Vacation on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 7) (21 page)

“I don’t think any of the humans we met on our honeymoon are heading towards those problems,” Woojin said. “They didn’t hesitate to tell us that they thought the Dollnicks, Drazens or Verlocks were the examples we should all be following.”

“So if educational entertainment is edutainment, what’s an educational vacation?” Lynx asked.

“Edu-cation?” Kelly ventured, putting the syllables together. “No, that doesn’t work. They blend too well.”

“So what did you all think of my graduating class?” Thomas asked. “I did a survey while they were eating, and all of them are willing to come back for advanced training. Chance and I have lots of ideas for new field exercises, and I bet Herl would loan us some Drazen trainers if we asked.”

“What sort of ideas?” Blythe asked suspiciously. There had been some complaints from local merchants about the creative missions the artificial people assigned, including an incident in which a pair of recruits successfully drained the deep fryer at the Burger Bar during the height of the dinner rush. They might have escaped undetected if they hadn’t tried sneaking out with the hot oil in a mop bucket, thoroughly cooking the mop.

“Advanced espionage techniques, like deception, hacking and misinformation,” Thomas replied, in the same tone he might have read a menu. “I’ve been studying the library archives on the history of espionage and I think that our focus on recruiting sources is far too conservative. It’s probably because we’ve been concentrating on business intelligence that we can sell, but I’ve been talking with Jeeves…”

“Jeeves?” Kelly interrupted, her voice rising. “Aren’t the Stryx supposed to be neutral in all of this?”

“Neutral buoyancy,” Jeeves declared, after floating silently up to the table and causing Kelly to jump. “It’s the whole trick to sneaking up on people.” He set down a plastic box full of glasses and pulled one out to display the Libbyland logo to everybody. “Special delivery from the gift shop, compliments of the management.”

“My other theory is that Libby made up the whole theme park to try to keep you out of trouble,” Kelly addressed the Stryx.

“There’s something to that as well,” Jeeves admitted. “I just can’t get excited about running around the multiverse like the other young Stryx. What’s so interesting about an infinite number of barely differentiated realities? You could get lost and not even know it. Oops, everybody forget I said that.”

“Forgotten,” Thomas declared. He’d taken his hero literally and wiped the comment from his memory. “So, am I authorized to start running an advanced course for the training camp?”

“I don’t see why not,” Clive replied. “But we’re going to need to hustle to replace the agents we’re losing.”

“What do you mean?” Kelly demanded. “Losing how?”

“You tell her,” Clive said to his wife. “It’s your family.”

“Well, I’ve been trying to talk her out of it, but it looks like Chastity is sort of going into competition with us,” Blythe said. “I should have known something was up when she left Tinka in charge of day-to-day operations at InstaSitter after she got back from her honeymoon on Earth, but we were all just happy to see her taking it easy for a change. It turns out she was preparing to launch a new business.”

“She’s going to start a private spy service?” Lynx asked.

“Sort of,” Blythe said. “Apparently, there’s so much recycled fiber on Earth that people can print the news on paper every day. Chastity fell in love with the whole thing and she’s been working in secret to launch the first human galactic news service.”

“Chastity is going to print newspapers in space?” Kelly asked in astonishment.

“She wanted to, but the economics just don’t work,” Blythe replied. “Her idea is to gather and report the news that humans care about and to use the Stryxnet to deliver subscriptions to tabs or anything else that can display text and pictures. She’s already made a deal with the Stryx, and we just found out that she’s poaching some of our best intelligence analysts for her start-up staff.”

“The Union Station Times?” Joe guessed.

“The Galactic Free Press.”

“How is it a business if it’s free?” Thomas asked.

“It’s not free,” Blythe said. “That’s just the name.”

“So it’s disinformation,” the artificial person concluded. “But why does she want to deceive humans?”

“It’s an expression from human history,” Kelly explained. “A free press, one that isn’t controlled by the government, is supposed to protect the citizens from their elected officials doing whatever they want and lying about it.”

“But we don’t have a government,” Thomas protested.

“We will someday,” Kelly replied. “Human history might have played out differently if we had invented the free press before the government, so maybe Chastity is on the right track. I think it’s a great idea. I’m tired of getting my news from the Grenouthian network.”

Sprawled beneath the table, his limbs twitching and his eyes darting about below closed lids, Beowulf was experiencing a race memory from the Earth-born half of his previous incarnation. He saw a boy on a bicycle pull a large bone from a sack on his back and throw it towards the porch of a house. Beowulf felt himself leap high in the air and catch it in his mouth, but instead of the pleasant smooth texture and taste of a bone, it grew soggy and inky as he chewed on it. Somebody came out of the house yelling, and the Huravian hound woke up with a bad taste in his mouth, wondering if he had eaten too much at the graduation party.

No, that couldn’t be. In fact, now that he thought of it, he was hungry again.

Vacation on Union Station
is getting a sequel. On the other side of the galaxy, the Cayl Empire has decided to wind down operations and the Stryx are planning to pick up the pieces. Kelly is tapped to host an open house event on Union Station to tempt the aliens into joining up, but does anybody other than the Stryx actually want the merger to take place?
Guest Night on Union Station
is scheduled for release in December of 2015 and is available for pre-order on Amazon.

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About the Author

E. M. Foner lives in Northampton, MA with an imaginary German Shepherd who’s been trained to bite bankers. The author welcomes reader comments at [email protected]