“So would he do this from friendship and to return a favor? Would he lie about representing his government?” the assassin asked the machine.
“That is not even a remote possibility,” Aelool said as he entered the room, forestalling the AID’s reply. “The Tchpth would never tolerate insanity in a planning position, nor have they had an adult manifestation of insanity in a thousand years, except as a temporary reaction to some drugs. I would have noticed had Wxlcht been drugged, unlikely as that would have been. The message and authority were authentic. What did it mean?”
“Miss O’Neal informs me that the Tchpth government has requested that she kill the Darhel Pardal,” O’Reilly said woodenly.
Aelool slumped to the floor, landing seated. “If this is a human joke, it is in execrable taste.”
“Aelool, I’m really not kidding. Even I am not that dense about interspecies relations,” she said.
“Then you are mistaken,” the literally floored alien stated.
“Anything is possible,” she answered.
“Not this,” he declared.
O’Reilly could see a situation developing and was about to intervene when Cally opened her mouth again.
“I meant, it is possible that I’m interpreting his message wrong, or that he thought it meant something different from what it means to me. This could be a misunderstanding,” she allowed.
“It is. It most certainly is. Please tell me why you have come to this conclusion so that we can sort out the real meaning.” The small creature wasn’t happy with Miss O’Neal. Again.
The priest said nothing, wanting to hear the answer, too.
“When I met Michelle a week or so ago to give her that information she wanted from her Tong contact on the Moon, she said some nasty things about Pardal and I offered to kill him for her. More as a joke than anything.”
“A bad one,” Aelool said.
“Granted,” she nodded. “But then she said that it was a good thing you guys kept me on a tight leash. That’s the only time Michelle and I have ever talked about a leash. Ever. So as ridiculous as it seems, can we at least consider what motives the Tchp — Tphk — Crabs would consider sufficient to order a specific sentient being killed?”
“Tchpth do not kill sophonts. Not even second or third hand,” Aelool reiterated.
“Of course they do!” Cally contradicted. “They sure as hell commissioned humanity to kill off Posleen. In job lots.”
“That was because the Posleen were a threat to all of the Wise and, thereby, to all the sentient life in the galaxy.” Aelool sounded positively testy.
“Don’t get mad at me. I’m not giving the orders. I’m just the poor kid at the sharp end.” Apparently deciding it was an oversight that she had not been invited to sit, or making a subtle Cally-esque point, she walked to the other side of the coffee table from the spot where Aelool was still seated on the floor and planted herself in a chair.
Aelool got up and moved to a chair, himself. As O’Reilly joined them, the Indowy explained, as if to a child, “The whole institution of the Wise was at stake. The whole Path was at stake. Without the Wise to guide others on the Path, the remaining sophonts would eventually destroy themselves and the galaxy with them. The Tchpth very reluctantly deemed using barbaric omnivores to kill barbaric omnivores an absolute necessity.”
Nathan O’Reilly raised a hand. “A moment, Aelool.” He rubbed his forehead pensively. “That Tchpth was as upset as I’ve ever seen one; he said the situation was grave ‘or they wouldn’t’ whatever. He sure didn’t like what he was having to say, and he went to a lot of trouble to let us know it was from their whole government. He clearly didn’t think a misunderstanding would be a possibility, and it was something he couldn’t or wouldn’t come right out and say.”
“Pardal is trying to kill Michelle. She’d be one of your ‘Wise,’ wouldn’t she? How would the Crabs extrapolate events from that? Or could Pardal be into something else that big or that dangerous?”
“Wait.” Aelool held up a green, furry hand for silence — a human gesture — and thought.
After a moment, he looked directly into her eyes — for the first time, ever. “The consequences if you are wrong would be unthinkable.”
Finally, the human leader of the O’Neal Bane Sidhe did intervene. “Plausibly, the highest Tchpth planners could have extrapolated events from the Darhel’s planned murder — don’t equivocate, that’s what it is — of one of the first human mentats to some sort of Galactic threat. I can’t see it, but I can’t understand their physics, either. Aelool, I hate to ask you, but how close is your wisdom to theirs?”
“It is not close.” He cringed. “You asked him if he was very, very sure. On their own heads be it, and I hope the Tchpth can be made to see it that way if she is wrong. All we can wisely do is just exactly what it told us. We turn loose her leash.” He turned to the priest. “My friend, do you still keep the human custom of prayer?”
“Of course,” the Jesuit answered.
“I hope very much that you will never find a better time to practice it. Please excuse me. This is more distressing than any human can imagine.” The little green alien left the room without another word.
“So. How do you plan to kill him, and when?” O’Reilly, having resigned himself to the business at hand, was determined to see it come off successfully.
“Did the Crab say when?” she asked.
“He only said, ‘Soon. Very soon.’ ” O’Reilly had no idea what to make of this. It would take time to sort through the implications. At least, to sort through as many of them as a human could follow.
“Then it has to be tomorrow,” she announced.
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Not recently. We can’t reschedule the run for Michelle; there isn’t time. We’d never get another chance before she died. On the other side of that coin, if either target learns the other has been hit, the security walls are going to go way, way up and whichever mission is second will be impossible short of nukes — and maybe not even then. They have to be done as close together as possible.”
“You’re the second inside man at the target. They know your appearance. You have to be there personally or it doesn’t come off. The hit on Pardal also absolutely has to be you, because the Tchpth said so — rather, they said you, so we use you. In case you’re somehow wrong, as is distinctly possible, our only possible excuse is that they picked the message, and the recipient, after being specifically warned. I also specifically declaimed responsibility for the consequences of delivering such a message to you.”
“I love you, too, Nathan.”
“Cally, that message is something I would never, ever have chosen to say to you on my own. There’s just no telling who or how many would die next.” She looked affronted as hell. “You are very good at your job. Good assassins always need target control in the hands of someone other than themselves. Which, in this case, it still is. If, may the Good Lord and all of the Saints preserve us, you’re right.” And so help him, if she made an inappropriate joke about his appeal to the almighty, he just might kill her.
“Okay. My interview isn’t until late afternoon. So I kill Pardal in the morning, and you have Harrison waiting for me with the car and my interview clothes. I’ll change on the way.”
“It’s damned late to be making radical changes of plans. How are you going to kill him?” he asked. He didn’t add that she might be overreaching in assuming her success and survival. He didn’t need to.
“Don’t know yet,” she shrugged. “Hey, no plan survives contact with the enemy. This is what you pay me for. I’ll shoot you a revised mission plan just as soon as I’ve got it — tonight at the latest. Honest, just relax. Trust me.”