Vacation on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 7) (12 page)

Kelly looked again and saw a long series of stairs twisting their way up the surface of the mound. There was even a handrail, but it was welded together out of different pieces, with extra bits sticking out away from the treads, which effectively camouflaged the stairway. Actually, the effect was rather artistic.

“You built this yourself, Jeeves?” Kelly asked. She was somewhat impressed the Stryx would go to the trouble of getting the aesthetics right.

“I got Dring to help me,” Jeeves admitted. “He wanted to come visit you anyway, and he’s waiting on the other side.”

The thought of seeing Dring was enough to get Kelly moving up the stairs behind Beowulf, who was already several steps above the deck and beginning to climb more rapidly. Despite its appearance, the handrail proved to be free of burrs and sharp edges, and she saw that the stairs were all carefully welded in place by expert hands.

“Joe,” she called back over her shoulder. “You may as well get the kids moving over this stuff so we can set up camp. They can always come back and play in the junk piles later.”

The exoskeleton suit Joe occupied lifted a hand in acknowledgement. When Kelly reached the top of the stairs, somewhat out of breath, she turned and saw six robotic figures picking their way over the scrap mounds. For a second she thought the group was being chased by one of the original occupants of the deck, but then she remembered that Metoo was also encased in an exoskeleton. They were escorted by a floating Banger, who hadn’t donned a suit, perhaps because he doubted his ability to count to infinity.

“Just climb in and pull down the safety bar,” Jeeves said. Kelly delayed until the robotic figures disappeared over the crest of the scrap mountain range where it nearly reached the ceiling. Beowulf hopped into the front of the boxy vehicle, where he waited anxiously to get started so they could catch up with the rest of his pack. Kelly seated herself on the small bench and pulled the padded yoke down over her head and chest.

“Is this really necessary?” she asked Jeeves. “If you’re going to carry us there, I trust you to do it without tipping the car over.”

“Carry?” Jeeves said, and Kelly would have sworn that the immobile face of the exoskeleton suit the Stryx was wearing lifted an eyebrow. “That would violate the whole spirit of the thing. While Dring was welding, I carefully created a magnetized path to your destination, and believe you me, maintaining polarity in such a jumble is no easy task. I added a coil and an off-the-shelf magnetic levitation controller to the car so you can float there in style, though you’ll never be more than a hand’s breadth away from the surface.”

“Oh, that sounds nice. But how does it go uphill?”

“Don’t worry,” Jeeves replied. “The magnetic repulsion and interlock is frictionless, so I just have to give you a good shove. At least, I think it will work, but we didn’t have time to test it with a load.”

“JEEVES!”

Kelly tried to lift the yoke, but it was locked in place, and she was suddenly flattened against the seatback by the acceleration of the power-assisted push-off. The cart started down the mound, gaining speed as it went, but bouncing like it was about to fly off into space at any second.

“J-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-V-V-E-S!” Kelly screamed, the sound rising and falling with the strong vibrations.

Beowulf curled up in his crash position and resolved to bite the Stryx trickster if he ever saw Jeeves in a form that wouldn’t break a dog’s teeth.

The cart slowed almost to a stop at the top of the next scrap hill, and Kelly saw her family working their way up the side of the adjacent mound. She waved frantically as the cart began to gain speed again, and then she saw that they were approaching an unlikely loop structure. She shut her eyes and screamed as the cart entered the loop and she found herself momentarily upside-down.

Five terrifying minutes later, the cart came to a halt, and she heard a click as her safety yoke released. Beowulf cautiously lifted his head, sniffed the air, and gingerly climbed out. Kelly waited another minute to make sure the cart wasn’t going to start moving again, and then she followed the dog.

“Over here,” Dring called. He was standing at a round table under a large umbrella that reminded her of a beachfront café on Earth where her parents had brought the family to vacation when she was a child. “I made you a pot of tea. Did you like my stairway?”

“Dring,” Kelly replied shakily. “How could you conspire with Jeeves to scare me out of my wits? And I thought poor Beowulf was going to be sick.”

“What was scary?” Dring asked. “I made the stairway perfectly stable, and I’m sure Jeeves wouldn’t operate the roller coaster outside of the safety limitations. I’m looking forward to riding it myself.”

“Roller coaster? He didn’t say—I should have known he was up to something!”

“Did you like the loop? I sketched it out based on a memory of a roller coaster I rode on Horten Four many years ago.”

“There was a roller coaster in the amusement park near the beach where my parents used to take us. By the time I was tall enough to go on it, they changed the admissions requirement to a minimum age of eighteen for insurance reasons, and kids couldn’t ride even with parental consent.”

“So this was your first time,” Dring surmised. “You did very well. I only heard the one prolonged scream, assuming that was you and not the dog.”

Beowulf gave the Maker a haughty stare, then turned and trotted off in the direction where he expected the rest of the family to appear.

“I don’t get it, Dring. I thought Gryph was keeping all of these decks intact in case the owners reappeared or because the Stryx hate to throw away a garden, but there’s nothing but scrap metal and assorted junk around here.

“Isn’t it great? I’ve already gotten Gryph’s permission to use whatever I want to create sculptures, and Jeeves asked me to work with him and Paul on extending the roller coaster so it goes all around the circumference of the deck. I’ve been thinking it would be fun to put a twist in the middle, like a Mobius strip, except riders would be upside-down for half of the route. Maybe that’s why I’ve never seen it done before.”

“But what if the original owners return and they don’t like roller coasters?”

“The Plangers?” Dring asked in surprise. “But they died out long ago, the entire race. Miserable sentients, they made the Brupt look like sentimentalists by comparison. I suspect the only people who were sorry to see them go were the Alterians, since the Plangers went through fuel packs like crazy and never developed their own. They were accidental space-farers, now that I think about it. They were barely out of their stone age when a well-meaning species came along and gifted them with advanced technology. The Plangers just rushed from one labor-saving measure to the next, until they had nothing to do all day but sit around in their exoskeletons getting injected with recreational drugs.”

Beowulf began to bark happily, and Kelly looked over to see her family starting down the last slope. Even with the mechanical assist from their robot suits, there was no way they could have traveled the same distance as her in that time. Clearly, the roller coaster had followed the long way around. She was going to give Jeeves a piece of her mind if he ever came out of hiding.

Twelve

“So whose bright idea was it to give a soapbox speech at the organics recycling center on a Saturday morning?” Shaina inquired. Walter and Daniel were both covered with spatters of rotten fruit and vegetables, and the HEEL organizer even had a wilted piece of lettuce peeking out from the breast pocket of his suit like a handkerchief.

“It was a directive from my boss,” Walter explained. “Go where the people are. It made sense at the time.”

“Speaking of time, you’re lucky you arrived so late, Shaina, or you could have been covered in future compost as well,” Daniel said, removing a bit of celery from behind his ear. “On the bright side, nobody throws away whole eggs, and the empty shells don’t carry due to wind resistance.”

“It’s not luck, it’s good housekeeping,” she replied, displaying a plastic pail. “I stopped to pick-up Brinda’s and my father’s scraps as well. What did Walter say to get them so upset this time?”

“Oh, the usual thing,” Daniel replied. “He was doing really well for a few minutes, people were stopping and listening, and there was even some applause. But then he got onto how we’re all pampered pets that the Stryx are fattening for the kill, and I got a lesson in guilt by association.”

“I thought you grew out of that,” Shaina admonished Walter, sounding very much like a stern mother whose child keeps insisting that the neighbor girl has cooties.

“I did, but it was in the directive,” Walter said sadly, surveying the damage to his suit. “Do you know a good dry cleaner?”

“Just ask our Stryx oppressors,” Shaina replied tartly. “And didn’t it occur to you that people who do their recycling on Saturday morning all have jobs, and that many of them would be offended by an accusation that they’re charity cases? What’s the deal with you anyway? The mystery woman from HEEL tells you to bash the Stryx and you bash the Stryx?”

“That’s why I asked Daniel to come and record it for me,” Walter said. “They want evidence that I’m working.”

The junior consul held up a compact immersive-quality mobile camera that Shaina hadn’t noticed amidst the overall tossed-salad effect of their appearance. There was a white substance that looked like mayonnaise on the lens.

“I hope that’s not a rental,” she said.

“HEEL sent it for recording my appearances,” Walter explained. “It’s all time-stamped, of course, so it gives them a way to check up on me. That’s why I figured I better put in the talking points they insist on. It’s my first job outside of student teaching, you know. I’d always heard that things were tougher in the real world, but I didn’t think it would be this hard. Whatever happened to free speech?”

“Well, there’s no point in standing around here looking like yesterday’s lunch,” Shaina told them. “Clive pinged me earlier and asked that I bring you both into his office for a chat.”

“Are you an EarthCent Intelligence agent too?” Walter asked.

“Part-time,” Shaina admitted. “It fits in with the auction circuit and I get free access to the business intelligence. We used to pay for a subscription to their all-species bankruptcy listings to receive leads for auction merchandise.”

“How about we all meet at InstaSitter in fifteen minutes?” Daniel suggested.

“He means EarthCent Intelligence,” Shaina explained to Walter. “It’s his favorite bad joke.”

“I may be a little late since I want to drop off my suit,” Walter said. “I wonder if HEEL will reimburse me for the cleaning?”

“I don’t know about that, but I just subvoced Libby and she says there’s a dry cleaner in the Little Apple,” Daniel said. “I guess it made sense to locate in the middle of the restaurant district and catch people while they’re thinking about it, before the stain sets in.”

“Alright. I still have to dump my stuff, unless one of you rebels-without-a-brain wants another dose.” Shaina brandished her bucket in a mock-threatening manner, and the men headed off to their quarters to clean up.

Forty minutes later they were back together, sitting around the display desk in EarthCent Intelligence’s conference room. Thomas was present, along with Clive and Blythe, and Jeeves had floated in as well, though nobody was quite sure who had invited him.

“You have a good eye for framing the action.” Blythe offered this compliment to Daniel after the recording of Walter’s performance came to an abrupt halt with the impact of a half-eaten tuna salad sandwich, heavy on the mayo, against the lens.

“It helps that he gestures a lot while he speaks,” Daniel replied. “I could almost see the weight of the EarthCent dictatorship crushing us all into the dust before the food started flying.”

“Is it possible that your employers are trying to get you killed so they don’t have to pay you?” Thomas asked the deeply chagrined HEEL organizer.

“Don’t be too hard on Walter,” Clive said. “Our cultural attachés have been reporting similar speeches being given at every station on the tunnel network. We also have confirmation from Operation Honeymoon that the same thing is happening on the open worlds.”

“Which makes you wonder who is paying for all of this,” Blythe continued her husband’s thought. “Why plunk down the amount of creds involved here, and then proceed with the naiveté of a student movement challenging the administration to change the lunch menu to all-dessert?”

“I thought that sending the camera and demanding proof-of-performance with a list of talking points was a major step-up in professionalism,” Daniel said. “It’s their platform that’s the problem. Most humans are open to talking about self-government, at least until you get to the part about taxes. But people react badly when you tell them that they’re stooges and that their benefactors, the Stryx, are secretly plotting their demise.”

“I could be secretly plotting,” Jeeves contributed. Everybody ignored him.

“Whoever is running HEEL must know that the message isn’t working by now,” Clive said. “Don’t you submit reports, Walter?”

“Sure, but I got back a copy of my employment agreement with the section about adhering to the organization’s platform circled in red. And there was another holo-cube course, apparently an update to the last one.”

“A new twist on multi-level grassroots organizing?” Shaina asked.

“I haven’t played it yet. The package showed up this morning just as I was heading out, but I brought the first couple cubes in case you want to watch. There’s something about this whole thing that makes me think it’s better to have witnesses.”

“Fire away,” Clive told him.

Walter reached in his pocket and pulled out a holo-cube. He looked around for something to throw it against before settling on the ceiling. Apparently he didn’t put enough muscle into the toss because the cube bounced off without releasing the holo-recording. Jeeves fielded it and crushed the cube in his pincer.

“Welcome to the Human Expatriates Election League orientation course, revision A,” the beautiful masked woman addressed them from the hologram. “If you watched the previous version of this series, please forget it, and destroy any unopened cubes by boiling them in water until they dissolve.”

“I bet she tells you to drink the water,” Blythe interjected rapidly.

“The water can be used for hot beverages or as stock for a nutritious soup,” the instructor continued. “Remember, an army marches on its stomach.” Her head and shoulders began shifting from side to side, and the cameras zoomed out, showing that she was marching in place.

Walter slouched in his chair and Daniel patted him on the back sympathetically. The cameras continued to pull back, and the hologram now showed tens, then hundreds, then thousands of animated figures marching in lock-step with the instructor. There was an awkward splice, after which the hologram picked up with the second half of the content from the previous first cube of the series.

“That was…different,” Shaina commented. “Shall we go for two?”

Walter reluctantly dug another cube out of his pocket, checked the number, and passed it to Jeeves. Before the Stryx crushed the cube, he turned it over, observing the markings. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, holding it up to the light, an action he surely didn’t need to perform given the suite of built-in sensors at his command.

“Can you tell who manufactured it?” Clive asked, catching on that the Stryx was trying to hint at something.

“The Hortens are the only manufacturers of one-shot holo-cubes on the tunnel network. Economies of scale and all that,” Jeeves replied. “Some of the advanced species can reverse-engineer the spent crystals to trace the recording, but I’m sure you knew that already or I wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“You mean it’s not just a concentrated cube of light and sound that disperses as it plays?” Shaina asked.

“Holo-cubes are made from a packed matrix of microscopic crystals,” Jeeves said. “Of course, they’re almost indistinguishable from common dust once they’ve given up their energy, and merely blowing on them would disperse the crystals over such a wide area as to render collecting enough to analyze a difficult task.”

Blythe looked at Jeeves speculatively and then slid him her empty coffee mug. The Stryx held the holo-cube just above the rim and squeezed.

“Welcome back to the HEEL course in multi-level organizing,” the beautiful instructor said. It appeared to be the same recording they had watched the previous week, with the action taking place in an outdoor market, crowded with crude animations of pedestrians and merchandise hawkers.

“Just watch how it works as I start to recruit downliners,” she continued on script. “Let’s begin with him.”

Her first victim was still dressed in a Victorian suit that could have been from the wardrobe of one of Kelly’s favorite authors, and he again halted in front of their instructor and waited. This time the splice was only detectable because the gentlemen’s blink stopped halfway and started again.

“Would you like to earn extra money while working for human self-government?”

“With all of my heart,” the man replied.

“And what would you say if I offered you ten millicreds a month for each person you signed up, plus five millicreds for each person they signed up?” the instructor continued.

“God save the King, I’ll do it,” the animated figure declared.

“Here’s a hundred creds on account,” the beautiful woman said, handing the gentlemen a cartoonish bag of coins. “Keep careful records or your local HEEL organizer won’t be able to disburse future payments.”

A gold line popped into existence between the woman and her paid activist. The man quickly purchased the loyalty of another passerby, and a green line was established between the two. The hologram sped up, and the space above the conference table rapidly filled with multi-colored lines. Finally, the cameras zoomed back in on the masked woman, who gathered all of the gold lines in her hands and pulled. All of the people in the marketplace fell flat on their faces.

“I’m ready for the election,” she said cheerfully. “In the next cube, I’ll show you how to convince your paid supporters that they are choosing you of their own free will.” The hologram dissolved.

“I quit!” Walter howled. “This is worse than going to graduate school and being forced to pretend that I agreed with everybody’s conflicting theories about non-events, all for a lousy stipend.”

Blythe put a saucer on top of her coffee mug and then she placed the assembly on the sideboard for safe keeping. Later she could ask Tinka to send it to Herl for analysis.

“I really wanted to give HEEL the benefit of the doubt, but they do seem a bit nefarious,” Daniel said. “If their idea of self-government is bribing people to vote for their paymasters, I don’t see how EarthCent can support their call for free elections.”

“Funny, but I was thinking just the opposite.” Clive said. He winked at his wife. Blythe flashed him a look of comprehension and began to fish around in the drawer of the sideboard. Whatever she was searching for was buried by a variety of bottle openers, stirrers, disposable chopsticks, and lots of take-out packages of ketchup, mustard and duck sauce. “I’m convinced that you’re a good guy, Walter, and I respect a man who quits a job over ethical considerations. But what if you could do the right thing and earn twice as much as you’re making now?”

“That doesn’t sound possible,” Walter replied. The sudden grins of his companions made him suspicious he was being set up as the butt of some insider joke. Blythe returned to the table and dropped something right in front of the former HEEL organizer.

Walter looked down at the button and read, “I’m a double agent for the humans.”

“You’ll keep drawing your salary and expenses from HEEL, and we’ll match it,” Clive told him. “I wouldn’t have interfered with a genuine self-government movement whether I agreed with it or not, but there’s something going on here that needs to be investigated.”

“But even if I wanted to do it, I don’t know anything,” Walter protested. “It’s like being an undergrad again. I get my marching orders from on high, and now they even require video evidence that I’m toeing the line.”

“I see it as a classic two-way operation,” Thomas said. “Disinformation in, information out. We need to turn Walter into HEEL’s top organizer.”

“Agreed,” Blythe said, and the EarthCent Intelligence crew began discussing their potential new asset as if he weren’t in the room. “Walter does a pretty good job with the public speaking, but as soon as he begins telling people what they don’t want to hear, he loses them.”