Honor of the Clan (31 page)

Right now, she was more concerned with Mary Lynn Stuart, laid out on the stainless steel operating table. The girl was caked in blood most places except where they had cut her clothes away. She also had the blue stain of medical's preferred antiseptic.

"So how long will it take her to recover?" she asked the surgeon, who, unaccountably, had not yet hit the kid with the Hiberzine antidote, nor was there a regen tank pulled up to the side of the table, nor a couple of first-year interns to lift her in. One lone intern stood watching, keeping his hands to himself. Cally had seen moderate to serious wounds before and was getting alarmed. The pre-Hiberzine exam was usually routine and short, unless they had shrapnel to pull out, in which case it was a full O.R. setup. In this case, Dr. Whatsis was taking way too long with the scanner thingamajigs.

"I'm afraid it's not a when, Miss O'Neal. It's an if, and a how much."

"What? She's just got a couple of gut wounds. It should be
nothing
. What the hell?" she asked. Then she remembered her manners.

"Note the entry wound." The surgeon lifted the girl's matted hair, separating it where the strands had already been pulled apart. "This is what got her. It didn't have enough power to exit through the skull." He laid her head down gently, face still swollen from Hiberzining. "So it bounced around a bit. Then, to make matters worse, the last thing Hiberzine hits is the core of the brain. Everything had time to bleed a little."

"What does that mean in real terms? Does she have some kind of chance, and how much without the damn slab?"

"I can save maybe forty percent. That's above the twenty-five percent threshold. I happen to have another child who just missed the threshold, and some of the salvagable material from her might be usable for the patient. Otherwise, we find female patients as close to her age as possible, but they will all be below threshold, so we'll need several. Fortunately, if you can look at it that way, we've acquired a few over the years. I'll have to see exactly what we can save, and then do a database match." He shrugged unhappily. "Twenty years ago, we couldn't have done it without the slab. Fortunately, outside world gene therapy has progressed to the point that we can remap the blood and tissue typing in vitro for all the donors. Or, if administration believes we can have the slab back any time soon, we'll stack her and use it to assemble the combination. She has a fifty-fifty chance if we do it without the slab, and a ninety-five plus percent chance if we use the slab. Even if the slab procedure fails," he used air quotes on the term. "What that means in practical terms is that she'll have a long rehab with psychiatric difficulties in line with the early slab patients. They'll eventually integrate her, but it's a long, traumatic, frustrating process."

He gave Cally a long, steady look. "You're more likely to know when or whether we can expect the slab back, or not." His expression said plainly that even though he wasn't cleared for the higher level negotiation information, it would have a major effect on his treatment decisions.

Cally jumped as her buckley vibrated at her hip.

"I'm supposed to tell you to take this call in your quarters," it said.

"Stack her for now. I
have to
take this call right now." Her look at him was serious, and carried more information than she should give away. "That information could change within days. Keep your mouth shut." She jerked a thumb at the intern, "And give him a scrubber. You're a mature juv physician.
He
looks like a kid because he is."

The intern jumped. A scrubber was another name for a common interrogation drug that had the side effect of memory loss of several
days
prior. Cally could see the consequences of forgetting his past forty-eight hours, and that must be a wrench in this case.

"Sorry, son," she said, turning to the doctor. "I know you would, anyway, but please put him on retroactive leave, not charged to him, and generally do all you can to blunt the consequences." She looked back at the young man. "Before he gives it to you, in these kinds of cases it's common to debrief you of any important information or appointments you may have to or want to compensate for."

The kid relaxed immediately, and with her wealth of life experience, Cally suspected the concern was a girl. Bummer. She suppressed a smile.

"I'll let you know anything I can as soon as I get it," she promised the surgeon. "And now I
have to
go."

Cally was in a new room from the one she usually had at base. Her old one was bigger, with a connecting door, and hence had been assigned out to one of the dependent families. She'd been too busy to do more than get the number from her buckley, although of course somebody had carted up her steamer trunk of on-base clothes and gear.

The room smelled dusty, although it had clearly been cleaned and vacuumed, since the marks were still on the carpeting. This had probably just made the dust worse, and she sneezed as she walked in and flipped on the light. She hadn't expected voice activation in these quarters.

The bedspread was whole, but grayed out as if a newer one had long been traded out someplace else, and the furniture style was late-period Bane Sidhe dinged up. No holoprojection center to play cubes. That was not really a big deal, as her buckley was fully loaded and had the capability to project a cube point seven five meters on a side rather than the usual ten centimeters. The only thing that sucked about it was buckley had this annoying habit of talking during the holo, and her efforts to shut him up had spotty results, at best.

Right now, she didn't have any need for a holo, because her sister was standing in the middle of the room.

"Hi. How are you?" Cally asked her, because she certainly couldn't tell from the mentat's placid exterior, immaculate if dull brown robe, not a hair out of place in the bun on her head, except that said bun was now held in place by a pair of red and gold enameled chopsticks. "Nice do," she nodded towards the hair. On Michelle, anything colorful or personal was a major fashion statement.

"You really like them? They were a pres—" She sighed. "Busy. Very busy, which is why I have not spoken to you until now about matters I really wish I could have given you all possible time to prepare for. I truly had no idea how widespread and general the pogroms against the Indowy Bane Sidhe were. It appears that many Darhel drew the same conclusion at once. The number of refugees coming to Earth is much larger than I had originally believed."

"How much larger?" Cally asked. "We haven't got unlimited resources."

"Several thousand," Michelle said. "Up to and including major clan leaders."

"Michelle," Cally said angrily. "We can't support that. We especially can't support that given that those same Indowy cut us off not two months ago! We get support from
them,
not the other way around!"

"Your purpose is not support," Michelle said. "They are coming here because they are being hunted by humans. Your job is to keep them alive until we can calm the Darhel enough to reintegrate them or find some other place to put them. And it's not really up for discussion. I don't like being caught in your intrigues, but if you're going to catch me up in them at least give me credit for sense. The credits associated with this action are going to put the Clan in a very comfortable position. Not agreeing to protect them would cause a final disavowal of the Clan and quite probably give the Darhel the information as trade. There really is no choice in the matter. I must go."

With that she, as usual, vanished. The hoity-toity mentat-fuck.

Cally sank down onto the bed, dumbfounded.

"You are sooo screwed," her buckley said cheerfully.

"Yeah, buckley, this time I agree with you."

"Awww. You're no fun." It shut up on its own and Cally was sure it was pouting.

"We're getting
what
?" Father O'Reilly's face alternately purpled and turned ashen. "Callista, get the Indowy Aelool. Tell him it's urgent." He looked up at Cally again. "And it
is
urgent. The only irreplaceable thing in the universe is time."

"You say she couldn't tell you more about the number of refugees than 'several thousand'?" he asked.

"No sir." Cally sat without being invited because the shock was still hitting her and she decided she really, really needed to.

"And all you got was an order to take care of them somehow and negotiating power to do it. The latter isn't small, mind you, it's just a question of whether it
can
be done." He rubbed his hand worriedly as if fingering a rosary around his neck. "We can't buy that much food, let alone move it around, but we're going to have to get in motion what we can do, and now." He looked at Cally helplessly. "All our evacuation plans postulate temporary dispersion to hiding, and then exfiltrating by dribs and drabs into various rogue city states, in the hope of rebuilding somehow, and we don't know how. Can Clan O'Neal help at all?"

As he asked this, the small Indowy clan head entered the office, ears nearly flat with concern. "Your AID said you sounded very worried."

To those who knew how to read Indowy expressions, and by now Cally was an expert, "very worried" was an understatement. One she agreed with.

"First off, let me make quite clear that any help Clan O'Neal gives in any way in anything remotely touching on this whole problem does not constitute adopting or taking responsibility for anyone." She fixed Aelool with a stern stare. "Your customs aren't ours. Aliens are alien. Got it. You get it that there will be no misunderstandings here. Anybody who's not our responsibility and in our Clan right now does not become our responsibility by any of this. By 'any of this' I mean any event
we
say is associated with this. Are we all absolutely clear on that?" She looked at the priest, and then back to Aelool.

"Yes, absolutely," Aelool said.

Father O'Reilly nodded. Cally O'Neal angry was a formidable thing. "Crystal," he said.

She thought about the other DAGgers on base. Some of the Indowy might be very useful to have at some point, even if it did entail responsibility. She'd better be clear on that, too. "Also, that does not completely rule out us adopting any person or persons at a later date, but if we do, it will be a specific invitation and by that I mean what
we
say is a specific invitation. You
will
respect that
our
alien minds are alien to you as well. Get it?"

She waited for both to respond in the affirmative before continuing.

"Good. Now that that's straight, Edisto Island is overloaded with the number of DAGger families we can handle without anyone noticing from satellite or air. That is, if they're looking, and we have to presume they will be."

Nathan O'Reilly sunk his head in his hands, drawing them down his face as he absorbed the grim truth.

"I understand the need to evacuate. If we make this place Grand Central station, it
will
be found. Especially given our little war with the Tir's people right now," she said.

"The only other large, covert organization I know of who has the resources to help at all are the Tong, and they may not take the job, and even if they do, they don't come cheap," she said. "Especially when they know you're desperate."

"If it is a matter of debt—" Aelool began.

"The Tong aren't like the Darhel. They will not hold your debt at interest, or at least not for long. They couldn't care less about politically controlling you, they just want money and power. Their own kind of power, not the Darhel's. They want sufficient power and control to support and further their efforts to make money," Cally told him. His expression was so bewildered that she thought she'd better at least sort of explain.

"It's what they do," she said. It was all the explanation she had without going into a lot of what would be xenopsych to the Indowy, and she wasn't even sure it was possible for him to get his head around the concept, because all they had experience of in business was the Darhel.

"They are going to insist on being paid regular payments, sufficiently large to pay off the debt in a set period of time. No, don't relax. Think human lifespan without rejuv. I am almost certain they will not take a debt schedule that takes more than thirty years to pay off completely."

The alien looked shocked and even a little offended, and Cally couldn't help thinking "welcome to the real world." Even the Indowy Aelool tended to assume it was humanity's job to understand the minds of the Galactics and adjust to them, rather than each Galactic race having an equal need to understand humans. They looked down on what they thought of as vicious, primitive omnivores, and then got surprised whenever it came back to bite them in the ass. Despite the gravity of the situation, Cally couldn't help but take small satisfaction in that.

"I might could negotiate something," she said. "I don't know what, I don't know how much, and I don't even know if. Michelle was right about one thing, though. Our vital interests are at stake here. I know I've got negotiating power for the refugees. Do I have it for you?" She looked at O'Reilly and Aelool in turn, ensuring their agreement. Her buckley was recording nonverbal gestures of assent, anyway. She didn't strictly need them to say it out loud as long as they were clear.

"Fine. It's easier if I send a courier to fetch my husband, if possible, since I need to be here probably more than he needs to be wherever he is. I happen to know he's on Earth indefinitely, anyway. It's business. Potentially big business. Even if he doesn't get a deal, the Tong will be content with him trying." She brushed at her hair nervously with one hand. "No, on second thought, I'll meet him partway. Like you said, time's irreplaceable. It's quicker and easier if we don't have to take him through a bunch of special rigamarole to get him in here." She waved her hand, indicating the base.

"Is anyone sorry I'm married, now?" she asked sweetly, not waiting for a reply as she left.

James Stewart, aka Yan Kato, reflected on how much trouble he'd be in if his employers knew he'd given his wife this extensive a list of their network of safe meeting places. A business organization like the Tong ran on negotiations and deals. Each organization to its nature: the Bane Sidhe needed safe houses; the Tong needed privacy for business. Of course, he'd be in lethal trouble if they knew he had a wife, and who she was. However, in this case, it was going to make them a buttload of money.