by E. M. Foner
“Is their argument valid?” Lume asked.
“Unfortunately, there’s something to it, though I’m sure I would prevail in a Dollnick court,” Flower said. “I don’t trust these Wanderers and I want you all to pitch in and help me keep an eye on them.”
“You want us to spy on your guests?” The Grenouthian did a drum roll on his belly in amusement.
“The Wanderers make trouble wherever they go, and we’re stuck with this bunch until their ship is back in working order. The Stryx have agreed to reimburse any direct expenses I incur, but if I could pay a substantial sum and see the Miklat on its way tomorrow, I would do so. There’s no telling what effect the Wanderers will have on the morale of my inhabitants. Or their morals, for that matter.”
“Does everybody have enough?” Bill asked, returning with the big bowl of seaweed.
“Put it at this end,” the Grenouthian directed the young man. “And I could use a ladle to get the liquid out.”
“Use a teacup,” Yaem suggested, and patted the seat of the chair on his open side. “Sit with us, Bill. You’re in the intelligence business now so you should be hearing all of this.”
“Reluctantly,” Bill said, sitting down where his Sharf handler had indicated. “Can I tell them about the, uh, thing?”
“What thing?” the Sharf asked through a mouthful of beans, and then swallowed. “You mean meeting my boss? Sure, go ahead.”
“Is Yaem’s superior checking up on him?” Avisia inquired, looking rather amused.
“Our boss is suspicious because the reports you guys helped Yaem with while he’s been busy working for Flower are too good,” Bill explained. “Then he asked me to write up my impressions of all of you, but I wanted to get your permission first.”
“Ooh, a polite spy. What is it that makes Humans so naïve?”
“As long as I get bean porridge once a week, you can write whatever you want about me,” Razood offered generously. “I’ll even give you my impressions of the others if you run out of things to say.”
“Sorry I’m late, everybody,” Jorb said, taking the last open chair at the table. “Write whatever you want about me, Bill, but leave Rinka out of it.”
“Everybody is here now, so let me bring you up to date while you eat,” Flower said. “You probably all know that I’ve taken the Miklat in tow so I can get back underway before our schedule is irreversibly impacted. I’ll have to shave an hour or two from each stop for the rest of our circuit, but I don’t anticipate having to make any other changes.”
“It seems like a rather large vessel to take under tow,” Yaem ventured.
“Fortunately, it’s Dollnick-built, and our ships standardized on emergency towing protocols over a million years ago,” Flower said. “The energy drain is substantial, but the Stryx will make good my losses since this mission was initiated through their request. The main problem we face is that the Zarents are on strike.”
Lume choked on a celery stalk and Brynlan pounded the Dollnick’s back, causing the piece to dislodge and shoot across the cafeteria.
“I’ll get that,” Bill said, grabbing a napkin and going after the projectile.
“The Zarents can’t go on strike,” Lume said, half rising from his chair. “The Farlings designed them for maintaining vessels in deep space. It’s their reason for being.”
“And they’ve been evolving for longer than the Dollnicks have had interstellar travel,” the Grenouthian observed. “They aren’t slaves, and who can blame them for being fed up with the Wanderers. Is it only the Zarents on the Miklat who walked out, Flower, or did it affect the whole mob?”
“According to what the Zarents have told M793qK, the strike is only on the Miklat, though they informed their brothers of their action before the communications failed. They believe they have been systematically starved of resources needed to maintain the ship in anything approaching good working condition, and when the secondary pile failure led to so many injuries, they decided to call it quits.”
“So they laid down their tools and walked off the job,” Razood said, pushing aside his empty bowl, the second he had polished off.
“They probably laid down those cute unicycles they ride around on and kept their tools,” the Sharf said. “Haven’t any of you watched their anime series that gave us a run for the money at the awards, Wanderer Mob?”
“The absence of a mob bothers me,” the Verlock spy returned to his earlier observation. “What did their captain say?”
“He won’t talk to me, and Woojin hasn’t been able to get anything out of him on the subject,” Flower said. “The Miklat’s native AI left the ship when it was originally transferred to the Wanderers, as do all Dollnick AIs facing a similar choice. The Wanderers, in their turn, refuse to talk with us, unless it happens to suit their purposes.”
“All of the Wanderers on board are refusing to talk to you?” Bill asked on his return to the table.
“I wish,” the Dollnick AI said, sounding almost human. “It’s only on an official level they refuse to discuss anything with me—they’re perfectly happy to make demands for personal attention around the clock. The Wanderers currently on board represent less than three percent of my population, yet they are monopolizing approximately half of my language processing time.”
“Maybe they’re just settling in.”
“Don’t even think it. From this minute forward, our top priority is restoring the Miklat’s life support and sending the Wanderers on their way.”
“I won’t give you any argument there,” Avisia said. “I’ve told my finishing school students to stay away from the Con deck, but young Humans that age are reckless. I’ve taken the precaution of slipping Gem nanotrackers in their energy drinks so I can make sure they’re all still on board before the Wanderers depart.”
“Sensible precaution,” Brynlan commented, and then addressed Flower without looking up at the ceiling, “Has M793qK asked the Zarents what happened to the mob?”
“He said that it’s not an emergency so he refuses to interrogate his patients or their families until they are all out of danger,” Flower said. “While I agree that there’s a mystery involved, the only way we’re going to get rid of the Wanderers is to restore the Miklat to operation, and it’s not like the rest of the mob would help with that in any case.”
“If the Zarents are on strike, who is going to do the repairs?” Bill asked.
“I have my emergency response bots decontaminating the ship and locking down unstable systems,” Flower said. “As soon as the initial damage survey is complete, I’ll attempt to match the required tasks with available personnel, but I’m not going to hold back on activating and deploying more of my bots if that makes sense. The Miklat is a Dollnick ship, however obsolete, and I have the complete schematics and manufacturing specifications for spare parts in my archives.”
“So what do you want us to do?” Lume asked.
“Spy on the Wanderers,” the Dollnick AI replied flatly. “You have the perfect excuse since that’s already your job, and it’s an excellent opportunity for you to gather information for your employers and recruit new sources. But even Stryx stations put a hard limit on the number of Wanderers they’ll allow on board at one time, and we’re already way over that on a percentage basis. I want to head off any trouble they brew up before I have to deploy my combat bots for policing duty.”
“Keep them entertained,” the Grenouthian director advised. “It should be easy to distract such an unmotivated bunch of sentients.”
“What’s the status of the LARPing studio you were setting up?” Jorb asked. “The last I heard you were investing in hardware upgrades to allow you to handle the real-time holographic aspects.”
“I’m in the process of integrating the equipment—it hasn’t gone quite as smoothly as I’d hoped,” Flower replied.
“But you’re always boasting about how the Dollnicks design everything to work together,” Bill said.
“I didn’t exactly buy Dollnick h
ardware,” Flower admitted. “Some of the hackers from Bits claimed to be experts at systems integration, and I let them talk me into purchasing used Horten hardware a gaming tournament promoter was selling at a steep discount. But they seem to be making rapid progress, and I hope it will be ready for Beta testing in the next few days.”
Seven
“At least let us pay for breakfast,” Vivian said to Julie. “When Samuel insisted on moving out of the honeymoon suite after the week we reserved was up, I thought we’d just be taking the next available cabin. We didn’t realize that Flower would make you play real estate agent.”
“You never explained why Samuel insisted on leaving the suite,” Julie said, checking the direction of the restroom to see if Vivian’s husband was on the way back yet. “Was it the color scheme? I warned Flower about all of the pink.”
“It’s the idea of accepting anything for free,” Vivian explained. “Samuel’s mother has been EarthCent’s ambassador on Union Station as long as he’s been alive, and unlike the other species, EarthCent has rules about diplomats receiving gifts. Now that he’s officially the top diplomat of the Human Empire he thinks we should adhere to the same code of conduct.”
“And the Human Empire basically consists of the two of you?”
“On paper, we’re representing over a billion humans spread across open worlds and space habitats. In practice, they all have their own local governments, and they look to the Conference of Sovereign Human Communities to handle their trade issues. The Human Empire is supposed to eventually replace CoSHC, and ultimately, EarthCent as well. But nobody expects anything to change in the near term.”
“But on paper, are you and Samuel really the top two diplomats of a new empire?” Julie persisted.
“It doesn’t mean anything to anyone other than the Stryx,” Vivian said, handing a ten cred piece to the waitress and indicating for her to keep the change. “Anyway, I’m sorry about Flower making you play nanny for us. I don’t know why she didn’t just give us the tour herself since we both have high-grade implants. Aren’t we cutting into your writing time?”
“Really, it’s fine,” Julie said. “I put in my two hours at the keyboard before I came out to meet you guys for breakfast, and I save my research for before bed.”
“Can you get work done right before you go to sleep? I would end up lying awake all night thinking about unfinished business.”
“Did I make it sound like work? My research is reading through the D’Arc backlist. There have been seven different authors in the line since the start of the twenty-first century. If everything works out the way it’s planned, I’ll eventually take over from Bianca the Seventh, but that’s at least ten years away. Bianca the Sixth moved on board after MultiCon, and once a week we sit down for a few hours and she helps me with plotting and characterizations.”
“Then you’re taking time off from your other jobs to show us around,” Vivian said, obviously concerned that she and Samuel were imposing.
“Flower made me her executive assistant and now I work for her full time, if not around the clock,” Julie said. “If I wasn’t here, I’d be stuck in my office trying to put together a scale model of a Sharf two-man trader.”
“Is she going into the toy business?”
“No, she’s trying to teach me something about space engineering since she’s opening a shipyard, but the whole schedule got put on hold by the Wanderer rescue. Flower used her discretionary stop this circuit to pick up all of the old factory tooling from a Sharf world, but nobody has even had the chance to start setting it up. As soon as it’s safe to go across to the Miklat, Flower’s going to send over the people she hired for the shipyard to get a little practical experience in jury-rigged repairs.”
“Is this really what girls talk about when guys are in the bathroom?” Samuel asked, looking impressed. He remained standing rather than taking his seat, an obvious sign that he was ready to get moving. “I’m beginning to lose faith in the accuracy of Vergallian dramas.”
“It can’t happen too soon,” Vivian said with a vehemence that took Julie by surprise. “Are you ready to look at temporary apartments, Mr. I-can’t-accept-free-lodgings-in-a-suite?”
“Come on, you know in your heart that you agree with me,” the EarthCent ambassador’s son said, ignoring his wife’s exasperated look. “Besides, it’s good practice for when we get back to Union Station. We already agreed we’re not moving in with our parents.”
“Would they have enough space?” Julie asked. She rose and took a second to locate the direction of the exit, never having eaten in the expensive dairy restaurant before. “I’ve heard Flower brag that her residential cabins are larger than the ones humans rent on Union Station.”
“That’s because all of Flower’s cabins were originally sized for Dollnicks, but everything on Union Station is custom-built,” Samuel said. “Vivian’s parents have a pretty big three-bedroom, though their Cayl hound makes it seem smaller. My folks live in a large hold right on Union Station’s core that was a junkyard when my dad took it over. They actually have plenty of room for free-standing structures.”
“My twin brother and his wife are staying with my parents for the time being, because she travels all the time to race floaters, and he isn’t in a hurry to live alone,” Vivian added, and then noticed Julie’s hesitation to lead the way. “You can’t be lost, can you?”
“It’s just that I’ve never been in here before and I rarely walk through this area of the food court,” Julie said, and then pointed. “But I’m sure the closest lift tube is over there.”
Julie set off, with Samuel and Vivian following her single file as they worked their way out of the crowded restaurant. Once they reached the lift tube, she requested the main residential deck, and thirty seconds later they stepped out of the capsule into a familiar scene.
“Isn’t that the library?” Vivian asked, looking up the corridor.
“There must have been a glitch,” Julie said. She turned back to the lift tube but the doors had already closed. “Flower?” she subvoced. “Is something wrong?”
“The space you’re showing is just around the other side of the spoke,” the Dollnick AI responded. “I’ll open the door when you get there.”
“Flower says it’s just around the other side, if circles can have sides,” Julie told the apartment hunters. “The weird thing is that Jorb’s dojo is that direction and I thought it was all commercial space over there.”
Samuel shrugged and started around the structural spoke that the lift tube ran through. The two young women followed him, and a set of double doors that Julie had never noticed before slid open when they reached the other side.
“Why are the lights off, Flower?” Julie asked out loud.
“There’s a proximity sensor, I’m conserving energy,” Flower replied via the nearest speaker grid. “You have to step inside.”
This time Vivian led the way, triggering the night vision implant she’d received while working for Drazen Intelligence. The moment the three of them were inside, the door slid shut, and then a spotlight came up illuminating a gold emblem worked into the marble floor.
“Human Empire?” Samuel read the Gothic script incredulously. “What is this?”
“I only had a week to prepare so I hope you like it,” Flower said, bringing up the full lighting. They were standing in front of a semi-circular reception desk, the Human Empire motif repeated on the vertical section, and there were some modernistic looking benches to the side under a sign that read, ‘Waiting area.”
“Why does it smell so good in here?” Vivian asked. “Is that something baking?”
“Chocolate chip cookies,” the Dollnick AI confirmed. “I had a bot pick up the dough from Flower Foods this morning and put it in the kitchen oven. It’s supposed to make house-hunters feel at home.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to tell them that part, Flower,” Julie said.
“My legal counsel insists that full disclosure is best
in real estate deals.”
“Is that an all-species conference room?” Samuel asked, pointing through an open archway at a large conference table with different sizes and types of chairs.
“I modeled it after the one at your mother’s embassy,” Flower said. “I had Dewey capture images for me the last time he was there.”
“You do understand that I wanted to downsize from the honeymoon suite to something we could afford for the next twelve weeks,” Samuel said slowly, not wanting to offend the ship’s AI, who had obviously gone to great lengths preparing the surprise. “We’re just interested in a regular cabin with a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchenette. This looks like some sort of luxury complex with a reception desk and shared facilities for professionals. How many residential units are in here?”
“You’ve got downsizing on the brain,” Vivian said. “Flower doesn’t expect us to live here—she wants us to establish an embassy for the Human Empire on board.”
“What?”
“It’s premium space with easy lift tube access, and the library is right down the corridor for all of your research needs,” Flower pitched them over the room’s public address system. “It comes with an attached suite that’s connected to his-and-her offices by hidden passages. If you want an additional cabin for the sake of appearances, I’ve got a unit coming open right across the corridor from Julie’s”
“Bill lives right across the corridor from me,” Julie objected.
“He can move into your cabin. The two of you aren’t getting any younger.”
“We’re barely in our twenties!”
“Just hold on a minute,” Samuel said, and even as the words came out of his mouth, it struck him that he sounded like his father when the senior McAllister thought an alien was trying to get something past him. “You’re going so fast that I can’t keep up. We don’t even have office space on Union Station and you expect us to set up an embassy here?”
“A headquarters,” the Dollnick AI corrected him. “An empire has to start somewhere, anybody can tell you that. I’m a member in good standing, so why not start here? It makes much more sense than basing the Human Empire out of Union Station. I visit fifty sovereign human communities a year, and I’m working on an arrangement with the Traders Guild to become the exclusive supplier of new two-man ships just as soon as I get the Sharf production line up and running.”
