Honor of the Clan

Chapter Fifteen

Papa O’Neal was in the best shape he’d been in in half a century or so. Specifically, the best shape he’d been in since the “new” wore off on what his rejuved and upgraded body could do at the tail end of the Postie War. His fitness this time had an entirely different reason, which was that if he hadn’t kept himself PT-ed to the gills he’d have died of boredom. Or killed somebody.

Since the only somebodies on this tub were the Himmit pilot and owner, and Nathan O’Reilly’s personal assistant, that would have been bad. Particularly, he had the feeling that Nathan would miss the PA and would be rather cranky if he were throttled and stuffed down the head.

He looked around his cabin. Same old bulkheads and extremely boring crap. The only reason he was in here at all was because he’d just woken up. The food was the same shit, more or less, that they served at base. He always carried a small bottle of hot sauce, periodically refueling it from a large bottle. Unfortunately, he hadn’t had time for any of that and was finding hot sauce much less effective when one had to ration it. He was still running out.

He had already gone through Candy’s supply of various kinds of stored entertainment, having had little time to gather up cubes before boarding this mobile purgatory. He had traded all entertainment back and forth with Alan and gone through all of that. It was bad when you started to look forward to telling war stories to the Himmit. Titan was positioned all wrong for them to pick up transmissions of broadcast entertainment, and reception from Earth was practically nil due to solar weather.

Hard PT was one of the few ways he had to exhaust his brain into semi-passivity and get past the boredom. He used it. He had managed to persuade the Himmit to cobble odds and ends together into bars for chin-ups and dips. Hadn’t been able to get an obstacle course out of it. Did get amplification for Candy to project the ones he didn’t have to climb on and buzz at him if he, for example, snagged himself on the holographic barbed wire overhead, tipped over a hurdle, or let the ball-buster live up to its name. It was something to do, and he thought he almost had talked the Himmit into kitting out one of the bulkheads in the cargo bay as a climbing wall. He just hadn’t hit on a story quite good enough to get it to “deface its ship” in such a fashion. He was also campaigning for a resistance-based weight training equivalent. His offer to lift the Himmit hadn’t gone over well.

Between training times, he amused himself by trying to compose original dirty limericks, which was surprisingly difficult. Alan was having better luck with dirty haiku. Papa had taken to sitting with him while he did so, because the process and content tended to confuse the Himmit, which in itself was at least a little amusing.

Then there were the interminable lessons in xenopsychology from “the diplomacy expert.” He had gotten to where he could get his head around the Indowy, Darhel, and the Crabs, but he still couldn’t say Tph… Tic… Tch, oh, dammit, Crab. His understanding of the Himmit was more limited, but that just put him in the same boat as all the other races. They were still alien as hell, and he’d always have to think about it to try to see from their point of view, or try to understand something they were doing. Alan said this was actually an advantage, in that it protected him from forgetting the first rule: “Alien minds are alien.”

He breakfasted alone, since he needed less sleep than Mr. Alien Expert, and so got up “earlier.” Only this morning he was halfway between some nasty stuff that was supposed to copy eggs when he realized he was not alone and looked up to see the Himmit perched on his wall. Odd time for it to request a story. Not that he minded an interruption while eating, in the case of this junk.

“There has been a change in schedule, Human Papa O’Neal. A Tchpth ship has emerged from jump and commed me that they wish to rendezvous for negotiations. We should have contact in just over three of your days,” it said. “I will leave you to resume nourishing yourself.”

Papa supposed that was a more accurate term than calling it eating. He also noticed that the Himmit had no trouble pronouncing oh-hell-dammit-Crabs. Froggy little bastard.

He thought about waking his tutor, and then decided against it. Once the kid woke up he wasn’t going to get a moment’s rest, so he’d better get PT-ing while the getting was good.

Three hours later, Papa was glad he’d gotten his workout in because he could see that his free time was over. Thank god. Even negotiation preparations were a welcome relief from boredom now that he had the promise of not having to endure them all the way to fucking Barwhon.

“So what kinds of things are on our list to negotiate for? I have some ideas of what I want, but what do the Bane Sidhe want, from your perspective?”

The PA sank his head into his palm. “Let me repeat, the Tchpth do not think in terms of deals and arrangements and agreements. The Tchpth think in terms of relationships and favors.” He paused, and Papa could see that he was going to have to listen to another run of xenopsych, only this time he had more incentive to pay close attention.

“Okay, what kind of relationship should I be negotiating for?”

“Let me try to explain things another way,” Allan said, clearly meaning one more out of umpty-jillion he’d already tried. “Humans look at the Galactics and see the Darhel in charge, because the Darhel control the contracts, and the shipping, and the money.”

“And life and death over the Indowy masses,” Papa growled. “And attempting it over humans, and damn near—”

“Let’s not get sidetracked. The Tchpth look at the Galactic organization and see a web of relationships. The Darhel do tasks the Tchpth agree need doing by somebody, but don’t want to do themselves. The Tchpth control what amounts to the money supply, control the technology level available to the Darhel, the Indowy, and us. They see allowing the Darhel to play their contract games as humoring them. It’s an easy favor that, from the Tchpth point of view, they’re getting a lot of favors back for. The Darhel may appear to control what looks to humans like all the political power, but the Darhel’s ability to step outside the Tchpth relationship format and favor economy is exactly zero. The Tchpth own the money supply. Um… picture it as if in the twentieth century, oil were actually money and some government had the power to make an unlimited supply of it effortlessly, and was militarily unassailable. See why the Darhel are stuck?”

“The fucking Elves can and do do a lot to the Indowy, and us.”

“Yes, they do. But their relationship with the Tchpth is entirely on the Tchpth’s terms as to definitions. The Darhel do have a lot of maneuvering room as to the trading of favors, and they understand, and use, that.

“The Tchpth relationship with the Indowy clans are what ultimately allows the Bane Sidhe to function. The Tchpth have more genuine philosophical thought in common with the Indowy than with the Darhel. The Indowy actually get this ‘Path’ thing. The Darhel don’t. Realize that the Tchpth can bypass the Darhel by delivering nanogenerator code keys to the Indowy any time they damned well please. And they sometimes do. The Bane Sidhe is a case in point. The Bane Sidhe nannite pool is entirely off the Darhel books. Maybe it will help for a moment if you think of the Bane Sidhe less as a resistance movement aimed at overthrowing the Darhel than a labor union. That’s not accurate, either, but figure this — the Indowy are lousy at management, economics, logistics, firm and formalized agreements. The Indowy need the Darhel. They don’t want to make the Darhel go extinct, or go stay on their own worlds. The Indowy just want better terms. The Tchpth relationship with the Indowy is to provide enough support to the labor union to keep the balance between the Galactics the way they think it should be. The Indowy also operate on the basis of a favor economy with the Tchpth. Think of this as another form of currency that’s completely off the Darhel books. Relationships.”

“The Himmit? Nobody’s really got a great handle on the Himmit’s story economy, but there are things they can do, and favors can be traded with them, so the Tchpth have their relationship with the Himmit somehow slotted into their scheme of things. We humans don’t actually have any understanding, at all, of the workings between the Himmit and the Tchpth. Are you following me so far?” The PA ran both hands through his hair, thinking so hard he was sweating.

Papa O’Neal was actually kind of impressed. “Yeah, I think so. You’re saying we’ve been mistaken about the Darhel and the Crabs are in control of the whole ball of wax — which tells me that maybe we should be pissed off at them.”

“No. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying the Tchpth have the power to control the whole ball of wax but don’t have the time, inclination, or aptitude for doing so. I’m saying the Darhel don’t mess with the Tchpth because they know the Tchpth can upset the applecart at any point. We are not negotiating with the Indowy. We are not negotiating with the Darhel. We are negotiating with the Tchpth. If the Tchpth see Galactic civilization in terms of relationships and favors, then we — and you — had better be able to see it that way, too. Or at least fake it real well.” He sighed. “Does that make sense?”

“Yeah. I reckon that makes sense. They could help us, they could help the Indowy, they could jerk a knot in the Darhel, but they really don’t have any percentage in it and don’t give a shit. Is that about the size of it?” Papa O’Neal patted down his shirt pocket before realizing he’d run out of tobacco.

“Closer. They do give a shit. They just think of it differently. Alien minds. Humanity’s opportunity, and our curse right at the moment, is that the Tchpth haven’t decided where we fit in. They haven’t decided where, over the mid-range time scale of the next thousand years or so, we ‘work’ as part of a stable relationship pattern between the races. It is almost as much false as it is true, but think of human involvement in the Bane Sidhe, for a moment, as the Indowy doing a favor for the Tchpth by developing xenopsychological data on the humans as part of the process of evaluating our place in the scheme of things. All this is hampered by all the Galactic races having extreme prejudices against us for all the reasons you already know, and probably a couple more we haven’t figured out yet.

“Your job, as a diplomat, is to almost but not exactly socialize with the Tchpth, and probably a few Indowy, but no Darhel, of course. In the course of this not exactly schmoozing, they and the Indowy will make loaded comments about relationships and balances of favors between different groups, including various Indowy Clans. Possibly the Tchpth will test you by making a few comments about other relationships, such as some internal to them, or some with the Himmit or Darhel. You are not going to pass that test on any level more sophisticated than a grossly barbarous, vicious omnivore, so don’t get your hopes up or give up hope,” he said.

“Right. So I’m at the Mad Hatter’s tea party and I’m supposed to do what?” The O’Neal wore the expression of a man completely out of his depth but willing to go down fighting valiantly.

“Primarily, avoid as many gross mistakes as possible while getting in specific talking points to illustrate how humanity, Clan O’Neal, and the O’Neal Bane Sidhe view the balance of favors between ourselves and the other Galactic races,” the PA said.

“Oh. Is that all?” Papa asked sarcastically.

“Don’t worry about it. You can take your PDA and wear an earbug. They’ll pretend you aren’t, but will be completely unsurprised that you need it. It’s actually an advantage, as they’ll hear what your PDA is telling you. In a certain sense, the PDA will be doing the actual diplomacy, while you maintain the relevant not-exactly fiction that the discussions are with the O’Neal.” The younger man shrugged.

“Oh. A buckley is going to be negotiating our future with the entire Galactic civilization. I’m so relieved,” Papa groused.

“This is all the better reason for you to understand those talking points well. If what you say contradicts or revises what they hear out of your PDA, they’ll go with whatever it is you say. Which also means, I need not tell you, don’t fuck up. Because at many levels, physical, economic, political and legal, the Tchpth can swat Clan O’Neal, and probably the whole human race, like flies.”

“But no pressure,” Papa said.

“Nope, O’Neal,” Alan said with a grin. “No pressure at all.”