Aelool did not see the human insert the cube into the reader slot of his buckley, nor did he hear him mutter, “I’m gonna kill her,” under his breath before he left the room. He would never have admitted to it if he had seen and heard such a thing. Nevertheless, he sincerely hoped that the human O’Neal would not do anything permanent to Cally O’Neal. He was rather fond of her. Did humans take poison in such cases? It was a very private clan matter, of course, and the Indowy had insufficient versing with human xenopsychology to understand why the O’Neal was vexed with his granddaughter over the contents of the message, but the Indowy was fond of her — for an omnivore. Still, it was a very private clan matter, and apparently the human O’Neal had not taken irreparable offense at the Indowy Aelool’s presumption. That was something. It would, however, be disastrous if the O’Neal passed a judgment against his clan member before she completed her assigned work. Disastrous on top of regrettable. And the O’Neal was so volatile, too. Aelool went back to bed, worrying.
Cally was only a touch bleary this morning. She’d been able to whittle down the material Mendy turned up for her to only a few key scenes, and had watched them over and over again.
One of the key features that would enable what she was about to do was a project R D had been developing to enhance human communication with Indowy. Humans had the problem, dealing with both Indowy and Darhel, of lacking mobile ears. The project involved having an AID or a buckley track the motion of its user’s body and head, in real time, and track electrical impulses sent from behind a human subject’s ears, using them to project a holographic set of mobile ears that would respond to the human’s conscious, and subconscious, commands. Human ears were not, it turned out, completely immobile. Their mobility was simply so restricted that the ears did not noticeably move. The impulses were still there, in the nerves, still responding to the age-old evolutionary cues of mammals past — and to conscious control.
Conscious control of the holographic ears took weeks of practice. In Cally’s case, she had that practice. She had been an early test subject for the project while on maternity leave. It had been a few extra bucks for baby’s new pair of shoes and such, when she’d badly needed the money.
R D had only intended to use the device between human and Indowy, and only if it improved the communication and comfort level between the two species. It hadn’t. Indowy, it developed, were happier not knowing the emotional states of their human friends. The research had been consigned to the trash bin of good ideas that just didn’t work out. Until now.
No Darhel had ever seen a human with mobile ears. That was advantage one. Advantage two was the information-tracking software that let a buckley PDA superimpose realistic holographic ears on a human head also gave her buckley enough information to superimpose the rest of a holographic face, as well. Her buckley could not make her look like a Darhel, not ever enough to pass for one of them, especially when there were so relatively few in circulation. However, she didn’t need to pass for a Darhel — not to another Darhel’s conscious mind. She only needed to look enough like one, for just a bare instant, to fool the visceral mind about what it saw, before its better judgment kicked in.
A Darhel’s descent into the permanent catatonia of lintatai was triggered by a single instant of homicidally bad judgment. A Darhel who succumbed to that one instant of rage didn’t get a second chance. The Darhel who survived puberty did not do so because of any reduced capacity for, or desire for, unbridled rage. He survived by analyzing all possible outcomes of a situation ahead of time, and applying carefully trained-in meditative disciplines when a situation began to take him into danger.
Adult Darhel thought of themselves as paragons of detached emotional control. It wasn’t true. Any Darhel had plenty of buttons to punch, he just had nobody around to punch them. One Darhel wouldn’t provoke another into lintatai because it was suicidal. He couldn’t drive the other into lintatai without entering it himself. Himmit, Indowy, and Tchpth also considered deliberately provoking a Darhel to be an insanely stupid act.
They were, of course, correct. It was also correct to say that every human did at least a dozen things a Galactic would find insane every day of her life.
It had long been accepted in the human executive protection field that one can never effectively guard against a determined, competent assassin who is willing, if necessary, to lose her life in the act. The Darhel had, she suspected, never heard that particular truism. One of their number was about to learn — the hard way.
She was surprised that Granpa was at the table with Harrison when she stopped by the mess hall for a light breakfast. She was freshly showered and bare of makeup, dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans. Her entire appearance, from top to toes, was Harrison’s domain today. She had the basic canvas and equipment, but Harrison was peerless at turning the basics into whatever they required. In this case, nothing less than a world-class, breathtaking vision of beauty would suffice.
Granpa sure was looking funky. Something was wrong. “All right, spit it out. What is it?” She addressed him in the way that was most in her nature. Straight on.
“What are you talking about? I just came down to see you off at breakfast. So I’m worried about you. I’m your grandfather; it’s my privilege,” he said.
“Not buying it. What’s really wrong?” she asked. After half a century of her reading him, he couldn’t get anything by her. The reverse usually applied, as well, but wasn’t the problem today.
“Harrison, could you excuse us for a minute?” Papa said, looking at his hands as he picked a fresh plug of tobacco from his pouch.
Harrison disappeared in the direction of the coffee counter.
Cally raised her eyebrows at the old man. “Well?” she asked.
“Granddaughter, dear, the next time you decide to engage in a major fucking breach of security, would you do me the kindness of telling me first? Instead of leaving me to find out years later from someone of a different fucking species at one in the morning on the day of an operation, for instance,” he said.
“Oops,” she said, as he glowered at her. Which was exactly what she would have expected. Exactly. Except he was overplaying it. Not much, but her sense of every detail around her was heightened to a preternatural sharpness this morning. “Now what’s the other shoe?” she asked.
“You don’t think that’s enough?” he whispered harshly. “The Indowy have known for years that I have a son-in-law, while you’ve been running around behind the backs of me and Shari, not to mention your girls, and—”
“You can drop that other shoe now. We’ll talk about my sins if we all survive the day. What else? Give,” she demanded.
Now he looked distinctly uncomfortable. He puffed up, as if to try another layer of false bluster, then the masks dropped and there was just Granpa. An uncomfortable and unhappy looking Granpa. “I think you should wait to ask me that question tomorrow. I really think you should.”
“What’s the other shoe, Granpa? I’m not going to give up, because whatever it is, I’m going to be more distracted worrying about it than I would hearing it. You might as well put it on the table,” she said.
When he quietly stuck a data cube on the table, she jerked back a bit. “I didn’t mean it that literally, but I’ll take it. Excuse me,” she said, taking the cube with her to the ladies’ room. Whatever it was, she apparently needed to see it in private.