High Priest on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 3)

by E. M. Foner

  “So their religion or government, which sees death as the end of the natural cycle, won’t allow the Stryx to help?” Aisha persisted doggedly. “And the people all do what the High Priest tells them? It sounds like she would be a very depressing travel companion.”

  “Surprisingly not,” Kelly said with a laugh. “In fact, aside from the whole dying business, she’s actually very upbeat. In any case, you’ll be meeting her soon because she’s staying with Dring while she’s on the station.”

  “Knock, knock,” Donna said as she walked into the office. She only did it when Aisha was present, and Kelly wasn’t sure whether the embassy office manager was trying to make their intern comfortable, or poking gentle fun at her. “How was your vacation?”

  “It wasn’t a vacation,” Kelly objected immediately. “I worked the whole time I was there. But I couldn’t talk the High Priest out of giving away all of their wealth. Apparently, they reached a perfect consensus through their vision-speak that it’s the right thing to do.”

  “I see,” Donna commented dryly. “Nice necklace.”

  Nine

  After two days of consultations and outright arguments, Kelly gave in and agreed to sponsor the Kasilian High Priest’s giveaway conference. Dring did most of the pushing, but the Stryx also dropped some heavy hints about how establishing a good relationship with Yeafah might save tens of millions of lives later down the road. Kelly also felt a certain guilty obligation to Shaun Crick, who had come away from Kasil with nothing after the High Priest changed her mind. So far, Kelly’s necklace was the only bit of treasure the Kasilians had actually given away, and failing to persuade Yeafah to accept its return, Kelly had stopped wearing it.

  Donna arranged the rental of the Galaxy room at the Empire Convention Center for the event. The Galaxy room incorporated two half-amphitheatres, without the central partition that allowed them to be rented for separate events. It featured Coliseum-style seating, though in place of stone, the steps were formed from a plastic variant that had a little give to it. The full amphitheatre could have held around five thousand humans, but most alien species needed a little more room. With Libby’s help, Donna held a lottery for the tickets to attend in person, and arranged with Gryph to broadcast the event on the Union Station feed. The attendees all arrived early to get the best seats, making Kelly wonder if they imagined that the High Priest would stand on the stage with a box of jewels and scatter them into the crowd.

  While waiting for Dring to show up with Yeafah, Kelly silently went over the speech she had prepared for the occasion. “First, I’d like to welcome to Union Station those of you who are guests here. We are gathered today because the High Priest of Kasil, the official and sole legal representative of the Kasilian people, has come to dispose of certain items that her people have come to see as burdens. All of you have seen the catalog, so you know that in addition to artworks and other valuables, the list includes historical artifacts from Kasilian museums that are of great value to some of the species present. I hope we can all act with restraint and good-will to see that these cultural treasures are restored to the descendents of their creators, rather than disappearing into private collections.”

  “There’s been a change in plan,” Libby spoke over her implant.

  “WHAT?” Kelly subvoced, as her head snapped up she began searching for the nearest exit. “Is this why you all wanted me to sponsor the event? You dragged me into a Coliseum and now you’re going to throw me to the wild beasts?”

  “It’s a good change,” Libby reassured her. “I know you were deeply concerned about the complaints from human merchants, and all of the business leaders of the species represented on the station felt the same way. It took Dring and Jeeves up to the last moment to bring Yeafah around to seeing things from our perspective, but she finally accepted a compromise.”

  “Tell me she’s agreed to give the stuff away somewhere else,” Kelly said hopefully.

  “Noooo,” Libby drew out the vowel, giving the EarthCent ambassador time to adjust. “It’s a more fundamental change than that. Yeafah has agreed that it would be irresponsible on her part to simply give away all of their wealth to strangers on a first-come, first-serve basis. Your idea of sending Shaina to talk to her about disruptions in local trade and Blythe to brief her on the station network economy must have done the trick. Jeeves tells me she was very taken by both young women.”

  “Well, that’s great, Libby,” Kelly replied cautiously. “So why do I get the impression that you’re about to drop a giant shoe on my head?”

  “The important thing from Kasilian perspective is that they rid themselves of the burden,” Libby continued. “But she also didn’t want to disappoint the adventurers who came from all over the galaxy after hearing about the Sending, something the High Priest regards as an act of faith. So you’re going to hold an auction instead.”

  “An auction? I suppose that solves the immediate problem, though it will leave her with a mountain of Stryx creds to get rid of,” Kelly replied. “But wait a minute. Did you say that I’m going to hold the auction? As in, ME?”

  “In order to get her to go along with the idea, Yeafah insisted that somebody take legal possession of their goods immediately, and receive the money from the auction without it returning into Kasilian hands. She feels she would be failing to carry out the wishes of the Kasilian consensus otherwise,” Libby explained.

  “Okaaay,” Kelly drawled in return, while she began arranging arguments to reject the assignment. “Do I need to ask who is about to become one of the richest and most loathed individuals in the galaxy?”

  “We didn’t have a choice,” Libby replied apologetically. “Kasilian law only recognizes a property transfer if something of value is given and accepted as a token of the larger transaction. If it hadn’t been for the necklace Yeafah gave you, it would have taken another trip back to Kasil just to complete the contract.”

  “But I never agreed to it!” Kelly objected.

  “Please, Kelly,” Libby implored, with real emotion apparent in her synthesized voice. “Gryph was already prepared to impose a similar solution in the name of protecting the peace. It’s why Jeeves was so anxious to get the High Priest to Union Station where we could control the situation. I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you ahead of time, but we wanted to avoid interfering directly, and in the end, you provided both the persuasion and the solution without Gryph having to act.”

  “But what am I supposed to tell all of these aliens who showed up for freebies?” Kelly asked, temporarily resigning herself to the Stryx plan.

  “That’s the good news,” Libby told her. “We informed all of the attendees that it would be an auction before they came. We just couldn’t tell you, or you would have given up on convincing Yeafah to change her mind and never sent the girls to talk to her. Speaking of which, Shaina is coming to help you with the auction. She’s just leaving Dring’s ship in Mac’s Bones now, so you can either start yourself or tell everyone to be patient for a couple more minutes. I just wanted to give you the maximum amount of notice.”

  “I may as well just start,” Kelly grumbled. “I can’t imagine we’ll get through the whole catalog today, but please send Aisha to help as well, and whoever else you can trick into coming.”

  “Thank you Kelly,” Libby replied enthusiastically. “I’ll project the holo catalog images above the stage and keep track of the buyers for you. The catalog description for each item will come up on your heads-up display. You’re the best.”

  Kelly walked in a small circle around the podium, letting the noise wash over her and scanning the thousands of alien faces for a friend or acquaintance. She didn’t recognize a soul. A loud chime sounded and a holographic representation of something that looked like a hairpin for a giant with a pearl the size of a cantaloupe popped into existence over her head. The crowd fell silent. Kelly had no idea whether it was in fact hairpin or a very expensive harpoon, because there was nothing in the hologram to indicate the scale.
r />   Kelly was about to start reading the description of the first object from her heads-up display, when it occurred to her that most of the little speech she’d memorized would work for an auction as well as a free-for-all. She mentally edited out the line about the High Priest, routed her subvoc pick-up into the room’s public announcement system, and delivered the remainder of the speech with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Failing to receive even a polite round of applause in response, she gave-up on delaying tactics and began to read from the ghostly cue cards.

  “The first item in our auction is a jeweled Horten worm prod from the Phyrgixx Brxxid period,” she stumbled through unpronounceable words. Fortunately, all of the attendees could read the descriptions on their own heads-up displays, and only the Hortens would really know how badly she was massacring their language. “Will somebody offer, uh, two hundred Stryx creds?” she hazarded a guess.

  “Done,” cried nearly a hundred quick-thinking aliens at once, nearly rupturing her eardrums so she didn’t register the ensuing round of laughter. Well, Kelly reasoned, Libby said she would track the buyers so I can just move on.

  “The next item,” she began, and then realized that the same hologram was still in place over the stage, and the description projected on her heads-up display hadn’t changed.

  “You have to take bids,” shouted a giant Dollnick seated on the fake stone step in front of her.

  “What?” Kelly asked reflexively. “Oh right, an auction. I remember now. Um, does somebody else want to bid?”

  “You have to say, ‘I have two hundred. Do I hear three hundred?’ and then point at the next bidder,” a human she didn’t recognize called out from the side of the Dollnick.

  “Oh, I get it,” Kelly replied. “I’ll just warn you that I’ve never really been to an auction before.” There was a collective groan from the crowd at this revelation. “Alright then. I have two hundred. Do I hear three hundred?”

  “Done,” shouted a smaller group of comedians, drawing another wave of laughter. But then Kelly heard a voice behind her call, “Three hundred,” and she spun around.

  “Great, three hundred!” she exclaimed. “Who said that?”

  A sea of aliens raised a hand, waved a tentacle or twitched an ear, depending on their cultural approach to auctions.

  “Come on,” Kelly pleaded. “You have to cooperate with me here. Don’t you want this to work?”

  “It’s the Ambassador Game,” shouted somebody who must have been a local diplomat, and the whole hall erupted in hysterics. Fortunately, by the time the laughter died down and the attendees were ready for serious business, Shaina showed up with her sister Brinda. The two petite women in their mid-twenties took over immediately.

  “What’s the bid,” Shaina asked Kelly, with a glance at the hologram. Before Kelly could answer, the young woman put her hands on her hips and bellowed at the crowd, “Hey, keep your pants on out there or you’re going to find out how these worm prods worked the hard way!”

  “Three hundred,” Kelly replied mournfully in the ensuing silence. “But I don’t know who offered it. Libby said she would keep track of the buyers.”

  “Libby meant the winners, and we need more spotters,” Shaina told the EarthCent ambassador decisively. “A few dozen of them would be good. In the meantime, you take this section, between that pink Grenouthian and the Vergallian bombshell. Brinda, you have from the bombshell to the sad-looking Thark fellow. Kelly, when somebody in your section shouts a bid or makes a gesture, you point at them and repeat the price so we all know. Tell Libby to send more spotters and ask who’s taking the offsite bids.”

  “I’ll handle them,” Jeeves replied as he arrived on the central stage. “Gryph is about to push the feed out on Stryxnet, so anybody with access to a ship controller or a Stryx cred register can submit real-time bids. Most of the bidders in the room have already been recruited to act as agents of the institutional buyers for their respective species, so the Thark recorders had a busy afternoon. And Kelly, the High Priest wanted you to know that we announced a ten thousand cred rebate on the first purchase plus a free tunnel transit for the early arrivals, so they should all be in a good mood.”

  “I make the worm prod two hundred thousand, minimum,” Brinda commented, while studying the aliens in her section.

  “Brinda concentrated in Art & Artifacts at the Open University,” Shaina told Kelly. “She glanced through the catalog and the values are all over the place, from under ten thousand creds on some jewelry, to over a billion for some of the one-of-a-kind museum pieces. We’re going to have to skip over the less expensive items and group them into lots for later, or the auction will go on for months.”

  “Months?” Kelly asked, dumbfounded. “How many items are there?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Shaina replied with a happy grin. “Just be glad that the Kasilians aren’t including their personal ornamentation in the deal or it would be a thousand times as much. The catalog is all high-end stuff, there’s just an awful lot of it.”

  “Alright ladies, we’re live across the galaxy,” Jeeves informed them, sounding about as excited as Kelly had ever heard him.

  “Two hundred thousand!” Shaina sang out suddenly, her unamplified alto penetrating to the highest benches of the amphitheatre. “Two hundred thousand, starting two, give me two, two?” she paused and pointed at a Dollnick in her section. “Bid two. Now three hundred. Will you give me three? Two hundred, bid two, go three? Now two-fifty. Give me two-fifty?”

  “Two-fifty,” shouted Brinda, pointing at a Horten in her section whose face was glowing orange with excitement.

  “Two-fifty, now three. Will you go three? Two-fifty, give me three? Now two-seventy-five. Give me two-seventy-five,” Shaina chanted, going faster and faster as she warmed to the task.

  “Three!” Kelly called, pointing at a Frunge in the second row of her section.

  “Three hundred thousand,” Shaina continued. “I have three, now three-twenty-five. Three-twenty-five.”

  “I was just scratching my head!” protested the Frunge loudly, causing Kelly to cringe in embarrassment.

  “Bid two-seventy-five,” Shaina continued without missing a beat. “Now three, will you give me three? Now three, higgley dee, will you give me three?”

  “Three,” Jeeves thundered, clearly getting into the auction spirit.

  “Three hundred thousand,” Shaina revisited the bid. “Now three-twenty-five. Will you give me twenty-five? Twenty-five? Now twenty? Give me twenty? Now ten? I have ten,” she pointed at a Horten in her own section. “Three hundred and ten, now fifteen? Give me fifteen? Going once. Going twice. Sold, to the handsome Horten for three hundred and ten thousand Stryx cred. Brinda?”

  “Our next lot is a Kraaken gold and depleted uranium icon with natural Thrump tusk inlay. Due to environmental regulations, this item may not be imported into the Kraaken confederacy,” Brinda read from the catalog description, double-checking that the hologram displayed over the heads agreed with the entry. “Starting five hundred thousand, five hundred. Gimme five, go five, gimme five. Four hundred. Now four hundred. Go four hundred.”

  “Four hundred?” Kelly pointed at an alien in an environmental suit who she believed was a native of Theodric. The helmeted head nodded in confirmation.

  “I have four, four hundred thousand, go five,” Brinda started back in, her words running together so fluently that Kelly wondered how the translation implants of the aliens kept up. “Gimme five, now five, bid four, gimme five.”

  “Five,” Jeeves trumpeted, and all of a sudden the current bid was floating under the giant hologram of the Kraaken icon, which was rotating slowly to give everybody in the amphitheatre a view.

  “Bid five, gimme six, now six,” Brinda continued at a break-neck pace. Kelly scanned her section for movement, starting to raise her arm to point more than once, only to decide the potential bidder was just shifting in place.

  “This is hard,” Kelly subvoced at Libby. �
�We really need those spotters.”

  “On the way,” Libby replied. “And you have six, Kraaken in the middle of your section wearing the purple poncho. He’s yelling ‘six’ but they have weak voices.”

  “Six,” Kelly shouted immediately, pointing at the purple poncho.

  “Have six, six hundred thousand. Now seven, will you give me seven? Bid six, will you go seven? Now six-fifty, will you go six-fifty? Bid six, now six-twenty-five, can I get twenty-five? Now twenty-five. No? Bid six, I’m letting it go. Once, twice, sold!”

  “Cavalry’s here,” Libby spoke over Kelly’s implant as the Hadad girls put their heads together and fast-forwarded through a couple dozen lower value items in the catalog. Led by Chastity, nearly a hundred InstaSitters, mainly teenage girls from the various species, began spreading out through the Galaxy room. They spaced themselves on the stairs that radiated from the central stage up the tiered bench seating, so that each InstaSitter had at most fifty bidders to watch.

  “Do you want to try again?” Shaina asked Kelly. “This is a good one, a Sun Temple panel from Hoong Prime. Brinda says the textbooks claim the originals were all lost or destroyed in a war millions of years ago. Those Kasilians sure knew how to hoard. We’re going to start it at a hundred million, but it could go for billions if the Hoong foundations get involved.”

  “A hundred million!” Kelly blanched. If Shaina had been offering her a microphone she would have pushed it away. “No, you and Brinda are doing great. I’ll just work on my bid reporting. Maybe Chastity would like to try later.”