Party Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 10) (9 page)

“An excellent tale,” Dring confirmed. “Now that I recall, Kelly strongly suggested that book. I suppose this explains her support of Samuel’s dancing lessons.”

“Oh, yes,” Donna said, tightening her middle finger over her index finger to excuse her next statement. “The ambassador and I have talked about putting on a ball for years.” She didn’t see the point in mentioning that these conversations consisted of her pushing for the embassy to sponsor a ball, and Kelly displaying an unexplainable lack of enthusiasm for the project.

“No speeches at all?” Dring asked mournfully.

“There has to be a dinner afterwards,” Donna said, and then crossed the fingers of her other hand and added, “I’m sure the guests would enjoy listening to speeches while they eat, or we could have a separate room set aside for awards and such.”

“A Hall of Praises,” Dring supplied the technical term. “The Hortens and the Grenouthians traditionally separate their official ceremonies from the associated social events that way, and I’ve seen something similar with many off-network species.”

“That sounds perfect. And we could divide the workload along those lines. I’ll handle the ball, the music, the dinner, and the local invitations, and you can invite the off-station dignitaries and arrange the whole praise thing.”

“I worry that I’m asking you to do too much on short notice. Are you sure it won’t interfere with your embassy duties?”

“Never mind the embassy, this is important,” Donna blurted, worried that the prize was about to slip away. “I mean, I’m sure that an event like this will do more for EarthCent’s credibility than anything that happens in the office while the ambassador is away.”

“In that case, I’ll inform the Stryx to authorize you for all ball-related expenditures on my account.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to set a budget?” Donna asked, feeling a twinge of conscience as she relaxed her fingers. “I wouldn’t want to accidentally overdraw your ready cash.”

It was Dring’s turn to look uncomfortable, and he blinked a few times before replying. “The Stryx don’t let me spend my own money. There’s more than enough in my station account to cover a hundred balls, but the debits never go through. Whatever I purchase, the sellers get paid, but Gryph refuses to reduce my balance. He won’t even discuss it.”

“That’s even better, then,” Donna said. “Obviously, it gives the Stryx pleasure to fund your station activities, and the more we spend, the happier they’ll be.” The stroll had taken them around the hold, and they found themselves approaching the poker game in front of the ice harvester from the opposite direction. “Not a word of this to the others, Dring. They’ll find out soon enough when the invitations go out.” She silently added for herself, “and when it’s too late to do anything about it.”

“Lynx and Daniel already know I’m planning a party,” the Maker told Donna. “They’re the ones who suggested talking to you.”

“Alright, I’ll handle them, but nobody else.”

“I’ll see your thousand and raise two,” Stanley said, tossing three blues into the pot. “And another five thousand if you can tell me what my wife is getting involved in.”

“Call,” Jeeves said, pushing two blues into the center of the table. “Straight, queen high.”

“That’s it for me,” Stanley declared, tossing his hand and rising from the table. “I had a ten high straight, missed a flush and a straight flush by one card. Dring,” he called, addressing the approaching couple. “I’m out of practice and these guys are all sharks.” He moved the chair back where he had found it to make room for the Maker to resume his place.

“What’s this, Stanley?” Dring asked, holding up the twenty-cred piece which the man had left on the table to cover his losses. “When I asked you to play my chips, I assumed I would benefit from the gains and cover the losses.”

“It’s a down-payment on whatever that conversation with my wife cost you, so don’t refuse it. From the look on her face, I’d say that you just put her in charge of planning the party to end all parties.”

Nine

“Welcome to the first Conference of…” President Beyer winced and stepped back from the microphone as a loud burst of feedback forced the ambassadors, their families, and invited press to cover their ears. “Uh, sorry about that,” he shouted from a safe distance. “Can we get a little tech support up here?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Samuel muttered to his mother, who was struck by how much her son sounded like his father when using one of Joe’s favorite expressions. “Earth humans can’t manage a working public address system?”

Somebody called out, “The monitor is pointing right at you. Aim it the other direction.”

“What’s a monitor?” the president inquired.

“The speaker on the stand next to the podium that lets you hear what we hear,” the same man replied.

“Got it.” The president picked up the stand with the speaker, but the tripod legs collapsed into their closed position, so rather than resetting it in another direction, he just laid it on the floor. Then he returned to the stand and blew into the mic.

“Don’t do that,” the audio expert in the crowd shouted in irritation. “That’s an old ribbon mic. You’ll break it.”

“Sorry,” the president said, and then began again. “Welcome to the first...” The feedback was so loud this time that something backstage began to smoke, and the odor of fried electronics drifted out over the crowd. Then the sprinkler system went off. “I always hated keynote addresses anyway,” the president shouted. “See you in the sessions.”

“Well, that was different,” Kelly said to her son. They joined the mob of diplomats and reporters trying to get out of the room while avoiding the spotty coverage of the ancient sprinkler system. “I told them we should have held the conference on a station.”

“Don’t you think there’s symbolic value in holding the conference on Earth, especially when so many citizens are convinced that EarthCent is a puppet government imposed by aliens?” asked a teenage boy at her elbow.

“If I have to choose between symbolism and staying dry, I’ll take a Stryx station every time,” Kelly replied. “Are your parents in the diplomatic service?”

“Leon, Children’s News Network,” the boy introduced himself. “I’m covering the conference. You’re Ambassador Kelly McAllister. I see you in the news all of the time.”

“Uh, Leon. You know what I said about staying dry was off the record. Right?”

“It could be, in return for an exclusive interview,” Leon insinuated.

“I didn’t catch your last name,” Kelly said.

“I only use the one name,” the boy replied. “Compounding family and personal names was just another way our previous generations overcomplicated things.”

“Oh. My mother watches your network.”

“Smart decision. Our motto is, ‘Because somebody has to be the adult.’ How about the interview?”

“Well, I guess I don’t need to be anywhere for the next hour, though I’d like to change into something dry. My son is spending the day with me while his father is running an errand. Shall we meet you somewhere in fifteen minutes?”

“Make it the game room off of the lobby,” the young reporter suggested.

“I’ll stay with Leon,” Samuel immediately volunteered.

Kelly spent five minutes waiting for the elevator, then finally gave up and took the stairs. By the time she reached her floor, the ambassador realized that she was already dry and returned to the lobby. There she stopped at the main desk to ask for directions to the game room, and while waiting for the clerk to finish with a check-in, she overheard a one-sided conversation between a manager and some executive offsite.

“No, the alarm never went off. Yes, but only three of the sprinklers actually worked, and just for a minute or two before the rooftop tank ran dry. No, there wasn’t an actual fire, just a blown amplifier. I don’t know, the keynote speaker was probably making weird alien sounds or something. Yeah, all of those EarthCent types are like that. That’s hilarious, sir. Can I quote you? ‘We took a bath on the conference but they could only afford a shower.’”

“Game room?” Kelly asked the clerk.

“The game room is for our regular guests,” the woman responded after glancing at the ambassador’s conference badge.

“I’m meeting somebody there,” Kelly said.

The clerk grudgingly gestured towards the lobby café, and added, “To the right, follow the signs.”

As Kelly walked past the café, focusing on the collection of wall-mounted plaques with room names and arrows, she heard Samuel call out, “Over here, Mom.” She turned and saw that the two teenagers were sitting in the café and drinking coffee. A small camera on a tripod with a large microphone fixed above the lens was set up a few feet away, pointing at their table.

“I thought you were going to play some games,” she said, taking the open seat at the table.

“That’s before I learned that your son was on the cast of ‘Let’s Make Friends’ for two years. We just finished recording a short interview, but I’ll bet the executive board will authorize a special if Sam is willing. I just wish I had my card collection with me so I could get your son to autograph his.”

“You collect LMF playing cards?” Kelly asked the teenager.

“When I was a kid,” Leon replied. “I used to watch it a lot because we never saw any aliens where I grew up in Kansas. We hardly saw any other humans. Are you ready to rock?”

“To, uh, all right. But before we begin, it would help me to have a better idea of your viewership so I’ll be able to provide answers they might find interesting. Other than my mother, would you say that your audience is primarily students?”

Leon shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not in the advertising end of the business, but I can check if you want.”

“And are all of the reporters your age?”

“I’m kind of old, that’s how I got this assignment,” Leon admitted, looking a little embarrassed. “We have a policy that correspondents have to be sixteen or older to go on overnight travel assignments alone.”

“Why’s that?” Samuel asked.

“You know,” Leon said. “People can be pretty weird.”

“Oh, right,” the ambassador’s son responded, thinking about what the observation deck guide had told him about the dangers on Earth.

“So how long has CNN been around?” Kelly followed up, beginning to feel like she was the one conducting the interview.

“We started when I was fourteen, so almost three years,” the reporter answered, making it sound like a very long time. “We were always talking about current events and stuff over the Teachnet, but after the Grenouthians opened their media center on Earth and all of the big news networks started running cheap archival footage 24x7, we felt somebody had to cover the real news.”

“But where did a group of children, uh, young people, get the funding to launch a world-wide news network?” Kelly asked.

“It started with an anonymous donation,” Leon explained. “Somebody bought one of the old established networks that was failing and gave it to us. Luckily, they used the same initials, so we didn’t even have to change the lettering on the gear. We outsource all of the financial stuff, like selling commercial time, and even though we have an editorial board, all of our important decisions are crowd-sourced over the Teachnet.”

“Teachnet? You mentioned that before, but I don’t really know what it is.”

“The teacher bot network, Mom.” Samuel interjected, and then attempted to explain his mother’s strange knowledge gap to the reporter. “My mother went to school a really long time ago in a big city where they still had lots of teachers, and my sister and I went to the experimental school run by our station librarian. But Aisha grew up with a teacher bot.”

Leon nodded seriously. “Lots of cities still have old-style schools, big towns too, but all of them use the Teachnet as well. The teacher bots are practically free, so it saves a ton of money on textbooks, and gives kids all around the world a way to learn the basics and to keep up with each other. But there wasn’t a school within a hundred miles of our farm, so I’ve always been a botter.”

“After living away from Earth for over thirty years, I didn’t realize how important the teacher bots had become,” Kelly admitted. “I guess I didn’t even know that they could communicate with each other. Who pays for the bandwidth?”

“Teachnet is peer-to-peer,” the reporter replied. “All of the teacher bots are part of it, so the coverage is global. We just have to keep them charged.”

A suspicion about the anonymous donor who launched the Children’s News Network began forming at the back of Kelly’s brain, but she pushed it aside for later consideration. “I’m sorry that I seem to be the one asking all of the questions,” she apologized to the reporter. “There’s still a half an hour before the first session, so fire away.”

“Great,” Leon said. “We’ve been accepting questions for the EarthCent ambassadors from our viewers for the past week, so let me just sort out the ones intended for you and we’ll get started.” He pulled out a tab that looked identical to the ones used by Galactic Free Press reporters, tapped it, and asked, “So while your husband is here on Earth, who’s running the secret training camp for EarthCent Intelligence agents?”

At the very same instant Kelly began struggling to come up with an answer, Joe was stepping out of the self-driving taxi in front of an impressive building in Seoul. He had been relieved to find that the Korean cab accepted Stryx currency, which hadn’t been the case in New York. In addition, the taxi had taken his directions without hesitation, even though he knew that his pronunciation couldn’t have come close to how a native would have spoken the address.

The signage on the building was limited to Korean script on a brass plaque, so Joe just hoped it was the right place and strolled towards the heavy glass doors, which slid open at his approach. The lobby was richly finished with marble and shining brass, and the young woman working the counter smiled and bowed in his direction.

“Welcome to Bank Gajog, Customer. How may I help you?”

Joe had made Woojin say a few things in Korean during their recent tunneling conversation, so he wasn’t surprised that his implant translated seamlessly, but he didn’t know whether the woman would understand English.

“Hi. I’m here to pick something up for my friend, Pyun Woojin. He said he would make the arrangements ahead of time.”

“Yes, Customer. We were expecting you. Are you prepared for the security scan?” A device that looked like a miniature periscope with a rubber cup around the lens rose up from the counter and turned in his direction.

“I just look into this thing?”

“Yes, Customer. You will see a small house in a green field. Try to look steadily at the house without blinking.”

Joe stepped up to the counter and prepared to crouch to get his eye lined up, but the retinal scanner was apparently capable of facial recognition, and adjusted its own position to accommodate his height. He pushed his eye socket against the flexible cup and stared at the little house.

“Identity confirmed,” the woman said. “Did you bring the physical confirmation from Pyun Woojin?”

Joe reached in his pocket and pulled out the plastic 35mm film canister that Woojin had obtained from his wife, who dabbled in antique photography as a hobby. It had arrived in the diplomat pouch from Union Station the previous evening, and been delivered to the hotel. He popped off the lid and extracted the small plastic bag, which had once contained O-rings for a miniature plasma injector, and passed it to the receptionist.

“This may take a little time, Customer,” she said apologetically.

The retinal scanner sank back into the counter and another device rose in its place. The receptionist now showed herself to be a technician, cutting the top off the sealed bag with scissors, and fishing out the strand of black hair with tweezers. She carefully deposited the black hair into a small drawer that popped out of the new device, and pushed the glowing green button. The drawer closed, and the machine announced, “Genetic sequencing started.”

“My flight back to New York departs in two hours, so I hope…”

“Genetic sequencing completed,” the machine interrupted him. “Positive match for depositor Pyun Woojin.”

“Thank you for your patience, Customer,” the bank employee said with sincerity. “Retrieval from the vault is underway.”

Joe was too embarrassed to ask how long that would take after his last aborted question, and before he could come up with any small talk, a large metal box rose from the counter. The side towards him was open, revealing a stainless steel cylinder.

“It’s like a safety deposit box or something?” he asked, his familiarity with Earth banks being limited to the time he had gone to retrieve important papers after his parents were killed in an accident when he was a kid. He was hoping the woman would help him open it on the spot so he could retrieve the necklace or whatever jewelry was in there. The Vergallian transportation Kelly had arranged for them included a strict weight limit on non-food personal items.

“Oh no, Customer. The transport cylinder can only be opened by Pyun Woojin. The lock requires an answer to a security question, but only after being activated by a drop of fresh blood from the owner. Any attempts to open the cylinder by force will cause it to self-destruct.”

“That’s good to know,” Joe muttered, hefting it in his hand. He figured it weighed at least as much as the half-case of Scotch he had planned on buying in the duty-free on the way back. Fortunately, it fit nicely in the small shoulder bag he had brought on the daytrip. “Can you recommend a good local place to eat? It looks like I have two hours to kill.”