by E. M. Foner
“It’s worth it,” Affie told Dorothy. “Just have her take it out of your pay.”
“Alright,” Dorothy grumbled. “Don’t tell my mom about this, either of you. She’ll say I should have gone back to the avatar parlor and done it again.”
The holographic projection of Dorothy wearing the dress winked out, and then came back, looking even more life-like than the real girl. Dorothy watched in awe as the more elegant version of herself strolled across the room in high heels, a designer purse sparkling with fake diamonds clutched in her hand.
“I borrowed the vectors for some of Chance’s shoes and bags with her permission,” Libby reported. “The selection will appear along the top of the store catalog when you bring it back up.”
“Two creds was a bargain!” Affie enthused. “My avatar was done by a specialty outfit for the modeling agency, but it can’t adjust for the heel height so seamlessly.”
“What do you think about the dress?” Dorothy asked, half-hypnotized by a vision of herself she had never imagined could exist.
“Price,” Affie said out loud, and some Vergallian script appeared floating along above the hologram’s head. “Ooh, two-twenty. I guess that’s out of your range unless you want me to loan it to you.”
“No, no,” the girl protested. “I can’t imagine when I would ever get a chance to put it on. David would run the other direction if he saw me wearing something like that. I look like an immersive star or something.” She blushed at her own words. “You try a dress now.”
The Vergallian girl waved Dorothy’s hologram out of existence and called up the catalog again. After selecting a V-shaped dress with pointy shoulders that stuck up to the eye-level of the catalog model, she asked, “Could I borrow a pair of Chance’s shoes?”
“It’s okay by me,” Dorothy replied. “Does it work that way, Libby?”
“Let me check with Chance,” the station librarian replied. “She says it’s fine, but if you break a heel you have to replace them.”
The two girls looked at each other in puzzlement.
“That was an artificial intelligence joke,” Libby added.
“Oh, I get it,” Dorothy said, and nudging Affie, gave a polite laugh.
“Let me have the adjustable waltz shoes with the figure eight heel,” Affie instructed the station librarian. “Can you set the height to seventy percent?”
A hologram of a very haughty Affie strutted towards the girls, looking exactly like a model on a catwalk. Stopping right in front of them, the avatar struck a number of odd poses that accentuated lines of the elegant dress.
“Wow, that dress fits you like a second skin,” Dorothy told her friend.
“I look like a Trelling with those shoulders,” Affie replied dismissively. “And if I ever got Stick out on the dance floor and he dipped me, I could put somebody’s eye out with those points.” She waved the hologram out of existence and the catalog returned. “Your turn.”
“This is so cool,” Dorothy said, picking a plain frock that she thought might not be too expensive. “With the low heels, please, Libby. And don’t bother with the bag.”
Dorothy’s avatar reappeared, skipped across the room, and turned a cartwheel in front of the startled girls. Then a hologram of David popped up across from her, dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt, and the two figures went into a sort of two-step, the only dancing style the young man seemed to understand.
“I’ve never seen a dance partner in a fitting room before,” Affie exclaimed. “Why don’t they all do this, Librarian? Is this a Stryx patent that they can’t afford to license?”
“I’m afraid it would be difficult to achieve with commercial technology,” Libby said apologetically. “I’m kind of cheating and reallocating resources from other tasks. If I charged the same rates I do for computational commercial work, this presentation would cost approximately eight creds a second.”
“Shut it off!” Dorothy croaked. “I can do the two-step with David for real and all it takes is some pleading.”
Sixteen
After popping two recently reattached buttons off of his best shirt, Joe muttered something about shrinkage and slipped past his wife and out of the bedroom.
“Get back here,” Kelly called after him. “Your uniforms aren’t shrinking, you’re expanding, and another beer is only going to make it worse.”
Joe ignored his marching orders and continued down to his brew room, where he retrieved an elastic metal back brace from the wall. It was traditionally worn by Frunge males during their ancestor worship ceremonies, a ritual nearly identical to the Scottish sport of caber toss. Czeros had given the belt to Joe as a present after an evening of manly commiseration about lower-back problems.
The owner of Mac’s Bones had just switched from half-kegs to quarter-kegs in his microbrewery due to his body’s complaints about liquid weight-lifting. The Frunge worship belt helped a great deal, and it had the added benefit of acting as a male girdle. He lifted up his T-shirt, sucked in his gut, and wrapped the alien support around his midsection. The two ends of the belt seemed to merge into a single elastic metal band when he pressed them together, creating an invisible seam. He pulled down his T-shirt and headed back upstairs.
“I put the buttons back on with Horten thread glue so we don’t lose them, but I guess you’re going to have to find something else martial to wear,” Kelly said. “What are you doing?”
“It’ll be fine,” Joe asserted, taking back the shirt and easily making the buttons. “I just did a few sit-ups to tighten the old abdominals.”
“Baloney,” Kelly muttered, but she was too busy preparing herself to investigate the mystery of the vanishing beer belly. “Are you going to carry any weapons?”
“I’ll borrow Ian’s old Claymore, the one he hangs over the bar, and Wooj said he’s bringing a Vergallian saber. Nobody would expect Clive to carry visible arms since he’s a spymaster, and Lynx is scary when she glares.”
“And the four of you will be enough?”
“Four would be overkill as an honor guard for anybody except the Dollnicks, and with them it’s just a symmetry thing,” Joe replied. “All of the aliens know it’s purely ceremonial in any case, but they’d think less of the president if we didn’t make the effort. Who are the princes the Dollnick ambassador is introducing?”
“Drume, from Chianga, and Kuerda, from one of the big terraforming clans. Chianga is one of the open worlds with a large human presence, and Kuerda’s family has the contract to terraform Venus.”
“I hope the president has something more to offer them than Sheezle larvae,” Joe said, pulling a black baseball cap over his short hair. “Why is the meeting at Pub Haggis rather than some fancy restaurant on a Dollnick deck?”
“The president knows that nothing on the station is going to impress a Dollnick prince, so he’s falling back on his grandfather’s philosophy for approaching bankers.”
“Which was?”
“His grandfather ran a machine shop back before the Stryx opened Earth, and whenever he got a big order, he’d need a bank loan to cover materials until he could deliver and get paid. Stephen’s mother told him that they always knew when his grandfather was going to the bank because he’d get up in the morning and put on his work clothes from the previous day. He wanted the bankers to think that he was so busy that he had to work around the clock.”
“The president is going to wear dirty clothes to the meeting?”
“Hildy wouldn’t let him, she’s got more sense than that. But the idea is that Pub Haggis is more workman-like. Plus, it’s not a secure location.”
“That’s a plus?”
“The Dollnick ambassador and the princes will no doubt have their personal scramblers that prevent eavesdropping, but the president wants to make sure that word gets out he’s meeting with them. It should help push forward the negotiations with other aliens.”
“Pretty smart,” Joe admitted.
“The president wasn’t very happy when his priv
ate conversation with Hildy was blasted all over the Grenouthian network, but he was quick to see how we can use them to our advantage. If we leaked a story to the Galactic Free Press about the meeting, everybody would take it with a grain of salt, but when the bunnies report the story, it will gain instant credibility.”
“You asked to be alerted fifteen minutes before your appointment,” Libby’s voice came from nowhere and everywhere. “I pinged Hildy as well, and they’re waiting for you in the living room. Clive, Woojin and Lynx are on their way to the Little Apple.”
“Thanks, Libby,” Kelly replied. “We’re leaving now.”
Ten minutes later, while Joe retrieved Ian’s sword from behind the bar, the president went over last minute strategy notes with Clive and Blythe, who had been sounding out alien contacts on possible joint ventures for Earth.
“Do you think there’s really a chance they’ll be willing to train terraforming engineers on Earth?” the president asked. “I can twist the arms of some old national governments and throw in a desert or two as practice areas if the Dollnicks are serious about it.”
“We have a better chance of getting them to set up some assembly plants with an apprenticeship program, the way they do it on their own worlds,” Blythe said. “Just learning how to work with alien equipment is a good start, and I’m sure you’ve seen the floaters the humans on Chianga are producing based on Dollnick components and modified designs.”
“The Dollnicks are the biggest employers of human labor, with over a billion of us working on their ag worlds or terraforming projects,” Clive added. “They’ve even repurposed some of their heavy equipment for two-armed operators. If you can just get them to invest in a few Earth factories, vocational and specialist training will surely follow.”
“But a university extension campus is out of the question?” President Beyer asked.
“They don’t really have universities on their own worlds, just colleges for the liberal arts. Technical and scientific training is all provided on-the-job in apprenticeship programs.”
“Alright. Anything else I need to know?”
“Keep the good side of your profile to the falafel stand,” Blythe told him. “Here they come. Everybody look professional.”
The president rose to meet the Dollnicks, and Kelly, Hildy and Blythe gathered around him. The four ceremonial bodyguards, Clive, Woojin, Lynx and Joe, formed on either side of the human delegation, trying their best not to look silly.
“Ambassador Crute,” Kelly said, inclining her head. “The President of EarthCent extends his thanks for your arrangement of this meeting.”
“Of course,” the alien diplomat replied brusquely. “Prince Drume and Prince Kuerda need no introduction in civilized space, so let’s begin.”
The Dollnicks seated themselves on the extra-high chairs that Ian had rented for their use, and their own bodyguards moved to strategic locations around the room. Donna had reserved the whole restaurant for the event, and other than the conspicuous group of aliens with immersive cameras gathered at the nearby falafel stand, the meeting was completely private.
“I understand how valuable your time is so I’ll get right to the point,” the president began. “The EarthCent administration is opening Earth to direct alien investment. We’ve already closed a deal with the Verlocks to establish an academy for theoretical mathematics and magic, but we’re particularly interested in putting our population on a sounder technological basis.”
“You wish us to train humans to compete in our markets?” Prince Drume asked, folding all four of his arms across his chest.
“Not to compete, to contribute,” the president said enthusiastically. “You’re already the biggest employer of human expatriates, and surely there must be times when you wish that our people came to you with a more practical skill set. Establishing pilot manufacturing or assembly facilities on Earth would give you the chance to screen for employees worthy of recruitment for service in your many admirable businesses.”
“While there is truth in your words, we anticipated your proposal and our projection for the return on capital isn’t worth the effort,” Prince Kuerda stated bluntly. “A local staging base to assemble equipment for the next phase of the Venus terraforming project would be convenient, but paying cancellation fees to the orbital factories already contracted to do the work would offset any gains.”
“But you came to the meeting,” the president observed.
“I recently received an interesting report from the director of our mining firm, which employs Humans in asteroid scouting,” Kuerda continued, looking directly at the president. “There was a mention of certain stores of thorium existing on Earth, though the report was somewhat confused about the provenance. Perhaps it was hoarded as treasure by your pre-Stryx governments?”
“Thorium?” The president glanced to his left at Kelly and Hildy, who shook their heads, and then turned to Blythe, who poked his shoulder and leaned over to whisper in his ear.
“Nuclear waste,” she murmured. “Spent fuel from power reactors and fissile materials from weapons programs. We used to trade it in the virtual game world, but there didn’t seem to be any point in looking into it as a business because of the radioactivity. It’s dangerous for humans to transport and the old governments had all sorts of regulations about it. Try them on uranium and plutonium.”
“Ah. That thorium,” the president said to Kuerda. “Yes, along with uranium and plutonium, I believe we have quite a bit saved up around the world.”
All three Dollnicks gaped. “Quite a bit?” Kuerda croaked. “And you don’t keep it all in one place under lock and key to prevent theft?”
Blythe broke off her hasty subvoced conversation with the Stryx librarian and whispered in the president’s ear again.
“It’s not all high-grade,” the president hastened to add. “Some of it is in the form of mine tailings, and I’m told that the, er, half-life of certain isotopes is unfortunately all too brief. But I’m sure a species with your technical ability…”
“You can sell the mine tailings to the Drazens, they like that sort of thing. I must insist on exclusivity for all of your high-level radioactive reserves to maximize our return on the reprocessing and packaging facility. We will pay ninety percent of the Frunge spot price minus the cost of shipping to an appropriate market in return for building the reprocessing plants and training human operators.”
“That sounds quite fair,” the president said, glancing left and right for input from his brain trust. According to the EarthCent Intelligent assessment, Dollnick princes would only be offended by any attempt to negotiate an offer, the details of which would then be sorted out by underlings.
“Deal,” Kuerda said. The giant Dollnick displayed his knowledge of human etiquette by extending all four of his arms across the table to shake hands with the president and the three women simultaneously. Then he turned his head to one of his bodyguards and called, “Get a Thark recorder in here.” The Dolly nodded and whispered into a device on a wristband.
“That’s fine for you, Kuerda, but I’m not looking to expand my commodities business,” Prince Drume observed. “I’m here because I’ve been favorably impressed with how the Human contract laborers we’ve brought to Chianga have established successful enterprises after completing their terms. They’re surprisingly diligent about keeping up with their loan payments.”
“There are still more than four billion people on Earth and no shortage of willing borrowers,” the president said. “The problem is that our higher education system is primarily focused on self-replication.”
The Dollnicks nodded, and Prince Drume said, “It’s an occupational hazard in all non-vocational education systems. That’s why our own industries utilize on-the-job professional training. I suggest you do the same.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” the president replied, as if he were hearing it for the first time. “If only we had the industrial infrastructure in place to train a new generation of engineers,
but unfortunately, our world was just completing the transition to a service economy when the Stryx arrived.”
“You mean everybody worked for your military service? My intelligence shows no evidence of a modern weapons industry on your world.”
“Our nations had to give up on weapons development when most of the people left to become contract laborers for generous alien employers such as yourselves. The governments basically remade themselves into pension funds for their retired workers,” the president explained. “The service economy that evolved on Earth was based on people providing advice for each other, things like that. It was much more lucrative than manufacturing products.”
“But where did the money come from?” Drume asked. “How was value created?”
“You don’t remember the Grenouthian documentary?” Kuerda said to Drume, with a significant look at his fellow prince. “They printed the money on slips of special paper or they added to the supply electronically with primitive computers. It’s what led the Stryx to step in and open Earth, since they’d never seen sentients so bent upon self-destruction by economic means.”
“That was a documentary? I thought it was the pilot for a new post-apocalyptic series,” Drume replied in astonishment. He turned back to the EarthCent president. “Perhaps you’d like to hire us to govern your world?”
“We’re getting better at it now,” President Beyer declared hastily. “But if you could see your way to taking over a few of our abandoned industrial parks and setting up some manufacturing facilities, I can grant you extraterritorial status. That will give you immunity from taxes, regulations, and interference from anybody claiming to have authority over the area. You’ll have to operate within Stryx rules, of course, since we remain a protectorate.”
“Perhaps some of my own Humans will be interested in managing such a project for me,” Drume mused. “I seem to recall that Earth lacks vehicular levitation technology, so a floater assembly plant such as the one on Chianga would be a possibility.”