Sister Time-ARC

by John Ringo

  Eating inside was not exactly picturesque, but ideal for privacy. The galley already boasted fittings of high-quality blocks for eavesdropping. Her PDA would page the waiter when they needed service. The restaurant management, sensitive to the needs of their most discriminating and lucrative clientele, had a very fine sense of which boats not to bother with may I help you visits or incessant coffee and tea refills. It was a great restaurant. The whole family loved it.

  Michelle was late. That surprised Cally more than she'd been surprised in a long time. She didn't think a Michon Mentat could be late. It didn't go with the labeling on the package. She looked cool and unflappable when she walked down the pier, wearing the street clothes her sister had purchased for her in Chicago, plus a duster of Galactic silk that matched the color of her pants. The assassin noted a bulge in the right pocket of the duster. If it had been anyone else, Cally would have suspected a weapon.

  "I apologize for being late. I thought I would look strange if I did not wear a coat. Does it look appropriate?" the mentat asked

  "You . . . made it?" Cally asked, sliding a menu across the table.

  "Is it obvious? Is that a problem?" She might have been any woman, for a moment, as she critically examined the garment.

  "I can only tell because it's Galactic silk and made in a single piece, and no, no problem. It looks great." And worth about ten years of my salary, I think.

  "Good. Were you able to obtain the information I requested?" The other woman's clear tones betrayed the tiniest hint of her childhood Georgia accent, but only to an experienced operative like her sister.

  "Oh, yeah. We got it. It was a milk run," the assassin assured.

  "That is good. Were your superiors sufficiently satisfied to agree to the rest of my contract? Also, I hope the milk was good?"

  "Milk? Oh. That was just a figure of speech. Milk run, I mean" she said. "Yes, we have a go for the mission. Here." She passed a cube across the table. "This has everything we found."

  "Let's go ahead and order. It would look strange if we just sat here for too long." She looked down the menu, running her finger over the options, "I know you can't, but it's a shame you can't eat meat. They have the best she-crab stew in Charleston."

  Michelle winced.

  "It's a regional specialty. Have you really never eaten meat since we were kids?"

  "I have not. If I were to eat it after all this time, I would probably have to make an extra effort just to be able to digest it. I would prefer a salad."

  "Can you do dairy, then? They do a very good caesar salad."

  "We have dairy. It was not appropriate for the Indowy themselves, but because humans are mammals, they made allowances. Also, I think they like the cows. Though the Indowy do not eat other animals, their population density has made large, mobile species a certain rarity on their worlds. I think I will try your caesar salad, thank you."

  "Do you mind if I just message it to them? I know you don't get the full restaurant experience that often, but we're more secure if the waiter just brings our food out."

  Michelle laughed, the first real laugh Cally had heard from her. "You must be making a joke. For me, this is nearly unimaginable seclusion. One waiter or ten, I am amazed that it would make that much difference," she said. "At home, security means being in the company of your own clan, or clans with close affiliations to your clan. Being alone like this would be like . . ." She paused for a long moment, nonplussed. "I do not remember. What would be so strange on Earth that nobody would think of it, and anyone doing it would be—you would think they were ill in their brain? Now being in a room alone, I understand. I sometimes work that way. Just . . . this." She waved her hand around to include the space around them, from the river to the sky to the dock between their boat and the restaurant. It had never felt empty and open to Cally quite the way it did now. It was kinda peaceful.

  "When you put me on the spot like that, that's a good question—about what would be the same level of weird here on Earth," Cally said after a long pause. "I would say stripping naked in the middle of a state funeral, but it's been done. I don't know if there is anything so strange that some person somewhere hasn't done it just to make a point." She thought some more. "Wow. Now that you say it, all I can think of is random destruction of life or property for no good reason."

  "I thought that was what you did?" Michelle said.

  Cally stiffened until she realized that the question was totally sincere and not at all intended to be insulting. "I always have a good reason."

  "What do people here consider a good reason?" Michelle might have been talking to the Mad Hatter at a tea party.

  "I can't speak for the whole planet. For me, it's whatever Grandpa and Father O'Reilly consider a good reason," the assassin shrugged.

  "Of course you listen to the O'Neal. Are you saying that you have not yet begun training in the evaluation of reasons for what you do?"

  "No, I'm saying that it's not a good idea to have people in my profession pick and evaluate their own targets. Also, I don't always have all the information my superiors have in determining whether someone should or shouldn't be a target," she said. "Oh, here's our food. Hang on."

  Michelle waited until the waiter had delivered the food and left before holding up the data cube her sister had provided. "Will it bother you if I look at this while we eat?" she asked.

  "No, that's fine. It's what we're here for," Cally said. "Not that I'm not glad to see you. That didn't come out right. Anyway, our resumes for the job listings are on there, too."

  "I am not offended." The mentat took a buckley PDA out of her pocket and inserted the datacube.

  Cally raised her eyebrows, but didn't comment. It must really bite the Darhels' butts that buckley PDAs were slowly and quietly spreading out from Earth to be used instead of AIDs, when the user wanted something not to be recorded. The Darhel certainly never shipped the competing devices anywhere, and never authorized them for sale. They had made alleged consumer protection laws banning their sale off Earth. Unfortunately for the Darhel, with a Human gunner team aboard almost all freighters and Human colonists everywhere, the Darhel were becoming more and more aware of the difficulties of trying to suppress black market activities among humans. She knew from Stewart that the Tong was ecstatic at the advertising effects the Darhel's attempts at suppression were providing in their target markets. Cally suppressed a smile as she glanced up at Michelle's PDA. Obviously market penetration was good.

  They ate in silence. After feeling strange for a moment in the unnatural quiet, Cally opened up a fashion magazine on her buckley and started looking through the spring collections. She was going to have to buy some outfits from an islander seamstress real soon, anyway. Might as well do something stylish.

  "This is the information I need. I wish it showed one more part, but I do not think they will be disassembling the mock-up—just modifying it. At least, not within our time window." The mentat gave the appearance of wearing robes even in street clothes as she looked up serenely. "This is straightforward. I will have it for you in four weeks, local."

  "Four weeks?"

  "I assure you, I can work very quickly since it only has to appear to function."

  "That's not what I meant. I guess I'm used to Earthtech."

  "This is very far beyond Earthtech. That is why I have to personally make it. Four weeks." She pulled a bag out of her coat pocket, handing it to the Bane Sidhe assassin. "Here is the agreed payment."

  "Great. A month, huh? Guess we won't have trouble getting someone inside and getting set up with that much lead time. I thought you were originally planning to make it without this stuff?" Cally gestured towards the cube.

  "Once I knew I was going to get better data, I had to wait. Like any other product of advanced technology, it has to be grown whole. Specifications cannot change in the middle of the process. Upgraded parts can be retrofitted, settings changed, options added, replacement part redesigned. The basic design for the underlying item cannot b
e changed while it is still in the tank."

  "Okay, so four weeks. I may contact you for a meeting between now and then to coordinate arrangements."

  "That will seldom be possible. I will be growing the product in the tank. I will not be able to interrupt the work casually. Suppose I contact you and we meet once a week?"

  "Okay, so four weeks and once a week. I'll see you whenever I hear from you, then."

  "Cally." Michelle reached out and touched her hand. "I still have not thanked you for the clothes. Is there anything at all I can get you? Not business, but something personal?"

  Cally hesitated for a moment, strangely reluctant to ask a favor. "Uh. I hate to ask, but could you possibly get me some depilatory foam? I haven't been able to get any since Dad's supplies from the old emergency cache ran out." Spoken, it sounded a bit pathetic, and she was kicking herself when Michelle smiled.

  "Of course I can. I will make it myself. It will not take even an hour."

  "Okay. But there's got to be something you want from Earth. The Galactics aren't exactly big on consumer goods."

  "Welllll." Her sister hesitated for a long moment, considering. "Chocolate. You could get me chocolate. And some of those little white solidified sugar wheels. The ones with red spokes and no hole for an axle, that are flavored with peppermint oil. I think they are designed to spin counter-clockwise, but I was so young I am not sure my memory is correct." She shrugged, but her eyes were actually glittering with what might have been excitement. "Clockwise or straight-spoked wheels would be perfectly lovely. Just whichever is available. Star-sparkle Mints or some such. I am sorry, I cannot remember the name."

  "Okay, chocolate and peppermints. Got it."

  "The little wheel ones," the mentat said.

  "The little wheel ones. Got it. Next week. No problem," her sister grinned.

  "If you cannot get them next week, whenever you have time is most acceptable," she said. She sighed. "We have indulged in quite a long lunch. I need to go start work now. The salad was good. Thank you." Then Michelle was gone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The family quarters for the Indowy-raised humans were a series of small, low rooms. The Michelle O'Neal Family suite had walls in shades of mint and peach. The parents' sleeping room and the living room opened directly on the corridor. Behind those two rooms lay the nurseries. A central corridor contained the long washroom that served the family. All the rooms were very small. That, at least, was the allocation of the Human living space its Indowy planners had intended. In reality, the parents had tri-sected their room by hanging curtains from tracks in the ceiling. On each side wall, and along the back wall, a set of bunk beds, closely stacked, provided a bunk for each of the six adults in the group. Hooks at the head of each bed held a change of robe and two night-robes apiece. A small, six-layer chest of drawers held underclothes and a memento or two for each parent.

  The children's rooms had the same furnishings as the parents' room, except that the beds were slightly shorter and wider. There were more drawers, the plan being that two children would be in each bed, at capacity. The children past their first apprenticeship would, of course, live in unmated social groupings. After some trial and error, the Indowy had learned that the humans they encountered in Fleet had been wise to suggest adolescent Human social groupings be segregated by breeding biology. Their males and females exhibited social and mating behaviors that were unstable and intense when housed together in the juvenile stages prior to group assignment and bonding.

  The Michelle O'Neal family, as with most of the Human families on Adenast, quietly deviated from their green mentors' plans and used clan privacy traditions to avoid discussing it outside the family. For one thing, the O'Neal adults were three couples, not a homogeneous group. Since Derrick's death, Michelle had slept in the room with her own two children and Bill and Mary's oldest daughter. Their toddler, and Tom and Lisa's three, slept in the other children's room.

  In the parents' room, the other two couples had four bunks, but most nights only occupied two. Tom and Lisa's two month old slept in Michelle's old bunk.

  Nooks and crannies all over the apartment—under chairs, in the small spaces under the beds—held prepackaged food so that the family didn't have to go to the mess hall for meals. It was the same stuff, anyway. In the sitting room, larger chairs for each adult and small ones for each child stood grouped around each other or the thinned-down holotank on one wall. On another wall, a spice rack displayed some of the family's wealth. The Human sections of the agricultural planets didn't run to growing traditional herbs and spices. Most Human families would buy a little pepper and hot sauce. More frequently, some locally brewed hooch. Michelle had paid to ship a fifty-spice rack up from Earth. Shipped and paid for legitimately. Refilled legitimately, for awhile. Sometimes the refills were even legitimately bought and shipped now. Just . . . not always. Her work did have small privileges.

  The senior female in the group walked into the living room, where their children immediately mobbed her.

  "Anne, Terry, move back and let your clan mother walk," a woman ordered. She was tiny, with wavy black hair and midnight eyes

  The Michon Mentat leaned down and picked up the toddler, Kim. "How was your day?" she asked her clan-wife.

  "Tiring. And yours?"

  "Informative. I will be working late for the next three weeks."

  "Mama! Mama! Look what I made for you!" Her own five year old, Tara, ran up to her with a picture on a thin sheet of white plastic. Bright, primary colors combined and smeared together into stick figures and childish trees. It looked like fingerpainting, but really came from a headset interface at school, designed to allow young ones to begin developing the mental discipline and neural connections to learn Sohon safely and without the risks of a real tank. "This is you and Mama Lisa and Mama Mary and Papa Tom and . . ." There were a lot of people on the page. Michelle smiled slightly, ready to hear them all.

  "Tara, please let me talk to your clan mother for a few minutes, then we will pick out a wall to hang your pretty picture on," Lisa said. "Michelle, could we sit down, please?"

  "Certainly. There is something you need to bring to my attention?"

  "Oh, no. The household is running smoothly. If it would not offend you, I would like us to talk about your work. We are worried about you." Her wife's robe showed stains and spots, accumulated from watching the children.

  "We can talk about my work," the mentat said.

  "You are home early today. I thought it would be good to discuss this before the others get home. We are—I am—very concerned about you. I do not mean to interfere, but there are certain rumors. . . ." The tiny woman reached out and took the toddler, who had started to play with the pins in Michelle's hair.

  "If the rumors are that I have been threatened with default on a contract, that much is true. It is also true that there is some danger. However, I have a plan."

  "A plan?" the woman echoed.

  "Yes, a plan."

  "How likely is this plan to make you very hungry within the year?"

  "There is considerable risk."

  "Loss of the head of our family would be very hard. Also, I would miss you very much. We must all hope that your . . . plan . . . goes well." The smaller woman fixed her dark eyes on her group-mate's face, mute with compassion.

  Wednesday, 11/10/54

  The Darhel Pardal relaxed his jaw and shoulders in an unseen gesture of relief as he watched the Epetar Group freighter finally vanish into hyperspace, leaving the Sol System for its rendezvous with its next load of cargo at Dulain. The nearly two week delay in getting the cash to the freighter to cover its docking fees at its next stop, as well as purchasing its high-margin cargo, had been the worst black spot of his career. Epetar had a contract to deliver bounce tube replacement parts, each specially crafted for its own unique bounce tube machinery, to Diess. The repair and reclamation program had finally gotten around to rebuilding Telsa City. There were countless tubes all over Diess in v
arious stages of salvageable disrepair. The contract would last at least a century.

  Indowy made all their equipment in the normal way, growing each item from a set of VR goggles all the way up to an entire starship in sohon tanks. For a ship, an entire Indowy family from the newest apprentice to the most skilled master might be involved in bringing the sharply envisioned, individual design to reality. Every item of Galactic technology had slightly different parts and slightly different designs. Devices were built to last at least one lifetime—which for a member of a Galactic race, or a rejuved Human, amounted to about five hundred of the local years. It discomfited Pardal that he had developed the habit of thinking in Earth time, but after twenty-eight years one adjusted. Even to this Aldenata-forsaken backwater.

  Of course, he used Human-produced goods for less critical functions in his office. Ephemeral as they were, even counting replacement costs they were economically optimized and functional. Which was why all the Groups took such great pains to keep Human goods as localized to the Sol System as possible. The destabilizing effect of their merchandise and their methods on the economy, if not properly contained, didn't bear thinking about. Dangerous as a mob of budding adolescents, the whole species.