Party Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 10) (15 page)

“Bob Steelforth. Galactic Free Press,” a reporter introduced himself.

“I know you, Bob, and you know me. I’m Dorothy, Ambassador McAllister’s daughter.”

“Sorry, you don’t look like anybody’s daughter in that dress,” the reporter apologized awkwardly. “I heard there’s a big cross-species flash event happening down here, and I’m covering the ‘What’s Up Union?’ page for alignment weekend. I thought I’d drop in and file a real-time report, maybe get a feature out of it.”

“Sponsored by SBJ Fashions,” Dorothy said, her eyes lighting up. “That’s ‘S’ as in ‘Shaina’, ‘B’ as in ‘Brinda’ and ‘J’ as in ‘Jeeves.’”

“I see you’ve worked with the press before,” Bob replied, filling in the details on his reporter’s tab. “Can you tell me anything about how the party got started?”

“Well, my family is all gone for the weekend and I had the whole hold to myself, so I called a couple of friends.”

“No prior advertising?”

“Just a notice in the Open Circuit.”

“Any reason you didn’t post to the Galactic Free Press events board for Union Station?” the reporter asked sharply.

“SBJ Fashions focuses on cross-species wear, so we didn’t want a crowd that was mainly humans.”

Bob acknowledged the truth of her reply with a grudging nod, and asked, “How long have you been in the business?”

“We started with a line of hats three years ago, and we’ve expanded into dresses and accessories. We outsource most of our manufacturing to the Chintoo orbital, but our bespoke line is hand-finished on the station. Ten percent of our profits go to the station shelter for underage labor contract runaways, and we’re currently working towards a cross-species shoe that will revolutionize the market.”

“Revolutionize the market,” Bob repeated, as he finished entering Dorothy’s statement. “Good luck with that. Mind if I go in and capture a few images?”

“Please, take lots. If you ping me afterwards, I’ll identify any of our items for you.”

“Great.” The reporter stopped and opened the locket around his neck that many station residents wore for nose plugs to filter semi-breathable atmospheres. He removed a pair of plugs and stuck them in his ears. “Dual purpose,” he told Dorothy. “Latest thing from the Dollnicks.”

“Doesn’t your ear wax clog the filters?”

“What?” the reporter shouted.

“Never mind.”

Dorothy was about to follow Bob back into the party, when Chance showed up, dragging a reluctant-looking Thomas.

“I see my timing is as impeccable as usual,” the fashionable artificial person said. “I’ll cut up the floor with grumpy here and make sure that reporter gets a picture of me in old Number Eight.”

“I’m really not comfortable with the idea of throwing a party in the EarthCent Intelligence training camp,” Thomas protested.

“The only equipment we’re using is rented, though Libby is manipulating the lights for us,” Dorothy explained. “Don’t worry. If my parents hadn’t wanted a party in the hold, they would have put it in writing.”

“Time to earn your keep, Dancer Boy,” the artificial person said to her partner, and pulled him into Mac’s Bones.

When Dorothy followed them back into the hold, it seemed like the band had become even louder, if that was possible. She fingered her own nose plug locket before grimacing and shaking her head. Dorothy kicked herself again for being unable to find her father’s tool belt with its acoustic suppression field unit for working around noisy equipment. Suddenly, somebody poked her in the side, and the volume dropped off to the level of lift tube background music.

“Jeeves! Where have you been?”

“If I don’t get in my multiverse hours every cycle, Libby gives me a hard time,” the Stryx replied. “Good job drawing a crowd, but I see you charged the caterer’s bills, a rush equipment rental, and a surprisingly expensive order of Horten take-out to the business account. Are we making any sales?”

“It’s a flash event, we’re creating good will. Affie and Flazint have friends modeling our products, and Chance says she’ll get our dress on the front page of the Galactic Free Press,” Dorothy said, exaggerating just a little. “It’s not like we’re taking orders tonight or anything.”

“Did you run it past Shaina or Brinda?” Jeeves asked.

“They have families and lives, so I didn’t want to bother them on a Friday night. It just sort of came together.”

“You creative types,” the Stryx said in mock despair. He floated alongside Dorothy to the refreshments table to inspect the catering that was blowing a hole in their marketing budget. Just as they approached, a girl in impossibly high heels stumbled and dumped a whole plate of cheese and crackers on the floor. An enormous paw shot out from under the table, covered the entire mess, and dragged it out of sight.

“I wondered where the dog was hiding,” Dorothy said. “I’m surprised he can stand the music.”

Behind the overhang of the disposable tablecloth, Beowulf finished scarfing down his latest haul, and then delicately reached with a paw for the Dollnick acoustic suppression field unit on Joe’s tool belt. Long practice had enabled him to master extending just one claw, which he used to adjust the device up to its highest setting. He could still feel the floor vibrating from the heavy bass, but the only thing he could hear was his own breathing. Then he rolled back onto his stomach and brought his eyes up to the level of the slit he had made in the draped tablecloth.

Fifteen

“You look like refugees,” the president observed, on meeting the McAllisters in front of the door to EarthCent headquarters. He eyed their collection of luggage, puzzling over Samuel’s cane, which was stuck through the straps of the boy’s bag. “You’re an hour early for our meeting. Did the hotel throw you out?”

“We’re leaving later this afternoon, so it was either check out early, or go back to the hotel in the middle of the morning,” Joe explained. “Room had to be vacated by 10:00 AM or they would have charged us a day at the full rate.”

“I believe we might have made a mistake going with the lowest bid for the conference venue,” the president admitted. “Oh well, there’s always next time.”

“I thought some of the sessions were pretty interesting,” Kelly said. “And I’m glad Joe was able to take our son on some daytrips to see a little of life on Earth.”

“I liked the Brooklyn Bridge,” Samuel spoke up. “The guide told us all about working in caissons and getting the bends. Too much air pressure is like the opposite of working in space.”

“I never thought of it that way,” the president replied. “It’s my favorite bridge too, though floaters are making all bridges obsolete. Now let’s get out of the hallway and make ourselves comfortable while we wait for the others.” He stepped towards the door of EarthCent headquarters and attempted to swipe open the lock.

“So this is where it all happens,” Joe said. “I’d sure like to get a look inside.”

“Just two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” the president replied, misunderstanding the ambassador’s husband. “We reprogrammed the locks after a, uh, incident, and the palm scanner seems to be thrown off because I’ve been carrying a hot coffee.”

“I think he means the office next door, Stephen,” Kelly hastened to explain. “Joe works closely with Thomas, an artificial person who has integrated a number of personality enhancements from QuickU.”

“Try knocking,” the president instructed Joe. “I’m afraid this lock just isn’t going to work for me today so we’ll have to enter through QuickU anyway. We share a lunch room.”

“Will they be here this early?” Joe asked.

“They pretty much live there,” the president replied. “You know geeks.”

Joe knocked on the QuickU door. There was a thudding sound, and the door was opened by a young man with long hair who was seated in a wheeled office chair. After letting in the guests, the employee kicked off the wall and rolled back to his work station without saying a word.

“I often knock around this time,” the president said, excusing his neighbor’s lack of manners as he ushered the McAllisters into the office. “I’m not alone today, Carl. These people with me are friends of Thomas from Union Station.”

Carl spun around in the chair, peered at the visitors through the shaded glasses that enhanced his holographic display, and then put his fingers in his mouth and gave a piercing whistle. Several more shaggy heads displaying various lengths of five o’clock shadow popped up from behind other workstations, and an attractive woman emerged from one of the few offices with a door.

“Good morning, Stephen,” she addressed the president. “I take it from Carl’s alert that you’ve brought us important guests.” She surveyed the three McAllisters and paused on Kelly. “I know you. You’re the auction ambassador.”

“Kelly McAllister. This is my husband Joe and my son Samuel. We’re sorry to disturb you so early in the morning, but my husband works with Thomas and…”

“THE Thomas?” the woman interrupted. “As in Thomas and Chance of Union Station? Of course, that’s where the auction was. Then you’re the Joe who Thomas works with training spies? This is an honor.”

“Uh, thanks,” Joe said, wondering what else the artificial person had told his QuickU friends. “Thomas always lets us know when he has a new personality enhancement on evaluation. You do really good work, well, except for the gambler one. Some of the regulars at our poker game are talking about banning Thomas until he agrees to stop using it.”

“My fault,” Carl said, raising his hand. “We didn’t design the enhancement for social gambling. It’s for making a career out of playing in casinos or insurance underwriting. He’s already told us that he’ll be deintegrating the gambler personality after he finishes testing it.”

“You create artificial intelligence here?” Samuel asked.

“Oh, no,” the woman replied, shaking her head at the very idea. “We deal strictly in enhancements. Think of it as packaged life experience with some algorithms to help the artificial people make sense of the data. I wouldn’t know the first thing about creating viable AI.”

“Don’t the two go hand in hand?” Kelly asked.

“Sentience is a mystery to us,” Carl said. “Everybody working at QuickU is fascinated by AI, but I don’t think any of us are interested in playing god that way. Some of the aliens have it down to a science, but what I’ve seen of the human-created AI relies a great deal on luck and environment. They basically keep piling complications onto a rule-based system, give it mobility and sensory technology, and then throw challenges at it and hope that it develops consciousness in self-defense.”

“So how do you create your enhancements?” Joe asked.

“The best ones are licensed from artificial people who have a strong skill set to offer, like the Dance Machine enhancement that Chance supplied and keeps up to date for us,” Carl said. “If I was an artificial person, the first thing I would do with extra income is pay down my body mortgage, but Chance says that she spends all of the royalty money on clothes.”

“You have a copy of Chance in a machine here?” Samuel asked, looking disturbed by the prospect.

“It’s nothing like that,” the woman reassured the boy. “Chance supplies us with a vector representation of the dance steps and moves that she’s mastered, including those from over thirty alien species to date. Then, with the help of your Stryx librarian, she isolates and codifies an algorithm for fitting those movements to music and mood.”

“I didn’t know Libby was in the enhancements business,” Kelly remarked.

“Any honest business is worth doing,” Samuel declared, another mantra learned in Libby’s school.

“I thought Thomas told me that his Secret Agent enhancement was compiled from characters in literature,” Joe said.

“That was one of our early attempts,” the woman explained. “The advantage is that the source material is license free because it falls under the ‘transformative use’ exclusion of copyright law. The disadvantage is that experiences gathered from fiction are, well, fictional, and then we have to synthesize the algorithm to process the data.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I ever got your name,” Kelly said.

“Lucy Hui,” the woman replied. “I’m the founder of QuickU, and thanks to night school, I’m now the legal counsel as well. These boys do all of the grunt work.”

“I’ve had my own run-ins with contract law,” Kelly said, accepting the founder’s hand. “I’ll never sign anything now without running it by our station librarian.”

“Unfortunately, Earth doesn’t have a resident Stryx,” Lucy replied. “Still, our personality enhancements are all marketed as ‘For entertainment use only,’ so we’re covered both ways.” She glanced over the workstations that took up most of the floor space to a closed door with a red light above it. “Are you here to see Hep? He should be done with today’s session in a few minutes.”

The president, who had slipped away to open the front door of EarthCent headquarters from the inside, returned just in time to ask, “You have Hep in there?”

“He’s volunteered to try to supply us with enough data points to create a Verlock mathematician enhancement,” Carl explained. “Hep’s mind is incredibly well organized, but he lacks an AI’s interface options for data extraction.”

“If you’re successful, why would an artificial person want a personality upgrade to think like a Verlock mathematician?”

“It’s sort of a public service thing for us,” Lucy explained. “Hep is having trouble finding the right help for his reverse engineering project, and he’s hoping that a free personality enhancement and good pay might attract some artificial people. Most of them have excellent innate computational ability, but working with theory is a completely different thing.”

“Well, uh, don’t drain him or anything,” the president said. “We need Hep to run the project, and he’s supposed to be meeting with a group of ambassadors in our offices in another forty minutes.”

“We’ll have him ready,” Lucy promised. “Have your guests had their coffee yet? There should be a fresh pot in the break room, and I brought in three dozen donuts this morning, so you’re welcome to whatever the boys haven’t eaten.”

“Coffee sounds good to me,” Joe said.

“Thank you,” Kelly and Samuel chorused.

The president led them into the lunch room that EarthCent headquarters shared with QuickU, and the McAllisters all stared in astonishment at the framed images on the walls. Half of them showed Thomas looking debonair in his Bond suit, or Chance mid-spin in her tango shoes and dress.

“I guess we’re so used to seeing them that we forget how good-looking they are,” Joe commented.

“Well, if you’re going to take out a mortgage with the Stryx to pay for a body, there’s not much point in going down-market,” the president pointed out. “Grab yourselves a drink and a donut, but remember that we have catering coming for after Hep’s presentation to the steering committee.”

“If it’s a spy thing and I can’t be there, can I hang out at QuickU and see how they do stuff?” Samuel asked. “Maybe they’ll make a copy of me for artificial boys.”

“That’s very noble of you, Samuel, but we actually invited the press to this briefing, so you’re welcome to participate,” Stephen responded.

“Is that wise?” Kelly asked, as she rifled through the donut boxes. “I thought the members of the steering committee were supposed to be confidential, and—come to Momma!” she concluded, uncovering a triple chocolate donut languishing alone in the third box.

“I take it you missed the Grenouthian documentary on human espionage through the ages that wrapped up with an analysis of EarthCent intelligence, including an organizational chart with faces, names, and contact information,” Stephen replied, but Kelly was lost in chocoholic heaven and didn’t even nod in acknowledgement.

After the crumbs settled, the president led the McAllisters into EarthCent headquarters, which turned out to be an office suite not much larger than the embassy on Union Station. The hall led past two side-by-side doors with nameplates reading, “President Stephen Beyer,” and “PR Director Hildy Greuen,” and then ran into an open reception area about half the size of QuickU’s shared workstation space. The receptionist’s desk had been pushed over against a wall, and the room had been filled with rows of folding chairs, one of which had been moved to prop open the front door.

“I wasn’t expecting much, but how can you run EarthCent out of this place?” Kelly asked in dismay.

“If I’m actually running anything, I’d like to know what it is,” the president replied. “Besides, our offices are spread all over Earth, and we had over four hundred resident employees at last count. When EarthCent was first established, somebody thought that putting the headquarters in New York made sense, but that was before the Stryx announced the budget. Other than Hildy and the receptionist, the only other people working out of this office are our resident cultural attaché and a communications specialist. QuickU took over the lease years ago, and we actually sublet from them.”

“Drat,” Kelly said. “I was looking forward to confronting your human resources department about a few open issues.”

“Luckily for them, they all work overseas,” the president replied.

The front door pushed open, and Ambassador Zerakova entered with her husband and daughters, all toting their luggage. Joe went over to prop the chair back in the door after it shut itself, just in time to admit Ambassador White, who was wheeling a deceptively large carry-on behind her.

Over the next twenty minutes, the rest of the ambassadors on the intelligence steering committee trickled in, some with family members, all with luggage. The wall near the door began to resemble the unclaimed bags section of a spaceport. Leon arrived with his camera and tripod, and Samuel immediately offered to serve as his assistant again. The only other press to appear was a fourteen-year-old girl who presented credentials from the Lower East Side Student Journal. A minute before the meeting was scheduled to start, Hep wandered in from the back hallway, and the president stepped up to introduce him.

“Before we begin, I’d just like to remind everybody that this meeting is attended by press, so let’s try not to blurt out any secrets. Without further ado, our guest speaker is Hep, who is spearheading our project to restore the original Drazen jump ship under contract to their museum, I mean, Drazen Foods.”

“It’s not the original Drazen jump ship, it’s the first one that worked,” Hep corrected the president.

“Of course. So do you have a presentation you would like to give, or shall we just ask questions.”

“Whichever is faster,” Hep replied. “I really need to get back to work.”

“Then we’ll just go with the questions,” the president continued unperturbed. “Could you start by explaining how jump technology works?”

“No,” Hep replied bluntly.