Honor of the Clan (12 page)

"Point," Papa said.

"That," Alan said, pointing to both of his temples, "is the thought that I had in my head. That your understanding of the basic, the most basic, theories of negotiation, manipulation and interlocution are
vitally
important for the Bane Sidhe, Clan O'Neal and humanity." He flung his hands outwards and pointed to Papa's head. "Have you now read my thoughts? Do you
clearly
have that thought in your head?"

"I don't know," Papa said, actually thinking about the response. "I can't read your mind."

"NOW we're to the theory of communication!" Alan said, clapping his outflung hands together and smiling. "The monkey
can
learn!"

Michael O'Neal, Sr., was bored enough on the ship, the young pup having left him alone for three whole days with a damned "diplomat game" to play on his PDA, that he finally resigned himself to calling the kid up out of a basic need for human interaction. He would have talked to him yesterday, but he had started feeling as though out-waiting Alan was becoming a game. He decided it would be damned stupid to get in a pissing contest with a kid young enough to be his great or three grandson. As the saying went, Papa didn't have to like it, he just had to do it. Besides, it wasn't the kid's fault he had to go play nice with a bunch of smart-ass, condescending, patronizing, hypocritical, pacifist, compulsive vegetarian lobsters with an attitude.

Okay, so they were smart. Their survival instincts were for shit. They were part of creating an artificial 'peace' that depended on nobody disturbing it. If they were so smart, why didn't they plan for the possibility that someone else might not have decided to 'study war no more'?

Tchpth were survival morons. The only truly intelligent thing they'd done against the Posleen threat was to figure out they needed other people to do their dirty work and where to go to find them.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. This ruckus comes up, starts giving them heartburn or whatever, they pulled the same old trick as the peaceniks when he was back in Vietnam. Be more than glad to take the benefits. Yeah, you got your freedom to smoke dope and not bathe. You're fucking welcome. Yeah, Crabs, the Posleen didn't take pliers to your steamed asses and dip you in melted butter. You're fucking welcome. Assholes. One war to another, it never changed.

Then this mess, he thought. He wished he could say it.

"Yeah, that Darhel and rogue mentat you found so fucking inconvenient are safely dead, so now you can wash your hands and pretend you had nothing to do with it you hypocritical bastards."
But no, he had to go haring halfway across the damned galaxy to kiss their asses. Right now, the greatest pleasure he could imagine would be to send the bug-eyed shark bait a simple e-mail saying,
"Blow me,"
and go home to play with his grandkids. Or do some real work. Anything but this, anywhere but here.

The flip side was, Alan was right. There had never been anything he'd done in his life more important than this meeting. It just pissed him off that it was in a conference room and not a battlefield.

"Himmit Tarkas would like to see you, Michael. May he come in?" his PDA asked.

"Come in!" he called towards the door. Unnecessarily because it had already begun to slide open, admitting the purplish gray quadruped.

"What are you thinking about?" it asked. "Is it a good story? The Human Clayton needed sleep. I would like to hear your stories. Would you like to tell them here, or would you be more comfortable in the lounge?"

"Here," Papa said. "The lounge gives me the creeps, no offense."

"None is taken," the Himmit said, sliding up the wall and shading to match.

"What do you want to hear about?" Papa asked. "And, you know, it's easier for humans to talk about stuff if they can see who they're talking to. It's a human thing."

"This is understood," the Himmit said. "And we are more comfortable being invisible. It is a Himmit thing."

"Your ship, your rules," Papa said. "Ask away."

"You were a mature adult, for your species, before the Posleen war. Am I correct that you fought in human killing human wars?"

"One of them," O'Neal answered grimly.

"Tell me stories from that, please." To the extent that it was possible, the Himmit seemed almost cheerful.

Papa O'Neal sighed inside. It was going to be a long trip. If the Himmit wanted an old man's war stories from 'Nam, the Himmit could have war stories to its froggy heart's—or whatever it had—content. "Well, this one time we were out on patrol way the hell up north and inland, damn near into Laos, and . . ." He paused and held up the cup of goop that had come out of the tap as a "drink." "You wouldn't happen to have some form of alcoholic beverage, beer by preference, instead of this stuff, would you?"

"I will be right back," it said.

Papa would have described its movement off as scampering, and its mood as cheerful, if someone had put a gun to his head and just
made
him give a description. He shook the impressions off as absurd. Vietnam war stories. He was paying for interstellar passage somewhere with fuckin' Vietnam war stories. O'Neal reflected that the universe was a strange place. He didn't know if there was any kind of god out there in the sense of religion, and he kind of thought not, but if there was, the guy sure had a twisted sense of humor.

Tir Dol Ron stared at the monkey in front of him and found himself once again amazed by the creative ingenuity of the vicious beasts. Most of the reason he felt this amazement, at the moment, was because it distracted him from the more natural feelings the situation might have engendered.

"This violates the Compact," he said grimly.

John Earl Bill Stuart only knew about the Compact in the vaguest terms possible. Specifically, he knew that he could . . . deal with . . . people trying to kill him or his employees, but must ask his AID for permission to . . . to . . . preserve the Tir's interests against other opposition agents if he found them. The Tir had no idea how often or seldom the AID granted or withheld permission. He couldn't. It would be hazardous to his life.

The monkey smelled of fear. Well he might. The Tir admitted to himself that under other circumstances this news could have seriously upset him. In the present case, Tir Dol Ron had absorbed so many unpleasant messes today that he was in a constant state of meditative calm. Extremely angry meditative calm, but the anger sat like ice in his stomach.

"You need not be frightened. I am quite calm." He said this not to reassure his employee. He hadn't even thought of such a thing. The thought would have required empathy. Darhel simply lacked that faculty; or, as they saw it, flaw. Instead, he spoke from the knowledge that John Stuart would have impaired functioning if he was frightened, and would be less efficient in understanding his own instructions.

"This requires a response. You are familiar with mirrors, of course." The Darhel chose his words carefully, hiding his mind away from whatever implications there might be to what he was saying.

"Yes, your Tir. I own several mirrors. Are you informing my AID that there has been some level of change in what your interests may be?"

"That is a very good way of putting it, Johnny." Tir Dol Ron didn't understand the human custom of nicknames, but he didn't have to understand them to use them. Primitives were often inexplicable.

"Tina, do you understand the Tir's instructions? Please do not reply in detail. Yes or no will do."

The AID had failsafes against expressing certain ideas in the presence of their masters. Not that a Darhel minded if somebody died. Billions did it every day. They just wanted no implications, ever, that they were directly, causatively involved. It was an indication that his employee was very slightly smarter than most humans, and confirmed that hiring him had been a good choice.

"Yes, I understand," the machine replied.

"Good. Apropos of nothing," the Tir's voice was silky, melodious to the point of sublime, "there was a large unit of Galactic and local professional killers who disappeared from north of here recently. At the time, I requested that you ignore the matter. I have changed my mind. You will look into it."

For what must have been the millionth time, Tir Dol Ron cursed the Aldenata and how very little it took to invoke the release of Tal, the lethally blissful hormone that locked a Darhel into catatonia until he died—usually of thirst. To have to use primitives with so little control over—

He turned his mind away from forbidden thoughts and dismissed his less-stupid-than-average employee.

Cleanup would now proceed in the present intolerable situation. The intriguers had destroyed an entire Darhel business group. Tir Dol felt an icy chill go up his spine. This was beyond serious. This was a
threat
. He had his AID plot ship schedules and collate his findings, transmitting them to the courier on station and ordering its dispatch to the most time-efficient locations and route. He used a billing code, under a standing contract, that would split the courier charges among all Darhel Groups thus informed.

Tir Dol Ron was possessed of a major treasure in the Sol System. There were a very, very few altars of communication left behind. The Tchpth, curse the folth-leavings, flatly refused to either build more or even indicate whether or not they knew how. They were open enough about using regular communications channels via ship that the Darhel had a debate among themselves about whether they knew or not. The fact remained that because of the sensitivity of Earth to the anti-Posleen effort, one of the very few devices for genuinely real-time communication between worlds had been sited here during the war. It was not real-time accessible. Instead, it was sited on Earth's moon as a location much less susceptible to annoying intriguers. They might not be able to kill sophonts any more than he could, but property was another matter. One would hope its irreplaceable nature would protect it but, alas, that had not been the case in the past. Chances were not taken.

He had two choices. He could transmit to the altar itself from here and accept both time lag from Earth to moon and risk of interception and decoding, or he could go there himself and transmit directly. The matter was serious enough that security vastly outweighed haste. He instructed his AID to book him a seat on the next shuttle up.

Chapter Seven

"What happened to Darin?" the Himmit asked.

"Oh, he ran into a claymore about two weeks later," Papa said.

"That's how most of your friends end up," the Himmit noted.

"Unfortunately true," Papa said. "Not that I'd call Darin a friend. Just one of the guys on the teams."

"You have had a remarkable ability to avoid being killed, given your life experiences," the Himmit said. "Statistically amazing, in fact."

"This is right good brew," Papa said, taking another sip. It was, too. He'd had a lot of beer in his time but this was very good. And he did not
begin
to recognize it. "Don't suppose you'll tell me where it comes from?"

"Nowhere accessible to you," the Himmit said. "And I, unfortunately, do not have any more."

"Well, then, I'll have to make it last," Papa said, belying that by taking another sip. "But since we ain't got much more and I don't tell stories well without something to wet my whistle, I think I'll tell you one that will not only pay for this trip, but for this very fine brew you have provided."

"I am eagerly awaiting it," the Himmit said.

"And you've got lots of ears," Papa replied, grinning. "The thing is . . . I want you to understand . . . Soldiers tell stories. Sometimes they . . . exaggerate."

"All stories, of the necessity of communication, contain some element of fiction," the Himmit said. "I personally doubt the one about the CS."

"Truth," Papa said, placing his hand over his heart.

"I do not doubt that the patrol was killed," the Himmit said. "That would be the outcome of the method. It was the packing into orifices. There was insufficient material."

"Well,
all
of 'em weren't like that," Papa admitted. "But that factoid makes the story better."

"Elements of fiction," the Himmit replied. "When we transmit our stories, we avoid all such elements. However, we relay
your
stories precisely as given. With the caveat that they contain some element of fiction."

"Point accepted," Papa said, taking a sip. "But what I want you to understand is that this story is truth. Pointed, complete, truth. There's nothing worth exaggerating in it. But you're not going to believe a word."

"Why?"

"Because it's the story of when I met a vampire."

He paused.

"I'm waiting for you to say something like, 'Pull one of the other ones, it's got bells on.' "

"Why?"

"You believe in vampires?" Papa said. "I know
I
didn't. 'Til I met one."

"I accept the possibility of there being of such condition as you would refer to him or it as a vampire."

"Interesting response," Papa said, musingly. "Given that I don't think there's anything you Himmit don't know."

"Very little."

"Well, I've never told this story to anybody," Papa said. "And all the rest of the guys who saw it . . . Well, they ain't around no more. That statistical thing you mentioned. And we didn't tell anybody, even in the debrief. It's not something you admit. So this is a story that nobody's got. Must be worth something."

"Agreed."

"We was doing an op in Europe," Papa said, sitting back in his chair. "Which we didn't do much as it was hard to get there. But the European networks had just gotten screwed to hell by the invasion. And there was this guy working in one of the Austrian defense bases . . . The Texans had a law at one point: A guy who just needed killin'."

"Most of your stories surround such people." The Himmit had learned that Papa needed a certain amount of prompting for his stories to flow.

"Yeah," Papa admitted. "He was a fairly minor logistics officer. But he had his fingers on a lot of stuff. And he looked incompetent. So stuff that was needed one place ended up in the wrong place, usually meaning that some unit that desperately needed it lost a battle and a bunch of soldiers got killed. The usual way that the Darhel worked in the war. And since the war. He wasn't incompetent, though. He was too consistent. And, hell, we had his money trace and some of his orders from the Darhel. Taking him out was practically a mission from God.