“Okay, Candy. Send this back through all that encryption and signal hiding crap we do, and double encrypt,” he said.
John Earl Bill Stuart, otherwise known as “Johnny,” had learned to find his Darhel boss’s office intimidating. When he first got promoted, started dealing directly with the Tir and all, he had felt a certain smartass superiority to some furry guy who looked like an overgrown fox, working in the middle of a a big city with no idea what the real world was like out there where average folks shot and killed any stray Posleen that happened to show up. The furry alien engendered a certain contempt, despite the over-dramatic hooded cloak and the rows of sharp teeth. Hell, Johnny had seen sharp teeth before. What had mattered to him was that this fox couldn’t kill a rabbit to save its life — well, without losing its life by going into some kind of permanent, fatal, biological drug trip. Johnny didn’t think much of people who did drugs, either, and these guys had their drugs built right in.
That was what he’d thought.
Then he’d really gotten his head around the Darhels’ total absence of conscience when it came to manipulating someone else to pull the triggers, or arranging billions of deaths by mischance. He was fully aware that the Darhel in question was capable of taking off from Earth and obliquely ordering some underling to push the button that slagged the whole planet, and doing it with the same amount of emotion he’d feel putting on his clothes in the morning. It couldn’t directly kill without effectively killing itself. It couldn’t even think about it real hard. But for positive feelings, it fully matched the coldest psychopath he’d ever met in his life. Positive emotions? Conscience? Nobody home.
Unlike human psychopaths, Darhel did follow rules. They’d cheerfully write the worst screw-you contracts in the world if you weren’t real careful with the fine print, but they followed rules. If they hadn’t had a practical morality of various rules, he doubted they’d be able to manage at all. But they were pure hell on breach of contract. Instead of looking at them as overgrown foxes, he had grown to respect them the way he’d respect a saber-tooth tiger with the appetite of a shrew, tethered by a very thin leash. He’d seen a mother bear savage a Great Dane once — just rip it right up. He’d been five, and on a camping trip in the Rockies. The memory was burned into his brain.
If a Darhel lost its temper, it meant not only the death of the Darhel, but everyone and everything moving that it could reach, until that internal drug kicked in. The hair on his neck stood up every time he went in the room with one, and his clothes always carried a stink of fear by the time he left. Worse, he was sure it knew.
He shuddered and pushed open the door, entering the office.
The room was all changed again. Everything was in shades of blue, with some white and a really depressing, mottled gray. Carpet, walls, ceiling — everything. That is, everything that didn’t have little designs of gold or, like the desk, gold edgings — inlays. He couldn’t help shaking his head just a little.
He could guess the reason for all the trappings. Tir Dol Ron was showing off his new acquisition. On one wall he had a painting of a kid of maybe eleven or twelve, dressed like the pictures of America’s Founding Fathers he’d seen in elementary school. Only his clothes were all light blue and made of silk or satin or something. The area behind him was dark mountains, but you couldn’t really make it out. The kid’s face looked feverish. He looked like the biggest pansy Johnny had ever seen.
After making him wait until a normal guy would start getting fidgety — Johnny was used to it — the Darhel entered the office through the side door that led in from the next room in his suite. It waved a hand carelessly to dismiss the Indowy servant that tried to follow it into the room.
“Mr. Stuart. Hurry your report. I have some very urgent matters requiring my personal attention and have little time to catch up on your… provision of services,” it said.
He. Always think of it as a “he.” Stuart reminded himself of what his alien employer preferred to be called. They understood the bad impressions that went along with calling someone an “it” and got pissed off if humans didn’t call them “he.”
“Anything I can help with?” Stuart asked.
“No, no,” Dol Ron snapped impatiently. Then he seemed to think the better of it. Even the fox-faced aliens occasionally needed someone to talk to. They weren’t very social. Human listeners were something between a convenience for thinking out loud and an audience for subtle boasting. Subtle as a sledge hammer.
“A minor functionary of another group had the bad taste to lose his temper on my planet and his superiors are bothering me about it. He botched a number of serious business dealings and his group is looking for someone to blame. It won’t be me, but it doesn’t stop them from trying,” the Tir said.
“That’s pretty rare. Any idea what set him off?”
“Botched business dealings sometimes do that,” the Darhel admitted. “Badly botched ones, anyway.” That was information it wouldn’t have confided seven years ago, but his boss was clearly having a bad day.
“So your forensics don’t show any more than that? Just business stress?” he asked.
“My what?”
“Forensics,” Johnny said slowly. “It’s something human authorities, or people like me, always do after a suspicious death in our area of responsibility, to make sure whatever caused the guy’s death is really what it appears to be,” he explained.
“With us, deaths of this type are always straightforward,” the Darhel snapped. “Our people place sharp limits on the — on whatever you’re implying.”
“I can see that, sir. But with respect, you and your dead guy are on a planet full of humans who aren’t all that good about staying within limits,” the security man said.
“Impossible. Ridiculous. If a human were involved, we would have found its corpse.” The Darhel paused. “However, your kind of investigation could give me an extra tool to shake off the inconvenience of Pardal’s lintatai with less input of my valuable time. Unless there’s something special, I don’t really need your report. Get right on this, get back to me. Make an appointment a week from now. You won’t find anything unusual, of course, but that’s a good time for me to use your report as further evidence that I’ve tried everything to meet my obligations. You’re dismissed.” It waved him away with the same negligent gesture it had used on the Indowy servant, having forgotten him already as it returned to its own thoughts.
Johnny didn’t take offense at the self-important, high-handed dismissal. Much. He was used to it. As long as he stayed on the Tir’s good side, he didn’t much care what the alien fuck did. He did his job, he got paid. When he was away from the Darhel, he even enjoyed the work. He hadn’t worked around Darhel for seven years without learning a bit about procedure. The late — or nearly late — Pardal’s AID would have been turned off until it could be reassigned. What he would normally have done was send his business to that AID and let it handle the matter, only involving its master if absolutely necessary. As it was, there would be a reception AID for the building, held by the building manager. Since he didn’t know anybody over there, it was his only route he knew of to get a message in right this minute.
“Tina,” he said, walking back down the fluorescent-lit hall to catch the elevator. Its brass doors, typical of Darhel excess, had been engraved with odd alien patterns that were apparently artistic. Or maybe writing or something. “Get the reception AID for Epetar Group’s Chicago headquarters.”
“Shall I put you on with its carrier, or Lila herself?”