Sister Time-Callys War 2 (16 page)

"Yeah, I saw him. And, well . . . he didn't seem too glad to see me," Cally said.

"I think you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, again," he said.

"What, is it just me?"

"I don't think it's that. It's . . . well the Crabs are pissed about the heist, and they could cut the trickle of low code keys and tech we're getting down to nothing if they wanted. And we've started having problems holding full-time staff because the food and pay suck—ideology only goes so far when you've got a family to feed. And we lost a couple of agents in Durban last week. The last few days just haven't been good. I tell ya, my department is running fifty percent understaffed," he said, palming the candy bar and making it disappear under the table.

"Not a great time to put more stress on the father's plate."

"No." He shook his head, taking a big bite of his hamburger.

Wednesday 10/20/54

Cally checked into a temporary room on base and pulled out her PDA.
O'Reilly wants more, I'll get
him more. I hope.
She logged onto the Perfect Match site, which had obviously had a recent web redesign. She had gone to the site, just to check it out, after one of the teenage girls on the island had mentioned it to a friend in one of the hand-to-hand courses.
Of course I was just checking it out. To
make sure it was safe.

The redesign had not changed the site for the better. A background of lurid pink hearts clashed against the fuschia and orange-red backgrounds of sappy pictures that looked like they'd been swiped from the covers of bodice-rippers. Bright yellow buttons for everything from links to hit-counters to awards of dubious provenance littered the bottom of the page, seemingly at random. The text and frames couldn't seem to decide what color to be, and the company logo at the top of the page actually
blinked
. It looked like another company had decided that do-it-yourself was cheaper than hiring art talent.

Blech! I hope Michelle will forgive me. Okay, where's the pesky forum? There.

She thought for a minute. "MargarethaZ: Apollo555, I have eyes only for you."
Okay, so it's trite. At
least it doesn't stand out in amongst all this sappy crap. Vanna69 wants to do
what?!
Now that's
just gross. Eww.
She logged off, wishing there really was such a thing as brain floss.

"You know the people you meet on those places all look horrible," the buckley commented. "And just last week, a man was killed in his sleep by a girl axe-murderer he met in a chatroom. Fifty-seven percent of 'singles' online are actually married. Twenty-two percent are ki—"

"Shut up, buckley."

"Right."

"Buckley, go secure. Where's Grandpa?" she asked.

"In the gym. Did you know that ninety-three point two percent of all sports inj—"

"Shut up, buckley."

"Well, you
did
ask the question! Why ask me a question if you don't want to—"

"Shut up, buckley."

"Right."

Papa O'Neal was doing his morning chin-ups when Cally walked into the otherwise empty gym, having taken time to change into her own workout clothes before taking the bounce tube down to level three.

The black shorts were okay, but the red leotard was on its last legs. She clung to it because it had that blessed option, a built-in sports bra. And not one of those flimsy ones, either. This one actually
worked
.

She walked over to the bar and began stretching, waiting for the young-old man to finish his set.

He dropped lightly from the bar, flexing his knees as he hit, and walked over to her. His t-shirt was dark and wet in big patches, his red hair darkened with sweat. He grabbed a clean towel out of the box at the end of the bar and turned to her, wiping his face.

"So, mission a go?" he asked. To anyone who didn't know the inner workings of Bane Sidhe society, it would have seemed odd that Cally led the team instead of her Grandfather, who, after all, had more experience. The truth was, he didn't have time. Clan O'Neal administration had eaten up so much of his days with things he couldn't delegate that handing off leadership to her had been the only way he could be assured of any meaningful time with Shari and the kids. Besides, she was good at it. So he had explained, anyway.

"Not yet," she said, stretching into a vertical split.

"Not yet?!" he coughed. "Whaddya mean not yet? Hello,
job
. Hello,
paying job
. Hello, life and death mission on the side of good and right? Not
yet?
" He started absently patting the nonexistent pockets on his shorts and t-shirt before sighing and letting his hands drop. "Okay, what the fuck's going on?"

"What isn't? The Crabs are pissed and are threatening to fuck with our code key supply, the Old Man's about that far away from a nervous breakdown," she held her fingers about a half inch apart. "And of course, it's all my fault. Okay, not really. Just the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyway, O'Reilly wants more hard evidence that Michelle is either right about this thing and the threat level, or he wants her on board. One or the other."

"Say that again." O'Neal was ice.

"He didn't deny the mission, Grandpa." Cally put a placating hand on his chest. "He just wants more of her cards on the table, his words, before we commit. It's a pain in the ass, not high treason."

"No. That join up shit—" His clenched hands were relaxing slowly and smoothly. A bad sign.

"Like you wouldn't know about bargaining chips, Grandpa? He wants to know the mission's not going to be another bust—and I can't believe I'm defending this." She sidestepped casually, putting herself between Grandpa and the door. "But I guess I am. Get pissed
after
I talk to her, if he doesn't approve the mission then."

"We're doing it. All that's left to be decided is if they're coming along or not."

"Fine. But don't nuke our bridges unless you have to, get it?"

He held a hand up, finger pointed at her, about to say something, but then dropped it to his side.

"Right. Don't nuke the bridges. Got it," he sighed. "Make it so I don't need to nuke 'em, Granddaughter."

"Yeah, but no pressure, right?" Cally put her head in her hand for a minute before looking back up at him. "I'm staying over another night, at least. You guys can either fly back and I'll drive, or whatever. I know we just planned on a one day trip."

"Right. I'll call Shari and tell her not to hold dinner."

Friday 10/22/54

The Cook Retail Center was Chicago's newest shopping mall. Cally pulled the old mustang in and parked. It was way back from the entrance, but it was the closest spot she could find. No matter how the economy in general was suffering, the fat cats in the federal bureaucracy were getting plenty. Like a gold rush town, to a limited extent the cash rolled downhill. It was a small mall, all cream walls and chrome. When they said the plant foliage had variegated colors, they really meant it. They had plants—or the equivalent—from Barwhon and a good half dozen other planets. The Barwhon stuff she recognized right off. The purple was a dead giveaway. The place was busy, for a weekday.
Maybe I shouldn't have
come just before lunch. There
were
other choices.

If I'm going to be meeting Michelle more than once or twice, she has to get out of those damned
conspicuous Mentat robes. Could she scream, 'Hi, I'm Michelle O'Neal and I'm on a planet where
I'm not supposed to be,' any louder?
Cally found a chain store well known for subdued but dressy casual clothes. As a trained observer, having seen Michelle twice, she had a perfect memory of her sister's size for everything but shoes. It wasn't hard to find a cream sweater and tan slacks. She added a tortoise-shell rooster clasp so the Mentat could do something more conventional with her hair than that bun. Conservative, but nice.

The big reason she had chosen this mall had to do with the very upscale Chinese restaurant at one of the side entrances. It was one of the contact points Stewart had given her. Someplace where her money was no good and her privacy absolute. The Bane Sidhe expense budget didn't run to business lunches anymore.

Normally, she couldn't have afforded anyplace this nice and would, therefore, have avoided it like the plague. She never, ever lived above her visible means—it was the first thing Bane Sidhe internal security looked for when they swept for moles. But with the bonus, she could afford a good meal out, and the Old Man knew she had a high level meeting. Besides the Tongs had a good reputation for actually delivering privacy when they sold it. If paid not to ask questions, they asked no questions.
Not that I'll
actually be paying. I didn't get to the top of the profession without knowing when to take a
calculated risk. Necessary mission, this gets the job done, saves scarce resources. In this case, my
own. I'm not touching that seed capital for more than the girls' Christmas until it's had the chance
to get together with those stock tips and make babies.

Recognition was as professional as she could want. A word and a hand sign, a particular place at the counter, and a waiter discreetly ushered her to the back room, handing her several menus. If the manager was surprised when he asked her if she would be expecting anyone and she said her friend would find her, he gave no sign. He simply left and presumed his guest knew her own business. Michelle appeared seconds after the door shut behind him, robed, as always.

Cally carefully didn't sigh. "Okay, we can't have lunch without the people up front seeing you enter in the normal way. Hey! Don't go!" This time she did sigh, in relief, as Michelle stayed there but raised an eyebrow. "Here. I got you some street clothes. Change and do your thing, showing up in the ladies'

room. Nobody really ever notices who goes in and who comes out, but they
will
notice if you're in this room without entering it. Go ahead and change here. At least nobody'll come in without knocking. Oh, and your code keys are in the bag."

Michelle's eyebrows arched higher in her otherwise impassive face, as she took the bag but made no move to change clothes.

"Oh, for heaven's sakes. I won't look, alright?" Cally said.

Michelle carried the clothes over to a corner, looking at Cally pointedly until she turned her back. A few moments later the Michon Mentat handed her sister her folded robe and disappeared. Before she left, just for an instant, Cally saw her feet.
Birkenstocks?!

When Michelle walked back in, she was obviously ill at ease in clothes that were, for her, so unusual.

"So how long has it been since you've worn anything but these robes?" She put the garment, which she'd been holding on her lap, into one of the now-empty shopping bags.

"Earth styles? Fifty years. The cut and fabric of clothing has changed over the years for utility reasons, even on Adenast. And the first colors were inharmonious for Human well-being. But our changes have had nothing like the frequency and variety you have here. Clothing is counter-productive for the Indowy, and we—they and us—do not see the point in having to turn around and replace things over and over again every couple of years, or worse, like less Galactized humans do."

"How do you stand it?" Cally couldn't help asking.

"I wanted to ask how you do," Michelle chuckled. "Having to buy replacement clothing as often as you do would deplete my pay very quickly. Not to mention my time."

"It's a trade-off. We probably pay about the same, when you get down to it. But most of us
like
to shop," her sister grinned, eyes twinkling.

"Leisure. The amount you have is unheard of on Adenast. Converted for differences in reckoning time, my schedule would work out to about ninety hours a week, Earth time. Some more, some less."

"For how long at a stretch? That's a crushing schedule," Cally said.

"It is an ordinary schedule. The discipline reduces the need for sleep. And I include necessary muscle care periods in my schedule, of course. Human Sohon workers cannot maintain health without it." She waved a casual hand at Cally, a deliberate gesture rather than a spontaneous one. "Really, I enjoy my work, Cally. It satisfies me a great deal to accrue honor to Clan O'Neal. I do regret that father has never learned to understand. You are more often around Indowy than he is. Am I truly that alien to you?"

"You're . . . very Indowy. Your expressions aren't very expressive," her sister shrugged.

"How strange. To the Indowy we are so very Human. And our expressions are stilled, of course, out of habit. We copy Indowy expressions, or those of the other races, to communicate, but they never become automatic. So when we Galactized are not actively using facial expressions, our faces tend to be still to avoid misunderstandings. And, of course, while working the feelings must be still."

"We should order." Cally pressed the button for the discreet call light at the base of a small lion sculpture next to the sauce caddy. She didn't recognize many Chinese ideograms, after so many languages on so many missions they ran together without a pre-mission review, but she did know those few that she could expect in these establishments—including the sequence that roughly translated, "Press for service."

"What are you going to eat?"

"I thought I'd try the crispy-skin duck, and I love hot and sour soup. Ooh. And they have shrimp spring rolls."

"You have not been here before?"

"No, this is a treat for me," Cally smiled. "What are you going to have?"

"The Buddha's delight looks appropriate. And I will have to ask the waiter which soups do not have meat. I can order my spring roll vegetarian, can I not?"

"There're other vegetarian choices on the back of the menu, so you don't need to feel locked in to any one thing."

"I noticed. I chose what I like." Her smile was slow, and obviously thought about, but it did reach her eyes.

"So how do you see me?" Cally couldn't help but ask. Seeing Michelle from her own point of view had been . . . enlightening.

"Like the rest of our Clan. You are so aggressively Human that at times I can not imagine how the Indowy who live on your base avoid fleeing in distress. You do not actually eat meat in front of them, I hope?"