“So the dark colonies are places that don’t care about money?”
“They’re people who want to get away from civilization,” Mina said.
“Exactly,” Dusty confirmed. “Pirates, bootleggers and survivalists. Religious cults and utopian dreamers. Transhumanists, uploaders and transformationists. All the weird and wacky folks that no one wants as a neighbor. Whenever a group gets fed up with being suppressed and harassed on their home world they pool their funds to buy some industrial gear, and pay someone like us to drop them off in an empty system way out in the middle of nowhere.”
“A good open source database has all the designs you need to build a colony,” Mina observed. “Of course, they’re not as good as more modern designs, and there are always things that aren’t in the database.”
“I get it,” I said. “We’re basically making customers, right? They want to keep their colonies secret so they won’t get raided by pirates or taken out by some government that doesn’t like what they’re doing. But they still want to have some trade with the outside world, and who better to trust than the guy who already knows where they are?”
“Looks like you’ve got some talent for this, kid,” Dusty said with a smile.
Naoko came hurrying into the room about then. “Alice! Good morning, my friend. I hope you slept well, for I fear we have a very busy day ahead of us.”
“Looks that way,” Dusty agreed. “Twenty-seven paying passengers, all headed for Zanfeld? Looks like the rats have woken up and started jumping ship.”
“I’ll leave the political speculations to you, Dusty. All I know is twenty of those passengers seem to be emigrating, and none of them know how to prepare a proper cargo manifest. I’m sure they’ll be no better at stowing their household goods, and you know how these Hoshidans are about their households. It’s going to be a nightmare getting them all aboard. Please say you’re available to help out!”
“You can always count on old Dusty, kid. I’ve got a few irons of my own in the fire here, but I’ve got time to help sort out our passenger problems.”
“Thank goodness! Alice, I want you to shadow us today so you can learn how to handle the passengers. I saw that you finished your classes already? Do you feel confident about supervising a crew of cargo bots?”
“Sure, that’s easy,” I assured her. “But I thought cargo distribution was more complicated than just moving boxes.”
“It is,” Dusty said. “But I can handle that part. We’ll set up a receiving station in bay fifteen to take whatever they bring in and containerize it properly, and then I’ll see about fitting it into the first mate’s loading plan. I don’t suppose you speak Japanese?”
“Yes, that’s one of my native languages. I’ve also got Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, French, Esperanto and Newspeak, if it comes up.”
“Good, good. I’m sure we’ll have errands for you, but for now let’s get this planned out. Naoko, why don’t you start laying out cabins while I fab up a security checkpoint and some packing bots.”
The preparations took up the rest of the morning. At first I wasn’t sure why taking on twenty-odd people was such a big deal, even if they did expect to pick their own cabin layouts. But then I got a look at the cargo lists they were sending us, and I saw the problem.
I also got kind of mad. Each of these people had dozens of techs and companion androids listed as ‘cargo’.
“Naoko, tell me we aren’t doing business with slavers,” I protested.
“Is Mina a slave?” She replied.
That caught me off guard. “No? I mean, she’s listed as a crew member, and she seems happy enough.”
“Of course she is. She was designed to crave the life she currently leads, and to be content with it. She loves Jenna, Lina and Kara with all her heart, because they’re her pack and her bonding instincts are overwhelmingly strong. She loves her work, because she was designed to enjoy it. She loves Chief Benson even more, because while she’s nominally free her instincts still see him as her master. All of these feelings are as real as anything you might experience, but they were all carefully engineered to make her embrace a life of subservience.”
I scowled, and kicked idly at a bulkhead. “Is that what they do here, then? Make people, and program them to want to be slaves? Is that supposed to make it right?”
“That is a topic of great contention, Alice. Most colonies allow serfdom of one kind or another, provided that the serfs are kept reasonably happy. Some forbid the practice, or restrict it to bots and specialized AIs that clearly fall short of proper sentience. But it would hardly be practical to limit our business to those rare exceptions.”
“We lost that fight a hundred years ago, kiddo,” Dusty commented over the com. “Mind you, it’s kind of suspicious how many slave revolts there are these days. The mind engineers say a place like Hoshida should be stable for hundreds of years, but I can hardly think of one that doesn’t have some kind of unrest. Ah, but old Dusty couldn’t possibly have anything to do with all the hacking and smuggling that must go into making that happen, eh?”
Naoko gave a frustrated sigh. “Dusty, she’s impetuous enough as it is. Please don’t encourage her.”
“That’s a fair point, I suppose. Stops like this, it’s best for an innocent young lady to keep her eyes open and her lips sealed. Shit’s always complicated, especially these days. Once you know what’s what, then you can decide what you’re going to do about it.”
“That sounds like good advice, Dusty,” I said. “Could we maybe talk about it more, when we aren’t so busy?”
“Ol’ Dusty’s always happy to run his mouth, kiddo. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you.”
I still wasn’t happy about it, but he was right. I needed this job, and it would be stupid to raise a fuss when I didn’t even know what I was talking about.
We had the baggage handling checkpoint set up by the time the Square Deal dropped into the Beta Layer. The transition sent a barely-perceptible vibration through the ship, and I don’t think Naoko even noticed. But I couldn’t help stopping to check the external view.
The Beta Layer is an antimatter universe, after all. Sure, space is mostly empty, and the Square Deal’s deflectors would keep stray debris from touching the hull. But a million vidshows had taught me that you don’t mess with antimatter, and I couldn’t help but be a little nervous about it.
Maybe it made the captain nervous too, because we were there for barely twenty minutes. As soon as the hyperspace converter was back down to a safe operating temperature we made our Alpha transition, and I turned my full attention back to my work with a sigh of relief.
Throwing together a couple dozen miniature palaces for a bunch of rich guys and their hordes of servants was a lot of work, even with bot crews doing most of the labor. Bots are only smart enough to handle routine work, and even the class two AI Naoko used as an assistant got confused pretty easily. It didn’t help that our passengers all submitted their requirements using different data formats, and they had all kinds of weird requests. I still can’t figure out why anyone would want a bathtub that fills with chocolate milk.
But they were paying, so I got to run around trying to supervise twenty different work crews at the same time. We converted a whole cargo hold to passenger quarters, laying out quick-fab walls and floors to subdivide the cavernous space, and then went to work on the detailed floor plans. Naoko did all the hard parts, translating the passenger requests into a standard design format and then compiling that into step-by-step directions for the bot crews. My job was keeping an eye on the bots and letting her know when they screwed up, which inevitably happened a lot on a rush job like this.
It would have been a real pain, except that around the time we got the fifth work crew started I remembered what Doctor Misra had told me about multithreaded awareness. Searching the ship’s stores I found some little flying observation bots that had a data stream I could interface with, and requisitioned one to keep an eye on a work crew.
Sure enough, it was no trouble at all to watch one crew through the bot’s cameras while I kept an eye on another one in person. There were five more of those bots in inventory, and using them all at the same time turned out to be just as easy. So I ended up with seven viewpoints to watch all the work crews, which was enough to keep up as long as I paid attention.
I worked right through lunch, grabbing a couple of meal bars and my nutrient shake to eat on the run. It was starting to look like we’d actually be ready by the time the ship docked at Takeo Station, but it was going to be close.
Then we dropped into normal space, and started getting calls from our passengers. Or rather, from their servants. It seemed like every last one of them wanted to make sure that they’d have a spot on the ship, and never mind that we’d already sent them automatic confirmations. They all wanted to talk, too. After the third five-minute call Naoko was about ready to tear her hair out.
“Alice, I need you to handle my overflow,” she said, hurriedly setting up a call manager program. I accepted an electronic invitation from it, and it opened a virtual display panel for me showing a list of incoming calls.
“Are you sure about this, Naoko? I don’t look like I should be in charge of anything.”
“We can fix that. Computer, set up a cosmetic com filter for Alice. Make her look ten years older, change her voice to match, and set her rank label to ‘Assistant Stewardess’. There, now use that to answer the calls I can’t get to.”
“What if-”
“Just smile and nod and tell them everything will be taken care of,” she interrupted. “As long as you don’t quote any prices we can work things out later. Hello, this is Naoko Sokol of the Square Deal. How may I be of service?”
I listened with a fragment of my attention. Darn it, I was bad at handling people. I didn’t know how to do this. What if I messed everything up, and lost us a passenger? These people were paying thousands of credits for their fancy quarters and giant cargo allowances.
Another call appeared in the queue. I glanced at Naoko, but she was still busily assuring someone that they’d be able to board tonight. She caught my eye, and waved at the indicator.
Darn it.
I took a deep breath, and accepted the call.
“Hello, this is Alice Long of the Square Deal. How may I be of service?”
The vidcall showed me a young-looking elf woman with a pretty extreme morph job, including huge green eyes and incredibly long pointy ears.
“Good day, Mistress Long. This unworthy one calls to confirm Master Ueda’s passage aboard the Square Deal.”
“That would be Goro Ueda, I assume? Yes, we’ve reserved quarters for your party as specified in his request for transport.”
“Ah, about that,” she said hesitantly. “Master Ueda has acquired three additional staff since the request was posted. One neotroll with special dietary requirements, and a pair of twin moon kittens.”
“That’s not a problem… oh, darn it. Help me out here, please? If you were human I’d say ‘ma’am’, but I’m sure that wouldn’t be proper here in Hoshida.”
“This unworthy one would never presume to question a human’s choice of words,” she replied deferentially. “However, some kind masters have been known to refer to the diligent servants of another master as ‘cutie’.”
I couldn’t quite decide whether to face palm, or punch someone.
“I see. Alright, cutie, we’ll go with that. Can you fit the new staff into the barracks in your original request, or do you need more space?”
An alert drew my attention to another incoming call. Ugh. Naoko was still talking, and this elf girl apparently wanted to have a long conversation about the care and feeding of moon kittens. Whatever they were. Yeah, okay, no problem, come on girl, I don’t have all day.
Darn it, she wasn’t going to shut up. Now what? Do I ignore the other call, or tell her I have to go, or… wait a minute.
I opened a second connection to the call manager, and dug into the disguise filter options. Was there a way to just tell it what to display for my movements and facial expressions? There must be, since infomorphs can make vidcalls and they don’t necessarily even have a physical body.
Aha! Yes, there was an input channel for that. All I had to do was clone the disguise filter Naoko had set up for me on the other line, and feed it cues. I could do that! Copy, configure, self-test, try different expressions. Sure, that looked about right.
I accepted the new call through my second connection, telling the app to show an older me smiling pleasantly.
“Hello, this is Alice Long of the Square Deal. How may I be of service?”
This time it was an older-looking elf, with red hair instead of blonde.
“Yes, this unworthy one is calling on behalf of Master Kita. We’ve received your confirmation, but the master wonders if it would be possible to arrange for an industrial power connection? A simple ten-megawatt line would do.”
“I’ll have to check with engineering, but it sounds doable. Only, what in Gaia’s name would you need that kind of power for? I’ll have to make sure it can’t endanger the ship.”
“Of course, Mistress. Master Kita is engaged in perfecting the ecology of his latest virtual world, and the design algorithms are quite processor intensive. The simulation is running on a computing node that requires seven megawatts of power, and there are various items of supporting hardware to consider.”
“Funny, I don’t see a giant computing cluster on your cargo list.”
It was working. I was still talking about moon kittens with the elf on the other line. I had to concentrate a little to keep the two conversations straight, but I could do it. Sweet!
Naoko hung up just in time to take another call. Then the queue backed up again, and I had to open a third connection. But that was as bad as it got.
Some minutes later Naoko logged out of the call manager, leaving me to juggle all of the calls while she went back to working on cabin setup. I kept the manifests up to date as I worked, flagging change requests from the passengers and problems with the bot crews.
A few calls later she showed up at the cabin where my physical body was watching the bots assemble a simulated coral reef. She hugged me, and leaned in to whisper in my ear.
“You’re juggling four calls at once and still watching all the bots? You’re a life saver, Alice! Thank you so much.”
“I’m just trying to help out,” I told her. “But this is pretty tiring, so I hope I don’t have to keep it up much longer.”
“We can hand it off to the facilities AI if you have to take a break,” she said. “I’ve been trying to avoid that because the Hoshidans consider it rude. But I don’t wish to overwork you.”
“I can handle it, Naoko. We’re only in port for a day, right?”
“That’s correct, Alice. Once we’re underway I expect our passengers will all retreat to their VR tanks or private amusements, and things will quiet down. But I shall still speak with the captain about obtaining additional assistance.”
Things finally calmed down for a bit as we came in to dock at Takeo Station. By then we were up to thirty passengers, but we’d gotten a call from each one’s staff confirming their arrangements. So I was able to spare a thread of attention to take a look at our destination.
I’d read that space-based colonies build big stations, but none of the vidshows did justice to the scale of them. Takeo Station was the main habitat in the Hoshida System, perched in high orbit over a hot gas giant orbiting a dim red star. Dozens of smaller stations were scattered around the planet’s moons, and swarms of shuttles filled the space between them. But they were all small fry compared to the main habitat.
Takeo Station was so big it would have easily qualified as another moon if it wasn’t man-made. A flattened sphere twenty kilometers across at the equator, defended by guns that outmassed the Square Deal and armor half a kilometer thick. Or at least, that’s what the guidebook said.
There was a deep chasm aro
und the station’s equator, with a steady flow of shuttles entering and leaving. As the Square Deal maneuvered closer it grew from a small gap in the station’s hull to a vast pit, a kilometer wide and four kilometers deep. We descended half that depth before finding our assigned docking position, nestled flat against the south side of the chasm.
“This place is huge,” I commented to Naoko.
She smiled tolerantly. “Not particularly. Wait until you see Imris, or one of the Bastions.”
“Seriously? Naoko, this one station must outmass all the trees on Felicity.”
“I did tell you that Felicity is a poor world, did I not? But I’m afraid we’ve no time for sightseeing. Here is a link to the station’s navgrid. Can you find your way around?”
Wow, that was a huge map. More than a trillion cubic meters of rooms, hallways, lifts, atriums and gardens, and that was just the parts that had life support. There was a marker showing where I was, but how would I ever find anything?
Oh, there was a search interface. I entered the address of one of our passengers, and the mapping program immediately came back with a suggested route to get there.
“I think so,” I said uncertainly. “What do you need me to do?”
“There are errands to run on station. Dusty is organizing the purchase of additional supplies, but many vendors do not deliver. Also, several passengers have requested assistance in moving their goods to the ship. Unfortunately local law discourages the use of unattended bots, so it would be best if someone accompanies the work crews.”
I sighed. “Is it always this busy?”
“Not usually. But when an opportunity for profit presents itself, we must move quickly to take advantage. This should simply be a matter of following the bots, and ensuring that they are not stolen or vandalized. Can you do this?”
“Sure. I’ll figure it out. I’d better bring Smoke and Ash just in case, though. Chief West wouldn’t be happy if he heard about me leaving the ship without them.”
I was a little nervous about being responsible for hundreds of credits worth of bots and cargo when I barely had any idea what I was doing. But pitching in was my job, so I’d just have to muddle through.
Perilous Waif (Alice Long Book 1) Page 10