Vacation on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 7) (16 page)

“I guess we panicked,” Eli admitted.

“Over an order of day-old chocolate chip cookies?”

Thomas was about to do what he could save the situation when Libby pinged him.

“You better get over to the Frunge weaponry section,” the Stryx librarian told him. “I asked Gryph to hold off on sending in the security bots, but he won’t hesitate if he thinks that bystanders are in danger.”

Thomas consulted his internal mapping system and sprinted through the Shuk by the most direct route, leaping over startled shoppers in two instances. In less than a minute he arrived at the concentrated section of Frunge armourers, complete with several operational smithies. Thomas immediately spotted Judith backed into a space between two suits of armor, brandishing a rapier before her. Walter stood back-to-back with her, holding a two-bladed battle axe like he was afraid he was going to accidentally amputate one of his own limbs.

“Put the axe down,” an irate Frunge shouted at Walter. “I told you it’s a museum-quality replica and it’s not for sale.”

“What’s happening here?” Thomas demanded, pushing through the ring of amused Frunge weapons sellers and blacksmiths, none of who appeared intimidated by the armed humans. “Judith. Why are you waving that sword around?”

“He started it,” she yelled, pointing the rapier tip at a young Frunge clerk who was holding a plastic box. “He said he had a pre-paid order waiting for pick-up, but that their code of ethics prohibits delivering weapons to anybody who can’t demonstrate the ability to handle them.”

“Ah, hello,” Thomas addressed the young clerk. “You sold me a fine collection of throwing knives yesterday. They were on sale.”

“The Assassin’s Special,” the clerk confirmed. “And you threw a test knife down the crossbow range to prove your ability. But we never saw these two do anything, and when I offered that man a knife to throw, he jumped back and grabbed the axe.”

“He didn’t understand you. He’s recently arrived from Earth and he doesn’t have an implant,” Thomas explained.

“What did he say?” Walter demanded in English.

“He was handing you a knife to demonstrate your skills but you jumped back and grabbed the axe,” Thomas repeated in English.

“Point first!” Walter objected. “Who hands somebody a knife point first? And with the terrible noise he was making, I thought he was attacking me.”

“It’s a special throwing knife for target practice, you hold it by the blade,” Thomas explained patiently. “By offering it to you point first, he was just being considerate. Now put the axe down before you scratch it.”

Walter looked at the Frunge suspiciously, but he laid the axe back on the display table, which was covered in a plush velvety-type substance. Judith reluctantly slid the slender sword back into its scabbard and took a step towards an umbrella-stand-like holder which contained a number of swords.

“I wouldn’t sell the male a spoon for fear he’d hurt himself eating soup,” the Frunge merchant remarked to Thomas, not caring whether or not Walter could understand him. “Your female servant looks like she’s had a few lessons. Perhaps you would like to add the sword to your purchase?”

“How much?” Judith asked, still holding onto the hilt.

“Three hundred creds,” the merchant replied. The head vines of the Frunge who had gathered for the unplanned show rustled with silent laughter.

“Hold on a second,” Thomas said, as Judith fished for her programmable cred. The artificial person had never been much of a shopper, but he had received plenty of pointers from Lynx over the years, and he wanted to make a good impression in front of his trainees. “That’s a ten-cred rapier if I’ve ever seen one. You wouldn’t keep any weapons you cared about all jumbled together like that.”

“I just got those in,” the Frunge said. “Those are war spoils from a tech-ban world and I haven’t really had a chance to sort through them yet. But I see that the young lady has a fine eye for weapons so I’ll let it go for a hundred and fifty creds.”

“I grabbed it at random,” Judith said. She was torn between beating the Frunge down on the price and the feeling she was being disloyal to the sword, to which she’d taken an instant liking.

“War spoils means that the soldier who carried that sword in combat lost,” Thomas observed. “You’re asking top cred for a weapon that’s been proven ineffective. Still, for twenty creds, she could use it in training.”

“Let me take a closer look at it,” the Frunge said. His young assistant retrieved the sword and the scabbard from Judith and brought them over. “There, you see that filigree work?” the merchant asked. “The gold alone is worth seventy-five creds.”

“If it was real gold,” Thomas retorted, trying a shot in the dark. He took the sword from the Frunge, sighted down the blade, and shook his head. “Well, I thought it would make a nice trainer, but I don’t think I could let my servant practice with this weapon in good conscience. Maybe for twenty-five creds she could hang it on the wall as a decoration.”

“Forty,” the Frunge said, his voice hardening.

“Thirty,” Thomas offered. “Cash.”

The Frunge squinted at the artificial person, and then broke into a grin. “Done, my friend. It’s a rare sentient who bargains as well as he throws a knife.”

Thomas handed the used weapon to Judith, whose face lit up like a child given a puppy, then fished in his suit pockets for thirty creds to pay the Frunge.

“You handled a potentially sticky situation very well,” Chance complimented Thomas, approaching him as the crowd of Frunge from the surrounding booths went back to their businesses. “I watched the whole thing.”

“Oh, our agents were never in danger,” Thomas said. “Walter simply misunderstood the Frunge’s intentions and grabbed an axe. And why did you choose a weapon you could barely lift?” the instructor added, turning to his student.

“They kind of look like trees, don’t they?” Walter responded. “I thought the axe would scare them.”

“I wasn’t talking about the misunderstanding,” Chance told Thomas. “I was impressed by your bargaining. I’m beginning to see that you’re not as naïve as I thought you were. Come on, it’s time to meet the others for coffee.”

Sixteen

“I know it was on the way, but how many humans can there be living here?” Lynx asked. She was still rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she maneuvered the Prudence towards the giant Chintoo complex. “I thought the manufacturing orbitals were mainly populated by mechanicals which were controlled by a few AI.”

“Don’t you ever talk to Thomas about these things?” Woojin said. “Chintoo is the preferred destination for humanoid-type artificials who get tired of being outnumbered by biologicals everywhere they go. Their bodies wear much slower in Zero-G, and the management enforces very strict limits on electrical noise. You know those headaches that Chance complains about from time to time?”

“I assumed she just wanted time off from work, or that she was hung over,” Lynx replied defensively.

“You know perfectly well that the only problem artificial people have with alcohol is if the impurities keep it from burning cleanly,” Woojin said. “Joe and I helped Thomas clean the crud off of his nano-filter a few months back. It took a series of acid baths and blowtorch.”

“So you mean all of the electrical devices on the stations interfere with their artificial brains?”

“I’m no scientist, but Paul explained that the decks on the station act as waveguides, so spurious radiofrequency energy generated by noisy devices sort of bounces around in an endless loop until it gets absorbed. The Stryx put coatings on most of the surfaces to help damp it down, and the artificial people have RF shielding, but sometimes all of the noise sources get to be a bit much. Thomas says it’s probably similar to the way humans would feel if we let the artificial lights flicker all day long.”

“He never told me,” Lynx said. “So they ban electrical noise on Chintoo?”

“It’s a highly efficient manufacturing complex. Anything that’s radiating noise is wasting energy, and it’s cheaper to shield the equipment than to shield all the occupants.”

“Alright, but that still doesn’t explain why Clive wanted us to stop here.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have slept through the tunneling call,” Woojin replied with a grin. “First of all, there’s the small matter of our catch-and-release.”

“I thought we were bringing her back to Union Station.”

“Why? So she can start bursting into rooms there and trying to recruit people for her multi-level government? That girl is out of control.”

“Yeah. I can’t say I’m looking forward to being in the same room when she wakes up,” Lynx said, looking over at the portal for the tiny lifeboat where the HEEL organizer was deep in stasis. “We dump her and go?”

“We save dumping her for the last thing before we leave,” Woojin said. “The real reason Clive wanted us to stop here is that according to Libby, there are nearly five thousand artificial people of human origin living on Chintoo.”

“They’re organizing for self-government?” Lynx guessed.

“If they are, Clive doesn’t know anything about it. There are hundreds of thousands of artificial people on the orbital, so the human-derived ones are a small minority. Apparently Clive has been talking with Thomas and Chance about getting some more artificial people into EarthCent Intelligence, and there happens to be a job fair on Chintoo today. It was a last-minute thing, but he arranged with Herl for us share booth space with Drazen Intelligence.”

“Why would Drazen Intelligence be recruiting artificial people?” Lynx asked in frustration. “I thought they gave up on their own AI a long time ago.”

“They’re not here to recruit,” Woojin replied patiently. “The Drazens outsource some of their Zero-G manufacturing to Chintoo, mainly the lower-tech mass-manufactured stuff, including some spy gear. The artificial people sell their services on a job-by-job basis, they don’t like long-term contracts. To get hardware produced, you show up with a prototype at one of their job fairs, and the different teams interested in the work bid on it.”

“Got it,” Lynx said, cutting the engines after the AI controlling Chintoo’s docking area locked on with its manipulator fields without so much as a warning. She’d visited orbitals in the past to pick up cargoes, and the ones dominated by artificial people had their own way of doing things that didn’t involve a great deal of back-and-forth discussion. The Prudence accelerated as the AI controller dragged it rapidly towards the terminal for visiting ships.

“I figure that you can be our chief recruiter, since you’ve been in EarthCent Intelligence with Thomas since the start,” Woojin concluded generously.

“Someday, I’m going to—ooph,” Lynx said, as the sudden deceleration threw her forward against the safety harness of the pilot’s chair. “Flip,” she commanded the ship, to get the nose pointed in the opposite direction. The Chintoo traffic controller was known for pushing the acceleration envelope of biologicals, just to remind them that a flesh-and-blood body isn’t anything to feel superior about.

“If Clive figured all of the time differences correctly, the job fair started a few hours ago, so we need to move fast,” Woojin grunted out after the ship flipped. He estimated two G’s of force were pressing him down into the co-pilot’s chair, making it feel like there was a Woojin clone sitting on top of him. There was a sudden, further deceleration at the end, causing both humans to see black for a second, and then the ship mated the docking arm with a gentle thud that was almost anti-climactic. “Do you have anything onboard we can use to make a banner for the booth?”

“Sign up here to be a human spy? Something like that?” Lynx unbuckled her safety harness and watched the straps retract in irritation. The Chintoo orbital had no spin, meaning they would be in Zero-G for the duration. “I don’t think I have anything. No, wait. Weren’t the Academy folks especially angry about our sleeping beauty writing on their lecture hall display boards with indelible markers?”

“I’ll check her bag,” Woojin said, launching himself towards the lifeboat portal. “Can you find something to write on?”

“Easier said than done,” Lynx replied. She knew she had brown wrapping paper in her old trading supplies, but she suspected most colors wouldn’t show up well on it. She rummaged around through their personal belongings almost at random, and when Woojin emerged from the lifeboat with a handful of ink-based markers, all she could come up with were the T-shirts she’d bought on Chianga.

Visiting the outlet store in Textiles, the clothing factory town, had brought back all of her trader instincts. When she saw the prices on the underwear woven from a natural Dollnick fiber that felt like a mix between silk and cotton, she bought all they could afford. Lynx figured she could get the Hadads to sell the goods in the Shuk and split the profit.

“Are we going to wear those or hang them out like flags?” Woojin asked.

“Both,” Lynx suggested. “Maybe we’ll even give some away. Blythe always said that free samples rule at trade shows. I just wish we had a stencil. Why don’t you grab a full bundle and we can make them at the booth since we’re already late?”

After confirming with the Chintoo controller that there was a pressurized passage from the docking arm to the exhibition hall where the job fair was taking place, they activated their magnetic cleats and headed out. Woojin hauled the bulky bundle of T-shirts, and even though it was weightless, the mass of two hundred tightly packed shirts added to his momentum, making it tricky to change directions.

The walk was longer than expected because the docking arm for biological visitors jutted straight out from the orbital and they had been slotted in near the tip. Fortunately, the metal-grated passage led directly to the exhibition hall, which looked like it had been added to the orbital as an afterthought to accommodate visitors. Viewed from a distance, Chintoo looked more like a derelict than an occupied facility, with large sections open to space. While the overall impression was that of a structure built with a child’s erector set on a giant scale, the exposed skeleton had a certain beauty of the sort beloved by refinery engineers.

“What a setup,” Lynx commented, as they emerged into the exhibition hall. A bright light like a miniature sun floated in the center of the spherical space, providing light and heat for the visitors. But it made it impossible to look up, which was actually a blessing, since standing on the inside surface of an occupied sphere always made humans feel that somebody was upside-down. The curvature of the inner surface that served as the floor would have been impossible to climb if the exhibition hall had rested on a planet’s surface, but in Zero-G with magnetic boots, it was merely disconcerting.

“According to the information channel, the Drazen booth is about a third of the way up the deck in that direction,” Woojin said, pointing along a curving aisle. “At least they leave a lot of space between the booths.”

“You’re right, I didn’t notice.” Lynx pulled up the standard information channel on her own implant and turned left at the proper cross-aisle between the transport cases that served as tables. All of the exhibitors brought their gear in standard transport cases with magnetic cleats for Zero-G. Most of the cases also sported wheels, since they were normally used on spinning space stations or worlds with gravity. “Hey, they already have a sign up for us!”

“Drazen Novelties / EarthCent Intelligence,” Woojin read. “Well, if I was an artificial person visiting the show, I’d stop by out of curiosity.” When they entered the exhibition hall he’d held the large bundle of T-shirts against his chest for control, but now he shifted to holding it above his head with one hand, so he could greet their Drazen hosts.

“You must be Mr. and Mrs. Pyun,” the elder of the two Drazens greeted them. “I am Grolt and my junior is Bant. Herl asked us to extend you every possible courtesy, which we are delighted to do.”

“Thank you for the sign,” Lynx replied. “Have you been here long?”

“Approximately five hours,” Grolt answered her. “The job fair has another seven hours to run, and most of the artificial people prefer coming towards the end. It puts more pressure on the buyers to accept bids.”

“Do you mind if we use a little of the booth space to print up some T-shirts?” Woojin asked.

“Help yourself,” the Drazen replied generously.

“Watch out as I cut the bands,” Woojin warned everybody. He maneuvered the bundle into the clear space behind the transport cases, and Lynx and the Drazens moved out of the direct line of fire. The ex-mercenary worked at the three plastic bands with his pocketknife, and when the last band let go with a sound like a shot, the compressed bundle of T-shirts seemed to explode off the deck. Part of the top layer got past Woojin’s attempt to contain it, and the humans watched in dismay as a dozen T-shirts floated towards the burning light at the center of the sphere.

“Allow me,” Grolt said, pulling a small box out of one of the transport cases. He opened the lid to reveal an oddly feathered bird that seemed to have dodged evolutionary design, intelligent or otherwise. “Let me have one of those,” he said to Lynx, pointing at the loose stack of T-shirts which she was holding together with Woojin. She tossed one to Bant, who instead of giving it to Grolt, held it up with one hand, using the other hand to pull it more or less into shape.

“This is your target,” Grolt said, holding the bird so it couldn’t misunderstand what he was showing it. “Go fetch the other ones floating around.” Then he released the bird, which started after the train of underwear with a single beat of its wings. It proved to be an experienced Zero-G flyer.

“Is that a real bird?” Lynx asked.

“It’s a mechanical, an agent’s helper,” Grolt explained. “They used to be too expensive for general use, but our engineers have simplified the manufacturing process for the logic circuits, and we’re hoping that we’ll get a low enough bid here to go into mass production. Herl would like to see all field agents equipped with at least one, and any income from selling them as toys or tools wouldn’t hurt either. They’re especially handy for retrieving things in Zero-G when there’s enough atmosphere for their wings to work.”

Woojin, who was bent over the stack with his arms spread wide, straightened up slowly, keeping a wary eye on the pile. The potential energy of the tight-pack had been spent in the initial decompression, and the pile remained loosely quiescent. He selected a T-shirt and stretched it flat over the top of one of the Drazen transport cases, and then pulled a black marker from his pocket. Finally, he wrote in three lines of crude block letters, “EARTHCENT INTELLIGENCE RECRUITER.”

“I’m not wearing that,” Lynx objected. “You print worse than Beowulf.”

Woojin sighed, pulled the T-shirt over his own head, and then passed the marker to Lynx. Bant handed her back the T-shirt they’d used to train the bird, and she bent over it and printed, “NOW HIRING SPIES.”

Bant captured the text through his implant and ran a translation. “Direct and to the point,” he said approvingly. “And going by the baseball cap, I’d say that the artificial person approaching now could be your first customer. I look forward to hearing your pitch.”

“Hi there,” Lynx called to the passing AI, who showed no disposition to stop at the booth. “Can I interest you in a new job?”

The artificial person changed directions effortlessly, and three balletic steps took him right up to the humans. He eyed the hand-printed T-shirts scornfully.

“I can see you’re in serious need of a graphic designer,” the artificial person said. “I can do one-offs for twenty creds right here, or I’ll take the whole stack back to my shop and print them for two creds each.”