Book Night on Union Station

by E. M. Foner

  “That makes sense. He’s from one of the Dolly open worlds.”

  “And there’s a request for ‘real books’ from another—wait a sec, the feedback is resorting—from five different colonies. I gather they’re talking about physical books rather than better downloads for their devices.”

  “Books are nice,” Vivian said. “My dad is more of a fan than my mom.”

  “If you mean books printed on the p-word, I’d appreciate if you discuss them when I’m not here,” the Frunge girl said.

  The Horten rolled her eyes at Lizant’s old-fashioned observances and changed the subject. “Here’s a thread that already has twenty different sources. It’s a request for crop seeds that suit the local ecology. I’m surprised they haven’t gotten all of that squared away by now.”

  “Our colonies on open worlds just sort of happened when the local workers came off contract,” Vivian explained. “When the people were offered the opportunity to stay and set up their own communities, they did it with the stuff they had on hand. It’s not like they set off from Earth on a colonizing mission.”

  “EarthCent could probably come up with seeds,” Samuel said. “Sounds like a low-cost item for the ship to stock.”

  “There are a whole ton of threads about fitting Flower out for a religious pilgrimage,” Marilla said. “I don’t know if she would go along with that.”

  “I do,” Grude offered. “She won’t.”

  “Where are you reading that?” Samuel asked. “The only place I can imagine humans going on a pilgrimage is to Earth, and we don’t need a colony ship for that.”

  “Do a sort by the most popular thread. It’s right at the top now.”

  “Hospital facilities?” the boy asked.

  “That’s the one.”

  “There must be some kind of glitch with the automatic translation on your tab. A hospital is a place for sick people to stay until they get well.”

  “Why would sick people want to be with other sick people?” Lizant asked.

  “For treatment. Hospitals on Earth have doctors and nurses and specialized equipment.”

  “But why stay there?” the Frunge girl persisted. “Why don’t they have their problem fixed and return home, or better yet, invite the doctor to come to them?”

  “I found it,” Vivian said, looking up from her tab. “Hospitals started as guest houses for foreign travelers who were often on religious pilgrimages. I guess your tabs are choosing that translation since Human-style medicine doesn’t make sense for the other species.”

  “Do Humans have a hospital on the station?” the Grenouthian student asked. “It might make an interesting subject for a documentary.”

  “No, we go to the Stryx med bay if there’s something really wrong, though the Farling doctor who works there also has a shop on the tourist concourse.”

  “Do Humans get sick often?” Marilla asked.

  “I guess there were a lot of germs and stuff back on Earth—”

  “Sanitation,” the Grenouthian interrupted.

  “And then we have diseases that just kind of happen,” Samuel continued, ignoring the bunny’s jibe. “Sometimes the diseases are coded into our genes.”

  “Why don’t you edit them out?” Grude asked.

  Nine

  “This is stupid,” Kelly said, looking up from her display desk. “Why would readers care about my favorite Vergallian drama?”

  “You don’t have a favorite Vergallian drama,” Libby observed.

  “How did you know I—never mind. Walter claims that all of these tidbits will help humanize the book so it’s not just a lot of dry facts about EarthCent, but to me, it’s all fluff.”

  “You loved Economics For Humans.”

  “I’m beginning to love it less now that I see how the sausage is made. I mean, why would anybody be interested in my most spectacular digestive failure after mistakenly eating alien hors d'oeuvres at a diplomatic party?”

  “Humans are fascinated by their digestive processes and you aren’t the only ones. Our visiting Farling doctor is doing some groundbreaking work with your microbiome.”

  “My microbiome?” Kelly demanded, her voice rising.

  “Human intestinal microbes, not yours specifically,” the Stryx librarian reassured her. “Walter would probably say that your encounters with M793qK have provided you with some interesting anecdotes for the book.”

  “Sometimes I think Walter’s target audience for these books is aliens who want to laugh at us. He could advertise EarthCent For Humans during Grenouthian documentaries about how primitive we are.”

  “You asked me to warn you one minute before the start of your steering committee meeting.”

  “Thank you. Did I lock the door?”

  “Yes, and Judith came by to sweep for listening devices earlier today.”

  “I don’t know why Clive keeps on sending people over here to do counterintelligence scans. They never seem to find anything anymore.”

  “They always find something, but you requested that they give those reports to Donna back when you were busy with our guests from the Cayl Empire,” Libby reminded her. “I suspect Donna considers it to be such a routine matter at this point that she doesn’t want to bug you.”

  “Were you just making a pun?” Kelly asked suspiciously.

  A large hologram flickered to life, and without moving from her chair, the ambassador found herself sitting at a conference table across from Stephen Beyer, the president of EarthCent. The other ambassadors on the Intelligence Steering Committee began popping into the hologram immediately afterwards, and they all exchanged brief greetings.

  “What’s new with Flower?” the president asked as soon as everybody settled in. “I can’t tell you how excited we all are about the prospect of having access to reliable interstellar transportation with such incredible cargo capacity and living space. I get a hundred new utilization suggestions coming across my desk every day.”

  “She’s parked not far from the station and everything seems to be going smoothly,” Kelly said. “I haven’t been out to visit yet myself, but my son was appointed to the Open University committee that’s supposed to help refit Flower for our mission. To be honest, I’m not sure why the Stryx wanted alien students involved. I suggested sending the ship to Earth where you could start bringing up people and materials on the elevator, but our station librarian informed me that fitting out here was part of the deal.”

  “Deal with who?” Svetlana Zerakova asked. “The Dollnicks?”

  “The deal with Flower. She operates independently at this point. From what my son told me, the Dollnicks see her mission with us as a sort of punishment, after which they might be willing to accept her back into colony ship service.”

  “I’ve spoken to a number of the alien ambassadors on my station about Flower,” Ambassador Tamil said. “My Verlock friend told me that the spontaneous creation of AI through complexity that characterizes the Dollnick colony ships has a history of mixed results. And my four-armed colleague, with whom I have an excellent relationship, said that Flower should be a perfect match for Eccentric Enterprises. I’m afraid he was hinting that the ship’s AI is, well, eccentric.”

  “That certainly appears to be the case, but the Stryx are guaranteeing her good behavior, so we shouldn’t have anything to worry about,” Kelly said.

  “Acceptable behavior,” Libby murmured over the ambassador’s implant.

  “Acceptable behavior,” Kelly corrected herself immediately. “Daniel’s sovereign human communities are extremely enthusiastic about the circuit ship idea and they’ve all offered their support. But my husband had some experience working police duty for aliens back when he was a mercenary and he brought up an interesting point about law enforcement on outposts and independent colonies.”

  “They aren’t on Earth so our laws don’t apply,” the president guessed.

  “Correct. Daniel informs me that the communities on open worlds tend to adopt the local alien laws since the
y’ve already lived under them for decades as contract workers and can access an existing judicial system. Those worlds belong to the host species in any case, so their planetary law will always trump local regulations.”

  “Are you saying that if we’re going to help those communities by training police and building up a legal infrastructure of our own, we’re going to have to base everything on alien jurisprudence?” Ambassador White asked. “Where are we going to find the personnel to support them?”

  “Stations and open worlds,” Ambassador Enoksen suggested. “My daughter-in-law has been studying Drazen contract law for years, and she handles small claims cases for merchants on the station. She told me that none of the alien species require lawyers to present credentials in their courts, but there’s no appeal for poor representation, so all of the risk falls on the client.”

  “Don’t sell Earth short,” the president chided them. “The alien businesses we’ve brought in have extensive dealings with locals, and since extraterritorial status was part of the deal for their facilities, they conduct business according to their own legal systems whenever it’s advantageous for them to do so. In addition, our attorneys who work with other species have experience in Earth’s system as well, which makes them ideal for helping to set up a hybrid system.”

  “How about judges?” Ambassador Fu inquired. “Providing police and lawyers is one thing, but somebody has to hear the cases. I’m skeptical that aliens will agree to appear in any courts we might set up anytime in the foreseeable future.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” the president said. “The goal here is to support humans who aren’t already living under a well-established government. Anywhere that there’s a host species providing access to its own court system is a different story. But I talk with quite a few businessmen from open worlds when they come to Earth seeking markets for their goods, and they say that the aliens grant them nearly full autonomy and prefer for them to handle their own affairs. Humans living on Stryx stations probably have less freedom.”

  “But the Stryx hardly have any laws at all,” Svetlana protested.

  “Laws which they enforce without fail,” Ambassador White said thoughtfully. “Anyone who chooses to live on a Stryx station, human or otherwise, has accepted the tradeoffs of a full surveillance society. Premeditated crimes are rare because our hosts intervene before they can happen.”

  “I’ve been talking with the ambassadors on my station as well, and I think that my lovely Vergallian colleague may have stumbled onto something while she was trying to insult me,” Ambassador Tamil said. “Her thesis is that neither the Stryx nor Flower herself would see any point in visiting Earth for the purpose of outfitting as we have nothing of value there to bring to the stars.”

  “That’s poppycock, Raj,” the president replied. “We’re already in negotiations with what’s left of the old Norwegian government to split the contents of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault with them. Hildy convinced the caretakers that there’s no better way to ensure the perpetuation of flora genes than to spread them to other worlds.”

  “Then why are negotiations necessary?”

  “After the Stryx opened Earth and the foundation money dried up, the local families have been maintaining the vault as a community project. They presented us with a bill for unpaid labor and materials.”

  “Have you checked with the Stryx about sending the seeds out in the diplomatic bag?” Kelly asked.

  “We’re talking about a million unique seed types, with multiple copies for all of them,” the president replied patiently. “Given the bulk and the preference for refrigeration during the trip, I’ve asked our friends at Drazen Foods to handle the shipping arrangements. Assuming we can meet the demands of the Norwegians, the first batch will be headed up to the elevator hub with a shipment of fresh hot peppers at the end of the month. We’ll be parking containers of supplies in orbit for Flower to pick up when she swings by Earth at the start of her mission.”

  “You should hire on a few Gem agronomists to clone the seedlings,” Svetlana suggested. “They work cheap and they piled up a lot of experience with plant seeds while restoring their own agricultural base so they could do away with that terrible factory food drink.”

  “I’ll do that,” Kelly said, making a mental note.

  “How about furniture?” Ambassador Enoksen asked. “I don’t know how many crew members we are ultimately hoping to send along or how many Flower will accept, but Dollnick furniture is too tall for us, and the extra arms mean that even their kid-sized chairs are built to the wrong proportions.”

  “I’ll suggest that too, but if we end up drawing most of the ship’s complement from sovereign human communities, they’ll be used to their own style of furnishing, which is heavily influenced by alien cultures,” Kelly answered pragmatically. “We would like to create a world-class library on Flower, so I’m hoping Earth can help out with that.”

  “I’ll put somebody on it immediately,” the president said.

  “Paper books?” Ambassador Fu inquired.

  “Of course,” Kelly said defensively. “There’s plenty of room, and it’s not like Flower is a Frunge ship. And my son-in-law is going to look around for old carnival rides that can be fixed up while he and my daughter are visiting Earth.”

  “I like it,” the president said. “Anything we can do to get people to visit the ship and participate in our outreach programs is a positive. A library and an amusement park should be major draws for isolated communities.”

  “What are we doing to prepare for the intelligence side of the mission?” Raj asked. “I assume this is too good an opportunity for the Oxfords to let slide.”

  “They’re working up what Clive called a comprehensive plan and he asked for our patience until it’s completed,” Kelly said. “But if you’re willing, I have some questions I’d like to ask while I have you all here. The bandwidth is being paid out of EarthCent Intelligence’s budget and it would be a shame to waste it. It’s EarthCent business, sort of.”

  “Sort of?” Svetlana asked.

  “I’ve been invited to write a book in the For Humans series, about EarthCent, to be specific. But it turns out that they create most of these books on an assembly line, with a lot of the text provided by moonlighting reporters and intelligence analysts. What the publisher wants me for is to jazz it up with some insider diplomatic stories.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard for you,” the president said. “You’ve been on more first contact missions than any of us, and none of the other ambassadors can boast your level of involvement with the Stryx.”

  “The style of these books doesn’t really allow for stories where I’d have enough space to provide the context. Any of us could write an entire book about even a single diplomatic experience. This is more of a…” she hesitated.

  “An entertainment product,” Ambassador White suggested.

  “Yes,” Kelly admitted. “They want bite-sized anecdotes about cultural misunderstandings, accidental food poisoning, things like that.”

  “We’ve all had plenty of those,” Belinda said ruefully. “One time at a Drazen reception, I held their ambassador’s drink while he thumb-wrestled his brother, who was visiting the station. They were so evenly matched that it went on forever, so I lost track of which glass was which and accidentally took a sip from his.”

  “And you’re alive to tell the story?”

  “It burned my lips so badly that I instinctively spit it out without swallowing. Our station librarian had a med bot on the scene before the pain really hit, and it knocked me out with a sedative and took me to med bay for reconstructive surgery. I woke up at home without even a hangover, so it wasn’t that bad as far as diplomatic parties go.”

  “My first diplomatic visit to the Grenouthian embassy I misunderstood their traditions and went naked,” Ambassador Oshi contributed.

  “I thought you were snoozing over there, Carlos,” the president commented. “And how did the bunnies react?
”

  “Their ambassador’s aide whipped off his sash and draped it from my shoulder to my knee so it covered my private parts. I almost caused another diplomatic incident by offering to return it to him after the reception. He requested that I burn it.”

  “Can I use your name?” Kelly asked.

  The ambassador shrugged. “It’s not a secret. Didn’t you see the Grenouthian documentary about alien diplomatic faux pas? Come to think of it, that could be a good source of material for you.”

  “And a good place to advertise the book,” the Corner Station ambassador suggested.

  “You might use my experience going to the rescue of a Frunge revenue agent who had been marooned on an abandoned mining asteroid by the local moonshiners,” Ambassador Fu offered.

  “I never heard that story, Zhao,” the president said. “Did it happen before you joined EarthCent?”

  “No, this was during my vacation last year. My wife and I rented a Frunge sunboat. You know, the kind that are supposed to be so safe that children can sail them?”

  “Did you get caught up in the background microwave radiation?” Svetlana asked. “It happened to us our first time out.”

  “So you know what it’s like. I picked up the revenue agent’s open distress call and tacked for the source, but the rudder stopped responding, and no matter how I repositioned the magnetic envelope, I couldn’t change course again. It was like canoeing in whitewater without a paddle.”

  “So you needed to call for rescue yourself?” Kelly asked.

  “Actually, the Frunge revenue agent saw that we were going to miss her beacon and get smashed up in the asteroid belt, so she risked her life using up her suit’s oxygen supply to blast off her asteroid and intercept us. As soon as she made it through the airlock, she took over the controls and reengaged the background radiation compensator. I thought the status light was supposed to be green, but it’s a danger color for them.”

  “That’s not half as bad as the time I picked up the Drazen ambassador’s three-year-old at a private dinner party,” Svetlana said. “I didn’t know that his white nightshirt meant that he was in his tentacling phase where they instinctively latch onto anything and squeeze to build up the muscles. He wrapped his tentacle around my throat, and at first I was afraid to pull it off for fear of hurting him. Then it was so tight that I couldn’t even work my fingers underneath, and if the ambassador’s dog hadn’t started barking to get everybody’s attention, I would have died right there in the playroom.”