Sister Time-ARC

by John Ringo

  As if the commander just didn't matter. As if having an incompetent in charge was not such a bad thing. As if there was the Unit and then there was whatever screwball the brass had saddled on the Unit.

  As the new commander, Mosovich wasn't too sure how he felt about that.

  The charcoal and red shades that blended on the Grandfather's walls appeared to shimmer three-dimensionally. The dragons were so real you wanted to reach out and touch them just to make sure they weren't there. Most observers would assume there had to be some clever tricks of galtech materials involved in the illusion. A very close look would reveal that not only were the patterns two-dimensional, the dragons were each individuals. Each had five toes, as befit its noble stature. Yet each had its own body and face among the rest. The artist had spent only God knew how long bringing each dragon into its own semblance of life.

  Stewart was early, or he wouldn't have been waiting. The Grandfather believed in punctuality, and achieved it within his organization by always displaying it himself. "Lead from the front" was one Western aphorism that the Grandfather whole-heartedly agreed with. Precisely as his watch clicked over to two o'clock Greenwich Mean Time, the door opened and a man walked in. His hair was still completely black. Stewart suspected the use of hair dye, since his face showed the deep lines and dryness of rapidly advancing age. An advancing age that was tragic for his friends and colleagues as well as the organization. Unfortunately, there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. In the early days of the war, a handful of the Tong hierarchy had been successfully rejuved. Unfortunately, the stolen drug sets had been improperly handled, through ignorance. Since then, the ignorance had been remedied, but too late for the ill-fated first generation—the first generation of Tong rejuvs would get about a tenth of the benefit of a proper rejuvenation. The botched rejuv suffered from its own lacks, plus the seemingly impenetrable wall the Galactics had come up against that limited the original process. Once the initial nano-repair mechanism was fully set in motion, its own processes prevented its ever being repeated. The Grandfather and the upper echelon of the Tong had lived well into the twenty-first century, and had succeeded at passing on their institutional knowledge to the next generation, but at what now seemed a very high price.

  The head of humanity's largest and most powerful organized crime syndicate was a blocky, solid man. He wore a black, European-cut suit, moving with a fluid grace that belied his arthritic knee joints. He walked behind the large walnut desk and sat, folding his hands in his lap to face the freshly-minted older brother who had asked for this unprecedented meeting, after dispatching a large chunk of expensive Tong resources on an unexplained errand. Stewart knew this meeting would lead to a permanent change in his position in the Tong, one way or another. He watched the old man suppress a sigh, and put his hand to his heart. The man's fondness for Szechuan cuisine was well known. As was his distaste for taking medication he deemed unnecessary. Even antacids. Given his experiences, it was hard to blame him for his skepticism.

  "It's good to see you today, Yan. How are you? Would you like some tea?" the old man said, as a pretty girl brought in a lacquered tray with a traditional tea service on it. She looked about sixteen, but could have been anything from fourteen to forty. She placed the tea on the desk and left quietly, shooting a quick glance at Stewart under her lashes.

  "Yes, thank you. I'm having a very good day, and you?" Standard opening, no real clue to his mindset. Stewart accepted a cup poured by the man who held his life and death in his hands. Of course that was always the case with Fleet Strike. Superior officers had the power of life and death. At least theoretically. I should be used to it by now.

  "You would shudder to see my schedule." He poured his own cup of tea and sat behind his desk, fixing a direct gaze on the younger man.

  Translation: I'd better not be wasting his time. That's fine, since I'm not. "There is . . . history of the war that our people rarely speak of, and never when we are not face to face," he said. Yeah, like those Darhel bastards sandbagging Earth's defenses and letting the Posleen through to eat three billion people in Asia. Not that a lot wouldn't have been eaten anyway. The Tong would cheerfully glass over the Darhel homeworld. We survive because nobody ever criticizes the Darhel outside of secure meetings like this one. Where possible, we don't talk about them at all. Patient. The Tong is very patient.

  "Our organization has much history, all worthy of study. We have a very long history of survival." The old man regarded him with a gimlet stare over the rim of the tea cup.

  Right, we keep our mouths shut because we don't want our people to die. Stewart carefully kept his eyes fixed on the Grandfather's collar. Respect was key in this meeting—was always key with someone this far up the chain. Stewart had grown up in latino gangs, and gone from there into the entirely Westernized Fleet Strike. The differences in eye contact rules in Asian culture were still something he had to think about. One thing his counter-intelligence training in Fleet Strike had stressed was how difficult it was to overcome the little gestures and telltales every agent drank in with his mother's milk. The trick was to identify the ones that you, personally, always had to be mindful of. Even when your "role" was now your real life.

  "An excellent example for study, sir. Another of our strengths is that we have always patiently sought opportunities to recoup debts of honor and exploited them, when the costs were affordable, and most eagerly when honor could be reclaimed at a profit." God, what a mouthful. All that to say that we owe the Darhel and I've got a way to screw them and make money doing it.

  The only thing that moved in the Grandfather's face was his eyes. A couple of rapid blinks confirmed that he'd understood. One of the other reasons the Darhel haven't caught on to how bitter the Tong's enmity is with them. The Darhel's information processing and artificial intelligence capabilities were awe-inspiring, but there were still things computers just didn't do very well. One of them was parsing the indirect communication that was an absolute rule of courtesy in some Human cultures. For all that the Darhel must engage in very indirect communication themselves when hiring out their violent dirty work, Cally had confirmed for him, once, something the Tong and Fleet had long suspected. Perhaps because the Darhel were much less indirect in their business communications, even their best AIs completely missed the subtext of the more indirect Human conversations. Except when violence was contemplated—they caught indirect conversations about that very well. The Darhel analysts just weren't as good as they thought they were about remembering that other species were alien. Humans had a leg up on that skill, being the most poly-cultural of all the known sentient species. The Tong had exploited that Darhel weakness ruthlessly to gain and maintain a high and pervasive institutional awareness of all that the Darhel were, all they intended, and all the payback the Organization owed them. Payback that had been a long-term project, contemplated only in the abstract—until now. The fucking elves were too used to assuming absolute species supremacy in business matters, and the Tong was about to fuck them right in the pocketbook. Stewart had his own debts to pay to his ghosts. He ruthlessly suppressed the feral grin that threatened to break through his polite mask, but couldn't quite prevent it shining through in his eyes. The Grandfather's eyes narrowed and lit with an answering gleam as the old man leaned forward.

  "The advent of such an opportunity, if proper care could be taken, would be auspicious. Very, very auspicious. You begin to interest me." The head of the largest and most powerful, unsubverted, solely Human organization in the Galaxy set his tea to the side and leaned forward in his chair. The fires banked underneath the cold rage, so long held in check, began to burn. Stewart could almost see the man silently counting his dead and reckoning the interest.

  "I apologize that time constrained me to send the first ships before we could meet. The opportunity would have been lost." Stewart allowed his eyes to meet his superior's for a moment. When the old man nodded, he continued, "This is what we have set in motion . . ."

  The
Indowy Aelool walked the halls of the O'Neal Bane Sidhe base with one of his younger clan brothers, but recently arrived on Earth. The youngster had tested as a high genius for the aptitudes important in the field of xenopsychology, leading the clan head to request his presence especially as an apprentice. Coming from his Clan Head, the request had more force than the strongest Human command. A Human would have been surprised that a clan head of even a tiny group like Clan Aelool—tiny only by Indowy standards—could disappear for long periods without ringing alarm bells in the heads of the Darhel. It was actually the youngster whose disappearance had taken more arranging. Clan heads were some of the very few Indowy who were not under contract to one Darhel Group or another, instead serving the Clan as a whole. As such, the Darhel were long accustomed to having little to no contact with the head of this clan or that clan for centuries at a time. As long as the clan's members were meeting their contracts and causing no trouble, the Darhel reasonably presumed that the clan head was off somewhere doing his job. Wasting time worrying about a relative handful of Indowy among the trillions and trillions would have cut into real business. For the Darhel, the clan heads had no other function than to maintain the system that kept the masses of Indowy well under control.

  In the new apprentice's case, the clan had made vague mumblings about administration work and bought out the childling's contract, apportioning his former duties among other apprentices in his family. The Darhel had never marked him as particularly smart or talented—Indowy being careful about such things, Clan Aelool more than most.

  The head of his breeding group was also unusually smart. She had made certain the child displayed some conspicuous mistakes and clumsiness in his work, making the Cnothgar Group happier than not to see the slow-learning, incompetent youngling become someone else's problem. If he thought about it at all, the Cnothgar Group's local factor would assume the clan had removed the little fuck-up to someplace where he couldn't further dishonor Clan Aelool.

  "I do not understand why you are such a determined contrarian regarding Human civilizability, Clan Father Aelool. I have read the other clans' reports on the failures of the SubUrb dietary experiments, and, most respectfully, they run exactly counter to your positions. My wisdom is lacking. Enlighten me, please?" his new apprentice said.

  "Ah. You are fond of kaeba pie, are you not?"

  "Well, yes. Who is not?"

  "But you more than most. If someone tried to get you to give up kaeba pie by offering you only mashed loogubble in exchange, how happy would you be to cooperate?"

  "Please do not ask me to make this sacrifice for Clan Aelool, sir. I will, most certainly, but . . ."

  "It would be a great sacrifice. I know." His eyes crinkled in the Indowy equivalent of an impish grin. "That is, more or less, what our enlightened colleagues among our own race and the others attempted to do with the humans." He clucked his tongue in a "tsk" picked up from humans.

  "Would it surprise you to know that the humans have established in excess of one hundred specialized colonies, in the areas that were totally destroyed, in pursuit of the different varieties of bean for this continent's favorite bean soup? These barbarian carnivores—yes, I know they are—consume bean broth in the megaliters. How many specialized colonies do you think they have established in pursuit of favorite meats?"

  His younger clanmate shuddered, "Ugh. What a question. Thousands, at least, based on your bean data."

  "Zero," the Indowy Aelool said. "Exactly none."

  The other Indowy actually stopped walking in consternation, then appeared to have a thought dawn. "That is easily explained, Clan Father. They raise captive populations of most of the meat animals they most prefer. Perhaps it is more difficult to grow their beans in various places, with their primitive technologies."

  "Partially true. Yet there are meat animals they used to eat—do not shudder, we miss things when we look away too soon—that they like, that they have not reclaimed. Then there are twenty-something specialized colonies dedicated to replanting large populations of another bean whose fermented products are particularly favored by their females—and consumed in no small quantity by many males."

  "If they are so fond of these beans, why did the SubUrb experiments not feed them these beans rather than other foods?"

  "A mere deficiency of metabolism. The lipids and sugars forming the food value of these much-favored vegetative foods can only be metabolized by the humans into energy, not synthesized into the building blocks needed for major body maintenance and repairs. The SubUrb plan failed because those carrying it out were too lazy or too careless. The carnivores disgust them, so they equated all beans to all other beans and substituted beans and seeds that do provide the compounds humans can metabolize—as we have in the food facilities for humans on this base, as well. With the problem being that the humans tolerate those foods but are about as fond of them as we are of loogubble."

  The youngster shuddered.

  "The first thing one would think is to fortify the favored beans with the necessary compounds. Again, the problem is the humans hate the taste or the texture of the fortified beans."

  "So why are you so preoccupied with catering to their aesthetic whims?"

  "If we want them to change their behavior without resistance, we must make them prefer to do so. If you were offered meat on your plate or kaeba pie, which would you eat?"

  "Neither! The dead flesh would make me ill!"

  "You would eat the kaeba pie, or even loogubble, in preference at least partially because you like it better. Philosophy be damned, it suits your preferences."

  The youngster winced.

  "The obvious solution never occurred to the relevant planners. Provide the humans with the ability to metabolize the vegetable foods they already prefer into the nutrients they need. It was too much trouble to take with the disgusting, immoral, primitive carnivores." The clan head's own disgust was obviously for the planners, not the humans. It was an almost blasphemous rebuke of their recognized wisdom.

  "Clan Father, in another, I would consider the assertion of one's wisdom over those planners as presumptuous. You, however, are such an eminent xenologist, and my Clan Head, that I must consider the possibility that your wisdom, in this, may exceed theirs. Is it permitted for me to ask if you have evidence."

  "I am so glad you asked. You see, we are going to my Human dietary laboratory. You will please excuse the decor. It is designed to make the humans especially comfortable with the foods that proceed from it. First, let me confess that I have taken the small ethical liberty of fortifying the foods with specialized nannites that convert the food compounds available to the ones necessary for Human health. The nannites build up in the system of humans who consume the foods and make the preferred stream of vegetable substances much more nutritionally available to those humans. I do not tell them about the enhancements."

  "That is quite an ethical lapse, if you will forgive my horribly impertinent comment."

  "It is. I believe they would consent if they knew. I believe they would then also imagine deficiencies of taste in the foods. This belief is the result of other experimentation in their kitchens. True meat was presented, falsely, as vegetatively enhanced. They not only claimed to notice a taste difference, they preferred the true meat so presented much less than the true meat honestly presented. Oh, do not shudder so. They would have been eating it anyway, and they would not, as one of us, be misled into an ethical breach—they perceive no ethical reasons to prefer the vegetative offering, anyway. That particular deception had no negative ethical value for the humans—I checked with the Human Planner Nathan O'Reilly. He has also approved this experiment, on the grounds that if the ones eating the nano-enhanced foods like the taste, and have no adverse health consequences, they are getting a pleasant treat and little more. I do confess his approval probably was contingent on the way I presented the information—truthfully, but in a persuasive way. Could I please attempt to produce aesthetic Human treats as long as I endeavored
to ensure they were healthy and did not impair the functionality of his operatives and staff?"

  "Well, if their planner approved, of course it is ethical. Why did you not tell me that at the beginning?"

  "The humans would not entirely agree on that ethics evaluation, customarily requiring individual consent."

  "Insane," Rael Aelool echoed the sentiment he had heard, often though surreptitiously, from his elders.

  "Not for them," his Clan Head contradicted. "Alien minds are alien. If we want their cooperation, we must respect that. Do not wince. To ignore the differences in alien minds in our dealings with them is the height of folly. If we had not once done so with the Darhel, all this plotting and intrigue—this Bane Sidhe—would have been unnecessary to begin with." The clan head had the expressions of an instructor commencing a class.

  "From your enthusiasm, it almost sounded as if you were going to tell me they are not that different from you and me." The child's wry tone was an unwitting display of his genius.

  "What? Of course they are different. Incalculably different. They are aliens. That is my whole point. We respect the Tchpht; we respect the Himmit; we even, after a fashion, respect the Darhel. We had better, out of sheer survival interest. We wrote the Darhel off as primitive because of their history. Short term thinking to our long term sorrow. One would think we had learned nothing from our mistake."