by E. M. Foner
“Only until I dropped out of high school. How’s everything on Earth?”
The Hanker shrugged. “Pretty much the way you left it, except with interstellar portals in all the major train stations and a lot of alien tourists wandering around with breathing apparatus. You can’t get a seat at any of the five star restaurants without bribing somebody.”
“The aliens can eat our food?”
“Usually not, but they like to see and be seen. Hey, I’ve got a job offer for you.”
“eBeth is working as an English teacher, in addition to being my apprentice,” I told Pffift.
“This pays better and you get to visit Earth.”
“How much better?” the girl asked.
“I’ll give you ten times whatever Mark is paying you because we all know how little that must be. Plus tips.”
“What’s the job?”
“Tour guide. My business partner is your old friend, the lieutenant. We’re going to use your portal to send people from here to Earth. It’s the perfect setup.”
“Back the wagon up,” I interrupted. “First of all, the portal is my responsibility and only my team members can operate it. Second, the bicycle I bought eBeth is worth more than—”
“I don’t think so, Pffift,” the girl interrupted me. “I’ve never actually been anywhere on Earth so I wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I never even got a passport.”
“I could write you a script based on Wikipedia,” the Hanker offered. “They have articles about all the interesting tourist destinations. The important thing is that you speak English and whatever they speak here, which is more than anybody else on Earth can say.”
“When Mark used to send people off-world to work, he gave them translation technology,” eBeth said. “I’ll bet he can program up some of those ear-cuff things that will do a better job than I could. I’m not really fluent.”
The front door opened and Peter came in carrying a bouquet of flowers that must have included one of everything from the local fields. “Morning, everybody,” he said, approaching our table. “Hi, eBeth. These are for you.”
“Really? They’re, uh, interesting,” the girl said, though I could tell that being presented with a peace offering in front of witnesses had tickled her fancy. “Nobody’s ever given me flowers before. I’ll put them in water and see how Sue’s coming with breakfast. You sit down and eat with us. ”
The successful penitent took the seat next to me and the Hanker introduced himself.
“You’re Pffift?” Peter asked. “But eBeth said you were, uh, different.”
“She said I was gross,” the alien said agreeably. “I take it you’re her young man?”
“Working on it,” Peter whispered with a glance towards the kitchen door.
“How did you ever think of flowers?” I asked him. “I’ll have to try that on Sue.”
“She’s the one who gave me the idea,” he said. “Does Mr. Pffift being here mean that we’re getting to the end of our mission?”
“Pffift doesn’t work for the League or Library,” I told him. “He’s here on private business.”
“You have your own spaceship and everything?”
“It’s my family’s, really, but I’m the oldest son,” the Hanker replied, dusting a bit of imaginary lint off the lapel of his suit jacket with the backs of his fingers. That’s when I noticed that Pffift was formally dressed.
“What’s with the monkey suit?” I asked him. “Going on a job interview?”
“You didn’t expect me to come all the way here with nothing to trade, did you? I got a great deal on men’s formalwear back on Earth so I stocked up. They say that a good suit never goes out of fashion and I’m hoping the same holds true on Reservation.”
“Except suits like that were never in fashion here,” I pointed out.
“So I’ll corner the market. That smells wonderful, Sue.”
“They’re just blueberry pancakes,” she said, setting the large platter on the table. “eBeth is bringing in the syrup and some dairy. Does anybody want coffee or tea?”
“No orange juice?” Pffift asked.
“Wrong season,” I told him. “Shipping methods on this planet aren’t fast enough to move fresh produce long distances.”
“Try the tomato juice,” Peter suggested. “Kim say’s it’s full of Vitamin C.”
Pffift made a face. “I’ll just take a pill, thank you.”
eBeth came in with the syrup, butter and yoghurt, and the five of us quickly demolished the pile of pancakes.
“That’s quite an appetite you have, Mark,” Pffift said.
“I biked uphill three hours to pick you up and then all the way back.”
“Which was mainly downhill,” the Hanker observed. “And what does the amount of work your encounter suit does have to do with how much food you eat to pretend that you’re human? There’s not even anybody to see.”
“He’s right, Mark,” Sue said, sounding not a little concerned. “I’ve been feeling hungry lately myself.”
“I’ll add it to the list of things to check next time I get to Library,” I told her, and turned to eBeth. “Sophus is lending me his wagon to pick up the Ferrymen Temple clock at the canal station today. Do you want to come along?”
“Sure, I’m not back to teaching until Monday. Peter?”
“I already asked for the day off.”
“Do you mind if I join you?” Pffift asked. “I want to get a feel for the place.”
By the time we returned with the turret clock in the back of the wagon, eBeth and Peter had quarreled and made up two more times, and Pffift had taken orders for a dozen suits.
Fifteen
“Why are we meeting in the Ferrymen Temple?” I asked. “There’s nothing here but pews.”
“We stripped the temple as soon as we found out you were from off-world,” Saul explained. “The Ferrymen’s Body has been in storage the last six months but it should be here any minute.”
“You keep mummies in the temples?”
The group of negotiators from the spaceport broke out laughing, including Hilde, who had previously impressed me as the reserved type.
“It’s just a name, Mark. Like ‘Ferrymen’s Eyes.’ I suppose I could explain but I thought you’d prefer to see it in person.”
“Your meeting, your agenda,” I said, still a bit miffed that I was losing out on the opportunity to sell any food or beverages to the out-of-towners.
The temple’s giant double doors, which rose to twice a man’s height, banged open and a crew of four burly men carried in a large crate. They marched past the indoor garden and down the center aisle to deposit their load on the raised platform at the front of the hall. There they quickly disassembled the crate and took the wood with them when they left.
“That’s a ‘My Life’ editing station,” I observed. “I thought you only had them at the spaceports.”
“There’s one in every Ferrymen Temple,” Saul informed me.
“But they violate your covenant!”
“No, the rule is quite specific in prohibiting electrical generation and internal combustion engines. The editing stations come with a sealed battery that’s good for many years under normal conditions. I understand that it accounts for around ninety percent of the weight.”
“Battery technology is tricky,” I acknowledged. “I know a power storage engineer who’s fond of saying that he can give you a low price, a long life, or a light weight—choose two out of three. But if the Ferrymen are willing to tolerate batteries there’s no limit to the technology you could be using.”
“It’s not the Ferrymen who prevent us from employing more gadgets, it’s our own choice,” Hilde told me. “We’ve seen what happens to worlds that grow dependent on labor-saving technology and we aren’t willing to go there, at least not yet. Our scholars are studying how various species implement communications networks, but why risk sacrificing relations with our next-door neighbors in return for the ability to talk to
strangers on the other side of the world?”
“Global networks aren’t all bad,” I said, thinking of Wikipedia. “Besides, it’s Earth you should be studying. The advanced species are much farther ahead of you, technologically speaking, and, not to put too fine a point on it, alien.”
“That’s part of the reason I asked for this meeting,” Saul told me. “Although we’ve taken over management of our three worlds and even handle the distribution for exports, the Ferrymen still keep an eye on the ships they lease us to carry on the business. Earth isn’t anywhere near our delivery routes, and we wouldn’t have risked returning to our homeworld before they joined the League in any case.”
“And now you don’t have ID crystals to use the portals.”
“Exactly. But our scholars who study your League have uncovered information suggesting that artificial intelligences such as yourself maintain a parallel portal network.”
“Nothing so grand,” I told him. “It’s just that when a world is being evaluated for first contact, our engineers normally open a single portal for the exclusive use of observation teams.”
“Do they close the portal after a world is connected to the main network?” asked a young woman wearing a style of outfit I hadn’t previously seen on Reservation.
“Eventually,” I hedged. “Library doesn’t do things in a rush and the engineers like having a back door in case something goes wrong with a new network.”
“How long is that?” she followed up.
“A few hundred years or more,” I ventured a guess. “It depends.”
“So if you wanted to bring a number of us to Earth and let us take a quiet look around, it could be arranged.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” I admitted. “I left a human friend in charge of the building where the original Earth portal is installed, and the last time I saw him he mentioned something about setting up a tourism business.”
“Your friend is quite prescient,” Saul said. “I would like to volunteer as a guinea pig.”
“I’ll discuss it with my team. One of us would have to accompany every group in order to open the portal, though I suppose we could schedule the returns and meet you. But there are also some legal niceties involved.”
“Customs?” Hilde suggested, that being her own area of expertise.
“It’s more an issue of the guidelines for portal usage laid out for observation teams,” I said, not seeing the point of telling them that the proposed project wasn’t even a grey area but an outright violation. “My team could face disciplinary action if we draw the wrong attention.”
“Anything that money could fix?” inquired an elderly gentleman whose ancestors might have been drawn from ancient China.
“Money never hurts,” I allowed.
“You told me at our previous meeting that you came to Reservation on a mission to make sure that the Ferrymen weren’t abusing us,” Saul said. “How did your League become aware of our existence?”
“The Ferrymen are always hiding a few client species around the galaxy so it wasn’t exactly a secret that you existed somewhere. My team actually learned about your worlds from a competitor you’ve been destroying in the marketplace for hand-crafted luxury goods.”
“Hankers?” the young woman guessed.
“They do sell a line of accessories that—”
“Garbage,” she interrupted. “Have you ever seen their work? My eight-year-old brother can do better.”
“Ester,” the older man rebuked her. “It’s not polite to interrupt and the Hankers do the best they can with those flipper hands of theirs. It remains amazing to me that so many species achieved space travel with such physical limitations.”
“You can get a lot done with a prehensile tongue, and most advanced species wasted a lot less time killing each other than humans,” I told him. “That said, these bodies are pretty nice.”
“We want a number of things from you and we’re willing to negotiate terms,” Saul announced bluntly. “Ester and Ching are currently here on an administrative exchange program from our two sister worlds but they aren’t authorized to negotiate contracts. If we agree on a course of action, can your portal connect to their worlds so they can carry the message and return with negotiation teams? There’s no regularly scheduled transportation between our worlds because we only have the six interstellar freighters on lease from the Ferrymen, and the shipping business keeps them pretty busy.”
“My trip here involved a three-month wait on Gimpel,” Ester said. “I had to spend the whole time in the oxygen-breathing lounge at the spaceport eating rehydrated food.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I apologized reflexively.
She shrugged. “I got a lot of reading done.”
“As it happens, I know the captain of a starship who hires out for the right price, but he’ll probably want to sell you his personal gig for visiting the surface rather than deploying one of the ship’s landing craft.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Hilde asked.
“The gig? It’s one of those disposable jobs and the drive is nearing its end-of-life self-destruct. Four more round trips, I believe.”
“It depends on the price,” Ching said. “We may be in a hurry but we aren’t suckers.”
“Putting aside transporting negotiation teams from your sister reservations, what do you want from us?” I asked. “If it’s not possible, I can tell you now and save us all a lot of running around.”
“You have that much authority?” Saul asked, obviously impressed.
“I’m conversant with all the rules and which ones can be bent.”
“What species is the starship captain?” Ester inquired.
“Hanker,” I admitted. “But I’ve known him for hundreds of years and he’s a great guy if you can see past his sense of humor. He’s also here.”
“In orbit?”
“On the bench out front. He wanted to be introduced but I asked him to wait until I called.”
“The guy in that sharp-looking suit is a Hanker?”
“Growing compatible bodies and swapping brains is kind of their thing,” I explained. “Most advanced species develop quirks after a while.”
“We knew about the bodies but the Hankers aren’t exactly famous for their fashion sense,” Ester pointed out. “There’s no way he could have tailored that suit himself.”
“It’s from Earth. He brought a cargo.”
“Go ahead and invite him in,” Saul told me. “His presence could prove to be quite serendipitous in more ways than one.”
I could have taken a few steps to the door and called Pffift, but I hadn’t hacked anything in so long that I was beginning to worry that I’d forgotten how. It only took a second to break the encryption on his wrist controller and to use the small screen to text him. The humans were still waiting expectantly for me to make a move when he entered, looking rather annoyed.
“This is the upgraded model,” the Hanker griped in place of a greeting as he strode up the aisle. “It’s supposed to be hack-proof.”
“Pffift. I’d like you to meet Saul, our county safety inspector, Hilde, a customs official from the northern continent who works at the spaceport, Ching, who is here from another reservation world, and Ester, from the other. Everybody, this is Pffift, captain of a Hanker exploration and exploitation vessel.”
“It sounds dirty the way you say it,” Pffift complained, offering a handshake to each of the humans in the order they’d been introduced. “We come in peace, for whatever that’s worth.”
“Peace is always appreciated,” Saul responded politely. “The presence of a businessman of your stature can only benefit our discussions. But how did you come to speak our language?”
“Am I? They all sound alike to me at this point. Paul sent me a vocabulary download and I took it in through an accelerated learning headset while we were on our final approach.”
“I wasn’t aware that accelerated language learning was an option for non-AI. Would it w
ork for us?”
“Don’t let the body fool you,” Pffift said. “My brain remains pure Hanker, and I have an embedded interface.”
“The humans were about to explain what they want from us,” I told him.
“We have a presentation,” Ching said, producing a ‘My Life’ cube and inserting it into one of the upload bays of the editing station. “If there’s anybody else from your team who should see it, we can wait while you summon them.”
“I have perfect recall so I can play it back for them later,” I informed him modestly. “Just to set the record straight for my report, we were under the impression that all of your authenticity videos were edited at the spaceport embarking the goods. Do the Ferrymen Temples double as video studios?”
“That’s their sole purpose,” Saul told me. “You didn’t think we were praying to alien Sky Gods, did you? The authenticity videos are all edited at the spaceport by professionals, but the local editing stations allow our people to come in and practice talking on camera and setting the field of view. The Ferrymen’s Eyes are all equipped with wide-angle auto-focus, but learning to shoot usable video without a cameraman still takes some training.”
“Given the Ferrymen’s obsession with entertainment, I’m surprised they don’t have you recording dramas for them,” Pffift said.
“Actually, they do encourage us to pursue the arts,” Saul said. “Once our population reached the level where we could produce meaningful quantities of goods and the Ferrymen put the current export system into place, they began shipping us ‘My Life” recorders and editing stations to support the business model. They also encouraged our playwrights to make recordings of performances, but unfortunately, the Ferrymen don’t appreciate a good tragedy. Ching?”
“Could you activate the projector, Hilde?” Ching requested. He gave us an apologetic smile. “The editing screen makes everything look so small.”
The customs agent moved around to the back of the editing station and activated the projector attachment, which explained why the front wall of the temple was an undecorated white surface. I imagined that eBeth would be pretty annoyed to find out that everywhere outside of our village the locals were using the Ferrymen Temples as movie theatres.