Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2) (29 page)

I looked at the settings on their email server’s spam filters. Their former IT manager must have been a real genius. He had the filters set to identify and reject messages tagged as spam. Didn’t he realize that the paradigm had shifted several years ago?

The global glut of spam became the galactic glut of spam after First Contact. Spam volumes increased exponentially and T
ō
don con artists offering suckers really
big
payoffs joined Nigerian princes on the list of top spam email tropes. With help from computer scientists on Orish, experts at creating things that changed form as necessary, the spam filter companies had developed a new type of artificially intelligent cyber-organism that lived in email servers. Called
mail daemons,
thousands of them lived inside email servers and end-users’ email programs. They had voracious appetites for spam and could exchange pseudo-genetic material to evolve faster than the spammers could change their strategies. Once the
daemons
learned end-users’ idiosyncrasies, tsunamis of spam would turn into still waters.

I enabled the
mail daemon
function on their email server and set it so the
daemons
would propagate down to individual users automatically. The other three PhDs at the table had been watching my actions on the wall screen and seemed impressed. I may not be able to write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform, but I knew my way around email servers.

“That should do it,” I said. “Within twenty-four hours your spam problems should be a thing of the past.”

“Jack,” said Dr. Liddell-Scott, “would Xenotech Support Corporation like a new client?”

“You bet I would.”

I stood up and we shook on it. When I sat down again, I removed three
libum
cakes from their plate with a pair of tongs that had wisely been provided. The ricotta cheese mixed with the flour made them soft and the honey made them sweet. I was licking honey off my fingers when Perry leaned over conspiratorially.

“Do you think you might be able to come up to Cambridge and check out the computers in my department?”

Her father was warming to me.

Poly would be pleased.

Chapter 32

“Everything being a constant carnival,
there is no carnival left.”
— Victor Hugo

Dr. Liddell-Scott said she would drop Perry off at his hotel on her way home, so I had the rest of the afternoon free. I decided to go back home to get a nap for an hour or two before I had to meet Poly and her family for dinner at seven. The restaurant was only a short walk away so I’d have time for a nap and a chance to recharge my batteries. However, Robert Burns must have been related to Murphy, another Gael, because
the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.
Three minutes after I’d entered my apartment and finished putting my Orishen knitting machine and pupa case spindle back in my project nook, my phone announced that I had a call. I had just kicked my shoes off and moved from vertical to horizontal in my bedroom.

“Who is it?”

“Yon Yonson.”

“Put him through.”

When I’d first met Yon I’d refrained from asking him where he was from. I’d remembered the infinitely recursive rhyme from Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse Five
and didn’t want to ask a question he’d probably heard a thousand times before
.
He seemed disappointed that I hadn’t, though. Later, over lunch, he admitted that he was, indeed, from Wisconsin.

Yon ran a carnival called Y. Y. Knott’s. It was the kind of traveling show that sets up in a small town for a week, then moves on twenty-five miles to the next wide spot in the road. I’d helped him modify two of his rides to use Orishen mutability technology and they’d proved very popular.

One was a lot like the Dumbo ride at Disneyland, with flying elephants moving up and down on long metal arms while spinning like a carousel. I’d found Yon a dozen used children’s imagination stations at a salvage yard on Orish and had replaced the elephants with the stations. Now kids got to ride in their own personal transmogrifiers that could change into whatever they could imagine—space ships or race cars or unicorns or even pink Dauushans. The hardest part about rigging up the imagination stations was anchoring them to the arms of the ride so they wouldn’t fly off exploring independently.

The other ride was a tame version of a roller coaster designed for preschoolers. I’d replaced the panels on the outside of the coaster’s cars with Orishen mutable composite fiber panels that would change into something different every time it went around its track. Sometimes it was a circus train, sometimes a row of prancing ponies, or happy birds or grinning pieces of fruit. The little ones loved it.

“Jack, you’ve got to help me!”

“What’s the problem?”

“The Orishen-tech rides are going crazy,” he said, “and I’ve got parents and
kids
ready to hang me from the top of my Iron Man-themed Ferrous Wheel.”

“What’s going wrong?”

“The imagination stations spontaneously transformed themselves into Orishen nymphs,” he said. “They look like angry praying mantis commandos and they seem to be stuck that way.”

“Got it,” I said. “Sounds like the WF subroutine is acting up.”

“WF?”

“Wish Fulfillment,” I said. “What about the other ride?”

“The roller coaster has a similar problem,” said Yon. “Now it looks like a grumpy giant centipede. It’s an Orishen supra-adult, covered in discolored armor plates and patchy gray bristles. Parents say it’s giving their children nightmares.”

“Sounds like a similar problem,” I said. “Where are you this week?”

I was hoping it wouldn’t be Idaho or Alberta. I didn’t want to get into my Remote Hands suit instead of getting ready for dinner tonight.

“We’re in the parking lot next to Mercedes Benz Stadium,” said Yon.

Thank goodness. They were at least close at hand.

“I’m on my way.”

* * * * *

The parking lot at the former home of the Atlanta Falcons was not filled with cars. It hadn’t been since 2025 when Pablo Daniel Figueres, the Sirocco Legislature Network founder, had finished building an even larger and more luxurious football stadium in Gwinnett county, northeast of Atlanta. In order to entice the Falcons to move to SLN Stadium and to get regulators to permit it, Figueres had purchased Mercedes Benz Stadium and mothballed it. The less than fifteen-year-old sports facility, with its fancy retractable roof that opened like the petals on a flower, was now padlocked. The carnival seemed lonely set up in a far corner of the facility’s acres of asphalt. My van dropped me off by the large Y. Y. Knott Carnival sign at the main entrance. It didn’t seem busy. Yon was waiting for me. I left my backpack tool bag in my van and got out.

“Thanks for getting here so fast,” he said. “We’re expecting a big crowd tonight. Hardly anyone is here right now, thank goodness. A dozen home schooling families just left and nearly took my head with them. They were
not
happy with the mutable rides. I hope you can fix them.”

“Let me see what I can do,” I said. “The last time something like this happened to a client, a major psychic shock caused the problem. Did anything out of the ordinary happen today? The mutable tech didn’t malfunction until this afternoon, right?”

“Right,” said Yon. “I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary, except the screwed up Orishen tech and the unhappy customers.”

“Which must have been caused by
something,
” I said. “Mind if I look around.”

“Go right ahead,” said Yon. “There’s not going to be much to see. The place is nearly dead.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

The carnival was laid out in a way that looked haphazard, but I knew it was as meticulously planned as the aisles of a supermarket. I started down the wide central avenue that’s traditionally known as the Midway. There were lots of tents and small wooden booths on either side. I saw a sign in front of one tent reading “Bruno, the World’s Strongest Man,” and another farther down that read “Dick Deadeye—Always on Target.” There were colorful red and white concentric circles and throwing knives painted on the canvas of that tent.

Games of chance, like throwing darts at balloons and knocking over wooden bottles with baseballs, alternated with shops selling delicious but unhealthy food. I tried not to look at the frozen chocolate-dipped funnel cakes on a stick. They also came sprinkled with chopped borsum nuts and I was glad Chit was back in my van. If she had begged for one, I would have given in.

The rides were at the far end of the Midway. Rides for little kids were on the right and rides for adults and older kids were on the left. The two mutable-tech rides backed up to each other and were separated by a high wall made of wooden panels painted with carnival scenes from the early nineteen-hundreds. I took a closer look. The scenes weren’t painted—they were flat screens and the scenes were videos. Men in straw boaters, women in shirtwaist dresses, girls in pinafores and boys in short pants wandered along an earlier incarnation of the Midway.

I wandered, too, down the narrow space between the right hand side of the wall and the kiddie roller coaster. It really was scary in its Orishen supra-adult form.

“What are you doing? Get out of there!” shouted a young woman with dark brown hair in two long pigtails. She was wearing black pants and a red and white striped shirt with the Y. Y. Knott logo embroidered on it—obviously the ride operator.

“It’s okay,” I said, “I’m Jack. I work for Yon. I’m trying to figure out why the mutable rides are screwed up.”

“I’m Hither,” she said. “Daddy told me about you. You’re Xenotech Support?”

“That’s me,” I said. “You’re Yon’s daughter?”

“Uh huh,” she said. “I was away at college when you added the Orishen technology.”

“What are you studying?”

“Was studying. I just graduated,” she said. “Music and business administration.”

“That’s an interesting double major.”

“I love to sing—I focused on vocal performance—and the
business part of my degree is so I can help run the carnival when Daddy’s ready to retire.”

“Like he ever will,” I said. “He loves this place.”

“I know, right?” she said, “But he said he’d pay for college if I majored in business, so here I am.”

“Helping out for the summer?”

“Uh huh,” she said. “Until I can figure out what to do next.”

“I’m sure your mom and dad are glad to have you around again.”

“They are,” she said.

I’m not so sure she was as happy to
be
around, but she kept up a good front.

“This Orishen tech is really cool. Daddy and the rubes
, er,
customers love it. He wants to convert two more rides next year.”

She looked at the frightening kiddie roller coaster and across the wall at the ride with the angry nymphs.

“Or he
did.”

Time to change the subject.

“Is your name really Hither?”

“No, it’s Heather,” she said, smiling. “But I’m a Daddy’s girl. It’s been Hither and Yon since before I could walk.”

“Well, Hither,” I said, “since you’re not busy, could you help me do some investigating?”

“Sure,” she said. “Something classic, like Holmes and Watson, or more hard boiled, like Marlowe and Spade?”

“More like Columbo,” I said. “I’m trying to find the source of the psychic trauma that caused the rides to change to these locked-in forms.”

I waved my hand to take in both rides.

“Glad to help,” said Hither. “Let’s search along the wall first. It’s pretty dark toward the back. You take this side, I’ll take the other.”

“Works for me,” I said. “Thanks for the help.”

I liked the way she took charge of things and headed off to do them.

“By the way,” said Hither over her shoulder. “What am I looking for?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” I said.

The dark, narrow space between the wall and the roller coaster enclosure wasn’t meant for foot traffic, but it seemed like it was still used as a shortcut or a private place to smoke. The high framework of the roller coaster track cut off a lot of light, so I asked my phone to help me see where I was going.

My phone and I methodically worked our way along the wall, searching for footprints, dropped candy wrappers, and other potential clues. I didn’t find anything and probably wouldn’t have recognized a clue if it jumped up and bit me singing
The Star Spangled Banner.
I just knew
something
had caused the psychic trauma that had screwed up the mutable rides and I had to find out what.

Ahead of me, another stretch of tall wall at right angles told me I’d reached the far end of the wall I’d been following. We were definitely in backstage territory. A few discarded bags of popcorn and paper cotton candy cones had collected in the corner, blown by the wind. A chill went down my back. Then I heard Hither’s voice from the opposite side of the wall.

“Jack, you should probably come over here.”

“Be right with you.”

There was a gap between the wall I’d been following and the wall at right angles, so it only took me seconds to join her. It was dim and shadowed on her side, too, despite it being only late afternoon.

Hither was pointing at a dark shape on the ground.

It was Shepherd.

His face was clearly visible and his chest was rising, but otherwise, he was motionless. With help from my phone’s flashlight app I could see that he had a lump on the back of his head half the size of an emu egg.

“Is he okay?” said Hither.

“I don’t know. Can you scan him?” I asked my phone.

“Affirmative.”

It made Star Trek tricorder noises then provided its diagnosis.

“He’s out cold.”

Sometimes I’m in awe of my phone’s mastery of the obvious.

“Please call Tom
á
so,” I said.

“Already done. He says you should bring Shepherd to the Dauushan consulate.”

“Let him know we’ll be there soon.”

P
â
kk are a tough species, so I didn’t worry too much about moving him. Hither and I got his inert form onto a peanut cart and out to the parking lot, where she helped me move him to the rear bench seat of my van. Then I carefully buckled Shepherd in. When I’d finished, Hither touched my arm.

“Will your friend be okay?”

She bumped her phone gently against mine to exchange contact information.

“You’ll tell me how he’s doing? I haven’t had anything this exciting happen since we won the ICCA Regionals.”

“ICCA?”

“The International Championship of Collegiate A Capella.”

“Cool,” I said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

I got in my van and was about to pull away, but Hither tapped on the driver’s side window. I rolled it down.

“What about the mutable rides?” she said.

“Sing to them,” I said, “Perky, upbeat songs—no heart-breakers.”

“That’s it?” she said. “The rides will go back to normal?”

“It worked last time,” I said. “Good luck.”

Hither looked at me like I was crazy. I smiled, rolled up my window, and buckled my seat belt. I thought I heard her singing
Let It Go
through the glass.

“To the Dauushan consulate, noble ambulance, and step on it.”