“Walnuts and chocolate chunks? You’re getting good at this Aelool. I don’t know why you picked this for a hobby, but I approve!” Again, she grinned around a mouthful of the food, bits of which stained her white teeth brown. “Do you mind if I… ?” She picked up four more squares eagerly, disappearing down the hall as if afraid he might take them back.
After she was out of sight and out of hearing, Aelool muttered softly to him. “Completely ethically clean food. Completely nutritionally adequate to maintain her. How much meat do you think that human will consume today?”
“Your wisdom vastly exceeds mine, sir. I admit I have no idea. I presume at this stage of your researches you are choosing the more ethically advanced humans?”
The Indowy Aelool’s ears and eyes quirked in suppressed mirth. “Childling, that was Miss Cally O’Neal.”
The dump of fear pheremones overwhelmed him as he shook in sudden reaction, “You brought me near—”
“Please. You were perfectly safe. Miss O’Neal has never killed an Indowy. Such drama. You yourself saw that she was only interested in how much of the clean food she could take without offending me.” He made their race’s equivalent of a shrug. “Do you see why I am convinced of my researches? To answer my own question, Miss O’Neal will almost certainly consume no meat today. She is concerned about keeping excess fat deposits off of her body, so monitors her caloric intake carefully. She will consume a few cups of bean broth, with no caloric enhancement — without enhancement, it has virtually no calories for them. She much prefers these ‘brownies’ to the meat. It really is that simple. I could provide similar clean foods, high in lipids and sugars, and persuade her to replace large amounts of her meat intake — completely on her own initiative. She would feel no deprivation. To the contrary, she would feel guilt for consuming so much ‘junk food.’ ”
“Junk food? It is better food! Um — doesn’t she have two, very large, excess fat deposits?”
“Oh, those. Those she has little choice about — an evolutionary adaptation to attract males. I gather she is unusually well adapted,” he said. “Remember, she does not know the bean squares will keep her healthy. By the time I have the human Nathan O’Reilly tell her the truth about the food — with me at a safe distance, far away, of course — she will be angry for a few seconds to a few days before laughing and asking for more brownies. By then, she will have accepted that she likes the taste of the improved, clean foods and will not imagine bad tastes into them.”
“You told her she was a test subject. Why would she be angry?”
“She thought I was joking.”
“Why? No, never mind, sir. I have a different question. Human males are the more aggressive. You mentioned that human males are less fond of the beans in the brownies?”
“Quite true. However, I have not yet explained the human male fondness for another metabolically challenging, high food-value, ethically clean broth made from fermented seeds. Let me tell you about ‘beer.’ ” The head of Clan Aelool led his young protege to a convenient, civilized bounce tube, carefully securing the rest of the experimental food for the journey.
Chapter Ten
Four men and one woman gathered around a hologram in a stale-smelling Galplas room. Six enhanced information manipulation units sat ranked on ancient folding tables along the walls, hard-wired out through secure data cables that ran through ductwork in each wall. Each machine’s buckley port was uncharacteristically empty. Each unit showed signs of recent and regular cleaning, each showed signs of age in black lines of dirt ingrained in the casing’s few small seams. Each was still a cutting edge application of Tchpth technology, being between seven and twenty years old. More accurately, cutting edge of what the Crabs had been willing to release to any Galactic anywhere. Human cyberpunks being less hidebound than Galactics, each was still more innovative in small ways than anything Indowy or Darhel had. They made up in creativity anything they lacked in Darhel institutional infotech experience. The cybers presumed, of course, that the Himmit had perfect working copies. The Frogs’ espionage capabilities on all fronts were so good that the cyber division of the O’Neal Bane Sidhe had the private opinion that even the Tchpth had no idea how much of their tech the Himmit had quietly stolen. After all, why would the Himmit risk provoking the Tchpth to increase security? One of the cybers’ primary and highly covert projects was to find and keep secure a good enough story to buy whatever information the Himmit had acquired on the slab.
They had enjoyed a remarkable lack of success, though not through lack of stories. It was practically impossible to protect a good enough story against penetration by the Frogs — nicknamed for the terrestrial amphibians they resembled. Purplish and bulbous when in the open having a conversation, the Himmit were racial cowards, a trait moderated only by their cheerfully insatiable curiosity. They had an extraordinary ability to reshape their bodies and repattern them to match their surroundings, and to move silently. Their natural camouflage ability was to a chameleon’s what a Formula 500 race car was to a little red wagon. They were also so harmlessly amiable that it was impossible to stay angry with one.
The cyber operations security director described the continuing attempt to protect information from the devilishly effective little bastards as “good training.”
The walls in the room were a nasty putty color. One corner was glaringly different, the bright purple walls covered with acid green spirals. It hurt Tommy’s eyes, but he had to admit that Cassandra was one hell of a cracker. Despite her penchant for collecting desk toys that, together, moved like a set of demented clocks, he’d never seen a system she hadn’t been able to poke half a dozen different security holes in. The purple stuff was obviously painted on, since it was already flaking at the uneven edges. Galplas had never been designed to take paint. What would’ve been the point? It could be tuned to any color you wanted — at least, it could at installation. Galactics weren’t much for anticipating change. Sometimes it seemed like they barely tolerated it at all.
Tommy Sunday shook himself and got his attention back on track. Cally was going over the layout of Fleet Strike Operations Training Headquarters. “They put the archival library on this section of the flats. It’s not just a machine room tightcasting to the troops’ AIDs. Fleet Strike learned a few lessons from the war. All of its more interesting material is secured within the system and accessible only by physically cabled-in terminals. In practice, that means you sit down in a study couch, scan in your fingerprint or swipe your temporary ID, and plug in the buckley you checked out from the front desk on your way into the building. The building is, unofficially but strictly, a no-AID area. The in-house buckleys all carry a bright-blue stripe up the back, just as a reminder not to cross-connect the two. There’s a manned desk at the door to tactfully ensure the protocol is followed. Questions?” She paused, clearly knowing the question wouldn’t be rhetorical.
“Yeah, I’ll bite. How are we getting into their system?” Schmidt Two looked over at Tommy, raising an eyebrow. The male assassin was on the opposite side of the table from Cally, as far away as he could get without being rude. Tommy hoped they could shelve their tension before the run. He didn’t like complications within the team.
“Go on.” Cally nodded at the big man.
“Fine. When I left Fleet Strike in 2031, I hadn’t been approached by the Bane Sidhe yet, but I’d gotten used to having extensive access and didn’t want to lose it. It was a big chance and could have gotten me shot if they’d caught me at it, but I fooled Fleet Strike’s systems into thinking I was on a long-term deep cover investigations mission. That I was a sleeper.” He held up a hand when Papa would have spoken.