Traders on the galactic.., p.2
Traders On The Galactic Tunnel Network, page 2
“I’m pretty sure they do,” Gerald said, studying the tab intently. “I think she’s headed right for it. Hey, it’s retreating.”
“Smart drone.”
“I think she’s catching up with it.”
“Let’s get out of here before somebody figures out the three of us are together and wants us to pay for a replacement,” Ellen said. “Semmi can find us later.”
Two
“—and then Larry paid my bail, which was only a hundred creds, and we left the planet,” Georgia concluded. “So the next time you’re looking for a freelancer to do a story about a Vergallian queen’s ban on human reporters, please ask somebody else.”
“Did you get a receipt for the bail?” Roland asked.
Georgia pulled a slip of parchment out of her purse and handed it to the editor in charge of Galactic Free Press freelance operations, who ran it through a scanner on his desk and returned it to the former food reporter.
“That’s it? You’ll reimburse me?”
“I thought it was your partner’s hundred creds, but, yes. It will show up on your programmable cred by Friday at the latest.”
Georgia broke into a wide smile. “Thanks. I wish we could have spent more time in the Empire of a Hundred Worlds. Those tech-ban planets are beautiful, and you’ve never seen so many horses, or whatever they call the local equivalent.”
“I’ve been keeping track of your itinerary and it makes me wonder if your, uh, Larry is trying to set a record for most planets visited in a year.”
“Larry’s my partner, which is like being married for traders, and since he got stuck as the acting Minister of Trade for the Human Empire, he’s been trying to visit all of the sovereign human communities that rely on exports.”
“I know he won the chair for the Department of Trade working group at the auction here last year, but I didn’t realize they had started assigning ministers,” Roland said. “Is the empire paying him a salary?”
“Are you kidding?” Georgia asked. “He doesn’t even get expenses. And the last thing he wanted was to get stuck with the job after they agreed to go ahead with the Human Empire on the Thousand Cycle plan. But every one of the working groups voted their chair into the position of acting department head and then disbanded. It was a classic bait and switch.”
“At least all of the traveling around gives you plenty of opportunities to write about the local cuisine and get a good feel for the galaxy. I remember a young food reporter sitting in that chair one year ago and lamenting about how the only place she’d ever been off Earth was Union Station.”
“Touché. But what’s good for me isn’t necessarily good for Larry.”
“Trust me on this. I’ve been married for longer than you’ve been alive, and a happy wife is always good for a husband.”
“Anyway,” Georgia continued, “now that the Human Empire’s mentor finally showed up, either they’ll work something out or I’m going to get Larry to resign. He already does enough uncompensated work organizing Rendezvous as the head of the Traders Guild council.”
“Will you be working with Ellen at Rendezvous again this year?”
“I hope so. I’m really looking forward to it, though I’m not so crazy about the idea of returning to Earth. I mean, Rendezvous is actually going to take place in orbit on Flower, but Larry wants to meet my parents.”
“That seems like a reasonable request for a life partner,” Roland observed.
“My mother is an alien denier, even though you can see the space elevator stalk from their kitchen window on a clear day. It’s embarrassing. Can we talk about something else? I thought this was supposed to be my official one-year evaluation as a freelancer.”
“Did you think I was going to critique your work as a journalist? I’ve bought over ninety percent of the stories you’ve submitted, and that’s probably a record for a first-year freelancer.”
“But you rejected both of the interview pieces I did, and it wasn’t easy getting those,” Georgia said. “That Verlock trader who specialized in antiquities talked so slowly that it took me a whole day just to get five hundred words out of him. According to the interview template on my tab, that’s the minimum the Galactic Free Press accepts for the Interviews with Aliens section.”
“The word count was fine, but I couldn’t buy that piece because of the content,” Roland explained. “Other than the bit about his sealing wax collection, it was all monosyllabic answers to your leading questions.”
“Leading questions? I was just trying to get him to speak!”
“You were putting words in his mouth.” The editor waved his hands over his display desk, did some scrolling and poking, and bringing up the text of Georgia’s interview, he began to read out loud. “When you lay out your blanket at a fair and arrange the oil lamps by size and species, do you always separate the tunnel network antiquities from the rest of the galaxy?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Georgia asked.
“He answered ‘No,’ and you went on to your next paragraph-long question,” Roland said. “Making statements and asking the interviewee to agree is what political reporters do, not real journalists.”
“But I did ask a question at the end.”
“You’re missing the point. The goal for feature interviews is to get your subjects to describe their work in their own words. As the interviewer, you have to develop a rapport with your subjects and get them talking freely about motivations. I don’t want to discourage you, but the two interviews you submitted gave me the impression that you believed you knew the answers when you sat down and you were merely seeking confirmation from the subjects.”
“Am I really that bad?”
“It’s not you, it’s your technique. Here, watch this.” Roland gestured over his display desk again, and grabbing a holographic thumbnail from the resulting menu, pulled it to the active section. A frozen hologram appeared of a girl in her late teens in the act of sitting down in a café across from a scruffy-looking man in his mid-twenties with multiple face piercings.
“Wait,” Georgia said before the editor could start the hologram playing. “Isn’t that the girl from the Children’s News Network whose interview with a Swiss banker the Grenouthians featured in a documentary about Earth’s pre-Stryx monetary policy?”
“Lena. She’s a natural at interviews, and now she’s freelancing for us. In this one, she’s talking to Cringe, the lead singer of a popular Apologist band, the latest big thing on Earth. This is the raw footage, so just watch how she works.” He made a small gesture and the hologram went live.
“Is this your regular hangout?” Lena asked the singer as she settled in. “The décor is a bit weird.”
“All of those black discs are vinyl records from the twentieth century,” Cringe told her in a cultured voice that didn’t match his appearance. “The plastic ribbons supporting the records are old seventy-millimeter film that was once projected in theatres. All of the performers who live in town do their interviews here.”
“Have you ever been to Zurich?”
“The club?”
“The city. There’s a cool café there with hundreds of lamps and light fixtures, like a showroom,” Lena said. “I go there for tea with my friends.”
“Nice,” the singer said, taking a sip from his coffee.
“When you wrote the lyrics for, I’m Sorry, but I’m only Human, did you know right away it would launch a new subgenre of music?”
“I felt that the song had potential, but I didn’t really commit to it emotionally, if you know what I mean, until I sat down with Blush, our keyboardist, and she did the arrangement. I actually wrote it after my then-girlfriend gave me a whole list of the qualities she felt I was lacking, but a big-name DJ assumed that I was talking about being human versus alien, and it sort of took off from there. The truth is, I do feel like we could all learn a lot from the aliens, especially when it comes to the basics, like not littering.”
“Did you have the jacket back then?”
“This?” Cringe brushed the sleeve of his leather jacket. “I’ve had it since high school when I got an electric dirt bike. My dad bought me this expensive jacket because he said it would be more cost-effective than a skin graft if I dumped on pavement.”
“Was he being serious?” Lena asked.
“I think so. It’s hard to tell with parents sometimes.”
“And then you took the album on tour and your concerts kept getting interrupted by bomb threats from the Human Pride movement. Did that have any effect on your art?”
“If anything, the threats pushed us to be even more honest,” Cringe said. “People who don’t understand the lyrics branded us as apologists because we try to acknowledge our shortcomings as a species, but taking a hard look in the mirror has always been a big part of what songwriting is about. I mainly listen to twentieth-century music myself, and there were lots of songs about waking up with a hangover and finding a goodbye message written on the mirror in lipstick, or being on the road and not staying faithful. Those singers weren’t bragging, at least, most of the time they weren’t. They were giving voice to failings we all have as human beings. It’s an interesting fact—”
Roland banished the hologram mid-sentence with a wave. “See how Lena works? She’s guiding the direction of the interview by establishing context for each question, but the questions themselves are invitations for the interviewee to speak, and then she stays out of the way.”
“But what was all of that about cafés and jackets?” Georgia asked. “I was beginning to wonder if she’d ask him about his favorite dog breed, or what kind of tree he’d be if he was Frunge.”
“An ability to make small talk is the key to establishing connections quickly,” Roland said. “If you approach interviewees like you’re testing their knowledge, they’re likely to freeze up or just give you safe answers. I’m going to send the raw hologram to your tab and you can watch it at your convenience. The run time is almost two hours for what turned into a twenty-minute interview after editing, about three thousand words in the print version.”
“If you think it will help,” Georgia said, trying to keep the skepticism from her voice. “I’d like to see her do that with a Verlock though. They’re tough.”
“So why did you choose to interview one?”
“His ship was parked next to ours at the fairgrounds on the Drazen world we were visiting, and the antiques he laid out on his blanket for trade were really interesting. Larry stayed up half the night bartering with him.”
“Why didn’t you interview Larry instead?”
“Would that be ethical?”
“We’d include a disclaimer about your relationship, but it would be in italics, and nobody reads those. At the last planning meeting, Walter Dunkirk, our managing editor, asked for ideas to increase our coverage of the Human Empire before everybody forgets that it exists. An interview with the acting Minister of Trade would fill a need.”
“I thought the paper’s reporter on Flower was covering the Human Empire.”
“Dianne, and she is, but there’s not much happening.” The display desk chimed and Roland grimaced. “Late again,” he said. “I’ve got to run, but keep the food stories coming and don’t give up on interviews. Being able to connect with people and getting them to open up is a big part of being an investigative journalist as well.”
Georgia navigated her way through the maze of desks and cubicles that filled the main office of the Galactic Free Press and entered the first available lift tube capsule. “Mac’s Bones,” she told it, and added, “Are you there, Libby?”
“I’m always here,” the Stryx station librarian replied.
“I was wondering about that deal we made to put all of my stuff in storage with an option to get my apartment back. I’ve been with Larry for a year now, and I don’t know when I’ll be returning.”
“What were you wondering?”
“I remember something about you charging ten percent of my previous rent per cycle for the service. It seemed like a great deal at the time, but now I’m wondering if I’m just throwing my money away.”
“I can deliver all of your furnishings to Mac’s Bones and you can take them with you,” Libby offered.
“No, we don’t have room on Larry’s ship. I just wondered if there was, like, a discount possible? For longer-term storage?”
“If you’re willing to forgo the option of having your furnishings restored to a new apartment on twenty-four hours notice, I can lower the fee by half.”
“To fifteen creds a cycle?” Georgia asked.
“Sixteen. I’ve been taking thirty-two creds a cycle out of your security deposit, which is half exhausted.”
“Could we, uh, make the new deal retroactive, since I never actually moved into a new apartment? I’m trying to save up enough to buy my own trading stock so I’m not just the supercargo who does some journalism on the side.”
“You’ve certainly learned something about driving a hard bargain,” the Stryx librarian replied. “Very well, but if I’m still holding your things in storage three years from now when your security deposit runs out, I’ll be disappointed.”
“I’m good for it,” Georgia promised. “You can just take it out of the programmable cred the paper pays me on.”
“If we reach that point, I’ll be disappointed because it will mean that you’re camping your way through life. If you don’t plan on setting up a permanent household, you should sell what you don’t want. I have a liquidation service.”
“I’ll think about it,” the reporter promised as the doors slid open. “And thank you for the discount.”
The man who was waiting in the corridor as she stepped out frowned. “Do the lift tubes on this station charge, like on a private orbital?” he asked.
“No,” she reassured him. “I was talking to the station librarian about something else. She’s very nice.”
Georgia practically skipped the rest of the way to Mac’s Bones, and she waved to the Horten girl at the Tunnel Trips rental kiosk as she passed. She cut through the EarthCent Intelligence training camp where she’d taken the mandatory kidnap avoidance course for Galactic Free Press reporters and made a beeline for Larry’s ship. The cargo hatch that formed a ramp when lowered was still down, so she entered and called up the ladder to the bridge, “Anybody home?”
A few seconds later, Larry’s face appeared at the top of the ladder. “We’re still working on the controller swap, but it’s almost finished. Why don’t you stock up for us at the chandlery?”
“You’ll trust me to choose meals for you?”
“Tell Kevin I’ll take the usual set. I have no doubt you’ll get one of everything new for yourself just to show off that you’ve got a strong stomach.”
“Hey, I get paid for adventure eating,” Georgia responded. “And Libby cut my storage fee by half and made it retroactive so I can stop saving for when my security deposit runs out and start buying some trade stock on my own account.”
“Great, it will give us something new to argue about,” Larry said, and ducked back out of sight. Georgia stuck her tongue out at the empty space, and then walked over to the chandlery, where a giant Cayl hound accompanied by a toddler waylaid her for attention.
“No scaring away the customers until after they buy,” the owner of the chandlery said, scooping up the little girl and attempting to push away the hound without success. “Welcome back, Georgia. I’m going to have to start paying you commission if you keep writing favorable reviews about Zero-G squeeze tube meals. People who live on the station and wouldn’t set foot on a small ship to save their lives have been coming down here and buying out my stock just to have some ready-to-eat meals in the cabinet at home.”
“I’m sorry,” the freelancer said reflexively. “I shouldn’t have mentioned your chandlery without asking you first.”
“Don’t apologize, I love running out of stock. The manufacturer is right here on one of the industrial decks and I can get a resupply in under an hour. The president of the company asked to meet you, by the way, but I told her that you were the incorruptible type.”
“Thank you, it would have been awkward,” Georgia said. “I mean, I’m used to meeting the owners when I review restaurants, but the squeeze tube reviews are as much about my trying to figure out how to enjoy the meal in Zero-G as about the food, and I’ve said some pretty harsh things about some of them.”
“Like the liver-and-onions.” Kevin laughed and pointed at a piece of paper taped up over the counter. “I paid the print-on-demand place to print the food section from that edition for me just to get a copy of it. The funny thing is that sales of liver-and-onions went up.”
“But it stunk out the whole ship! Larry claimed that the smell even got into some coffee beans we were carrying and he had to trade them at a loss.”
“Some people like stinky food. So what will it be this trip?”
“Larry wants the standard trader’s set, and I’ll take whatever’s new since the last time we stopped in, which must have been—”
“Yesterday,” the little girl in Kevin’s arms said.
“That’s her new word,” the chandler said proudly. “Margie doesn’t quite have the usage down yet, but she has the direction right.”
“The direction?”
“Yesterday is for everything in the past and tomorrow is for everything in the future. Joe says she has the makings of a poet.”
“Oh, I get it. And I think we were last here two cycles ago. Has the manufacturer released any new squeeze tubes since then?”
“At least a dozen, that’s probably what the president wanted to talk to you about,” Kevin said. “I don’t know what the free publicity is worth to them, but I imagine it’s a lot. I bet they’d start putting your face on the squeeze tubes if the Galactic Free Press would go along with it. I’ll put together the trader’s set of meals and fill a box with all the new options. Do you want the usual number of coffee and water boxes?”
“Just the coffee,” Georgia said.
“So you’ve finally started drinking the recycled water. Looks like Larry is going to make a real trader of you yet.”
