She didn’t live here, of course. Ming’s existence was nomadic, her travel itinerary a closely held secret. The Darhel groups did not officially acknowledge any of the Tong’s planetary lieutenants on any of the Posleen-infested planets that were undergoing the reclamation process. Unofficially, dealing with someone in charge was ingrained in their habits. Currently, they were still trying, with limited success, to have hit men target the lieutenants. The Grandfather said that it might take them some time to realize that expecting to stop human black markets by lopping off heads was about as effective as beheading a Greek hydra. Mrs. Chin made sure that she remained a moving target.
Proximity to the Indowy brought a certain amount of trade, and with the trade had come a certain familiarity with the furry, green teddy-bears. The human factor for the town had noticed that members of Indowy breeding groups delighted in giving each other small, simple gifts as tokens of affection. Indowy being Indowy, they purchased even simple gifts which were individually crafted and expensive — not because the Indowy had a particular dedication to individual craftsmanship, but simply because they had never done it any other way. Two of the Beeseers, from New Orleans by way of a central Indiana Sub-Urb, and old enough to remember prewar Earth, had amused themselves for awhile making strands of clear, colored beads and stringing them to sell to the green herbivores. They’d marketed their product as symbols of fertility, plenty, and fellowship. Dulain, being an Indowy world and the Indowy being able to outbreed all known sophonts anywhere, had a very few humans and a whole lot of Indowy. The Indowy considered the pretty little gifts so inexpensive as to be practically free. Page and Gilbeaux, with no marketing efforts to speak of, had been selling as many Mardi Gras necklaces as they could string.
When Ming had received the message from Earth that Dulain’s humans needed to assemble an alternate cargo for an incoming freighter, production had gone into round-the-clock shifts. They could count on some lower-margin Indowy goods being available to fill out the ship’s hold — especially as the message came with suggestions of which Indowy ears for the Tong lieutenant for Dulain to drop a word in. Clan Beilil was not plentiful nor powerful on Dulain, but they did appear more open, for no reason that was readily apparent. Ming had quietly filed the name in her memory as a useful contact for the future.
Meanwhile, several human towns that were capable of turning out glass beads had gone into high gear, as well. The plus was that there was less of a bottleneck in the immediate machine production of colored glass beads, the downside that they had to be strung by hand. A cube containing a series of books on the construction of machine tools from scrap metal had been, and was still, very popular on Dulain. The necessary parts for generation of strings of the beads were being put together by every small machine shop on the planet. In the two weeks since they had had word from Earth, her people had accomplished a great deal. In the two weeks they still had before they had to ship the product off Dulain, they would do much more.
The more time Michael O’Neal, Senior, spent in secure rooms, the more alike they all looked. The Galplas walls were a light mud color, except for the purplish glow of the ceiling surface. It made his eyes hurt, if he didn’t wear sunglasses. Which was, of course, the only reason he was wearing them.
“Nice shades, Papa,” George said as he walked past and moved a couple of the rolling office chairs around, trying to pick one that was less broken down than the others. The chairs all sported gray Galactic silk slipcovers over the seats and backs. Silk was expensive — unless it was from the first efforts of children and typically very off-spec. Color, texture, and quality were variable. The slipcovers were marginally better than nothing, maybe. They didn’t stop the feel of the torn tweed and disintegrating fifty-year-old foam padding beneath them.
He grunted and set his mug down on the table, shaking a couple of chairs to pick one that wasn’t going to dump him into the floor. A caster came off of one of them and he slid that chair over against the wall, putting the offending piece in the seat. The other chair seemed to only have loose handles, so he parked himself in it and kicked his feet up onto the badly chipped pine table.
“So, the miracle kiddies down below get to make another part.” George jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the chair.
“Gotta hand it to them. Theirs don’t break. At least, not so far.” Papa spat neatly into his mug.
“Bitching about the crappy fucking chairs again?” Tommy Sunday walked in wearing a grimace and carrying a steel camp stool. He pushed a couple of the inadequate chairs out of the way and unfolded his stool. “At least you can sit in the damn things.”
“You aren’t missing much, son,” O’Neal said.
The door opened again, admitting Cally and Harrison together. Cally’s hair was a shining silver bell around her face. It hadn’t looked that good in years.
“Wow,” Tommy said. “What the hell did you do to your hair?”
“Why thank you, Tommy. Good afternoon to you, too,” she said, smiling a little too sweetly.
“Uh… I mean it looks really good,” he said.
Papa suppressed a grin. “Your hair looks very nice, sweetheart.”
“Thank you, Granpa.”
“Who would have thought that Darhel conditioner would work so well on human hair?” Harrison asked the room at large.
“Not me,” said George. “Cally, you’re a brave woman.”
“We tried it on a sample of hair from her brush first. I’m not a total novice at hair care, I’ll have you know. I figured since Darhel depilatory foam works on humans, the protein structure might be similar enough that their conditioner would work as well.” Their fixer looked insufferably proud of himself.
“I didn’t think Darhel medicines were safe in humans.”
“They’re not. The conditioner has a binder and emollient effect to reduce split ends and increase shine. It’s not a medicine.”
Cally crossed the room and sat down next to George. “Okay, let’s get started. Has everyone had time to review the latest intelligence on our target?”
“Is it supposed to smell like cabbage?” George asked.
Cally glared at him and switched on the holoprojector, pointedly ignoring the young man’s comment as a holo of a video screen appeared at the far end of the tank. With holo the default viewing medium on the planet, using three-dimensional projection to simulate a two-dimensional screen no longer struck anyone as ironic. “As you can see from the timetable, we have at least a month to get inside. If Michelle is more than three days late, we’ll have to hold on for another three weeks past that before we get another shot. We’re just lucky that winter is convention season — all those researchers flying down to the Caribbean for their conferences.”
They laughed. Of course, it wouldn’t have been half as funny if half of them didn’t already live along the coast. Even if it was colder than a witch’s titty in a brass bra this time of year. Maybe after this mission he ought to talk Shari into doing a run down to Cuba. Havana was nice now that the governmental policies had changed.
“…thing we know Erick Winchon does is go to conferences and give speeches. Usually long on mouthings about peace and altruism, short on science. There’s a front group that does some puff research. For their cover research, our best guess is that they do small studies off site, then fabricate large sample data consistent with their small study results. Dr. Vitapetroni tells me they design their work to generate meaningless truisms that sound good. Grants are so light on the ground that convention standards aren’t so high these days — anybody who’s got a paper published fills up the convention program. So giving a lot of pretty speeches maintains their cover and appearance of respectability.” Cally tapped the forward arrow on the buckley, advancing the slide.