Alien Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 2)

by E. M. Foner

  “Thank you for coming,” the Verlock ambassador bellowed, while tapping his spoon on the table in rhythm with his speech. He talked at a speed that almost approached that of a slow-spoken human, so Kelly assumed that the spoon tapping was a device to speed himself up. “Please enjoy your dinner. We will make an announcement after dessert.” Then he sat down and the gong boomed a third time.

  A stream of serving bots flooded the room, and they didn’t even appear to be rentals. The diplomats were stunned speechless as multiple dishes of their native foods, expertly prepared, were offered up. Each species was treated to its own beverage selection, and rather than sending back one of the tall draft beers to an uncertain fate in the kitchen, Joe took all three off the tray and put one in front of Kelly. Whoever said that the way to an alien’s heart was through his digestive organs must have been correct, because even the Vergallian ambassador concentrated on her own delicacies for a change.

  Around the table, some of the diplomatic couples began to feed each other choice morsels, a scene Kelly could have lived without. In too short a time, the table was cleared, and a new set of serving bots appeared, bearing dessert selections and more drinks. Kelly reckoned that the cost of catering just the one meal must have been more than EarthCent’s operating budget for the Union Station embassy for a decade.

  But eventually, all good things come to an end. As the diplomats slumped in their places, satiated, and the table was cleared the final time, the gong sounded once more and the Verlock ambassador ponderously rose to speak.

  “Throughout the ages, all intelligent beings have sought to improve their conditions and to create a better world for their offspring,” the spoon-tapping Verlock began. “Unfortunately, it often happens that the hard-working, responsible species, attract the envy of those who would rather take what belongs to others than to create something new themselves. But looking around at those present tonight, I can believe the galaxy is evolving beyond such barbaric practices, thanks in no small part to our ever-reliable friends, the Stryx. Thank you for coming. Drinks will be served until the fifth gong.”

  The Verlock wrapped up his brief speech by sitting down in slow motion, and the noise level in the room shot up as the gathered ambassadors began to speculate excitedly. Kelly’s translation implant caught scraps of conversation from around the room, like “What was that supposed to mean?” and “Did they win some galaxy-wide lottery nobody told me about?” But it was hearing the words “Why don’t you come back to my place?” that got her attention.

  Kelly turned and glared at the Vergallian ambassador, but she bit back her first reaction and calmly asked Joe, “What did you make of all that, Honey?”

  “What?” he replied, as if his mind had been somewhere else. Then he shook the Vergallian pheromone fumes from his addled brain and turned back towards Kelly. “I, uh, I guess I wasn’t listening very carefully. Something about drinks until the gong?”

  “It was just a little speech about how we should all get along and not covet our neighbor’s possessions,” she snarled pointedly, keeping her eyes locked on the Vergallian ambassador’s flawless face the whole time. The woman slowly blinked her long eyelashes, before turning away with a sigh to talk with the drunken Frunge ambassador on her other side.

  “Seems like they went to a lot of work just to say something you could put on a greeting card,” Joe observed. “Hey, Bork. What did you make of all that?”

  The Drazen ambassador held up a finger as he listened to his wife finish saying something, then he turned to the humans. “It’s unprecedented for any embassy to go to this much trouble unless they are apologizing for accidentally blowing up a world or tearing a hole in space. My wife has been having an interesting conversation with the Thark ambassador on her right, who has apparently spent the evening devouring some hand-made delicacy from Earth that they find intoxicating.”

  “Soap,” Joe interjected, and Kelly nodded in agreement.

  “The ambassador told my wife that the Tharks have been recording so many new commercial contracts for the Verlocks that they had to open an embassy on the Verlock home world. This was related in the strictest confidence, of course,” he added with a wink.

  Suddenly, there was a roaring sound in Kelly’s ear, and she realized that the Verlock majordomo was standing right behind her. Guessing that the alien had been attempting to whisper and the volume had overwhelmed her implant, she triggered the translation to replay. Sure enough, the message was, “Our ambassador requests a private word.”

  “Of course,” Kelly replied and stood up to follow the majordomo. On second thought, she leaned down to her husband and said, “Come on, Mr. Attaché. This is official business.” As Joe rose to his feet, she flung a triumphant look at the Vergallian ambassador, and strode off behind the majordomo. Except striding after a Verlock meant moving like your feet were in a pool of molasses and you weren’t in any particular hurry.

  Eventually, Kelly and Joe found themselves ushered into a chamber that must have been a replica of a deep cave on the Verlock home world. The bone-white stalactites reaching down from the wet, rocky ceiling towards corresponding stalagmites on the irregular floor made the humans feel like they were walking into the mouth of an enormous rock creature with very pointy teeth. The Verlock ambassador, whose thick skin would probably allow him to sleep on a bed of stalagmites, if that was his pleasure, waited next to a waist-high stone platform that looked like a sacrificial altar, a ceremonial dagger clenched in his three-fingered hand.

  “Thank you for coming,” the Verlock intoned slowly, tapping the butt of his dagger against the rock at what he no doubt believed was a break-neck tempo. “It is time we put aside our masks and spoke plainly.”

  “I agree,” Kelly replied, not having a clue what the Verlock was talking about but wisely choosing to get to the point as quickly as possible with the glacially slow speaker.

  “You humans move too quickly,” the ambassador complained. “What is this InstaNavy that has purchased three Brupt Destroyer Spheres already? Are you planning an all-out attack on the Horten systems?”

  “Is this a game thing?” Kelly asked, turning to Joe.

  “Yeah. They just changed the rules to allow players to pool their resources and buy serious battleships from galactic history. Blythe had the idea of buying a few and selling the shares, but she and Paul keep control. I started telling you about it last night, but you drifted off.”

  “Blythe? As in the BlyChas Enterprises Blythe?” the Verlock rumbled, deeply impressed.

  “It’s a long story,” Kelly groaned, not adding that it was a long story she didn’t want to get stuck telling. “You understand that they don’t represent EarthCent. They are independent businessmen, uh, girls,” she concluded weakly.

  “Of course we know that,” the Verlock responded. “Every species on the station knows that EarthCent is a remedial diplomacy school run for humans by the Stryx. But BlyChas Enterprises is a business that any Verlock can admire.”

  “BlyChas partners with the Stryx too!” Kelly fired back in defense of EarthCent, then she realized that she might have let the cat out of the bag and had to restrain herself from clamping her hand over her mouth. But rather than bringing the meeting to a close with a nasty comment from the ambassador about “Stryx pets,” her words had the opposite effect.

  “You must get me a meeting with this Blythe,” the ambassador insisted. The translation implant even managed to add an overtone of pleading to his basso profondo. “It has never been our way to mix with aliens. But circumstances change, and beginning with tonight’s reception, we intend to take a greater part in the galaxy’s business affairs. Perhaps it is traditional with your people to accept a fee for arranging an introduction?” he hinted.

  “I’ll have to check with her mother first,” Kelly answered with a touch of sourness, having descended in a moment from being Earth’s highest ranking diplomat on the station in private conference with the powerful Verlock ambassador, to a messenger for
teenage girls who still called her “Aunty.” Why did the universe have to be so weird?

  “We will speak again afterwards,” the ambassador stated, leaving the impression that it was more of an order than an invitation. Then he ushered them slowly out of the private chamber and back to the dining hall, an exercise that reminded Joe of a childhood visit to a great-grandmother who walked with the help of a little stand on wheels.

  Kelly held onto her husband’s arm as she thought through the evening’s events, trying to piece together the puzzle. Joe was focused on getting back to their places in time to try another one of the excellent beers that the Verlocks must have gone to great effort to obtain. Just as they reached the table, the fifth gong sounded.

  Seventeen

  “I’d like the three of you to serve as my informal brain-trust,” Kelly announced self-consciously. She was acutely aware that adding up the ages of Shaina, Blythe and Chastity, and then dividing by three, would yield a result of approximately half of her own age. Well, if she wanted advice from somebody older, she could always ask Joe, or Gryph for that matter. “And Blythe, I wanted to thank you for accepting the invitation to meet with the Verlock ambassador and his associates. I’m sure you’ll at least get a nice meal out of it.”

  “I’m looking forward to it, Aunty Kelly,” Blythe replied. “InstaSitter hasn’t made much progress with the Verlocks because their children are practically indestructible, but I want to pitch them on the companionship angle. And besides, I figure we owed you a favor for that last commercial, so this will balance the books.”

  “I was a little annoyed when I saw you had used Dorothy in an advertisement without asking, even though you didn’t show her face,” Kelly admitted.

  “Oh, not that old poster ad. This one is a fifteen-second commercial that’s running on all the stations,” Blythe informed her brightly. “You haven’t seen it? Libby? Can you run the new spot for us?”

  Before Kelly had time to digest what Blythe was saying, Libby was running the commercial on her office wall. The video started with Metoo collapsing in the grass in front of a pair of shapely, stockinged legs that sported shoes which Kelly recognized from her own closet. Then the scene changed to show Dorothy’s chubby arms and small hands applying animal themed band-aids to the little robot. The voice-over declared, “If only he had an InstaSitter. Even the Stryx need looking after sometimes.”

  Kelly turned bright red, but she couldn’t think of anything to say, especially since she had invited the girls here for help. Besides, Dorothy would probably be thrilled to see herself “taking care” of Metoo on the station’s corridor display walls.

  “Alright, then.” Kelly took a deep breath and tried to reestablish control of the meeting’s direction. “As I was saying, I hope I can count on the three of you to help me figure out what’s going on around here. Shaina?” she asked, turning to the small woman with the lung capacity of a carnival barker. “Do you have anything new about changes in the local trade and the rabid interest alien businessmen are showing in Earth?”

  “The wholesalers and import/export houses are in an uproar,” Shaina reported. “It seems like every day brings a new surprise. I heard a weird story from one of our smugglers, I mean, importers, just this morning. She dropped off her cargo of plastic recycling at the Chintoo complex, but she couldn’t pick up her usual load of sheet metal in exchange because they were out! She asked them, ‘How can a robotic orbital manufacturing complex run out of sheet metal?’ They answered that some other traders had placed a last-minute order, bought everything they had, and came with a small fleet of freighters to take it away. She ended up waiting a whole day in zero-g for them to manufacture a fresh batch.”

  Chastity nodded. “Tinka and I have a whole sideline selling sheet metal, in the gameverse, I mean. It’s kind of counter-intuitive, but setting up to smelt metal in space is a major undertaking, and making it on a planet and then transporting it into orbit costs a lot more than getting it wholesale from an orbital and paying tunnel tolls. And it’s fun, because you can find a market almost anywhere you want to go.”

  “I don’t let Paul waste our gameverse time on commodities,” Blythe answered Kelly’s inquiring look. “We stick to the dangerous, high value cargoes, but neither of us really have time for trading anymore.”

  “Are you keeping up with your studies?” Kelly asked out of curiosity. It had been a while since Donna had mentioned anything about how the girls were progressing through the levels, and Kelly suddenly found herself wondering if they had dropped out of the Stryx education system.

  “Oh, we finished that a while ago,” Chastity told her. “I still have time for Raider/Trader because Mom won’t let me work more at BlyChas than eight hours a day. She lets Blythe do what she wants.”

  “I’m almost eighteen,” Blythe stated in her own defense. “Anyway, what could be a better education than working with the Stryx?”

  “Thank you,” Libby chipped in over the office speakers.

  “So it’s not that one of you has already figured out the connection between the overwhelming interest in Earth on the part of all the aliens and the changes in interstellar commerce but you’re not telling me?” Kelly asked, for the sake of the record.

  “No comment,” Libby stated. The girls all laughed and Blythe clapped her hands.

  “How about a bet, Aunty Kelly?” Blythe suggested. “If I figure it out before you, I can use the ‘Eat me up,’ ad for InstaSitter that Mom wouldn’t let me run.”

  “You’re on,” Kelly told her fiercely, and immediately regretted it. “You really made an ad—never mind. Of course you did.” Turning her head up to speak to the ceiling, she continued, “And you, Libby. I take it that ‘No comment’ means the Stryx have decided it’s all a matter of protected business information?”

  “We’ve determined that all of the parties involved are acting within their own laws and are not violating any of our station, tunnel or Stryxnet usage regulations,” Libby answered.

  “Fine,” Kelly harrumphed. She took a minute to rifle through her office junk and locate her cup of emergency instant coffee. Pulling the tab off the bottom heated the contents to barely tolerable in just five seconds. “Forgive me for not sharing, girls, but even if I had three more cups, I couldn’t be that cruel. Now that I have some caffeine for back-up, can one of you explain InstaNavy to me?”

  “I bought a Thark Battle Cruiser,” Chastity informed her excitedly. “Everything is customizable in the gameverse so I’m making it pink. Tinka and I are going to recruit all girls for crew.”

  “And what is the going rate for a pink battle cruiser?” Kelly inquired, even though she was afraid to hear the answer.

  “Oh, the basic model is a half million in Trader gold, but fueled up and armed to the teeth, it was close to a million.”

  “How did you ever find so many gamer girls to put all of that Trader gold together so quickly?” Kelly pursued the details against her better judgment.

  “Oh, I paid cash, or rather, BlythChas did. We bought the Trader gold on Bill’s Exchange using Stryx creds. The Stryx gave us a temporary line of credit,” she added.

  “What’s the current exchange rate?” Shaina asked out of curiosity. She wasn’t a gamer herself, but trade was trade.

  “It’s shot up since the rule changes,” Blythe stepped in to answer. “It used to float around nine to one, but it was up to just five Trader gold for one Stryx cred this morning. All of the excess gameverse gold from trading that the players have been hoarding is getting sopped up by the military escalation.”

  Kelly did the math and gasped. “It’s a game! How can you spend more than I’ve earned in my life on a single game piece?”

  “We’re making a profit, Aunty Kelly. Since we base our selling prices on the current exchange rate, we’re actually making an eighty-percent profit just on the round-trip currency exchange. We’re already way ahead on the Brupt Destroyer Spheres, and we had to buy twelve of them just to keep up with demand.
Chastity didn’t want to start recruiting for her ship until she finished the virtual decorating, but I bet she sells out in no time. We never could have done it without Libby to keep track of all the owners. InstaNavy has gone from nothing to over three million shareholders and enough crew for the fleet in less than a week. I think I really nailed it with the name,” Blythe concluded blandly.

  “Let me get this straight. You’ve borrowed money from the Stryx to exchange for gameverse currency, this Trader gold stuff, that you used to buy virtual battleships. Then you sold shares in the battleships at a profit for more Trader gold, which you then changed back into Stryx creds for another eighty-percent profit, and you used part of it to pay back the money you borrowed from the Stryx?” Kelly was rather proud of the way she summed it up, though she had to share the credit with the coffee.

  “Yeah, it’s a lot of money,” Blythe replied casually. “And between InstaSitter and InstaNavy, everybody knows we’re doing well, so we’re getting endless invitations to invest in all sorts of alien enterprises. I assume that’s why the Verlocks want to meet.”

  “If they’re anything like the other species, watch what you say or they’ll claim you’ve made a verbal contract when you were just being polite,” Shaina warned her.

  “Really? Would you come with me? It may sound like Chastity and I know what we’re doing, but the truth is, we’ve only dealt with aliens as customers or employees to this point. The only business-to-business experience we have goes back to buying flowers, and I don’t really count that because the nursery growers were human and we were just little kids,” Blythe said.

  “I’d love to,” Shaina replied happily. “Percentage or consulting fee?”

  “I think consulting makes more sense,” Blythe replied. “We can work it out before the meeting. Was there anything else today, Aunty Kelly?