Spy Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 4)

by E. M. Foner

  “I can’t afford it, can I?” Lynx interrupted him.

  The Dollnick slumped. “Did you have to ask that?”

  “Tough crowd today?” Lynx asked sympathetically.

  “Damn Vergallians are selling parrot-fly pesticide in the next aisle,” the Dollnick grumped. “My family has been breeding parrot-flies and parrot-dragon-flies for hundreds of generations, but this crowd all thinks they’re old-fashioned. It’s a good thing we’ve been building up the civilian side of the business.”

  “Parrot-dragon-flies?” Lynx inquired.

  “Of course, to counter the parrot-flies,” the Dollnick explained. “Most customers only buy one or the other. We never quite managed to train the dragons to recognize friendly parrots.”

  “I think I’ll just take a look at what your nest-fellow is offering,” Lynx said, disengaging from the disappointed parrot-fly salesman. She moved to the next Dollnick table, where the demonstrator was using three of his hands to display the spy-tech features of the watch he wore on his fourth wrist.

  “Pull out on the winding stalk, and pow!” the Dolly exclaimed, carefully holding the tiny knob away from his other arms. “Invisible molecular filament, cuts through anything without active shielding.”

  “How do you get it back in again without accidentally lopping off a limb?” asked a Horten.

  “The whole faceplate rotates like a reel and you wind it in,” the Dollnick replied, using the forefinger from his third hand to spin the faceplate in rapid circles as he kept the molecular filament taut with his second hand’s grip on the detachable stalk.

  “What if you only have two hands?” Lynx asked.

  “The watch also includes a superconducting magnet for manipulating or attracting ferrous objects,” the Dollnick continued his pitch as if he hadn’t heard her. “I won’t demonstrate that here due to the number of you carrying Gem Nanotrackers today, but I assure you, it’s a nifty technology for opening wooden doors with deadbolts on the opposite side.”

  “What’s a deadbolt?” asked a Drazen.

  “Who wears watches anyway?” the Horten chipped in. “And who builds wooden doors?”

  “Did you get this out of an old James Bond movie?” Lynx asked. “I didn’t realize anybody other than EarthCent agents watched them.”

  “I’m a double agent for EarthCent,” the Horten declared proudly. He pointed at the button on his belt, which Lynx recognized but couldn’t read, since the message was displayed in Horten and her translation implant only worked on speech.

  “If you aren’t buyers, just move along,” the towering Dollnick said sulkily. He had already spotted fresh prospects over their heads and moved to intercept.

  “Where’s your button?” the Horten asked Lynx after looking her up and down.

  “I actually am an EarthCent agent,” she told him. “They didn’t give me a button.”

  Eighteen

  In accordance with their arrangement, Lynx and Thomas met up with Blythe and Clive back at the EarthCent booth at the end of the first day of the show. Outside of the Nebulae room in the overflow area rented to the Gem, they stopped in front of the large mapping display for Nanotracker. Lynx readily spotted the avatar that represented her and brought up the detailed tracking information.

  “Somebody’s been drinking at lunch,” Thomas remarked, scanning down the verbose readout.

  “It was just one beer, and it wasn’t AT lunch, it was FOR lunch,” Lynx protested. “I’m starving now.”

  “You went by all sixty vendors?” Blythe asked in surprise. “Did you actually talk to anybody, or did you just run through stuffing free samples in your bag?”

  Lynx looked down in embarrassment at the “EarthCent Spy” bag most attendees toted about for free samples. Hers was bulging so much that the handles didn’t quite touch when she gripped them in her hand.

  “I skipped all of the bio-tech booths,” she admitted. “I don’t want to start replacing my body parts that still work fine.”

  “Still, it’s good to know what we’re up against,” Clive observed. “If we ever do have run-ins with alien agents, remember that they may be more machine than man under the skin.”

  “Are you implying that there’s something wrong with that?” Thomas asked pointedly.

  “Oh look, it does transcripts,” Blythe declared, zooming to the next level of detail for the Nanotracker. “As much as I hate to admit it, the Gem sure know how to spy.”

  “They get plenty of practice spying on themselves,” Herl remarked, materializing out of thin air next to the group of humans. “And the problem with Gem tech is you never know if they’re cloning the results, so you may effectively be sharing your intelligence with them. But they are good with the nanobots, I’ll give them that.”

  “Did you just get here, Herl?” Blythe asked the Drazen spymaster. “I didn’t see you come in.”

  “Oh, I’m a sneaky fellow,” he replied. “I stayed in the background and watched the two of you recruiting double agents for a while. I have to say, it was one of the most amusing surveillance jobs I’ve done in my career. Some of the top alien agents working out of the station gave you their contact information and took your buttons. I can’t understand why nobody ever thought of trying this before.”

  “It was Blythe’s idea,” Clive told him. “She figures that some of them will think that we’re dumb enough to believe that they really are double agents. Plus, they’ll feed us all sorts of phony intelligence for centees.”

  “What are we going to do with phony intelligence?” Lynx asked.

  “Analyze it,” Blythe answered. “If you figure the false intelligence represents what they want us to believe and where they want us to look, we might be able to figure out what they’re trying to hide and we’ll have a good idea where it isn’t. They’ll probably include some real intelligence on the other species as well, to make the misinformation look legitimate. In any event, it will give our analysts something interesting to work with while they’re waiting for our field agents to start producing.”

  “Fascinating,” Herl said. “Whatever gave you such a good idea?”

  “We do a lot of customer satisfaction surveys for InstaSitter because you can never let your guard down in business,” Blythe explained. “Lots of parents lie through their teeth, telling us how much little Joey enjoys a mixed vegetable dish for dessert instead of ice cream, that sort of thing. We cross-check the suspicious results next time we babysit little Joey, and sure enough, the mixed vegetables turn out to be part of a misinformation campaign.”

  “Speaking of mixed vegetables, I only had a beer for lunch,” Lynx reminded them. “I wouldn’t have even had that if they weren’t giving it out free at the Frunge booth.”

  “You drank the Frunge beer?” Herl asked, his jaw dropping open.

  “It didn’t taste that bad,” Lynx replied defensively. “Why?”

  “Nothing,” Herl replied quickly, though he looked rather concerned. “Supper’s my treat if you’ll settle for the food court. My expense account isn’t as flexible as you might think when it comes to entertainment. I’m afraid there have been abuses over the years by my predecessors, and Drazen bureaucrats have long memories.”

  “We were planning on discussing the technology we saw at the show while the impression is still fresh,” Clive told him as they headed down the corridor as a group. “Are you sure you won’t be bored?”

  “Not a bit,” Herl replied, still watching Lynx out of the corner of his eye as if he expected her to faint or explode. “Ambassador Bork was right about you humans. Great fun.”

  “Oh, look! They’ve opened another Panda Pagoda branch here,” Blythe exclaimed as they entered the food court. “Any objections?”

  “It’s all the same to me,” Thomas replied.

  “If we steal their recipe for General Tso’s Chicken, we’ll have enough money to buy all the fun gadgets at the show,” Lynx suggested. “I’ve been all over Stryx space, and Panda Pagoda is the most successful
human business I’ve seen.”

  “Good aggressive thinking, but since Panda Pagoda is a human business, our job is to prevent other species from stealing the recipe,” Blythe pointed out. “Besides, we’re not in a position to do anything with a secret recipe. You’d need a chain of restaurants for that.”

  “I was kidding, sort-of,” Lynx replied, scanning the menutab at the table for her favorite lo mein, putting in the order, and passing the device to Herl. “I’m all set.”

  “So what must-have technology from the show do you think we really need to buy?” Clive asked her.

  “I thought about that a bit,” she answered, hungrily watching Panda Pagoda’s counter as if she expected her food to appear within seconds of being ordered. “Based on how things have gone with us so far, I think we should put your money into countermeasures. It’s probably better if we don’t start sending agents into the field until we can do it without every intelligence service in the galaxy knowing who they are and where they’re going before they even leave the station.”

  “Very wise,” Herl commented, after he made his choice and passed the menutab to Clive. He seemed surprised that anybody who would drink Frunge beer would have an intelligent opinion.

  “How about you, Blythe?” Clive asked as he studied the menu.

  “I’ll have my usual,” she answered.

  “No, I meant, what do you want from the show?”

  “Right. The Drazen bug sniffers were impressive, but I really liked the Vergallian full-spectrum active suppression system, though we could never tell Kelly who makes it or she won’t have it in the office.”

  “Do you think they would sell you one without a back-door?” Herl inquired.

  “Isn’t that something we could figure out and disable?” Blythe asked.

  “Not on your own,” Herl answered, and offered an expanded explanation. “Your scientists have some very, er, interesting views on how the universe works, but your technology base has a long way to go to catch up. Leaping forward in knowledge is just a matter of education, but if you could send all of your top people back in time to your Stone Age, it would still take them many generations to achieve even a crude facsimile of your current technology. It’s a question of tools, of bootstrapping. There’s no magical way to skip generations of technology, even if you know the final shape of things.”

  “So what do you suggest?” Clive asked.

  “If I was in your shoes, I would buy competing versions of detection technology, but stay away from the intelligent active jamming,” Herl replied. “A Drazen sniffer will reliably detect all the bugs we know of, and as a double-check, you could run a Vergallian or Dollnick sniffer to make sure a rogue Drazen entity isn’t listening in without permission.”

  “A rogue Drazen entity?” Lynx repeated, raising an eyebrow.

  “I’m sure you know that all espionage is commercial in nature,” Herl replied. “There are Drazen businesses and inter-species consortiums that are better financed and equipped than my agency, and there are plenty of Drazen chain restaurants as well,” he added significantly, tapping on the menu tab.

  “How about you, Thomas?” Clive inquired. “See any must-have equipment?”

  “I’m sure you noticed that some of the industrial consortiums were selling enhancements for artificial people and robots as well as biologicals,” Thomas replied. “I believe I could easily integrate an electromagnetic spectrum jammer without a controller, and by handling the frequencies myself, I could secure any room I’m in against most active bugging. I know what’s needed, I’m just currently short the proper hardware for the job.”

  “Anything else?” Blythe inquired.

  “Some of the hidden weapons systems were tempting,” the artificial person admitted. “I liked the laser pointer with the high-energy setting, and I have room for a couple of high-voltage stunner implants in my middle fingers. And the memory weapons were very impressive.”

  “I must have missed those,” Lynx admitted to her partner. “I guess I shouldn’t have skipped past the bio-tech stuff so quickly. Were the memory weapons based on Farling drugs? Could we have used them to erase the last hour of memory from the Vergallian spy Beowulf caught at the camp?”

  “Not that type of memory,” Thomas explained. “You probably saw them and walked right past between the demonstrations. They were on one of the Verlock tables, a mix of edged weapons and drinking cups, three-dimensional metal art works, chain mesh belts, all those things.”

  “I don’t remember,” Lynx replied, drawing a laugh from the others at her unintentional joke.

  “Everything displayed was made from Verlock memory metal. So a coffee urn can transform itself into a rapier at a touch, a goblet becomes a dagger, a plowshare becomes a mace-head.”

  “And you think that walking around with a coffee urn, a goblet or a plowshare would help agents go unnoticed on an undercover mission?” Lynx asked skeptically.

  “Any of them would fit into the trading stock we were provided with on Earth,” Thomas pointed out.

  “That was a one-time thing,” Lynx replied. “Clive won’t be sending our agents on trading missions with junk that people are trying to clean out of their houses.”

  “And what does the Director think we should be buying?” Blythe asked her husband.

  “The interstellar tracking technology,” Clive answered. “The Effterii is the only qualitative advantage we hold over any of the species, and with the exception of the Stryx, there’s no ship it couldn’t keep up with or outrun. But there’s also no way I’m aware of to track ships through jumps unless you plant a beacon onboard. The Verlocks were selling some quantum-coupled directional finders they make by scavenging the parts from Stryx ship controllers and registers. Expensive, but they’re supposed to be next to impossible to detect, and in the right situation, priceless.”

  “How about renting out to cover the cost?” Lynx suggested. “You could offer to do tracking jobs for other species, make them put down a deposit to cover the cost of the location finder if we don’t get it back, and charge a nice fee on top to go after the target and provide the actual coordinates.”

  “Sounds like a good way to get shot at,” Thomas said excitedly “Does the Effterii have a weapons system? Can I come?”

  A waiter brought the food, and Herl made several elaborate hand passes over his Moo Goo Gai Pan as if he were performing a magical or religious rite. Apparently satisfied with the results, he separated his chopsticks and began to eat.

  “What was that all about?” Lynx asked, never one to let the opportunity to pose a question slip by. “I’ve eaten with plenty of Drazens, but I’ve never seen that ritual.”

  “I always check fast food,” Herl explained, displaying a distinctive ring with a blue crystal which he wore on his sixth finger. “If it contains any substances I’ve added to the filter, the crystal will glow. Compared to you humans, we Drazen can eat almost anything, but I’ve found that MSG gives me a headache.”

  “You wear a ring just for that?” Clive asked, amused by the idea.

  “It also checks for poison, of course, in food and in the air,” Herl replied, as he expertly wielded the chopsticks to lift a mouthful of Moo Goo Gai Pan.

  “Sounds like the kind of basic technology we should really be providing to our own agents,” Blythe commented. “I don’t recall anybody displaying food and air testers at the show, though.”

  “They really aren’t considered intelligence technology, or even high-tech,” Herl explained. “This particular model I bought some years ago at a luggage shop, though it’s also common to see them sold at street fairs, anywhere there are lots of small food carts.”

  “You know, I think I’ve seen them,” Lynx said, taking a break from shoveling down her lo mein. “I kind of wondered why I kept seeing vendors selling the same cheap-looking rings in Drazen markets on the colonies where I’ve traded. I thought they were for kids. How come I never see humans wearing them?”

  “You’d have to
talk the manufacturers into producing a human version, or it would take years just to teach it to react to the items you can’t eat,” Herl told her. “Besides, humans are picky cross-species eaters because you know everything can hurt you. Drazens tend to get careless because we assume we can eat anything. The same is true for drugs.”

  “Would it bore everybody if told Herl about that vacation Lynx and I took?” Thomas asked cautiously, watching Blythe and Clive for a cue. “Perhaps he could suggest a simple technology that could help us avoid such incidents in the future.”

  “We don’t have any secrets from Drazen Intelligence,” Clive replied, without making it clear whether this was by agreement or a simple acknowledgement of the facts. So Thomas proceeded to regale the table with a tale of how Lynx became comatose after accidentally absorbing the Farling drug, and how he passed twelve days by her side, mainly watching the old spy movies provided by their original EarthCent handler under the guise of educational materials. Lynx recognized a number of embellishments, but given that the artificial person’s previous job included telling bedtime stories, Thomas was practicing admirable restraint.

  “So the Farlings are up to their old tricks,” Herl commented, “Started with an anonymous tip, I’ll bet.”

  “Was that you?” Blythe asked. “Thank you for the warning. The Stryx analyzed samples of the Farling drugs recovered after Thomas dumped them, and they immediately put four of them on the forbidden list. Horrible mind control and mind-destroying stuff.”

  “No, I thought you understood,” Herl replied. “The anonymous tip was from the Farlings themselves, it’s part of their standard marketing campaign. I’ll send over the details when I get back to the Drazen embassy.”

  Nineteen