“Mama! Mama! Look what I made for you!” Her own five-year-old, Tara, ran up to her with a picture on a thin sheet of white plastic. Bright, primary colors combined and smeared together into stick figures and childish trees. It looked like fingerpainting, but really came from a headset interface at school, designed to allow young ones to begin developing the mental discipline and neural connections to learn Sohon safely and without the risks of a real tank. “This is you and Mama Lisa and Mama Mary and Papa Tom and…” There were a lot of people on the page. Michelle smiled slightly, ready to hear them all.
“Tara, please let me talk to your clan mother for a few minutes, then we will pick out a wall to hang your pretty picture on,” Lisa said. “Michelle, could we sit down, please?”
“Certainly. There is something you need to bring to my attention?”
“Oh, no. The household is running smoothly. If it would not offend you, I would like us to talk about your work. We are worried about you.” Her wife’s robe showed stains and spots, accumulated from watching the children.
“We can talk about my work,” the mentat said.
“You are home early today. I thought it would be good to discuss this before the others get home. We are — I am — very concerned about you. I do not mean to interfere, but there are certain rumors…” The tiny woman reached out and took the toddler, who had started to play with the pins in Michelle’s hair.
“If the rumors are that I have been threatened with default on a contract, that much is true. It is also true that there is some danger. However, I have a plan.”
“A plan?” the woman echoed.
“Yes, a plan.”
“How likely is this plan to make you very hungry within the year?”
“There is considerable risk.”
“Loss of the head of our family would be very hard. Also, I would miss you very much. We must all hope that your… plan… goes well.” The smaller woman fixed her dark eyes on her group-mate’s face, mute with compassion.
The Darhel Pardal relaxed his jaw and shoulders in an unseen gesture of relief as he watched the Epetar Group freighter finally vanish into hyperspace, leaving the Sol System for its rendezvous with its next load of cargo at Dulain. The nearly two-week delay in getting the cash to the freighter to cover its docking fees at its next stop, as well as purchasing its high-margin cargo, had been the worst black spot of his career. Epetar had a contract to deliver bounce tube replacement parts, each specially crafted for its own unique bounce tube machinery, to Diess. The repair and reclamation program had finally gotten around to rebuilding Telsa City. There were countless tubes all over Diess in various stages of salvageable disrepair. The contract would last at least a century.
Indowy made all their equipment in the normal way, growing each item from a set of VR goggles all the way up to an entire starship in Sohon tanks. For a ship, an entire Indowy family from the newest apprentice to the most skilled master might be involved in bringing the sharply envisioned, individual design to reality. Every item of Galactic technology had slightly different parts and slightly different designs. Devices were built to last at least one lifetime — which for a member of a Galactic race, or a rejuved human, amounted to about five hundred of the local years. It discomfited Pardal that he had developed the habit of thinking in Earth time, but after twenty-eight years one adjusted. Even to this Aldenata-forsaken backwater.
Of course, he used human-produced goods for less critical functions in his office. Ephemeral as they were, even counting replacement costs they were economically optimized and functional. Which was why all the groups took such great pains to keep human goods as localized to the Sol System as possible. The destabilizing effect of their merchandise and their methods on the economy, if not properly contained, didn’t bear thinking about. Dangerous as a mob of budding adolescents, the whole species.
He cursed the theft that had caused the delay in the Dulain-Diess run on his watch. He would be decades repairing his reputation and career from this debacle. At the moment, he was directing all his spare time to tracking down the thief for deterrent punishment. Recovery of the stolen wealth was probably too much to hope for. His most recent efforts followed the line of an old human adage for the hunting of attackers: Who profits? Unfortunately, his “short list” was not yet short enough.
“AID. Display Hunt File One and control pad for evaluation. Show suspect list. Retrieve cash flow intelligence for each entry on suspect list for six months prior to the theft.” He doggedly resumed his search for connections, humming softly. The departure of the freighter, albeit belated, had put him in a better mood than he’d enjoyed for weeks. Gistar, Cnothgar, Adenar. Someone wanted a trade war. But which? Any one of them would have profited enormously by the theft, but only if their group could throw off suspicion on one of the others. He didn’t for a moment suspect the Tir Dol Ron. As administrator for the Sol System, he was separated from the covert jockeying of inter-group rivalries. The Darhel Ghin had some limits to the behavior he was willing to tolerate in the name of business. The Tir’s squeezing of rival Darhel groups would have to follow the same traditions as anyone else’s — confined to systems where he had interests, but not direct administration. Sometimes Pardal wondered if the old Darhel maintained the rules just for the sport of it. Not that it would matter. He proceeded in his happy attempt to untangle conspiracy from betrayal from intrigue. Someone, somewhere, was going to pay.
As with any world, some parts of Dulain were stunningly beautiful. Unfortunately for those who lived there, Bounty City was not one of those places. Chin Ming looked over the ugly Galplas cube that held the indentured servants. Her hair, which she wore today in her own elegant bob, blew in the wind as she stared at the slave barracks many of them would only leave feet first. The top Tong leader on Dulain, one of the Grandfather’s full lieutenants, was a very petite woman. She had shipped out among a generic batch of colonists and been one of a core of bought-out former indentures planted by the Tong to establish a foothold for their new operation. The wife of a respected Hong Kong businessman within the organization, she had ridden out the Posleen war in Ontario. Her husband and children she lost to the war. Her own not inconsiderable operational and business experience had remained intact. Juved, she looked like a sweet, demure, little flower. Her protective detail thought so, Little Flower being the code name they had assigned her. Mrs. Chin had raised being underestimated to a high art. She functioned well with the Indowy not only because of her diminutive size and habit of indirect gaze, but also because each sensed in the other a certain skill set, and respected it.
Chin Ming had never underestimated, nor been underestimated by, one of the Indowy in her life — which certainly put her one up on every Darhel she’d ever had to deal with. She had avoided ever meeting one of the Sidhe in person, but in the game of competing interests she dealt with them every day.
The vast majority of the human population had been set down here in the dry, gray-green scrub more for the lack of water and subsequent ease of containment than for any other reason. Planetary admin shuttles dropped armed indents wherever the latest infestations of feral Posleen had been sighted, then picked up the human survivors afterwards for return to the cube, healing and recuperation. They laid down their arms and reported aboard the return ship for the simple reason that if they did not, ankle and wrist bracelets would start to administer increasingly painful electrical shocks. If ignored, the bracelets would inject the wearer with Hiberzine, rendering him unconscious and setting off a beacon for pickup whenever someone got around to it. Frequently, delinquent pickups came in much the worse for wear. More often, they came in as very depleted remains.