They ate in silence. After feeling strange for a moment in the unnatural quiet, Cally opened up a fashion magazine on her buckley and started looking through the spring collections. She was going to have to buy some outfits from an islander seamstress real soon, anyway. Might as well do something stylish.
“This is the information I need. I wish it showed one more part, but I do not think they will be disassembling the mock-up — just modifying it. At least, not within our time window.” The mentat gave the appearance of wearing robes even in street clothes as she looked up serenely. “This is straightforward. I will have it for you in four weeks, local.”
“Four weeks?”
“I assure you, I can work very quickly since it only has to appear to function.”
“That’s not what I meant. I guess I’m used to Earthtech.”
“This is very far beyond Earthtech. That is why I have to personally make it. Four weeks.” She pulled a bag out of her coat pocket, handing it to the Bane Sidhe assassin. “Here is the agreed payment.”
“Great. A month, huh? Guess we won’t have trouble getting someone inside and getting set up with that much lead time. I thought you were originally planning to make it without this stuff?” Cally gestured towards the cube.
“Once I knew I was going to get better data, I had to wait. Like any other product of advanced technology, it has to be grown whole. Specifications cannot change in the middle of the process. Upgraded parts can be retrofitted, settings changed, options added, replacement parts redesigned. The basic design for the underlying item cannot be changed while it is still in the tank.”
“Okay, so four weeks. I may contact you for a meeting between now and then to coordinate arrangements.”
“That will seldom be possible. I will be growing the product in the tank. I will not be able to interrupt the work casually. Suppose I contact you and we meet once a week?”
“Okay, so four weeks and once a week. I’ll see you whenever I hear from you, then.”
“Cally.” Michelle reached out and touched her hand. “I still have not thanked you for the clothes. Is there anything at all I can get you? Not business, but something personal?”
Cally hesitated for a moment, strangely reluctant to ask a favor. “Uh. I hate to ask, but could you possibly get me some depilatory foam? I haven’t been able to get any since Dad’s supplies from the old emergency cache ran out.” Spoken, it sounded a bit pathetic, and she was kicking herself when Michelle smiled.
“Of course I can. I will make it myself. It will not take even an hour.”
“Okay. But there’s got to be something you want from Earth. The Galactics aren’t exactly big on consumer goods.”
“Well…” Her sister hesitated for a long moment, considering. “Chocolate. You could get me chocolate. And some of those little white solidified sugar wheels. The ones with red spokes and no hole for an axle, that are flavored with peppermint oil. I think they are designed to spin counter-clockwise, but I was so young I am not sure my memory is correct.” She shrugged, but her eyes were actually glittering with what might have been excitement. “Clockwise or straight-spoked wheels would be perfectly lovely. Just whichever is available. Star-sparkle Mints or some such. I am sorry, I cannot remember the name.”
“Okay, chocolate and peppermints. Got it.”
“The little wheel ones,” the mentat said.
“The little wheel ones. Got it. Next week. No problem.” Her sister grinned.
“If you cannot get them next week, whenever you have time is most acceptable,” Michelle said. She sighed. “We have indulged in quite a long lunch. I need to go start work now. The salad was good. Thank you.” Then Michelle was gone.
Chapter Thirteen
The family quarters for the Indowy-raised humans were a series of small, low rooms. The Michelle O’Neal family suite had walls in shades of mint and peach. The parents’ sleeping room and the living room opened directly on the corridor. Behind those two rooms lay the nurseries. A central corridor contained the long washroom that served the family. All the rooms were very small. That, at least, was the allocation of the human living space its Indowy planners had intended. In reality, the parents had tri-sected their room by hanging curtains from tracks in the ceiling. On each side wall, and along the back wall, a set of bunk beds, closely stacked, provided a bunk for each of the six adults in the group. Hooks at the head of each bed held a change of robe and two night-robes apiece. A small, six-layer chest of drawers held underclothes and a memento or two for each parent.
The children’s rooms had the same furnishings as the parents’ room, except that the beds were slightly shorter and wider. There were more drawers, the plan being that two children would be in each bed, at capacity. The children past their first apprenticeship would, of course, live in unmated social groupings. After some trial and error, the Indowy had learned that the humans they encountered in Fleet had been wise to suggest adolescent human social groupings be segregated by breeding biology. Their males and females exhibited social and mating behaviors that were unstable and intense when housed together in the juvenile stages prior to group assignment and bonding.
The Michelle O’Neal family, as with most of the human families on Adenast, quietly deviated from their green mentors’ plans and used clan privacy traditions to avoid discussing it outside the family. For one thing, the O’Neal adults were three couples, not a homogeneous group. Since Derrick’s death, Michelle had slept in the room with her own two children and Bill and Mary’s oldest daughter. Their toddler, and Tom and Lisa’s three, slept in the other children’s room.
In the parents’ room, the other two couples had four bunks, but most nights only occupied two. Tom and Lisa’s two-month-old slept in Michelle’s old bunk.
Nooks and crannies all over the apartment — under chairs, in the small spaces under the beds — held prepackaged food so that the family didn’t have to go to the mess hall for meals. It was the same stuff, anyway. In the sitting room, larger chairs for each adult and small ones for each child stood grouped around each other or the thinned-down holotank on one wall. On another wall, a spice rack displayed some of the family’s wealth. The human sections of the agricultural planets didn’t run to growing traditional herbs and spices. Most human families would buy a little pepper and hot sauce. More frequently, some locally brewed hooch. Michelle had paid to ship a fifty-spice rack up from Earth. Shipped and paid for legitimately. Refilled legitimately, for awhile. Sometimes the refills were even legitimately bought and shipped now. Just… not always. Her work did have small privileges.
The senior female in the group walked into the living room, where their children immediately mobbed her.
“Anne, Terry, move back and let your clan mother walk,” a woman ordered. She was tiny, with wavy black hair and midnight eyes
The Michon Mentat leaned down and picked up the toddler, Kim. “How was your day?” she asked her clan-wife.
“Tiring. And yours?”
“Informative. I will be working late for the next three weeks.”