In Cally’s case, it meant that all she had to do was borrow a decent boat to have a good, discreet, business lunch. She and the smugglers had similar notions of what constituted adequate dining privacy. November was not a good time of year, in Charleston, for alfresco meals on deck. The sky was a sullen gray that seemed to merge at the edges with the gunmetal ocean in the distance. The brown marsh grasses bent in great swathes, ends fluttering in the strong wind. The sisters would eat lunch in the warm shelter of the small galley.
A thirty-eight footer, the craft had never served to smuggle fish. Well, once in a pinch, but that was strictly as a cover for its real cargo — in that case, a political refugee who had made it as far as Norfolk on his own but who had needed more distance from civilization than even the unreclaimed wilds of the eastern coastal U.S. could offer. The problem with bounty farmers was, well, that they made their living from collecting bounties. Most places, they weren’t the sort to keep their mouths shut if a reward was offered. As she understood it, it had taken strenuous efforts to get the dead fish smell out of the living areas of the boat after that run. Fortunately, that had been a job for the cousin who owned the boat, not her.
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. This has everything we found.” She passed a cube across the table and Michelle took it.
“Let’s go ahead and order. It would look strange if we just sat here for too long.” Cally 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 kind of 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.” She shrugged. “For me, it’s whatever Granpa and Father O’Reilly consider a good reason.”
“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.