Honor of the Clan (27 page)

Papa had been expecting a scathing review as soon as the hatch closed, Indowy guide or no Indowy guide, so the silence was getting uncomfortable.

Alan didn't reply.

"Uh, penny for your thoughts?" Papa said. Better to get it out of the way as soon as possible.

"I don't, really, think it matters," Alan said morosely.

"Future of Clan O'Neal?" Papa said. "Future of the Bane Sidhe? Future of the human race? We just participated in really high level negotiations. I'd figure you'd have
something
to say."

Alan let out a sigh.

"You know what I said about the Parent's Table not really being the Parent's Table?" Alan asked. "That it was just translation? A sort of metaphor?"

"Yeah?"

"I was wrong," Alan said. "No human had ever seen this negotiation. We'd had it detailed, we analyzed it, we spindled, folded and mutilated it. Which is why, with the exception of your last Response, you did fairly well. Intonation and body language issues, but fairly well. Your last Response may, in fact, have been masterful."

"
What
?"

"Listen to me!" Alan snapped. "Think. I said it was a metaphor. I was wrong. The monsignor was wrong. Every human who has ever studied the Children's Negotiation Ceremony was dead, completely, utterly
wrong
."

"How?" Papa asked. His back hurt and his feet hurt and his legs hurt and he was seriously ready for a very big drink of whisky. But he felt like Alan might finally be saying something important.

"Think about a family party," Alan said. "There's a few grown-ups at the Grown-Ups' table and there's a dozen or so kids running around playing. Kids engage in negotiations. We don't call it that but they do. What, really, do the Parents
care
about such negotiations?"

"Nothing," Papa said, his mouth suddenly dry. "They're kids."

"It's better to ask forgiveness than permission," Alan said. "So mostly the children keep their secrets to themselves. They don't bother the parents."

"They get more quiet when they don't want to be noticed," Papa said. He wasn't only a multiple father but a multiple
grand
father. And great-grandfather.

"Every now and again, the kids will feel it's necessary to get a seal of approval on something," Alan said.

"So they go to the Parent's table," Papa said. " 'Dad, we're going over to Billy's to play video-games.' So . . . who are the Parents?"

"That's the kicker," Alan said. "This was, as much as anything, a religious ceremony. The Indowy, the Tchpth, the Darhel, even the Posleen, are referred to as Children of the Aldenata. They view them as Gods. Well, in the case of the Posleen as demons, but that's beside the point. The real point is that the Aldenata may or may not have real power, what is called hard-power. They may still exist and influence events."

"They might have been
listening
?" Papa said. "So humanity's first communication with God-like aliens was 'That's gotta suck'?" Papa paused and shook his head. "Great. Just fucking
great
."

"But then there's the big problem," Alan said.

"There's a bigger problem?"

"We, humans, are not Children of the Aldenata," Alan said. "We're the kids from next door who wandered in. And, as reported, through no fault of our own we're causing problems. It's entirely the local, older and wiser, kids' fault. But there are problems."

"Ouch," Papa said.

"If you've had a nice, neat, playful little party and some neighbor kid wanders in and all of a sudden there are problems," Alan said, "what do you do?"

"Toss the little bugger out," Papa replied. "Or teach him manners."

"
That
is why I said 'I don't think it matters.' I think we just, for the first time ever, got
formally
introduced to the Aldenata. And if they have a problem with our behavior, we don't have any 'adults' to negotiate for
us
."

Xikkikil stood on the bridge of the ship and looked at the plot of relevant ships in the tank. It had traveled inward with the ship carrying the Human O'Neal, so as to allow that vessel to begin the acceleration for its return to Earth. Now they had to pay the price of that choice in the time to decelerate and return to the jump point. No matter. The job was done, the relationship reestablished. Specific favors would, of course, depend on situations as they arose. It was the relationship that was the thing.

Unfortunately, the return of the relationship meant, in this case, a return of the debt owed to Clan O'Neal for the . . . killing . . . of the Darhel Pardal. It mattered not that the Tchpth were appalled at the consequences of their actions, the fact remained Clan O'Neal had risked the life of its third in line as Clan Head in order to do a favor the Tchpth asked for and regarded as horrific. That the Tchpth's own error in estimating the consequences of that favor and the price the O'Neals were paying as a result was so high was a factor that raised the level of the debt considerably.

The O'Neal had been surprisingly subtle in his negotiations. A barbarian, yes, barely to be considered a Child to be allowed to run free. But subtle. His closing statement was so baroque as to be indecipherable. An entire team was parsing it to squeeze every meaning out. The closest they had come to full understanding was that O'Neal placed the entire blame for the current debacle on the Tchpth. There was, further, a resonance of contempt for the Tchpth race for stooping to the level of violence. Humans, it was understood, would use violence, even their negotiations were barely controlled brawls, as a first response. That the
Tchpth
had acceded to it under such comparatively minor circumstances was, understandably, contemptible.

The planners would be having extensive debates as to what options might be available to mitigate the larger issue while still reducing the debt.

A single refugee ship had emerged from hyperspace, but the Tchpth and the Himmit knew that there would be more. They also suspected that they had a better appreciation for human capabilities than the Indowy refugees. From the Indowy point of view, the Darhel's humans were killing them, and Earth was the only place they had humans of their own. Their own vicious omnivorous killers were, in their minds, sure protection from the Darhel's vicious omnivorous killers.

The Tchpth presumed the Himmit had a more realistic appreciation for the results of pitting groups of humans against each other. It was difficult to tell, as always. The Himmit collected stories voraciously, but they refrained from giving return "stories" almost as carefully as the Tchpth refrained from releasing too-advanced technology to the other Galactic races. Still, it was occasionally possible to deduce something about Himmit thoughts by observing a Himmit itself to identify what stories or events it found most interesting. Occasionally.

This refugee ship, of course, had an entirely fictitious reason for being in the Sol System. In this case, probably the Himmit whose ship it was asking for stories it would otherwise not have come for. Not even the Darhel could pierce the cloaking of Himmit shuttles. Transport to Earth would be functionally invisible. For the first ship. However, at some point, Tir Dol Ron would be bound to notice that there were far, far more Himmit in the system than there should be, and begin to ask himself why.

Chapter Seventeen

Thursday, January 14, 2055

The trouble with intel, Cally reflected, was that it was too damned uncertain a business, and intelligence people sometimes either overestimated or overstated the likelihood of their conclusions. They also tended to want to tell you how and why they knew what they said they knew. This was good to the extent that it somewhat served as a check against bullshit wild-ass conclusions. It was bad in that it was damned boring. Sometimes she felt like she spent half her life in drab little conference rooms. It was actually very little, she admitted to herself, it just
seemed
longer. It just figured that one of the things that survived through the years was PowerPoint. Or, in this case, a generic, open-source knock-off.

Sands leaned over and whispered to her, "That is one bad-ass bit of hacking!"

Obviously, not everybody was as bored as she was. Cally sat up a bit straighter in her chair and tried to pay attention.

". . . searching through a large collection of data from the campus's many cameras, we found the one hundred women who most closely resembled the description of our kidnapper. Then we backtracked through official records to positively identify those women. Out of the ninety-two identified, ninety were students at the university.The other two had graduated from local high schools and probably live locally." The presenter paused to make sure everybody appreciated how well they'd done to rule out so many of the girls they initially ruled in.

He continued, "So we focused our attention on the remaining eight." Here he switched to a slide that contained eight grainy photos that gradually enhanced to clarity.

Cally suppressed a yawn, wishing they could just give them the damn target, mission parameters, and
relevant
information. She did have to admit that the final eight did all look a lot like the artist's sketch of the kidnapper.

The man was still droning, ". . . using age regression techniques and searches of cached data to come up with possible identifications. Based on multiple series of school pictures we came up with a total of fifteen women who could be our possible. Then we searched juvenile records, birth records, marriage records, child protective services records, and other sources to put together a profile for each of the fifteen. We got two women who fit the profile for childhood conditions conducive to sociopathy, and six women whose genotypes show a genetic risk factor for same. Uh—including the two. One of our top two is presently incarcerated in the Minnesota State Correction System. That leaves this woman as our prime suspect."

Cally leaned forward, finally having one specific face to memorize. The four pictures were much better, of course. Not that they flattered the woman, although she was attractive. They just needed no digital enhancement to sharpen them up. They were the originals from the young woman's social website. What a dumbass thing to do if you aspired to become a player. Darwin Award, coming right up.

"Now we come to the actual murderer, Mr. Robert 'Bobby' Mitchell."

Cally couldn't quite stifle a yawn. She tried. She mostly managed, but not enough to be spared a dirty look from the presenter's partner. Ha! She was probably still sore they got their asses kicked on the court. George happened to be looking her way, so she met his eyes with a conspiratorial twinkle of amusement before they both dutifully returned their attention to the recounting of how intel had found a man whose DNA was no longer in official records. This part was slightly uncomfortable to every operator in the room, as what could be done to others could also be done to them. In all, they preferred to do unto others, first.

Eventually they got to the point and an actual mission out of all that babble. By psych profile, the murderer of the girl was likely the top hitter. It was a one-man task, it was complicated, and it was really gross—hence easy to chicken out, scrimp, or cheat on, even for a stone killer. He'd have been unlikely to trust anyone else enough to delegate. Fine. And they had tracked down who he was. Fine. But tracking down
who
 the killer was did nothing to track down
where
he was.

The intel weenie had an answer for that, too. They started with the assumption that the top hitter might work for Tir Dol Ron directly. It fit the Darhels' pattern of behavior to date. There was the word Cally and every other operator dreaded to hear from the intel people betting their lives. Assumption.

The actual mission was the acquisition and interrogation of one man who doubtless had nothing to do with the killings. Barton Leibowitz was the Enterprise Resource Manager for the Tir's corporate office on Earth, which was a fancy way of saying that he and his AID were the entire personnel and accounting department. Intel's supposition was that the man who hired people and fired people would know Mitchell if he was a regular employee and if, as Darhel hit men often were, he was just a contractor, Leibowitz still might know him through the process of cutting his checks. Not that anybody used paper checks anymore. The admin weenie could transfer the right amount of money to the right account without ever laying eyes on the contractors or anyone else, and probably did. However, their searches turned up something about the man that made him an easy mark for a little interview. He had been through a divorce, finalized about four months ago. Pictures indicated that while not ugly, Bart was probably not having great luck in the singles scene. Bluntly, the man was probably very lonely.

Yup. Supposition on top of assumption. That was intel, all right. Granted, the process they preferred to call "analysis" usually turned up good shit. Their two and two usually did make four. It was just the "usually" part that made her edgy. That wasn't what bothered her about this particular job, though. No, the problem with this job was of a personal nature, and the bitch of it was that it was genuinely mission essential.

"I have . . . I don't know if I should call it a suggestion or a request," Amy Sands interjected. These folks almost looked like they were going to their own funeral. She understood it. The problem shouldn't have been one for a seasoned professional, but she could understand why it was. She was also seeing another side of the legendary Cally O'Neal. Or, at least, she was legend at school. Amy was now realizing that the other woman put her pants on one leg at a time just like anyone else. Excellent, yes. Phenomenal. But human, nonetheless.

"Yeah, Sands?" Tommy Sunday's tone was nice, but it had that underlying tinge of a veteran being patient with the cherry—well, near cherry—guy on the team.

She supposed that was fair. It was her point, actually. She was too realistic to expect a permanent place on this team. Like the military, the Bane Sidhe also had a fairy godmother department, and she had lucked out bigtime to be here even for a short assignment. Amy was determined to milk this job for every bit of knowledge and experience she could wring out of it. This wasn't petty careerism, although doing well there was nice.