stryx, er, opened your planet. The station librarian was able to retrieve their primary patents for us to review in the competitive technologies section of our written proposal. Although there were some interesting designs, nothing would have come close to the flexibility and durability of these units.”

  “Good sales pitch,” the Grenouthian student remarked.

  “You’re all welcome to come back and examine this model at any time, but we have three more displays set up for you,” Keena announced. “If you’ll follow me.”

  The Vergallians set off with the student committee members in a row, and Vivian remarked to Samuel, “I guess it wasn’t totally stupid.”

  “I don’t get what you have against them,” he said, followed by, “Excuse me,” as he nearly ran down a lovely Vergallian girl around Affie’s age, who favored him with a dazzling smile.

  “I couldn’t help noticing you,” she said, batting her eyelids playfully. “If you’re not with anybody, I’d like to—”

  “He’s with me,” Vivian snarled, pushing between the two. Then she realized that the Vergallian was still talking, something about needing volunteers for a focus group to view a new drama and discuss alternative endings.

  “You’re standing inside her foot,” Samuel said quietly. “It’s more holo spam.”

  Vivian jumped back, but not before several of the other students noticed. Yvandi was the only one to put her thoughts into words.

  “Wow,” the plain-spoken Sharf student said. “Fighting over a guy with a holographic advertisement. You’ve really got it bad.”

  Eighteen

  “Heavy one,” Thomas warned the EarthCent Intelligence recruit who was next in line in the bucket brigade. “Must be hardcovers.”