“Not a great time to put more stress on the father’s plate.”
“No.” He shook his head, taking a big bite of his burger.
Cally checked into a temporary room on base and pulled out her PDA. O’Reilly wants more, I’ll get him more. I hope. She logged onto the Perfect Match site, which had obviously had a recent web redesign. She had gone to the site, just to check it out, after one of the teenage girls on the island had mentioned it to a friend in one of the hand-to-hand courses. Of course I was just checking it out. To make sure it was safe.
The redesign had not changed the site for the better. A background of lurid pink hearts clashed against the fuschia and orange-red backgrounds of sappy pictures that looked like they’d been swiped from the covers of bodice-rippers. Bright yellow buttons for everything from links to hit-counters to awards of dubious provenance littered the bottom of the page, seemingly at random. The text and frames couldn’t seem to decide what color to be, and the company logo at the top of the page actually blinked. It looked like another company had decided that do-it-yourself was cheaper than hiring art talent.
Blech! I hope Michelle will forgive me. Okay, where’s the pesky forum? There.
She thought for a minute. “MargarethaZ: Apollo555, I have eyes only for you.” Okay, so it’s trite. At least it doesn’t stand out in amongst all this sappy crap. Vanna69 wants to do what? Now that’s just gross. Eww. She logged off, wishing there really was such a thing as brain floss.
“You know the people you meet on those places all look horrible,” the buckley commented. “And just last week, a man was killed in his sleep by a girl axe-murderer he met in a chatroom. Fifty-seven percent of ‘singles’ online are actually married. Twenty-two percent are ki—”
“Shut up, buckley.”
“Right.”
“Buckley, go secure. Where’s Granpa?” she asked.
“In the gym. Did you know that ninety-three point two percent of all sports inj—”
“Shut up, buckley.”
“Well, you did ask the question! Why ask me a question if you don’t want to—”
“Shut up, buckley.”
“Right.”
Papa O’Neal was doing his morning chin-ups when Cally walked into the otherwise empty gym, having taken time to change into her own workout clothes before taking the bounce tube down to level three. The black shorts were okay, but the red leotard was on its last legs. She clung to it because it had that blessed option, a built-in sports bra. And not one of those flimsy ones, either. This one actually worked. She walked over to the bar and began stretching, waiting for the young-old man to finish his set.
He dropped lightly from the bar, flexing his knees as he hit, and walked over to her. His T-shirt was dark and wet in big patches, his red hair darkened with sweat. He grabbed a clean towel out of the box at the end of the bar and turned to her, wiping his face.
“So, mission a go?” he asked. To anyone who didn’t know the inner workings of Bane Sidhe society, it would have seemed odd that Cally led the team instead of her grandfather, who, after all, had more experience. The truth was, he didn’t have time. Clan O’Neal administration had eaten up so much of his days with things he couldn’t delegate that handing off leadership to her had been the only way he could be assured of any meaningful time with Shari and the kids. Besides, she was good at it. So he had explained, anyway.
“Not yet,” she said, stretching into a vertical split.
“Not yet?” he coughed. “Whaddya mean not yet? Hello, job. Hello, paying job. Hello, life and death mission on the side of good and right? Not yet?” He started absently patting the nonexistent pockets on his shorts and T-shirt before sighing and letting his hands drop. “Okay, what the fuck’s going on?”
“What isn’t? The Crabs are pissed and are threatening to fuck with our code key supply, the Old Man’s about that far away from a nervous breakdown,” she held her fingers about a half inch apart. “And of course, it’s all my fault. Okay, not really. Just the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyway, O’Reilly wants more hard evidence that Michelle is either right about this thing and the threat level, or he wants her on board. One or the other.”
“Say that again.” O’Neal was ice.
“He didn’t deny the mission, Granpa.” Cally put a placating hand on his chest. “He just wants more of her cards on the table, his words, before we commit. It’s a pain in the ass, not high treason.”
“No. That join-up shit—” His clenched hands were relaxing slowly and smoothly. A bad sign.
“Like you wouldn’t know about bargaining chips, Granpa? He wants to know the mission’s not going to be another bust — and I can’t believe I’m defending this.” She sidestepped casually, putting herself between Granpa and the door. “But I guess I am. Get pissed after I talk to her, if he doesn’t approve the mission then.”
“We’re doing it. All that’s left to be decided is if they’re coming along or not.”
“Fine. But don’t nuke our bridges unless you have to, get it?”
He held a hand up, finger pointed at her, about to say something, but then dropped it to his side.
“Right. Don’t nuke the bridges. Got it,” he sighed. “Make it so I don’t need to nuke ’em, Granddaughter.”
“Yeah, but no pressure, right?” Cally put her head in her hand for a minute before looking back up at him. “I’m staying over another night, at least. You guys can either fly back and I’ll drive, or whatever. I know we just planned on a one-day trip.”
“Right. I’ll call Shari and tell her not to hold dinner.”
The Cook Retail Center was Chicago’s newest shopping mall. Cally pulled the old Mustang in and parked. The spot was way back from the entrance, but it was the closest one she could find. No matter how the economy in general was suffering, the fat cats in the federal bureaucracy were getting plenty. Like a gold rush town, to a limited extent the cash rolled downhill. It was a small mall, all cream walls and chrome. When they said the plant foliage had variegated colors, they really meant it. They had plants — or the equivalent — from Barwhon and a good half dozen other planets. The Barwhon stuff she recognized right off. The purple was a dead giveaway. And the place was busy, for a weekday. Maybe I shouldn’t have come just before lunch. There were other choices.
If I’m going to be meeting Michelle more than once or twice, she has to get out of those damned conspicuous mentat robes. Could she scream, “Hi, I’m Michelle O’Neal and I’m on a planet where I’m not supposed to be,” any louder? Cally found a chain store well known for subdued but dressy casual clothes. As a trained observer, having seen Michelle twice, she had a perfect memory of her sister’s size for everything but shoes. It wasn’t hard to find a cream sweater and tan slacks. She added a tortoise-shell rooster clasp so the mentat could do something more conventional with her hair than that bun. Conservative, but nice.
The big reason she had chosen this mall had to do with the very upscale Chinese restaurant at one of the side entrances. It was one of the contact points Stewart had given her. Someplace where her money was no good and her privacy absolute. The Bane Sidhe expense budget didn’t run to business lunches anymore.