For T.R. and Lee

… because Marines do more than drink coffee

STORM AT ELDALA

©1999 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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When Heaven is about to confer great office upon a man,it first

exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews andbones with

toil:

it exposes him to poverty and confounds all his

undertakings.Then it is seen if he is ready…

Meng-Tse, Sol, 6 B.C.

Chapter One

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STRUGGLING INSIDE Sunshine’s fighting field, Gabriel Connor

flung himself and their small ship through space while the plasma

bolts of their pursuers arrowed past on either side of him, so close

he could have sworn he could feel the heat straight through the hull.

He stared frantically around him into the darkness, but there was

nowhere to go. They were surrounded.

This time, for sure, this time we’re going to die.

We cannot keep this up much longer, Enda’s seemingly

disembodied voice came to him from somewhere on the other side of the

field. She was handling gunnery, having a talent for it, but the gift

seemed not to be serving her well today.

There are too many of them left, she said, and we are

running low on power.

Gabriel glanced at the power readouts inside the gunnery field.

They were down to ten percent on both sets of weapons. His big gun,

the rail cannon on top of Sunshine, was recharging, but not

quickly enough. It wanted another thirty seconds, and whether it was

going to get them was uncertain.

Gabriel tumbled the ship to make sure of the field of fire. One of

the little ball bearing ships that had chased them out into the

depths of the Corrivale system came plunging through his sights. He

took aim with the plasma cannon and fired.

Clear miss.

He cursed, the sweat running down his back and tickling, but there

was nothing he could do about it.

Slow down, Enda cried, make them count!

He saw her take aim and fire at another of the ships as it plunged

past them. She scored a hit, but not a killing one. The ship arced

away, leaking atmosphere in a ghostly silvery veil, but its engines

were untouched.

How many now?

The targeting software says sixteen, Enda said.

Gabriel cursed again and tumbled the ship once more, wishing that

he did not have to handle piloting as well as firing. The attack

unfolding around them was a standard englobement with ten small

vessels at the vertices and six stitching in and out of the defined

space. The enemy craft held Sunshine at the optimum locus of

the englobement.

There were tactics for this kind of engagement, and Gabriel had

tried all three kinds. He had used the “place holder,”

where you shoot from optimum locus because it’s the best position.

That had worked only as long as the gunnery power was at optimum

power. He had then tried the pattern-breaker approach in which you

killed enough of the englobers to make the number of ships at the

vertices ineffective. Unfortunately, Sunshine’s weapons had

begun to run low just as this approach began to work.

There were still sixteen of them and no realistic hope of reducing

the numbers to the critical eight or below. There was nothing left

but the rush-and-break, the set of moves enacted simply to escape.

This Gabriel hated, first because he suspected these little ships

could outrun them; second because he suspected they would chase

Sunshine straight into the welcoming field of fire of the big

ship that had dropped them out here in the distant dark of

Corrivale’s fringes.

Also, he hated to run. Marines didn’t run. They fought.

But you’re not a marine any more.

Surprising, still, the access of fury that simple statement could

provide him. He was not one of those people in whom rage clouded the

vision. For Gabriel, things became clear— entirely too clear.

Three of the ships holding the vertices closest to Gabriel moved

closer together to stop the break, but he could see that one of them

was slightly out of alignment. He twisted Sunshine off to the

left, and the enemy ship followed.

Mistake, Gabriel thought, as he flipped without warning, coasting

backward on his inertia and letting the nearest ship have it with the

forward plasma cannon. Enda, warned by who-knew-what touch of fraal

precognition, was already firing that way. She hit another of the

little round ships as Gabriel hit a third. From all the targets,

metal cracked and splintered outward; vapor spit out under pressure

and sprayed away as snow. More sluggish materials slopped out, went

rigid and tumbled away in frozen lumps and gobbets with the shattered

remains of the vessels that had emitted them. It was Gabriel’s first

close look at the destruction of one of these ships, and it confirmed

what he had thought earlier.

Undead. The pilots had been people once. Humans, fraal, sesheyans,

weren … The important thing was that they weren’t those people

any more. This killing was a kindness.

Gabriel!

He barely reacted in time as the set-of-three came diving at them.

The englobement had been reduced to thirteen and was less viable than

it had been, but it was still all too effective. The ten vessels

holding aloof were defining the interior again, this time on the

vertices of paired pyramids.

There were more places for Sunshine to break out; the faces

of the solid were wider now. Gabriel spun Sunshine on her

longitudinal axis, raking all around with the plasma cannon. The

set-of-three dived away but still in unison.

Got to break that up, Gabriel thought and glanced hurriedly at the

indicator for the rail cannon. It was only up to sixty percent. It

wouldn’t even fire until eighty,

Enda was firing. Gabriel fired too, his plasma cannons down to

twenty percent now. Bolts from their adversaries shot right past him,

blinding and scorching him. Gabriel preferred to work with the ship’s

sensors acting like his own nerves— there were times when the

effect could mean the difference between being alive and dead. We’ll

see if it’s enough this time, he thought. Maybe, just maybe—

The rail cannon was up to sixty-five. Just a few minutes, he

thought. Come on, Sunshine, just a few minutes more—

It all happened at once. The three ships broke formation, two to

the right and above, one below and to the left. Enda concentrated on

the two. Gabriel fired at the one but missed. He felt the scorch

raking up Sunshine‘s underbelly, and then he felt another bolt

hit. He yelped, the ship lurched upwards, possibly saving them both

from being killed right then, but another bolt lanced down from

above, hitting the rail cannon.

It blew. Gone, the rails twisted all askew; it wouldn’t fire

anything now.

The englobement dissolved as the other little vessels registered

the destruction of the one weapon that had been keeping them at a

distance all this while. It was gone now; they could swarm in and

take Sunshine at their pleasure.

Enda was firing nonstop. Gabriel was firing at anything he could

see, and the fury was helping again. Along with the utter terror, he

was burning with the knowledge that they were both about to be

killed. It was amazing how life became not less intense at such a

time, but more so, a fury of life, ready to burn itself out but not

give up.

One hit, then another, blowing up so close to Sunshine that

the entire ship shook, but it was not going to be enough. More plasma

bolts came stitching in from behind, and Gabriel cried out in agony

and rage as one of them hit the engine compartment.

Then came an intolerable glory of light off to one side, a burning

pain all up and down Gabriel’s side, as if someone had thrown burning

fuel on him. He rolled Sunshine away from the pain. He had

just enough power left in his emergency jets to do that. The first

light had just been the “pilot” detonation. Now came the

secondary one, and Gabriel squeezed his eyes closed tight.

The little ships were fleeing in all directions, but six of them

were caught together as the squeezed nuke went off. The remainder

knew they had no chance against Sunshine even damaged as she

was. They kept running.

Space grew still and dark, and in it Sunshine drifted,

tumbling gently and losing power. Gabriel sat there gasping in the

darkness of the fighting field as the power ebbed away, the weapons

losing what little charge they had left.

“Okay,” said a gravelly voice from out in the darkness.

“That went pretty well, I thought.”

“Helm,” Enda said sternly. “You were not supposed to do that.”

“Aw, Enda, you’re too rough on the two of you.”

Gabriel knew what the words meant, but he found them hard to

believe at the moment. It’s the software, he told himself. But his

brain insisted that he couldn’t let down his guard, that something

terrible might still happen. Those little ships were only fighters.

They could not have come all this way by themselves. Somewhere around

here was the fortress ship or dreadnought that would have dropped

them. It could not be allowed to find Gabriel and Enda, not alive—

not even dead and in one piece. The pilots of those little ships were

reminders enough that there were some fates worse than death.

“All the same, we cannot be constantly relying on overarmed

allies to come sweeping in out of the darkness to save us!”

“I thought that was what you kept me around for.”

Even through the fear, Gabriel had to grin. “He’s

incorrigible,” Gabriel said, still gasping for air. “You

should know that by now.”

“Maybe I should,” Enda said with a sigh. “Meanwhile,

let it go now, Gabriel. This has been enough exercise for one day.

Shut it down.”

Gabriel reached out in the fighting field to the glowing

collection of virtual lights, indicators, and slider controls that

appeared within his reach. One slider well off to his right was

pushed right up to the top of its course. He reached out and pulled

it down.

Reality ebbed out of everything. The blackness of space melted

away to the virtual gridlines of the system’s training mode …

and it was all a dream. Gabriel’s muscles unknotted themselves for

the first time in about five minutes.

“Better?” Enda said.

“Much.”

“Then come out of it, now. I do not see why you feel you must

drive yourself so hard, just for an exercise.”

“It’s a human thing,” he said, taking another breath for

the appreciation of it not being his last. “You wouldn’t

understand.”

He could sense Enda putting her eyebrows up. A couple of moments

later Gabriel was alone in the field. He took his time about getting

out, shutting down instruments, making gunnery safe, and checking the

pieces that purported to have been made safe. It was not that he

didn’t trust Enda, but partners checked one another’s work when

weapons were involved. Besides, said that nasty hard-edged part of

his mind, someday you might have to do all this yourself. Get used to

the possibility now so that when it catches you by surprise, you will

survive. She would want it that way.

He finished his checks, then made the small movement of mind that

folded the fighting field away from him. A moment later he was

sitting in the normal lighting of Sunshine’s narrow cockpit

looking over at Enda.

“Helm,” she said as she unbuckled her restraints, “do

not change the subject.”

“I got tired of fighting for their side,” Helm said.

“Besides, you were winning.”

“You should have let the business take its course

regardless,” Enda said. “That is the purpose of these

exercises, so I am told.” She glanced over at Gabriel, who was

wiping the sweat off his face.

“How did we do?” he said to the air.

“Twenty-six minutes,” said Helm. “You should be

pleased with yourself. It’s precious few engagements that run much

longer than fifteen these days, especially with numbers like that.

You’re getting a better tactical sense, that’s certain.”

“He is also running himself ragged,” said Enda, watching

Gabriel mop himself up with the cleaning cloth that he had started to

keep by his seat for these exercises. “Are you all right?”

“I was nearly dead, I thought,” Gabriel said, still

finding it hard to talk without gasping for air. “Boy, is

that real. It’s worth it, even if I do hate it more than anything.”

“Well, you were the one to discover how effective it is,”

Enda said, levering herself out of the left-hand seat and standing up

to take a good long stretch. “It is not my fault if the ‘deep

limbic’ implementation of the fighting software deprives you of any

sense that this is a simulation. If you have a problem with that,

take it up with the programmers at Insight.”

“They’d probably just say that there’s no difference between

a simulation and the real thing if the simulation’s real enough,”

said Helm. “Like to see some of them out here testing the

software under conditions like this.”

Gabriel made a face.

“It might be amusing,” Enda said to Helm. “Anyway,

I do not see that it makes the experience of fighting any less useful

for Gabriel if, during the fight, he feels as if is real.

Surely that should sharpen one’s reactions. The more frequently that

particular reaction is sharpened— the terror and coping with

it— the easier it should get for you, or so it seems, from what

I know of human habituation training. Am I wrong?”

“Not in the concrete sense,” Gabriel muttered. “I

just don’t like to have to do the laundry after every session.”

“You do the laundry after every session anyway,” Enda

said, wandering out of the pilot’s cabin and back toward the little

living area, “whether we work out in limbic mode or not. Sweat,

you keep telling me, is something no marine can ever put up with.”

“The problem’s not the sweat,” Gabriel said, more or

less under his breath. Then he laughed and pried himself out of his

seat.

Even though he had been using the fighting field every day for six

months now, it still sometimes came as a shock to Gabriel how cramped

the cockpit felt by comparison when he came out. The beauty of the

Insight “JustWadeln” weapons management system was to make

you feel as if you were the ship— moving freely in space

with your weapons available to you in the form you liked best.

At any rate, Gabriel was becoming more expert with Sunshine’s gunnery software all the time. He thought he would probably never

master the cool grace-in-fire that Enda displayed. It constantly

bemused him how someone so peaceful and serene could be so very good

at gunnery.

“Guns are the soul of rationality,” Enda had said to him

late one night. “They have a certainty of purpose, and they

fulfill it— when they don’t jam— and like any other fine

weapon, they pass on some of that certainty to their users, if the

user is wise enough to hear what the gun has to say to him.”

To hear this coming from a delicate ethereal-looking fraal who

might mass forty-five kilos if she put on all the clothes she owned,

turned Gabriel’s brain right around in his head. What guns mostly

said to him was, Shoot me, shoot me! Yes, oh yes!— with

various appropriate sound effects. Nonetheless, Enda’s communion with

her gunnery was something to be envied, and Gabriel occasionally

listened to see if the guns had anything further to say to him on the

subject.

He walked down into the living area and found Enda already

ensconced in one of the two fold-down chairs in the sitting room,

talking to Helm again over comms and looking as fresh as if she had

not been in battle for the better part of half an hour.

“How do you do it?” he asked her.

She looked at him with amusement. “I pull the chair down,

like this—”

“Never mind,” Gabriel said. “When did he say he was

coming?”

“Twenty minutes. We can finish debriefing as soon as you’re

done playing with the new hardware.”

“Good,” Gabriel said, grinning, and walked on down to

the little laundry room to get rid of his present shipsuit, which

smelled as if it had seen better days.

Gabriel shoved his clothes down the chute, clamped the hatch

closed and hit “Cycle.” Straightening, he looked at the

newly installed shower cubicle and dallied with the idea of a real

water shower. Might as well do it while we’re close to someplace

where water’s cheap. If it ever really was, when you were part

owner in a spacecraft, when mass cost money to lift, and

noncompressible mass twice as much.

Finally, he opted for a steam-and-scrape cycle, with ten seconds

of water at the end. Gabriel punched the options in, let the machine

get itself ready. To save time, he stood over the sink, wet his head,

and took a squirt of shampoo out of the in-bulkhead dispenser.

Getting grayer, Gabriel thought, scrubbing for a few moments in

front of the mirror. And why not? The last six months would probably

be enough to gray anybody out a little bit. Still, his father hadn’t

gone gray this fast, and he couldn’t remember his mother ever saying

anything about early gray running in her family. Gabriel had never

thought about this before, but now that he was interested, there was

no way to ask— or maybe no one to ask. He hadn’t heard from his

father since before …

The shower chimed, letting him know it was ready for him. Gabriel

got in, closed the door tight, and hit the control for the steam.

After a few minutes, through the ship’s structure Gabriel could

feel the very faint bump and rock, which meant someone was at the

airlock. He’s early, Gabriel thought, turning to catch the steam.

Probably wants to chat with Enda without me in the way.

The steam stopped. Gabriel lathered up in a hurry from the scrub

dispenser set in the wall and peered through the steamy glass at the

mirror where he could see nothing. He knew what would be visible

there. He was looking more lined than he ought to at twenty-six. The

stress. We’ve been through a lot in the last half-year. When things

even out, when we find work we like better, when the money settles

down to a steadier income …

When I find out who framed me.

That was the underlying problem, the one not likely to be solved

any time soon. That was what they were probably already settling in

to discuss out in the sitting room, Enda over a tumbler of kalwine,

and Helm over something stronger.

Gabriel shook his head, scattering water and lather. The water

spat down from the shower head above, and he started counting so as

not to be caught with soap all over him when it ran out. Every drop

would be recycled, of course. It had not been like this on his old

ship, which had water to spare. Whole bathtubs full of it, Gabriel

thought. Hot. You could splash it around. There had been times over

the past six months when, while hunted from one world to the next,

shot at, driven into hiding, kidnapped and attacked with knives and

guns and God knew what else, the thing that had really bothered Gabriel was that he couldn’t have a real bath.

The shower warning chimed. Gabriel scrubbed frantically, turning

to rinse himself. Bang! The water valve slammed itself shut,

unforgiving. Gabriel stood there, steaming and wistful, trying to see

over his shoulder whether he had gotten the last of the soap off his

back.

He got out, pulled a towel out of the dispenser, dried himself,

and put the towel down the chute as well. In the delivery-side hatch

was his other shipsuit, rigorously clean and a little too stiff for

his tastes. Gabriel shook it out, slipped into it, stroked the seam

closed, and did a couple of deep knee-flexes to let the fabric

remember where he bent. He paused before the mirror to make sure the

nap of his hair was lying in the right direction before walking out.

The place smelled of hot food— something Helm had brought

over from Longshot with him.

“I swear,” Gabriel said as he came up the hall, pausing

by one of the storage cabinets to get out a tumbler, “I don’t

know where you get that stuff from. It’s not like you don’t shop in

the same places we do. Why does your food always smell so terrific?”

“It doesn’t dare do otherwise,” said the rough gravelly

voice in the sitting room. There was Helm Ragnarsson, sitting immense

in the foldout guest chair, which had extended itself valiantly to

its full extent in both dimensions but was sagging under Helm’s

massive and muscular bulk, originally engineered for heavy-planet and

high-pressure work. “Here you are finally,” Helm said.

“Still wet behind the ears.”

“Yeah, thanks loads,” Gabriel said. “I’m going to

have to fix that thing again, you know that? We should make you bring

your own chair.” He turned to Enda, picked up the kalwine bottle

sitting by the steaming covered casserole on the table, which was now

folded down between the chairs. “Refill?”

“Yes, thank you, Gabriel,” she said, and held out her

glass.

Gabriel poured for them both, then lifted the lid of the

casserole. “What is this?”

“Eshk in red brandy sauce,” Helm said.

“Now you did not buy that at the package commissary at

Iphus Collective,” said Enda. “Helm, confess. You cooked it.”

Helm grinned, and the look made Gabriel think that the top of his

head might fall off. There was always something unexpected about this

huge, near-rectangular brick of a man with his meter-wide shoulders

and his iron-colored hair, suddenly producing one of these face-wide

grins. It was the kind of smile you could imagine a carnivore

producing at a social gathering of prey animals. “And if I did?”

Helm said.

“Then I think we should eat it,” Gabriel said. “Plates?”

Enda reached under the table. “I have them here. Helm, tongs

or a fork?”

“Tongs, please.”

Gabriel went and got the third freestanding folding chair from his

bunk cubicle, came back, set it up, and fell to with the others.

There was not a lot of discussion during this period, except about

the sauce, which had even Helm breaking out in a sweat within a

matter of minutes.

“I thought you said humans developed a resistance to this

kind of spicery,” Enda said, looking from one to the other of

them.

“Eventually,” Helm said.

Gabriel was unable to speak for the moment and resigned himself to

suffering in silence and drinking more wine.

Finally the edge of their hunger was blunted enough to talk over

the afternoon’s simulation, its high points and low, and the ways in

which Gabriel and Enda’s reactions could improve to deal with the

combat situations— particularly those little ball bearing ships

that had been attacking them. Ships of the same kind had pressed

Gabriel and Enda here in Corrivale and over in Thalaassa as well. All

this side of the Verge was buzzing with rumors of them now, ships of

a strange construction, appearing from nowhere, vanishing again.

Nothing more had been seen of them around here, but this did not make

Gabriel feel any better about the area or their prospects in it.

“You didn’t call me in for this practice session so close to

our last one without reason,” Helm said, wiping his mouth with a

paper cloth and folding it carefully.

“No,” Gabriel said. “I think we should be thinking

about leaving.”

“I suppose it will come as something of a wrench for the

locals,” Enda said. “They have been coming to depend on our

custom …”

“And on us paying their outrageous prices,” Gabriel

muttered. “Well, no more.”

“You have decided, then.”

“Since when is it ‘I’?” Gabriel asked.

Enda leaned back and sighed, giving him a look that might have

translated as affectionate exasperation. “Gabriel, I have been

wandering around this part of the worlds for a long time. My opinion

about where we take Sunshine is simple. I don’t care. I am

delighted to defer to you in this regard. Where shall we go?”

“Someplace with work,” Helm said. “I mean, there’s

not much money in staying here. If work were the only problem, you’d

have angled your jets and moved right after we got back from

Thalaassa, since I don’t think you want to work in this system any

more. Well, about time, is all I can say.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t said anything about it before

now,” Gabriel said.

“Before you made up your mind?” Helm said as he put his

feet up. “No point. You’re still a typical shiphead— all

strong-and-silent stuff until it’s actually time to move. Then get up

and do it with no warning. Which is smart. The best starfall is the

unadvertised one.”

“A masterly summation,” Enda said. “Perhaps, Helm,

you will tell us as well what Gabriel now has in mind, for this has

been a matter of interest to me also.”

Helm snickered. “I’d go into futures trading if I could do

that.” He leaned back and looked at Gabriel. “What’s the

word?”

Gabriel shook his head. “I haven’t found out anything further

here about the people responsible for getting me cashiered,” he

said, “and the money in this system isn’t worth the trouble of

staying. At the same time I hate getting too far away from the Grid,

but it’s also occurred to me that the need to be close to the data

had obscured a possibility … and I thought we might look into

doing some infotrading.”

Enda bowed her head, a “thinking” gesture. Gabriel

glanced at Helm.

“Big profit margins there,” said Helm. “Big risks,

too. You have a software or hardware crash while you’re transiting

with live stuff from a drivesat relay, or you run into some kind of

transportation problem, miss a starfall, drop the data, and suddenly

there are people suing you from here back to the First Worlds.”

“Not somewhere I’d been planning to go at this point,”

said Gabriel.

“Not someplace you’d ever go again,” Helm muttered, “if

you lose a load of data. Lawyers …” He shivered. “But

the profit margins …” He looked as thoughtful as Enda.

“Twenty to fifty percent on a load, if you pick somewhere just

opening up. ‘Course places like that are dangerous too.”

“I had thought,” Gabriel said, “about hiring some

armed backup.”

Helm grinned from ear to ear. His ship was full from core to shell

with weaponry of all kinds. But then Helm was a mutant, and unless

you were a mutant who was also tired of life, armament out in these

less than perfectly policed spaces was a good idea. Too many humans

considered being a mutant some kind of treason against the human

genotype to be punished in any way that wouldn’t get you caught. Helm

clearly did not intend to be caught assisting anyone in this kind of

rough justice by lacking the kind of hardware that would dissuade

them.

“Where were you thinking of going?” Helm said. “Got

to consider fuel, victualling—”

“Terivine,” said Gabriel.

Enda nodded sidewise. “It would make sense,” she said.

“Terivine has become a common enough waystation for ships doing

the runs between Corrivale and Aegis, and Lucullus as well, but the

place is not heavily populated …”

“That’s not a huge problem,” Gabriel said. “Besides

the colonists, there’s a considerable presence of scientists studying

the riglia, those avian sentients they found. They need to move their

data back and forth at something better than the crawl they’d get

from using unscheduled infotraders. Tendril and Aegis both have to

move administrative information pertaining to their colonies there.

It looks like a good small market for a beginning infotrading

business.”

“You have obviously been doing your research,” Enda

said, “so you will know what kind of competition is there.”

“Not much,” Gabriel said. “Two firms work the

system at present. One’s native, a one-ship company called Alwhirn.

Another is a licensee, Infotrade Interstellar Aegis.”

Helm’s eyebrows went up. “Isn’t Infotrade Interstellar a

subsidiary of VoidCorp?”

“These days, what isn’t?” Gabriel said wearily.

“Us,” said Enda. She pursed her lips in an

expression that made her look unusually like a disapproving

grandmother.

“You think they don’t know it?” said Helm. “But

here you sit in the system, bold as brass plate, as if they didn’t

dare touch you.”

“They do not,” Enda said, “for the moment. Not

after we put so sharp a thorn in their side at Thalaassa and

Corrivale, and Gabriel became the hammer to drive it in. They would

be eager enough to repay him the trouble. The Concord would be quick

to lay that at their doors if they tried that now. However, once we

move elsewhere …”

That was always the problem. Since the vast expanse of the Verge

began to reopen, the stellar nations had been moving in with various

degrees of eagerness, acquisitiveness, or plain old-fashioned greed.

Trade was opening out again, or for the first time. The wars that had

cut off the Verge from the rest of humanity for so long had kept

major trade routes and infrastructure from being established. Now

what should have happened a quarter century earlier was beginning to

happen again and in a rush. Every stellar nation or

multistellar-national with the funds to spare was expanding into this

area, hunting markets to master and resources to exploit. Systems

that were backwaters ten years ago had become trading crossroads of

considerable wealth and power. Through such systems, like Corrivale,

Terivine, and Aegis, the huge cruisers of the stellar nations passed,

both to trade and to find ways to extend their own influence.

Mutual-assistance treaties, joint-use agreements for planets or whole

systems, “understandings” and “gentlemen’s agreements”

could result in a world becoming the property of a stellar empire or

company based thousands of light-years away. VoidCorp was probably

the least principled of these. Once a software company, VoidCorp was

now an interstellar power with many systems under its domination and

many more becoming increasingly entangled in its web of interlocking

corporate affiliations, treaties, and licensing agreements.

Gabriel sighed. “If we try to force ourselves into a position

where we don’t go anywhere that VoidCorp goes, we won’t have a

lot of choices. I don’t like them any better than either of you do,

especially considering that some part of VoidCorp Intelligence may

have had something to do with setting me up. There are millions of

VoidCorp Employees scattered across space who’ve never heard of us,

won’t have a clue who we are, and even if they’re told, they may not

care.”

Enda frowned. “I would not be too sure. We only liberated

about a thousand sesheyans that the Corporation is sure should be

Employees. That the Concord declared them not to have been so is

fortunate, but it will not count for much with VoidCorp.”

“I.I. Aegis is just a licensee,” Gabriel said, “local

people running the business with VC equipment and contracts. It’s a

common enough arrangement, and licensees don’t necessarily agree with

the Company’s overall policies.”

Enda nodded. “It is too easy, I suppose, to become paranoid,

and see Corpses hiding behind every asteroid, plotting our downfall.

Have you done initial price-estimates as well? We would have to make

alterations to the hold. The armoring we installed for mining work

would need to be removed, and the new data storage facilities would

not come cheap.”

“Depends where you get them,” Gabriel said and reached

out to touch the part of the wall that hid the display for Sunshine’s Grid access. It came alive with imagery from the ship’s internal Grid

handling computers— a vast green plain rippling with some kind

of long grass, a favorite image of Enda’s.

“Data trading,” Gabriel said, and the display flickered

into an image of many rows of text and columns of figures.

“Oh, brother,” Helm said, reaching down under his chair.

“Half a moment while I get something to strengthen me.”

“Why, Helm,” Enda said, “surely so acute a

businessman cannot look on a sight such as this unmoved.”

“Yes I can,” Helm said. “Wake me when we get to the

weapons allocations.”

Gabriel threw a sidewise glance at the bottle Helm now held. “How

can you drink that stuff?” Gabriel asked, for the bottle

was one of those squat square ones that Bols Luculliana came in.

Helm poured out two fingers of the thick clear stuff and shrugged.

“It clears the mind. Want some?”

Gabriel shuddered at the thought and looked at the screen again.

For a few minutes he went over the figures with Enda. She looked

cautiously at the ones for the installation of the data tanks, which

Gabriel suggested should be done by a small independent firm at

Diamond Point on Grith.

“It is close by,” Enda said, “and would be

convenient for maintenance on return runs, but the firm has not been

in business for long “

“It comes with good recommendations,” Gabriel said.

“Ondway told me about it.”

Enda blinked at that and smiled. “Indeed. He would have some

interest in seeing that our money is well spent, and in distributing

business to the local community.”

Gabriel nodded. They had met Ondway in Iphus Collective. The

meeting had been an unusual one. In these spaces where VoidCorp’s

influence was strong, it was almost unheard-of to run into a sesheyan

who did interplanetary work and was not an Employee. Ondway had put

Gabriel and Enda in the way of some unusual business opportunities

and also had given them hints about conditions on one of the

supposedly uninhabited planets in the Thalaassa system— hints

that had led Gabriel to investigate farther and get them into

trouble. After the dust settled, Gabriel and Enda had been awarded a

small public bounty from the Concord civil liberties fund. What had

amused Gabriel immensely was the notion that, while one arm of the

Concord government wanted him imprisoned, another was giving him

grants for catching VoidCorp with its Corporate pants down. However,

there had also been a less public award, not so much a bounty as a

thank you from a sesheyan interest group of which Ondway was a

prominent member— a group of native activists profoundly moved

at Gabriel’s single-handed rescue of more than a thousand of their

kind from the Thalaassan world where VoidCorp was attempting to

quietly exterminate them. Gabriel had insisted that there had been

nothing single-handed about it. Enda had been in the thick of things

with him, and he had merely been well positioned to intimidate some

people whom he loathed. The sesheyans were not interested in his

excuses, and they insisted on crediting Sunshine’s expense

accounts with a considerable sum. Between these two awards, Gabriel

and Enda were in a position to live less marginally than they had

when they first went into business together.

Then had come the question of what to do with the money. Their

first indulgence had been a shower for Sunshine, and there had

been no argument about that, but such a small luxury had not made

much of a dent in their new funds. Enda, conservative as a fraal in

her second century might be expected to be, was all for investment of

the rest. So was Gabriel, but there had been little agreement about

the kind of investment to do. Now, though, Enda was looking

interested.

“All right,” she said. “I concede that installation

may as well be done on Grith. But the general risk still gives me

pause in comparison with, say, mining.” She reached out to pour

another glass of kalwine. “A cargo of ore does not go stale, nor

does it have value until one delivers it to the processor. This kind

of cargo is more sensitive and needs to be better protected.”

Helm looked up at that. “The weapons allocations,” he

said.

“We need more guns,” Gabriel said, “or upgrades on

the old ones.”

Helm grinned.

Gabriel brought up another page of price lists, and Helm commented

at length on the virtues and vices of the weaponry available in this

part of the Verge.

“I have my own preferences,” he said, “and you

don’t have to go all the way to Austrin-Ontis for decent weapons any

more. You should think about upgrading that rail cannon, at the very

least. It would be even better to get rid of it. What I’d really like to see you get would be a mass cannon, but—”

Gabriel laughed. “Oh, sure, let’s just stop the next passing

Star Force cruiser and pull one off!”

“Some day,” Helm said, “the cost of the things will

drop so that people who aren’t military can get their hands on one.”

His expression suggested that he intended to be the first.

“Meanwhile, those upgrades. I have a friend who knows where you

could get a discount.”

“Delde Sota,” Gabriel and Enda said in chorus. Enda

chuckled. “Helm, is there any business in this system

that mechalus does not have her braid or her brain plugged into?”

“You want good machinery,” Helm said, “go to a

mechalus. Who would know it better? The good doctor collects favors

from everyone she fixes up. She put me onto somebody who’s done

fairly well by me. Any more figures?”

Gabriel looked over at Enda and said, “I don’t think this is

a decision I should make by myself, no matter how you insist that the

things I did got us the awards that would make this possible.”

Enda merely produced one of those demure little fraal smiles.

“You were a marine too long,” Helm said to Gabriel. “You

were good at taking orders, but now you have other problems—

staying alive, mostly. That means making decisions, not taking

orders.”

“What made it hard,” Gabriel said, “was the

prospect of moving too far from where my trouble happened.”

“You haven’t had much luck with tracing the ones responsible,

have you?” Helm said.

“Not much. The trail leading back to ‘Jacob Ricel,’ or

whatever his name was before he boarded Falada, is cold.

There’s no way for me to go where it might still be warm without

being arrested. The marines have never been happy with the outcome of

my trial. They’d prefer to do it again their way.” Gabriel shook

his head. “Grid information’s cold as well, or getting that way,

and getting at it is expensive.”

“Whereas if you were hauling data,” Helm said, “you

would have periodic access to the drivesat relays from which you were

hauling … and hauler’s discount on data access, while

spending a lot of safe time away from the Conkers.”

Gabriel nodded. He had no desire to spend time closer to Concord

space than he had to. There were bounty hunters who would be willing

to turn Gabriel in for the reward. Yet outside of Concord space there

was no resolution of his problem. Sooner or later, Gabriel would have

to go back with what evidence he was able to garner and take his

chances with Concord justice.

“As regards ‘riding shotgun’ for us,” Enda said, “would

you be available?”

When Helm looked up from pouring another splash of Bols, there was

an odd expression in his eyes. Gabriel thought it looked like

gratitude, but it sealed over quickly into the old no-nonsense humor.

“Been waiting for you to make up your mind. My schedule’s

wide open. When do we leave?”

“About a week,” Gabriel said. “Getting the data

tanks installed will take most of the time.”

“And arranging to see what kind of first load we can

acquire,” Enda said. “I will see to that.”

“I’ll talk to the doctor in the morning,” Helm said.

“Meanwhile, I could use a nap, and I have to clean up after

myself. Cooking!” He stood, looming over Enda, huge and amused.

“I did it with an autolaser. In a pot.”

“You do most things with an autolaser,” Enda said

mildly. “The pot was doubtless added in a moment of

inspiration.”

Helm laughed, picked up his bottle and put it on the table for

them, and went off down toward the airlock. “Call me in the

morning,” he said to Gabriel, “when you get your schedule

sorted out.”

“I will.”

The airlock cycled shut behind Helm, and Gabriel got up to help

Enda clean up after their meal. It was something they were both

punctilious about— a ship in which some parties are tidy and

some are sloppy soon turns into a little hell. Once the table was

uncovered and folded away and the plates and utensils were washed and

stowed, Gabriel folded a chair down and just sat there looking at the

screen, which had defaulted to that view of the green field under

some alien sun, the long grass rippling silkily as water in the wind

that stroked it.

Down in her cubicle, Gabriel could hear Enda moving around,

putting her bed in order for the night. A year ago he had known

nothing of her, known no fraal at all and precious few aliens of any

kind. Now he could hardly imagine a world without her— a world

circumscribed by these scrubbed gray walls and floors— the fire

of starrises and starfalls, some new primary burning golden or

blue-white or green through the front viewports, the fierce sky-blue

of Enda’s huge eyes.

Once the world had been different, not gray-walled but

white-walled, the color of marine country in a Star Force ship. Life

had been simple, explicable, neatly circumscribed. You went where you

were ordered— or were taken there. You fought who you were told

to, and you cleaned up afterwards. Ready to fight … He

had been, but the nature of the enemies had changed overnight, and

the conflict had become difficult to understand. Too difficult for

the marine he was then— and Gabriel had found himself

cashiered, cast loose on a world he didn’t know, alone and

friendless.

Then Enda had turned up. There were aspects of their first meeting

and their subsequent dealings that Gabriel still did not understand.

But he was certain that it was a better world with her in it, and

that he owed her most of what he had now. He was partner in a ship,

half of a business, and had come through some difficult times getting

used to it. He had survived, but there was always the question of how

long he could keep on doing it.

“You are thinking harder than usual,” Enda said.

Gabriel glanced up. “Does it show?”

“I heard you. You are still unsure …”

Gabriel chuckled. “Mindwalkers. I can’t even brood without

being overheard any more.”

She pulled down the chair opposite him. “I have had much less

training in the art than most. However, if you think loudly, I cannot

help it. You also must not think I desire to pressure you in any

direction. If I have been doing so, you must tell me so.”

Gabriel shook his head. “You misheard me. You can be pretty

forceful, but not that way. In fact, it’s hard to get you to tell me

what to do even about little things.”

“Perhaps I refuse to be lured into a role that you would

accept too easily,” Enda said. “Gabriel, is your choice

firm?”

“Yup. Let’s get out of here.”

Enda tilted her head to one side, one of the fraal versions of the

human nod.

“We had not discussed how we will leave. Do we make starfall

to Terivine by ourselves, or hitch a ride with some larger vessel?”

“Maybe not on the first leg,” Gabriel said. “If you

set out on your own, sometimes people assume you’re going to keep

going that way. If we picked up a hitch after we make our

first starfall …” He shrugged.

“This deviousness,” Enda said, “suits you well

enough, you who were such an innocent only six months ago. Beware

lest you lose track of who you are beneath all the twists and turns.”

She smiled as she said it, but Enda’s look was more than usually

thoughtful. Gabriel had never had a living grandmother to look at him

in this particular way. Now it occurred to him that this was how one

might look if she were about a meter and a half tall and so slender

that she looked like you could break her in half like a stick.

“There are times,” Gabriel said, “when I’ve

considered that.”

Enda blinked at him. “What exactly?”

“Losing track, of who I am, or was. A little discreet

cosmetic surgery, maybe … a change of look, a change of name.

Let Gabriel Connor have an accident somewhere. Change the name

appearing on Sunshine’s registry. Become someone else …”

“It would be a logistical problem to change our registry,”

Enda said. “Not impossible, but expensive, and it is impossible to do such things without leaving an electron trail.

Additionally, for those who are determined to know where you are, and

who you are … I question whether the stratagem would work for

long.”

“More to the point,” Gabriel said at last, “is

whether I really want to hide. I don’t want to throw away my name. I

want to clear it.”

“But you are finding that hard,” Enda said, “and

potentially harder as time goes on.”

“Without the evidence I need to prove I didn’t kill those

people willingly, yes.”

“The frustration,” Enda said softly, “can wear a

soul down, if allowed to do so.”

“Even a stone wears down under water,” Gabriel said.

“Every time someone hears the name ‘Gabriel Connor’ and looks at

me that way— ‘Oh, that Gabriel Connor, you were on the

Gridnews, you murdered your best friend and got away with it, some

legal loophole or other. Aren’t you proud of yourself?’ Every time I

see that look, it’s another drip on the stone. Is it so strange to

wish it would just stop?”

He tried to look steadily at her. Even now, even with half a year

of time between him and the deaths of his comrades in that shuttle

explosion, it was hard to talk about it, even with someone as coolly

compassionate as Enda.

“It is one of your people’s sayings,” Enda said, “long

ago I heard it. ‘When Heaven intends to confer great office upon a

man, it sheds disaster upon him and brings all his plans to naught;

reduces him in the sight of the world, and confounds all his

undertakings. Then it is seen if he is ready.’ “

Gabriel laughed. “That’s all very reassuring if you know that

you’re intended for some ‘great office.’ Otherwise, it just seems

delusional, a way to rationalize the act of the universe doing what

it usually does— crapping on the ordinary guy.”

“In this then,” Enda said, “plainly there is

universal justice. The great and the lowly are treated the same.

Perhaps what makes the difference is in how they react to it.”

Chapter Two

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A STARFALL AWAY FOR a big ship, or five or six starfalls off for a

small one, a Concord cruiser slipped massively through the outer

fringes of the Lucullus system. If no one in the system was sure what

its business was, that state of affairs well suited one of its

passengers.

Lorand Kharls sat quietly in the room he had occupied since

arriving aboard the cruiser. It was very bare, for he did not have

time to go in for much decoration. His work required him to change

residence often, and he disliked having to pack much more than a

change of clothes and a box of reference works, books and solids and

so forth. He had come far enough along in his job that this was more

than enough to help him get his business done— that, and hours

of talking and listening.

There was a soft knock at his door. “Yes?” he said, and

his assistant, a tall young man wearing mufti and a complete lack of

expression, slid the panel aside.

“She’s here.”

“Thank you, Rand. Ask her to come in.”

The door slid wider, and a dark-haired young woman walked in. She

wore a Star Force uniform with Intel pips at the collar, and an

expression pleasanter than his assistant’s, though as neutral. She

would never have been able to manage anything like his assistant’s

fade-into-the-veneer quality. Her face had too much character—

a stubborn forehead, strong chin, and those large brown eyes that

somehow made the rest of her face seem insignificant.

“Aleen Delonghi, sir,” she said, saluting him.

“You’re welcome. Please sit down.”

She did, in the one other chair that the room contained. There was

nothing else in the place but a table with some data solids on it.

“The captain tells me that you’ve been asking your superior

for a chance to speak to me regarding the mission that brought me

here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This suggests that you think you know what should be done

about the situation.”

“I think so, sir.”

“After, of course, having gone through all the salient

information that we have spent the last months collecting and

collating.”

“All of it that has been made available to me, sir, yes.”

Kharls looked at her. She was experienced enough at what she had

been doing over the past few years. The administrative department

that had sent her to him along with several other Concord

Intelligence operatives had spoken highly of her talents. Now he

would see whether they were justified in doing so.

“Very well. You’ve seen the subject’s statements on the

matter, and you’ve seen Intel’s recommendations regarding the

situation so far. What is your opinion of them?”

She took a deep breath. “I think they look like a pack of

misdirections and lies from beginning to end.”

“Any ideas as to whose lies?” Kharls asked.

She said nothing.

He sat back in his chair. “You know,” Kharls said

slowly, “there was a time, a culture— a human culture,

mind you— in which, if someone accused you of lying, they had

the right to try to kill you. Right there. Isn’t that fascinating?”

She paled, and her eyes slid to the tri-staff that leaned casually

against the wall within Kharls’s reach. “They called it ‘giving

someone the lie,’ ” Kharls said, “or ‘the lie direct’.

What a busy time it must have been, human nature being what it was

and is.”

“Administrator Kharls,” Delonghi said, sounding much

more cautious now, “maybe I should rephrase that.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Your behavior as regards this … asset, if that’s the

word I’m fumbling for— for he looks more like a liability every

time I consider him— your behavior regarding him is undermining

a genuine Intelligence priority. How is Concord Intel— or Star

Force Intel for that matter, since that’s my cover at the moment—

supposed to find out anything useful when you allow other assets to

contaminate him?”

” ‘Allow?’ ” He looked at her with surprise.

“That suggests that I know in advance what they’re going to do.”

“Of course you—” She stopped.

Kharls looked at her hard from under those bushy eyebrows. “Miss

Delonghi,” he said. “Forgive me if I do not take you

entirely into my confidence at the moment. I have a very large remit,

as you may know—”

“You are a Concord Administrator,” she said, with the

air of someone trying to cut straight to the heart of the matter,

“and probably the most powerful being in these spaces.”

He leaned back again, though not with any look of being flattered

or mollified. “Would it shock you,” Kharls began, “if

you knew that my main purpose, as so powerful a being— let me

for the moment adopt your language— was to create the

conditions in which my job description, and my job, became

unnecessary?”

Her eyes widened. Kharls did not smile at her, though the

temptation briefly crossed his mind.

“You won’t believe me when I say as much,” Kharls said.

“What sane being would? Who would want to put himself out of a

job in which planetary governments take his lightest word as the

equivalent of enacted primary legislation, in which he can exercise

what used to be called ‘high, low, and middle justice’— the

powers of judge, jury, and executioner? Would you believe something

like that? Of course not. So I can make such outrageous statements

and get away with it. Not being believed is a tool of considerable

utility when one exercises it with care.” He waited to see if

she would at least react to the irony. Not a flicker, he thought. It

will be a while yet before this one has come along to where I want

her. “At any rate, I have not sent this particular asset out

into the night to remain uncontaminated.”

“There are those who say he’s contaminated enough as it is,”

said Delonghi, trying unsuccessfully to restrain an expression of

scorn.

“So they have and will,” Kharls replied. “That’s

all to the good, for the moment. If the situation changes, I will

judge it accordingly … but not before.”

“You’re telling me that you’ve purposely sent this operative

out to make contact with enemy intelligence organizations—”

” ‘Enemy’ is such a narrowing term,” said Kharls.

“Who knows in what relationship the Concord will stand within,

say, twenty or thirty years to any of the stellar nations that

presently are not part of it? Or how matters will stand in the Verge?

And even inside the Concord, as you well know, there’s considerable

difference of opinion about what nations and issues are most

important. Nearly infinite difference of opinion.” He

smiled grimly. “Fortunately, my job is not about reconciling

opinion, which is just as well, since that would be impossible. My

job is to make things out here in the Verge work as well as they can

for the moment, and to figure out how to make them work better still

for the people who’ll come out here to live, and those who are here

already. In particular, my remit charges me to look out toward the

edges of things, the unpoliced and untravelled spaces all around the

Verge where situations are not as clear-cut as they are in toward the

First Worlds— much less structured and more chaotic. The

textbooks don’t do much good out here for even the best-intentioned

agent, ambassador, or ship’s commander. One learns to strike out into

the dark and try techniques that might seem foolish elsewhere.”

Kharls sat back again, looking at his folded hands. “I have

no scruples about using agents who may seem tainted or chaotic to the

textbook types. If that conceals such agents’ true value, so much the

better, for valuable assets, unfortunately, tend to be killed the

most quickly. As regards the object of our discussion, however, you

need to be clear that I have not sent him anywhere. He is one

of the very few genuinely free operatives I manage— if manage

is even the word, since he completely rejects any idea that I have

any such power over him.”

“Then he’s a fool,” Delonghi said.

“Possibly, but he’s also right.”

Delonghi kept her face still. Kharls watched this exercise with

interest. “See that,” he said, “you still don’t

believe me. I wonder if the ancients had an offense called ‘disbelief direct’?”

He got up, stretched, and stepped around to the big viewport that

was the room’s only other indulgence. “If he draws the attention

of other intelligence assets,” Kharls said, looking out into the

starry blackness, “that is all to the good. He is a lightning

rod, Delonghi. He is being held out into the dark specifically to see

what forces he attracts. But he is not to be seen as having no value

simply because he is being used as a lightning rod. In the old days,

the very best ones used to be made at least partially of precious

metal.”

Kharls turned away from the viewport. “Now, obviously you

want to go out and have a personal look into this situation …

and meddle.” Her face did not move at the word. “Well, you

were a talented meddler for some years, which is why you’re here with

me and my people at all. I suppose we can hardly blame you for

wanting to revert to type.”

He sat down again. “In short, I’ve decided to allow you to do

so. I am instructing you to go and examine this situation

personally.” Her eyes narrowed. Badly concealed triumph, which

for the moment he declined to notice. “With the following

conditions. You are not to interfere in any way with the subject’s

free pursuit of his own objectives. You may try to determine what

they are or what he thinks they are. I require you to report

to me regularly on the details. You are to pay particular attention

to the attempts of other intelligence organizations to interfere with

him. You are not yourself to interfere with those attempts.”

“Even if they kill him?”

“They may look like they want to,” said Kharls softly,

“but I assure you, they do not. They will not either,

unless someone fumbles badly. They are eager to find out why we are so interested in him. As eager as you are, I dare say.”

At that, she did have the grace to blush. Kharls did not

react to this either. “You are to keep your own head down. Do

not be noticed by them. For our own part, I want to know the sources

of their interest— the motivations of whoever you find

watching him or trying to affect him. No one spends so much time

watching someone merely to discover what he knows that they don’t.

More often they watch to see what he knows that they know too

… and what they fear for anyone else to find out.”

She nodded.

“You will return on recall,” Kharls said. “Consult

with the colonel and the captain about your equipment and cover.

Otherwise, go do your work.”

“Thank you, sir,” Delonghi said.

“I wouldn’t,” Kharls said, “until you come back

with your job successfully completed.”

She turned to go.

” ‘Middle justice,’ ” Kharls said softly. “I

always wondered about that one.”

He glanced up again. Hurriedly, she saluted him and left. The door

slid shut behind her, leaving Kharls alone in his office.

She had her own agenda. Well, he had no interest in agents who

didn’t. The truly agendaless ones were too dangerous to trust with

anything. It was always a risk, sending an operative out on really

difficult business— especially since it was difficult to tell

exactly how he or she would react. As he had said, he did not scruple

to use the tainted or skewed asset when the moment came right. His

job required him to use his tools— the lightning rod or the

gun— with equanimity, to use them as effectively as their

structures allowed, and to destroy them if necessary … and not

to count the cost until the job was done. For Lorand Kharls, as he

felt his way toward the secrets of the deadly and dangerous things

that were slowly beginning to reveal themselves at the edges of the

Verge, that would most likely be many years. For the lightning rod …

… he would have to wait and see.

*

Gabriel was desperately busy for a week and a half. Arrangements

had to be made with the data tank installers on Grith, and while that

happened Sunshine had to be landed at Diamond Point and kept

in bond, with all the nuisance that entailed— signing in and

out every time you came aboard and executing a full “incoming”

inventory. Then came provisioning and victualling, with all those

supplies having to be delivered to a different part of the bond

facility, every box opened, every piece of replacement equipment

checked. Then for the weaponry installation, Sunshine had to

be taken out of bond again and trucked over to one of the unsealed

parts of the port. Gabriel had laughed at the description of the area

as “low security.” He didn’t think he had ever seen as many

discreetly disguised missile launchers and energy weapons arrayed

around a shipchandler’s yard as he saw here.

This part of the work was easiest for Gabriel, for Helm came into

his own here— never leaving the shipchandlery while anyone was

working on Sunshine, hanging over the mechanics’ and

engineers’ shoulders, seeming to watch everything at once. They swore

at him, but not too often. Everyone there knew that Helm was expert

with weaponry, and though he did not seem to be “carrying,”

this impression could be a mistake.

“I never shot anybody for an honest mistake,” he’d joke

with them. The installers would laugh and keep a close eye on Helm

while he checked the installation schematics against the

circuit-solids that were going in.

The gunnery work— a very hush-hush removal of the old plasma

cannon energy conduits and their replacement with new ones and new

software to match— took three days. It might have taken four if

Gabriel had allowed what Helm wanted, the removal of the rail cannon,

but at the last moment he decided to keep it. Helm argued the point,

but not hard, perhaps detecting that Gabriel had something on his

mind. He did, but he couldn’t explain it and refused to try. He was

nervous enough about the work being done on the plasma cannons. They

were not legal and were being carried “concealed” with flap

ports typical of much more innocuous weapons covering them. The

thought that someone whose silence had not been paid for might drop a

word about those guns into the wrong ears was one that recurred more

frequently to Gabriel the longer they stayed.

On the morning of the fourth day, they took Sunshine over

to the other side of Diamond Point to a little private pad. There

they left her under the supervision of guards whom Helm had hired

while the data tanks were installed. All their shopping was done, so

Gabriel had a day or so free— indeed, Helm told him to get

lost, and Enda was nowhere to be found, still busy with lining up

their infotrading contracts. Gabriel therefore spent a happy day

doing tourist things, finally climbing up to the observation platform

on the hundred-meter-high bluffs, a spot he had once visited as a

marine and once again as a tourist a few months ago. Now he stood

there in silence around sunset, watching as the huge reaches of

Grith’s tidal sea started to fill with the daily inrush. Despite all

the activity in which he had been involved over the last few days,

Gabriel’s mind felt oddly empty, as if waiting for something to

happen.

He reached idly into his pocket and began to turn his luckstone

over in his fingers. In some ways, the little stone was the last

remnant of the life he’d led before being held for murder. Everything

else from that pre-life was gone now … his uniforms, the

notebooks for his studies, the various bits and pieces that a young

man on active service picks up over a tour of duty. Only this

remained, a token given him as a “lightening exercise” by a

buddy who was going home and happily giving away every possible ounce

of freight. Sometimes Gabriel thought he should get rid of this too,

but the little thing was too evocative of the last of the good things

about being a marine— the companionship, the sense that there

were things worth fighting for and friends to fight beside. At first,

he had not been able to think much about those friends. The screams

of the ones he had killed echoed through his dreams for weeks. He

still heard them, but not as often. Gabriel thought as he looked down

at the ten-kilometer-long waves of the shallow tidal sea, when will I

stop hearing them altogether?

Will that be a good thing if I haven’t found out who killed

them?

There would be time for that. He would not stop looking. In the

meantime … better to try to get on with some other kind of

life.

He made his way back to the ship that evening to sleep aboard. The

next morning, the installation crew unceremoniously rousted Gabriel

out, telling him not to come back until lunchtime. When he did, he

heard a voice echoing down Sunshine’s middle corridor. Gabriel

paused— then realized with a jolt of happy surprise whose voice

that was.

“Delde Sota!” he called.

She turned toward him, smiling that cool wise smile of hers as

Gabriel stepped out. “Greeting: looking well, Gabriel.”

“So are you,” Gabriel said.

It was true, for she was quite handsome, even when you reckoned

her looks by strictly human standards. Easily two meters tall, Delde

Sota had long dark silvershot hair pulled straight back from her high

forehead. Around shoulder level her shaggy mane was braided, the

silver sheen of the cyberneural fiber and custom-made prehensile

fibrils weaving in patterns through the hair as the braid tapered and

became more complex. Finally, there was only a slender silver tail at

the end, which might lie still or part itself again and weave itself

into many-fibrilled patterns while the doctor considered something.

This was most of the time. Delde Sota was not one whose mind was long

inactive, and she seemed to consider it part of her business to keep

you thinking, too.

Enda was there as well, which surprised Gabriel. He had expected

her to spend another day out in town, but here she was chatting with

doctor, who was dressed for travel in the usual mechalus rlin

noch’i, the simple utilitarian one-piece garment that covered the

body from neck to feet— a soft gray-silver, in Delde Sota’s

case. Over this, she wore a long, wide-sleeved, floppy overcoat of

some soft fluffy charcoal-colored material, a marked contrast to the

slick gleam of the rlin noch’i. Gabriel was bemused by how

pleased he was to see the doctor. It was not merely that she had been

a great help to him and Enda— she had. There was a peculiarly

cheerful quality to her that made the power and complexity of her

personality pleasant to be around.

“Doctor, what brings you over this way?” Gabriel said.

“I’d hoped we’d see you before we left, but I didn’t think it

would be here.”

“Agenda: business,” said the doctor. “Also have

been in touch with Helm Ragnarsson about your plans. Suggestion from

him: desired in-depth system check of your ship’s software with an

eye to— shall we say?— tampering. Have found none.”

She paused as if to give Gabriel a chance to say something, but

the silence was a comment. There were indeed some devices aboard

Sunshine that enabled the ship to be monitored from outside.

They were there at Gabriel’s sufferance, for the time being, and he

only thought about them when he chose to.

Gabriel simply blinked at Delde Sota, and the end of her braid

wreathed about and tied itself into a brief knot before undoing

itself again. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said.

“Query: departure time?” Delde Sota said.

“Response: uncertain as yet.”

Gabriel looked over at Enda. She gave him a smile that, for its

intensity, was unusual.

“We have no more business to do here after our tanks are

full,” Enda said, “and full they will be. The response has

been better than I had hoped— far better. We now are only

delayed by the remaining time that the tank installation will take.

When that is done, we may download from the planetary Grid and be

away immediately.”

“Reaction: congratulation,” said Delde Sota. “Propitious

start. Wish that your business may continue so.” She gave

Gabriel a look, suggesting that she was referring to other aspects of

his business as well.

“If you’d like to check the tanks when the loading is

finished,” Gabriel said, “also with an eye to ‘Tampering,’

I would appreciate it.”

“Statement: would appreciate it myself,” said Delde

Sota, her eyes glinting with amusement. Data tanking was usually

proprietary hardware— something into which a mechalus was

always delighted to get her wires with an eye to simulating it for

her own purposes. “Query: this will not violate any end-user

agreements?”

Enda bowed her head “no” and said, “Obviously you

may not examine the data itself, which lies within confidentiality

seal and encryption, but as for the tanks—”

Delde Sota smiled. “Statement: know something about

confidentiality myself,” she said. “Ancillary statement—”

She broke off. Gabriel smiled, hearing a mechalus joke. Computer

circuitry and software were part of the physical world through which

Delde Sota moved, almost an element, like air or water, and part of

her own being. As a skilled former Grid pilot, no level of encryption

would long have kept Delde Sota out if she had her mind set on making

her way through it, but she did not. Her ethics were as hard and

dependable as the circuitry she had weaving through her.

“How long will you be with us, Doctor?” Enda said. “Will

you have time for a meal before we leave?”

“Reply: numerous,” Delde Sota said, turning away from

her brief attention to the Grid access panel across the hall from

them. “Information: I will be accompanying Helm Ragnarsson on

Longshot to Terivine.”

Gabriel’s mouth fell open. “Wha— Delde Sota, that’s

wonderful! But what about your job on Iphus?”

“Clarification: have taken extended sabbatical,” said

the doctor. “Requirements for service at Iphus Collective,

medical, medico-mechanical, have dropped off nearly thirty percent

over past two months. Assistant physician complaining of boredom.”

She grinned, a briefly fierce look. “Conjecture: no more

complaints for the immediate future.”

“Why the drop-off, do you think?” Enda said.

Delde Sota gave Enda a thoughtful look. “Theory: pressure

from VoidCorp against independent mining operations on Iphus

Collective increasing. Theory: VoidCorp pressure also being exerted

against Collective facility proper, with a view to forcing closure.”

“They have wanted that for a long time,” Enda said. “Do

you think our recent activities might be responsible for this

increased pressure?”

“Reply: uncertain,” the doctor said. “Agreement:

action has been in train for some time. Speculation: other influences

may also be responsible.”

She turned to look over at the Grid access panel. “Extenuating

circumstances: any job grows wearying with too much time in a single

place. Medicine may be practiced anywhere. Oaths pack small and

light. Other equipment requires more time.” She glanced sideways

at Gabriel. “Phymech on Helm’s ship has been upgraded to high

standard. Query: has yours been serviced lately?”

“Not since you last looked at it.”

“Have closeout deal on new upgrade pack,” Delde Sota

said. “Twenty percent off. Twenty-five for old and trusted

customers.”

Enda laughed and covered her eyes, a gesture indicating that the

fraal who made it could not cope with present events and was

considering taking up the contemplative life. “Another of your

discounts! Gabriel, take her somewhere quiet and negotiate with her,

or push her into the tank hold and lock her in, whichever you

please.”

“Twenty-three percent,” Delde Sota said over her

shoulder as Gabriel guided her away, “for insufficient show of

enthusiasm.”

They walked down Sunshine’s hall to look through the round

port in the door that gave onto the main hold. Once the hold would

have been a large empty space. Now it was filled with rack after rack

of data storage facility, the “tank,” a series of

ceiling-to-floor frames filled with heavy-duty data storage solids

and their holding and processing shells. Occasionally a fraal or

human technician could be seen squeezing among the racks, always with

arms full of more solids. Closer to the door, another technician was

installing the high-speed upload and download channeling transmitters

that would allow the carried data to be dumped to a system grid or

planetary facility on arrival.

“Very impressive,” Delde Sota said, peering through the

heavy glass, and the end of her braid twitched.

“It’ll be another couple of days before they assign us our

system address and bring the automatic router online,” Gabriel

said. “They have to finish the local network testing first.”

He sighed. “A whole new set of software to learn and no room to

maneuver if a mistake gets made.”

“Opinion: software not all that complex,” said Delde

Sota, “and will be within call if you need assistance.”

Gabriel leaned against the wall. “What brought this on?”

he said.

“Statement: have dealt with that issue,” said Delde

Sota, but her neural braid was wreathing again, tying itself in a

small tight knot. “Addendum …” She looked through

the window. “Sense of things moving. Generalized shifts in

political stances, of balance of power among stellar nations. Feeling

… that there might be wisdom in relocation elsewhere while

situation settles down.”

Gabriel nodded. “I was going to ask if you’d be willing to

act as a recipient for some data for me, but since you’re coming with

us … Do you have anyone remaining in Corrivale that you trust

to receive sensitive material?”

“Response: Ondway, certainly. Query: type of data?”

“I have some Grid searches underway for old personnel

information on the man who called himself ‘Jacob Ricel,’ “

Gabriel said. “The search material is coming to our local

Corrivale-based Grid address. But with Sunshine now designated

for infotrading, she’ll get a new address and routing codes, and the

old ones can’t be carried aboard her any more— the infotrade

authorities won’t permit multiple addressing for haulers. I was

wondering if someone in the system could hold anything that came in

for me till we pass this way again.”

“Solution: pass keywords to Ondway,” Delde Sota said.

“Research materials safe with him. Query: manage for you?”

“I’d appreciate that,” Gabriel said. “Come on

through and you can take what you need out of the ship’s Grid

system.”

She wandered back up the hallway with Gabriel and leaned against

the bulkhead in the sitting room while her braid insinuated itself

into the fold-down control panel that serviced the ship’s Grid

access. Gabriel leaned over the control panel and touched in his

password.

Delde Sota raised her eyebrows. “Result,” she said,

“system configuration and keyword material found. Store?”

“Please.”

She nodded and straightened up. “Secure. Intention: will pass

this information to Ondway this evening. Satisfactory?”

“Absolutely. Thanks, Doctor.”

“Mission statement: mental health requirements not to be

ignored in favor of physical/infrastructure needs,” said Delde

Sota as Enda came back in, carrying the small plastic water bottle

that she used to water her pet plant. “Body, mind, dichotomy

illusory/false. Query: plant sprout yet?”

Enda gave her a look. “There is no point in hurrying

something that is not ready,” she said. “Some would say

that owning a Gyrofresia is simply a disguised exercise in the

art of patience.”

“Opinion: too much patience bad for the bile ducts,”

said Delde Sota, and turned toward the lift. “Intention:

completion of errands. Helm will contact me when departure imminent.”

Delde Sota waved a hand; she vanished into the lift, and her braid

followed a moment later.

Gabriel sat down. “You said we were going out full?”

Enda nodded, putting the Gyrofresia bulb in its little

ceramic pot onto one of the service ledges. “We have done

unusually well for a first load,” Enda said, pouring water

carefully on the bulb.

“You mean we had a lot of help.”

“From Ondway and his connections in Diamond Point …

yes.”

“Connections that would not otherwise have given their

business to a first-time operation,” Gabriel said.

Enda tilted her head to one side. “Goodwill, as they call it,

is worth a great deal. We have a lot of it aboard, and we must do

what we can to repay it. We must make this first run with all due

speed. Some people will be watching carefully how we perform.”

“And some to see how our performance can be interfered with.”

Enda sighed. “Unquestionably. For the meantime, doing our job

with care will be the best defense.”

She went down the hall again, leaving Gabriel to sit and wonder

whether it would be enough. Still, with Helm along to help with

defense and Delde Sota there for computer and medical problems, we’re

as well prepared as we can be.

Gabriel sighed, got up, and headed off to the utility closet down

the hall. If he was going to worry, he could at least scrub something

while he did it.

Chapter Three

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THREE DAYS LATER, Sunshine departed Grith. The day before

departure was the tensest because of a bureaucratic problem. The

ship’s infotrader routing address, the complex set of passwords,

encryption routines, and system information that would identify it to

planetary grids, had not come through from the nearest assigning

authority on Aegis. That information itself was coming in on another

infotrader, since Corrivale had no drivesat relay of its own. Without

that address, there was no point in Sunshine leaving the

system at all. Yet much of the data she was carrying was

time-sensitive. The guarantees under which the data had been embarked

in Sunshine specified that most of it had to be dumped at

Terivine within fifty-five days. If the guarantees were broken, the

fees for the data haulage had to be first discounted, then refunded

if the delay was more than a hundred and twenty-one hours past the

designated time of delivery.

Gabriel and Enda spent the day worrying in their respective

styles. Gabriel paced up and down outside the ship, since he had

already cleaned everything aboard that could be cleaned. Enda sat

still, looking at her favorite vista of grass flowing in an alien

wind on the Grid access display.

“At least,” she said to Gabriel, “I will find out

quickly enough when anything happens.”

Two hours later, everything moved into high gear as the other

infotrader made starrise in the system, cleared Grith landing

control, and dumped its data to the planetary Grid. The access panel

chimed, then lit up with all manner of bizarre error messages.

“Oh no, something else has gone wrong,” Gabriel moaned

and ran back to the hold.

“Gabriel,” Enda called from the sitting room, “is

the holding system set to ‘active’?”

“How would I know? They didn’t—” He stared at the

control panel set against the near bulkhead wall on the inside of the

hold. “Oh,” Gabriel said, finding himself staring at a

blinking telltale buried in the black plastic of the control panel,

while out of the blackness next to it, the words Go to Active? came burning up.

He touched the words. Active, the panel said, and then

immediately after that, Storing waiting inload …

The inload process took a half-hour or so, while the system loaded

the waiting information, checked itself, checked that the storage was

secure, and then encrypted everything. By then the hum of in-system

drivers could be heard as Longshot came to rest on the pad

beside them.

Gabriel was already in the left-hand pilot’s seat, running

Sunshine through her pre-starfall checks. “I thought you

were meeting us at the spaceport,” he said to Helm via audio

comms.

That gravelly laugh came rumbling back. “You don’t go nowhere

unescorted,” Helm said, “now that you’re carrying. Let me

know when you’re secure and we’ll make our last stop.”

It took another ten minutes for the infotrading system to convince

itself that the data destined for Sunshine had been safely

loaded.

“Delde Sota was right,” Enda said, looking over

Gabriel’s shoulder at the new sets of telltales flashing in the

master 3D control display. “This software leaves little to

chance.”

“It would be nice if it would let us take off,” Gabriel

muttered. Finally the readouts said, Secure. Clear Ready for

transport.

Enda strapped herself in. They made the quick jump into the

spaceport’s bond area and admitted the usual port reps, an officious

and very well spoken sesheyan named Se’tali accompanied by several

assistants. They confirmed the supplies now going into Sunshine’s cargo hold. Their procedures required electronic signatures,

spot-card payment for port services, and last of all, sign-off on the

ship’s registry documents. Gabriel provided all these as requested.

Se’tali said something polite and wedged himself into the lift.

His assistants followed. Several of them winked at. Gabriel, a

gesture they had adopted from humans. Somehow, it looked more

impressive than usual because of all the eyes that sesheyans had to

work with. The last of them exited the lift, which retracted itself

into Sunshine’s girth and locked up.

“You were mentioning good will,” Gabriel said, checking

all the indicators to make sure everything was closed tight for

space. “We seem to have a lot.”

“May it follow us,” Enda said. “Helm?”

“Ready.”

The port clearance control flashed permission-to-depart to their

console. Helm lifted clear first, the scream of his engines dwindling

upward and away. Gabriel touched the system drive into life and

followed. The furious golden fire of Corrivale on Grith’s green and

violet surface dropped away beneath them, glinting blindingly but

briefly on the girdling turquoise-violet tidal seas. Behind the curve

of Grith, growing smaller now, the vast red — and — ochre

striped bulk of Hydrocus loomed up over the thin bright band of

atmosphere as it grew and dwarfed its jungle moon.

“Out of atmosphere,” Enda said. “Ten minutes on

system drive to the exit coordinates. Is the stardrive ready?”

Gabriel checked the readouts three times, making sure that the

coordinates matched the hard copy in his personal data pad. “We’re

set.”

“You ready over there?” Helm’s voice came down comms.

“Yup. Check your info against ours?”

A pause.

“On the nose,” Helm said. “Weapons ready.”

Gabriel’s were ready too, but he had not brought up the fighting

field, not expecting to need to do any shooting at the moment.

It was at the other end of the transit that his concerns lay.

Enda too was looking at the gunnery readouts. “Are these

latent energy readings supposed to be this high?” she said

softly.

Helm chuckled. “The readings are fine. We’ll play with the

new toys when we get where we’re going. Meanwhile, coming up on the

tick—”

Gabriel had his eyes on the countdown. Ten seconds. He cut out the

system drive and brought the stardrive to standby, watching the

status indicators as the gravity induction coils and the mass reactor

wound their waveforms into synch. Five seconds. The coordinates for

the drop-out point at Terivine system converted into a third set of

waveforms interwoven with the first two. Two seconds. One—

Blue fire sheeted up over Sunshine in tendrils and waves,

obscuring the burning gold of Corrivale as Longshot dropped

into drivespace with a flare of crimson off to one side. Like liquid

flowing upward, blue light webbed over the front viewport and fell

into the pilot’s cabin as Sunshine dropped into starfall. It

was dark again, the unrelieved blackness of drivespace clinging all

around them.

Enda checked her instruments. “A new beginning for us, then,”

she said, “and well begun. Gabriel, when did you last eat?”

His stomach growled at him. “About a year ago,” he said,

“or at least it feels like it. Let’s see what the new catering

packs look like.”

*

Some light-years away, down a Grid commline that was as secure as

a large amount of money spent could make it, a conversation was

taking place. One end of the conversation was on Iphus in the

Corrivale system. The far end of the conversation was in a small

secured cabin of a large and well-armed ship presently orbiting

Grith.

The tall, thin man sitting in the thick-carpeted office on Iphus

was leaning forward on his elbows at his big polished desk, looking

down into the small tank that he preferred to the large flashy 3D

displays of some others on this floor. The things leaked signal, for

one thing. That was wasteful, no matter how secure you thought your

comms were. The big displays were tasteless as well. He had no desire

to imply that his communications were unimportant enough to let just

anyone who walked in see them. That was not the way to get

ahead in the Company. Perception, if not everything, was a

substantial part of it.

“… don’t care what they think,” said the woman at

the other end. “There’s been a lot of comm traffic from that

end. I’ve dumped it to your location. They’re getting ready to move.”

“Where?” he said. “If they take themselves anywhere

there’s a significant Concord presence, there’s no point in it.”

“They won’t,” the woman said. Her expression was

scornful. “They don’t dare. He’s wanted. There’s a reward out

now, thanks to us, enough to arouse interest. Sooner or later,

somebody is bound to fit the face to the offer and pick up on him.”

“Is it one of those ‘dead or alive’ things?”

She sniffed. “You’re living in the wrong century. What point

is there in just letting someone kill him? Due process has to be

followed if you’re going to make any kind of example that will stick

in people’s minds. It would be too obvious … not to mention

creating problems at this end.”

“Well, when it comes to problems,” he said, hunching

down lower, “we’ve got some at this end.”

Her eyebrows went up at that. “What kind? After what that

bunch of traitors and renegades did to you at Thalaassa, I’d have

thought everyone would have agreed about what to do for a change.”

He laughed. “You know how big this company is. Everyone with

a letter higher than J in front of their ID thinks they’re entitled

to an opinion, and some of them act on them, the misguided

idiots. Discipline has been going to hell around here lately. That

shuffle up high three weeks ago—”

He stopped himself. Some topics it was unwise to discuss, no

matter how carefully you thought you had secured your comms …

always remembering that the people who had installed your lines in

the first place were also Company and might have agendas of their

own.

“Never mind.” He sighed. “Our Intel people are

apparently involved again.”

She looked suspiciously at him. “Why?”

“They think they missed something the first time. Apparently

Concord Intel is after him too, and they want to know why.”

She swore. “They dumped him the first time as waste, and now

they—” She broke off, shaking her head. “Do you

seriously think they might be onto something?”

“I have no idea. If you think I can get anything significant

out of our own Intel people about this, you’re mistaken. They’re all

creeping around in hush-hush mode. The only thing that’s

certain is that somebody whose ID starts with X or Y has had his nose

pushed right off his face by this hashmash at Thalaassa. Action has

to be taken to calm his or her ruffled temper, and this probably

means exposing the subject as Intel from the other side.”

“He’s not,” she said fiercely. “We know that.”

“As if that matters! If they have their way, they’ll make him

look as if he is, and then either side can chuck him away into

whatever jail they like to waste the rest of his days away. The

example will be taken by those who need it, believe me. Unless

certain others get their way—”

She shook her head. “You lost me.”

“There is a strong line of opinion in some offices up here,”

he said, “and not Intel— the Enforcement offices, I

mean— that he should just have an accident. Safer, quicker,

less trouble in the long run. What he did was a one-off, they think.

Crazy guy, thrashing around for some kind of vengeance, took it

against the nearest target— if he even knew that much of what

he was doing.”

She swore again. “There’s got to be more to it than that.”

He let out an annoyed breath. “I know. They’re simplistic.

Yes, the guy needs watching. We’ll see if he really needs to

be killed. He might find out something useful about the other side,

and if he does … fine, then let the mouse run a little

farther. We’ve got all the time in the world, and we have him

outnumbered. The minute he’s no longer useful …” The

man’s thin hand came down, clenched clawlike, on the shining desk.

“For now, wait and see.”

Then he chuckled. “Yes, why not make life as interesting for

him as possible in the meantime? There are all kinds of

possibilities.”

“As long as none of them are pleasant for him,” she

said, “I can cope with that for the time being.”

“I’ll be in touch,” the man said. He reached out to cut

the connection. “Don’t let them move without us knowing.”

“It’s handled.”

He killed the comms circuit and sat back in his chair. When the

mouse had run for the last time, she might have to be taken care of

as well. It would be unfortunate if her knowledge about this line of

action should become public.

Well, time enough to think about that. Meanwhile, he had other

business. Within a few days, there would be more data to help him

work out what to do. He slipped a long finger into the tank display,

touching the dumped data into life. Columns and figures, rows of text

scrolled by, and he smiled slightly.

Interesting times, he thought. Yes, those can be arranged. Intel

can just deal with it the best they can.

*

Just over six weeks later, Sunshine and Longshot made starrise at Terivine.

Terivine A and B, the two main stars— a pair of G-class

yellows— had been too close together at only ninety million

kilometers to allow any exception to the no-planets tendency of

binary systems. When the Verge started to open up again, transiting

vessels had used a spot outside A and B’s rotational locus as a

target for starfall and rested there for recharge before moving on.

No one bothered with the little cool orange dwarf, Terivine C,

orbiting a hundred AUs out.

Ten years previously, the Alaundrin freighter Desert Wind had a navigational accident— the computer involved with

calculating her path through drivespace dropped a decimal place in

the coordinates due to a power fluctuation. When she made starrise,

Desert Wind was no more than two million kilometers out of the

little star’s atmosphere. They were lucky to have come out no closer.

When the ship’s crew got their composure back, they had reason to

lose it again. There, orbiting the star no further out than

forty-five million kilometers, was a Class 1 planet that no one had

ever noticed.

As Sunshine made starrise in a down-sliding sleet of

trickling white fire, Gabriel looked out on the little system and

tried to imagine what that first crew’s reactions must have been. No

one looks for what they don’t expect, and no one had ever expected a

planet around a star so small and possibly so old. Argument was still

raging as to whether the little world, eventually named Rivendale,

was a capture or the remnant of a natural formation. In any case, the

planet had suffered from tremendous tidal stresses and volcanism

while it was forming. Its crust was unusually strong on the light

elements and thoroughly faulted so that even the world’s older

mountain ranges were spectacularly shattered by time and tidal

spasms. The younger ranges were labyrinths of splintered basalt

needles and pinnacles, spearing upward over valleys torn deep between

them, rearing above oxide-streaked canyons kilometers deep and cliffs

kilometers high. All these features might have been expected of a

low-gravity world, but in Rivendale’s case, it was as if someone had

attempted to produce a particularly extreme example of the class.

There were other oddities, again due to tidal effects. Terivine’s

unusually powerful braking effect on so light a planet had left

Rivendale with a rotation period nearly seven days long. Fierce heat

and numbing cold alternated on a weekly basis and grew worse with the

turning of the seasons. The initial surveyors had looked down at this

dramatic and intimidating landscape and had been sure that, whatever

future settlers might talk about on a regular basis, one topic would

always be the weather.

Nor did it take long before the settlers began to arrive.

Rivendale’s discovery attracted the inevitable attention from the

nearest stellar nations. Alaundril, located in the Tendril system,

and the Regency of Bluefall, based around Aegis, got in first and

settled their claims in 2492, splitting the colonization rights

70-30. It was only a few years after the first colonization parties

arrived that a completely unforeseen complication arose. Rivendale

turned out to already be inhabited by intelligent life.

Gabriel had checked this aspect of the planet with some care. His

acquaintance with Enda had made him more curious about alien life

than he had been during his marine years, and he had not been

surprised to discover that it had been a fraal xenobiologist who

stumbled on the truth. Riglia had been known since Alaundril and

Bluefall’s Regency conducted the first joint precolonization survey.

Long, graceful, translucent creatures, gossamer-thin, like ribbons of

shimmering air, they excited some brief interest. Though avian, they

were very unlike other avian species so far discovered. They spent

their whole lives in the air, subsisting on airborne algae and

plankton native to the high mists of the Rivendale mountain chains.

The fraal, who with various other scientists had come to study the

unique Rivendale ecosystem, had looked up at a passing riglia,

glinting and wreathing its rainbowy way past in the warming sun of

early noon, and had thought, Cousin, you are fair. The fraal

had not expected the chilly and pragmatic response, tentative but

clear. You are no cousin of mine, but you are right.

The fraal, a mindwalker as well as a scientist, had gone to the

authorities and explained that they had a problem. The riglia were

fully aware that their planet was being colonized— or from

their point of view, invaded— and were furious. The Alaundril

and Regency authorities were annoyed but also sensible enough to be

cautious. There was no chance of reversing their own plans and

removing the colonies. That would have constituted an unacceptable

loss of status for both nations, but they stopped further

colonization, citing concern about the local ecology.

Gabriel, during his investigations, had reason to smile at that.

It was not the Rivendale ecology that was in danger. Humans and fraal

who lived on that world literally had to hang on by their nails,

suspended more or less between heaven and earth in a realm where air

pressures could range from near vacuum to nearly three bars down in

the deepest canyons.

The one city, Sunbreak, perched precariously on a nine-kilometer

high col between two fourteen-kilometer high mountains. There, two

thousand people lived— breathing deeply, Gabriel thought, and

being very careful where they put their feet. Some intrepid

homesteaders had struck out into the surrounding mountain range to

make themselves small farms, terracing some of the less intractable,

lower reaches and collecting water from the warmweek mists with

condensers. It was a dangerous life. The riglia regarded any damage

to their environment, no matter how minimal, as damage to them and

were likely enough to attack solitary humans simply out of pique.

There were other creatures, like spidermist, that would strip the

flesh off you right down to the bones without pique being involved.

“Hey, Sunshine! Everything all right over there?”

Helm’s voice came over comms.

“No problems at all,” Gabriel said. “You two have a

quiet time?”

Helm chuckled. “When Delde Sota is around, you wouldn’t ever

describe anything as ‘quiet.’ She reprogrammed my entertainment

system somehow—”

“Correction: did no such thing,” came a sharp voice from

the background. “Augmented gamma correction for imagery player.

Long overdue.”

“All the colors of every thing are strange now,” Helm

muttered. “I liked my playback the way it was.”

“You have brought this on yourself, Helm,” Enda said,

unstrapping herself from her seat beside Gabriel. “It is a

mechalus’s business to seek perfection in the machinery around her,

as well as the machinery which is her, unless you desire the

doctor to reshape her personal ethics while riding with you.”

“Don’t start with me,” Helm said, though there was humor

in his voice. “Got a hail from Terivine control down in

Sunbreak. They’ve got a spot ready for us at the port.”

“Good,” Gabriel said and checked his coordinates. “Not

a big place, that. Are they going to warehouse us somewhere else

after we land? They can’t have more than a few acres of active space

down there.”

“I know. It’s like landing on a dinner plate. No matter. You

just follow me down.”

“Helm, have you been here before?” Enda said.

“No,” said Helm, “but I’m here to ride shotgun,

which means I go down first and impress everybody. Stay back a couple

kilometers.”

They rode their system drives in toward Terivine then let the

planet’s gravity well pull them in. This was one of the few parts of

piloting that still made Gabriel nervous: waiting for the feel of the

air to make a difference to Sunshine’s flight characteristics.

It was not that she was a tricky or difficult ship to manage in

atmosphere, but the speed with which atmospheric densities varied

sometimes made for a rocky ride until Gabriel could work out which

attitude the ship preferred on the way in. Terivine, with a “sea

level” pressure much higher than most worlds’, could produce

problems during landing if the sequence wasn’t carefully managed.

The problems did not materialize, and Gabriel followed Helm down

through the banks of mist— almost too thin to be thought of as

cloud— which layered the upper atmosphere. After a few minutes,

they broke out of these and into an intermediate layer of clear air

above the highest mountains. Gabriel shook his head at the broad,

jagged, green and cream streaked landscape below them, all

warm-tinged from Terivine’s orange-yellow light. On the milky, misty

horizon lay wave after wave of fiercely jagged mountains, like a

frozen sea. Fog lay far down between them in most of the valleys,

hiding greater depths. “Forbidding” was one word that

immediately occurred to Gabriel at the sight of the place. Too much

vertical and not enough horizontal!

It was a beautiful place as well. Gabriel liked mountains and

mountainous worlds. He liked to stand and look up at a landscape that

was far too big to be conquered, a kind of reminder that humans might

be a great power among the worlds, but single beings still had to

fight their own battles with the physical universe. And the physical

universe sometimes had them completely outclassed.

From Longshot, Helm grunted and said, “Deep valleys

down there. Full of those … what did they call them …

Rigla?”

“Riglia,” Gabriel replied. “Very annoyed people, if

I got the right impression. I wouldn’t waste my time trying to have a

friendly chat with the natives.”

“Wouldn’t normally have been on my list anyway,” Helm

said. “All they’ve got are little cilia, if I remember what you

told me before we left Grith. Can’t pick things up, except with their

minds … Don’t think they’d go in big for arms sales.”

Gabriel gave Enda a sideways look as they dropped deeper into the

atmosphere. “Think you might make some sales down here?” he

said.

Helm chuckled deep. “There are humans here,” he said.

“No matter where they live, these days, what human ever feels

really secure?”

Gabriel had no quick answer to that one.

“There’s our port,” Helm said. “About ten degrees

to starboard. Watch your approach as you come in. We’ve got to follow

this valley, and it twists.”

He dropped into a broad valley that wound between two huge

mountain walls. Gabriel nosed Sunshine down after him. There

was less striation among the mountains here and more volcanic rock.

Here and there, you could pick out a peak that had clearly once been

a volcano, now shattered or undermined by the pressures of other

local formations against it. The colors were darker— browns and

blacks, mostly, old basalt, faulted in massive square or hexagonal

blocks, or shattered to pinnacles by millions of years’ worth of

lateral pressure.

Away ahead of them two great peaks soared up, high and narrow,

angling away from each other like the horns of a bull. There was a

pale patch on the yoke of stone that connected them.

“That’s it?” Gabriel asked.

“That’s the spot. Five degrees to the right at the back of

the settlement—”

“I see it,” Gabriel said. His 3D display crosshaired the

spot for him. As spaceports went, Sunbreak’s was nearly nonexistent—

you could have dropped the whole of it into one of the service yards

that surrounded the port at Diamond Point.

Helm led them down, the golden light of Terivine on Longshot’s hull going out like a snuffed flame as he dropped between the

mountains and descended toward the spaceport. It was still warmweek,

but not for long. There would be no direct sunlight on the city for

another ten days, until coldweek was past and the new warmweek was

coming.

If city is the word I’m looking for, Gabriel thought. The pale

patch had resolved itself into a scatter of buildings, some large,

some small, a jumble of locally quarried stone and caststone

edifices. The place certainly could not house more than a couple

thousand people.

In front of them, Gabriel saw Helm skirt around the high back of

the yoke between the two mountains, coming at the port beacon from

the back side. He came to a halt in midair, hanging on his system

drivers, not even engaging his attitudinals as yet. Showoff, Gabriel

thought, getting ready to cut in his own landing systems, but he had

to admire the featherlike way Helm settled himself down on exactly

the tiny scrap of light-bounded tarmac. He came down so slowly that

there was no way that anyone could have missed the size, orientation

or number of his gun ports.

Enda’s smile was small and prim. “Art comes in strange

forms,” she said, looking down at Longshot half a

kilometer beneath them. “Helm? Shall we follow?”

They saw a tiny figure exit and walk around Longshot,

looking carefully at the surroundings. The shape was carrying

something that looked like a twig at this altitude and was probably

capable of making a hole in a Concord cruiser.

“Yeah,” Helm said, “you might as well. The locals

are all looking out the windows now.”

Gabriel brought Sunshine in and down— perhaps not

with the same expertise, but in the manner of someone unconcerned

with the locals’ opinions. He grounded her about three meters from

Longshot, where the smaller ship’s main guns covered her, and

powered the drives down.

“Sunbreak control, good afternoon,” Gabriel said,

reckoning that it would safely be afternoon for another day and a

half yet. “We have an infotrade cargo for you. Can we conclude

port formalities and get the material away?”

“Formalities have already been concluded, Sunshine,”

said a man’s voice down station comms. “We’re not big enough to

need much in the way of paperwork here: the detectors told us you

were coming.”

Did his voice sound uneasy? Gabriel glanced at Enda. She reached

into the 3D display between them and touched the “privacy”

light.

“It is to be expected,” she said. “Any world so

isolated would normally have the best starfall detection hardware it

could afford. They would have known the time and location of our

arrival nearly as soon as we departed.”

She slipped her finger away from the control-light, which dulled.

“Thanks, Sunbreak,” Gabriel said. “Then we’d like to

dump, if you would pass us your authentication protocols. The dump

addresses we have already.”

Enda shifted the infotrade control systems into the front display.

It filled with lines of code, as the two Grid systems—

Rivendale’s planetary-level one and Sunshine’s local portable

Grid— acknowledged one another’s bona fides. The code display

dissolved, leaving them with the message Discharging cargo.

They watched the words blink. This was the part of the process

that Gabriel dreaded— when the machines were in control, and

being built by mortal beings in a universe where entropy was in

force, could conceivably fail. If that happened, no one would blame

the machines. It would be Gabriel and Enda who would be responsible.

They could sue the people who installed the machinery and might

someday recoup some of the losses they would have had to pay out of

their own pockets for the lost data.

The display went black. Gabriel swallowed.

Darkness followed, for several seconds. Then, Discharge

complete, said the display. Receiving facility backup complete

and confirmed. Cleaning cycle begins.

Gabriel sat back in his seat and said, “Look at me. I’m

wringing wet.”

He had never been clear about whether fraal sweated. Enda breathed

out one long breath, and said, “It is nice when things

work. Shall we go out and see about a meal?”

“Not until I shower,” Gabriel said, unstrapped himself

and went down the hall.

*

Some while later, Helm was coming up in the lift, and Gabriel was

stretched out in one of the chairs in the sitting room in a clean

singlesuit, while Enda looked over the local Grid access channels.

They were spare— a few music channels, some solid or 3D

entertainment, most of it stale.

“You could make some money,” Gabriel said, “just

bringing entertainment material in here.”

“If we had cargo space to spare,” Enda said, distracted

by the list of local amenities, which was also brief. The lift door

opened. “Look, there is a fraal restaurant here.”

“Feeling the need for home cooking?” Helm said.

“Sweet heaven,” Gabriel said. Helm was in a costume that

could only be described as full battle armor— tunic and

breeches and boots and armlets and greaves of dull refractory

materials, shiny in places but mostly scarred with use, and huge

pistols on both hips. “Helm, you look like a tank, but better

armed.”

“I always wear the armor on my first night out on a new

planet,” said Helm, grinning that innocent grin. “Saves me

having to wear it later.”

Enda laughed. “As for home cooking, I eat that every day;

Sunshine is my home. I would simply be interested in seeing

exactly how ‘fraal’ the cooking here is. Such a tiny

settlement is not the kind of place you would expect to find

cosmopolitan ingredients. For real fraal cooking, you would need

such. We never saw a cuisine we did not borrow from.”

She and Gabriel got up. “What is it like out, Helm?”

Enda said. She too had chosen to wear a singlesuit, a plasma-blue

number in which Gabriel had first seen her long ago, and which picked

up the vivid blue of her eyes startlingly well.

“About nineteen. A little breeze.”

“No need to bother with a wrap, then. Let’s lock up …”

They met Doctor Delde Sota on the blacktop at the bottom of the

lift. She was standing and looking around her at the spectacular

ebony or cream and ebony striped mountain vista, all gilded in the

orange light that surrounded them.

“Opinion: gravity level enjoyable,” she said.

It was lighter than usual: about six tenths of a gee, and

there was a slight tendency to bounce until one got used to how to

put one’s feet down. “I wouldn’t overeat in this climate,”

Helm said, as they walked toward the port buildings and the road into

town. “Don’t think it would stay down long.”

Laughing and talking, they made their way into the heart of the

settlement past the port buildings. Those were stone, but the

business and leisure heart of the settlement was a mixture of stone

and prefab. The little blocky apartment houses and shopping clusters

were set amid carefully maintained but minimal landscaping, on ground

which was little more than bare stone. They did not see many people—

a few humans and some fraal, walking in small groups or heading home

with bags or parcels of shopping from the local stores. Everything

seemed quiet and peaceful, but also lonely— the influence of

the terrible jagged peaks looking down from all sides, even in the

subdued, prolonged afternoon light, was somber.

It couldn’t much affect Gabriel’s mood, though. He was too

relieved. “It was easy,” Gabriel said as they slowed down,

hunting for Enda’s fraal restaurant, which was supposed to be on the

Main Thoroughfare. “The software really did handle it all.”

“That was just one run,” Enda said. “I would not be

inclined to class this work as ‘easy’ just yet. We may have come out

full, but will we go back that way? If we do not, the fine

fat-looking profit we have made on this run will be undermined. If

the message traffic we have brought with us from Grith does not

generate some in the opposite direction, there will be no point in

continuing this particular run. We will have to look elsewhere.”

Gabriel nodded. “I know, but it’s too soon to think about

that. We just got here! Let’s see what tomorrow brings.”

The fraal restaurant turned out to be attached to one side of a

kind of community center for the local inhabitants, a long low

stonebuilt edifice, quarried from black basalt blocks and boasting a

wide shallow-peaked roof of some other dark stone split in thin

layers. Inside, there was light and talk; large round lights hung

down over a great number of trestle tables spread over a wide expanse

of stone floor. People, humans and fraal and a mechalus or two,

glanced up with interest and bemusement from their meals or drinks as

Gabriel, Enda, Helm, and Delde Sota came in and looked around.

From off to their right came the smell of something aromatic

frying. Gabriel thought it smelled like ginger. Dining tables were

gathered there around a circular counter, and Enda sniffed the air

with delight. “I swear, that is delya,” she said,

heading off in that direction. “What wonders the worlds hold!”

The others followed her and found a table. The fraal gentleman who

was doing the cooking came out to greet them, and he and Enda began a

long conversation in their own language, with much bowing and waving

of hands. After a moment the chef went off, and Enda looked at them

all, slightly abashed.

“He will be happy to bring you menus if you want,” she

said, “but I think we are onto something excellent here. Will

you let me order for you?”

“Everything but the booze,” Helm said amiably.

“That I leave to you with joy,” Enda said.

Shortly thereafter, they had bottles of kalwine, and small metal

dishes began arriving, full of portions of cooked vegetables. At

least that was what Gabriel thought they were. It became plain that

the dinner was going to be one of those at which you eat a great

number of unidentifiable but delicious things and are never

afterwards clear about exactly what you had or how to get it again.

The laughter and the talking at their table got ever more cheerful

and seemed to spread as the evening drew on (though the light outside

didn’t change) and the community center around them filled with

people eating, drinking, talking, and laughing. Gabriel found himself

enjoying the good cheer, though he wondered if there wasn’t a

slightly nervous cast to it— as if practically the whole

community of Sunbreak was gathered in this large room, making a brave

noise against the vast silence of the world outside, a world

beautiful but essentially inimical, a world very much alone.

The second time the thought came up, Gabriel shook his head and

poured himself another glass of the kalwine, turning his attention to

Delde Sota, who was in the middle of some mechalus joke that she was

telling Helm for the second time. “— couldn’t find his

head. Result: the captain says, ‘Screw its eyes out and see if they

work better.’ “

“I still don’t get it.”

“Semantic problem,” Delde Sota said, lifting her glass

with her braid, while propping her chin up on both fists, her elbows

on the table. ” ‘Head’ is—”

“Excuse me,” said a voice off to the left. They all

looked up.

Standing by the table was a small man, dressed in the kind of long

tunic and baggy breeches that some people from Bluefall favored. He

was plump and round faced, with little eyes looking at them

dubiously. “You the people who landed those two ships up the

port this afternoon?”

“Yes,” Gabriel answered.

“Infotrading?” the man said.

“That’s right,” Helm said.

“Well, I run the infotrading company here. Alwhirn Company.

I’m Rae Alwhirn.”

“Yes, we’ve heard of you,” Gabriel said and got up to

extend a hand to the man. “Pleased to meet you. Gabriel Connor—”

“The pleasure’s not mutual,” Alwhirn said, and looked at

Gabriel’s hand as if it were dirty. Then he darted a glance at Helm,

and quickly away again. “Not at all. We don’t want your kind

here.”

“What exactly would ‘my kind’ be?” Gabriel said.

“Speculation: competition?” said Delde Sota.

The man glared at her, then at Gabriel. “You think we don’t

read the news we carry? We know what you were up to in the Thalaassa

system. First murder— then union-busting—”

Gabriel stared, and laughed. “Excuse me?”

“Those sesheyans you were hauling all over space were

Employees,” Alwhirn said. “You were in the middle of that

big Concord PR exercise to make them look like ‘free’ sesheyans, poor

oppressed people who got the wrong end of the stick somehow.” He

sneered. “The same way you did, huh? I suppose you’re going to

try to tell us someone set you up to make it look like you killed all

those marines, your own buddies, that someone framed you—”

Gabriel was silent for a moment. “Were you there?”

“What? I read the—”

“Were you there?”

“Of course I wasn’t there, I have a job to do, unlike some

people who try to come in out of nowhere and take my business away.

If you think—”

“What we’ve brought into the system is new business,”

Gabriel said, “from Grith and Iphus. Business you never went out

of your way to find. You’ve been bringing in data from Aegis and

Tendril and not much else. Now if I wanted to—”

“See that,” Alwhirn growled. “You come to spy on us

and—”

“Your business here is a matter of public record,”

Gabriel said wearily. “If you—”

“So is yours,” Alwhirn said. “Murder. Get

out of here before you regret having come in the first place.”

Gabriel took a breath. “If I was a murderer, you’d be

asking for trouble. A good thing that there are witnesses to the

statement.”

Alwhirn glanced around the table then turned away. As he went, he

muttered something. They stared after him, but he was out the front

door a few seconds later. Other people turned to watch him go, then

looked at Gabriel and the others. Not all the looks were friendly.

Gabriel sat down again, and looked at the glass of kalwine in

front of him, just refilled. All of a sudden it had lost a great deal

of its savor.

“That was strange,” he said.

“Granted,” Enda said. “What do you make of it?”

Delde Sota shook her head. Helm, for the moment, was looking

toward the door and windows. “Bad news travels fast,” he

said under his breath.

“It’s Infotrade Interstellar that I would have expected this

kind of thing from,” Gabriel said. “Not the local

independents!” He pulled his glass close again. “What’s the

matter with these people, anyway? It’s not as if we’re taking food

out of their mouths.”

“I have seen much human behavior in my time,” Enda said,

“but I do not consider myself a specialist. Though the likeliest

answer would seem to be that, for some reason, they feel threatened.

As for I.I., they sent us a very pleasant message.”

“What?”

“It’s in Sunshine’s Grid mail center— it came in

while you were showering. It is nothing fulsome. They acknowledge our

presence here and wish us luck.”

That piece of news made Gabriel shake his head. “As for the

rest of that, the idea that VoidCorp’s Employees have a union—”

“Very likely they do,” Enda said. “Probably it

seems, superficially, to have the same kind of rules that other labor

unions do, though membership is probably mandatory ….as

Employee status remains mandatory.”

Helm was still looking around, watching the people who were

watching them. “No great interest,” he said after a moment.

“I think we’re safe for the moment.”

“Query: later?” Delde Sota said softly.

“There is no way to tell,” Enda said, sounding rueful.

“With the active opposition of some of these people, our

business may not be pleasant.”

Gabriel frowned. “We’ll see, but as for Alwhirn— does

he think he owns this system? I don’t want trouble with him, but if

he wants to start it, he’s going to get some back, possibly more than

he bargained for.”

A silence fell at that. Then Delde Sota said, forcefully,

“Dessert.”

They had dessert, a flambeed concoction that drew applause from

some of the tables around them. They paid their bill, said “good

evening” to the people around them, congratulated the fraal

chef, and then walked back to the ships, making little of the

uncomfortable incident during dinner. Gabriel did his best to sound

untroubled as they went. He was tired and that helped him. One issue

kept rearing up at the back of his mind to be dealt with.

Terivine had no drivesat relay. All its data came to it via

infotraders. No information could have come to Rivendale about

Gabriel’s arrival before today.

How did this guy know so quickly that I was here and who I am?

Helm and Delde Sota went off to Longshot. Enda and Gabriel

headed back to Sunshine, secured her, and turned in. As

Gabriel lay down and spoke his light out, the thought hung in the

darkness there with him for a long time, all too clear.

So much for my new beginning …

Chapter Four

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THE NEXT MORNING was still the same afternoon, although the orange

light of the sun came in at a lower angle. Light slid in long golden

rays between the peaks and tangled in the mists that were starting to

rise to higher levels now, filling the invisible valleys below like

water. Warmweek was fading, that leisurely afternoon tarnishing down

to a brassy orange pre-sunset hue, a light with color but

progressively less warmth.

Gabriel stood on the cracked gray tarmac outside Sunshine and looked across at the fanglike peaks serrating the horizon on all

sides. The landscape well suited how he felt at the moment—

hemmed in and unable to escape the atmosphere of silent, low-level

threat, no matter how far he went. And not so low-level, he thought,

thinking of Alwhirn’s angry, frightened face last night.

How did they find me?

It was a good guess that someone at Diamond Point had been spying

on Sunshine and her crew, watching to see where they were

going. That information would have been no secret for a day and a

half before their departure when they filed their starfall/starrise

plan. Someone gets into a ship, Gabriel thought, and hurries here

with the news that we’re coming and what we’re coming for. He

recalled again the edgy sound in the port controller’s voice when

they had come in. ‘The detectors told us you were coming.’

Yes, Gabriel thought, and who else?

Who would have the funds and inclination to send someone all the

way over here in a ship when a holomessage could have done as well?

We could have been carrying a message like that ourselves, Gabriel

thought, and we’d never have known it. It would certainly have been

cheaper.

But there had been a couple of hours between their arrival and

Alwhirn’s appearance at their table. Am I just being paranoid?

Gabriel thought. Did he receive a message about us in the same load

we brought in, or did he just hear gossip about us from the port

people? In a place this small, a new infotrader suddenly turning up

in the system would be discussed.

Gabriel sat down on one of Sunshine’s landing skids and

gazed out at the morning — cum — late afternoon. He

hadn’t slept well. It had been another of those dreams last

night, a repetitive conflict of light and shadow. Flares of

brilliance lashed out against some inward-pressing darkness, all of

it haunted by unexplained feelings of fear and excitement. Gabriel

took these dreams for some kind of obscure message from his

subconscious, though he had no idea what the message might mean.

Something to do with starrise and starfall, he thought. He was not

yet sufficiently inured to them that the excitement of a jump failed

to move him. While living in a Concord Cruiser that carried the

marine complement of which he was part, Gabriel had gone through

starrises and starfalls without comment. They were pilots’ business,

an insignificant artifact of getting where you were going. Now that

Gabriel flew himself, suddenly drivespace was a serious part of the

day, and he listened to whatever Helm or Enda might say about the

fables and rumors of starfalls— what caused the differing

color, which ones were supposed to be lucky … Gabriel

shivered.

The sound of the lift coming down distracted him. Amazing how

noises that would have been completely lost in the rumble at Diamond

Point now seemed louder among the peaks and rolling mists. All sound

fell into that moist quiet as if into a sack where they were dampened

and lost. That silence seemed to say, There are very few of you.

We can wait. Some day you will be gone.

“What a beautiful morning,” Enda said. She walked out to

join him, looking around at the swirling, churning mists and hugging

herself against the cool dampness of the morning.

“Nnnh,” Gabriel said. He disliked pouring cold water on

her pleasures, but in his present mood he had trouble seeing the

beauty.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Not really.”

“That dream again?”

Gabriel shrugged. “I think so, but I may be getting used to

it now.” Not that it was any easier to bear while he was inside

it. At least it doesn’t make me wake up yelling any more.

Enda nodded. “I am still thinking about our gentleman at

table last night,” she said.

“Not much of a gentleman.”

“Well, his manners were not the best. His reasons for being

angry with us did not ring particularly true, either.” She sat

down on the skid next to Gabriel. “I cannot help feeling that he

was more frightened than angry, but of what or whom?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Don’t ask me until after I’ve had my

chai,” he said. “Come to think of it, don’t bother asking

then, either. I’m still wondering how we’re going to pick up any

business with this guy out poisoning people’s minds against us, and

whether it’s realistic to think we’re going to get any business at

all when the place is this small.”

“I would definitely wait until you have had your chai,”

Enda replied. “You should also walk around and talk to people.

Our business is to see exactly what the other firms have been doing

here, then examine which parts of the local market they may have

missed.”

Gabriel gave her a cockeyed look. “You sound like some kind

of sales representative.”

She chuckled. “Well, so I was, once long ago.”

Gabriel sat back against the upright of the landing skid and

laughed at that. “I thought you were in suit maintenance.”

“Oh, I did that too,” Enda said. “Gabriel, when you

live in a great spacegoing city, conscientious marketing is something

you cannot ignore, especially when you tend to keep your contacts

with other species to a minimum. You will not succeed if you go

barging into established business relations between planets or

between a planet and another free trading facility that serves it.

Trade wars only make life harder for everyone … and eventually

people die of them. One must rather work to become part of a network,

a cooperative structure.” She looked out across the mountains.

“Life among the stars is too hard as it is— resources all

stretched too thin over the terrible distances, and communication

much too difficult and expensive to waste on attempting to destroy

infrastructure that others have built. To compete without an eye to

your competitors’ continued success as well as yours is to court

disaster.”

Gabriel had to shake his head at that. “Enda, are all fraal

as nice as you?”

Enda looked at him in some shock, then she began to laugh softly.

“Many are far nicer. I have had my failures, which is one of the

reasons I do not travel with my own kind any more. I thank you,

Gabriel.” She looked out into the mist, then turned to him

again. “Meanwhile, you have driven out of my mind what I came

out to tell you. There is more mail for you in the ship’s system.”

“For me? Where from?”

Enda had pulled her hair down out of its long tail and began

braiding it. To Gabriel, it looked like the braid Delde Sota used,

which reflected the Sealed Knot of her particular medical profession—

a four-strand braid with a strange sort of “hiccup” in its

pattern.

“Some of the data we dumped came back to us through the local

sorting facility,” Enda said, weaving the long silver-gilt

strands over and under one another, “at least, if I read the log

files correctly. A good question whether I do. The software manuals

are not exactly lucid, but certainly there is a packet of mail for

you.”

“Probably hate mail from our friend from last night.”

Enda raised her eyebrows. “I hardly see why he would waste

the money when he can deliver his hatred in person. But no. This was

data we brought in with us.”

“Huh,” Gabriel said as he gazed over toward Longshot.

“No sign of them yet?”

Gabriel shook his head.

Enda shrugged. “After last night, I think that Helm did not

care to sleep right away. He told me before we left Grith that he

needed to do more work on his external security and surveillance

fields. I doubt he would have felt comfortable about dropping off

while his work was still incomplete.”

Gabriel shook his head. “I’m still not sure I understand why

he’s doing this. Coming over here for no particular reason, watching

out for us this way….”

Enda looked over toward Longshot as she finished her braid.

“I would not care to hazard detailed guesses,” she said.

“But this time I doubt he is repaying Delde Sota any favors.”

“Think not?”

Enda turned away from Longshot, looking toward the eastern

sky, which was gradually beginning to deepen toward something that

would be dusk in another day and a half or so. “It must be a

bitter life at times,” she said softly, “being a mutant—

having to hold your own worth like a shield in front of you, never

knowing for certain what a ‘normal’ human might think. Friendship,

even casual friendship that does not much touch the depths, could be

a precious thing to someone in such circumstances.” She gave

Gabriel a look. “I would not say our dealings with Helm are all

one-sided, or that we do not offer him something he much needs,

though it might seem a light and easy gift to us.”

Gabriel nodded. It was not a subject he would normally have

discussed with Helm. He had a feeling that one of the reasons their

friendship worked was precisely because he didn’t think about Helm

being a mutant. “You may have something there. As for Delde Sota

… who knows why she does what she does? Though she is curious about most things.”

“There was not much for her at Iphus, perhaps,” Enda

said, “even when it was busiest. Mechalus, too, have their

problems with the world outside Aleer and the Rigunmor sphere of

influence, people who feel that it’s wrong to meddle with biological

life. The Hatire are only the most outspoken of many.” She

shrugged. “Perhaps Delde Sota sees it as a worthwhile challenge

to be out among those who live another kind of life. Perhaps

something else is on her mind. Certainly she will have a chance to

explore other modes of existence besides the strictly virtual or

mechanical. There is not much to keep a former Grid pilot busy here.”

She looked out at the mists, which had begun to billow up almost to

the level of the yoke between the two mountains.

“Look,” Gabriel said, gazing westward.

Enda followed his glance. Away off in the distance, in the high

airs above the mist, they could see a few thin, twisting ribbons of

translucence, writhing and weaving their way through the lengthening

afternoon, catching the light of Terivine high above the mountains in

brief gleams of tarnished gold.

“Riglia,” Enda said, and shivered.

“They won’t bother us,” Gabriel said. “They avoid

this place, supposedly. Too many well-armed humans and others.”

“I would wonder,” Enda said, standing up again. “I

think I will have some chai myself.”

“Wait for me,” Gabriel said. “I want a shower, and

then I’ll have a look at that mail.”

*

As it happened, the mail came first, and the shower was forgotten

as Gabriel sat down at the Grid panel and touched the controls that

brought up the mail. He keyed in his passwords and then took a quick

breath as the package of mail de-encrypted.

“Altai!” he said. “It’s from the research service.”

Enda came to look over his shoulder, handed him a mug of chai,

black as he preferred it, and stood sipping her own while Gabriel

scrolled through the great blocks of text that suddenly began to

spill out into the display.

“What is it?” she said. “They have used one of

those hard-to-read typestyles again.”

“Ricel,” Gabriel said. “They’ve finally turned up

something on him.”

“Ricel” was not the man’s real name or his only name. He

had served on board the Star Force cruiser Falada, to which

Gabriel had last been posted. Ricel’s position was ostensibly in

engineering. Early on in Gabriel’s assignment to Falada, he

had been instructed by Concord Intelligence— to which he had

been “seconded”— that Jacob Ricel was his shipboard

contact, someone who might get in touch with him and have him

investigate one matter or another. It had only happened once or

twice. The problem was that the last intervention Ricel asked Gabriel

to perform was the passing of a small data chip to someone aboard

ship. The person in question was the assistant to the Ambassador

Plenipotentiary dealing with the crisis in the Thalaassa system to

which Falada had been sent to intervene. The data chip was not

a message coded in solid form, as Gabriel had thought, but the

trigger for a detonator in a shuttle transporting the ambassador and

her party. Everyone aboard died. One of Gabriel’s best friends,

acting as marine security escort aboard that shuttle, had died.

The deaths had happened in atmosphere, so the government of the

planet Phorcys demanded the right to conduct the trial, much to the

annoyance of the Concord Marines. To their even greater annoyance,

the trial body refused to convict Gabriel of the murders—

though he had not been exonerated either. Gabriel’s insistence that

Ricel had given him the data chip and that Ricel was his Intel

contact aboard the ship had been rejected by the marine prosecutors.

Elinke Darayev, Falada’s captain, had insisted that Ricel had

not been Intel, and she should have known. This left Gabriel

with the question: who was “Ricel”? Apparently he

was now dead, due to a space suit accident, but Gabriel could not let

matters rest there. He needed whatever information he could find on

the man if he was to clear himself.

Gabriel shook his head in combined annoyance and satisfaction. “I

can’t believe it. We spent six weeks with this stuff in our hold, and

I never knew it. We have got to have a word with our sorting

software.”

“I am not sure the software was at fault,” Enda said.

“We left in a rush, and there was no time to de-encrypt or sort

the material. Next time we will leave in a more leisurely manner and

do our sorting first.”

“You bet,” Gabriel muttered. The display flickered, and

several images, each tagged below with more text, came up.

Gabriel took a deep breath. “Look at these,” he said.

Three images rotated there. They were all the same if you looked

past superficial differences. One of the images was clear, the other

two grainy, but this had not bothered the AI software that Altai had

been using to hunt through public records in the systems it had

scanned. Gabriel had paid extra for the image search facility. Now he

saw that the extra investment was beginning to pay off.

“There were at least three of him at one time or another,”

Gabriel said quietly. “How many lives has this guy had?”

“Discovering that may take some time,” Enda said,

looking over his shoulder. “Does it not say there that ‘Ricel’

has died?”

“Yeah, well, I’m becoming suspicious about such claims when

they’re made about anyone attached to this face.” Gabriel shook

his head. “Why doesn’t he change it?”

“What?”

“His face. You’d think he would, if he really wanted to stay

secret. Look at this one: a mustache, but that doesn’t hide anything.

And this one, the tattoos are a distraction, but take them off and

it’s still the same face. Why doesn’t he have his nose done, or his

hair color or skin color changed, or the hairline inhibited from

‘life’ to ‘life’?”

Enda tilted her head to one side. “I have no answer for you,

but it does seem to be the same man.”

Gabriel studied the four précis. “These span ten

years,” he said. “What was he doing in between? Where else

was he that hasn’t shown up yet?” He sighed. “These results

aren’t bad, but Enda, the price!”

“You must not count the price,” she said, “not

while you are still hunting answers, not unless you value your peace

of mind so cheaply. We are not without resources, and we made a

healthy profit on this run.”

“Will we make another, though?” Gabriel said, sitting

back. “Any offers on the return-leg screen this morning?”

She tilted her head sideways again, this time more slowly.

“Nothing yet, but there is no need for buyers at this end to be

sudden, especially not with Mr. Alwhirn in his present mood. If

anyone wants to ship data with us, well enough; but they would have

shipped with Alwhirn or I.I. before now. No one in so small a place

is going to rush off to give their business to someone they have

never seen before. Time will be taken to study us. Therefore we

should be out and about today. We should see about resupplying.”

“With what? We’re full up after Diamond Point—”

“You know that, and I know that, but the storekeepers here

will not. Besides,” Enda said with an amused look, “I want

to find out where Oraan, our chef of last evening, is getting his

vegetables. Canned they may be, but they are of high quality. If he

is growing them, then we will be back here, infotrading or not.”

Gabriel got up and stretched, thinking about his shower. Enda gave

the screen one last look, then went down the hall. After a moment,

she stuck her head out of her cabin door and looked at him. “I

wonder about these dreams you have been having. They seem to be

making you circumstantial.”

“Maybe they have,” Gabriel said, uncertain what she

meant.

She came down the hall with the plant pot. “Good. Meanwhile,

a little natural sunlight can do this no harm.”

“You know what I think?” Gabriel said. “I think

that thing’s made of some kind of plastic. It’s a joke on a poor

human who doesn’t know any better.”

Enda smiled. “When I play a joke on you, it will be a better

one than that. When you are ready, let us go into town and see about

those vegetables and anything else we can discover.”

*

They went out an hour or so later. By the time they finished their

stops at the various shops and businesses in Sunbreak, lunch was

starting when they finally got to the community center.

Enda sat down with a glass of the bubbling water and started

making notes on the morning’s discussions. Gabriel had chai while he

gazed out the windows at the extraordinary view, row after row of

serried peaks in the now-fading afternoon light.

Rather to his pleasure, they didn’t stay alone for long. A couple

of people came along to sit and chat with them. “Just curious,”

said the lady, an Alaundrin, who sat down with a tall mug of some

pungent kind of hotdraft that Gabriel couldn’t identify.

“Nosey,” said the man who sat down across from her, a

short broad man with a big nose and merry little eyes.

The lady was Marielle Esephanne. Her husband was still in the

office taking care of some paperwork in his job as a secretary to the

Regency Expansion Bureau, the department that oversaw infrastructure

matters in Sunbreak. The man introduced himself as Rov Melek, cousin

to a homesteader growing beef lichen and broadleaf maleaster on a

small terraced farm just across the valley from Sunbreak on Black

Mountain.

“But they’re all black around here,” said Gabriel.

Rov winked at him as he turned around his own glass of chai,

waiting for it to cool. “Makes it easier to name them.”

Enda looked up from her notes. “You are responsible

for the vegetables. Let me finish this, then I want to talk to you

about those.”

Rov grinned. “We’re becoming a gourmet’s paradise,” he

said to Gabriel. “People come, oh, tens of light-years for our

food, but it would be nice if more of them came back more than once.

We get so many of these one-time charlies.”

Gabriel chatted with the two Sunbreakers while Enda finished her

notes. As he had suspected, it turned out that most people in the

settlement worked for either Alaundril or the Regency of Bluefall.

There was not a lot else to do here. However, the settlers seemed to

consider one administration about as good (or bad) as the other, and

Gabriel heard Marielle or Rov refer to “the government” and

mean both sides of the colonial divide.

Maybe, Gabriel thought, it’s because this place is so small and

isolated. Making a big deal over one side or the other wouldn’t get

you far. They’re all stuck here together, a long way from anywhere

else.

They were eager enough to hear what news Gabriel had to pass on

from Grith. Everyone in town knew about Rae Alwhirn’s outburst of the

previous evening, but no one knew what it was about or had connected

recent events at Corrivale with them. Marielle and Rov listened

without much comment to Gabriel’s much-edited story of his visit to

Rhynchus in company with Enda and Helm.

“That guy,” Rov said in reference to Helm, “looks

like he might own a gun or so.”

Gabriel agreed. When he finished telling about their arrival at

Grith and the standoff between a VoidCorp dreadnought, Falada,

and a group of Concord cruisers, Marielle whistled softly. “There’s

why Rae got so upset. He’s sure that VoidCorp’s trying to shut him

down.”

Gabriel blinked. “But they were trying to shut us down. I’m not sure why he was angry at us for being on the wrong side

of them …”

“Rae’s got more conspiracy theories than a riglia’s got

cilia,” Rov said. “He’s always been on a hair trigger,

seeing something hiding behind every rock. He’s had a lot of trouble

in his business. Bad luck, mostly. A power failure a while back cost

him a lot in insurance; there were lawsuits…. Now Rae thinks

everything that happens around here is aimed at him.” Rov

scratched his head. “Have to admit, I haven’t seen him pop like

that before. He must think you’re out to get him in particular

because you’re infotraders.”

“Did he treat the I.I. people the same way?” Gabriel

asked.

“Frikes, no, they were here six years before he started.

They’ve been trading in and out of this system, to Aegis and Tendril

all that while, but you see the problem.” Rov gestured around

him. “We’re so small here, and so quiet. Our Grid’s so small you

could spit across it. A lot of people don’t like the idea of them,”

he jerked a desultory thumb over his shoulder, “the riglia.”

Enda pushed her notepad aside. “Do you not like the idea of

them either?”

“Don’t see that they care about my opinion one way or the

other,” Rov said, “but they were here first. We didn’t know

when we came that they were more than dumb animals. A lot of us came

a long way to settle here, got ourselves set up, and then what do we

find?” He pulled his head down between his shoulders as if

seeking protection from something. “Government shoulda checked

things out more carefully before they let anyone settle here, before

those fraal scientists came in and told everybody ‘Guess what, you’ve

got company.’ ” He sighed. “Sorry, lady. I know it

wasn’t your fault. Anyway, there are people leaving all the time. The

feeling that you’re being watched … it gets to you after a

while.”

“I’ve felt that,” Gabriel said. “An uneasy kind of

feeling.”

“That’s right,” Marielle said. “Well, it’s the

riglia, I suppose. They’re mindwalkers, so they can do that. There

are a lot more of them than there are of us.” She sighed. “Some

day maybe there’ll be nobody but them here again, but meantime a lot

of us have spent everything we had to come here. We can’t just go.

There’s nothing to go with.”

Gabriel nodded and took a drink of his chai.

“This isn’t a busy part of space, anyway,” said Rov. “No

other well-settled systems are nearby. There are some useless ones—

stars but no planets, or planets that’re just rocks, no point even in

mining ‘em. You hear stories, rumors about one world or another that

got missed when they did the surveys, but you can’t take things like

that too seriously.”

“They missed Rivendale that same way,” said Enda, “when

they first came through the system. No one thought so small a dwarf

star would have a planet.”

“Well, true enough, lady,” Rov said. “It’s rare,

isn’t it? Hasn’t happened since, though you keep hearing stories and

rumors. People go out looking for those places and don’t come back.”

He dropped his voice lower. “And there are ships out there, too,

that nobody knows where they come from— out in the empty

spaces, the ‘back of the Verge,’ the Barrens. Nobody sensible goes

out that way. Crazy explorers, they go, but you don’t see them

again. We had a couple through here,” he said as he reached for

the wine bottle, “had themselves an exploration contract from

the CSS and everything. They were on their way to someplace out past

Coulomb.”

Gabriel looked at Enda. “What’s past Coulomb?”

“Nothing that I know of”

“That’s just my point,” Rov said, “but they were

going that way anyhow. Something called Elder? Caldera? Something …

No, Eldala, it was.”

Enda shook her head. “I have never heard of it.”

“You’re not alone. But off they went, she and her friend, and

we haven’t seen hide or hair of them since. Hair enough her friend

had, too.” Rov chuckled.

“Maybe,” Gabriel said, wondering what Rov’s last comment

might have meant but deciding not to press it. “Were they just

more of the one-time visitors you mentioned?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” said Rov, drinking the

last of his drink and eyeing the glass absently. “The one lady,

the human, she was real taken with this place. She said it reminded

her of home. Wouldn’t want to think what her home looked like, but

she said she was definitely coming back.” He shrugged. “Infinity

only knows where she is now. And there’ve been others. A few went

missing in transit to somewhere else— Aegis, Richards, Annahoy—

and didn’t turn up at the other end. They found one or two ships, but

no sign of the pilots or passengers. That was weird.”

“Where were the ships found?” Enda said.

“Just floating near their outward transit points. One of

those was strange. The detectors said the ship had gone into

drivespace, all right, but it didn’t transit. No starfall.”

“Bad coordinates,” Gabriel said, “but nothing

happens when you do that. You just pop out in the same place a few

seconds later. You feel stupid—”

“This wasn’t like that. The one ship, Wauksha its name

was, should have come out at a halfway point on its way to Aegis. It

didn’t, though the detector showed it on its way. It turned up just

out of system, over by Terivine A. They were lucky to have found it.

The star would have pulled it in, in a few more weeks. The other ship

was by its departure point, but it never left. They just found it,

empty….”

“That is very odd,” Enda said.

Marielle shook her head. “Not half as odd as some things you

hear,” she said softly. “Remember the ghost ships, Rov?”

Rov nodded. Marielle looked over at Enda and said, “A few

people have seen this, over— what— two, three years or

so? They made starfall, were coming in on system drive, and saw

something on the way in. Like a big ship that just came up out of

drivespace, then went away again. Can’t be a ship. A ship would have

to recharge. But this thing, this big dark ghost, just comes bobbing

up out of drivespace like a sat relay and sinks right back again.”

Gabriel did not look at Enda, though he very much wanted to. “What

was it?”

“No one knows,” Marielle said, “but it gives me the

jillies. I may not be on kissing terms with the laws of physics, but

I don’t like hearing about things that can just throw them out the

door like that, either.”

Rov nodded. “One guy— didn’t hear this myself, a friend

of a friend heard it— one guy who saw this said, ‘I thought it

was alive. It looked at me before it went off again.’ “

“Ghost stories,” Gabriel said.

“Oh, I know,” said Rov. “Every place has them. Some

of them are just that. People like to scare themselves, but this is

different. You won’t hear people talking about these a lot. Maybe

some folks here are a little superstitious. They think that these

things might creep closer if you mention them.”

It was a warning, however gently phrased. Gabriel nodded. “You’re

right, of course, but you were telling us about Rae Alwhirn.”

The conversation veered off into good-natured gossip after that,

though Gabriel had trouble concentrating on the chat after what he

had just heard. He and Enda had seen just such a huge vessel come

looming up out of drivespace at them before sinking away into the

darkness again. A deep uncomfortable green color it had been …

very like the little green ball bearing ships that had come after

them way out in the Thalaassa system, the ones with the pilots who

had once been alive but were not any more. Gabriel reminded himself

once more that he needed to talk to Delde Sota about what had come of

the autopsy she had done for them at Iphus Station on the body of one

of those vessels’ pilots.

He stretched, turned to yawn, then froze as he caught a glimpse of

someone off to one side of the room. Slowly Gabriel turned back

forward again and leaned on the table.

“… but it’s been busy anyway,” Rov was saying.

“Unusual number of visitors for this time of year.”

Enda looked at him, then briefly past him, with mild interest.

“You mean you have a tourist season?”

“Not as such,” said Rov. “Government pretty

strictly controls the number of people who come in here. They’re

concerned about the riglia taking it wrong. You wouldn’t have been

affected. Infotraders aren’t regulated, but a few ships came in over

the past week. One was a tourist— another was a trader,

bringing in entertainment solids.”

“Oh really,” Gabriel said, crossing another business

possibility off an ever-decreasing mental list.

“Gabriel,” Enda said then, “something occurs to me.

I want to talk to Helm about plans for this afternoon. Do you want to

come back to the ship with me? It won’t take long.”

“Sure,” Gabriel said. “Marielle, Rov … see

you later?”

“This evening, maybe,” Marielle said. “Here’s my

husband coming. Rov, talk to you later.”

Gabriel and Enda went out. “Gabriel,” Enda said quietly

to him as they made their way up the street toward the port entrance,

“did you see where I was looking?”

He shook his head. “It was behind me. I didn’t want to stare.

I thought you were looking at what I’d been looking at.”

“Perhaps. There was a woman sitting away at the back of the

room, having chai or some such. I have seen her before.”

He gave her a look. “Where?”

“In the port offices at Diamond Point. She was going in as I

was coming out.”

“Interesting,” Gabriel said, “because I saw someone

here whom I saw back on Grith. Not at the back of the room.

Over on the left side.”

“What a small universe it’s becoming,” Enda said.

“Listen, Gabriel, we have more important business. After that

talk with the owner of the provisioner’s this morning, I would

definitely bring in a load of foodstuffs when we come again. They

have little here except prepacks and staples of the most elementary

kind. You would get very tired of starch noodles if you lived here

long. I think we would get good results if we brought in some of the

simpler dried and preserved fish and fungus packs, vegetable

dumplings and so forth—”

Gabriel went along with this, and they were well into the virtues

of a major dried soup brand native to Aegis, and discussing where in

the ship they would stow it by the time they got up into Sunshine’s lift. When they finally got inside, Gabriel laughed.

“You are incredible!”

“In what regard?”

“Your ability to talk about anything but what’s on your

mind.”

Enda gave him a dry look. “I assure you, I am thinking about

the soup as well. Wait a moment” She stepped over to the Grid

access panel and touched it for local network access. “Helm?”

“Wondered when you were going to call.”

“I did not want to wake you untimely. Would you and Delde

Sota come over? There are some things I want to check in our mutual

inventory before lunch.”

“Lunch,” said Helm, immediately interested. “Be

right over”

Enda turned away. “We may want an excuse to come back that

does not involve data, if we are unable to pick up an outward data

load or another Terivine-bound load from Grith. I am more interested

in your sighting. Whom exactly did you see?”

“Like you, someone from Diamond Point,” Gabriel said.

“She was parked over in bond a couple of slots down from

Longshot. Little brunette woman, maybe about fifty kilos,

short, with pale eyes.”

“Not dark ones?” Enda said.

“No. The eyes got my attention first. She was dressed as if

she was from Austrin-Ontis— you know, those layered rigs with

pockets all over them— not that that proves anything one way or

the other. She was exchanging docs with a port official— I’m

not sure whether she was coming or going at the time. She had a

little all-purpose ship, a Westhame or something similar. Light

haulage, possibly converted from a live-in ship.” He closed his

eyes for a moment, trying to see the vessel in memory. “Fairly

new. I remember thinking a fair bit of money would have been tied up

in that.”

“Indeed. Now both of these people are here. What would you

say the odds are of this being an accident, Gabriel?”

“Hard to say. ‘What a small universe it’s becoming.’ “

Enda reached up and thumped Gabriel on top of his head. “I

will take the imitation as flattery, poor though it be. Now we face

another question: which of these is the spy you have been expecting?”

“Both of them?” Gabriel said.

Enda gave him a thoughtful look. “Well, why not? We know that

the Concord has evinced interest in your movements … if only

through your friend Lorand Kharls.” Gabriel snorted at the word

“friend.”

“Yes,” Enda continued, “well, we know he has some

interest in using you as a— ‘stalking horse,’ your phrase was?

Though from what you told me of your conversation with him, he was

not forthcoming about what he was stalking.” Enda pulled down

one of the chairs and sat in it. “He could not come into this

part of space without attracting considerable attention. So he has

sent someone to keep an eye on you.”

“Seems likely. The question is, who’s the other one?”

They looked at each other.

“VoidCorp,” Gabriel said.

“You would not have many friends in that camp,” Enda

said. “Nor would I. Nor Helm, not after Thalaassa. Even Delde

Sota might have crossed paths with them. She was cautious enough

about the possibility that they were monitoring her medical facility

back on Iphus.” She sighed. “Now all we must do is discover

which of these people is working for which side.”

“And do what then?” Gabriel could imagine what Helm

would suggest. “Besides feed them disinformation.”

“All we can,” Enda said, “keeping the information

as mutually contradictory as possible. Indeed, it might be wise to

find some way to split away from Helm and Delde Sota, so we can see

which operative follows who where.” She smiled, a wicked look.

“I don’t know if Helm’s going to be wild about letting us go

off on our own,” Gabriel said.

“If we have no load to take back to Grith, that might

change,” said Enda. “Meanwhile we must let Helm and Delde

Sota know about this. We should go into town again, seeing and being

seen. If we see our spies, we should make common cause with them as

fellow visitors. Buy them a drink and hear their lies so that we may

more carefully shape our own.”

The lift chimed. Enda moved to the lift column and touched the

“allow” panel.

“What would you know about lies?” Gabriel said. “A

nice respectable fraal like you “

“Only that, in life as in marketing, they have their place,”

Enda said. “Though you must be willing to pay the price

afterwards.”

*

The four of them went to lunch at the community center but didn’t

see the two people they wanted to see. Instead, they had to console

themselves with another meal of astonishing quality. Gabriel was

amazed, for in his marine days he had eaten on much richer and

well-visited planets, but rarely as well as he was doing here.

“It’s not just the vegetables,” he said to Delde Sota as

they fought over the last few spoonfuls of something brown but

ineluctably delicious. “Oraan is a genius.”

Gabriel managed to come up with a second spoon to get the last of

whatever was in the bowl, but Delde Sota’s braid came up and took it

neatly out of his hand and held it out of reach. The braid had

brushed Gabriel’s hand in passing.

Now, amid Enda and Helm’s laughter, Delde Sota said quietly,

“Query: adjusted electrolyte balance recently?”

Gabriel, confused, looked at her. She ate the last spoonful of

sauce and put the spoon down.

“Analysis: body electrolytes are out of kilter,” she

said.

“Just stress …”

Delde Sota shook her head. “Negation: not the kind of shifts

that are stress-related. Diet changes?”

“Not until we got here. I’ve rarely eaten so many things that

I didn’t know what they were. Not even on a marine transport”

Delde Sota looked wry as she said, “Intention: to run full

enzyme/endocrine series on you. Premature gray in family history?”

That brought Gabriel up short. “No. You think they’re

connected?”

“Etiology: impossible to judge except on case-by-case basis.

Insufficient data at the moment. Require more concrete information

and analysis.”

“You were a Grid pilot once,” Gabriel said, thinking

with some distaste about what that “concrete information”

was probably going to involve— blood and tissue samples and the

like. Gabriel had always been able to cope with the sight of his own

blood in battle, but in a clean quiet office full of ominous-looking

medical instruments, blood became a completely different matter.

“Can’t you just sneak into my old marine records?”

“Do not have to sneak,” Delde Sota said with an amused

glint in her eye. As usual when dealing with medical issues, her

language started to contain less of the mechalus dialect and become

more common. “Copies included in your vehicle registry seals

aboard Sunshine and in your present personal data and credit

chip. However, that data is antiquated. New data is required.”

Gabriel groaned. “Do I have to be conscious for this?”

“Preferable,” said Delde Sota, “especially for

extraction of brain tissue. Hard to know whether one is in the right

spot, otherwise. You are unlikely to miss it, in any case.”

Wide-eyed, Gabriel pushed back his chair. The end of Delde Sota’s

neurobraid came up and patted him on the wrist. She smiled at him and

said, “Stress may actually be a factor. Unable to recognize joke

when presented with one. Examination can wait, but not too long. Some

concern about physical status.”

“Uh,” Gabriel said. “Uh, all right.” He was

having trouble with the concept of the removal of his brain tissue.

He liked it where it was.

Helm was glancing around and drinking kalwine as if it was much

later in the day. “No sign of them,” he said. “Must

have flown the coop.”

“Must have. Helm, what’s a ‘coop’?” Gabriel asked.

“It’s a small hangar,” Helm replied. “Haven’t seen

our cranky guy here, either. What’s his name, Alwhere?”

“Alwhirn,” Enda said. “No, he too is conspicuous by

his absence.”

“Statement: no surprise, since departing plus minus twelve

hours with data load,” said Delde Sota.

Helm gave her a bemused look. “You been in their system?”

Delde Sota looked innocent. “Value judgment: hard to avoid,”

she said quietly, “since port scheduling system security similar

to air in opacity and impermeability. Ship Quatsch in

pre-loading cycle, purging tanks, overwriting data solids, usual

security routines running.”

Gabriel knew that some mechalus Grid pilots did not even have to

physically touch a computer to infiltrate it, but knowing that in the

abstract and being presented with it as an accomplished fact were two

different things.

“You could get in trouble for that!”

“Requirement: have to be caught first,” said Delde Sota.

She lifted her glass and drank.

“Well, one less thing to worry about,” Helm said. “What

about us?”

“I have been up one side of the main street and down the

other,” said Enda, “and have found no one willing to ship

data with us. Now we know why. Indeed I can hardly blame them when

there is a scheduled departure imminent, and the local hauler is

probably offering them better than usual rates to keep us from taking

his business.”

“If you’d moved a little faster,” Helm growled as he

downed another drink, “we might not be sitting here with empty

holds our only option.”

Enda looked annoyed. “Helm,” she said, “it was not

I who slept in this morning.”

“It wasn’t my business to be up early. I was up

late taking care of you-know-what. If you had been a little sharper

off the pad, we wouldn’t have to—”

“Wait a minute, you can’t talk to her tike that,”

Gabriel said.

“Who says I can’t, you runty little—”

It got loud and relatively content-free after that, but that was

how they had planned it. Lunch was over, and the community center was

beginning to empty out, but that process stopped as the inhabitants

paused to watch a fraal, a mechalus, a human, and some kind of mutant

all shouting at one another. Even Oraan the chef stopped in the

middle of scouring a pan to watch the argument scale up. Enda caught

Gabriel around the arm and dragged him away from Helm. Delde Sota, in

turn, grabbed Helm and hauled him out of range of the other two.

People seemed generally impressed by how strong Enda was, to be able

to control such a big young man. She pushed him out the front door

and marched him down the street, yelling at him like an annoyed

grandmother. Behind her, at a distance, came the doctor with Helm

roped up in her braid while the mutant blared threats and

imprecations.

The two parties went into their separate ships and did not stir

for the rest of the afternoon. Later that evening, Gabriel and Enda

came out to go to dinner. They sat by themselves, looking sour and

pained. The locals noticed this and commented quietly to themselves.

A couple of others noticed this as well. One was a small, dark-haired

woman with striking pale eyes. Another woman, dark-haired as well,

but with brown eyes, was petite and dressed like someone from one of

the Aegis worlds. They sat on opposite sides of the room and took no

notice of one another. All their attention was on Gabriel and Enda,

eating their dinner stiffly and in haste, like people anxious to get

something over with and leave. Finally, they left without a backward

glance. Shortly thereafter— though not so soon as to arouse any

particular notice— one of the women, then another, went out as

well.

*

“And?” Enda said down the comms to Helm a while later.

There was a slight pause, due to an extra layer of encryption that

Delde Sota had laid into the ship-to-ship network channels.

“Nothing new,” Helm replied. “Both of them are at

their ships at the moment. They haven’t filed any plans with Joel at

the port’s systems. We’d know right away if they had.”

“Well,” Enda said and turned to Gabriel. “Now we

must make our choices. We will not be getting any

Rivendale-originating data to take with us on this run. Nor do I see

much point in waiting here until our competition has left.”

“Not when the I.I. ship is due to arrive in another two

days,” Gabriel said. He was sitting in one of the sitting room

chairs with his feet up and his arms folded. “I don’t see why we

should linger with not one, but two, of someone’s covert agents

sitting out there and waiting to see what we do. We ought to hop and

make them do something, if only to annoy them.”

Helm laughed at that. “All right. Hop where?”

“I’d be tempted to say back to Grith,” Gabriel said,

“but that seems too predictable. Also, I’ve seen enough of

Corrivale for a while.”

“You could do Aegis in three starfalls,” said Helm.

“It’d make sense, anyway. Once there you could see if there’s

any data for Corrivale or Terivine and haul it back out.”

“It is not a bad idea,” said Enda. “Unscheduled

courier runs pay ten or fifteen percent better than the scheduled

ones.”

Gabriel was thinking more along the lines of how busy a system

Aegis was, and how much easier it would be to lose a stalker or two

there than here. “All right,” he said. “Aegis in three

starfalls, twenty light-years and some small change. Is there an

established ‘tween-jump recharge point?”

“There are a couple spots that people use,” said Helm,

“just out by themselves in empty space. Star called Mikoa on

your second-to-last jump.”

“Fine,” Gabriel said and headed forward to talk to the

piloting computers.

After checking the coordinates and the timings, he came back to

the sitting room and said, “Helm, how soon would you feel like

leaving?”

“Any time.” He paused. “Delde Sota says nothing

would keep her here except the food, but she’s had enough beef lichen

to last her a month or so.”

“Well, then,” Gabriel said, looking over at Enda,

“anything else that needs to be done before we leave? Did you

get enough canned vegetables?”

Enda sighed and said, “The ones I was interested in were not

canned, and like Delde Sota, I think I have had enough of them for

the moment. When we come back this way again under less pressing

circumstances, I shall see about bringing some away with us.

Meantime, let us go.”

“Right,” Helm said. “Four hours from now? Most

everyone’ll be in bed. No comms activity within an hour of the

takeoff time. We’ll do a fast heat-up to give them least warning.

You’ll want to program the preheat sequence for your system drive

into the computer. Want a time tick?”

“Hold on and you can give it to me in the cockpit,”

Gabriel said, getting up to go forward again. “Wait. If we want

our two ladies to follow us, shouldn’t we give them plenty of

warning?”

“We shouldn’t give them too much of a warning,” said

Helm. “If they’re any good, they’ll catch up. In fact, how fast

they catch up will indicate how good they are. If they’re inept, I’d

sooner find out this way.”

Gabriel laughed and went up to the cockpit again. A few minutes

later, Sunshine’s departure time was set. They would warm

engines for exactly three minutes, then take off and make starfall

about twenty minutes later.

“This way you’ve got time for a few last errands,” Helm

said.

“I’m not leaving the ship,” Gabriel said. “I’ve had

enough of Rivendale for now.”

He glanced over at Enda. She shook her head. “Let’s get out

of here.”

Chapter Five

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FOUR HOURS LATER, Gabriel and Enda were in the pilots’ seats,

strapped in and waiting for Sunshine’s preheat cycle to start.

Rivendale’s long afternoon was finally shading toward evening. The

sun was well down below the jagged peaks, and the eastern sky was

slowly purpling.

Gabriel stretched in the straps and looked out the windows. “It’s

a pretty place,” he said, “but it’s trying. So much day

gets to be a nuisance, and I wouldn’t even want to think about a

week’s worth of night. How can anyone live here and stay sane?”

“Obviously they manage,” said Enda, “though I think

I prefer shorter days myself.”

The ship went hhup around them, a soft awakening hum, and

half the system indicators that had been dormant or gray in the 3D

display now began to show power readings as they slowly escalated.

Gabriel glanced over at Longshot. With the sunset glancing off

her windshield, it was hard to see inside; but he thought he caught a

flash of motion— probably Helm giving him a thumbs-up. He

returned the gesture and looked around outside the ship.

At the port building, a male figure came out the front door,

looked at them curiously. After a few seconds, another human, shorter

and rounder than the first, came out and looked as well. The two

looked at the ships. One of them pointed; the other gestured.

“Two minutes,” Gabriel said.

One of the two humans went back inside. A few moments later,

Sunshine‘s comms chirped. Someone was hailing them.

“Oops,” Gabriel said, reaching out to kill the local

network connection. “Another systems failure. We really ought to

have that looked at when we make port again.”

“Somewhere else,” Enda said, smiling.

Another half minute ticked by, and another. The man who had gone

in now came out, and he and his companion stood watching the ships.

They made no move to come any closer.

“Thirty seconds,” Enda said, reaching into the 3D

display to touch one of the driver displays into “query”

mode. The telltale folded itself into a wider display of ship’s power

levels, all showing 100% or better. “Everything is as it should

be.”

“Good,” Gabriel said.

He was looking around the field for any sign of activity, and also

watching the street that led up to Sunbreak town proper. There was no

sign of anyone. Am I. spoiling someone’s sleep over there? he

thought. Wouldn’t that be a terrible thing?

“Ten seconds,” Enda said. “Do you want to take her

up, or shall I?”

“You have control,” Gabriel said. “I’m going to get

into the fighting field.”

Enda put her eyebrows up as Gabriel reached into that part of the

display. “No harm in that,” she said. “Five seconds.”

The final countdown bled away, Enda said, “Now,” and

Sunshine lifted straight up, gracefully but with rapidly

increasing speed. That was very much Enda’s piloting style as Gabriel

had observed it. Smooth acceleration, but plenty of it. Up they went,

through layers of mist, over the rapidly widening terrain of jagged

peaks, and up into Terivine’s orange light again. With Helm pacing

them off to starboard, they cleared the peaks and slanted low over

the beautiful but hostile landscape. Gabriel perceived all this

briefly as visual input while the fighting field was still settling

over him. When it took as a schematic, bright lines and curves

stitched against diagrammatic darkness with lines of galactic

latitude and longitude.

“Out of atmosphere,” Enda said.

Gabriel shifted his body in the seat to get the feeling of where

his weapons were. The rail gun was reporting almost ready, and the

plasma cannons were hot.

“That didn’t take long,” he commented.

“With their gravity, I would be surprised if it did,”

Enda said as she spun Sunshine on her axis to point away from

Terivine and Rivendale, out toward the point where they had agreed

with Helm they would make starfall. “Anything of interest behind

us?”

Gabriel looked back at Rivendale in the fighting schematic and

said, “Nothing coming, at least not at the moment.”

He jumped then as the alarms howled. Something was coming, but not

from the direction in which Gabriel was looking. The virtual display

whipped around to show him the direction from which the threat now

approached. Gabriel had instructed the display to disallow Longshot but to alert him of anything of unknown mass over a ton. Here came

something, a small tight knot of light in the display with a “comet’s

tail” spread out behind it to illustrate course and speed.

“Another ship, all right,” Gabriel said, and felt around

him for the paired joysticks that were his preferred method for

handling the plasma cannons.

The other ship was diving straight at him. “Helm,”

Gabriel said, “Company—”

“I see him. It’s our friend Quatsch,” Helm

replied.

“You mean Alwhirn?” Gabriel said. “He wasn’t

supposed to be leaving for another twelve hours!”

“Damn,” came Helm’s voice, sounding more gravelly and

annoyed than usual. ” ‘Plus minus twelve hours.’

Sonofabitch must have sneaked right out past us while we were in the

community center!”

“Even schedules can lie,” said Enda. Her face set grim

as she broke off to starboard. Quatsch came after them.

“He’s not eager to try conclusions with me, that’s

plain,” Helm said with some amusement as he curved around to

match course with Sunshine again. “Let’s see if I can—”

The first plasma bolts lanced by Sunshine much too closely

for Gabriel’s tastes.

“What’s the matter with him?” he muttered.

“Quatsch!” he shouted over an open channel. “What

are you doing? Quatsch! Alwhirn!”

No answer.

“He’s not in a mood to negotiate, I would say,” said

Enda. “Helm, one of us is going to have to do something about

this poor creature, at least enough to make him break this off. I

dislike the idea of harming him, and it would do our return business

on Rivendale no good, but it is preferable to—”

She threw Sunshine to port as Quatsch dived at them

again, firing. The bolts went wide.

“I’m not sure that his craziness isn’t some kind of act he

uses when it’s going to get him somewhere with his friends,”

Gabriel muttered, getting his own plasma cannon ready. “Helm, if

your sharpshooting’s better than mine, you’d better do something

about this boy, because I’m in no mood for him.”

“Targeting,” Helm said and fired. At the last moment,

Quatsch tumbled aside, diving away from both Longshot and Sunshine.

“Let’s not bother with this,” Enda said. “Helm, is

your stardrive ready?”

“Three minutes for prep,” said Helm, “and we’ll be—

Uh-oh.”

Gabriel’s insides twisted as he saw what Helm saw. Another ship

was accelerating toward them from Rivendale.

“Small,” Helm said. “Not much bigger than

Sunshine.”

“Thanks loads,” Gabriel said. “It’s that Westhame.

That’s Miss Blue Eyes.”

“She doesn’t have much,” said Helm. “One plasma

cannon. One rail gun. No help; she’s alone aboard.”

“Doesn’t make that much difference,” Gabriel muttered.

It was perfectly possible to fly and fight a small ship with the

computer to help you. “Enda, get us ready for starfall.”

“Here comes the rest of the party,” said Helm. “Third

trace. Must be your brown-eyed number, I think. My good gods in a

bucket of ale, what has she got fastened onto that thing?”

Gabriel did not much care to hear this kind of language from Helm.

“What has she got?” he asked, eyeing their stardrive

energy level indicators. They were nowhere near ready.

“Too much. I want to know where she bought it,” Helm

said. Gabriel could hear more than a hint of gleeful awe creeping

into Helm’s voice. “Hell, I wish I’d sold it to her, what a

commission I’d have—”

“Helm!” Enda said. “Details would be

useful!”

“She’s got that mass cannon we were discussing,” said

Helm. “Don’t let her get within a kilometer of you. The results

could be unfortunate—”

“Damn it!” Gabriel said as Quatsch dived at them

again, firing. “Quatsch, stop it! We don’t want to hurt

you, but if you—”

Gabriel fired in frustration, intending to miss. Quatsch veered past as Enda threw Sunshine out of the way. “I’ll

shoot him next time,” Gabriel muttered, “I swear I will.”

He punched the comms open again. “Quatsch, that was the

last piece of slack I’m going to cut you. Next time I’m going to put

one right through your hold, and there goes your business. Get out of

our way!”

“Go on and try,” came a shrill response. “I don’t

care! You and your kind have tried before! You’re just one more of

them! Won’t let a man make a decent living, you and the big

companies, you’re all the same—”

Gabriel could hear Enda breathe out. “He is unstable,”

she said, “but he might damage us. Maybe one through the rear

hull would be the kindest thing—”

“Trouble,” Helm broke in.

He flipped Longshot end for end and came streaking past

Gabriel at great speed. He was firing hard and fast. Gabriel swung in

the fighting field to follow where Helm was going and saw the third

trace. The third ship, more massive than any of the others, swung

from side to side in quick graceful curves, skillfully avoiding

Helm’s fire and firing something that Gabriel didn’t recognize. There

were no bright bolts of power or clouds of projectile vapor, just a

pale streak of cloudy fire that shot out, enveloped Quatsch and tore it to shreds. Not an explosion— though that followed,

as all the air inside the craft flew out through a hundred suddenly

formed gaps. Quatsch became a thousand twisted fragments,

spinning away in all directions while continuing briefly along the

same general course.

Gabriel stared. “She killed him,” he whispered. “Why

would she have killed him ? “

Enda was as shocked as Gabriel but had her mind on other problems.

“Helm, where is that third ship?”

“The smaller one? Away up in ‘zenith’ direction now. No

action. Watching.”

And listening, Gabriel thought. On whose behalf?

“Possibility,” Delde Sota’s came over comms. “Open

communications with hostile vessel.”

“What for?”

“Stall,” said Delde Sota. “Pump for information.

Have other business to attend to.”

“Right,” Gabriel said. He swallowed, for all this was

his fault. It was not Helm or Delde Sota that these people wanted. He

opened a clear channel and said, “Pursuing vessels, this is

Sunshine. State your intentions or be prepared to face the

consequences.”

“There’s no point in running,” said a very cool, very

calm female voice. “I can outrun you. If you make starfall, that

won’t matter either. I’ll know where you’re going sooner or later and

find you there. Give it up now and resign yourself to being boarded.”

“You can forget that,” Gabriel said, furious. “Why

did you kill him? No one needed to do that!”

“You were about to,” said the cool voice, “not that

it matters. Everyone’s going to think you did, anyway.”

A terrible shock of fear ran down Gabriel’s spine like ice water.

She’s right. I’m the one who murdered a bunch of my best friends. Why

wouldn’t I kill a crazy man who gave me an excuse?

“You can just come along with me,” said the calm female

voice, “or suffer the consequences.”

” ‘Come along with you.’ For what purpose?”

“You know very well. There’s interest in you that you’ve been

avoiding with varying amounts of success, but the gameplay has to

stop now. We’re past that.”

“Oh, are we?” Gabriel said. Delde Sota, whatever you’re

up to, get on with it.

“Don’t try my patience. If you cooperate, things will be made

a lot easier for you. If you don’t…”

He felt a long tremor go through Sunshine, and all her

displays and readouts wavered as if they had lost power for a

fraction of a second. Gabriel shot a glance at Enda. She shook her

head and threw Sunshine away in the opposite direction.

“I’m willing to disable you if I have to,” said the cool

voice. “You won’t be dead, but you’ll have a lot of repairs to

make— and this poor little place isn’t set up for them. When

the rescue parties come up from Rivendale— if they manage to

organize anything— and they discover what’s happened to poor

Alwhirn—”

Enda kept running. Helm followed, not firing, possibly to avoid

interfering with whatever Delde Sota had in mind. Gabriel slipped

deeper into the fighting field, getting into synch with the rail

cannon. If he could get off one well-aimed shot, even from a few

kilometers away, she’d have a nasty surprise.

“Stop running,” Gabriel told Enda.

“What?”

“Stop running. Let her catch us.”

He felt her looking at him.

“Are you sure?”

“Just do it!”

“Gabriel—” came Helm’s voice.

“No, Helm,” Gabriel said, as forcefully as he

could— trying to have him get the message that he was not to

interfere, without saying so openly. “I’m not going to run. I’m

through running.”

“I wouldn’t try anything at this point if I were you,”

said the cool voice.

“You idiot,” Gabriel shouted, “you’re not as

delicate with that damned thing as you think you are! I can hear

atmosphere leaking, half my weapons are off line, and my rail gun’s

been pulled right out of track. It wouldn’t fire now if I got out

there and hit it with a hammer! After I spent how many

thousand dollars having it replaced! You—”

He swore as creatively as he could under the circumstances. The

woman laughed at him. Gabriel’s anger made everything extremely clear

for a moment as he reached for the large joystick that managed the

rail cannon. For just a moment he had an image of how nice it would

be to throttle that pretty little neck and watch those lustrous brown

eyes goggle out. His fist tightened on the virtual control.

Slowly she came drifting in. He watched carefully, waiting. The

ship was coming quite close now, less than half a kilometer away.

Well out past it, Longshot was coasting away, watching. Closer

and closer the other ship drifted. Gabriel saw the change. There had

been cockpit lights. Abruptly, they went out.

Power loss. Delde Sota got into her system over carrier—

Gabriel fired the rail cannon. He had not been lying; it had

indeed been pulled out of alignment by that first ripple of force

from the mass cannon … but not that much. The

meter-wide ball of heavy metal hit the back of her ship and took it

right off, but there was not the huge bloom of silvery air that he

had been expecting.

“Gabriel—” Helm said.

“Don’t bother, Helm!” he yelled. “We’re all right!

Just go!”

“Going,” Helm said. Liquid fire streaked up around

Longshot, veiling her in a ferocious electric blue; then she

was gone.

Ship’s comms suddenly filled with the sound of more cursing, from

two different sources this time. Enda tilted her head in an

evaluatory way as she activated the stardrive.

“Colorful language,” Enda commented.

All around Sunshine, blue-black fire trickled and ran,

obliterating the view of the space around Terivine. Good luck,

Gabriel thought distractedly. The best starfall there is, supposedly.

They vanished into the empty blackness of drivespace.

*

The next five days were as quiet as Gabriel had expected them to

be, almost so much that he had trouble dealing with it.

He found himself wishing that he had more to keep him busy.

He could not rid himself of the image of Quatsch blooming

into a thousand cracks with air pouring out of them, freezing as it

came. Though he had not pushed the button, he was feeling

increasingly responsible.

Whoever these people are, Gabriel thought, I don’t mind them

coming after me, but when they start taking out people who just

happen to be in the neighborhood … that’s another matter. If

this is anything to do with Lorand Kharls, I’m going to rip his head

off when I see him next.

On consideration, he didn’t think Kharls was involved. The man

might be manipulative, obscure, and underhanded, but Gabriel felt

certain he would not have countenanced cold-blooded murder. Nor,

Gabriel thought, would he have sent out anyone likely to behave that

way.

Now what? he wondered. What happens when we turn up at Aegis and

someone says, “Hear you killed somebody else out by Terivine.”

I can tell them all I like that it isn’t true, but I know what

they’re going to think, and whoever she is, she knew too.

Who is she?

Who was that other one—Miss Blue Eyes, who just sat there

and watched it all?

Gabriel sat in the pilot’s seat a long time that first day after

they jumped, trying to work out what could possibly be going on in

the larger world around him. Finally, he turned to find Enda leaning

over his shoulder and gazing into the blackness.

“What’s on your mind?” he said.

She sighed. “Food. Perhaps I was not as tired of the beef

lichen as I thought I was “

Gabriel gave her a look.

“Well, more than that, of course,” Enda said as she sat

down beside him. “Poor Alwhirn. As for Rivendale, who knows

whether we will ever go back there now? What value the place might

have had for us will now be lost, no matter what the investigation

into Alwhirn’s death may reveal. The presence there of two different

agents spying on us makes it plain that seeking out ‘small quiet’

markets in which to work is not going to work”

Gabriel shook his head and said, “Alwhirn might have been

crazy, but there was no reason to just kill him like that.

Whoever that woman is— I don’t like her. We’re going to have

words if we ever meet again.”

“I suspect it would be more than words,” said Enda. She

paused for a moment, then continued, “I wonder if she killed him

because it looked like he might actually have been about to

kill us?”

Gabriel stared at her.

“Well,” she said, “granted, there are people out

there who would prefer to see you dead. Elinke Darayev, the captain

who was your shuttle pilot’s lover strikes me as one of these.

Doubtless there are others. Are there not, at the moment, also those

for whom you are more useful alive than dead?”

Gabriel brooded over that for a few moments. “Some, but if

this is typical of their protection, I don’t think much of their

methods.”

“Insofar as they leave such people with another possible hold

over you,” said Enda, “I would agree.” She frowned.

“It is too easy a tactic, now, and one which you will have to

guard against in the future.”

“It’s likely enough to be pretty effective right now,”

Gabriel said. “Is it even going to be safe for me to show my

face in the Aegis system?”

“Well. First of all, we are riding the crest of that news, so

to speak. No one will come to Aegis with it any sooner than we will,

unless a much larger, faster ship than ours becomes involved.”

“Not beyond possibility,” Gabriel said.

Enda bowed her head in acknowledgment. “I would suggest,

though,” she said, “that under the circumstances, we should

go straight to the authorities when we arrive there and file a

report. First of all, that would not be the act of a guilty person.

Second, it may put the people who were trailing us on the defensive—

however briefly. If someone comes hot-jets behind us to accuse you of

murder, you will have left them in a much weaker position.”

The authorities. Gabriel thought about that. All his life, the

authorities had been nothing that he feared, and in the marines, he

had considered himself part of “the authorities.” Now he

routinely found it difficult dealing with the pang of discomfort that

went through him when he heard the phrase. He knew that until he

cleared his name— maybe for a long time thereafter— he

was on the wrong side of that invisible line and had to consider

whether it was safe to speak to the people on the “right”

side.

“That would probably mean one or another of the embassies on

Bluefall,” Gabriel said, “the Alaundrin or the Regency,

since they both have a foothold in Rivendale.”

“And more to the point,” Enda said, “the Concord

one.”

Gabriel threw her a quick glance.

“Naturally you would not have to file those reports in

person,” she added.

“Especially not the Concord one,” Gabriel

muttered. “The Regency may be running the planet as functionally

neutral, but if I walked into the Concord offices there,

extraterritoriality would function. They’d arrest me as soon as look

at me.”

“Indeed. Well, you need not.” She gave him a more

thoughtful look. “Would you want to stop on Bluefall at all?

That was home for you once….”

Gabriel took a long breath and let it out. It had been years since

he had been home— just after his mother died, in fact. As far

as he knew, his father was still there, but lacking any answer to

recent holomessages, Gabriel didn’t know for sure and was becoming

nervous of finding out. Do I want to walk up to him and have him

reject me as a murderer? Gabriel thought.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel answered. “We don’t need

to, I guess, but also we don’t need to decide right now. The first

thing we need to find out is what data we can pick up at Aegis and

where we’ll go after that.”

He stretched, leaned back in the seat again, and said, “It’s

just so unfair. I would never have killed him.”

“Forensics will prove that you did not,” Enda said. “We

have no weaponry of the kind that destroyed Alwhirn’s ship. The

people who did our installations at Diamond Point will be able to

verify that. There was certainly nowhere to get such equipment at

Sunbreak— even if we could have afforded it.”

Gabriel sighed. “I know that, and you know that, but will the

people at Diamond Point testify? Who knows who might be getting at

them even as we speak? Besides, considering some of the weaponry we

had installed, their testimony might be more damning than helpful.”

Enda got up. “I refuse to speculate in that direction,”

she said. “There is no point in imagining complications that may

never arise. Besides, right now I am wondering how Delde Sota managed

to interfere with that other ship’s power.”

“So am I,” Gabriel muttered. “It’s more like magic

than anything else.”

“I daresay she had a connection to comms through Helm’s

computers,” Enda said. “Past that point, it certainly looks

like magic to me as well— if by that you mean something outside

natural experience. Let us just be grateful that it is being

exercised on our side.”

She went away and left Gabriel to his thoughts. If she was able to

get into that ship’s system, he thought, what else might she have

been able to find out? That information was going to have to wait

until they came out of drivespace.

*

The next morning, and again the morning after that, Gabriel sat

down with the information about Jacob Ricel. He had time to try to

work out what to do with it, but he found himself wondering whether

it was really worthwhile trying to follow any of this. The

information was all between five and ten years old … all

stale. If he went back and questioned the people who had known this

man, what would he find? Eroded memories, more stale data leading …

where?

He gazed at the three faces with the three different names and

wondered what other lives Ricel might have changed the way he had

changed Gabriel’s? How many other lives had the man destroyed or

altered out of recognition … and then just changed his name

and passed on into other circumstances? What kind of person do you

have to be to do things like that to people? And in the name of what,

exactly? Intelligence … planetary or stellar-national

security?

“Thoughts are free, they say,” said Enda quietly from

behind him, “but I would pay a small fortune for yours.”

Gabriel shut off the Grid access array and let it relapse to

Enda’s green field again. “I sometimes wonder if this is ever

going to be worth my while.”

“What? Clearing your name?”

He nodded. “I think it would be nice to forget about it, to

just go off and explore strange places where no one would know me or

care where I’d been.”

“Exploration contracts …” Enda said, sitting down

across from him. “They are not lightly awarded. Nor are they

cheap.”

“Oh, I know. It’s just something to think about.”

Gabriel stretched. “I remember— what was his name, Rov?—

talking about that system— or was it a planet?— out past

Coulomb….”

“Eldala,” Enda said after a moment. “Not a name I

know, and I know quite a few.”

Gabriel shook his head and said, “I don’t know much about the

details of survey methods. I know no one thought to look for

Rivendale because Terivine C seemed such an unlikely primary. Could

they still make a mistake like that? Miss an entire planet on

survey?”

“Or misclassify it?” Enda shrugged. “In a hurry,

one may make all kinds of mistakes. I suppose you would have to look

at the survey information.”

“Well, you know, I got curious earlier,” Gabriel said,

and pulled out the Grid access keypad again. He touched it in a few

places, and the waving grass vanished to be replaced by a long,

dry-looking page of figures and names.

Enda blinked at that. “Surely we do not routinely carry

planetary exploration information in our own computers.”

“In the raw form, yes we do,” Gabriel said. “The

compiled CSS listings are there under ‘Standard Reference,

Gazetteer.’ There’s nothing more involved than that. No graphics or

descriptive detail. Look, there’s the name. Eldala.”

“A system name,” Enda said, leaning closer. “Goodness.

That is a long way out.” She squinted at the display.

“Planets indeterminate. Distances indeterminate.” She

tilted her head to one side. “What kind of survey information is

that?”

“All the listing says is ‘Incomplete,’ ” Gabriel

said. “They didn’t finish. They left early for some reason. When

we get at a drivesat relay, we can send off for the information and

wait for it to come back.”

“Morbid curiosity,” said Enda.

“Well, admit it. Wouldn’t you like to know what

happened?”

Enda looked doubtful. “My guess is that it is some kind of

bureaucratic hitch. A civil servant made a mistake compiling the

information. It would not surprise me if someone misfiled a whole

planet.”

The thought of the necessary size of the filing closet made

Gabriel grin. “All the same … we could go find out, after

we’ve done some more infotrading, enough to get ourselves supplied.”

Enda leaned on the bulkhead, musing. “You might be able to

convince me,” she said, “but I would want to make sure we

are well equipped with emergency stores and the like, and the phymech

would have to be checked again.”

“Of course. The idea of a whole planet falling between the

cracks …”

Enda shook her head. “It is interesting. Nevertheless, there

is Aegis to think about first, and what may be picked up there. We

will not have any difficulty finding information to haul. There are

never enough infotraders to service all the deaf Grids and minor

systems out this way, but we will have to consider where we might go

besides Terivine.”

Gabriel sat back and folded his arms. “Not much choice in the

Verge,” he said, “unless you want to go right back into the

Stellar Ring. A long way …”

“I don’t think so,” Enda said. “Nor, I think, would

you desire to get too far away from your own researches into Mr.

Ricel.” She stretched, so that the blue crewsuit she wore

shimmered, then steadied down into matte blue again. “Aegis,

Tendril, and Hammer’s Star are our opportunities. Aegis is most

central. Tendril—”

“No, they’re not,” Gabriel said.

Enda looked at him, confused. “Have I missed something? In

the Verge, there are only the three drivesats.”

“There’s a fourth,” Gabriel said. “The Lighthouse.”

Her eyes widened.

“At the time,” Gabriel said, “I didn’t think much

of it. I had my mind on those three pictures of Ricel yesterday, but

Altai routinely sends along a news package to its subscribers. I

skimmed it and forgot about it. One of the stories says that the

Lighthouse is passing through this part of the Verge. It’s

going to be stopping at Aegis on its way further out.”

Enda shook her head. “Now, I feel foolish, for I have not

thought about the Lighthouse in some time. It jumps about so

…”

Gabriel chuckled softly, for Enda was understating again.

Originally that massive construction, a kilometer and a half long,

had been an Orlamu Theocracy space station called the Lighthouse

of Faith. Now it journeyed through the Verge accompanied by

several Star Force cruisers and various smaller vessels, bringing

trade, news, and a semblance of armed security to the scattered

worlds of the Verge. It housed the headquarters of the Concord Survey

Services, which supervised and assisted independent exploration

contractors through the Verge and beyond. It also carried large

diplomatic and trading complements, a city’s worth of permanent

inhabitants, and numerous docking ports, repair stations, and cargo

bays. It had a larger population than some planets, was better armed

than many, and had the additional advantage of a massive stardrive

that could take it fifty light-years in a single starfall.

There was one aspect of the Lighthouse that bore some

consideration. It had a drivespace comms relay. Infotraders flocked

to it to transfer data when it came into or near their systems.

“Certainly we can drop our data at either the Lighthouse or Aegis,” Enda said slowly, “but after that …

Gabriel, why stop there?”

Gabriel looked at her dubiously. “You’re suggesting that we

might hitch a ride wherever she’s going?”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

Gabriel considered that. The Lighthouse’s provenance—

originally it had belonged to the Orlamu Theocracy— meant that

its status in Concord terms had become peculiar. The Orlamu had no

problems with the Concord refurbishing their “great experiment”

after it had almost been completely destroyed by a Solar raid into

their space in 2461, but they had insisted— and so had others

suddenly faced with the prospect of this behemoth turning up in their

systems— that it should be considered strictly a neutral

facility. The negotiations had gone on for a good while, but at last

the station’s neutrality had been accepted by all parties involved.

“Well …” Gabriel said. For his own part,

neutrality was all very well, but he was uncertain how it would hold

if a party wanted by the Concord was suddenly to turn up inside the

place. “If we wanted to pick up or drop data there, I don’t

think there’d be any trouble with that. Actually piggybacking

Sunshine onto the thing concerns me. I wouldn’t like to test

the facility’s neutrality too rigorously.”

“And have it fail, you mean,” Enda said. “You also

mean that there are marines there, a permanent contingent.”

She said nothing more, only wandered back toward crew quarters. A

few moments later she came out again with the squeeze bottle she used

for her plant.

Gabriel watched her water the small brown bulb, of which maybe a

couple of centimeters stuck up from the surrounding gravel. “Is

there something that plant needs that it might be missing?” he

asked after a moment.

Enda glanced up. “As regards its nourishment or its normal

growth cycle? Not at all. It is behaving perfectly normally.”

“How long is it supposed to stay like that?”

“As long as it likes,” said Enda. “Rather like

you.”

Gabriel put his eyebrows up in a way that was meant to look

ironic.

Enda turned to go down to her quarters with the bottle again. “I

understand that you might find it uncomfortable to be within range,”

she said from down the hall. “You would have to decide whether

the discomfort would be so unbearable as to put aside a useful

business opportunity. As for dropping data at Lighthouse, the

‘physical ingress’ rules would matter only if we had no right of

egress to begin with. As infotraders, we have such a right.”

She came back up the hall again and folded down her seat by the

Grid access panel. “As for hitching a ride, that depends on

whether we pass the usual security check when we apply for space. It

also depends on where Lighthouse would be going after we

visited her. Her schedule varies without warning and is much affected

by local conditions and the political requirements of the moment.

Myself, I would not disdain a fifty light-year hitch in a useful

direction, but we would need more recent information on where she is

headed next.”

Gabriel nodded. There was no question but that the Lighthouse could be useful. One long starfall instead of many small ones …

“If you were serious about exploratory work,” Enda said,

“the Concord Survey Services are located aboard Lighthouse.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Again, I’m not sure I want to just

walk in there.”

Enda shrugged. “It is not a decision that needs to be made

now. We should deal with Aegis first.” She glanced up the

hallway into the cockpit. “We now have only a little over a day

until we make starrise and recharge our drives for Mikoa. While doing

that, we will want to discuss this with Helm and Doctor Sota, but

first things first. When did you last eat anything?”

“Uh,” Gabriel said.

“Precisely ‘uh,’ ” Enda said, getting up. “It

is a good thing the starfall/starrise interval is no longer than it

is. You become philosophical and would waste away unless you were

reminded to take nourishment every now and then.”

“You’re just trying to get rid of those prepacks you got on

Rivendale,” Gabriel said, “the ones you’ve decided you

don’t like after all.” Nonetheless, he got up and followed her

down to the galley.

The Lighthouse, he thought.

Why not?

Chapter Six

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TWO DAYS LATER, Sunshine made starrise in the endless black

between Terivine and Mikoa. This jump made Gabriel nervous, for he

still hated jumping to a location that didn’t have a planet or a star

associated with it. Such approximate destinations, defined by

agreement rather than by some physical feature, struck him as a

perfect place to be ambushed.

“Paranoia,” Enda said to him cheerfully after he had

expressed this to her.

Nonetheless, when they were ready to come out of drivespace again,

Gabriel had the fighting field down over him.

“Thirty seconds,” Enda said. “Are you set?”

“As set as I’m going to be,” Gabriel said, muffled in

his darkness with the controls for the plasma cannons in his hands.

They waited.

“Five seconds now,” Enda said.

Gabriel nodded.

“Starrise,” Enda said.

Gabriel saw it rendered in the field. Light washed into the

cockpit, a pale gold, trickling away to one side.

“Right,” he said, tumbling the ship slowly and looking

around him for another starrise, but there was none. “Where’s

Helm?”

“I do not know,” Enda said. “The detectors do not

see him anywhere.”

“What happened? We dropped into drivespace at the same time.

The last time we went into starfall together, we came out together,

tight as you please.”

“The last time we went into starfall together,” said

Enda, “Delde Sota had not been doing something unspecified to

another ship down Longshot’s comm circuits.”

She reached into the 3D display, touched one of the indicators,

and the whole thing wavered and jumped as if there had been a power

surge. Gabriel swallowed, starting to feel twitchy in his gut. It

reminded him too clearly of what had happened when the mass cannon

had hit them. She couldn’t be here, he thought. I shot her butt off.

Impossible—

Then his nerves steadied down, though his stomach was still

burning him, a surprising discomfort low down on his left side. Gas

pain? Cramp?

Who needs this right now? Gabriel thought, squirming.

The display jumped again.

“We have lost the mass detectors,” Enda said. “Gabriel,

how could that happen?” She started touching other

controls inside the display, one after another, and Gabriel watched

them go ash-pale and nonfunctional.

Ow. That hurts. The pain was becoming unbearable. After this I’m

not going to eat within six hours of a starrise, I don’t care how

hungry I am.

“I have no idea,” Gabriel said, “but how could

anything Delde Sota did to that woman’s ship have possibly affected

Helm’s stardrive?”

“I don’t know,” Enda said. “I would prefer to wait

until Delde Sota turns up and ask her myself.”

No one was there. Gabriel watched his in-field version of the main

display flicker, waver, and then pale to nothing. Everything—

ship’s environmental energy levels, her fuel, all her stardrive

readouts— faded and were gone.

Gabriel’s stomach was churning. Without instrumentation, the ship

not only couldn’t fight, she could barely move. That burning was now

like a coal, fierce and concentrated. That’s not gas. Gas doesn’t

burn on the outside! What the—

Gabriel hurriedly unfastened his straps and jumped up. The pain

slipped down his leg.

Not the stomach. My pocket—

He started to reach into it, then hurriedly changed his mind and

grabbed the fabric of the pocket so that he could dump the contents

on the floor.

The luckstone fell out. It was fiery hot and blazing with light.

It bounced to the floor, lay still, and began sizzling itself a

little hole into the supposedly indestructible plastic decking. The

smooth oval stone, normally dead black, now shone with a

greenish-golden-white light. The fierce little glow slowly pulsed

bright to pale to bright again.

Enda stole a glance downward, and her eyes widened as Gabriel

hurriedly sat back into his chair and began refastening his straps.

“It has never done anything like that before, has it?”

Enda asked.

“What, try to burn a hole in me and then succeed in doing the

same to my deck?” Gabriel said. “Now that you mention it,

no!” He threw the luckstone a very annoyed glance. “What if

it keeps on doing this? It’s going to burn straight down into the

personal cargo hold!”

“It may if it pleases,” Enda said, reaching into the

display again. “I have other problems. Oh!”

The display lit up again with a sudden flash. Enda scowled as if

she didn’t trust it. Gabriel busied himself with getting back into

the fighting field, which still seemed functional for the moment.

“Everything is back again,” Enda said, “and the

mass detectors are up and running once more. What a relief.”

“I’d be a lot more relieved if we knew where Helm was.”

“Somewhere else, plainly.”

Gabriel gave Enda a look. “Have I mentioned to you that the

fraal sense of humor can be a little strange?”

“Several times,” Enda said. “Similar claims can be

made about the human one. That joke about the wire brush, now—”

One of the warning lights, the one that said EMERGENCY, grew to an

alarming size in the 3D display and began flashing on and off.

Gabriel looked frantically at all the other indicators, but

nothing seemed to be wrong with Sunshine.

“Enda?”

“It is not our emergency,” she said, reaching out to the

indicator. “Someone else’s.”

“Helm?”

“No. He is not here, but someone else is.”

The display filled with data— not just text, for once, but a

schematic.

“Small,” he said as he studied the data. “A cargo

ship?”

“Possibly. We have not seen this one before?”

“You mean, is this the other little ship that was at

Rivendale? No.”

“That,” Enda sighed, “is a relief.”

The emergency message now began to play in several different sets

of characters, several different sets of colors, and one sound. “This

is free ship Lalique, out of Richards, en route from Mantebron

to Aegis. We have suffered stardrive failure and are near the

Mikoa-Aegis transit point. Transiting vessels, please render

assistance, or if passing through on emergency transit, please convey

emergency message to nearest drivesat relay. This is free ship

Lalique— “

“It’s recorded,” Gabriel said. “Still, I’m

surprised we’re the first ones on the scene.”

“Assuming we are,” Enda said, “and that they have

not merely forgotten to turn off the broadcast.” She studied the

display. “Well, let us go see what we can do for them. This is a

bad place to have a stardrive failure.”

Gabriel nodded. They might have to take the passengers aboard and

leave the ship here, then go for help. Aegis would be the logical

place to take them, so Gabriel and Enda’s own plans would not suffer

much, but he didn’t much like the thought of having strangers aboard

Sunshine. He looked down at the luckstone, which was still

glowing in the little socket it had melted for itself in the floor,

though it no longer seemed to be working its way any further in.

“Have you got a fix on them?” he asked.

“Yes, no problem. They’re no more than forty or fifty

thousand kilometers away. They were probably using the same arbitrary

starfall figures for the system that we were.”

Gabriel nodded. Sunshine’s system drive kicked in, and the

two of them sat there looking outside for any sign of the ship and

stealing glances at the floor between them.

“It seems to be quieting down,” Enda said. “Are you

all right, Gabriel?”

He touched the seam of the top of his shipsuit open and stared

down inside, then frowned. “I got scorched. It burned right

through the pocket material.”

Enda blinked at that. “The material is supposed to be

fireproof, I thought.”

“Then that wasn’t fire,” Gabriel said. “I thought

the decking was indestructible, too. Can we claim for repairs on the

guarantee?”

“You would probably have to explain to them how you did it,”

Enda said, “and then they might ask you to reproduce the effect.

First you will have to work out just why the stone behaved that way.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll just use some hull

patching on the hole. It’s just a shame. That’s the first real

scratch or damage that Sunshine has had. She was perfect until

now.”

“Ah. You mean, except for when the hold came apart and nearly

fell off when you landed on Grith that time.”

“Oh, that,” Gabriel said with a smile.

Enda laughed softly. “Take a look in the field and tell me if

that is the ship we’re looking for.”

Gabriel could see the gravity “dimple” of the vessel,

drifting intact. At least the stardrive hadn’t caused any structural

damage to the vessel.

“Lalique, Lalique, this is free ship Sunshine,”

Enda said. “We are within two hundred fifty kilometers and

closing. Can we render you assistance? How many are you, and are

there any medical problems to deal with before the mechanical ones?”

There was a long pause. “Sunshine?” said a

woman’s voice after a moment. “Oh, what a relief! Thank you so

much! There are just two of us. No medical problems, thanks. Can you

manage airlock-to-airlock?”

“We have a collapsible tube, yes,” Enda said. “I

will squirt the tube specs and coordinates to your computer when

you’re ready.”

“Ready now.”

They closed in slowly and caught their first glimpse of the ship

just a kilometer away. Lalique was obviously an old

family-style ship. She was big, nearly twice Sunshine’s length, and broad in the beam. Two pair of short wings, a little

bigger than canards, just out from the cigar-shaped main hull. Four

big cargo pods slung high, two and two, sat snug against the hull

near the back.

“Nice,” Gabriel said as they closed in. “Plenty of

room in there.”

Enda maneuvered Sunshine in close to Lalique until

the two vessels were drifting at the same speed and in the same

direction. The computer confirmed the match. Enda then triggered the

flexible airlock tube so that its counterpart program on the other

ship could lock the ships together.

This took several minutes. Gabriel stayed in the fighting field,

looking everywhere for Helm. “Where the frikes is he?”

Gabriel muttered.

Enda sighed and said, “He has probably popped out further out

in the system where the mass detector cannot see him. Let us wait and

see what happens.”

There came a soft chime from the display. “This is working,

at least,” Enda said. “Lalique, our computer is

showing the mating as complete and secure. Are you showing the same?”

“Yes, we are. Please come aboard,” said the woman’s

voice.

“Five minutes,” said Enda and cut the channel. “Gabriel,

I think you can safely come out of that for the moment.”

He nodded and collapsed the field, blinking in the normal ship’s

light. “I’ll leave it on automatic announce, though,”

Gabriel said, unstrapping himself and heading down the hall to the

arms and equipment locker. “I want to know when Helm turns up.”

Enda nodded as they both paused by the locker to pick up hand

comms and a sidearm each. “It’s not like I don’t trust them,”

Gabriel said, “but—”

“You don’t trust them” said Enda approvingly. “Why

should you? At any rate, this far out from anywhere, no one is going

to be offended by anyone carrying defensive weaponry.”

“Right” he said as he checked the charge and the safety

of his pistol. He holstered it at his hip, and then reached down into

the bottom of the locker for his roll of general access tools, the

ones used to get into panels and under deckplates. The other ship

probably had tools of its own that were suited to the fastenings its

own hardware used, but Gabriel liked to have his tools with him.

I just hope I don’t have to try to do anything really technical,

he thought as they made their way through the hold to the airlock. If

Lalique‘s stardrive was anything like Sunshine’s, it

was covered with alarming labels saying things like No

user-serviceable parts inside and Opening casing invalidates

warranty. Sometimes such warnings were just clever ways of making

sure that the drive manufacturer and its licensees were not cheated

out of the price of service calls, but sometimes they were genuine

indicators that anything you did to the drive might cause you, it,

and everything around you to suddenly become collapsed matter. The

trouble lay in telling which was which.

They paused by the airlock port, and Enda touched the opening

combination into the locking pad. The door hissed open, and the two

of them slipped into the tube and pulled themselves along the cables

down the orange-walled corridor.

Another hiss of air heralded the opening of the door at the far

end. “Come in,” said that female voice, sounding more

cheery this time.

Gabriel was concentrating on keeping his stomach under control. He

had never liked going rapidly back and forth from gravity to

non-gravity areas, though it was something every marine learned to

handle, if not enjoy. Mostly it involved keeping your cardiac

sphincter shut by muscle pressure, and this meant single-minded

concentration until you got back to gravity again.

Shortly he saw floor in front of him, or what would be floor in a

moment. He braced himself against the cables and put his feet

through.

A moment later he was upright and looking around at a kind of

entrance hall with several doors and a corridor leading out of it. A

hand seized his upper arm, steadying him.

“Welcome aboard,” said the hand’s owner, “I’m

Angela Valiz.”

Gabriel looked up and replied, “Gabriel Connor.”

He looked at her closely as he said it, watching for any reaction,

but there was no flicker of recognition in her face. She was a tall,

strongly-built young woman, maybe Gabriel’s age. Her fair hair tailed

down the back of her neck rather the way Enda did her own. She was

dressed in the baggy trousers, tunic, and soft boots popular for

casual wear in most places of the Aegis system.

She looked at him curiously and asked, “Bluefall?”

“Uh, yes.”

She nodded and said, “I recognized the accent.” She

turned to Enda, who had come in behind Gabriel. “Respected,

welcome.”

“Thank you indeed. Enda, they call me.” She made a

graceful gesture with her left hand, a variant on the human

handshake. Most fraal were left-handed, and this gesture showed that

the hand was empty of weapons.

“You’re very welcome, Enda.”

Gabriel looked around him. What he could see of Lalique was

handsome-looking. The ship’s walls and ceiling panels were soft

pastel beiges and blues. High ceilings and broad doorways gave the

interior an unusually open and airy look.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” Gabriel said.

“Thanks. It’s been in the family for the last fifty years,

but right now I just want to get it home safe.” She looked down

the hallway with a concerned expression.

“What happened, exactly?” Gabriel said.

“Come on down to the control room,” Angela said. “You

can look at the drive controls there. We made starrise here five days

ago, recharged, and got ready to drop into starfall again, but the

drive wouldn’t engage. Everything else seems fine. The drive

diagnostics report it ready to go, but when you hit the go button …

nothing.”

They came into the control room. It was genuinely a room, not just

a large cockpit as in Sunshine. Several people could crew the

bridge at five stations arranged around a small circular array of

panels. The viewport ran three-quarters of the way around the circle

above the panel array.

“Over here,” Angela said and indicated one panel.

Gabriel sat down and studied the control configuration of the

keypad for a moment. Fortunately it was one of the configurable

control pads that the major manufacturers had been using for the last

couple of decades, having finally realized that no one had to relearn

the system every time it needed to be checked out.

“Right,” Gabriel said, and started working his way down

through the diagnostics tree to where the stardrive’s inboard

routines could be accessed.

The drive itself was a RoanTech, one of the ten or fifteen main

manufacturers. Stardrive manufacturers too had begun to produce

drives along broadly similar lines, partly so they could start

dealing in replacement parts for one another’s drives, and partly

because it made sense— there were only so many ways you could

put a gravity induction engine and a mass reactor together. Their

diagnostic routines tended to look much the same these days for the

same reasons as the control pads did.

Enda leaned over Gabriel’s shoulder, watching him examine the

drive’s controlling software, and then looked at Angela.

“By the way,” Enda asked, “have you been suffering

any irregularities in the way your instrumentation works?”

“Yes we have,” Angela said. “Right after we got

here, all our displays and readouts started to act up. I was

wondering if it had something to do with the stardrive. When that went, the instrumentation kept misbehaving, but don’t ask me why.”

“Well, at least it wasn’t just us,” Gabriel said, “but

I can’t think what might be causing it.”

There was a noise from down the hallway through which they’d just

come. Angela glanced in that direction. “Oh, here’s my partner.”

Down the central hallway was a door belonging to a lift that

apparently serviced the lower level of the ship. The lift door

opened, and he could hear footsteps in the hall. There was something

odd about the rhythm. A second later, through the control room door,

came the largest weren that Gabriel had ever seen in his life.

“Grawl, these are the people who answered our distress call,”

Angela said. “Gabriel, Enda, this is Grawl.”

Weren could be twice the height of a small human, and this one

was. They also could be twice the breadth, and this one was. She was

absolutely massive, with fur much more silver than was usual for

weren. It had light striping that made Gabriel think of a pale gray

tabby that one of his family’s neighbors on Bluefall had owned. The

neighbor’s tabby, fierce as it had been on occasion, did not have

ten-centimeter claws, three-centimeter tusks, or a very large gun

slung on a baldric over its shoulder. This weren had all of these,

and she looked at Gabriel and Enda with an expression of which

Gabriel could make absolutely nothing.

Gabriel did not have much experience with the species. The marine

contingent he had served with had not spent much time in the worlds

where the weren had much of a presence. He knew enough about them to

understand that politeness was much valued in their culture and

likely to keep one’s own head from being torn off in an excitable

moment.

“I greet you,” he said, “and hope that we are not

intruding.”

The dark eyes looked at him. “Welcome enough you are,”

the weren said in a soft rumbling voice, “here where any visitor

is likely enough to be welcome, were he half your size.”

Gabriel nodded noncommittally. He wasn’t sure if she had

complimented or insulted him.

“Cousin,” said Enda, “well met on the journey.”

The weren swept an arm low before her body. “Respected,

starlight shine on your road as well.”

Enda smiled. “A long road— nearly as long as yours.

Kurg is far away indeed.”

“Distance,” said the weren, “is an artifact of the

mind.”

Angela chuckled and said, “Grawl and I ran into each other in

Alaundril about a year ago. We’ve been together since. She was

traveling …”

“I was outcast,” Grawl corrected.

Gabriel looked at her with surprise. “I can’t imagine who

would have had the nerve to throw you out of anywhere.”

She gave him a look that he hoped was a smile. “I was the

daughter of warriors, the granddaughter of warriors,” Grawl

rumbled, “but I was a disgrace among my family.”

“In what manner?” Enda said.

Gabriel looked at Enda in shock, but Grawl lowered her head to

Enda’s level— a good way down— and said, softly, “I

was the smallest of my kindred, the weakest, the poorest fighter,

last-born, last in regard, but there was worse than that to come.”

Gabriel looked up at her, easily two hundred kilograms of muscle

and claws, and could do little but shake his head. She saw the

movement and turned toward him. Hot breath blew about him with a

peculiar cinnamony scent, ruffling his hair.

“I am a poetess,” Grawl whispered.

“Poetry is hardly an art scorned among the weren,” Enda

said. “What was your clan’s objection with this?”

“There have been no artists of any note in my family for some

generations,” Grawl said. “My clan-sire felt that mine was

an unsuitable calling for the daughter and granddaughter of warriors,

and though the rest of the clan did not agree with him, he is our sire. When he said I had gotten the best of my brothers by skill

and stealth and craft when I could not do so by force and fight, the

other clan members dared not argue with him.”

Then a sound came out of her the likes of which Gabriel had never

heard. Weren laughter, the sound of a pot boiling, but a pot full of

lava. “Get the best of them I did. None of them can wind words

as I do. None of them could stand before me when I made satires upon

them! I caused my eldest brother to go den-living from embarrassment,

and my eldest sister to snatch her mate half bald, all by merely

telling the truth about them in public, in meter, in the

meeting-place of our people. Furious my family was, and they raged

and shrieked in housemoot! They sought to tear me with their claws,

but the claws of my words were sharper. They sought to blast me with

their flintlocks, but the bullets of my scorn flew truer. Finally

they gathered together outlawed me, and paid my way off planet.”

She smiled. The expression, even with those tusks, was surprisingly

benign from such a massive creature. “Having received what I

desired from them, I went out into the Old Night with a good heart

and sought my hire in ships, doing security work. So we met, Angela

and I, and we have done well together.”

Gabriel glanced over at Angela during this. She had the expression

of someone hearing a very familiar story.

“The meter is reminiscent of the sesheyan double-stave,”

Enda said, “though not as telegraphic.”

Grawl’s eyes went wide. “You too are an artist!” she

cried. “Always and far and wide the fraal are known for their

sensitivity and craft.”

And flattery, Gabriel thought, keeping his face straight. “About

your stardrive …” he said.

Angela looked at him. “Don’t tell me you know what’s the

matter with it already!”

Gabriel laughed. “I wish. Does the drive have its own display

panel?”

“Yes,” Angela said, “though I would think that it

would display everything necessary up here.”

“So would I,” Gabriel said, “but it doesn’t. Can we

go down and have a look at it?”

“Certainly,” Angela said. “Come on.”

She led him down the hall and to the lift again, while behind them

Enda and Grawl began to discuss poetry. “How long have you been

out with this ship?” Gabriel asked Angela as the lift door slid

open.

“About a year and a half now,” she replied. “I have

a five year lease from the family. After that, if I can demonstrate a

profit when I get back, I get another five years. Otherwise my little

brother gets a turn.”

They stood in the lift, and it sank toward the hold level. “Have

you been back home since?” Gabriel said.

Angela shook her head. “Not a chance. I wanted to get the

family out of my hair for a while … find out what life without

constant commitments hanging over your head looks like.” She

sighed as the lift door opened. “It’s been refreshing. A little

hectic, sometimes, but I wouldn’t give it up. One way or the other

I’m going to make the best of these five years, not get tied down,

and roam around a good ways.”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows at that as she led him down a hallway

that was twin to the one above them. “So how was Eldala?”

he asked.

She stopped and stared at Gabriel in complete disbelief.

“Eldala,” Gabriel said. “Did you get there,

eventually?”

“Where did you hear about that?” she asked, more

surprised than suspicious.

“We were in the Terivine system the other day. On Rivendale.”

She looked at Gabriel uncomprehendingly. “So?”

“So were you, apparently. One of the locals mentioned you and

where you were going.”

“Well, yes, we were there, but—” Angela shook her

head, started walking down the hall again. “I don’t remember

telling anyone about Eldala.”

“Little guy named Rov something,” Gabriel said. “He

remembered that moderately well, and he remembered you well

enough to wonder where you were. They’re worried about you.”

Now, as Angela paused by a sliding door and touched a combination

onto the face of it, she looked completely confused. “Why would

they be worried?”

The door opened, and they went in.

“You’re kidding, right?” Gabriel said, pausing to look

around the room. “It’s just a small town, that settlement. They

gossip about everything there. You told someone you were coming back

through, and then you never came back. They think you’re lying dead

in a ditch somewhere.”

The room was small, square and empty. The sealed main drive array

took up the entire back wall, and a black metal panel with

Qualified Service Personnel Only sealed the main access

panel. Faired into the black metal was a big square panel of glass

with a keypad at the top of it. Gabriel reached up, typed in the

access command, and the entire diagnostic and drive system management

directory rosette fanned out across the glass panel.

Angela leaned against the nearby wall. “It’s so strange. I

don’t remember mentioning where I was going to anybody on Rivendale,

although,” she added, “we were partying a lot while

we were there….”

“Ah,” Gabriel said as he studied the directory rosette.

They got blitzed, told everybody where they were going, what they

were going to do …

Gabriel was beginning to form some opinions about this girl, and

they were not flattering. Rich, probably. Careless. Mouth like a

ramscoop.

“Aha,” he said, finding the spot he wanted on the

rosette. Gabriel touched that petal, and it became the core of

another “flower” of options, one of which was log play. He

selected that one. His old friend Hal had been an e-suit engineer on

Falada, and Hal’s second rule— after the one about

reading the dumb-ass documentation— was to read the dumber-ass

logs as well. “If nothing else,” Hal had said, “it

makes you look like you know what you’re doing, however spurious this

impression may be.”

Gabriel began working his way through the stardrive’s logs. It had

a diagnostic program to help him with this. The program looked at the

logs, then at what they should look like, and then it finally showed

any major differences it found.

Gabriel quickly scanned through the last several starfalls and

starrises, and then started to read them with more care while the

program was doing the same for the entire log. To Angela he said,

“When they told me about this place you were going. I got

curious. I’d never heard of it before. What caused your interest in

it?”

“Well, it was a blank in the gazetteer,” Angela said.

“There had been some kind of accident when the original survey

came through. Said they were having mechanical trouble. Anyway, they

reported the planet as too cold and went on to their next stop.”

“Too cold?”

“Bad ambient temperature,” said Angela. “Eight C

below zero, apparently.”

Gabriel nodded. That would have been reason enough to pass on when

there were hopes of finding something better in the next system

along. Eight was a very low ambient, if he remembered the planetary

climatic information he’d been taught as a marine. It suggested that

even summer highs might not be much better than twelve C, which was

bad for crops, even those that had been genetically tailored for

chilly conditions. There was little point in settling a planet that

was both far away and where food could not be successfully grown. You

wound up having to bring everything in, and if there was no other

resource there to make the trip worthwhile, no stellar nation or

company would bother investigating settlement any further.

He paused, looking at something the diagnostic program had

flagged. “Let me look at that,” he told the computer. “So

you gave up on it?” Gabriel asked Angela.

She shrugged and said, “It wasn’t what we had in mind. We got

tired of being far away from everything … starfall after

starfall, never seeing anyone, watching the same old entertainment

over and over on the ship’s channels …”

“You have Grawl to make poetry for you,” Gabriel said

with an absolutely straight face.

Angela punched him in the shoulder, more fiercely than Gabriel had

braced himself to withstand. He rocked and barely kept from falling

over sideways. “Don’t mock her,” Angela said. “She’s

had a hard time.”

“She looks like she’s survived it,” Gabriel said,

touching the panel again to focus the diagnostic’s attention on what

he thought he had found.

Angela folded her arms and stared down at the toes of her boots.

“Survival isn’t joy,” she said.

Gabriel paused, glancing at her. “I wouldn’t know a lot about

what constitutes joy for a weren.”

Angela gave him a resigned look. “How clear can any of us be

about what goes on in an alien’s mind? Any more than any of them can

be clear about what we’re thinking? I just worry about her,

that’s all. I think she’d really rather be home on Kurg, getting

involved in tribal politics and ripping out the occasional suitor’s

throat, but she’s made the best she can out of her life.” She

scratched at a worn place on the decking. “It must have been

awful,” Angela said softly, “always being beaten up and sat

on, having the food stolen out from under your nose and everything

else worthwhile being taken away from you by the stronger ones, the

faster ones. Grawl found another way.”

Angela looked up again and said, “But is she happy?” A

touch of familiarity there? Gabriel thought. “And you,” he

said, “you got beaten up and sat on as well?”

She gave him a look both indignant and amused. “Ah, an

amateur thought-wrangler,” she said. “For your information,

I was one of two and bigger than my brother. As a matter of fact I beat him up whenever he needed it, which was most of the time.

Brothers are always getting out of hand. If you don’t show them the

error of their ways early on, they run around making messes forever

after.”

Gabriel smiled at that. “I’ll take your word for it.

Meanwhile, look at this.” He pointed at the log display in the

glass and at the diagnostic program’s suggestion of what should be

present there. “I’m no expert, but this might be the trouble. I

know our drive has routines to keep this from happening. Yours is

enough like ours to suggest this is the problem. I think the synch

between the two atomic clocks that handle the drive has been failing.

See.” He pointed. “The logs show them having gotten

progressively more out of synch over the past few weeks. This one in

particular, the gravity induction apparatus, looks like its clock has

been speeding up. Not by huge amounts, but enough for it to start

interfering now. Has this started acting strangely over the last

couple of starfalls?”

Angela nodded. “Just after we left Mantebron.” Gabriel

stared at the diagnostics showing in the panel. “All right. I’m

going to try to reset it. You willing to have me do that?”

“Yes. I don’t see that it can do that much harm.”

I hope you’re right, Gabriel thought. He backed up through the

diagnostic program again and went down the tree to where the clock

routines were. Touching a spot labeled Synchrony, he was

rewarded by a message that asked, Reset clocks to match?

“Aha,” he said. “That they have this particular

routine makes it sound like this problem might come up more than

infrequently.” Gabriel looked sideways at her. “Have you

missed a scheduled service, by any chance?”

“Uh …” She looked embarrassed. “Possibly.”

“This may be one of the things they do on those routine

services,” Gabriel said, and touched the fork of the choice-tree

that said YES.

DONE, it said a second later.

“All right,” he said. “When we’re off the ship,

punch it and see what happens. We won’t leave until we see you safely

away. If you can’t get out, you and Grawl come aboard Sunshine with us, and we’ll get you to Aegis so you can arrange a

return-and-tow with somebody there.”

“Seems fair enough,” Angela said as she went out.

Gabriel closed down the panel routines and went after her.

As they were walking back to the lift, Angela looked at him

curiously. “Something leak in your pocket?”

“Huh? Oh.” Gabriel glanced down at the pocket where the

luckstone had been. “No, just a burn. I got careless with some

equipment.”

“Must have been some equipment. I thought those things were

burn-proof.”

“So did I,” Gabriel said, thinking morosely of that spot

on the decking. “Another of life’s little surprises.”

In the lift, Angela leaned against its wall, looking thoughtful.

She glanced up at him then, and Gabriel thought, Oh, please, don’t

invite me to dinner; I just want to get out of here and get on with

what we were doing.

“Eldala,” Angela said. “Are you interested in it?”

Gabriel blinked. “Uh … why?”

“You mentioned it first. Plainly it must have stuck in your

mind when you heard about it.”

“Well,” Gabriel said, “yes.” He shrugged. “It

hardly matters, though. You’ve got the exploration contract.”

“I’ll sell it to you,” Angela said.

Gabriel stared at her as the lift door opened.

“Why?”

“It’s no good to me now,” said Angela. “If you’re

right about the drive clocks, I’ll be glad, but I’m not going

anywhere again without having this drive serviced. That may take me a

while. By then …” She shrugged.

By then you may have found something more interesting to do with

your money, Gabriel thought. Hmf.

She looked at him as they walked back into the control room. “Are

you interested?”

Gabriel looked over at Enda, who was seated next to Grawl. Enda,

looking from him to Angela to him again, gave Gabriel a look that

said, Should I ask?

“Angela’s interested in selling the exploration contract for

Eldala,” Gabriel said.

At this, Grawl screwed her face down into what looked like a

frown. Enda looked more than usually thoughtful. “The price?”

“Is negotiable, believe me,” Angela said. “I just

don’t feel prepared to carry on with that contract at this point.”

“You were there, I take it?” said Enda.

Angela nodded and Enda continued, “Not for long, though. Is

the world habitable for humans?”

“Not without a lot of support, I think,” Angela said.

“Low ambient, supposedly,” said Gabriel.

“We landed, looked around the place, picked up some mineral

samples and things like that,” Angela said. “Rocks, mostly.

We ran assay on some soil samples for ore artifact but didn’t find

anything terribly useful.”

“There was much snow,” said Grawl. “Great white

peaks that towered to the blue heavens. Snow bannered from them in

the sun, and the winds blew the snow about—”

“Wait a minute,” Gabriel said. “How glaciated was

this planet?”

“A mighty polar cap straddled the world’s nadir,” Grawl

said, “and a lesser one the pole which pointed toward the sun.

Seasonal, we reckoned the difference, for the ambient temperature—”

“It was cold,” Angela cut her off.

Gabriel looked at Enda.

“Well, cold is not sufficient to disallow colonization, as we

have seen elsewhere,” Enda suggested. “Distance is likely

to be more of a preventative factor. Still…”

The back of Gabriel’s mind was caught in a noisy argument. One

part of it was claiming that this rich girl was just trying to cut

her losses and make some money off a wasted investment …

possibly adding to this the amusement of selling someone something

worthless. Another part of his mind was sure that she had missed

something and that this might be a good idea … a very good

idea.

“By the way,” Enda said, “I did not have a chance

to mention that Helm is in the system. He just got within detection

range.”

“What kept him?”

Enda shrugged. ” ‘Standard error,’ he said. You know as

well as I that there can be a considerable difference in arrival

distance between vessels departing at the same time and from the same

area.”

“He’s just got me spoiled,” Gabriel said. “He’s

such a hot pilot. That’s a relief, though.”

He looked back at Angela, then. “How much money are we

discussing here?”

“I’ll give you a flat price for the whole thing,” Angela

said. “Half what we paid: contracts, exploration pack, the

support software, all that.”

” ‘Support software’?” Enda asked.

Angela laughed and said, “It’s just a big reference library

on survival in hostile environments, a translator, and some other

stuff. I never even configured some parts of it. The manuals are

terrible, and when we got there and realized the environment wasn’t

anything we couldn’t handle with overcoats and common sense, and

there wasn’t anything to use the translator on …” She

shrugged.

“And you paid … ?” Gabriel asked.

“Seven thousand Concord.”

Gabriel thought about that. “Refund guarantee? If we go to

these coordinates and don’t find a planet—”

Rather suddenly, Grawl loomed over him. “There is,”

she growled, “a planet.”

“Grawl, I think he was making a joke,” Enda said

hurriedly. “It can be a strange thing, the human sense of humor.

There is this story about a wire brush—”

“Contract becomes effective immediately on sale?”

Gabriel said, refusing to move, no matter how Grawl tried to

intimidate him.

Angela nodded. “The only thing that would affect the contract

would be transmission time to a Concord Survey facility.”

“Well,” Gabriel said, “we’re infotraders. We can

carry the contract transfer ourselves, if you’re comfortable with

that.”

“It’s going encrypted, so it’s fine with me,” Angela

said with a shrug.

“A deal, then,” Gabriel said. They struck hands on it.

The remainder of the deal took little time. Gabriel had to go back

over to Sunshine for his accounting chip. He brought it back

aboard Lalique, and they recorded the sale in both ship’s

computers at the same time, passing the software and other files into

Sunshine’s databanks. Gabriel took possession of the “hard”

documentation and software copies on solids, and then looked around

one last time.

“Well, a pleasure doing business with you,” he said. “I

hope all this works out well for you.”

“So do I,” Angela said, “because otherwise we’re

going to need a ride to Aegis.”

“Well,” Gabriel said, hoping this wouldn’t happen,

“let’s see what happens first. We’ll break the ships’ connection

and stand away the usual safe distance—”

“Right,” Angela said. Suddenly she looked anxious to be

gone, as well. “Come on, Grawl, let’s get her hot.”

At least she walked them down to the airlock first. “Listen,

Gabriel, Enda,” she said, “if this does work out all right,

our comms info is in the solids and the contracts. Get in touch when

you make Aegis. We can get together.”

“Certainly,” Enda said, They slipped into the tube

again, and the door closed behind them.

When they were on their side again, Enda asked Gabriel, “Is

that what humans call ‘impulse buying’?”

“Probably,” Gabriel said. He looked down at the solids

in his hands. “It was kind of a hunch.”

“I think it was stress,” Enda said. “Having things

burn holes in your pocket seems to make money do the same.”

Gabriel smiled, though weakly, and they made their way back up to

the pilot’s cabin. Gabriel paused by the door and reached down to

gingerly touch the stone. It was as cool as it had ever been.

“Weird.”

“You do not seem terribly eager to put it in your pocket at

the moment,” Enda said as Gabriel stowed the manual and contract

solids.

“No, and you won’t see me acting eager until we’re out of

this system. Let it just sit there until I’m sure it wants to

behave.” Gabriel sat down in the right-hand chair and opened a

comms channel. “Helm?”

“Hey, you’re back. How bad was her drive busted?”

“Maybe not at all. We’ll find out.” He changed channels.

“Lalique?”

“Here,” said Angela’s voice. “We’ll be ready to

test in thirty seconds. Hey, Gabriel, I meant it about dinner.”

“Uh, thanks,” Gabriel said. “Half a moment while we

move out of range.”

He backed Sunshine well away, then gave the system drive a

two-second pulse, pushing them some kilometers away from Lalique.

“Good luck,” Gabriel said.

“Thanks”

The seconds ticked by as they watched out the viewport.

“Please,” Gabriel muttered, “please let it work.”

Enda threw him an amused glance.

“Here we go,” said Angela. “Five, four, three—”

She broke off. Gabriel swallowed, hoping desperately that their

drive had not failed again.

Starfall light sheeted in brilliant gold all over Lalique’s shape, and she vanished.

Gabriel breathed out.

From Longshot, Helm said, “Are they gone now? Can we

talk?”

“There’s plenty of time for that,” Gabriel said. “A

few days to recharge, then we’ll get out of here. Come on over and

we’ll have dinner.”

“Bring the autolaser,” Enda said.

Chapter Seven

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“WERE YOU ABLE to find out anything interesting from our…

friend’s … ship while you were making her power

fluctuate?” Gabriel asked Doctor Sota in the middle of ingesting

another of Helm’s pot-and-autolaser entrees.

Delde Sota shook her head and replied, “Result: much ship

registry information. Of academic interest, but such information can

be forged— and was, I think. Ship claimed to come from Tendril,

private-use vessel; no guarantee of accuracy of claim. Analysis: had

been, in her computer, records of previous comms back to her base,

wherever that might have been. All purged, data solids overwritten.”

Her braid fidgeted in the air, tied itself in a knot, and untied

itself again, fretful. “Can do little about genuinely erased

data. Apologies.”

“How did you do that?” Enda said.

Delde Sota raised her eyebrows. “Methodology: any

transmission carrier is an open door, even for less talented

beings/systems. Addendum: encryption never really that complete in

‘realtime’ applications like live comms. Second addendum: systems

often inadequately shielded. Signal leakage can be exploited, even

mechanical/physical problems like bad grounding …” She

shrugged. “Method: simple to convince secondary/tertiary power

source of bad phasing, poor fusing, or short in system. Too-eager

‘safety feature’ cuts in, fails system out.” She shook her head

regretfully. “Problem appears to have had some other cause

entirely when diagnostics are run.” And then she smiled, just a

little.

“You enjoy that kind of thing,” Gabriel said.

“Analysis incomplete and simplistic,” said Delde Sota,

and her smile grew.

“So we have one person chasing us whose ship says it’s from

Tendril and is probably lying,” Gabriel said. “Anything on

the other ship? Miss Blue Eyes?”

“Result: negative,” Delde Sota said. “Insufficient

time.”

“Well,” Gabriel said, “I’d like to get out of here

before she comes along, anyway. Though we didn’t file a plan, it

strikes me as likely that she’ll work out we were heading for Aegis

and that we’d have stopped somewhere in this vicinity.”

There was general agreement on this point, and then the

conversation slipped into more mundane topics. Gabriel paid little

attention, musing upon his own thoughts instead.

“Something in this space,” Gabriel said after

dinner, “is weird.”

“Well,” Helm replied, “it’s not weird now.”

The dishes and dinner things were put away, and they were all

squeezed together around the table in the sitting room. Gabriel’s

luckstone sat on the table by itself. If a piece of smooth, dark

stone could look innocent, it did.

“This thing,” Gabriel said, “I thought it

was going to burn a hole in my stomach.”

“Good thing it was just loose in your pocket,” Helm

said, “instead of on a chain or something.”

Delde Sota had been examining with the luckstone with her braid.

Now she pulled it close and touched it with one finger. “Nothing,”

she said. “Former opinion: lightrock. Source: beaches on

numerous planets; silicate natural chip or solid, conducts

bioelectricity. Now—”

“Are you saying that’s not what it is?”

Delde Sota shook her head. “New opinion: old opinion

incorrect/incomplete. New one not formed. Structure appears to

be silicate quartz. Energy states of atoms not normal.”

” ‘Energy states’? It’s not radioactive or anything, is

it?”

Delde Sota shook her head and said, “Occasional jitters in

shell structure of atoms. Like superconductor ‘jitter’ in

super-cooled gold; quick change of energy states, as if to jump to

higher ones or relapse to lower, but not cyclic.” She poked the

little stone again with her braid.

“It did this when exactly?” Helm asked.

“When we dropped into the system. Our instruments were acting

up around then, so I didn’t notice it for a few moments.”

“Can’t have been very hot to begin with.”

Gabriel gingerly picked up the stone again. It glowed slightly at

his touch, but that was all.

“Well,” Helm said. “I had a look at your

instrumentation, and I can’t find anything wrong. So you might have

had some kind of power surge and that“— he pointed

with his chin at the stone—“reacted to it.”

Gabriel shook his head. “It didn’t persist after that first

moment.”

“At least you fixed that problem.” He paused, and

the barest hint of a mischievous grin played across his features.

“Now, back to this … Angela. Did you find any

proof that the desynchrony was what made her drive fail?”

“No,” Gabriel said, eyeing Helm cautiously, “and I

probably couldn’t have if the damned machine had written me a note,

because I didn’t know what I was looking for. What was I supposed to

do, Helm? You can’t just sit there and do nothing in a

situation like that, even if you don’t know what to do.”

Helm gave him a wicked look. “Good-looking woman like that, I

suppose not.”

“Helm,” Gabriel said, annoyed, “don’t go looking

for it, because it’s not there.”

The grin only broadened, almost splitting Helm’s face in half. He

downed the last of his drink and was about to say something else when

Delde Sota cut him off.

“Opinion: shame I did not have a chance to look at her

drive.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, glad to be off the subject of

Angela Valiz. “Well, they’re gone, and now we can be on our

way.” He glanced up from the stone. “Preferably before this

decides to do something odd again.”

“It looks so unthreatening now,” Enda said, “but I

would not argue the point. Should some pursuit catch up with us, I

would sooner it did so at Aegis. After that… ?”

They all looked at Gabriel.

“Well…” he said. “Give me a few minutes,

would you? I have a few things to sort out in my head.”

“Go ahead,” Enda said.

Delde Sota added, “Opportunity: sit and digest.”

Gabriel got up and ambled up to the pilot’s compartment, sat down

in the left-hand seat and looked out into the darkness. Behind him,

Enda and Delde Sota were softly discussing the luckstone. Maybe the

thing to do is let the pursuit catch up while we’re there, he

thought. Find out just who these people are who are after me, but, as

Enda says, somewhere with plenty of witnesses.

Helm came up into the pilots’ cabin and glanced around him. He

squeezed past Gabriel into the right hand seat and looked out at the

stars.

“You thinking what I think you’re thinking?” Helm said.

“I wouldn’t know how to be sure,” Gabriel said.

Helm laughed under his breath and said, “The Lighthouse?”

“You noticed that it’s coming in, too.”

“I keep an eye on its whereabouts. Sometimes people jump into

Corrivale from it when it passes by one of the other systems, and

some of them like an armed escort if they’re carrying dangerous

cargoes, or time-sensitive ones.”

“So you wouldn’t have trouble picking up work there?”

“No,” Helm said, “and neither would you. But it’s

your call. I don’t know that I like the idea of getting too cozy with

that thing, myself.”

Gabriel’s eyes widened slightly. “You don’t think the Concord

would be coming after you, after Rivendale?”

“Huh? Of course not,” Helm said. “The residues in

the area will give a clear indication of what happened.” He

waved a massive hand. “On the other hand …” He

sighed. “Gabe, as a general rule it’s too busy for me in a given

area when that thing shows up. Oh, I know it’s a good sign.

Civilization coming back to the Verge and all that. Good business for

the people who live here, but it smacks of… I don’t know …

bureaucracy,” Helm scowled as if he had taken a bite of

something sour, “the kind of thing you got caught up in. Too

many people living too close together, arguing and scrabbling over

rights to exploit this, defend that, and colonize the other. Big

money changing hands, and people’s lives getting ruined by it all,

just being rolled over without a second glance, by the big weight and

momentum of big companies, big forces …”

He paused and looked out into the darkness. Almost in a whisper,

he continued, “The Concord’s just another big force. I know it

means well. Maybe it’ll be big and powerful enough some day to do

well, but right now there are too many other forces arguing the

point. Where it goes, they go too, and you’re likely to get run over

in the traffic without anyone noticing. Me, I prefer the wide open

spaces.”

“Even without the security?” Gabriel asked.

Helm laughed softly. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t

it? There isn’t any, Gabe, no security anywhere. Oh, people think

there was once. They tell stories about the Good Ol’ Days when our

parents were young …” He shook his head. “It wasn’t

any better for them or their parents, not even when humans lived on

just one planet, before the fraal turned up to keep them company. It

was never secure. People either didn’t have enough money or

food or time— or if they did, they didn’t know how long it

would last them. Their lives might work for a while, but sooner or

later luck would change, times would change … and death came

to them all.” He did not sound terribly somber about it, more

matter-of-fact. “Security’s just so much nebula-glimmer. See it

far off and it looks real and shining. Try to get into the middle of

it, and there’s nothing there but dust and the glow’s all gone.”

Gabriel smiled. “So speaks Helm the Philosopher.”

Helm looked amused. “Well, maybe I won’t be famous for it,

but you must look out into the dark while you’re in drivespace and

have long thoughts. It’s an occupational hazard. If that idea hasn’t

occurred to you by now, it will eventually. Meantime, I don’t hunt

security. I just get on with business.”

“Business isn’t going to take you as far as Mantebron?”

“I don’t think so,” Helm said. “Now, if you’re

thinking of going that way and hitching a ride with the Lighthouse,

it’ll certainly save you time. Four, maybe five starfalls?”

“Five. The better part of forty days.”

“Definitely an advantage if you want to go take a look at

this new contract property of yours and see what’s worth exploiting.”

Gabriel shifted in his seat and said, “I don’t know that I’m

going to exploit anything.”

Helm gave him a bemused look. “This is what people buy

exploration contracts for. If you just wanted to hide, you

could do that in drivespace. If you wanted to go work somewhere

quiet, there are a lot of places more comfortable. Sounds like your

intentions are a little mixed, Gabe.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Gabriel said after a moment,

“but it’s what I want to do.”

Helm’s eyebrows climbed his forehead in surprise, and he said,

“Unusually good sense from you today. Well, no matter. Doubtless

you’ll relapse shortly,”

Gabriel punched Helm in the arm as hard as possible. Helm hardly

noticed.

“So you’ll go then?” Helm asked. “You’ll send word

of where you are, though, and how things go?”

“Naturally. We’ll go back to infotrading after we finish this

run. It’s a long way, and we’ll need more funds.”

“We’ll rendezvous with you quick as we can,” Helm said.

“Delde Sota has some things she wants to look into over the next

month, so she says. Didn’t go into too much detail, but she made it

sound like it was private business. I don’t want to pry.”

“Probably smart,” Gabriel said, “when dealing with

a woman who can crash a ship’s systems down its comms.”

“No argument there. Speaking of which”— he looked

over his shoulder—“Doctor?”

After a few moments Delde Sota came lounging up the hallway to

peer past them into the starscape. “Speculation: enjoying view?”

“And the exercise of philosophy,” Helm said, “but

less important stuff too, one thing in particular. These two are

going to hitch on the Lighthouse after all.”

Delde Sota looked thoughtful. “Diagnosis: possible

psychiatric disorder? Sunshine carries proscribed weaponry,

and one crew member wanted by Concord, however erroneously. Security

and background checks mandatory for all hitching vessels. Results:

likely to be unfortunate.”

“That’s what I was going to say,” Helm said, “but

if someone had a word with Sunshine’s computers and made them

look and act like the ‘proscribed weaponry’ wasn’t there …

Silly laws about those anyway. They deserve to be broken. How are you

supposed to take care of yourself when every crook and pirate has

stuff like this?”

“Helm,” Enda said from behind Delde Sota, peering around

her, “into what are you tempting this virtuous mechalus now?”

“Opinion: interesting problem,” Delde Sota said, getting

a more than usually wicked gleam in her eye. “Weapons

‘redescription’ insufficient to job at hand. Proper intervention also

requires at least one altered set of personal ID, negative for any

possible background checks. Transit log with altered timestamps also

necessary. Fooling proprietary infotrading and messaging systems into

accepting altered ship registry without affecting other performance …

Hmm.”

The hair stood up all over Gabriel. He had never heard Delde Sota

say “hmm” before, and in its present tone, the word

acquired an unexpectedly dangerous quality. “It’s going to be

possible to put everything back the way it was afterwards, won’t it?”

Delde Sota’s braid waved airily. “Fact: removal of

intervention insignificant problem. Emplacement of ‘disguise’

requires programming of some elegance and skill.” She raised her

eyebrows, a pleased look. “Opinion: nothing like a challenge.”

“This won’t violate any of your oaths or anything, will it?”

Gabriel said.

Delde Sota blinked at him, bemused. “Medical oaths? Hardly.”

“I mean, any others. Do Grid pilots have oaths?”

She smiled a very slow smile. “Spectrum of response: from

‘What you do rebounds on you threefold’ to ‘If it harms none, do as

you will.’ Value judgment: suggested course of action comes under

latter.” The end of her braid began weaving itself into ever

more complex and subtle patterns. “Intention: ought to get

started. Enjoyable challenge and profitable use of remaining recharge

time.”

“Beats knitting,” said Helm.

“Believe I said that,” said Delde Sota, and went off

down toward the rear cargo hold.

Helm grinned and said, “You’ll be all set shortly. Let’s go

back down in the sitting room where it’s comfortable and sort out the

post-starrise logistics.” He got up, squeezed past Gabriel and

then Enda, and headed off down the hall. “Where’s that bottle of

Luculliana gone?”

Gabriel glanced up at Enda.

She gave him a resigned shrug, and the two of them went after

Helm.

*

They spent another three and a half days waiting for their

stardrives to recharge. Gabriel passed the time by mulling over the

information on Jacob Ricel but could glean nothing new from it. Delde

Sota spent every waking moment tinkering, manipulating, and

restructuring all of Sunshine’s registry data and Gabriel’s

personal ID, while Helm and Enda entertained themselves on the Grid

and kept up with the ships’ maintenance and cleaning.

After a brief stopover to recharge their drives in the Mikoa

system, Sunshine and Longshot finally arrived in Aegis.

They made starrise a hundred-and-fifty-million kilometers from the

star itself. There, in the plane of the system’s ecliptic, hung the

Aegis drivesat, its various relays dipping in and out of drivespace

with flashes of multicolored light. Starrise followed starfall in

pulsing regularity, the visible manifestation of millions of

conversations, messages, images, and data flowing out to the rest of

civilization and back again.

The drivesat was a lifeline, and the factor that combined with the

system’s favorable location to make Aegis the center of the Verge. It

was hardly central from the point of view of the older parts of the

settled universe. The worlds of the Stellar Ring were a thousand

light-years away, six months’ journey even for a fortress ship

capable of fifty light-year jumps. For smaller vessels, that journey

would have taken a year or more.

Such distances were too vast for almost all freight except the

most precious things that could not be made locally. Trade within the

Verge had thus become one of the most important things to reestablish

after the Long Silence. Aegis, no more than four starfalls from its

surrounding systems for most vessels, became the de facto hub

of the Verge’s gradual reconstruction. Some would argue that the

location itself, even more than the presence of the planet Bluefall

in the system, would have been reason enough for the construction of

the drivesat relay there.

Others might suggest that the readiness of the Regency government

on Bluefall to deal with almost every major stellar nation from the

Concord to VoidCorp had more to do with it. The planet’s

still-unrevoked open immigration policy had brought sentient beings

there from all over settled space. Many brought their business with

them, happy to be based on one of the most beautiful planets in known

space. In any case, the Aegis drivesat relay had turned the system

into the major crossroads of the Verge, where fortunes were

made and sometimes lost, and the great powers of the 25th century

rubbed elbows, sometimes jabbing one another as they sought

advantage.

Hundreds of ships transited Aegis every day, so Gabriel was not

surprised when the only acknowledgement from system control was a

harried-sounding automated message asking Sunshine to declare

a destination and move to a less crowded part of space.

“Well,” Enda said, as the display between them filled

with transit information, “where shall we go?”

Gabriel watched the data scroll by. There were only three planets

in the system: Bluefall, the gas giant Redcrown, and little Jetsam.

“I’ve seen enough giants for a while.”

“And Bluefall?” Enda said.

Gabriel shook his head. “Not this trip. When is the

Lighthouse due in?”

“Within several hours. We have timed it nicely. Look, the

data transfer system is waking up …”

No one at Rivendale had given them anything to carry, but

Sunshine‘s infotrading systems seemed unconcerned by this. Any

time they detected a drivesat’s carrier-signature, they automatically

contacted it in case there was traffic waiting for the ship or other

general information to be picked up. The display in the pilot’s cabin

showed the usual Grid contact heralds, a splash screen for the Aegis

Grid, and the special heralds for contact with a drivesat. Then in

rapid succession, the system announced No outgoing cargo. No new

out-system cargo. Standard inward in-system cargo. Cargo embarked.

Cleaning cycle begins.

“No sign of any trouble from Delde Sota’s ‘tinkering,’ “

Gabriel said, much relieved. “But what was that? We weren’t due

to pick anything up yet.”

Enda peered at the display. “It seems to be a general

information and system bulletin package … a ‘newspaper.’ “

“I would have thought that would come in from the in-system

mass transceiver.”

“Maybe this is for infotraders serving the relay?”

“Hm.” Gabriel nodded noncommittally and said, “No

sign of Helm yet.”

“The ship will call us when he turns up, or Helm will,”

Enda said as she got up and went back to the sitting room to have a

more leisurely look at the material.

Gabriel told the autopilot to take the ship well out of the

“incoming traffic” area. When he got back to the sitting

room, Enda was already working her way through data from the

drivesat’s news package— an hourly summary of planetary,

system, and stellar nation news with a live “bulletin board”

listing ships passing through the system, data available for outward

transit, and so forth.

“Heh,” Gabriel said after a moment, having spotted

Lalique on the list. “She made it back safely.”

“So it seems.” Enda gave him a look. “Did I detect

correctly that you were not overwhelmed by the idea of dinner with

her?”

“You detected correctly.”

“We will avoid that, then. Why, though?”

Gabriel shook his head. “A few things, but mostly …

she didn’t seem to think things through, somehow. At the moment,

that’s a problem I don’t much like.”

“Because you have that problem yourself?”

“The weren was interesting, though,” Gabriel said, not

answering that last comment. “Now I understand Rov’s crack about

Angela’s friend’s hair— or fur, in this case.”

Enda nodded. “Yes. Well, we have other things to do.”

She turned her attention back to the listings, working her way down

the long scroll of entries offering credit for ships that would trade

info back into specific systems. “A lot of interest in data

going to Exile and Cambria … a lot going to Coulomb. Very

little traffic for Mantebron or Walin, but that would make sense

since the Lighthouse is on its way. No point in hauling data

to a system that is about to have a drivesat in the neighborhood.”

“Most of these are short-run contracts,” Gabriel said.

“They want delivery within one or two starfalls …

fourteen to twenty days of pickup.” He leaned against the wall,

shaking his head. “Those aren’t much good to us. It’s going to

take us the better part of a month to get back to Aegis from

Mantebron, let alone Corrivale.”

“Look a little further down the list,” Enda said and

went down to her quarters.

Gabriel did. By the time she came back, carrying the squeeze

bottle for her plant, he was well down into listings for data not so

time-sensitive. “Slow runs,” he said. “There’s a fair

number of cargoes here that have no due dates on them at all. Just

‘expedited delivery.’ “

“That usually means ‘Please just get it there within the next

few months,’ ” Enda said. “A fair amount of data

travels that way, archival material mostly. No one would call it

‘nonessential,’ but there is no point for it to hurry.”

“No point for anyone to go out of their way carrying it,

either,” Gabriel said. “It doesn’t cany much of a premium.

Costs plus five percent.”

“Why would it?” Enda said. “It is not dangerous

cargo or time-sensitive. Easy work for low pay. This is the kind of

infotrading just suited for people who might be carrying other

cargoes on the side.” She watered her bulb. “Is there

anything slow destined for Coulomb? That would not be far out of our

way and can be quickly dropped before our run to Eldala.”

“Or after,” Gabriel said. “We might not be there

long. If there’s no urgency on the shipment at the contract end, why

hurry?”

“I don’t know,” Enda said. “I would sooner take

care of it beforehand.”

Gabriel looked at the list. “There you are. Coulomb. Assorted

entertainment material, administrative matters … About half

our capacity, I’d say.”

“Do you want to file the application?”

“Let me see if anything else is available to go out the same

direction,” Gabriel said. “No point in going out half empty

if we don’t have to.” He spent a little more time with the list

and finally said, “That seems to be it for Coulomb. There’s

material for Armstrong, but that’s too far out of the way.”

“I agree. Let us file for that Coulomb load before someone

beats us to it.”

Gabriel called up the information tanks’ support programs, brought

the new scheduling list to their attention, and instructed the

programs to speak to the drivesat, laying claim to the waiting loads.

After the interrogate/answer cycle completed, the display lit up with

the Concord Communications Commission template contract and the Aegis

drivesat’s loading parameters. The drivesat would load the material

to Sunshine in pulses each time it surfaced from drivespace.

“That suit you?” Gabriel said, as Enda read the terms of

the contract.

“Next page?” she said. Gabriel scrolled down. “Yes,

that seems fine to me. Identical to our Terivine contract except for

the time limitations, or lack of them.” She went off down the

hall. “If you approve, Gabriel, so do I.”

“On its way.” Gabriel touched the controls on the keypad

that completed the contract and sent it out.

No sooner had he done so than Gabriel began feeling nervous. The

previous contact with the drivesat had been automatic. If anyone had

any reason to want to stop Sunshine from picking up another

load— like wanting to ask questions about a fatality at

Terivine, or if Delde Sota’s tampering with their system ID had

failed— it would happen now.

What am I supposed to do, sit here and hide forever? I didn’t

murder anyone. I’m innocent, and I’ll bloody well act like it.

Those long hours in the cell back on Phorcys still came back to

Gabriel in dreams sometimes. In the dreams, he would be there

forever; he was found guilty even though he knew he was innocent. He

would never get out…

The screen flickered, breaking his reverie and churning his

insides. Gabriel swore under his breath.

Message encrypted and packed. Cargo scheduled.

A second later the screen said, Cargo dispatched. Drivesat

relay confirms backup. Original saved. Cleaning cycle begins …

Gabriel got up and stretched. “Done,” he said, as Enda

came back.

“Now we wait,” said Enda. She yawned and added, “I

might sleep. We have been very busy for a while “

“You do that,” Gabriel said. “I’ll wait for Helm.”

Gabriel sat there for a few more minutes, wondering if the display

would suddenly fill with some message from the Concord Communications

Commission saying that Sunshine’s infotrading license had been

revoked because of the incident at Rivendale, or that it was revoked

because it had been given in error to a ship part-owned by a wanted

murderer, or they had detected Sunshine’s tampered ID codes.

None of these things happened, and he relaxed enough to start

amusing himself with the local Grid. It had been a long while since

Gabriel had been in his home Grid, and he found it not much changed,

especially not the fifty channels belonging to Mask and Bauble

Studios, “the oldest continuously running studio in the Verge,”

with its numerous space operas, soap operas, and other holoserials.

Other things also had not changed— particularly the long

waiting times, broken transmissions, and other annoyances inherent to

the Aegis Grid. It was really very much behind the times, despite the

presence of a busy system government, huge amounts of traffic, and

entertainment firms like M&B pumping it full of content.

A little leisurely paging through the local news revealed that the

Regent was still in negotiations with both VoidCorp and Insight over

the contracts for installation of new Grid software and hardware.

Neither of them is going to let the other win, Gabriel thought. They

hate each other too much. All the Regent has to do is let them keep

outbidding each other. Hale’s not stupid. He needn’t do anything

concrete, and when someone finally puts their seal on the bottom of

the deal, he’ll have enough Concord dollars to build another island

out of—

Up in the pilots’ cabin, Sunshine’s comms channel chirped.

Gabriel touched the keypad in front of him to route it to the sitting

room. In the display, Longshot’s ID flashed.

“Hey, Helm,” Gabriel said.

“Seem to be running a little off-course,” Helm said.

“Maybe I should look at the stardrive.”

“Hey, it got you here. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.”

Helm chuckled. “You have any problems?”

“Not a thing.”

“Everything else OK?”

“No problems,” Gabriel said, knowing what Helm meant.

“Your stone behaving itself now?”

Gabriel looked over at it, on the shelf next to Enda’s bulb. “Not

a squeak out of it.”

“Anything more about your Ricel guy catch up with you?”

“Not a word as yet. Meantime, we’re waiting for clearance on

a load of non-time-sensitive stuff.”

“Mantebron?”

“Coulomb.”

“A little out of our way, that. Delde Sota’n me are going to

recharge the drive and head back to Corrivale. Delde Sota’s getting

concerned about those errands she has to run.”

“Got time for one last dinner?” Gabriel said, suddenly

feeling a little wistful.

“Before recharge? At least. After that, she’s kind of urgent.

We may need to meet you back here.”

“Or somewhere else on our way back from Eldala, yeah …

a few weeks along. You sure you feel comfortable leaving us by

ourselves with all this highly valuable data we’re going to be

carrying?”

Helm laughed softly and said, “You’re good enough with the

guns— I’m less worried about you than I was. Word about

Terivine may get around in good ways as well as bad.”

“I hope you’re right,” Gabriel said. “See you

soon.”

“Right,” Helm said, and cut the channel.

If the Lighthouse was about to turn up, and they were

leaving on it, there was one more thing Gabriel needed to do, and he

did not care to be rushed doing it. Quietly, taking his time so as

not to sound nervous, Gabriel dictated his report to the authorities

of what had happened on Rivendale and in space above it. In the

middle of the process, his insides jumped again as comms went off

once more. The ID in the display said CCC BLUEFALL.

Gabriel swallowed. “This is Sunshine,” he said.

“This is CCC Bluefall,” a bored-sounding voice said. “We

wish to apologize for the delay in handling your contract

application.” Gabriel swallowed again. “Your approved

contract is in the system and will be forwarded to you at the

earliest opportunity consonant with decreased traffic in the drivesat

or in-system relays. Thank you for your patience. Repeating, this is

CCC Bluefall—”

Gabriel let it repeat. They approved it. No problems!

He briefly entertained the idea of waking up Enda to tell her. No,

let her sleep. She was right; we’re fine.

The subject of the events at Terivine had come up several times in

their passage to Aegis. Now, here he sat with the report all but

completed and additional “exhibits” appended— copies

of Sunshine’s logs, and her flight recordings. Like most

ships, she was programmed to make such recordings when her weapons

were cast loose. Gabriel was nervous enough about this aspect of the

report, even though Delde Sota’s delicate “adjustments” to

Sunshine’s logs had apparently concealed the presence of her

plasma cannon. If they detected the forgery, he would be in more than

enough trouble, but that trouble wouldn’t start right away. Gabriel

was now down to his last piece of business— which bureau to

send the report to. The CCC had to see a copy. Infotraders, after

all, were required to keep an eye out for each other. The more

obvious destinations for the report were the Regency and Alaundril

embassies on Bluefall. Gabriel tagged one copy for each embassy’s

colonial attache, then sat looking for a few moments at the files.

Logs, 3D recordings, weapons records, everything was ready, waiting

to be sent. In a moment of grim humor, he added one more destination,

to Lorand Kharls, wherever he was at the moment.

If he doesn’t know all about this already …

Though this time, even Kharls would have trouble knowing anything

so soon. No harm then in surprising him, if anything truly could

surprise that nasty, devious little man.

Gabriel looked down at the keypad and the SEND key, but paused. Do

I really have to send this? And if I do, who knows what’ll happen to

my life as a result?

He couldn’t get rid of the idea that however good his intentions,

this was going to misfire. Another thought went through Gabriel’s

head. With all the confusion, why bother putting your head in the

noose? They might never notice, or not for a long time.

A phrase from somewhere went through his head. The guilty flee

when no man pursueth. Gabriel’s face went grim again.

I am not guilty!

He reached out; his hand hovered over the key.

He touched it.

The messages encrypted and filed themselves away among the data

transfer routines in Sunshine’s insides.

Messages encrypted and packed, the display said. Cargo

scheduled.

A few seconds past, then a new message flashed onscreen. Cargo

dispatched. Drivesat relay confirms backups. Originals saved.

Cleaning cycle begins …

That was that. If anything was going to happen, Gabriel doubted he

would wait have to wait long for it to happen. The Alaundrin and

Regency embassies would have the reports now.

When Enda appeared again from her quarters nearly an hour later,

it was almost a shock to see her looking so untroubled and normal.

“Any news about that application?” she said.

“Yes,” Gabriel replied. “No problems. Helm called.

He and Delde Sota are going back to Corrivale after they recharge.

That unfinished business she mentioned …”

“I thought they might,” Enda said, rubbing her face a

little wearily. “Well, they have been good to come so far with

us. Now we will go out alone and see what new things the worlds hold

in store for us.”

New cycle, the display said suddenly. Delayed

embarkation. Confirming reception facility clean. Embarking data …

The comms circuits chirped again. Off to one side of the Aegis

heralds in the display, Longshot’s little ID came up.

Gabriel touched the keypad. This time, 3D and sound came up

together: and there was Helm and Delde Sota.

“Dinner this evening?” Helm said. “Seems smart,

since you’ll be leaving before we’ve finished recharging.”

“It’s a good idea. After that, when will we see you again?”

“When you’re back from the back of beyond. We’ll meet you

here, if you like. The doctor wouldn’t mind checking out some of the

local options.”

“It’s a pretty world, Bluefall,” Gabriel said, “and

they’d be glad to have someone with your talents. Any one of a

hundred companies would hire you, if you feel like settling in.”

“Possibility: might consider it,” said Delde Sota. “Have

a few loose ends to tie up back on Iphus.”

Enda nodded. “Well, we should move ourselves to the

coordinates where traffic for the Lighthouse is meant to wait.

Meet us there?”

“No problem,” Helm said.

Comms went dark.

Chapter Eight

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AFTER DINNER, HELM and the doctor left and Gabriel tried to rest

but did not sleep well. The dreams came again, light and darkness,

and fear, but stronger than usual. Excitement. A sense of something

happening, and something about to happen. Something profound

and profoundly moving, so that in the midst of the darkness and the

flaring fire, Gabriel trembled. Is it fear, he found himself

thinking in the middle of the dream, or something else? He hardly

knew what to call it. Neither did what watched him. Something—

He sat up in the bed, panting, sweating.

Again, Gabriel thought, but this time there had been more. And

this time, he had not been alone in the dream.

Across his cabin, the luckstone, glowing a very faint gold under

the matte-dark outer shell, lay benignly on a shelf next to a couple

of solids and old books.

It has something to do with that, he thought.

He had no proof, but he had not had such dreams until…

Until after I was thrown out of the marines. It could have

something to do with that. The stress, the displacement…

Reasonable as that seemed, Gabriel was sure the dreams had nothing

to do with his trial or cashiering. Just looking at the stone after

one of these dreams caused a peculiar feeling of resonance, as if the

stone had something to do with what he had seen. It was no part of

the action in the dreams— if action was the right word for it—

but it was involved.

There was someone there …

He put his face down in his hands for a moment, closing his eyes

again as he chased the memory.

Useless. Gone.

Gabriel looked at the stone.

I wish I knew how to find out more about this, but I don’t have a

clue. It’s going to have to wait.

He sighed and went to shower, thinking he would step up to the

pilots’ cabin afterwards and have one more look at the Aegis drivesat

before he and Enda had to start their linkage to Lighthouse.

The drivespace relay had always fascinated him, not least because

he had been science-mad as a boy. The drivesat and its kindred had

thrown a wrench into the particle-wave theories of slower-than-light

communication. Since messages sent through drivespace did their

“jump” in only eleven hours, as opposed to the

hundred-and-twenty-one hours required for matter, then the basic

units of that energy could not be particles, waves, or anything to do

with matter at all. There were noisy arguments among the more

“exotic” physicists as to whether this theory impugned the

formally “equal” status of matter and energy. Every now and

then, someone came wandering along the news channels suggesting that

the physical world didn’t really exist and drivespace relays proved

it.

In his teens, Gabriel had been less concerned about whether he and

the physical world existed. His father had bought him a telescope

when he was very young, and Gabriel had spent many happy nights

looking out into space, especially at Redcrown and its eccentric

rings. The drivesat relay had been entirely another kind of thrill,

starfall and starrise every second, distant but tempting. Some day,

he had thought, someday I’ll do that. I’ll see that fire outside my

ship, and a few days later, I’ll look at a new world no one’s ever

seen….

Gabriel found himself looking at the system with new eyes. When

they first arrived, he had felt little interest in the drivesat, but

now, sitting in the pilots’ cabin, he looked longingly out the

viewshield for a glimpse of something else. The fierce sapphire gleam

of Bluefall, like nothing else in this part of space— vast

oceans reflecting the yellow light of Aegis, the pure blue-white

glimmer of the disk, the home to which he could not go.

Next time, perhaps …

He was not even sure in which direction he should be looking.

Aegis he could see, though not in its full splendor with the

viewshield dimmed to keep him from suffering eye damage.

Gabriel reached into the 3D display and triggered the controls for

the system drive, just enough to tumble Sunshine in place. She

pitched forward, and reflected light began pouring in through the

viewshield. There, with craft small and large clustered around it,

was the Lighthouse.

Gabriel, looking down the length of the huge structure, touched

the control to stop Sunshine’s tumble. People might talk

casually about craft kilometers long, but when it came your turn to

snuggle up to one in a ship measuring only sixty meters long, you

came to appreciate the size. At one end of the long spindle-like

central structure was a broad, conical engineering section. At the

other end was the “city section,” a tall dome-like

structure crowned with spires and towers, and below that the docking

section lay nestled like a broad, flat drum. Staggered between the

docking area and the engineering section were four huge sets of

docking spars meant for smaller vessels to grapple onto. The spars

were already loaded with numerous spacecraft of all kinds: cargo

ships, private vessels, a few larger freighters, but there were

plenty of empty spaces. The entire structure rotated gently in

Aegis’s light, glittering with artificial illumination where shadow

fell. Looking at it gave Gabriel the same kind of feeling he got from

mountains, a pleasant sense of physical insignificance, except that

this was due to something manmade, and the feeling therefore had a

slight and peculiar quality of pride associated with it as well.

“It is impressive,” Enda said as she came up to lean on

the back of his seat and gaze past him. “Have you reviewed her

schedule?”

“Not yet.”

“She made starrise about an hour ago and sent out a news

package. It is in Sunshine’s mail system. It confirms what we

had heard. The stop in Aegis system will be brief— forty-eight

hours only, just enough time to recharge.”

“Any changes in its transit schedule?”

“A small one,” Enda said, “a change of order in

destinations. Mantebron first, and then Walin rather than the other

way around.”

“Do they say why?”

“Domestic concerns.”

“Walin’s or Mantebron’s? Or local ones aboard Lighthouse?”

“They do not say,” Enda said, “but I suppose I can

see why they would not. This vessel’s movements are carefully

watched. Sudden changes in its schedule can have political

implications or would be assumed to have them.”

They looked out at the vast rotating shape beneath them.

“This is your last chance to change your mind,” Enda

said. “We will be going a long way from help.”

“It’s also a long way from the people who’re chasing us,”

Gabriel said. “Maybe it’ll make them think twice about

following. If they have a large ship, there’s nothing we can do to

stop them, but if they’re just single-shipping it, then they’ll be

far behind us.”

Enda tilted her head in agreement. “We should contact the

Lighthouse then and book ourselves a spar location. They do

not look too full. I doubt there will be a problem.”

In fact, it turned out to be surprisingly easy. Five minutes spent

on the Lighthouse’s Grid gave them a clearance for spar six,

spaces nineteen through twenty, and a courteous request to make fast

to the spar as quickly as possible so that later-arriving vessels

could be accommodated without difficulty.

The docking itself took less than half an hour, most of which was

spent piloting Sunshine into position near the docking spar

and equalizing her motion to that of the Lighthouse. For this,

too, there was specialized assistance, the spar having its own

docking computer that spoke directly to Sunshine’s system

drive. Docking clamps mated to Sunshine‘s landing skids,

pulling her close to the spar and fastening her down. A tube then

extended from the spar and offered itself up to Sunshine,

leaving her airlock mated to the rapid transit system inside the

spar. With no more than several loud thumps and bumps, it was all

over.

Stuck, Gabriel thought. Until Lighthouse made starrise at

Mantebron, there was no escape. Not that he would have considered

pushing off a vessel while in drivespace, especially when the larger

vessel owned the drive. Sunshine would never be seen again.

“Well,” Enda said, “I shall go aboard and have a

look around. There is no need to wait until after starfall.”

“I might wait,” Gabriel said.

She looked at him and sighed. “You are still afraid that

someone is going to take umbrage at your presence. You must try to

relax about this.”

“Having stood in court in Phorcys and seen the looks on the

faces of the Concord prosecutors when they were told they couldn’t

have me,” Gabriel said, “relaxation isn’t as easy as you

might think, no matter how good I know Delde Sota is.”

“Well,” Enda said, “I will go out and possibly find

something interesting for lunch. I doubt they will have any fraal

restaurants here as good as the one we found in Sunbreak, but there

may be something worth bringing back.”

Enda vanished into her quarters for a few moments and came back

dressed as Gabriel had rarely seen her: in fraal high fashion. She

wasn’t wearing one of the singlesuits she normally favored, but a

sleeveless vest and mid-calf kilt, all made from silken fabric with a

subdued sheen of blue over a deep green. Beneath the kilt, she wore

dark buskins laced up high.

“Very chic,” Gabriel commented.

“First impressions are important,” Enda said, and headed

down the hall to Sunshine’s airlock. “Can I bring you

anything?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Enjoy.”

*

Gabriel spent a good while catching up with news from around the

stellar nations, partly out of a feeling of duty, and partly out of

habit. While posted on Falada, assisting the ambassador who

had been working with the Phorcyn and Inoan governments, Gabriel had

made it a personal requirement to be as well informed as anyone about

interstellar relations. Now, after an hour reading the news, Gabriel

found himself feeling that the worlds were going to hell and that

Mantebron was not far enough away from the mess.

Realizing that this was not a healthy state of mind, Gabriel

turned his attention to the entertainment channels. He found more of

the M&B serials, all desperately alike and all written by the

same small coterie of names. Gabriel began to think there was a

prison island somewhere on Bluefall where, far from the glitz and

glamor of the Watertower District, writers were kept chained to the

gently waving trees and forced to write for their bread.

Other channels were better supplied. One showed nothing but

features about the fauna and flora of various worlds, and Gabriel got

entirely too fascinated by one documentary about the sex life of the

scraaghek. Another channel showed nothing but the output of various

people aboard Lighthouse playing virtual combat games. Gabriel

watched with increasing amusement, as only a small percentage of the

space combat games paid attention to details like gravity,

acceleration, or the speed of light. He was relieved when Enda came

back with a large bag full of parcels and began to unload them on the

table in front of him.

“What in the worlds … ?” Gabriel said, as she

came up with a box, opened it, and produced an odd sort of keypad.

The keys were very wide, all black plastic without any sort of

signage on them.

“It goes with the translation software that Angela sold us

along with the exploration contract. She never completed registering

the software or sending off for the extra parts.” Gabriel didn’t

comment. This sounded all too like Angela. “The company that

makes them has a distributor here,” Enda continued, “and I

had the registration information with me, so I picked these up.”

Gabriel poked at the keypad. “Is the whole thing

configurable?”

“So it seems, and here are some language modules for it.”

” ‘Formal Middle Fraal,’ ” she said with

approval and handed that data solid to Gabriel. “You can use

this. Your accent is terrible.”

“What accent?”

“Exactly,” Enda said. “The one time you said hello

to me …” She smiled. “Let us just say I made

allowances.”

“Why? What did I say?”

“You meant to say ‘Greeting and honor to you as well,’ but I

am afraid it came out, ‘You greet the sickness with my shoes,’ or,

‘You are sick on my— ‘ “

Gabriel spluttered. “Oh, Enda!”

“The marine language course may have been recorded by someone

with a vile regional accent,” Enda said, “or by one of our

people who had been away traveling so long that the form of the

language he spoke drifted considerably from the norm.” She

sighed. “It is a danger, of course, but when a people fragment—”

Enda stopped. Gabriel turned to look at her. “Is something

wrong?”

Enda was gazing at the keypad on the table. “No, not as such,

but one does find oneself having the occasional argument with someone

who is no longer there. Another accident of much travel. In any case,

if you do that Fraal course, check with me. We have a very slippery

preterite, and I may be able to keep you from being sick on someone

else’s shoes.”

Enda rooted around in the box and came up with a couple more

solids. “Sheyan. Another good choice. Your accent at that was

fair— better than mine. And another manual. I do not know if

this is the same one we have already. You will want to check.”

Enda went and changed back into her shipboard clothes and then

began cooking. Gabriel was distracted from the good smells when the

ship’s mail system chimed for attention— something either from

Aegis or Lighthouse. Swallowing, Gabriel reached out and

touched the keypad, bringing the display to life again.

The infotrading system displayed the usual heralds as it unpacked

the message and decrypted it. Suddenly Gabriel found himself staring

at the CCC logo. The display cleared and began to fill with text.

Gabriel began reading, aware of Enda looking over his shoulder

with a pan in one hand. This is to confirm your data trading

contract for the following dates …

“So, then,” Enda said and went back to the galley.

Gabriel let out a long breath and scrolled on down. No notes, no

addenda, no nothing, and no reference to his report.

“When do we eat?” asked Gabriel, now that he suddenly

had an appetite again.

They had their lunch or dinner. Gabriel had no idea what it was,

but it tasted wonderful. Afterwards, Enda went off to her cabin to

rest. Gabriel, still feeling cautious, sat waiting for any further

messages. None came. Finally he pulled down the chair on the far side

of the table, put his feet up, and let the Grid display babble

stellar nations’ news at him until it lulled him to sleep.

How long he dozed there he was not sure, but the chime of ship’s

comms woke him up. Gabriel reached out to the control keypad, touched

it, and found himself looking at Helm and Delde Sota.

“You’re about to jump,” Helm said. “Thought we’d

make sure you were comfortable.”

Gabriel smiled. “As much so as possible, under the

circumstances.”

Enda came in, looking past him at the display. Delde Sota’s braid

could be seen knotting itself several times, partly behind her back,

as if in secret. “Intention/wish: go safely, you two. Phymech is

in order; checked. Command: do not need it.”

“We’re in agreement there, Doctor” Gabriel said. “You

take care too. Helm—”

“Don’t say it,” Helm said. “You’re welcome. Take

care and send word.”

Their images blanked out.

Data Embarkation Complete, the herald said a moment later.

Enda looked at Gabriel.

“He is a gentle creature,” she said, “and hates

long farewells.”

“I don’t know about the ‘gentle’ part,” Gabriel said,

“but I’ll miss him too.” A slight vibration went through

Sunshine‘s frame, and a sudden sheen of green-blue light came

down the hall from the pilots’ cabin.

Gabriel leaned around the sitting room wall to look down the hall.

Through the open door to the cabin he saw sheets of blue light, like

water that glowed, come streaking up over Sunshine’s viewshield. Quietly, without fuss, it happened— fifty

light-years’ worth of starfall. Lighthouse slipped into

drivespace, the darkness falling around them like a curtain that

would rise again, five days later at Mantebron.

*

For the first couple of days, Gabriel was increasingly obsessed

with trying to get the translation software to work. This proved to

be a maddening business. The manuals appeared to have been compiled

by people for whom the kind of Standard spoken on Bluefall and other

Verge worlds was a second language, and Gabriel became so infuriated

with the infernal machine that he just couldn’t let it alone.

The basic idea was simple enough. The translation software

operated in two modes, one for known languages and one for new ones.

The keypad operated either as a whole screen or in conjunction with

one, ‘listening’ to spoken words in one language while showing and

speaking the words in the other. When you had both language modules

complete and present, the order could be reversed. The ‘learning’

mode was simpler. The keypad displayed simple images— sun,

tree, water— and learned the spoken words for them, building

them into the beginnings of a grammar.

Gabriel would have enjoyed playing with that part of the program,

but the operating instructions were inconsistent. What one chapter of

the manual said about running, say, a verb placement module, another

later chapter might contradict.

The more frustrated Gabriel got, the more time he spent with the

hardware, determined either to make it work or to take a hammer to

it. Chalice, the All Purpose Translation Tool, the program

called itself. He remembered his old marine friend Hal saying,

“Anything claiming to be ‘All Purpose’ is probably good for

nothing. Useful software and hardware are designed to specific

purposes. Nothing is good at everything, even people.”

Eventually Gabriel put the program aside and took more time to

regale himself with the delights of the Lighthouse Grid. It

was far beyond impressive. During this period, Enda came and went

without comment, though Gabriel noticed that she was getting more

sleep than usual.

She was sleeping again now, and Gabriel was immured in the sitting

room, paging through the Grid. He looked over at the translation

module, laying mulish and mute over on one of the shelves, and could

not bear the thought of dealing with it any further. There was only

one thing left for him to do.

I’ve been putting it off long enough. If something is going to

happen, let it happen.

Gabriel went to get something from his quarters that he had

laughed at when Delde Sota had given it to him: a package of

hair-shift and a set of eye-change lenses. The latter produced a

perfect fake retinal pattern for scanners that used such

technologies. Gabriel had been too unnerved to ask where or how Delde

Sota had come by them— it occurred to him that there might be

things it was better for him not to know.

He retired into the refresher and came out blond and blue-eyed,

though Delde Sota had warned him that the blondness would last for

only a few hours, and after that would tarnish.

Gabriel dressed quickly in his best clothes, put his credit chip

in his pocket, and picked up one last thing: his luckstone.

He locked Sunshine’s airlock from the outside and pulled

himself down the tube to its far end, clenching his stomach harder

than usual since he did not know what the gravity situation was going

to be at the far end. To Gabriel’s surprise, there was gravity even

in the spar. The other end gave onto a cylindrical metal-paneled

hallway about ten meters wide. Down the middle of it, faired into the

floor, was a stator track for transport. Walkways lay along both

sides of the track, which ran about a quarter kilometer in either

direction.

Gabriel walked toward the central core. After a few minutes, a

little bullet-shaped transport pulled up next to him and dilated a

doorway.

Gabriel got in and sat on one of the two benches that ran down

each side of the transport. The door constricted and the transport

took off smoothly, pausing again after about a minute to pick up a

dark-skinned lady in the voluminous gown and hood of an Orlamu. After

another minute’s travel, the transport stopped.

“Main core,” said a feminine computer-voice.

“Engineering transport to the right, city transport to the left.

Whtala vheirna, daikash leiVhairhe …”

Gabriel exited and headed to the left, wondering if his fraal

would ever sound that mellifluous. Probably not without a lot of

work, but one thing’s for sure: I’m not going to be sick on anyone’s

shoes again.

Once he entered the core, the gravity disappeared, and Gabriel

pulled himself along by convenient handholds to the first open door

he found, a large elevator with a sign above its doors labeled

Express. Deck 197, Deck 198. Humans in every kind of clothes

were hanging onto the handholds, though there were a few mechalus, a

number of weren— their relationship with the Orlamu had always

been close— as well as assorted human and fraal Star Force

personnel, and a couple of Orlamu priests. The lift closed and took

off for the long run up to 197.

Gabriel looked out into a broad plaza as the door hissed opened

and several occupants began to empty out. The interiors here looked

nothing like those of the usual space station. Walls, columns, and

buildings here were faced in wood and stone as well as plastic. The

feeling of sheer openness and space surprised Gabriel as the elevator

took off and stopped in a second plaza, even bigger than the first

and centered on an upward-gushing fountain.

It’s not just the materials, he thought as he hauled himself out

and took a moment to get used to gravity again, it’s the basic

architecture. The Orlamu had originally constructed the Lighthouse

of Faith as a religious facility, and like many other religious

organizations, they had used a sense of space and height to attempt

to draw the mind upward and outward. Where their architecture had not

been overlaid or replaced by newer building— as it had all over

Deck 198— the effect worked extremely well.

This area was hardly Orlamist at all, having over the years become

the social center of the Lighthouse. Numerous pathways led

across the central plaza. Scattered across the broad expanse of pale,

gleaming stone floor were sales kiosks, food and news booths,

lounging areas, hotels, restaurants, bars, and a cluster of specialty

purchasing facilities that constituted a shopping area astonishingly

well supplied by anyone’s definition.

Gabriel spent the better part of an hour there, spotting the

gourmet shop where Enda had picked up their lunch two days before.

Next to it was an entertainment kiosk with preprogrammed solids, and

Gabriel was much amused to see a large stack of solids labeled as The

Complete Verge Hunter. It could hardly be the complete run, since

that turgid and inadvertently funny space opera was still in

production. Elinke Dareyev had been terribly fond of it. Hearing the

captain of a seriously armed vessel shouting with terrifying

enthusiasm at the end of a boozy officer’s mess night, “Not for

myself, but For The Force!” had sometimes made Gabriel

very glad that someone else’s finger was on the firing buttons until

next morning.

Where is she now, I wonder? Gabriel thought. There was something

else lost to him, one more reason to get on with clearing his name.

He had no idea whether he would ever be able to regain Elinke’s

friendship, but at least he wanted her to understand that he was not

guilty of her lover or anyone else’s murder.

Gabriel went on among the kiosks, admiring the clothes and the

jewelry laid out there, the books and frozen images, the gifts and

knickknacks from many worlds. I could afford a few things if I felt

like it, Gabriel thought. As he turned toward one shop with some

semiformal clothes in its forward display area, he caught a glimpse

of midnight blue and silver coming toward him.

He froze. Marines, five of them: two men, three women. They

glanced at him, glanced at the window, and glanced away. Gabriel

stiffened, holding his breath.

The soldiers just kept going, not even sparing Gabriel a second

glance.

They don’t even know me. Why should they? Gabriel thought, turning

back toward the window. It’s not like I have TRAITOR branded

on my forehead. Even if they had recognized me, how do I know they’d

necessarily have shared the ‘official’ opinion that I’m guilty? It’s

not like the marines are some vast many-bodied, one-headed beast with

no brain.

Gabriel looked over the clothes, decided they didn’t suit him, and

wandered farther across the plaza. He became extremely interested in

an Insight software distributor’s kiosk. The JustWadeIn fighting

hardware in Sunshine was Insight-made, but there was no new

version available yet. After that, he spent a good while looking at a

long case full of delicacies, sweets and tiny savories of a kind he

had seen Enda gorge herself on more than once.

He would have been hard-pressed to say exactly when he realized he

was being followed. Gabriel had been taught to have an instinct about

this kind of thing, since having one could keep you from being

killed. For some time now, since after the marines had passed him, he

had been aware of something constantly near him … a patch of

the same color, a sound of footsteps that repeated and didn’t change

pitch. Not too close, but close enough.

He “lost interest” in the sweets and went wandering more

purposefully, trying to see how closely his shadow was willing to

follow. At no point would Gabriel actually allow himself to look in

that direction. That would spoil the game and possibly alert his

quarry. He stopped by an open eating area and paused to lift the menu

pad from an empty table. The shape following him— a woman, not

very tall, dressed somberly in what might have been a jumpsuit—

put herself behind a news kiosk where he couldn’t see. Gabriel put

the pad down and strolled away to another of the shopping areas,

where he tucked himself behind another clothing sales outlet.

A few flickers of motion wavered off among the kiosks about a

hundred yards away. Whoever was following him was better at at than

Gabriel knew how to be. He was torn between appreciation of a genuine

talent and wondering whether that talent was shortly going to place a

knife in his back. While weapons were not to be carried here, there

were some weapons too small to detect and others, like knives, that

could be easily concealed.

Gabriel knew a fair amount about stalking an adversary himself,

but it felt odd to slink and skulk without being armed. Additionally,

it was hard to skulk profitably in a place this wide open. His own

training, at least the part which involved board-and-sneak work on

ships and space stations, was better suited to narrow corridors with

low ceilings and corners to hide behind. This was like hiding

in a cathedral, with the additional hint that more than the temporal

powers might be watching you.

He made his way casually around the lower walls of the dome to one

of the lifts that lead to the higher levels. One chimed and opened

for him. He slipped in, waited for it to close, and then punched for

the level marked Deck 200.

Let them play with that, he thought while the lift waited for any

additional passengers. There were guards up there, Gabriel knew, but

he was willing to have a brief brush with them if it would discomfit

the person following him. It was possible that the “shadow”

would have trouble with them too.

As the lift door began to close, he saw her come out from behind a

kiosk, briefly looking in another direction— a slim little

woman with dark hair. She was turning her head away from Gabriel just

as he got that glimpse, but not before he saw the blue eyes.

Now let her wonder, Gabriel thought. She would have to stand there

watching the lift indicator until it revealed his destination, then

she would have to follow him up, and he would have time to hide

himself or find a position where getting at him would get her in

trouble.

The lift proceeded upwards at a good speed and finally let Gabriel

out into a bare round area. A few bored guards stood off to one side.

A bank of chip-access entryways intended for the wealthy residents of

the city lined the opposite wall. Gabriel walked toward them

unconcernedly, getting out his chip as if he were just one more guest

of some wealthy resident of the city.

Gabriel slipped his chip into the machine and was astonished to

see the door snap back silently. The guards on the other side didn’t

even bother looking at him as he walked through, trying not to gawk.

He was in a large common access area, with numerous corridors

leading off toward the bases of various towers. One lift stood by

itself. An Orlamu guard, looking as bored as his colleagues out by

the main access, stood at the base of it. Gabriel headed that way,

and the guard looked at him with an expression suggesting he was

going to tell Gabriel to go back the way he had come.

Gabriel wondered if the guard would let him up there if he claimed

to be a “seeker,” someone in the early stages of the

Orlamist faith.

Behind him, a bizarre strangled hooting noise went up. Gabriel

swallowed, turned to look behind him, and saw the access-area guards

converging on one of the doorways. One of the uniformed guards was

kicking the thing in a desultory way, but there was no apparent

result, and the noise did not stop.

Gabriel stopped to watch this too. Behind him, the Orlamu guard

was also watching with a suddenly amused expression, like someone who

has seen this happen before. He turned to touch the lift column

behind him, apparently touching in some combination, and then went

down toward the access gates, giving Gabriel a glance as he went.

The guard joined his fellows working over the turnstile. Gabriel,

watching this, turned away and went over to the lift column, curious.

It had no summons controls that he could see, only a chip slot. Out

of sheer curiosity, Gabriel stuck his ID in.

Around the side of the column, the lift opened.

Outside, the strangled hooting of the alarms was still going on,

and the Orlamu guard was trying to help the others with the

malfunctioning turnstile. Gabriel shook his head and slipped into the

lift. The door closed.

The panel inside was labeled 1-22 and Temple.

Gabriel hit the control for Temple and then spent the brief

ride upward staring at his ID card. What did Delde Sota do to this

thing? What else could I get into on this station?

The lift stopped and opened into a dimly lit corridor that ended

in what looked like another lift access. Gabriel walked along the

hallway as if he belonged there, although he was sweating slightly—

he was not going to be able to keep this act up for long. At the end

of the hall he paused and looked around, trying not to look lost. A

lift door lined the wall on the right, but on his left were very

different doors, tall and arched and black. As he stepped toward one,

it opened silently outward. He slipped in, and it closed behind him.

Darkness. Gabriel paused to let his eyes become marginally used to

the dimness, and then stepped forward. His eyes quickly accustomed

themselves to the light, just a dim gleam from further inside and

higher up. Gabriel smiled in the dark. If Miss Blue Eyes was still

with him, which now seemed very unlikely, she would have trouble

sneaking up on him in here. There was no cover, nowhere to hide. The

room was sixty meters across, round and empty, with only the one

entrance and a simple round podium in the middle.

He moved out into it silently, toward the center of the great

expanse, listening carefully as he went for the sound of any door or

portal opening. The floor of the place was all black unpolished

stone. The ceiling was not a ceiling as such, but another dome, tall,

narrow, and pointed, with only a few telltale gleams to betray its

structure. In that vast, graceful space of darkness, suspended high

above Gabriel, burned a single point of light.

The sharp-pointed dome itself was at least a hundred meters high

from the pediment, to the point where the great inward-curving

triangles of reinforced ceiling drew together. How splendid this room

and the vista beyond it would look when the Lighthouse was in

normal space, Gabriel could imagine. But here, surrounded by the

velvet blackness of drivespace, its aspect was possibly even more

affecting. Up high, the single light burned, white, invisibly

suspended in the darkness, not too remote, yet not too close—

an eye that watched, or the symbol for life burning in defiance of

darkness always held at bay.

A simple enough symbol, Gabriel thought. One could read just about

anything into it. A focus for meditation, an image of good versus

evil, a simple contrast between extremes …

Gabriel stood quiet in the darkness for some moments, listening,

though not only for footsteps. He thought of Lorand Kharls saying to

him, The Concord may have the power to kick you out of the

Service, but it has no power to absolve you of the oaths you swore.

Only the Power to which you swore them has that authority. Heard

anything from that quarter lately?

The question had no better answer now than then, though it made

Gabriel less angry than it had when he had first heard it. He was

still trying to work out exactly what Kharls had been getting at.

My oath. To that at least Gabriel had held firm, not only because

he had been surrounded by other people who took them equally

seriously, but because they were right.

To protect the Concord and the peace of her peoples against all

threats overt and covert, public and private—

Someone had to stand up and make worlds safe for people to lead

peaceful lives. It was hard, in a universe where forces as diverse as

pirates and big business moved at will, taking whatever they thought

they could get away with. Other forces also were moving that Gabriel

understood less, but which troubled him more. He thought of those

little ball bearing ships with pilots in them who might have been

human once, but were now dead and horribly changed. They hinted that

something out there was coming, something with unknown motivations …

motivations Gabriel doubted intended much good for anyone.

Undeath. Bondage. Pain.

He remembered the faces of the man and the sesheyan he had seen,

one after the delicate autopsy that Doctor Sota had performed, one

after the rather rough dissection he’d done himself on Grith. Both

faces had been twisted into shapes of anguish or rage at what had

been done to them. Whatever dark things were causing this fate to

fall upon innocent creatures, Gabriel thought they needed to be

stopped.

As for oaths—

The Marine Oath allowed you to supply your own authority, as long

as it was the one you considered Supreme, the Force to which you

would answer for things well done or ill done, promises made or

broken. Gabriel, like others of his intake group, had simply invoked

the Creator, though by no specific name. He was still not sure in

what, exactly, he believed. His father and mother had raised him in

the Humanity Reformation tradition, but from early on Gabriel had

rejected that, hearing doctrine in it that simply made no sense to

him, even when he was eleven. Gabriel had gone without protest to the

small local Reformation services with his parents until he was adult

enough not to have to go any more if he chose not to, then he went

into the marines and was relieved to find that no one cared what

religion he was.

It had always astonished Gabriel that there were people who

seriously believed, that Helm would suffer terrible tortures in some

afterlife simply because he had the misfortune of being born with

tailored genes.

As if that was his fault! If anyone should have done any burning,

it should have been his parents. Many of the more radical Hatire even

believed that mechalus like Doctor Sota would be punished for the

cybernetic parts of her makeup. The idea of such a punitive afterlife

made no sense to Gabriel.

Gabriel listened, heard nothing around him, and walked forward to

one side of the dome, looking around at this simple and elegant place

that the Orlamu had made. For them, this darkness of drivespace was

the Divine Unconscious in which all potential dwelt unseen, the

endless expanse over which the mind of God moved before the beginning

of things. Their founding Prophet said he had felt a Presence out

there in the darkness, listening attentively to the thoughts and

fears of the first human being to be subjected to starfall. He had,

however, brought back no message from that listening Presence.

Gabriel’s breath caught in his throat. There, off in the darkness

under the edge of the dome, a shadow paused, then retreated into

shadow.

Two can play at that game.

Gabriel melted back into the shadow under the overhanging pediment

as quickly as he could. His night vision had had a good while to

adjust. He could see the shape slipping sideways, toward him.

Gabriel grinned and silently slid back toward the wall, hiding

from the slight illumination of the single light up in the dome. He

waited.

Very softly, he heard the footsteps coming. He listened to them

even more attentively, for they were not the same footsteps that had

been following him before. Those had been lighter. This was a heavier

person, walking with a different rhythm.

Gabriel pressed against the wall and waited, watching the darkness

come. It was not a woman, but a man, nearly as tall as Gabriel. The

man held something slightly in front of his body in one hand. A gun?

A knife?

Always hope for a gun, his weapons instructor had said to

him. Guns are easier than knives to take away, and they make their

users careless and overconfident. If it’s a knife, here’s what to do—

Cautiously, the shadow came toward him.

Gabriel did not move until the man was three steps away, then he

took two of those steps, reached out for the thing in the man’s hand,

and clamped the hand tight around it. A sabot pistol!

Gabriel bent the man’s wrist inward and applied the pressure in

the spot he’d been taught. A strangled grunt came out of the man, and

the gun fell. Gabriel kicked it away, not wanting to kill this person

or be killed himself.

The man grappled with him, flailed at Gabriel’s throat, catching

it with his free hand. Gabriel wound his other arm through the man’s,

over and under, breaking the hold, then gripped the other arm, pulled

the man close, swung him around so that the light from that solitary

white beacon high above shone, however feebly, in his face.

Gabriel’s insides jumped as the other struggled.

It was Jacob Ricel.

But he’s dead!

Or supposed to be dead—

Suddenly everything reversed. It had been Ricel grappling Gabriel,

and Gabriel working to free himself. Now Ricel was pushing him

desperately away, and Gabriel was trying to hold him but couldn’t get

a firm grip. He did a leg sweep instead, catching Ricel behind one

knee. Ricel went down, and Gabriel threw himself down hard on top of

him— or onto where he should have been. Ricel rolled, scrambled

to his feet, and ran.

Gabriel, stunned by his impact against the stone floor, levered

himself up and went after Ricel as fast as he could. Light shone

blinding in his eyes as Ricel threw himself out the door.

No, Gabriel thought, gasping as he ran after Ricel. No, no!

He plunged through the door into the antechamber. Empty. Gabriel

glared at the lift, which the light above its door indicated was

heading back down toward Level 200. Having no other option, Gabriel

ran back to the lift he had come up in and slipped his ID chip into

the slot. The door opened.

He slipped in and rode it down, trying to get his breath back and

to make himself look less like he had just been in a fight. When the

door opened again, he slipped out of the lift in the direction away

from the turnstiles—

—right into the Orlamu guard.

“Uh, sorry,” Gabriel said, “wrong floor …”

The guard took Gabriel firmly, if gently, by the arm and escorted

him back to the turnstiles, putting him through one of the “outbound”

ones and watching while Gabriel made his way back to the public

access lift. All the guards were staring at him now. He wasn’t sure

he cared. Certainly no one would attack him at the moment.

There was no way to tell where Ricel had gone. Gabriel took the

lift back down to Deck 198, his mind full of questions. Regardless of

what Miss Blue Eyes had been up to, Ricel had to have been following

him for a good while as well. The man had to have some kind of

high-level clearance to have caught up with Gabriel where he did, but

there would be no finding him now.

Gabriel came out of the lift and looked out across the huge deck.

There was nothing but the buzzing, murmuring crowd going about its

business— no Jacob Ricel and no petite blue-eyed woman, either.

Helplessly, Gabriel began to laugh. Gone, both of them, lost in

this huge place and probably going to ground right this minute, God

only knew where. It was too ironic that it had been the darkness that

revealed Gabriel’s enemy to him, and the light that had snatched him

away.

He’s here, and it has something to do with me. Now all I have to

do is find out what.

Chapter Nine

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THE LIGHTHOUSE MADE starrise with as little fuss as the

starfall. A brief tremor pulsed through her huge fabric, and a sheet

of crimson light blanketed her bulk like a lowering dawn. Gabriel

watched it all on the Lighthouse Grid—saw the Concord

cruisers that were the station’s escort go arcing away, quartering

her immediate area to see who was in the neighborhood. The sight

reassured him, but he also wondered whether Ricel was hiding on one

of them under some other name. He had gone out after his first

encounter in faint hope of catching a glimpse of one of his shadows,

but there had been no sign of either of them.

For the time being there was nothing to do but make Sunshine ready for her castoff. The Lighthouse had asked the ships

riding with her not to depart simultaneously because of the increased

possibility of an accident. Not that many ships appeared to be

preparing to leave the Lighthouse here, and Gabriel could

understand why.

They had come out of drivespace no more than fifty million

kilometers from Mantebron’s single inhabited planet, High Mojave. It

was a cold, dry, desert world, isolated and nearly forgotten during

the years of the Long Silence. Even the corsairs who ranged all

through this distant part of space had passed High Mojave by, feeling

that there was nothing there worth stealing— and probably they

would have been right. With no air to breathe, barely enough water to

condense, it was a world like old Mars in the Solar Union. Unlike

Mars, it was not likely to survive more than another thirty or forty

thousand years. Mantebron was near the end of its life, and most of

the experts gave it thirty millennia at best before it would begin to

expand into a red giant.

The settlers, mostly Orions and their descendants, didn’t care.

When all of human history spanned not that much more than six

thousand years, thirty thousand seemed like enough time for their own

purposes. Even so, reminders of the deaths of other cultures were

scattered here and there across the planet.

Crumbling, ancient remains could be found in the heights or half

buried in the silt of rivers that had been dry beds for fifty

millennia. The Glassmakers, those old builders were called. No one

knew if they had been a species or group of species. Their remnants

were too old. Other Precursor species had been discovered here and

there throughout explored space, but of all the Precursors, the

Glassmakers were thought to be the oldest. As a result, almost

nothing was known of them but a few ancient buildings, spires and

minarets of great beauty and age, crystalline or milky, spearing up

from promontories by seas now dry. Among the spires and the stones

alike, the red-brown dust drifted and blew. It blew everywhere on

High Mojave, over empty cracked lakebeds and fields occupied by

tough, scrubby crops engineered not to mind little air and almost no

water. Little domed communities dotted the desert where tiny groups

of families held onto their independence and ignored the rest of the

world as best they could.

“No place I’d want to linger,” Gabriel said. He had seen

little more than the Lighthouse’s current orientation

information about the world, and that looked no more attractive than

the general information he had picked up while doing his diplomatic

work in the marines.

“No,” said Enda. “The Lighthouse will stay

for a couple of weeks, for it rarely comes out quite this far, so

close to the edge of Open Space, but this area is no longer the

backwater that it was. Since the Precursor ruins were found here,

suddenly the stellar nations are showing interest, claiming that they

want to bring the planet into the twenty-fifth century, improve

conditions—”

“They just want to dig,” Gabriel growled. “I bet

VoidCorp is at the head of the line.”

“Not just they,” said Enda. “The Solar Union is

interested, too, and the Hatire— partly, they say, for

religious reasons. Though as always, power and wealth will have a

great part in all of their reasoning.”

Their turn to undock came. Gabriel retracted Sunshine’s tube and checked all the seals. The spar’s clamps let go of Sunshine,

and Gabriel lifted her carefully away, getting well clear before

tumbling to look back. The warning for everyone not to depart

Lighthouse at once turned out to have an ironic edge, for

Gabriel saw only two other vessels leaving, both nondescript bulk

freighters. One made its way straight down toward the planet—

apparently a scheduled delivery of supplies. The other took itself a

safe distance from the Lighthouse and went immediately into

starfall in a blaze of yellow-white light.

“Not that anyone would be so foolish as to come after us

while we are still obviously watching for them, I am sure,” Enda

said.

“Well,” Gabriel said, “let’s take ourselves a

quarter million kilometers out to starfall. There’s this, at least:

anyone who bothers checking with the records on Lighthouse will see that we had a load of data for Coulomb. They may go there

instead.”

“Assuming they do not have starrise detection equipment,”

said Enda, “which will make our destination all too obvious.”

Gabriel shrugged. If they did, there was nothing he could do about

it.

They headed out past High Mojave above the plane of the ecliptic,

and Gabriel went over his figures for their next jump. The starrise

and starfall didn’t particularly concern him, but coming into a

system that had been explored only once or twice— and never

completely— produced unique problems.

There was the matter of the planet’s actual location. Settled

planets all had at least one satellite that acted as a beacon for

incoming ships. Such satellites indicated the planet’s distance from

its primary, its present position in its orbit, and a set of

equations and baseline figures used to calculate the world’s future

positions around the primary for the next year or so. This

information updated itself automatically and was uploaded to whatever

infotrader passed. The infotrader’s ship’s systems would then pass

the information into local planetary or system Grids and to whatever

drivesat it passed. The information would also automatically

disseminate itself to ships using those Grids, the coordinate info

storing itself in ship’s navigational computers until needed.

A newly explored planet did not acquire such a satellite unless

the party responsible for the exploration was a stellar nation, a

large company, or the Concord itself. Exploration contracts did not

necessarily include such a satellite, since explorers typically were

unwilling to pay for the equipment unless it was plain that the

expenditure would be recouped. A planet explored in January would not

be anywhere near that location in June. Unless the intrepid explorer

felt like spending another five days in drivespace and another

starfall and starrise’s worth of fuel and energy, he would have to

calculate where the planet would be at the time of his next starrise.

Gabriel had spent hours over Eldala’s calculations because he did

not trust Angela Valiz’s figures. He knew he might be mistaken to

judge someone by less than an hour’s conversation, but he was none

too sure of any observations she might have made about the new world,

including its distance from its sun. That was another thing—

“Do the ephemerides we have say whether the planet has

another name?” Gabriel said to Enda.

Sitting in the pilot’s cabin, Enda shook her head. “No. The

original survey called the star Eldala, so we may well call both star

and planet that for the moment. We will be in no danger of confusing

them when we get there.”

Gabriel sighed. “Well, I can’t do any more with these

calculations. I’ve adjusted for the possibility that Angela may have

misplaced the system’s ecliptic, which is typically hard to nail down

over a short period, but I don’t dare adjust too much … and as

for the rest of it, either she was right, or we’ll just have to do

another jump.”

Enda reached into the 3D display between the pilots’ seats and

touched the controls for the stardrive. It was fully charged and

began to cycle toward starfall on a two minute countdown.

“Last chance to fiddle with your figures,” Enda said.

Gabriel shook his head. His attention was directed back the way

they had come, toward Lighthouse. At this distance, it was

impossible to see except as a faint spark reflecting Mantebron’s

light. He thought briefly of the darkness of the Temple of the Divine

Unconscious, in which that single, seemingly distant light burned.

Faint as it was, it had shown him something he had desperately wanted

to see.

I’ll be back soon, Gabriel thought.

Yellow-orange light, like fire, washed over Sunshine as she

slipped into drivespace. If any other vessel followed them, her crew

was in no position see it:

*

The five days went by quickly. Gabriel spent more time with the

translator, working on his Formal Middle Fraal and avoiding anything

to do with the language-analysis side of the machine. He had reason

for keeping busy. After their first night in starfall, Gabriel was

intent on staying awake as long as possible. That way, when he had to

sleep, he might not dream.

The dream that first night had been like all the others: darkness,

light in the darkness, and the two opposed to one another …

fighting. Anger was added to the old fear, and a peculiar sense of

both apprehension and desire. Something was trying to happen.

Again Gabriel was accompanied, but he could not tell by what. He

didn’t think it was a person. There was a sense of movement, but not

through place. Everything came in abstracts, or at least everything

that Gabriel could remember after the fact. It was maddening to wake

up terrified, excited, exalted, and not know by what.

Enda let him alone to deal with it and did what she usually did—

cooked, read, studied the stored Grid records they were carrying, and

listened to music. As so often with her, it was choral music, ranging

from vast choirs to ensembles of just four or five voices. For

Gabriel, as he sat in his quarters with the translation module, the

music evoked one of the more basic characteristics of fraal life, its

essentially communal nature. He wondered more and more often what had

led Enda to shift to so relatively isolated a lifestyle.

Gabriel knew that some hundreds of years back there had been a

great division among fraal concerning the way they lived. Some of

them became the Builders, who chose to live among other species,

especially humans. Others, the Wanderers, took ever more exclusively

to life in the great spacegoing fraal cities, drawing away from the

other species, even shunning contact with them. Enda had been a

Wanderer for a while, he knew, but she had given it up. She had

hinted once or twice that she might have been “asked to leave,”

though sometimes Gabriel wasn’t sure whether she was joking with him.

Gabriel refused to press her. He spent his time dealing with the

Fraal preterite, which was as slippery and unpredictable as Enda had

warned him. The language also presented him with other interesting

difficulties, such as the fact that the Fraal language had two

different sets of cardinal and ordinal numbers, one for counting

objects and one for counting people.

He got up at one point and wandered into the sitting room to

stretch his legs and back, which were betraying a tendency lately to

cramp after these long sessions.

“Enda?”

“Shei?” she said, turning away from the Grid

display. It was showing a news precis from one of the Solar Union

channels, and the display was full of a great crowd of people

gathered together in some broad public plaza under a vividly blue

sky. As she turned away, the display froze and went silent, waiting

for her to turn back to it.

He sat down across from her and looked idly at the crowd. “When

you’re counting and you’re not sure whether the objects are sentient

or not, what do you do?”

“Use the numbers for sentients,” Enda said. “That

way if you later find that those whom you have been counting are

intelligent, no one has any reason to take offense; and if you find

that they are inanimate objects after all, they will not have

suffered from the extra courtesy.”

Gabriel nodded. Enda said, “This sudden access of academic

fervor is not entirely unmotivated, I think.”

He widened his eyes slightly. Enda simply looked at his pocket.

“Uh,” Gabriel said and reached into it with a resigned

look.

He dropped the luckstone onto the table. Though cool, it was

glowing softly. It had been glowing this morning when he awakened

from that dream— a subdued light, one which somehow had given

him the irrational idea that the stone was looking at him.

“This is where the dreams are coming from,” Gabriel

said. “I’m sure of it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know … but it’s true.” He turned the

stone over on the table, and over again.

“What will you do?” Enda asked.

“I may have to get rid of this,” Gabriel said, “but

not before I understand why it does what it does. First, though, I

think I might try putting it down in the hold at night to see what

that does.”

“I am sorry for your trouble with it,” Enda said.

Gabriel snorted. “It’s hardly your fault, but I hate it when

it makes me cranky. Sleeping, and the way I feel afterwards, isn’t

much of an improvement on not sleeping.”

“We have some somnifacients in the medical kit. You might try

one of those.”

Gabriel nodded. “Well, it’s only a few more days till we

starrise again. Then I should have more than enough to wear me out.”

Enda tilted her head “yes” and waved at the Grid

display. It went back to her wind-rippled green field. “I will

have something to keep me busy besides the news. Always too

depressing … and the farther we go out, the more depressing

becomes the image of what everyone is doing to the worlds.” She

lifted a hand and let it fall. “The worlds we have, we have done

ill by, for the most part. Yet still we go seeking new ones …

with what reassurance that matters will be any better in the future?”

Gabriel got up and put the stone in his pocket. “You’re

always telling me about my blood sugar. I think yours could use some

attention.”

“Blood starch,” Enda said, “more likely.”

“I’ll leave the etiology to Delde Sota,” Gabriel said.

“I’ll make something for us to eat, and then I want you to check

my Eldala figures once more.”

Chapter Ten

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IT TURNED OUT that his concerns had been unnecessary. They came

out without incident three days later through a starrise of unusually

deep violet. Bright shadowing on the edges of the viewshield told him

immediately that they were fairly close to the primary. It was off to

the left and “above,” a bright star, but hard to tell of

what size.

“Have you got a range on that?” Gabriel asked Enda, who

sat at the navigation and sensor array.

She was studying the readouts in the center display as they

settled themselves after the usual energy fluctuations of starrise.

“About a hundred-fifty-million kilometers. Wait a few minutes

and we will be able to get a rough estimate of the ecliptic from the

sunspot motion.”

“Not much to work with there,” Gabriel said, looking at

the enlarged image of Eldala in the 3D display. “It’s fairly

quiet.”

“That leaves one less thing to worry about,” Enda said.

“Let us see what we can find. Grawl said the planet had a lot of

snow. That suggests something with a largish albedo.”

“Depends on the structure of the continents,” Gabriel

said, “and the albedo might be low if it’s far out the star.”

He reached into the display and tickled down the controls for the

visible-light imagers, impairing the imagers for the moment from the

IRs. While in drivespace, Gabriel had instructed the computer to look

along the subset of coordinates that Angela’s figures had suggested.

If those figures were accurate, fine. If they were not, it meant at

least a day of hanging in space and taking pictures in all

directions, then another day of doing the same, after which the

computer would compare the two sets of images for any light that

seemed to be moving too fast. That would be the planet they were

looking for, or some other planet in the system that escaped notice

earlier, or an asteroid, or a comet wandering through, or—

“Now that is no star,” Enda said.

“What?” said Gabriel, looking up from the display.

“Look at that,” Enda said, and pointed with four fingers

together, in the fraal fashion.

Gabriel looked off to Sunshine’s right. Near the lower

corner of the viewshield he caught a gleam of blue-white, plainly a

disk, though too far away to make out any phase.

“You’re right,” Gabriel said. He waved away the imager

controls for the moment and brought up the system drive to tumble

Sunshine forward and to the right.

“That’s a planet’s worth of gravity out there,” Gabriel

said, “no question. Final measurements will have to wait, but it

looks like— maybe point eight five gee?”

“So it seems, about a hundred-fifty million kilometers out

from Eldala. That is nearly a perfect G0, by the way,” Enda

said, looking at the computer’s analysis of the star’s spectrography,

“but not a dwarf. The planet should be somewhat warmer than the

primary-size-to-distance ratio would indicate, if Angela’s figures,

or the previous survey’s, were correct.”

“Let’s go see.” Gabriel brought up the system drive up

to full.

It took them about an hour and a half to get there. They could

have done it more quickly, but Gabriel wanted more imaging to see

whether there were any other planets that both the original survey

and Angela’s quick exploration had missed. Nothing turned up.

The planet began to swell before them, and they saw that blinding

blue-white gleam resolve itself into discrete patches of blue and

white.

“They did not exaggerate about the south polar cap,”

Enda said as they settled into what would resolve itself into their

survey orbit. For the moment, they orbited pole to pole at a hundred

thousand kilometers, looking the planet over.

It was a handsome place, though Gabriel could see why Angela had

called it “just cold.” It looked it. The four or five major

landmasses scattered around the planet were striped and streaked with

mountainous terrain, most of it glinting white in Eldala’s light.

There was no telling how many oceans lay under that southern polar

cap, which easily covered a quarter of the hemisphere. The northern

one was in its summer, but the polar cap there was of a good size,

and all around it was a great barren area with none of the green of

the equatorial band— brown country, tundra perhaps, or

permafrost with the top layers of snow thawed off it. Any high ground

there had snow on it. Only in the equatorial areas did the snow

really vanish, though here and there, some lone high peak stood out

in the green as a single star of whiteness, stubborn against the

summer.

“Well,” Enda said, “Grawl was right. There

certainly is a planet. Now we will find out more about what kind of

planet it is.”

“And increase the value of our investment,” Gabriel

said. If they were going to sell the contract on, this part of the

work could double or triple its value. “Fortunately we can let

the ship do most of it.”

This part of the business of exploration was not anything like

what one saw on Verge Hunter, in which the crew of the Hunter stumbled over unknown planets in a way that suggested that God had

tripped and dropped a large box of them all over the floor of heaven.

Planets were scattered around, yes, but like grains of sand on a very

large, very bare floor … and very, very few grains. The

majority of stars within the confines of explored space were barren.

Most of the worlds that had been found around those stars were

either completely barren or uninhabitable by humans. Indeed, there

were some human religious essayists who had used this frustrating

distribution as proof that a Creator did indeed exist, and that He

was in a bad mood this aeon. Over the handful of readily

human-habitable worlds that did exist, every stellar nation

within a couple of hundred light-years scrabbled and fought. Every

other marginally useful planet was either littered with domes or

being terraformed, and there was too little comfortable room into

which humanity and sentient alien life could expand.

Gabriel and Enda had discussed their tactics for this earliest

part of their survey while still in drivespace.

“The usual ball-of-string orbit,” Gabriel said,

“starting polar and then precessing. We’ll let the computer and

the belly imagers get the visible spectrum imagery first—

that’ll take us a few hours for the whole planet. We don’t need fine

detail. Then duplicate the first set of orbits, and let the IR imager

save those pictures for comparison.”

“If we find nothing useful?” Enda said. “No

minerals, no Glassmaker cities?”

Gabriel snickered and said, “Then straight out of here and

off to Coulomb with our mail. With just the survey pictures, we’ll

still make at least twenty percent on the deal, then we’ll go back to

Lighthouse and do some shopping.”

“And look for Ricel again,” Enda said.

“If he’s still there,” said Gabriel. “But this

lead, at least, is hot … not like those five year old

pictures. If he’s gone, we’ll find out where. If he’s not…”

It was something to think about. Meanwhile, here they were, and

there was other business almost as interesting …

His own troubles pained him, but this was both figuratively and

literally far bigger than Gabriel— a new world, a place where

humans had stopped only briefly. As for other species, who knew who

might have been here, and when?

“Let’s start winding our ball of string,” Gabriel said,

and reached into the center display again to check the search

parameters one more time.

Enda watched the central display come alive with the graphic

showing the planet and their plotted course. The first line tracing

itself around the world began to change color from untouched green to

newly plotted and imaged red.

“I think I am going to get something to eat,” she said,

“and you should too … because I think, within a few

hours, we will be down there.” She got up and headed for the

galley.

Gabriel suddenly realized how hungry he was and went after her.

*

The computer finished its first set of orbits more quickly than

they had expected, and its soft chime called Gabriel and Enda from

the galley into the sitting room. There the main display was already

projecting a rough map of the planet.

Gabriel was surprised that there was much less water on the planet

than he had thought. The cloud cover was considerable, but it had

shifted while the first imaging run was happening, and the computer

had had time to do some extrapolation on what surface was not

presently showing. The IR confirmed that the sphere rotating in the

air before them had no such world-girdling ocean as Bluefall had,

nothing even as big as Earth’s. What seas appeared were more like

large interconnected inland oceans, with a few mini-seas or huge

lakes scattered among the main continents. What might have been

plate-sliding on the planet’s crust had allowed at least one of these

inland seas to extend a pair of winding straits northward and

southward of itself, some thousands of kilometers each, so that it

seemed to split the continent through which it ran in two.

“Probably going to get pretty good tides up and down those,”

Gabriel said, reaching into the holographic projection to stop its

rotation for a moment and increase the size of the image.

“More to the point,” Enda said, “look at that spot

there—” She indicated a point where the northward-reaching

strait narrowed down particularly tightly. “It will take another

pass before the computer overlays detailed contours on the image, but

if I read the terrain there correctly, that is a downhill plunge— the sea from which the strait runs is higher than the

straits. Tides there may be farther down, but at that spot there

should be a waterfall like nothing anyone has ever seen! A kilometer

high, it might be: perhaps more. I want to take a closer look.”

“You do love your landcapes,” Gabriel said and smiled.

“Why would I not,” Enda said, giving him a look, “after

so many years spent between the worlds and so rarely on them? Permit

me this slight foible after two centuries.”

“I wasn’t arguing. Let’s take her in closer and do our next

imaging run “

That took rather longer, several hours. By the end of that run,

the spherical image that presented itself to Gabriel and Enda in the

sitting room display had much more detail. The inside edges of the

inland seas were massively crevassed with fjords, producing

spectacular cliffs where mountain ranges ran straight into the seas.

Elsewhere, in the center of the main continent, new mountain ranges

fought with old ones for dominance. There seemed to be a lot of

tectonic activity in the middle of the continent, the business of

mountain-building going on actively.

“It is a young planet, I would guess,” Enda said, “and

a good-sized one. Just a shade smaller than Bluefall. Not too long a

day, just over twenty-eight hours. The gravity is lighter.”

“Not so even, though,” Gabriel said. “I’ve been

feeling the ship wiggle every now and then. A gravitational anomaly

or two?”

“Many planets have such, but Gabriel, I think we should run

the temperature assay again. Our results look nothing like those from

the first survey.”

Gabriel agreed. “The average does look more like five C,

doesn’t it? While a lot of the winter hemisphere is snow-covered

right now, it’s not glaciated. That early survey’s IR array must have

been malfunctioning with a vengeance.”

Enda stopped the display and indicated the narrowing strait that

she had pointed out earlier. Here, with preliminary contours laid

over the imaging by the computer, it became clear how very high

indeed was that drop from the “inland sea” level to the

northern strait.

“I underestimated. I did not believe it could be as much as

three kilometers, but there it is! We must go there. That is

certainly one of the great wonders of the worlds.”

“Take your imager,” Gabriel said, “but keep the

pictures to yourself. You don’t want this system filling up with

tourists.”

Enda laughed and headed toward her cabin. “At this distance

from the Stellar Ring? It seems unlikely.” There was the sound

of opening drawers as Enda looked for something. “The Verge is

changing. Who knows who might be here in twenty years? Especially if

we are right about the temperatures …”

Gabriel poked the hologram into a slow spin again and considered

that. People were building domes all over real estate much less

promising than this. If the temperature had been mis-assessed last

time, and it did get warm enough here for crops to grow, then

there would be stellar nations arguing over this world in very short

order. The nations that were more of a power in the Verge, such as

the Regency, would do what they could to stymie the outsiders. In any

quarrel involving both Verge powers and the nations that had been on

the far side of the Long Silence, the Vergers routinely banded

together.

How long will it last? Will anyone who lives in this part of space

get a chance to live here and make some use of whatever the planet

has to offer, whatever that might be?

For a world of this size, its gravity was light enough to suggest

that it might be low on metallic elements, and the temperature issue

was still bothering Gabriel.

From down the hallway, Enda said, “Did you look at the

atmospheric analysis?”

Gabriel reached into the hologram and touched the telltale

hovering above the globe. It dropped down a list of constituents.

“We will have to check that when we’re actually in

atmosphere, of course,” Enda said, “but it looks extremely

welcoming.”

Gabriel nodded. Seventy percent nitrogen, nearly two percent CO2,

eighteen percent oxygen, a little richer than humans liked it, but

much to a fraal’s liking.

“At least there’s likely to be less trouble with altitude

sickness,” Gabriel said, “for me, anyway.”

“Angela did not drop dead of breathing it, nor did she

mention any other problems.”

The notes that Angela had sold them along with the rest of the

exploration contract package were less than illuminating in many

places. “Cold” was the remark that summed up one entire

afternoon. The next day was not much better: “Gathered mineral

samples. Unremarkable.” Gabriel found it remarkable that someone

could visit a planet where humans had been only once before, if that,

and find nothing to say but “unremarkable.”

“I heard that,” Enda said as she came into the sitting

room again. She was wearing one of her coveralls now, the one with

the adaptive insulation, and she had braided her long ponytail and

coiled it around her head, so as not to interfere with the coverall’s

hood.

“Heard what?”

“You thinking with the silencer off,” Enda said. She

gave him a partly humorous look. “Sometimes you are very loud.

You should make a few allowances for her, Gabriel. She admitted

readily enough that exploration was not what she had imagined, and

she got out of it as quickly as she could.”

“Well, I suppose …” Gabriel said. “Do you

want to take us down? I’ll go change.”

“Do that. I will wait for you, though. If the ride becomes

bumpy for some reason, you would not want to be walking around.”

Chapter Eleven

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GABRIEL WENT OFF to his cabin and changed into a coverall more

like Enda’s. He slipped a few useful items into the pockets: a knife

with both steel and one molecule blades, a small sidearm that he

holstered at his right hip, and a little canister that held a digital

mensurator. Finally, he looked over at the shelf near his bed, There

was the luckstone.

Why not? he thought, and put it in his pocket. So far, I’ve come

back every time I’ve been carrying it. So what if it burns the

occasional hole in the deck? We all have our bad days.

When he got up into the pilots’ cabin and strapped himself in,

Enda had the contoured globe rotating in the central display. Their

course down to the planet was marked.

“I am not going to hurry, since we will be able to use the

time for more imaging, and there are a few other features that I

would like to look at more closely later.”

“You’re the pilot,” Gabriel said. “I’m just going

to sit here and admire the view.”

Enda brought up the system drive and used it to give them their

initial nudge of acceleration, but Gabriel could see that she was

mostly letting the planet’s own gravity do the work. He had teased

her about this style of piloting once or twice in the past, asking

why she didn’t just use the drivers.

“Ah,” she had said, “there speaks someone who has

had a large military organization paying for his fuel. When you live

a Wanderer’s life as long as I have, Gabriel, you find ways to

conserve. When the universe offers you energy for free, take it!

Where is energy more free than in a planet’s lovely gravity well

beneath you? You will want the fuel for getting up out of it

afterwards, believe me.”

Gabriel watched Enda drop them gracefully toward the evergrowing

blue curve of the planet. There was the usual brief sizzle and

crackle of ionization as Sunshine’s hull bit into the

outermost layers of atmosphere; a brief flicker of blue light danced

over the viewshield. After that, the ship began to shudder a little

as she dropped toward the highest-altitude clouds.

“The high altitude winds are more active than I would have

expected,” Enda commented.

The ship bounced and rattled, and in the one of the cabins,

Gabriel heard something crash to the floor. “Uh-oh,”

he said.

“No, I think that was in my cabin,” Enda said. “It

sounded like my flowerpot.”

“Oh, no! After all that watering …”

“I would not worry too much about it,” Enda said. “An

Ondothwait plant is fairly tough even after it leafs out, and this

one has a while to go yet.”

Sunshine steadied as she fell through another deep bank of

cloud and came out. Beneath them on all sides spread a widening view

of blue air and white mountains with the green of the equatorial belt

presently off to their left as they descended.

“Our landing spot is about halfway around the planet now,”

Enda said. “I want to see if the temperature fluctuates much as

we come in closer.”

Gabriel watched the indicator linked to the IR imagers. “Still

looks pretty close to five as an average. Some hot spots over by the

equator. Do you want to stay with those?”

“No, I am angling north. I want another look at the brown

areas near the north pole. We will come down in the equatorial band,

though.”

“Your waterfall?”

“It is on the fringes, but the area looked free of snow. It’s

just as well. Except for those huge polar tundras, this place is

nearly as mountainous as Rivendale.”

The curvature of the planet was lost now, and they arrowed across

a vista of mountains covered with more and more snow as they angled

northward.

Gabriel peered down at one deep lake nestled among some of those

mountains, and said, “There’s something down there in the middle

of that one, might be a little island.”

“It would not surprise me if those lakes are simply drowned

valleys,” Enda said. “I wonder about the rainfall patterns,

though, since the water is running out of the inland sea to other

lakes.” She tilted Sunshine’s nose down a little more

sharply. “Either there are downpours here in the wet season that

are something to see, or there is a great deal of snowfall in the

winter with astonishing amounts of melt in the summer.”

“Either way, the temperature assay from that earlier survey

is looking wronger all the time …”

“Wronger?” Enda threw him an amused look. “Gabriel,

you are speaking strangely of late.”

“Hesaite as opposed to hesai,” said

Gabriel. The -te suffix was the commonest of the three fraal

intensifiers and was hung off the end of words and then repeated as

often as necessary to suggest how much more intense the word in

question was becoming.

“Oh ” She chuckled. “You are at that magic early

time when the two languages begin to get confused with one another. I

must speak more Fraal to you and see how confused we can get you.”

“Thanks so much,” Gabriel muttered.

Sunshine shuddered again as they dove closer to the planet,

over the vast waste of northern tundra. This terrain was hugely

crevassed as well, and as they passed one side of the polar cap at

about thirty thousand meters, they could see the long fingers of

glaciers running down into the brown land on all sides, like twisted,

ever-narrowing white ribbons.

“Unusual structures,” Enda said. “Have you ever

seen anything like that?”

“Not recently.”

The polar cap filled the entire landscape to the right of Sunshine as they descended. All the surface of the polar cap was tortuously

wrinkled and cracked. Some of the cracks were huge enough to drop a

Concord cruiser into.

“This is not a quiet planet,” Gabriel said as Sunshine slipped around toward sunset and into night. “A lot of action

down there.”

“Yes. I wonder if some of the error in that first survey’s

readings might have been because there is more geothermic input to

the local ecosystem than there was before?” She made a couple of

adjustments to the controls.

Gabriel shrugged as they came around the side of the polar cap.

Still dropping altitude, they headed southward again, making their

way once more toward day. Being summer in this hemisphere, night did

not extend very far across it.

“When we take these figures back to the CSS, we’ll see what

they have to say. Look at that!”

They were angling back toward the equatorial region. Even at this

height, twenty thousand meters and dropping, Gabriel could see a

single peak that stood above all the others in its range.

Astonishingly pre-eminent, the mountain glinted with snow for about

three-quarters of its height.

“That has to be ten thousand meters high.”

Enda peered at the contour map, which had now flattened itself out

in their display to match their course. “I would suspect more

like twelve. Yes, it is extraordinary. We must be careful with our

imaging. This place will become a haven for climbers if we are not

careful.”

“Are you happy with your landing spot?” Gabriel asked as

they dropped lower still. The snow underneath them was giving way to

greenery, except on the highest peaks, but he could see very little

flat terrain anywhere.

“We will do well enough,” Enda said. “I will put us

down not too from that waterfall. See. You can make it out now on the

horizon.”

It came up faster than Gabriel expected, even though Enda was

decelerating fairly hard. In the swiftly brightening twilight, a

small ring of peaks, all low enough not to have any snow, were

visible ahead. Just past them was a pair or a pair and a half of

peaks— two large ones, one small, mostly covered with greenery—

and from between them, half veiled in mist, a great rush and pour of

greenish-white water was streaming down. It was so huge that it did

not seem to move at all, but Gabriel only had to look at it to

imagine the thunder of it. The bottom of the fall was one great

cloud, and everything near it was invisible.

“Off in the smaller mountain-circle to the right of that,”

Enda said, “is a plateau. It showed as fairly flat in the second

set of images. I would say it must be at least five kilometers wide.”

Within a few minutes, they were over it. The imagery had been

correct in showing it as “fairly flat” from a hundred

thousand meters. Here it revealed itself as a foothill area for the

mountains. Many small hills jostled together like an uneven heap of

cobblestones that had been thinly sown with earth and planted over.

“Let us see now,” said Enda, bringing up the system

drive and slowing Sunshine nearly to a hover, so that they

cruised forward at no more than a few meters per second.

The ground was covered with low scrub and some kind of

blue-greenish creeping plant, but there were a few barren patches

scattered about. Enda made her way toward one of them that was about

twice Sunshine’s length and lay near the edge of the plateau

fairly close to the waterfall. The barren patch itself was surrounded

by several low hills, and Enda slipped very carefully between the two

highest of them and set Sunshine down on the bare ground.

Enda put the system drive on standby, and the ship went quiet. For

a moment they both sat there and looked out the viewshield, where the

deep dark blue of early morning was slowly beginning to lift.

“What would you say the latitude is here?” Gabriel

asked.

Enda studied the chart showing in the display between them.

“Around thirty degrees north—”

“We don’t have a lot of morning twilight left. Do you want to

wait?”

“Oh, you can stay if you like,” Enda said, already

undoing her straps. Gabriel grinned at her and followed suit. “I

will leave the computer running so that it can do a more detailed

analysis on the last round of images. Once we get back, we can decide

what to investigate next.”

Shortly they were both armed and in the lift. Gabriel, having

noted from the main display that it was only five degrees C out

there, paused a moment to add a neutralizer coat over his coverall.

At the bottom of its run, the lift door slipped silently aside and

they looked out. The overall impression was of the kind of deep

blue-green associated with being underwater, partly due to the color

of the sky and the rising light, partly due to the color of a lot of

the local flora. The ground was pale, scattered with small

nondescript pebbles.

Gabriel felt slightly unsteady, but tremendously excited. He put

his head back and drew a very deep breath. “Smell how clean that

is.”

“It is certainly not like ship’s air,” Enda said. “Our

scrubbers do well enough, but this freshness reminds you of how air

is supposed to smell.” She looked around. “The

contract is yours. Do you want to step out first?”

“You just want whatever’s hiding in the bushes to bite me

before it bites you.” He drew his pistol, checked that it was

ready, and stepped out past Enda to look around.

The silence was complete except for one thing: the continuous roar

of the waterfall, which lay not far off to Sunshine’s left

past the little hills that hemmed them in. Through the ground Gabriel

could feel a slight tremor, the physical equivalent of white noise,

the source of that “unsteady” feeling. Carefully Gabriel

looked around for any sign of motion, listening as best he could for

any other sound. There was none.

“Come on,” he said. Gabriel led the way around the front

of Sunshine and paused for a moment to check the other side.

He saw nothing, and they began walking in the direction of the falls.

As they got off the barren spot, the feel of the ground became

surprisingly springy. The ground cover was some kind of creeping

succulent, blue-green like much else here, giving off a slight spicy

fragrance when they stepped on it. Footsteps went silent on this

natural carpeting, and the effect made Gabriel listen harder, but the

sound of the falls drowned everything out. He paused for a moment,

looking over his shoulder to make sure Enda was all right. She was

just behind him, ghost-pale in this light, her eyes oddly colorless

in this landscape where nearly everything seemed to match them.

Gabriel turned toward the sound again and made his way up between the

two nearest hills.

As he and Enda came up into the pass between the hills, the full

force of the sound hit them, and they were face to face with the

waterfall.

Gabriel looked up, and up, and up, and finally staggered backwards

and had to brace himself so that he could continue looking up. It was

one thing to stand on a ledge and look into deep valleys and across

high cliffs a kilometer or more high. It was another to stand by such

a cliff, even halfway up it, and see that there was still another

kilometer or two to go.

There was no seeing the top of the waterfall. Mist veiled

everything there. Vast sheets and drifts of water came down from high

above like the rippling curtains of some pallid aurora. They

tattered, shifted, and dissolved into a strange silvery fog— a

fog with weight, pouring down the side of the mountain past them

until it boiled and bubbled up again, slow as cloud. The thunder and

roar of the fall filled land as tons and tons of water hammered onto

the half-invisible stones. Gabriel could not hear himself breathing,

could not hear his own heartbeat. He could hear himself think, but

the sound of his mind running in its usual narrow channels suddenly

seemed small and petty when set against this vast, unconcerned,

glorious roar.

Enda brushed past him to a point where the ground sloped downward

before falling away completely. The mist curled up beyond it. If

anything, the view of the waterfall was even more spectacular from

here, despite the uncertainty of twilight. Its waters plunged down

into the valley and roared away northward among more cliffs and

mountains. One of them, the tall one that they had seen earlier,

shone in the east like a star. It was the ten thousand meter peak,

which caught the rising sun and burned with its light as brightly as

a planet against the indigo sky.

Gabriel felt minuscule, insignificant, ephemeral, yet he smiled.

If anything should last, he thought as he turned his face up to the

wet air and felt the infinitesimal touch of the fog upon it, let them

be things like this. What does it matter if I exist, if I live or

die, as long as things like this can be?

He stood like that for a few moments more, then turned and walked

out of the mist to find Enda standing not far away and looking at him

a little strangely.

“Did I have the silencer off again?” he said, more

loudly than he usually would have.

She smiled. “Not as such, though under the circumstance, no

one could misunderstand. If anything, you were rather more quiet than

usual.”

Gabriel looked up at the falls again. “Can you blame me?”

She bowed her head “no,” looking around her again. “I

think I might go back and have something to eat. What about you?”

He looked over his shoulder at the waterfall. “I don’t

suppose it’ll go anywhere. Why not?”

Together they walked back to Sunshine. Very reassuring she

looked, sitting there on the bare ground, embraced by the hills, a

little light showing through her viewshield, warm against the lifting

twilight. They did a walk-around to make sure that she had come

through the landing unhurt then went back up in the lift.

“Unquestionably this is a beautiful place,” Enda said,

“but mere physical attractiveness is going to make little

difference if it is too cold to colonize. Despite preliminary

indications, we must still carefully check that. We can take some

time over the IR analysis with the computer to see what we can

deduce.”

Gabriel nodded and went off to his cabin to dump his jacket.

“What’s beeping?” he asked Enda as he went. The sitting

room display was making a plaintive noise that he couldn’t remember

having heard before.

Enda said something that Gabriel couldn’t make out.

“What?” Gabriel said, making his way back up toward the

sitting room.

“I said, ‘Newhaihe ye’soithalensh,’ ” Enda

said. She looked pale, even for a fraal.

Gabriel started taking the phrase apart. ” ‘In the name

of— ‘ “

As he came into the sitting room he saw the display showing its

spherical map of the planet, with a number of small bright points

highlighted on it, and the single word, quite large, at the bottom of

the image.

Positive result.

He froze. “Positive for what?”

“Heat above background at short range,” said Enda,

reading from the small print in the display, “and in particular,

heat in diffusion with concentrations typical of inhabited

buildings.”

“What?”

Gabriel found that he was actually shaking as he stood there,

looking around the corner of the sitting room. He had to take hold of

the doorsill to brace himself. Enda reached into the display to bring

up the visual and IR images, one after another, starting with the

beginning of their final descent into atmosphere and continuing at

five second intervals. For a good while the ship was too high for the

IR data to be trusted, and much later there came a different point of

diminishing returns, where IR readings became increasingly less

reliable because exothermic heat from the ship’s hull interfered with

them. The overlaid images from an altitude of a thousand meters down

to a hundred meters were quite clear. In a number of them they could

see little regular splotches, glowing significantly warmer than

background with stored heat. They were buildings.

“Houses,” Gabriel said. “Oh, my God.” He went

into the sitting room and threw himself into a chair.

There are people here. A new alien species … I think. Oh,

my God—

Enda adjusted the display to its largest size and recycled the

images to look through them again. Starting with the shots taken from

ten thousand meters, the IR scanner showed a couple of hot spots that

were associated with high mountain peaks.

“Volcanic,” Enda said, “or formerly volcanic. That

one with the flattish top, that might be a plug, but these …”

She indicated other spots on the planet that became more obvious over

the long curve of their descent. Various small points of heat had

become extremely bright to the IR scanners. Just before landing, six

kilometers away under their approach path, were six or eight of these

close association.

Gabriel could only sit there and shake his head. “How could

Angela have missed this?”

“By being in the wrong place? They did not conduct an imaging

survey, nor did they have IR scanners, and they did not come to this

place.” She bowed her head in the fraal gesture of negation,

twice, like a human shaking his head in disbelief. When she looked up

again, she was close to laughter.

“Gabriel, there have been stranger accidents than this. Do

you know how close the first human surveyors of Mars came to finding

our base there, a hundred years before we were prepared to reveal

ourselves? Do you know how near a thing it was that the OSS

Brightfall actually found the weren homeworld, and by

what complete mere accident it happened?” She covered her face

with her hands for a moment. “If the universe will play such

jokes on us, we should at least be grateful that it has a sense of

humor.”

“If you say so,” Gabriel said, “but now what

do we do?”

Enda too sat down, looking at the display, which she had left

frozen on one image, that circle of little houses some kilometers

away.

“I wonder,” she said, “if perhaps we should leave.”

Gabriel looked at her.

“We are not well equipped for this kind of problem,”

Enda said, “and our chances of doing something that could make a

great deal of trouble for those who come after us are considerable.”

“Just like that?” Gabriel said. “You just want to

run off?”

“Not run precisely,” Enda said, “but there are

aspects—”

“Enda,” Gabriel said, “you’re fraal. Your

people were the first ones to seek humans out and explain yourselves

to us. We’ve had a good long time together, your people and mine. A

lot of history wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t begun exploring

the galaxy together. Stardrive wouldn’t have—”

“Some history,” Enda said, “would be worth avoiding, if you ask me. Both our species have made our share of

mistakes.”

“There’s another problem,” said Gabriel. “Remember

Rov telling us how some people went into this part of space and

didn’t come back?”

“Angela had no problems,” Enda said.

“Angela wasn’t here very long,” Gabriel said. “I

wonder if someone came out this way and ‘didn’t come back’ because of

something they found here? Is that why we don’t have any later

reports about this planet?”

Now it was Enda’s turn to look thoughtful. “I doubt we are

likely to find anything that would shed much light on that.”

Gabriel could see the look on her face slowly shifting. “I

think we should sit still, at least until we have a chance to do some

more analysis on these,” he said. “We can go after

breakfast, if you want, but if you think we should sell the contract

at this point, there’s no question that we would make back everything

we spent on it and a lot more. Somebody lives here.”

“I confess I would be curious to see who,” Enda said.

Gabriel kept quiet while Enda turned to look at the little warm

shapes glowing in the image.

“Very well,” she said. “Let us have breakfast, by

all means, and spend some more time with these pictures. Then …”

She let out a long breath. “Let us just hope that our drive was

no louder than the background noise from the waterfall. I would hate

to have frightened the neighbors in the middle of the night. The

results could be unfortunate.”

She got up and headed back to the galley. Gabriel, for his own

part, got up to make sure that the lower access was sealed and

secured, and that the lift was up and locked. He turned to the

display that showed that little half-circle of houses nestled in yet

another small group of hills … and he swallowed hard.

Breakfast did not last long. They were too concerned about the

images and spent a lot of time going over what they had.

The first thing they agreed on was that they needed another

low-level survey, perhaps from about a thousand meters, and cover the

whole equatorial zone. That was the best height for the IR and

visual-light imagers to cover the maximum area at a resolution that

would accurately pick up low-level heat emissions. Much higher than

that, there was a good chance of missing something important. For his

own part, Gabriel was becoming a little less annoyed than he had been

at Angela Valiz, for as he studied their own initial approach, he

appreciated Enda’s point about the amount of sheer luck involved in

finding those buildings.

There was no way that a survey even from low planetary orbit would

have picked up any of this. For a civilization’s works to be visible

from space required either a species that possessed a high level of

technology, huge built-up city areas, and a desire to turn the lights

on at night, or a species that routinely built buildings bigger than

twenty kilometers on a side. There were a good number of the first,

but none of the second. Everything else was likely to go unnoticed.

Even a low survey might miss very obvious signs, Gabriel thought

as he reached into the display and looked one more time at that

nearest, clearest image, the little half-circle of houses. He backed

up to examine several images before it. Buildings those might be, but

there were no walls, no fences, no cultivated fields, no roads or

visible paths. Houses could be mistaken for many other things that,

in a landscape with no straight lines, could have looked like rocks.

Who knows how many houses Angela passed over on her own initial

landing? Gabriel frowned, for again, Angela’s notes gave no sense of

exactly where she had been.

Enda was busy with the display’s keypad, which she had briefly

subdivided and was now programming with the path for their secondary

survey.

“I hope Angela didn’t come anywhere near here,” Gabriel

said, glancing over at her work. “Otherwise, who knows how the

locals might react to us?”

“Assuming they noticed,” Enda said as she examined the

planet’s surface via a magnified holographic image. It was now

girdled with a graceful braid of glowing sine curves, the course for

the secondary survey. “Well, we must take our chances. How does

this look to you?”

Gabriel leaned over to have a better look at it. “Seems

optimum.”

“Gabriel, there are other structures about which I have some

doubts.” She showed him an earlier image, taken from greater

altitude, of a site further into the mountains.

Gabriel peered at it. It was triangular and there were odd

extrusions in the middle. “How high were we when that was

taken?”

“Five thousand meters.”

Gabriel shook his head. “That’s pretty big, then. It doesn’t

look like anything else we’ve seen “

“It looks rather like this,” said Enda, and shifted

images again. This time it was one taken from a lower altitude, and

the size was proportionately bigger, though the shape was skewed.

“The angle,” Gabriel said.

“Maybe, but the heat profile is different— much cooler

than the other smaller buildings we’ve seen, whatever purpose they

have been made for. These triangular structures are all at high

altitudes, compared with everything else we have seen so far …

and in spots which would be very difficult for even very motivated

construction engineers to manage.”

“You’re thinking … what? That these might be artifacts

from some other culture?”

“An older one possibly,” Enda said. “We do not have

nearly enough data for a judgment.”

“Well,” Gabriel said, “let’s get up there and see

what we can get.” He turned down toward his cabin. “One

thing first— the sun’s going to be coming up shortly, and I

want at least one picture of that waterfall to take with me.”

Enda gave him an amused look as he came back down the hall with

his pocket imager.

“What a tourist.”

“Excuse me, but I’ve spent most of my career being carted

around the galaxy fighting and shooting and never being allowed to do

tourist things,” Gabriel said with a smile. He shrugged into his

neutralizer coat. It was still cool enough out there for him to want

a little extra protection. He touched the lift controls and said,

“Permit me this slight foible in my two-and-a-halfth decade.”

“Two-and-a-halfth,” Enda said admiringly. “Fraal

ordinals will ruin you yet, Gabriel.”

“Maybe they will. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Oh, wait for me,” Enda said, saving her work at the

sitting room display and sending it on to the ship’s computers. “I

would not mind one more look myself.”

The lift came, and they went down in it together, Enda having

taken a moment to fetch her jacket. “It is not so much the

cold,” she said, “as the damp. That mist drifts about so.”

Dawn was coming up as they came to the crest between the two

hills.

“Oh, look at that,” Gabriel said and lifted the imager,

studying the guide screen for the best image. Light from the sun, now

peering past the mountains in the distance, was rainbowing golden

through the mist and falling water. “Let’s go back down where we

were standing before … the contrast’s better down there.”

They went down to nearly the edge of the precipice, and Gabriel

stood and took several images, waiting for another breeze to come and

push the water aside a little, hoping for the glint of golden

sunlight on those rocks, but the breeze did not cooperate.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “I just worry that the

imager won’t catch the way this really is. It’s so huge.”

Enda tilted her head to one side. “I doubt it will do it

justice, but images like these serve best as reminders. We will be

out in space somewhere, and you will pull out the image and remember

not how this looked, but how it felt.”

“You’re probably right,” Gabriel said, smiling to

himself as he turned the imager over and saw that he had nearly

filled its short-term memory. “Come on. Let’s get back to the

ship.”

They turned and started to walk up … and Gabriel froze.

Up at the top of the hill, silhouetted against the sky, standing

and watching them carefully, was a short person with a gun.

Chapter Twelve

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GABRIELS FIRST GLANCE gave him the idea that the person was

wearing a dark red hooded coverall with some kind of pale mask. The

second glance told him that this was a bipedal person about a meter

and a half tall, covered with fur. The person was wearing a longish

embroidered vest, but Gabriel found it hard to concentrate on that at

the moment. The half-meter-long, fluffy, red and white striped tail

was an attention-getter, and so was the rifle.

“Why do those guns look familiar?” Enda said.

“They resemble the black powder guns the weren use,”

Gabriel said. “They fire slugs, or something more accurate. In

any case, I’d try to avoid being part of a test.”

Although his neutralizer coat offered protection against energy

weapons, he was unsure of its efficacy against bullets. There was a

token composite layer that was supposed to stop a knife, but the

velocities of bullets and knives were somewhat different.

The furred person slowly came down the hill, never taking its eyes

off them. The “pale mask” turned out to be a cream-furred

face with a short muzzle, the nose at the end of it dark red. Small,

round ears pointed toward them as he paused, studying them carefully.

The creature barked at them. Though Gabriel did not doubt that it

was language, it sounded like the barking sounds he had heard some

kinds of small mammals make.

Gabriel, watching the expert and assured way in which this

creature was handling his weapon, found himself wondering whether

this creature might have its mind on food.

Are we game? Are we about to be asked to dinner in a way we won’t

like?

“Now what?” Enda said softly.

“I don’t know about you,” Gabriel said, “but I

think a smart thing to do would be to sit down and be small.” He

did just that, sitting down on the springy ground and ducking his

head while still keeping an eye on the alien watching them.

Enda stood looking at it for a moment, then sat down next to

Gabriel and closely copied his pose.

The furred person watched them for about five minutes. Gabriel sat

still. He hoped the alien did not see how convenient the seated

position had made Gabriel’s hands to his pistol, or how well it would

hide a motion toward it if he felt he needed to make one. All in all,

this situation had its embarrassing side for a former marine. Ready

To Fight was the old motto. Certainly Gabriel always had been ready, in that far-off world where enemies were clearly defined.

Now, when he was not sure whether there was any reason to fight, he

was still ready, but it was much lonelier work.

The creature stood watching them, his gun ready, then suddenly he

turned.

“Is he about to leave?” Gabriel said.

The creature lifted one of its hands and waved.

“Do you hear that?” Enda whispered.

Gabriel lifted his head a little. Footsteps: a lot of them, soft

but audible even on the succulent ground cover. The sound was coming

up the other side of the hill.

Suddenly there were about thirty of the red-furred people up

there, and every one of them had guns. They looked down at Gabriel

and Enda, and a soft chorus of barking went up on the morning air.

Gabriel did not move as the furred people started to come down the

hill toward them. He was shaking, and there was no use in trying to

control it, but he was ready.

“I don’t want to hurt them,” he said softly to Enda,

“and we don’t know that they want to hurt us either.”

“I agree completely,” she said, “but I also do not

believe I am scheduled to die today.” He could see her, very

carefully, thumbing off the safety on her own pistol.

He had already clicked the safety off his own weapon. Now they sat

there and waited. The trembling passed, but Gabriel found himself

experiencing the unnatural awareness that he had felt in battlefield

situations before, the sudden shocking clarity of his surroundings,

the sharp taste of breath at the back of the nose, and the oddly

abstract moments during which he studied the approaching enemy

entirely with an eye to choosing targets.

It took barely a second for he and Enda to be surrounded by a wall

of russet-red fur, variously colored and patterned fabric, tooled

leather, and guns, many guns. Gabriel found himself admiring one of

the weapons for the beauty of the carving on its stock, a pattern of

leaves and what he assumed were flowers. He also noticed that the

reddish fur ran down on the backs of the creatures’ hands, but not to

the fingers or palms. They were seven-fingered hands with two thumbs

each, very delicate and obviously well suited for skilled work.

Slowly Gabriel lifted his head to look up into the eyes of the

creature who had first stood at the crest of the hill. The face was

an intelligent one, the eyes lively— but with what emotion, if

any, there was no way to tell.

“Good morning,” Gabriel said.

There was silence around them. The scout leaned down to Gabriel

and spoke, a brief string of soft barks and growls.

“I really wish I could understand you,” Gabriel said,

“but I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re saying.”

He glanced around at some of the other faces. There was a lot of

variation among them— the basic pattern seemed to be short,

white fur that blended into a longer, slightly shaggier red pelt on

the head. However, some of the faces peering at them had orange or

white stripes on the muzzles where eyebrows would have been on a

human, or down on either side of the small round ears. The mobility

of the faces seemed limited, though here and there a lip wrinkled up,

showing extremely sharp white teeth.

The moment stretched out. Finally, the scout made an upward

gesture with one hand, looked at Gabriel, and repeated it.

“I think we’re supposed to go with them,” Gabriel said.

“I am more than willing,” said Enda. “This ground

is rather wet.”

Carefully they both stood up. The creatures watched them intently

as they did this, and Gabriel noticed that most of the attention

seemed to be on their hands as they rose.

“They’re watching to see if we make a move toward the

weapons,” Gabriel said.

“I have no desire to use mine at the moment,” Enda said.

“Do you see the need?”

“No.”

“Let us go with them, then.”

A few of the furred people started up the hill. The scout gestured

after them, and Gabriel followed, Enda walking beside him and a

little behind. As they came to the top of the hill, Gabriel looked

down and saw that Sunshine was surrounded by ten more of the

aliens, some facing inward toward the ship, some outward.

“You do not think they have damaged her?” Enda asked.

“I can’t see any evidence of it. She’s locked, anyway. They

can’t get in.”

Their escort walked them past Sunshine, and Gabriel glanced

over but made no attempt to stop. The scout watched Gabriel’s face as

they went past. Gabriel looked down at him, then turned away and

focused his attention on the way they were going. He and Enda might

need to come back this way in a hurry, without help from their

escort… or while trying to evade it.

The aliens led them northeast to the next line of hills and over.

As Gabriel and Enda had seen on the way in, this whole area was

hilly, and they wound between those hills for the most part, avoiding

the highest crests. He watched all around him for landmarks. There

were few, besides the occasional outcropping of stone or patch of

scrub-bushes.

“You know what the worst thing is about this?” Gabriel

asked Enda.

“Besides the language barrier,” she replied, “and

an unnerving number of weapons very close to us, and not having any

idea what is happening?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“I’m getting hungry again.”

Enda laughed. “I told you you should have eaten more

breakfast.”

“Next time I’ll listen.”

The walk went on for another hour, and Gabriel became hungrier

still. As they reached the top of a hill, he was breathing hard and

had to rest. This last hill had been steep, but its ridge was broad

and the leaders of the party seemed disinclined to head to the left

or right where other hills joined this one. At the top of the hill,

Gabriel paused for a moment, looking down, and Enda stopped beside

him. Below them, at the foot of the hill, was that little half-circle

of houses gathered together in a valley, under the shadow of a taller

hill on the far side. From the fieldstone chimney of the biggest of

these houses, thin smoke rose lazily on the slight morning breeze.

Gabriel shook his head. “Well,” he said, “I think

we can assume they noticed us coming over in the middle of the

night.”

“Yes. I would not be surprised if they were annoyed with us.”

The scout made a gesture that Gabriel thought meant he and Enda

should follow him. Everyone headed down the hill toward the small

settlement. Gabriel and Enda followed.

All the houses were handsomely made from what looked like cemented

fieldstone. Most of them seemed to be in a three-lobed construction,

except for the middle building, which had three long “rooms,”

each with its own roof. The roofs, all wide and low-peaked, met in

the middle of the structure. The roofs themselves were of some kind

of brushwood, thin dark blue-green twigs of it bound tightly together

in bundles and laid down in rows. At the edges where the roofs

overhung their supporting walls, stones weighed the roofing down.

“It is an interesting shape,” Enda said as they came

down the hill. “I would guess the roofs are pitched to deal with

large snowfalls.”

Gabriel nodded; he had seen architecture like this elsewhere. From

the open doorways of the other buildings, more of the furred people

were peering at them as they came down. There were some very small

ones peeking out from behind the taller aliens.

Children? he thought. There was no way to tell.

They walked down into the common area in front of the houses. Some

of the escort party who had come with them were no longer carrying

their guns at the ready; they had shouldered them, and a few were

unloading. Gabriel looked with interest at the alien nearest them who

did this, and then sucked in an alarmed breath at the size of the

slug he saw being removed from the chamber.

“Don’t be shot escaping,” Gabriel said quietly to Enda

as the scout gestured them toward the doors of the central house, the

longest and largest of them.

“I always try to avoid such. Why?”

“Had to have been a hundred grams of lead in that pellet,”

Gabriel said. “Depending on the charge behind it, it could take

the head right off you and leave you very unhappy afterwards.”

“I will make a note of that.”

The doors of the central longhouse were hinged sections of an

oval, well made of some substance that looked metallic, but had been

deeply carved, as ornately as the rifle stock Gabriel had seen

earlier.

“Whatever else you can say about these people,” Gabriel

said, pausing by one of the doors and cautiously raising a hand to

touch the carving, “they’re artists. Look at these animals! They

might be imaginary, but whether they are or not, they’re beautiful.”

He looked at his hand in slight surprise and rubbed the fingers

together. “This stuff is warm,” he said. “I would

swear it was something like aged bronze.”

Enda came up beside him, reached up a hand, and touched the stuff.

“Perhaps some kind of wood? I could not say … materials

technology is not my strong point.”

They were ushered through, Gabriel stooping a little as he went

through the door, which was no more than a meter and a half high. He

paused several paces inside the doorway to let his eyes get used to

the reduced light. There were very small windows, positioned high up

in the walls, in the single-room building.

The place was not as dark as he had expected. The fieldstone walls

had been plastered white inside. Long, slim floor-based sconces ran

down both sides of the room. Atop each stand, large illuminated

globes gave off a gentle, warm light. There was not much in the way

of furniture, but various benches and low chairs were set along the

walls. Scattered over the stone-flagged floor were numerous shaggy

dark skins and what looked like woven rugs in geometrical patterns.

Many pillows or cushions were scattered on top of those. Here and

there, a few of the aliens were sitting gathered together on the

floor, bent toward one another in conversation. Those conversations

stopped as Gabriel and Enda passed by, and dark eyes looked up at

them in astonishment.

In company with their escort, Enda and Gabriel moved up the length

of the big room where a fire was burning. The broad hearth, built

deep into the building’s back wall, was a handsome thing. There were

short benches under the wide overhang of the hearth’s “smoke

hood,” so that one could sit inside and be very close to the

fire. An impressive array of fire-blackened metal-work—

swinging arms and chains, and some kind of machinery with toothed

gears— were bolted to the stone slabs that made up the back of

the fireplace. The hearth itself was one seamless slab of smooth

black stone. At the back of it, a small fire burned, but Gabriel

could not make out what the fuel was. It was some dark substance that

did not look like wood. The whole place was full of a spicy scent

that Gabriel thought perhaps came from the fuel, but it was not a

smoky smell.

Enda looked around her with wonder. “The fire is not for

heat. That is coming from somewhere else.”

“Those flat dark plates along the walls?”

“Possibly,” said Enda. “I am more interested in the

lights, myself.”

The scout, who had walked up through the long room with them, now

gestured at the pile of cushions nearest to the fire. Enda folded

down gracefully into a crosslegged position on the flattest of the

cushions. Gabriel looked at her rather ruefully. “I wish I could

do that,” he said. “You make it look like going down in a

lift” He sat down, crossing his legs rather less gracefully.

The scout walked away, leaving them to sit and look around them.

There was a little more furniture at this end of the room, some

standing cupboards and a couple of long tables. On a smaller table

off to one side of the fire there stood a beautiful small cabinet of

carved wood and some other substance, something white, possibly bone.

The scout went to it and turned a knob on the front.

The sound of music— strange percussive and woodwind sounds

in an odd rhythm— startled them both. It was coming from the

carved cabinet.

Gabriel blinked at that. After a moment the music stopped and was

replaced by the sound of soft barking and growling.

“Powered transmission of some kind,” Enda said, as the

scout gave them a glance and went over to confer with several others

of his people standing nearby. “Perhaps even wireless

transmission.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Radio! I wish more of ours looked

this beautiful.”

“Form following function, I suppose,” Enda said. “If

one does not have microminiaturization, one must evolve handsome

furniture to contain the works.” She looked around. “Gabriel,

what is the source of the power? We did not see any exterior wiring

or power conduits outside when we came.”

Gabriel shook his head and said, “Wireless power

transmission? Microwave, maybe?”

Enda tilted her head “no” and replied, “We would

have picked that up from space.”

“Even if it was a low-level transmission?” Gabriel

asked. “Were we scanning for it?”

Enda let out a long breath. “No,” she said, “but we

were not expecting it, were we?”

The scout now came back with a couple more of his people, one of

whom was carrying a rough brown jug and several cups. They sat down

among the cushions across from Gabriel and Enda, and one, still

holding his gun, stood guard behind. The scout poured out what looked

like water into the cups, and very slowly handed one to Gabriel.

Gabriel lifted it and sniffed it, trying not to look too obvious.

“Water, I think.”

The scout poured out another cup and handed it to Enda. Gabriel,

watching this, found himself wondering what was going on … for

their host was gazing at Enda intently, and he looked ready to snatch

his hand back.

He looks like he thinks she’s going to bite him. Why? Why would

she be a threat and I not, when I’m nearly twice her size?

Whether Enda noticed this or not, she took the cup carefully. She,

Gabriel, and the scout all looked at one another uneasily.

“Does he go first,” Gabriel asked softly, “or do

we?”

He was all too aware how fraught a point drinking or not drinking

with one’s host could be in some cultures, but they had no guidelines

to which they could refer.

The scout was looking at Gabriel’s cup, and then at Gabriel, with

what really looked like nervousness.

Oh, hell, Gabriel thought, if they wanted to kill us, they could

have shot us any number of times. Why drag us all the way here to

poison us? He lifted his cup to his host, said—“Up the

marines, cousin!”— and drank the contents down.

Just water, with a slightly acid taste to it, and very refreshing.

Enda followed his lead, and said, “It is rather like lemon or

verjuice.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said, watching their host.

The scout was still watching Enda out of the corner of his eye as

he drank from his own cup. The other two were looking either at Enda

or at the scout.

Once they had drunk, there was nothing Gabriel and Enda could

think of to do but to try to communicate somehow. They sat there and

tried words in every language they knew, which was not that many. He

had no more than a few phrases in Fraal at this point, and he was

unwilling to speak the language while Enda was available. In any

case, he saw no reason to ask their hosts to be sick on his shoes. He

also tried a few words of Weren, which he had picked up from the

language software over the last starfall.

Gabriel at last shook his head and said, “You give it a try.”

“Well enough,” she said, “but our people have never

been out this way.” She spoke brief sentences in a number of

human languages that Gabriel had not heard before. She tried Sheyan,

Aleerin, and even a few words of T’sa, but there was no response.

Finally she sighed and spoke a sentence in Fraal.

The furred people all looked at her, and something went click.

Gabriel looked up to see the guard standing there with his weapon

cocked and braced, ready to fire at Enda.

Enda was astonished. Gabriel saw that her hand was on her pistol,

but she had not drawn.

“What’s this all about?” he said softly. “What’s

their problem?”

“I cannot say,” said Enda, “but I refuse to panic.

I mean them no harm, no matter who else has troubled them that I may

resemble.”

She finally looked away from the person with the gun, and looked

at their host again. Enda lifted her empty cup and held it out to

him.

He looked at her for a long, long moment, then lifted the pitcher

and poured for her again. As if unconcerned, Enda drank.

Gabriel held out his own cup, since he found his mouth extremely

dry. The scout poured for him as well, and when he put the pitcher

down again, Gabriel lifted the cup and toasted him, then drank the

contents.

Their hosts looked at them and then glanced at each other.

“Look,” Gabriel said to Enda. “We’re at kind of an

impasse here. I think I should head back to the ship and get that

translator. It might be useful.”

“It certainly cannot make matters any worse,” Enda said.

Gabriel looked around them. “I don’t know if I like leaving

you here by yourself, though.”

She laughed at him. “Gabriel, I have been in much worse

places than this and come away from them unscathed.”

“Oh? I want to hear all about this. You’ve been holding out

on me.”

“This is hardly the time,” Enda said, but she had begun

to smile again.

Gabriel kept his own expression under control for the moment, but

hers had heartened him a little. He knew from experience the useful

shift that a fierce look, purposefully assumed, could make in one’s

emotional state when about to lead a charge, and he was not above

using the technique on those around him when it suited him.

“All right,” he said, “but listen—”

“I am armed,” Enda said, “very well armed. As I

said, I do not believe that today is my death day. I will prevent any

attempt to rush to conclusions in this regard … and I think I

could do much more damage to them than they could possibly do to me

in an equivalent time.”

“What if they get your pistol away from you?”

“Not all my weapons are visible,” Enda said, “but

then again, not all yours are, as well.” She gave him a knowing

look.

“Right,” he said. I have this awful feeling she’s

talking about my wits, he thought. I wish she wouldn’t do that,

because their charge pack is feeling a little low at the moment.

Gabriel stood up and turned to the nearest of their hosts, the

alien he had been thinking of as the scout. To this gentleman Gabriel

made what he hoped was a graceful and unthreatening gesture

indicating that he wanted to go outside.

That alien and the others seated or standing about looked at him

with narrowed eyes.

What does that mean around here? Gabriel thought. He looked

at creatures and spread his hands. “Well?”

They watched him. He sighed and pointed at the door. They all

looked at his hand. Gabriel hurriedly dropped the hand, wondering

what pointing might mean in this culture.

This is ridiculous, he thought. I’m afraid even to move.

Very gently, he started to move toward the door. They watched him,

but did nothing. Good, Gabriel thought.

“Enda,” he said, “is there anything else you need?”

“Reassurance is in short supply at the moment,” she said

softly.

“Believe me, I’d trade all the data we’re carrying for a load

of that right now,” Gabriel said. “I’ll be back in a

while.”

He went out of the longhall and stood looking around for a moment.

From the doorways of the other houses and lodges, other red-furred

faces gazed at him, unreadable. A sound beside him made him turn. He

found himself looking down into the face of the scout who had

followed him out.

The look was as unreadable as before, but it was more intimate.

Thoughtful? There was no telling exactly what those thoughts were.

“Buddy,” Gabriel said, “translators aside, I wish

we could talk right this minute.”

The scout looked at him and tilted his head a little to one side.

The ears moved, the eyes flickered. He spoke— just soft

growling noises, unlike the imperative barking Gabriel had heard

earlier.

Gabriel looked at the scout, looked toward the hills in the

direction from which he and Enda had come, and made another slow

sweeping gesture up that way.

The scout looked at him. Gabriel took a few steps in that

direction, then looked back.

His host tilted his head again, that thoughtful look … then

turned his back on Gabriel and went back into the building.

That was a dismissal… I think.

Gabriel hesitated. Was there any chance that their hosts would

think he was abandoning Enda? She’s capable of taking care of herself

… she says.

Finally, he headed out of the half-circle of houses, quickly

falling into the dogtrot that a marine used to cover ground in a

hurry.

He quickened his pace. He and Enda had stumbled on a species that

was moderately advanced, completely unknown until now, and seemed

very hostile to the fraal. That alone Gabriel found bizarre. Here was

a new species, presently impossible to talk to and probably angry

about something, sitting on a planet hardly anyone knew existed …

and here Gabriel and Enda were, by themselves in the middle of it

all. He ran faster.

Chapter Thirteen

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GABRIEL CAME TO the last hill and paused at the top of it to look

down. There was Sunshine, intact and seemingly unguarded. That

surprised him, and made him suspicious. Who might be tucked away

around here that I can’t see? Gabriel thought, eyeing the hillsides.

There was no cover here for anything bigger than a rat… just

acres of the blue-green turf.

He trotted down the hillside to the bare patch where Sunshine was parked. The lift column showed no signs of tampering. Gabriel did

a slow walk-round. The people here struck him as quick and smart, and

it might have occurred to some of them that this strange vehicle

might have removable, valuable parts, but nothing was missing. As far

as Gabriel could tell from his minimal training in tracking, no one

had been near Sunshine at all.

He touched the lift code into the column. The door unlocked itself

and let him in. When it opened again, Gabriel hurried down toward the

weapons locker and picked up a couple of items. These he slipped into

the “secret” pockets in his coverall, ones that even a

talented human investigator would not routinely find in a pat-down.

After that, Gabriel rooted around in the sitting room cupboards

for the translator keypad and software solids. He picked up the

“blank” ones for new species, both of which could record

and had a book encoded into it, something called Dodgson’s Guide

to First Contacts. At first Gabriel had tossed this aside, not

thinking it important. Now, though—

He found a carry bag to stow everything in and also picked up

drypack lunches from the galley, bottles of water, and a few of the

high-protein-and-carbohydrate emergency ration bars that Enda

routinely referred to as “the inedibles.”

Gabriel paused with the food in his hands. Suppose these creatures

had some taboo against eating in public? No matter what their taboos

are, he thought, we’re going to need to eat something eventually.

He slung the bag over his shoulder, went down in the lift, and

locked Sunshine behind him. He started the dogtrot back to the

circle of houses and fell gratefully into the rhythm, hoping the

physical exertion would distract him from his own nervousness.

It didn’t. There was simply nothing about this situation that

could be relied upon, nothing predictable.

Slowly, behind Gabriel, the thunder of the waterfall died away as

he put a kilometer between him and Sunshine, then another.

Along the way, he mused upon the strangeness of the place, not at all

a proper site for these people to be living. They had seen other

settlements in the imaging, but this area was so remote from the

others.

Is this some kind of vacation camp? Gabriel wondered. Where is

their technology coming from, the radios, the guns? Not to mention

the energy to run these things. There were no big cities …

Have they got them hidden? Or are their large settlements in some

other form? What about those big buildings we saw, the triangular

shapes?

Gabriel stopped atop a hillcrest, looked around him, then headed

down the far side. He panted his way down that hill and up the next,

the long-ridged hill before the furred people’s settlement. Gabriel

doubted that he and Enda were going to get answers to any questions

soon. Even if the translator program worked, there was always the

possibility that these people would have no desire to discuss

business with strangers. Certainly they had already shown caution in

their dealings with Gabriel and Enda, which brought to Gabriel’s

mind, again, the image of the one alien who had held his gun on Enda

with real intent.

He paused on the last ridge, looking down at the settlement.

Everything seemed very much as he had left it. Gabriel headed down

the hillside and went to the central longhouse.

As Gabriel ducked through the oval doorway, there was a soft

chorus of growls down at the end of the room, and he saw lifted

weapons. He said, for all the world as if he were someplace familiar,

“It’s just me, folks, don’t panic.”

Gabriel came down to where Enda still lounged with some of the

other furred people around her, looking at her with curiosity. “Is

everything all right?” she asked.

“No problems. I brought you some lunch, and for our hosts …

this.”

He produced the translator keypad, putting it down on the furred

rug that covered the floor among the cushions.

The furred people gathered there looked at the keypad with some

bemusement. Gabriel held up one hand in what he desperately hoped

would be taken as a “watch this” gesture, then activated

the keypad.

All its keys flashed briefly with light, then darkened again.

Gabriel looked at the alien whom he had been thinking of as the

scout. That one showed no great amount of surprise at the keypad’s

actions, but he did reach out to lift the keypad by one corner and

look at its underside. He glanced quizzically at Gabriel.

Enda said, “I think perhaps he wonders that it seems to have

no power source. Everything else here seems to have some kind of

power conduit cords attached. Look at the radio and the bottoms of

those lamps.”

Gabriel saw that she was right, though in the shadows at the

bottoms of the walls, it was hard to tell where the cords went. “I

wonder …” Gabriel said. “If they have electric

power, why do they need fires?”

Enda shrugged. “Pleasure?” she said. “Some humans

have them for such reasons, I’ve heard.”

Gabriel nodded and turned his attention back to the translator

keypad. He touched one of its keys, which lit up with the stylized

stick figure for “man.” The scout looked at this. Gabriel

indicated the key, then indicated himself.

The scout regarded Gabriel with widened eyes.

Gabriel glanced over at the nearby bare stone flagging of the

hearth, where there were a few sticks of kindling. One had been burnt

at one end. Gabriel hitched himself closer to the hearth, picked up

the burnt stick, and started drawing. The contrast of charcoal on the

darkish stone of the flagging was not very great, but he drew a round

head, indicating his own. Next he drew a stick body and thumped his

own chest. Last of all, he sketched one arm—

The aliens nearest him hissed.

The sound was alarming. Gabriel looked around. Some of the aliens

were still hissing, and all but a couple of them stared at him. One

got up and left. Another was poking the one that sat next to him, and

both were hissing hard. The scout, presently closest to Gabriel,

reached out and patted the hearth next to Gabriel’s drawing, and

hissed again, his mouth open wide and the fangs showing.

“I wonder,” Enda said, “if he means that he

considers your style of artwork rather primitive.”

“I wish I could tell him I agreed with him,” Gabriel

said, looking ruefully at the stick figure.

One of the smaller aliens came along with a roll of some pale

material. The little alien looked at Gabriel with big eyes and would

not come close. That look he knew, even across species: a child’s

shyness.

“Come on,” Gabriel said reassuringly, “don’t be

afraid.”

The little one held out the roll. The scout took it, unrolled it,

and showed the roll to Gabriel.

Gabriel reached out carefully to take it. The roll itself was not,

as he had first thought, any kind of paper or composite, but some

very smooth slick material with tiny, tiny holes in it.

“This could be some kind of inner bark of a tree or plant,”

Gabriel said. “Remember back on Grith, we saw some of the

sesheyan longbooks made out of the inner membrane of galya vine? They

looked like this. But, oh, Enda …” He turned the roll so

that she could see the inside of it.

The drawing on the inside of the roll appeared to have been done

in the kind of charcoal Gabriel had been using to draw on the hearth,

but it was many times more complex, a delicately shaded portrait of

one of the warriors who sat in the circle with them— Gabriel

recognized the elaborately embroidered overvest with its spiral

patterns. The artist had very perfectly caught the faintly wise,

grizzled look of the seated alien’s face, the scarred muzzle, the

ears, one of them nocked. The fraying of the vest in front of the one

shoulder, in the place where the gunstock would normally rest, was

faithfully reproduced. The curly pelt was there, and the tail, more

hinted at than seen, just peeked out from under the overvest. The

eyes looked into the distance, as if the hunter saw game atop the

nearby hill, or perhaps looked into memory at yesterday’s hunt, last

year’s kill, his own youth …

“Edanwe,” said the alien who had given the drawing to

Gabriel. He gestured at all of them. “Edanweir.”

“That was a species name, I think,” Gabriel said,

handing the drawing to Enda. He leaned over the keypad, touched a

key. “Edanwe,” he said to it. The key went black, then

flashed with a neutral symbol, and the keypad said, “Edanwe.”

Gabriel poked his stick figure again, and said, “Human.”

He drew a few more beside it, hastily, and said, “Humans.”

Then he drew a shorter, thinner one with longer arms and legs next to

the “human” stick figure, and said, “Fraal.”

A rustle went through the watching edanweir. They looked at each

other, then at Gabriel, with expressions that somehow seemed

distressed.

“This is a lovely thing,” Enda said softly. “Gabriel,

the keypad can acquire drawings from outside sources. I was not sure

how useful a feature that would be, but I begin to see the point. If

you will lift the pad close to the drawing and touch the ‘acquire

key,’ that small one with the up arrow …”

Gabriel did this, slowly, conscious of edanweir eyes on him.

Nothing visible happened to either the drawing or the back of the

keypad, but when Gabriel put the pad down again, he saw that the

neutral symbol on the “edanwe” key had replaced itself with

a miniature of the portrait.

The “scout” edanwe leaned in close to look at it. He

looked over his shoulder and spoke to one of the others. Then he

touched the key with Gabriel’s stick figure. “Human,” said

the keyboard.

“Yrrrmh’n,” said the scout, obviously straining

his mouth out of its normal shape.

Gabriel nodded: then stopped himself. Don’t bother with gestures,

he told himself. Who knows what nodding might mean here?

“Human,” Gabriel said.

“Yuuhm’n,” said the scout.

“Yes!” Gabriel said, delighted, and touched the button

with the sketch shown on it in small. “Edanwe.”

“Edanwe,” said the scout. “Ntai! “

The edanweir looked at each other. “Well,” Gabriel said,

“that’s one word out of a thousand we need before we can have a

decent conversation, not to mention the verbs.”

“It is a start, Gabriel,” Enda said. “Do not

disparage it. At least we have this much in common with our hosts,

that they understand the symbology of drawings. There are cultures

which do not, or did not, even among humans “

“Well, I’m glad they can understand mine. Even if their

drawing is much better.”

*

The next four or five hours went by fairly quickly as the edanwe

started working with the keypad. Several times, what seemed to be

arguments broke out, though about what, Gabriel couldn’t tell. Early

on, he and Enda moved themselves away from those working with the

keypad. They ate some of the rations that Gabriel had brought, and

concentrated on looking through the documentation for the translator

module.

It had been difficult enough to understand when there was no

pressure on them. Now it seemed positively obscure.

“You’d swear this had never actually been used with a

new alien species,” Gabriel muttered as he scrolled through the

logic solid, reading the back of it where words appeared when not

connected by Grid software to a larger display.

“That is an interesting point. Has it?”

“If it has, I don’t remember anything about it in the docs.”

He looked over at the edanweir, one of whom was pushing key after

key on the keypad with what might have been a frustrated look. The

others working with him, including the scout, leaned over his

shoulder, pointing and growling. Things seemed to be going all right

at the moment, but what if the software couldn’t cope? Language is so

complex, Gabriel thought.

Gabriel blanked the data solid he was holding and looked at its

title side. “This Dodgson’s thing,” he said, “you

think it has anything to do with the translator itself? It did come

bundled with it.”

“Let us look through it and see.”

Dodgson’s Guide to First Contacts, it said when you

activated it. There was a large table of contents, full of headings

like ‘Initial Overtures’ and ‘The First Worlds.’ Gabriel skimmed down

through these to the first section, ‘Known Species.’

“Fraal,” he said. “Here.” He started reading

down through it. ” ‘A wandering species, much known for

their aloof and mysterious behavior…’ Enda, did you know that

you’re aloof and mysterious?”

“You forgot ‘ethereal’ and ‘delicate,’ ” Enda

muttered.

Gabriel shot her an amused look. For his own part, he had seen

Enda, while suited, wrestle massive meteor fragments around with

great skill and strength in zero-g, and ‘delicate’ was not normally a

word he would have chosen.

“Wandering,” Enda said. “What about all the

thousands and millions of us who have been Builders, who have settled

among humans for hundreds of years? Certainly some of us do wander,

but not all of us. This person seems not to have heard the news.”

Her lips were pursed in the annoyed-grandmother expression that she

assumed every now and then when faced with extreme stupidity.

He grinned and went back to his own reading, going on to the weren

section. ‘Massive and ferocious creatures of limited intelligence …’

“What?” It was possibly the commonest of the

stereotypes about the weren, not stamped out by any means, but known

to be untrue. The weren might originally have been the product of a

nomadic tribal culture on Kurg, but they had proven themselves a

subtle and clever people, both on planet and off, producing as many

philosophers, poets, and mathematicians as any other species.

“Enda,” Gabriel said, “is it possible that this

book is a joke?”

“It is a joke,” she said, scrolling further down

the solid she was holding, “whether it is trying to be one or

not. If you mean, ‘is it an intentional work of humor’, I have no

answer for you. Have you looked at the real ‘first contact’ material

yet?”

“Getting to it.” Gabriel scrolled past the

species-specific information and went to the chapter entitled

‘Initial Overtures.’

The screen flickered and said, In your travels, if you are

extremely fortunate, you may come across species that are presently

unknown to our science. While it is dangerous to generalize, any

aliens may conceal a considerable intelligence, possibly even

comparable to our own—

Gabriel opened his mouth, closed it again. “When was this

written?” Gabriel explained, scrolling back to look at

the colophon.

Enda laughed, and the edanweir looked at her. After a few seconds

she stifled her laughter, and Gabriel began scanning down to see what

had caused it. The trouble was that there were so many possibilities.

Gabriel stopped at one in particular: Avoid loud noises or

shouting. While it is dangerous to generalize, many species take this

as an indication of hostility.

“Oh, good,” Gabriel said, “I’m so glad they told me

that.” He chucked the book off to one side, onto the nearest

rug.

It squealed.

The edanweir turned shocked expressions on him. Gabriel picked the

solid up again and saw large letters now spreading across the reading

surface. WARNING! Abuse of this solid may cause damage to the

reader circuitry or loss of data. Please do not drop or shake.

“This thing is pushing its luck,” Gabriel muttered. To

the edanweir, he held up the data solid, shrugged, made what he hoped

they would understand as a conciliatory gesture. “Malfunction,”

he said.

They regarded him with totally unreadable expressions and turned

their attention back to the keypad.

Gabriel flipped the data solid back to the “manual side”

and spent another hour reading. He looked up from this largely

unrewarding business to realize that the artificial lighting inside

the longhouse had been turned up. Dusk was falling outside.

He stretched and looked around. The edanweir were still working

over the keypad, though now there were only the scout and two others.

Gabriel glanced at Enda, who was sitting with half-closed eyes

against several cushions. As he looked at her, she opened her eyes.

“How are they doing?” he asked.

“I have not inquired,” she said. “Gabriel, for

whatever reason, they do not seem to like me to come too close to

them. I thought it wiser not to press the point.”

Gabriel glanced at the high windows under the eaves. “Getting

to be our dinnertime. More to the point, I’d sooner be back in

Sunshine before it gets completely dark. Not that I don’t

trust these nice people: but the local wildlife might be less

hospitable.” He looked around at the furs on the floor. They

were large, the biggest of them nearly three meters by three.

“Yes,” Enda said, and stood up.

There was an immediate response from the edanweir, a look almost

of alarm. Enda did not look at them, but at Gabriel. Behind her, the

edanweir calmed down.

“Right.” Gabriel started tidying up after himself,

putting the used packaging from their lunch into his carrybag. The

last thing he picked up was the software manual with Dodgson’s

Guide. “I don’t think we should leave this here. They might

figure out how to read it, and thenwhere would we be?”

“I would be tempted to leave it,” Enda said, “on

the off chance that they might be more successful at deciphering the

translation manual than I have been, but perhaps you are right.”

Gabriel chuckled and pocketed the solid. He looked toward the

scout-edanwe and made the same graceful gesture toward the doors that

he had used earlier, but this time he included Enda as well.

The scout looked at them both. He got up from the keypad, leaving

his companions still working with it, and copied Gabriel’s gesture.

Together the three of them walked to the door. Gabriel paused just

inside the doorway, and looked down at the scout. He was gazing up at

them, eyeing first Gabriel, then Enda, and it was on Enda that his

glance lingered longest.

“Goodbye for now,” Gabriel said. The edanwe looked up at

him and growled softly.

Enda and Gabriel walked away from the longhouse through the

falling dusk, making their way up the long-ridged hill. Gabriel

turned, just at the crest of that ridge, and looked back to see the

smoke rising gently from that fieldstone chimney. His instincts began

to itch him. Standing on a hilltop silhouetted against the sunset was

asking to be made a target.

He headed down the other side, Enda following him. All the way

down, and all the way back to Sunshine, Gabriel’s back itched

as if someone was taking aim at it. He was a target for something, he

knew it— even here, practically at the edge of the

explored universe. Something was coming toward him. coming after him,

and he couldn’t stop it. The darkness would not hide him for much

longer.

Gabriel shivered, standing there by the lift column in twilight

nearly gone to dark, and punched in the security code with

unnecessary force.

*

Once they were safe inside and had a meal, Gabriel was able to

relax. Enda took herself straight to bed afterwards, looking worn

out. Gabriel was as weary as she. Though nothing bad had happened to

either of them, the daylong stress of being in the presence of aliens

with weapons— aliens that neither of them could understand—

did wear on you after a while. Gabriel was glad to turn in early

himself and retired to his room after cleaning up the remains of

their dinner.

Yawning, he lay down on his bed, not even bothering to undress. He

reached to shut off the light, first touching the alarm built into

the shelf to set it for dawn. The cabin light faded….

*

Darkness.

This part of the dream he was all too used to at the moment. The

fear started to build, but Gabriel was getting used to that. In the

dreams, he had begun to advance toward the experience of the fear,

partly to get it over with, but also partly remembering a voice

saying, If a pain recurs, don’t be afraid to get used to it. Once

you’ve learned to accept it, you can move past it, to what it means…

All the same, there was now something more vivid about the fear, a

sense of it being closer, more real, more physical … though

that was an odd word to use for a dream. Equally strong was the

knowledge that this was a dream. Odd that this realization did

not make the experience more bearable, but less.

The other presence was here in the dark with him, but somehow more

familiar. The darkness broke ever so briefly as he saw something. A

shape silhouetted on a hilltop— a target— strange

thought that. Where did that come from? Warm darkness all

around them, darkness that breathed. Gabriel braced himself, knowing

what was coming next.

Fire, the brilliance in the darkness— and the darkness

comprehendeth it not— strange thought. Where did that come from? No matter. The brilliance lashed out at the shapes that

hid and skulked in the dark, illuminating them briefly in glimpses

and flashes. This was always the hardest part of the dream to deal

with, when you saw detail, always more than you wanted, and wished

you could scream. The darkness choked the screams in your throat and

left you gasping and helpless.

Not alone this time, though. Not alone. Gabriel exulted

briefly in that fact. There was someone else with him, fighting the

same fight. Together they took great spears of fire and threw it into

the darkness at the menacing shadows. The shadows screamed and

stretched tearing taloned limbs toward them, but Gabriel and the

companion he could not see in the darkness or fire grasped the light

and rained it on their enemies, fired it at them as if from weapons,

hurled it on them like stones from a height. The screams out of the

darkness scaled up, wailing, furious, and faded away. They were not

beaten. They would be back.

They might well win, next time, Gabriel could hear that

other presence thinking. Maybe they would both die next time, but for

the moment, they had won. It was all they could do. When darkness

next fell, they would fight again.

It could not be helped. It was their job.

Not mine! Gabriel cried into the dark. I didn’t sign up

for this!

You did You swore the oath. That other job may be gone, but the

duty remains.…

*

… and the alarm went off. It was just before dawn.

Gabriel lay staring at the ceiling in the dim light that the alarm

had turned on. He swore. If there was anything he hated in the world,

it was falling asleep and then waking up to the feeling that he had

not really slept at all.

At the same time, Gabriel felt a peculiar sense of … what?

Satisfaction? Just the feeling that, even in a dream, he was

not completely helpless, that he was beginning to be able to affect

what was happening to him …

Better than nothing, Gabriel thought. He got up and went off to

shower before Enda awoke and wanted hers.

Chapter Fourteen

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SOME HOURS AFTER dawn, he and Enda made their way back to the

edanweir settlement. They paused at the open doors of the longhouse,

looking in and waiting to see whether there would be some response to

their return.

Various edanweir sat among the cushions by the fire. They looked

up as Gabriel and Enda walked toward them. One of them, an edanwe

Gabriel did not immediately recognize, had the keypad. He sported one

of the handsome woven vests some of them wore, a short one with

bright leaf-patterns woven into it in green and a dark green-blue

like that of the ground cover.

As Gabriel and Enda got closer, there were a few more

uncomfortable looks directed at Enda. “I wish I knew what that

was about,” Gabriel said to her. “You sit down over there

and make yourself comfortable, and I’ll check out what’s happening.”

He walked over to the blue-vested edanwe and knelt down beside it.

The edanwe glanced at Gabriel and growled.

“Yeah, good morning to you too,” Gabriel said and peered

at the keypad, looking to see what kind of images had been programmed

into the pad so far. There were very few. The preprogrammed ones,

with stick-images of leaves, falling water, and so on, produced no

Standard words when he touched them, only edanweir.

“No wonder you look so pissed off,” Gabriel said softly.

“You’ve been sitting here doing this with no result… or

at least none that does you any good.”

He looked over the keys one more time. “Did I misconfigure

this thing, maybe?” Gabriel said, reaching for the keypad. The

edanwe moved his hands to let Gabriel take it.

Gabriel turned the keypad over and brought up the flat display on

the back that held the configuration profiles. The edanwe looked over

his shoulder and made soft grunting and growling sounds. Gabriel

shook his head.

“I don’t know. I thought I had this set up right.”

He got up and brought the keypad over to Enda, showing her the

back of it. She too looked at it and could only tilt her head to one

side in negation. “I thought you had it set up correctly, but it

would seem our friends are making little headway. Certainly we saw

many arguments yesterday over what the images meant.”

“Yeah. I can’t shake the idea that they just don’t like this

machine … that either they don’t understand what’s needed, or

they don’t like the methodology.”

“You might be right.” Enda turned the keypad over to

study the keys. “They cannot have entered more than twenty

concepts.”

Gabriel sat down beside her. “This is going to take all year.

I really wish some other survey had been here before us.”

“If one had, I think this world would very likely have been

embargoed to keep its culture from being contaminated.”

“Depends on whose survey would have found them,” Gabriel

said. “If it was the Concord, well and good, but if VoidCorp

turned up here and tried to sell the edanweir the same deal as they

sold the sesheyans …” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t

like that much.”

“Neither would they,” said Enda as she looked across at

the edanweir.

“As it is,” Gabriel said, “for the moment, they’ve

lucked out. One survey passes through and has its equipment break

down, so nothing comes of it. Another one is too brief and

half-hearted to make any difference, then we come along and can’t

understand a thing that’s going on.” He laughed. “Are these

people religious, I wonder? Something sure seems to be protecting

them.”

He was also wondering if other travelers might once have come this

way without giving anyone prior warning and then had simply gone

missing— some of Rov’s ‘went out and never came back’ types.

Some disagreement with the locals? Or something less local, perhaps?

There was no evidence of that.

Gabriel took the keypad back to the blue-vested edanwe, and

together they sat for nearly two hours and took turns hammering on

the thing. Besides trying to program in simple words like hand,

finger, wrist, which they did have in common, Gabriel tried again and

again to get the machine to speak in Standard. Again and again it

refused to say anything but “human.” Gabriel started to

wonder whether the thing was simply broken. He spent nearly another

hour reading the manual, while the edanweir came and went around him,

looking at him curiously.

A shadow fell over him around lunchtime. Gabriel looked up to see

the scout, in a different vest today, but Gabriel knew him by his

face markings and the slant of his eyes, slightly more tilted than

those of the other edanweir. He was carrying the pitcher and cups

again.

“Hyuman” said the edanwe.

“Edanwe,” said Gabriel. It would do for a greeting.

“Hyuman,” said the edanwe, pointing at the keypad

and wrinkling his muzzle so that a lot of his teeth showed. “Hyuman

hyuman hyuman hyuman hyuman.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, “I’m sick and tired of

hearing it say that myself.” He reached over to Blue Vest and

tapped the corner of the keypad with one finger. The edanwe looked up

and handed it to him.

Gabriel started pressing the keys that had been programmed,

speaking the edanwe words, and the scout lifted his long tail over

his shoulder, so that the tip of it twitched where Gabriel could see

it. Was that a nod? Gabriel thought perhaps it was, since it repeated

each time Gabriel pronounced a word correctly. He touched each key

and said the Standard words for them … and the keyboard

refused to say anything but “human.” Gabriel picked the

keypad up and shook it, grimacing.

The scout hissed. Laughter, Gabriel thought. At least he has a

sense of humor about this. I wish I had more of one.

Gabriel gave the keypad back to the blue-vested edanwe and looked

up at the scout again. The scout handed him a cup of water and

Gabriel toasted him with it. “Edanwe …” he said.

The other lifted his cup too. “Hyuman!”

They drank together, and after a while the scout went off, leaving

Gabriel looking over the blue-vested edanwe’s shoulder and trying to

help. It did no good. Something was wrong with the keypad’s

programming that Gabriel couldn’t understand, no matter how many

times he went back to the manual. After a while Gabriel stopped

interrupting Blue Vest and turned to Enda. “Could it be broken?”

She bowed her head. “All its diagnostics keep coming up

clean. I suppose the diagnostic problem itself could be faulty, but

the manual has no information about how to troubleshoot that.”

Gabriel stretched. The day was well gone. Dusk was falling, and

the edanweir were going around to their artificial lights, turning

them up. Another one had turned on the radio, and more soft clunky

edanweir music was coming from it.

“This is so frustrating,” Gabriel said. “I want to

ask them where they got this technology from. I want to ask them

where they shot that!” He gestured with his chin at the

biggest fur rug in the middle of the floor. “But I can’t.”

Enda tilted her head to one side. “I do not know what we can

do about it.”

Gabriel sat there considering. “You know,” he said at

last, “maybe there’s something.”

“I listen attentively,” Enda said, and yawned.

“Thanks lots. You said the other day that you heard me

‘without my silencer on.’ You do hear thoughts sometimes.”

“Not usually at will,” Enda said, and frowned.

“I know, but would you be willing to try?”

She looked alarmed. “With them?”

“Why not? Would listening hurt?”

“It might,” she said. “They might become angry.”

“You can’t tell until you try.”

Enda was looking very thoughtful. “Gabriel, even among beings

who know what is about to happen, trying to overhear thought can be

considered offensive. To those who do not know what is

happening …”

“I don’t mean anything like trying to read their minds,”

Gabriel said. “I know it doesn’t work like that. If you can just

pick up a few words, enough to explain to them that we’re from

another world, that we don’t mean them any harm … that kind of

thing.”

Enda considered that. “Well, is your friend here? He seems to

be most likely to help us. We do not know the others here so well.”

Gabriel looked around. “There, he just came in again. Let’s

try.”

Gabriel went over to the doors, where the scout was talking to

another edanwe and unloading his rifle. Gabriel waited until he

finished, unwilling to bother someone who was making his weapon safe.

When the scout had placed the last of the bullets into his belt

pouch, Gabriel gestured to him and then Enda.

The scout twitched his tail over his shoulder and went with him.

Gabriel sat down by Enda again, wondering how he was going to get

this next point across. Finally, all he could think of to do was to

touch Enda’s head, and then to touch his own, and hers again.

Enda looked rather wry as this was going on. “Do these people

even believe that the process of thought resides in any organ

associated with the head?” she said to Gabriel, folding her

hands together. “He may not understand what this is about at

all.”

“Well,” Gabriel said, “give it a try.”

Enda sighed and closed her eyes, holding very still.

The scout peered at her curiously. He looked at Gabriel, as if in

question, then his eyes went wide.

The high-pitched howl that followed was terrible. Gabriel

scrambled to his feet. So did every edanwe around. The scout

staggered back, cried something in a series of sharp furious barks,

and began loading his gun frantically.

Gabriel and Enda were suddenly surrounded in a frenzied, barking

crowd of edanweir, all clutching and tearing at their clothes and

equipment. Gabriel’s pistol was pulled off him and passed out of

reach before he could react, as was Enda’s. She struggled to sit up,

but about five edanwe were pinning her, and one of them, snarling,

had lifted a hand as if to strike her.

Gabriel caught that hand and stopped it with some difficulty, only

to find the furious face of the hand’s owner staring up into his, the

lips skinned back away from the teeth in a growl that looked nearly

insane with anger. Or fear? The hair stood up all over Gabriel

as the edanwe hauled Enda to her feet.

There was some pushing and shoving as the group tried to go in a

couple of different directions amid a chorus of growls. Then the

scout barked again, and the crowd reacted, pushing Enda roughly away

toward the back of the longroom, off to the right of the fireplace.

The scout had not laid hands on Enda, but he clutched his gun and

stared at Gabriel with such perfect rage that Gabriel stepped back a

pace, then looked after Enda. She was not struggling as they dragged

her off— probably a wise decision.

The scout stared at Gabriel. Rage, yes, but there was something

else too. Betrayal?

He hurried after the crowd taking Enda away. At the far end of the

hall was a small door that led to a narrow passage. Down the passage

were smaller rooms with doors made of planks, perhaps intended for

storage.

“Enda, are you all right?” Gabriel shouted after her.

“For the moment.” Half hidden by the crowd pushing her

down the hallway in an angry chorus of yowls and barks, she was

trying to catch her breath. “But I would say— he

understood— what I was trying!”

Down at the end of the hallway was a last room with a thick plank

door, and one little window that seemed to be covered in some kind of

mesh. The door was closed with a heavy bar. Several edanwe hurriedly

lifted this, pushed Enda in, then pulled the door closed and barred

it.

For his own part, Gabriel was trying not to overreact to so many

guns being pointed at his face. “Is there anybody in there with

you?” Gabriel called.

“No,” Enda said, still gasping. “It is quite empty

…” She paused. “Except for some meat.”

“Meat?”

Gabriel held his hands up in a gesture intended to suggest that he

was not going to do anything sudden, and moved toward the door. There

was a chorus of barks and yelps, and hammers were cocked before him

and behind him, but he did not stop. Very gently he pushed through

the crowd of edanweir, and went up to the door.

Gabriel peered in through the grille-window, which was covered

with a very delicately made metal mesh. The room in which Enda was

now standing had straw on the floor, and plastered fieldstone walls.

Around the walls ran a well-made iron railing, and more such railings

crisscrossed the ceiling.

“I think this is their larder,” Enda said. Sure enough,

hooks hung from the railings, and on some of them were suspended

carcasses of some animal. These had been very expertly butchered,

Gabriel thought, and he did not care for the symbolism. He also

wondered if these huge haunches of meat were from the same animals as

the large furry pelts on the floor of the common room. If they were,

his estimation of their hosts’ skill as hunters went up somewhat, for

they had seen no indication that these creatures were being farmed.

He turned away from the door to find all the edanweir glaring at

him, guns raised. “Enda,” he said very softly, “I’m

not going to let them keep you in here.”

“Gabriel, calm yourself. They have done nothing to me as

yet,” Enda said. “If it looks like they might… that would be the time to do something.”

“I just hate waiting until the situation gets worse. It tends

to make the required response more extreme.”

He didn’t move. The edanweir fidgeted, but they didn’t move

either.

“Harming or killing these people will not help us,” Enda

said. “If they believe I meant them harm to begin with, it will

only confirm them in that opinion, and make things worse!”

Gabriel wasn’t so sure, but he had always disliked being the one

to start the shooting— it tended to create misunderstandings

later about who had been responsible. The edanweir looked at him, and

didn’t move.

“By the way,” Gabriel said, “they missed my

holdouts.”

“I suppose that is reassuring,” Enda said. “Gabriel,

please … think three times before you harm any of these

people. I have brought this on myself. There would be no point in

punishing them for their reaction.”

Gabriel leaned against the door, looking at their captors. A few

of the edanweir in the hall sat down, with weapons at the ready.

Various others, the scout among them, looked suspiciously at Gabriel

and then slipped back toward the main hall.

“Well,” Gabriel said. “What do we do now?”

“That is a good question,” Enda said. “I am short

of answers, unfortunately, and I have an uncomfortable feeling that

this eventuality is not covered in Dodgson’s”

Gabriel laughed a little hollowly. “Did you get anything?”

“From your friend?” He could hear Enda gulp. “No.

The moment he felt the touch and knew it for what it was …

then there came the fear, Gabriel, awful fear and loathing.”

“Why?”

“I wish I knew for sure,” Enda said, producing a

rustling noise as she sat down in the straw on the floor of the

larder. “There are species that are against any mind touch. This

may simply be another. Gabriel, this situation does not look

promising, and we still have a load of data to deliver to Coulomb.

Perhaps it might be wise if you left.”

Gabriel laughed. “This is no time to bring that up. The data

isn’t even remotely time-sensitive!”

“It must get where it is going, or our contract—”

“If you don’t get out of here safely,” Gabriel said,

“I’m not getting out either. If that particular line of

thought continues to its logical conclusion, the reason we won’t be

leaving is that we’ll be dead. The CCC can sue our estates if it

likes.”

Gabriel looked around at the watching edanweir and said to Enda,

“I’m not going anywhere, since you’re not. The data’s not a big

problem, compared to what’s sitting in front of us.” More

softly, he added, “Besides, this is my fault. I talked you into

it. I’m not going to leave you here to suffer the consequences.”

Enda was silent. Finally, she said, “I understand the

sentiment, but there are no other marines here to back you up.”

“For a situation as small as this,” Gabriel said, “one

marine should be enough.”

Enda was silent, leaving Gabriel to hope very much that this would

be true.

*

He sat outside the cell a long time. Night had long since fallen,

leaving him in near-total darkness. For a while this had not bothered

Gabriel. Now that Enda’s breathing had changed, and he knew that she

was asleep in the larder, Gabriel started feeling very alone. The

edanwe guard sitting down the hall from him with his gun in his hands

made this feeling slightly worse. The edanwe could plainly see well

enough in the dark to be able to shoot.

Gabriel fished around in his pocket and came out with the

luckstone. He put it down on the ground beside him. It flickered, a

very faint pale gleam, then lost its light again. Gabriel had seen it

do this before. Sometimes, if you were going to get it to make any

light, you had to hold it for a while. He picked the luckstone up,

held it in his fist, leaned back against the wall, and closed his

eyes, trying hard to relax.

It was hard, for the loneliness seemed palpable tonight, the

darkness closing in around Gabriel, shutting everything away. Here he

sat, outside a prison cell on a world that no one knew … far

from civilization, far from life as Gabriel knew it, light-years away

from help or any friendly voice. This little local darkness suddenly

seemed more like the darkness of drivespace— silent,

featureless, utterly isolated.

Gabriel sighed, looked down at the luckstone in his hands. It was

beginning to shine through his fingers. He put it down beside him on

the ground, where it sat glowing quietly, like a coal burnt down low.

Even with this slight light, the guard was hardly more than a dark

shape looking at him, and the faint glint of eyes catching the

luckstone’s light. Gabriel folded his arms and leaned against the

door, trying to think of a way out of this problem. He could find

none, and he was tired. Hungry, too … but he had no real

appetite, and wasn’t willing to eat any of the small supply of ration

bars he was carrying. Enda might need them.

Nothing more’s going to happen tonight, Gabriel thought. I should

try to rest if I can. If anyone comes near me, I’ll hear it, but for

the meantime ….

*

… darkness. It was hardly even surprising any more. He

stood waiting for the fire, for that made the darkness bearable.

Additionally, Gabriel was beginning to wait for that other presence.

Fighting together was better than being alone in the dark, even if

you had no idea who the other was. Well? he shouted. Is it

going to be the same again this time? Let’s begin!

No answer came, but he heard something through the darkness that

he had heard before and disliked: a low, soft hiss at the edge of

hearing. It always suggested that it might start to get louder, and

the more one listened to it, the more the fear grew. It was louder

than usual, and in the darkness Gabriel turned, trying to work out

from which direction it came.

It was hard to tell. Abruptly, though, that other who could not be

seen in the darkness was with him. Together they turned to face the

sound.

It has always been there, said the other. Even with the

fire, we may not be able to burn it away. If we try—

Something in that darkness touched Gabriel. He knew it to be his

companion and did not fear. Fire burst out and burnt him, the fire

that had been their shared weapon. In the darkness, Gabriel screamed—

— started awake, and looked around him. He still sat in

darkness, but it was the normal kind. A faint gleam of light off to

one side was the luckstone. He breathed out. Also near the stone,

looking down at him, were his guard and the scout.

The scout crouched down beside him, looked at the stone, then up

at Gabriel. He held out his hand to the stone, then to Gabriel,

almost touching his chest, but not quite.

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “Yes, it’s mine.” He

picked the stone up.

The scout looked at it, eyes wide. Fear? Awe? Surprise?

“Here,” Gabriel said. “It’s nothing to be afraid

of.”

He held out the hand with the stone in it. The scout shrank back a

little … then reached out his own hand, palm up, tentative.

Gabriel put the stone into the two-thumbed hand. Just for a fraction

of a second, they were both touching it at once … and Gabriel

found out how long a fraction of a second could be.

*

He was born out of darkness into light.

A world of blurred images and warmth surrounded him. He grew into

language and understanding of the imagery around him: the houses, the

hills, the sense of community. That was perhaps the most important

thing for his people, their oneness.

Years passed as he grew into that community. He learned to hunt

and to shoot. Community helped him to understand his people’s wisdom,

the way they managed their world. He lived through the years of hard

snow, when nearly everyone starved through the winter. He lived

through the death of his father, and his elevation to his father’s

position in the little community by the Downfall. His mating and his

widowing, terrible as that was, both of those he lived again. Then

came his part in the meeting with the Others, that awful time when

the people discovered that they were not alone, and that the universe

beyond their world was intrinsically evil, a place of pain and

terror, and of singleness, loneliness, community not only unknown but

hated. He relived his assumption with many others of the role of

guardian, secret and covert as that had to be, lest the Others

discover the treachery. Then came something worse still, the invasion

the Others had warned of— first rumors of strange beings

passing by the world, and then the actuality of it and their awful

shapes, reminding everyone who saw them of the Others, whom so many

had tried to forget.

It all came in scraps of memory. To part of him they were

familiar. To the one suddenly in community with him, they were

terror— content without context, strange faces, an eternity

trapped in a body of the wrong shape, thinking thoughts shaped by the

strangeness of that body and brain. No individuality, no privacy, but

a low underlying undercurrent of others sharing your thoughts and

never letting you alone. But there was something fascinating about

this, a fulfillment of an old dream, not to be alone any more. There

was something else going on here, something hidden, something lost—

what is that? No, what are you doing?— something

important, buried too securely for even those holding the secret to

know, buried for their own good. Messengers carrying a secret even

the messenger did not know. But it could not stay hidden for long, it

was part of the fire, it would burst out—

No!

Don’t be afraid—

No!

All right. All right, let it be.

A measure of calm, then, a sense of community restoring itself.

Strange, to look at the world through such awful isolation, but it

was better than being trapped in the darkness again alone. The core

of light shone between them— the Messenger!—

dimmed out—

*

— and Gabriel sat there gasping, staring into the shocked

and panting face of the scout.

“What happened? ” Gabriel said when he got his

breath back.

Somehow it didn’t surprise him when the scout said, in a soft

growl, “Nendhwe rraim nte’ithsaournte— !” and

what Gabriel heard at the same time was, “Not just ourselves in my mind— !”

Then the scout gasped and dropped the glowing luckstone on the

floor between them.

Gabriel swallowed. There had been no way to understand this about

the edanweir, no way to tell just by looking at them. They were a

people psionic in small groups, their “community” operating

best that way. They did not live in cities because they could not

bear to. Increased numbers diluted the essence of their community.

They were wise enough to have elected not to go down that road. They

were most psionic in pairs— as Gabriel now knew.

He still didn’t know the other’s name, but then how often do I

think about my own name? I don’t need to. I know who I am.

Or I thought I did …

He touched his chest and said, “Gabriel. That’s my name.”

“Tlelai,” said the scout. It was a soft half-growl, but

Gabriel also heard it as a word in a strange language, and at the

same time as a word in Standard, the Standard word much clearer to

him. “My calling.”

They looked at each other, both still breathing hard.

“Did you do that?” Gabriel said. “Did you make that

happen?”

Tlelai’s tail thrashed furiously. “Thought you did.”

“Not me.”

“You can hear me …”

“I hear strange noises,” Tlelai said, “and proper

words. Both together, but the words are louder.”

They both looked at the stone.

“What is that?” Gabriel asked Tlelai.

Tlelai’s tail thrashed again. “It might be from the

mountains. Things like that come from there, they say.”

Gabriel picked the stone. It glowed softly. “Did it hurt

you?”

“It did not hurt my hand,” said Tlelai, his tail

becoming still. He looked at Gabriel, and suddenly the expression was

completely readable. Fear and wonder, well mixed … but the

fear predominated.

“You are alone,” Tlelai said, in the same tone of voice

in which a person might say to someone, You are dying.

“It’s not a problem,” Gabriel said.

Tlelai looked at him incredulously. “Look, never mind, just

listen to me first,” Gabriel said, afraid that this

rapport would vanish as suddenly as it had come. “We did not come here to do you any harm. We didn’t even know you were here. We

are explorers.”

The brown eyes flashed. “You come from out of the world,”

Tlelai said.

“That’s right.”

“So have others,” said Tlelai, and the fear was

profound.

Gabriel rubbed his face with his hands, hardly knowing where to

begin. “I saw something about that. Will you tell me more? I

need to understand.”

“I’ll tell,” Tlelai said, “or others will. If you

tell me why you came.”

Oh, God … for there was another explanation that

could be started in any number of places. “We heard there was a

planet here. We came to see if that was true.”

Tlelai hissed, and Gabriel clearly heard laughter, the sound of

merriment in a heart. “Well, where else would the world be?

Though … forgive me. Yours is elsewhere.”

“A long way off.” Gabriel looked at the stone, and back

to Tlelai. “Do your people talk like this?”

Tlelai looked at him in confusion. “With stones? No.”

“I mean, I couldn’t understand you before. Now I can, and I

see some things— that you see, or saw—”

Real confusion now. “Where else is understanding, if not

shared? How else do people see, if not by comparison?”

Gabriel was on the brink of understanding, but too much was

happening at once. “Let’s talk about this later. I’m confused.

For now, won’t you let Enda out of there?”

“Enda?”

“My friend.”

Tlelai’s eyes went wide, but it was a gesture of anger. “She

made mewesh. That’s not permitted!”

“What’s mewesh?”

Now Tlelai looked perplexed. “I cannot explain it. Others

will have to do that, the advisers. We’ve sent for them.”

“Makes sense,” Gabriel said. “I could use some

advice myself. What about Enda?”

“She must stay here.”

“Then so will I,” Gabriel said. He leaned wearily

against the larder door.

Tlelai was silent a moment. “Why did she do that?” he

said, very softly.

“Mindwalk? To try to talk to you, only that. She would never

have willingly hurt you.”

Tlelai’s tail lashed, and now Gabriel knew that this particular

gesture meant “no.” “We know otherwise. Others …

have done differently.”

“She’s not Others,” said Gabriel. “The ones you’ve

sent for— they’re more edanweir?”

“Yes. They’ll come in the morning.”

“Advisers—”

“They specialize in history,” said Tlelai, “and the

implementation of history.”

Gabriel grinned mirthlessly. There were a lot of ways that last

statement could be taken. The local edanweir might have sent for

someone from their government, the police possibly … or the

executioners.

“I will gladly answer your people’s questions about us,”

said Gabriel. “We both will, but I have questions to ask you

too. Once that’s done, we’ll go away and never bother you again, if

that’s what you want.”

“You really mean that,” said Tlelai. He looked

astonished.

“I wouldn’t lie to you.” Gabriel looked at the

luckstone, and added, “I think maybe I can’t lie to you.

I seem to have been dragged into ‘community’, with you anyway. Tell

me something. Have you been dreaming strange dreams?”

Tlelai held very still. “For a while now. Yes.”

“When did it start?”

“Months ago. Five, perhaps six.”

“Darkness,” Gabriel said, “and light.”

“Light that burns,” said Tlelai. “Great fear, but

also excitement, again and again, and a little more each time.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “I thought I was the only

one.”

“I don’t understand it,” Tlelai said. “I don’t

understand how you can come from elsewhere and be like us. The Others

were not.” He was shaking now, and the fur stood out on him as

if he was cold. “Everything is changing. Nothing is the way it

used to be.”

“Tell me about it, brother,” Gabriel said softly.

“Listen. Go get some sleep. I will too. When the advisers come

in the morning, we’ll talk again, assuming we still can.”

“Once you are in community,” said Tlelai, “there is

no coming out again until you die.”

“A good reason not to overdo it,” said Gabriel, and

shivered. He had had enough strangeness for one day.

Tlelai got up and rubbed his face, a gesture so familiar that

Gabriel could have laughed, except it might have come out as a sob.

Then Tlelai did something that Gabriel had seen other edanweir do to

each other on meeting and parting. He gave a small bow, with one arm

reaching toward the ground and the other hand held in front of his

face, covering his mouth.

Gabriel did not get up, but he recognized the gesture— to

keep your breath from your brother’s face, because you shared enough

with him already, and to show him what your tail was doing, if he

didn’t know. Gabriel, sitting there against the larder door, covered

his own mouth, bowed a little, and then grinned, leaned back, and put

his arm up behind his shoulder, crooking the hand over his shoulder

and wiggling the fingers, mimicking the tail he didn’t have.

Hissing, Tlelai went down the hall. To the guard he said, “Don’t

trouble them tonight. They’ll do no harm.” He walked away into

the faint light of the longhall, leaving Gabriel wondering whether,

despite the apparent improvement of relations, he and Enda were going

to get out of this alive.

Chapter Fifteen

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HIS SLEEP THAT night was mercifully dreamless. Gabriel did not

sleep long, though, because the events of the previous evening had

left him too strained and excited for his sleep to last long. He was

also worried about Enda and wanted to talk to her.

She woke a short time after he did, when first light started to

come in through the high-screened windows. Gabriel spent nearly an

hour trying to express to her, with uncertain success, what a second

or three of community with Tlelai had told him. The experience was

rather like a dream, and some of the imagery had already faded.

“Someone’s been here, though.”

“Yes,” said Enda. “Angela.”

“Believe me, whoever they saw, it wasn’t Angela. It wasn’t

anyone human, or any other species we know … I don’t think.”

“Who was it?”

“The harder I try,” Gabriel said, “the less the

memory responds. I’m going to have some questions for their

‘advisers’ this morning.”

“Are these judges,” Enda asked, “or religious

leaders?”

“I’m not too sure about that,” Gabriel said. “This

‘community’ thing is easier to understand and discuss while it’s

actually happening. This much I can tell you: I couldn’t understand

the guard this morning. I think maybe I won’t be able to understand

anyone without Tlelai around. These people are definitely psionic,

though whether it’s like the kind of psi we’re familiar with, I don’t

have the experience to say.”

“It sounds like you soon may,” Enda said, looking

thoughtfully at Gabriel through the metal mesh of the window in the

door.

“I hope so,” Gabriel muttered, “because I may need

something like that to get you out. These people are furious with

you. I don’t know for sure that they’re going to try to kill you, but

I don’t know that they aren’t going to either. I wasn’t able

to get any clarification on why what Tlelai and I did was different

from what you tried.”

Enda bowed her head. “We may find out soon enough.” She

looked up again. “Do you hear that?”

Gabriel paused and listened. A low soft buzz was approaching. “Now

what in the world makes that kind of sound?”

Enda blinked. ” ‘While it is dangerous to generalize

…’ “

Gabriel’s grin was painful. “Please. Enda, I hate to leave

you by yourself—”

“They will not kill me without warning; that at least seems

plain. Go do what needs to be done.”

Gabriel hurried out of the longhouse. Outside quite a few edanweir

stood around in the common area around the houses— more, in

fact, than he had seen in the whole settlement at any one time since

he came. They all looked up into the sky, toward the source of the

buzzing noise. Gabriel followed their gaze … and saw the

airship coming in to land.

Gabriel stood there with his mouth open in astonishment and didn’t

care who might see it or misinterpret the gesture. The twenty-meter

cylindrical exterior tapered down to points at the ends, and seemed

to be made of tanned hides sewn together, but Gabriel suspected there

was either an inner liner or some substance painted over the inside

to make everything airtight. The buzz came from a pair of motors on

each side that drove two propellers each. There were ailerons on the

sides, a large rudder on the back, and another on the tail. A fairly

roomy gondola hung on the bottom, one which Gabriel reckoned might

hold eight edanweir. The craft was a beautiful bronzy color in the

morning sun, possibly because of the lacquer the edanweir had used on

the exterior.

Gas extraction technology, Gabriel thought, probably electrolysis—

and by derivation from that, electroplating. Maybe metal brazing as

well. He wondered what ran the engines that drove the propellers.

Depending what gas was inside the buoyancy capsule, he would have

been chary of electricity or a chemical propellant, but there was no

way to tell what these people might have come up with. They were

ingenious.

Some of the edanweir ran forward to help tie the airship down.

Suddenly Gabriel understood the rough circle of large rocks he had

seen off to one side of the settlement the other day. Catches came

loose, probably in response to a single control released from inside

the gondola, and ropes dropped from the sides of the airship. The

edanweir grabbed them and made them fast to the rocks, pulling the

gondola almost down to ground level.

A hatch opened in the side of the gondola, and a party of five

edanweir came out. Tlelai and some of his people went to greet them,

and after a moment’s conversation they turned and made their way

toward the longhouse where Gabriel was standing.

Gabriel made the bow that Tlelai had shown him, not just for

courtesy’s sake, either, but from the feeling that this group,

especially the one who led it, deserved it. Looking at the edanwe,

whose fur was darkening round the muzzle and whose eyes were filmed,

Gabriel got the same kind of sense that he used to get from the

ambassador— a sense of patience, thoughtfulness, thoroughness,

and authority. These were not people with whom you would trifle,

whether or not they could have your partner killed.

The eldest one, the edanwe with the dark muzzle, looked closely at

Gabriel. He was perhaps the most plainly dressed edanwe Gabriel had

seen so far. Most of them seemed to favor complex weaves and bright

colors in the vests they wore. This one wore a plain red-brown vest

of supple leather that matched his fur.

“Things have changed since you and I last spoke,” said

Tlelai to the eldest edanwe. “We and our guests still do not

understand each other completely, but there have been some

improvements.”

Gabriel was filled with relief that he could still understand

Tlelai. To the eldest edanwe, he said, “Honorable one, I greet

you. My friend and I apologize for troubling your people through

ignorance. We have much to say to you, many questions to ask, and

many to answer, if what Tlelai tells me is true.”

“Stranger-in-community,” said the eldest edanwe, “we

greet you also. You seem very unlike other visitors we have had from

out of the world. We will see exactly how deep that unlikeness goes.”

He walked toward the longhouse. The other edanweir followed him,

and Gabriel and Tlelai brought up the rear.

*

The next three or four hours were a nightmare, if an interesting

one. Gabriel had hoped to start asking the edanweir questions about

themselves right away, but this did not happen. The first half hour

or so was spent getting the group seated on the cushions near the

fire, serving them water, and distributing small plates of dried meat

slices for them. All the initial conversation had to do with

“community” matters. Gabriel discovered that this village

was a temporary settlement, strictly seasonal. Come the winter, these

people would be moving either to the very center of the equatorial

area or underground.

When conversation turned to Gabriel, he was rather caught off

guard. “Where is your own community?” said the eldest

edanwe, who had not been formally named when they sat down, though

all the others had. “Not your companion with whom you travel,

but your bloodkin?”

This required an explanation about the planet Bluefall, which then

was skillfully diverted into a discussion of human family structure

and relationships. This led into a rather difficult explanation as to

why Gabriel had not taken his father into the marines with him, who

the marines were, where they lived, what they did …

Gabriel realized that he was being expertly pumped. He briefly

considered trying to stonewall, then thought, there’s no point. The

only thing that’s going to do any of us any good is the truth.

He answered every question they asked him, biding his time until

he would be able to ask them questions of his own.

Gabriel kept his hand on the luckstone because there were times

when the fringes of the discussion started to dissolve into growling

or more structured edanweir speech without “translation,”

and the contact seemed to prevent this problem. The other problem

Gabriel kept stumbling over was that there were words that even his

“community” with Tlelai did not help him translate. He

would sit puzzling at their meanings for long periods, until some

other question jarred him out of his reflection.

After about an hour and a half of incessant questioning, silence

fell. The eldest looked at Gabriel with amusement. “Whatever

they teach you in your worlds, patience is part of it. Ask us what

you like, and let us learn from you that way as well.”

Gabriel smiled. “How long have your people been on this

planet?”

“Since we have been a people,” said the eldest. “Some

thousands of years, certainly. This has always been our home.”

“Who else has this world been home to?” Gabriel said.

The eldest threw him a sharp look. “There have been some who

sought to claim it. We do not speak of them.”

“If you mean the Others,” said Gabriel, “they are

not the ones I mean. There are buildings here that do not look like

yours.”

A profound silence fell among the edanweir. Some looked at the

eldest.

His tail was twitching, a reflective gesture. “They are very

old. We do not know who made them.”

“Have you tried to discover that?”

The eldest edanwe’s tail swung in the broad arc they used for

“no,” and he said, “Some have gone that way. They did

not come back.”

Gabriel nodded and said, “Are your people scattered so widely

in this world strictly because of the weather? Because it is hard for

many to live together when resources are strained?”

The eldest looked perplexed. “We live as we do because

community does not survive if it is not separated.”

Gabriel tried to work that one out.

“In the ancient days, our people tried living together,”

said the eldest, “in great groups of houses, but community

faded, and only language was left. It was not enough. We grew to hate

one another.” He shuddered. “That was a terrible time. Many

died. When it was over, we went back to living scattered, each group

alone … with each group rejoicing in the presence of another

when their paths chanced to cross. Each meeting is intended rather

than accidental. Each shared joy is real rather than forced. We

cannot live any other way.”

This was hard for Gabriel to understand, coming as he did from a

culture in which the word for the “right kind of living”

came to mean “someone who lives in a city.” Still, he

wondered if perhaps his own kind had missed something somewhere along

the line.

“So others are not a matter of fear for you,” Gabriel

said. “You do not fear the stranger, but Others, the Others—”

The tension in the little circle became thick. “You have been

plain with us,” said the eldest. “We must do the same with

you.”

He stopped, as if looking for where to begin. “Death is no

stranger to our people. We are not immortal. Only once, in that

terrible time when we tried to live together in crowds, did we ever

experience murder. For thousands of years after that time was over,

we did not know it again … until the Others came.”

The eldest clenched his hands together. “Our lives until then

had not been without trouble. Bad winters, death from wild beasts or

from accidents in making and building, we had all those. Still, our

world was good. We learned about the sky above us, the worlds around.

We came to know that this world, this planet, was not everything,

that we went around our star. That was a wonder. Some among us said

that our sun was just one more like the many stars. That was a wonder

too, but then, from those other stars, they came.”

He trailed off, like someone very unwilling to speak a word, lest

the reality behind it manifest itself. “They were death,”

the eldest said. “We did not recognize them as such, as first.

The creatures who came seemed strange, but don’t we at first seem

strange to one another when we meet? When these strangers came, with

shapes that were strange as well as personalities that differed, we

were frightened. We thought we should work to overcome those fears.”

He breathed out a few times, looking into the fire. “They

spoke fair at first,” he said. “They said they had

knowledge to bring and gifts to give, and we should share in those

gifts. Well, how would it be otherwise? We would treat them the same

way ourselves. Many of us said that though these creatures looked

strange, they were the working of the Powers among us, and they

should be made welcome. They did give us some gifts. Wireless

transmission, they gave us that technology, the heatstones, other

things, but slowly some began to wonder at the behavior of the new

people. From the New Ones came stories of how there were other forces

out among the stars from which they came, forces that were not

‘friendly.’ ” Gabriel heard the hesitation. There had been

no word in this language for ‘unfriendly’ until recently.

“They warned us of what those creatures would do if they came

here,” said the Eldest. “Take our homes, drive us out of

them, make us ‘slaves.’ We did not know what those were at first.

After a time we found out.”

“Did they make you slaves?” Gabriel whispered.

His tail twitched. “They showed us slaves they had made

earlier,” he said. “These had been other kinds of creatures

once. Like you, like her, but they were dead. They said, these were

creatures from the stars who had fought with them. Their breath had

been taken. Though dead, they lived and would serve these creatures

forever. If any of us saw these other creatures from the stars or had

dealings with them, we too would be, made like those slaves.

‘Harvested.’ Taken away to serve them forever, in hatred and pain and

eternal death.”

Gabriel gulped. “That kind of creature,” he said, “I

have seen.”

“Then it is true what they said, that you make them.”

The growl started.

“No!” Gabriel shouted. Heads turned all around.

“No,” Gabriel said more gently. “We do not make

them. I hate them more than anything.” He turned his face away,

trying to get a little control of himself.

There was silence for a while.

Gabriel clutched the luckstone, feeling for the connection.

After a while it came again, that thin thread of communication

between two kinds of mind stretched taut by the strain of what they

discussed.

“These things have been seen among our worlds too,”

Gabriel said, when he was sure they could understand him again. “None

of our people know who makes them. They come to kill. They attack

worlds that have no defense. Enda and I have fought them.”

“She has fought them?” Tlelai said, incredulous.

Gabriel was starting to find this annoying. “I don’t know

everything these creatures have told you,” Gabriel said, “but

fraal aren’t evil, or no more than the normal run of people. Her kind

and mine have roamed the stars together for centuries. They knew us

for a long time and did us no harm. Now we work together. Enda is my

friend and would hurt no one.”

“But she made mewesh” one of the other edanwe

growled.

Gabriel could have sworn with frustration. The luckstone was a

marvel, but there were still terms it seemed powerless to translate.

“You do not know what it means,” said the Eldest. “Let

me tell you in what other way they explained slavery. They came into

the community of our minds without being invited. The heart of

community is invitation. There is no other way in which it is

established. The Powers invited the elements of the world into

community with them at the beginning of things. That is how life came

to be. Consent. The Others walked into our minds and dwelt

there without consent and could not be removed. They learned our

secrets, our loves and our lives. They made mewesh in our

minds, the defilement. They forced our people to see the world the

way they saw it, to desire what they desired. What they

desired was horror, death. Those who could do that, the Others took

away with them. Those who could not bear the mewesh, the

unwanted presence of the Others in their minds, died horribly, in

madness, in pain. All those who were in community with those who

died, they died too. The Others made community itself, the quality

that makes us people— they made that fatal, a vile

thing. We could not stop them. They had weapons of which we had never

dreamed. They went where they pleased and took what they pleased.”

“Until they left,” Gabriel said.

“They left because they found us useless,” said the

Eldest. “Oh, they threatened us first. They told us that if any

others came to this world, we must tell them nothing of the ones who

had been here before. They said that they would watch us to make sure

we did not betray the secret, and then they went away, but the fear

did not.”

Gabriel knew plenty about the little spherical craft and their

inhabitants, but this was the first time he had ever heard any breath

of an explanation of where they came from. It frightened him. The

possibility occurred to him that those who had heard explanations, of

whatever kind, probably tended to die of them.

“You are courageous to tell us this,” Gabriel said.

“We tell you this freely because it may not matter.”

Because they are thinking of killing us anyway, Gabriel thought.

“When you and your companion came,” said the Eldest, “we

were frightened, but some among us said that you might not be like

the Others. If you were … how could we stop you? So we

watched. You came forth from your ship and seemed harmless enough.”

“Except for the infernal machine,” said Tlelai.

Gabriel covered his face with his hands. “Oh, please. I will

smash the machine myself at the first opportunity. We did not realize

that it was malfunctioning. It was supposed to help us learn to speak

your language, and you ours.”

There was some subdued hissing at that. “Well enough,”

said the Eldest. “So we did not trust you at first. Your

companion looked somewhat like one of the Others. Some thought she

was a messenger sent to spy on us. She showed no signs of this, and

we began to think perhaps you were people, if strange ones.”

The Eldest growled softly. “But then she made mewesh,

and this we will not allow.”

“She meant no harm!” Gabriel said.

“What else could she have meant but harm?” the

Eldest said harshly. “There is no good use of those abilities.

They are all about power, force, and slavery, no other use.”

“You’re wrong,” Gabriel said. “In the worlds

outside, there are many good uses for mindwalking. Don’t ask me for

details; I’m not expert in it.”

The Eldest started to open his mouth, and Gabriel was sure he

could hear what was coming. He was not up for it. “Now you

listen to me,” he said. “I am not leaving here without

Enda, no matter what you think. She’s my friend. If you try to stop

us when we leave, I’ll fight you, and very many of you will not get

up afterwards. That will make me sad, but it’s what will happen.”

There was silence for a while after that. “You are a

fighter,” the Eldest said. He meant ‘soldier,’ but their

language had no word for it, and even the concept was no more than a

hint.

“Yes. That was my job.”

“Why did you fight?”

Suddenly in memory it was dark around Gabriel, and only one

distant light burned in that darkness. To protect the Concord and

the peace of her peoples against all threats overt and covert, public

and private—

“To defend those who could not,” Gabriel said. “The

children, the old ones, the people who only wanted to live and be let

alone. To stop those who would take their homes and their lives from

them.”

“You would do that for her?”

“She saved me,” Gabriel said. “I could have died. I

would have been alone and friendless, without community.” He

looked very hard at the Eldest. “We have been a little community

together. With some others, but mostly, she and I. So I am not going

to let anything happen to her.”

Silence fell.

“I just wish I had tried this before Enda did what she did,”

Gabriel said, turning the luckstone over morosely in his hands. “We

might have avoided all this. We only wanted to talk to you, and none

of the things we knew how to do were working. It was my idea.”

He looked at the Eldest again. “You should be blaming me,

because I talked her into it.”

One of the edanwe sitting with them now looked at the luckstone

and said, “The Others from the stars … when they came,

they questioned us as to whether we knew of such things in our world.

Strange things, old things, that behaved oddly.”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “What did you tell them?”

The Eldest wrinkled his lips back, showing the fangs. “Nothing.

We may live in community and be a trusting and innocent people, but

we are hardly stupid.”

Gabriel looked up sharply.

“They were seeking everywhere for things of power,” the

Eldest said. “Mighty objects that could move great weights, work

wonders that we could not understand … or so they told us.”

He looked amused. “When they went away, they promised us great

rewards if we could find such things for them when they came again.

As if we would do anything for them, after what they did to us! As if

we cared to seek out such things, which can have no good use if they desire them.”

“Are you sure? What about this?” Gabriel held out

the luckstone. “Because of this, your kind and mine can speak

together. Isn’t that a good use?”

They looked at the stone.

“Only the simplest things have only a single use,”

Gabriel said, “and more than one use can make for problems. I

hear people dream, now!” The sound of Gabriel’s anger took his

hosts by surprise. They shrank back a little, as if he were armed,

not they. “I hear him dream!” Tlelai bowed his head.

“And I don’t know how to stop,” Gabriel said, more

sadly. “The stone’s use is a good one, but I don’t know what I

am any more.”

“Laidanhu,” said one of the edanweir softly. The

others stirred a little, looked at Gabriel.

Just what I need— another word that won’t translate. “I

don’t mind hearing and understanding you, or being in community, a

little, but I didn’t need your dreams,” Gabriel said softly. “I

have enough trouble with my own. Here’s another part of my life I

can’t go back to … the normal part, where I could sleep

without fear.”

“Lose that then,” said one of them, pointing to the

stone.

“I can’t,” said Gabriel, “not without understanding

it better. Not without knowing what it’s doing to me.”

He paused. “You know something about that, I think,”

Gabriel said. “Fine. Maybe you’re shy of telling me. It can

wait, but meantime, I think my people can help you.”

“We do not want more aliens here!” said the Eldest. “If

the Others send the spies they promised, they will believe we have

betrayed them. They will start taking our people and killing them.

That would be bad enough, but they will not stay dead afterwards. If

killing you is the price we must pay to keep them from doing

that to us …”

Gabriel swallowed. Here came the gamble.

“It is possible,” he said, “that it’s already too

late.”

The edanweir stared.

“We may have been followed here,” Gabriel said. “There

is the possibility that some of those who follow”— he was

shocked as he said it, for this particular possibility had not

occurred to him until now—“may have told the Others where

we’ve gone. If that’s true, they may already be on their way here.”

The growling that went up from the group around him now was truly

furious. Gabriel held himself still. All his training was screaming

that this would be a very good time to shoot his way out of there,

get Enda, run for Sunshine, and leave the planet.

Yet Gabriel didn’t move, though it was maybe the hardest thing he

had ever done. He might have damaged this world irretrievably by the

simple act of landing here. Angela Valiz, for all her fecklessness,

would have done no such damage. No one was following her, but

Gabriel had at least two intelligence services following him around.

If the power behind those little spherical ships with their undead

crews had been following him too … then he had a

responsibility to help these people.

Assuming they didn’t kill him first. The growls were getting

louder.

Two edanweir were not growling. One was Tlelai, and the other was

the eldest. He looked at Gabriel with some sorrow.

“What will you do then,” said the eldest, “if they

are coming?”

“I will stay here and help you fight,” Gabriel said.

“Fight how?” Tlelai said. “Their weapons are

greatly superior to ours.”

“You have other weapons,” Gabriel said, and held out the

luckstone, “don’t you?”

Tlelai looked perplexed, but the Eldest looked at Gabriel with a

slow and thoughtful expression, and his tail twitched.

“You are not the only one whose dreams have been strange of

late,” he said. “Does the locked room even realize that it

is locked, until someone brings the key?”

He stood up. The others stood too. “I must send for another,”

the Eldest said. “It will take a day for her to arrive. When she

comes, we’ll speak again.”

“What about my friend?” Gabriel said.

For a long time the Eldest looked at him. “Tomorrow.”

He stood up, slowly, and the others stood with him. So did

Gabriel.

“I will say this for you,” said the Eldest. “Not

one of the Others ever gave so much as a glance to the Downfall.”

Gabriel’s eyes widened. “So your people were watching us from

our very first landing, that morning.”

“The noise you made going over,” said Tlelai, “how

should we not? A whole raging herd of mhwada would have made

less noise, but we were not going to move until we saw what you did.”

Gabriel had to laugh. “I am glad to have seen those falls

before I die, and I expect my dying to be a long time from now.”

He looked the Eldest in the eye. “So we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

He made the bow he had been taught. The Eldest returned it, and

the group surrounded him and made their way to the door.

Gabriel brought up the rear with Tlelai. Just as they were coming

out of the doors, an edanwe whom Gabriel had not seen before came

running over the long ridge toward them at great speed. He came

plunging down and barreled right into the crowd of other edanweir who

were still outside admiring the airship. Some of them caught him and

stopped him from falling over.

He staggered to his feet and hurried over to the Eldest. “There

is another ship from the stars!” he cried.

“Where?” said Gabriel.

“Near yours,” said the edanwe. “We have not gone

near it. You should come.”

Gabriel looked at Tlelai, and together they took off after the

edanwe at a run.

Chapter Sixteen

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ALL THE WAY, Gabriel was cursing. Once he had been willing enough

to be followed into the middle of nowhere to bring matters with his

shadows to some kind of conclusion, but now this “nowhere”

had become somewhere, with people living in it whom he liked.

He had brought his troubles down on them.

Worse still was the idea that some unknown species, or coalition

of species, had been preying on Verge worlds. Possibly in a

coordinated way, though there was no way to be sure of that at the

moment, but the history of the lost colony at Silver Bell was no

longer inexplicable or unique.

Had the people there been given the same kind of warning that the

edanweir had? Submit. Do our bidding. Serve us alive …

or serve us dead. Had there been any warning? What the

Silver Bell colonists had done, how they responded except by that

last cry for help, no one knew. They were gone without trace, except

for the one creature, human no longer, alive no longer, that had

attacked Sunshine. Gabriel and Enda had destroyed the ship but

had saved the body, sheathed in strange armor oozing chemical slime.

They had delivered it to Delde Sota on Iphus for autopsy, which

revealed a medical chip buried in the changed and deteriorated human

tissue. That chip had been implanted into a Silver Bell colonist

years before….

There were other odd disappearances in the Verge that could

possibly be fitted into the same pattern. On Bluefall, Gabriel’s own

world, there had been a terrible day back in July of 2452 on which

human activity there had simply ceased, and the inhabitants simply

vanished. Doors were left open, meals half eaten, and when scheduled

traders arrived in the system over the next days, everyone in a whole

world’s small but flourishing cities was simply gone. Now

Gabriel wondered, did visitors arrive that day and take a whole

world’s worth of people away?

Kharls has to find out about this, Gabriel thought, as he and the

edanweir ran up yet another hill. I think. I have to be really

careful how I send the news back, since anyone carrying it is likely

to suddenly become dead or worse.

They were only a couple of hills away, and the three edanweir

showing him and Tlelai the way had slowed and were exploiting what

cover they could find. They had begun fading further southward than

the usual path that Gabriel and Enda used on their way to Sunshine,

making their way behind one of the hill crests, in the direction of

the Downfall. Gabriel was delighted to see that the cover was a lot

better here than it had been, more scrubby.

“Up there,” Tlelai said to him.

Gabriel, glancing at him, saw that he was hardly making any sound

at all. Where were the words coming from? There was sense being

expressed through Tlelai’s particular form of psionics, but was he

speaking any edanwe words, in the sense that Gabriel

understood? Was the idea of an edanwe language itself an illusion

promoted by telepathy?

He wished he could talk to Enda about it, but that would have to

wait. Gabriel turned his attention to the way Tlelai was showing him—

along the rear of this hill crest, then up to another long ridge

reaching up toward the cliffs near the waterfall.

“Up there,” Gabriel said, “okay, then what?”

There was a flicker in the back of his mind. In a flash he saw the

way Tlelai meant to go, a way he had used to watch Gabriel and Enda a

few days back. In his mind, Gabriel suddenly saw himself and Enda

standing in the mist of the waterfall, looking up and away from the

silent watchers. Gabriel gulped. It was strange to see yourself, not

in a video image or or hologram, but in life through someone else’s

vision, peculiar but clear. That image was tinged with both fear and

fascination: strangers/aliens/harm/ wonder…

“Got it,” Gabriel said, and gulped again as the image

flashed away and he found himself looking only at the common day

around him. The other edanweir were moving away cautiously, creeping

toward the path that would take them up to the next ridge. Tlelai

went after them, and Gabriel followed.

A few minutes spent crawling along with the others restored

Gabriel’s equanimity as he started to consider what they might find.

Meanwhile, he didn’t mind the communication with Tlelai and the

others. It was certainly making his life easier. The rest, though—

the flashes of insight that weren’t his, of content for which the

context came along belatedly if at all— they felt desperately

strange.

He thought of his marine weapons instructor, not on the exercise

floor for a change, but one night in the mess after dinner. The

wise man— I know there’s no point in hoping any of you

will ever be wise— but the wise man knows there’s no

situation in which he is unarmed. The situation itself is a

weapon, if you have the sense to pick it up, turn it over in your

mind, and look at it that way. The assertive mindset can find the

‘pointy end’ of anything— a rock, a dropped word, a

passing reference …

Gabriel pushed himself down flatter, following the others’ example

as they approached the hillcrest and prepared to make their way

across slightly exposed ground. This ability, this situation, could

be a weapon, as well. He disliked the thought of it. Gabriel

preferred fighting with guns, knives— things he could touch.

Wasn’t it an irrational prejudice, preferring the physical to the

nonphysical just because it was what he was used to?

The first scout was across and had hidden himself away in a patch

of blue-green scrub deep enough for all of them easily to lie

concealed. The second squirmed up to join him, and Gabriel looked to

see how he could best manage this himself without being spotted. They

had the advantage of being smaller than he was and able to flatten

down harder. Just keep your butt down, their drill instructor

had always said, and you’ll be all right.

Gabriel crawled across, going as silently as he could even in the

neighborhood of that gigantic and growing roar … and he kept

his butt down. A few moments later, he was in the shrubbery with the

first two edanweir. They were making their way among the shrubs off

to Gabriel’s left.

He followed them, amused to find a path leading between two or

three layers of shrubs that clambered against the bank at the bottom

of the rising cliffs. He crouched down low, being very careful not to

show his head above the level of their cover.

Gabriel looked where the two edanweir were looking. One backed

away from an open spot in the shrubbery, and Gabriel carefully peered

through.

He was looking almost directly down at Sunshine from a

point about a hundred meters in front of her. He swore

appreciatively, for this hiding place had been completely hidden from

his view when they came out. In fact he had looked directly at it and

had seen nothing. The shape of the cliff made the vantage point look

inaccessible.

This was good, because down beside Sunshine was the long,

lean, well-armed ship that had killed Rae Alwhirn and had almost

blown Sunshine to Kingdom Come. It was unoccupied at the

moment, Gabriel thought, because Sunshine’s lift column was

showing the light that indicated her lift had been accessed and was

on the passenger level. This could only mean that the inner door was

unlocked as well.

The other two edanweir looked at Gabriel, waiting to see what he

would do. Tlelai came up behind him. “Who is this other?”

After that long conversation with the Eldest, Gabriel heard the

possible implication in the words. “I don’t know her personally,

but she’s already tried to kill me once. I think I may know who she

works for, though.”

“What should be done with her?”

Gabriel had a few ideas, all amusing, but none productive. “I

don’t want her running loose around the countryside, that’s for sure.

Let’s catch her and bring her back for the Eldest. I have questions I

want to ask her.” He thought a moment, then said to Tlelai, “You

do have another larder to stick her in?”

Tlelai grinned.

Gabriel undid one of his secret pockets, the seal of which was

faired into the stitching of the normal pocket. From this he fished

out the smallest pistol from Sunshine’s arms cabinet, the one

which Helm had once described as a toy, only good for picking

someone’s nose with.

“Here,” Gabriel said, handing the Nosepicker to Tlelai.

“If she thinks all you people have are rifles, this may surprise

her.”

Tlelai took the pistol carefully.

“Here’s the safety,” Gabriel said, touched it off, then

touched it on again. “This doesn’t fire bullets. It’s an energy

weapon. It throws fire.”

“That,” Tlelai said with another grin, “you and I

have done, haven’t we?”

“You know,” Gabriel said, “I believe we have.”

He looked down at the two ships again, considering.

We must not have damaged her all that badly. Interchangeable cargo

hold, I guess, and the stardrive nowhere near it, a standard enough

design. He frowned more deeply. With this timing either she came in

on her own from somewhere else, or she might actually have been

riding on Lighthouse with us, a nasty possibility.

Either way, she had to be taken out of circulation quickly. The

Eldest was annoyed enough at Gabriel’s presence and very annoyed at

Enda’s. Another offworlder would only strain matters further.

“All right,” Gabriel said “I’ll go down. Keep an

eye on things.”

He could see the faint traces of a pathway down through the shrubs

and scrubby cover toward the base of the smallest of the cliffs. As

he went, he blessed the thunder of the waterfall. No one would hear

any chance sounds with that roar behind him.

He sighed and reached into the secret pocket one more time to

remove that second holdout, Helm’s other gift, the two-“bladed”

knife. He would not open it just now, but Gabriel set the second

blade— the cellular microfilament that could cut through

durasteel— on “ready.” It would spring out of the

handle when he grabbed it. Also down in the pocket was the luckstone,

which he changed over to the pocket on the other side, to avoid

possible accidents.

Gabriel slipped out of the scrub, brushed himself off, and went

toward that second ship as warily as a man might who had suddenly

found someone else sharing his parking place. He heard the faint

click of relays from inside Sunshine. He didn’t hurry, but

went around the far side of the other ship and had a look. He started

back, taking care to be well within sight of the cliff.

He was not surprised in the slightest to suddenly find standing in

front of him a petite woman with big brown eyes, shining brown hair,

and one of the biggest, blockiest two-handed weapons he had ever

seen. The barrel of the weapon, a very impressive mass rifle, was

trained squarely on his head. She was still dressed in the Aegis

style, the kind of comfortable baggy pants and tunic that Gabriel had

given up when he went into the marines. She had discarded the

headscarf, and little bright tendrils of her hair lifted and glinted

in the breeze.

“You” Gabriel said.

“Whatever that may mean to you,” she said, “and I

doubt it’s very much— yes.”

“How did you find us here?” Gabriel said, looking up at

Sunshine as if expecting someone else to appear.

“She’s not here,” said the woman, “so don’t bother.

I’ll chase her down after I’ve dealt with you. Do you mean, how did I

find you on this planet? You should be able to guess that. Or on this

spot?” She shrugged and smiled. “Plenty of heat sources

down here, but only one that’s ship-shaped. It had to be you. I was

surprised you weren’t a little more careful, but that fits the

profile.”

Gabriel frowned. “How did you get into my ship?”

“It wasn’t difficult,” the woman said, “but then

your ship doesn’t have all that many secrets from my firm. There was

a lot of work done on it on Grith that you weren’t clever enough to

keep from happening ….you and your over-gunned friend.”

She looked around, smiling more broadly now. “You shouldn’t have

sent him away. That just made my job easier.”

“Who do you work for, then?” Gabriel asked. “Not

VoidCorp, I think. They’re usually better at covering their tracks.

No, I would say you’re Concord Intel, dedicated, if slow.”

He smiled at her as kindly as he could. Her face went hard—

he had hit correctly on that one— and Gabriel’s smile

broadened.

“What brings you here?” Gabriel said. “Not the

touristic possibilities, though I think you’ll agree they’re

considerable.”

“Shut up, Connor,” she said. “Don’t push your luck.

No one would bother to come looking if you had an accident here.”

“At least one person in the Concord would,”

Gabriel said.

Her face twitched, then set cold, and he saw her finger tightening

on the trigger. Just a little— but he had seen that gesture

before, in people who were having profound internal arguments about

whether or not to just go ahead and kill someone.

He knew he had no chance of getting that thing away from her. At

this distance, she would pound him like last Sunday’s roast fish

before he could tuck and roll. There was always the knife, but he

hadn’t rated it for throwing yet. He had no other holdouts ready

…except for the new weapon he didn’t care for, the one that

wasn’t solid and couldn’t be held in the hands.

The idea came quick and clear, but Gabriel didn’t know if he could

pull it off without touching the luckstone.

“Now, let’s not be hasty,” Gabriel said, working to

sound shaky. It wasn’t hard. Meanwhile he tried to summon up that

in-mind flicker he had felt a while ago, catching the image of their

route here from Tlelai.

Nothing.

Oh, no, come on—

Nothing happened. Her finger twitched again. The sweat popped out

all over Gabriel. His vision skewed, as if someone else was looking

through his eyes. Gabriel stood there desperately hoping this didn’t

show somehow in his own face. Tlelai, he thought, looking

carefully at the woman and what she held, and glancing over her head.

Now would be a very, very good time—

His vision unskewed. Did he get that, Gabriel thought, feeling

briefly dizzy, or have I just wasted my time?

“Don’t pass out on me, now,” the woman said.

“Uh, believe me, I won’t.”

“Good, because there are all kinds of things we need to talk

about, like how you did what you did to my ship at Terivine.”

“It wasn’t half as final as I wanted,” said Gabriel,

“but it fulfilled the needs of the moment.”

“Cute. You can tell me all about it once I’ve got you safe

inside. Get moving,” she said, and gestured with the gun.

“No,” Gabriel said. “No, I don’t think so.”

Her smile went rather grim. “Always the marine. All the more

reason for you to recognize this. Even set very low, it’s going to

cause you considerable damage … and there’s nowhere around

here to treat that kind of thing “

She is a complete idiot. At this range it wouldn’t leave anything

of me but smashed up bones and pureed tissue in a big torn bag of

skin.

“We have a very nice phymech aboard Sunshine,”

Gabriel said. “Besides that, I wouldn’t advise you to fire

anything at the moment. They wouldn’t like it.”

” ‘They’?”

He glanced over her shoulder.

She laughed. “Connor, that one’s so old it appears in cave

paintings. Now get—”

She broke off as the crack of the first gunshot went off

behind her, almost instantly followed by the emphatic thump as

it dug into the ground a half-meter behind her foot.

She whirled toward the sound of the gunfire, lifting her rifle to

aim. Gabriel didn’t waste the moment. Three strides and a jump, and

she was turning again, but too late. He kicked the gun out of her

hand. Gabriel came down half on top of her and grabbed her. They

rolled on the ground, and he twisted his head aside as her fingers

went for his eyes. A thumb hooked into his cheek, started to rip

sideways. Nasty, Gabriel thought, but certainly a recommended move.

He rolled over hard, wound up on top of her, leaned on his forearm

over her throat, pushing down hard—

The painful pulling at his face stopped, and the hand dropped

away. Gabriel opened his eyes again to see that someone’s gun barrel,

beautifully engraved with abstract half-spiral patterns, was resting

right against her head. Another rifle, equally beautiful, rested

against her neck.

Gabriel disentangled himself, pushed back and stood up, becoming

part of the group of edanweir holding weapons on her. While one of

them went off to fetch her weapon, Tlelai said, “Are all your

kind this friendly?”

“Some are a lot more so,” Gabriel said.

The edanweir were growling. The woman watched them, trying to keep

her face from showing what was going on behind it… and not

being too successful. The edanwe who had picked up her gun now

brought it back and handed it to Gabriel. He turned it over

admiringly in his hands. It was an AAMG-12 mass rifle—

expensive, high-powered, one of the very best of its kind … as

Gabriel knew well, for it was a weapon of choice for the Concord

Marines. This one bore the proof marks of a Concord armory: a

datestamp so recent there was no chance for it to have been stolen

and resold.

“Been too long since I had one of these,” Gabriel said

to Tlelai. “I’ll hang onto it, unless you want it.”

Tlelai switched his tail a very emphatic “no” and asked,

“Where did she come from?”

“She doesn’t seem very eager to tell us that. Sounded like

she thought she was going to be asking all the questions, a typical

misapprehension.”

“Would it not be simpler,” said one of the other

edanweir, “if we …” He held out his trigger finger

and made an exaggerated firing gesture.

“No,” Gabriel said. “I wouldn’t kill her right now,

anyway. She and I have things to discuss. If she doesn’t cooperate,

you can make a rug out of her later.”

Gabriel saw that she was no longer having any success at all at

keeping the fear out of her eyes.

“How are you talking to them?” she said. “What are

you going to do to me?”

“Almost certainly something less lethal than you were going

to do to me. If they let me, that is.”

There. Let her wonder for a while, but what would the

edanweir do to her? A third alien, with who knew what agenda …

“I may be able to keep them from killing you,” Gabriel

said, “but you’re going to have to answer a lot of questions. If

they, or I, get a sense you’re lying …” He made what was

intended to be an expressive skkkt sound, and a gesture of

cutting his throat.

The two edanweir who had come with Gabriel and Tlelai looked at

Gabriel with amusement, then repeated the gesture, being careful to

do it where the woman could see it. Gabriel had all he could do to

keep from laughing.

“Should we bind her before we bring her back?” said one

of the edanweir.

Gabriel sighed. “Probably. She’s won’t understand what’s

going on, and it’ll keep her from doing something stupid enough that

we’ll have to shoot her right away.”

One of the edanweir produced some thin rope, with which they tied

her wrists and hobbled her loosely enough to walk. The second one put

a slipnoose of the same kind of cord around her neck. When they were

done, Tlelai gestured at the woman, indicating that she should get

up.

“If I were you ” Gabriel said, “I wouldn’t try

these people’s patience. They’re strong for their size, and they hunt

much bigger quarry than you or me. Check out their living room when

they walk you through.”

The woman got up, glared at Gabriel, brushed herself off as well

as she could, and walked off amid her escort with something meant to

resemble angry dignity.

Gabriel, standing by Tlelai, said, “That was a bad moment.

Thanks, cousin.”

Tlelai looked at him with some bemusement. Gabriel’s heart pounded

suddenly. Oh, God, I’ve done something wrong …

“Is it not proper to call you ‘cousin’?” he said.

“I would have thought ‘brother,’ ” said Tlelai.

Gabriel smiled. “Brother let it be. I want to check my ship

and lock it up again … and I want a quick look at the outside

of hers. Let’s go see what needs to be done.”

Chapter Seventeen

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THEY MADE THEIR way back to the settlement without incident.

Gabriel had been wondering what their prisoner would make of the

airship when their little hunting party came over that last long

ridge, but when they arrived, the airship was gone. Gabriel was

relieved, though he couldn’t have said why.

He half expected to find the Eldest and the others gone when he

and Tlelai came into the longhall, but they were still there. Gabriel

was very pleased to see that Enda had been removed from the larder

and was sitting off on one side in a little nest of cushions by

herself. She was still being guarded by two nervous-looking edanweir,

but Gabriel found this much preferable to Enda being stuck in the

meat locker.

For the moment he only smiled at her and went to see the Eldest,

now standing off with his group to one side and watching the new

alien being brought in. Gabriel was becoming better at reading

expressions and was not surprised by the dismay he saw.

The Eldest lifted sorrowful eyes to him and said, “Why has

this one come? Is she also an explorer?”

“No, sir,” Gabriel said. “It’s as I warned you.

She’s come looking for me.”

“What will you do with her?”

“Until I find out more about exactly why she came, I can’t

tell you that. As soon as I know, I’ll tell you what I discover.”

Tlelai was looking at the Eldest from across the room, where he

was helping the others make the woman secure.

“Discoveries are many today,” said the Eldest. “It

seems you had weapons we did not find at first.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said.

“And you did not use them.”

“Why should I have? Besides, sir, I believe you knew I had at

least one. I think it suited you to see what I’d do with it. I doubt

I’d have had a chance to use it twice. Maybe not even once.”

The Eldest waved his tail slowly. The gesture was partly one of

reflection, partly of humor. “You are very unlike us. You have

brought us into danger, yet you don’t seek to escape that danger

yourself.”

“I couldn’t do that,” said Gabriel. “I wish none of

this trouble was happening, but…” He nodded his head at

the woman. “I’ve got to talk to her. After I’m finished, I think

perhaps she should be kept where my friend was kept. I don’t trust

her.”

“Nor do we,” said the Eldest, “and only a little

less than we would trust you, but that does not trouble you either,

does it?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Gabriel said,

“but I do understand.”

He gave the Eldest the bow of courtesy and went to sit with Enda

for a moment. “A moment of politics,” he said.

She smiled and said, “Of all the creatures wandering about

through space these days, humans and fraal are probably the most

political animals. I understand, but I also overheard enough to

appreciate what was going on. Nobility is all too rare.”

“Don’t tell me I’ve got something I don’t have,” Gabriel

growled. “I brought us here. The situation being what it is, I

may have screwed these people. Helping to clean up the mess isn’t

nobility.” He smiled grimly. “It’s just the marine tendency

to enjoy giving his surroundings a good scrub.”

Enda’s ironic smile suggested that she did not believe Gabriel in

the slightest. She raised her eyebrows, gazing over toward the other

side of the room. “So this is our brown-eyed friend?”

“Not very friendly.” Gabriel started to chuck the mass

rifle he had taken from her among the cushions, then had another

thought and held it out first to one, then the other of the two

edanweir who were guarding Enda. They shrank back and emphatically

wagged their tails “no.”

“Right,” Gabriel said, leaving the gun among the

cushions for the moment. “I wouldn’t make any fast moves toward

that, if I were you.”

“Such would not have been among my plans, I assure you.”

Gabriel sighed. “Do you have any idea why these people

are so upset about you? It’s so bizarre …”

“Gabriel, despite our ‘delicate and ethereal’ looks, I assure

you that not all my kind are angels,” Enda said. “Fraal

have at least as wide a range of behaviors as humans, and there have

been killers and rogue mindwalkers among us before now …

though not many. I would dislike the thought that someone of that

sort had been out this way, terrorizing these people. I would very much dislike the thought that fraal are working with these ‘Other’

creatures, whatever they may be. You said you were not getting much

in the way of imagery …”

Gabriel shook his head. “Either I’m not very good at

exploiting ‘community,’ or the Eldest is very good at controlling

what he broadcasts. Nearly all of that talk we had came out for me as

abstracts only, no images. It’s not like it is with Tlelai.”

“There is some other connection between you two,” Enda

said, “the dreams.”

“There’s that, yes.” Gabriel glanced up. “Tell me,

though. When we got here, you said to me, ‘I do not think they would

necessarily believe us’ about our coming in peace. How were you so

sure?”

She was silent for a few moments. “Gabriel, I caught some

images after our arrival that were less than reassuring. All I could

do was suggest that we might have some trouble. I had no wish to

create a self-fulfilling prophecy concerning something about which I

might have been completely wrong. I was uneasy, and it seemed

dishonest to keep it from you “

Gabriel nodded and looked back toward the Eldest. “They may

still kill both of us. Community or not, they have too much to lose

if we’re not who and what we say we are, and her arrival

hasn’t helped.”

“Yes,” Enda said. “What will you do with her?”

“I can tell you what I’d like to do,” Gabriel said,

feeling his face. It was starting to get sore. “Though it might

surprise our hosts. I think the guns are almost entirely for hunting.

I doubt very much whether they ever use them on each other.”

Enda sighed and looked around her. “A veritable paradise.”

“Until the cold sets in, yeah,” Gabriel said.

“Apparently winter here is fairly amazing. Otherwise, I’d like

to get us all out of here before we completely ruin their impression

of what beings from our side of things are like.”

He looked over at the woman who sat amid her cushions with very

bad grace, hunched and scowling at the edanweir guarding her. It had

occurred to Gabriel that space was genuinely a lot bigger than people

thought. Isolated colonies were just that, quite hard to find even

when you knew where they were. It was also occurring to him that the

Others, whoever they were, might have spies in human space, that they

had been told, for example, where Silver Bell was. By other humans?

Gabriel shuddered at the thought of the treachery, but there were

some humans who would do anything for money, advantage, or power.

Gabriel tried to push that thought away.

It wouldn’t go. He looked over at this nameless woman and thought

of how mole-ridden intelligence organizations could become, how they

watched and infiltrated each other. If they could spy on each other,

why couldn’t these Others do the same thing? Where better to find out

exactly what your enemies knew about you, and to help misdirect them?

It was a nasty thought, and seemed all too likely. Gabriel

breathed out a long sad sigh, feeling briefly heartsick for the time

when life had been simple, when he had not distrusted everyone he

saw, or felt the need to look twice at everything to see if it really

meant what it seemed to at first glance. The age of innocence,

Gabriel thought, gone forever now.

He looked over at the woman who seemed to be from Concord

Intelligence. He was determined to tell her nothing of any

importance, no matter what she seemed to know. All the same, he had

to get some useful information out of her, and wasn’t sure how to go

about it.

Still, he was fairly comfortable in this situation, and she

wasn’t. She had no idea what he might do, which was something Gabriel

could use to his advantage.

Gabriel picked up the mass rifle again. “I would ask you to

sit in on this,” he said to Enda, standing, “but I think it

might make our hosts nervous.”

Enda shook her head. “I am quite content to sit here and

watch you work whatever miracle you have in mind.”

Gabriel checked the mass rifle again to make sure its safety was

on, then went to where the woman was sitting. He sat down across from

her, well out of reach, and put the mass rifle behind him, where he

knew he could get at it quickly.

“All right,” he said, “let’s get you sorted

out now. What’s your name?”

She glared at him.

“You know, your face is going to get stuck that way if you

keep doing that,” Gabriel said. “A shame to ruin such good

looks. At least give me a fake name, lady. I don’t want to

have to kill someone whose name I don’t know.”

The glare did not go away, but another emotion started to show

around its edges. Fear.

“Aleen Delonghi,” she said.

“Concord Intel?”

“Yes,” she said reluctantly.

“I’d like some ID.”

She looked at him as if he were out of his mind. “You think I

have it in my pocket or something?”

“Not in your pocket,” Gabriel said. “I know where

they put the chip, in a general way. I don’t have a reader with me at

the moment, but I suppose I could dig it out of you.” He reached

into his pocket and came up with his knife. He flipped its safety off

and shook out the “soft” blade, the microfilament nearly

invisible in this light.

She blanched. “There’s more overt ID in my ship,” she

said. “The combination for the side lock is 99664568.”

“You think I’m going in there?” Gabriel said. “It’s

almost certainly booby trapped. No, I’ll wait until I have leisure to

undo your security and have a nice long rummage. There are two things

most on my mind at the moment. Why have you been following me, and

why did you blow up Rae Alwhirn’s ship?”

“I’m not willing to discuss either topic in such an insecure

situation,” she said scornfully.

“You’d better get it through your head that your own position

is not very secure,” Gabriel said. “I’ve no particular

desire to kill you, but it might be safer than turning you loose to

take your chances with the edanweir. They are not in a happy mood,

and they are not a force to be discounted, even if they do look kind

of cute and cuddly. They may not shoot each other with those guns,

but we are most emphatically not ‘they.’ I’m amazed I’m not dead at the moment, and the minute I lose interest in you, you have problems, so you’d better start talking.”

She looked down at the cushions.

“There’s also the matter of your friend,” Gabriel said.

“The shadow at the back of our little fight above Rivendale.”

“You’re not making much sense.”

“The other participant in this continuing hide-and-seek

game,” Gabriel said. “Miss Blue Eyes. Is she a friend of

yours?”

“I don’t know who you mean. She’s certainly not part of my

organization.”

“I think she might be VoidCorp,” said Gabriel. “They’re

the ones who would have the biggest axe to grind with me at the

moment. The question is which of you started following me first? Or

were you perhaps following her because she was following me,

and then you lucked onto me as a result?”

DeLonghi just looked at him.

“There’s always that possibility,” Gabriel said. “Though

if you really are working for Lorand Kharls, you should know

that he has ways of knowing where I am.” Gabriel thought about

that. “That’s a possibility too … that you’re not as much

in his confidence as you think you are, that he didn’t give you

access to his own particular method of finding me.”

DeLonghi shook her head. “You’re just fishing. You won’t get

anything that way.”

“No, I suppose not,” Gabriel said. For the moment, he

folded the knife away and slipped it back in his pocket where the

luckstone was. “It’s a relief to know I’m not dealing with

anyone very senior.” She flushed. Right again, Gabriel thought.

“If you were, you either wouldn’t be here at all, or I would

never have seen you before this afternoon, but Alwhirn,” Gabriel

said, “why? Why did you kill him? He was just a nutcase,

an annoying one … but not really dangerous.”

“He was about to fire on you,” DeLonghi said.

Gabriel shot a glance over at Enda, remembering their earlier

conversation. At the same time, he was stabbed through with the

sudden certainty of a lie. Not “thinking the other person wasn’t

telling the truth,” not an intimation that a lie was happening,

but the certainty of it, as if Gabriel was doing it himself.

Just behind the image of the lie was the shadow of truth. His hand

was still on the luckstone.

“Lady,” he said, taking it out of his pocket and rolling

it absently between his hands, “there’s really no point in you

trying to hide the truth from me. One or two of these people and I

have something in common, and our partnership, brief though it’s

been, seems to promote communication. Let’s see how good it is at

promoting some with you.”

She didn’t react. “Now I’m new at this,” he said, “and

it’s entirely possible that I’ll mess up somehow and burn your brains

out, but since you won’t cooperate otherwise, I think that’s going to

be on your own head. What’s left of it.”

In a sudden surge of motion DeLonghi lurched to her feet and tried

to run. One of the edanweir standing nearby simply stuck out a foot,

almost absently, and tripped her. Down she went.

“Just because people are small,” Gabriel said, as they

helped her back to her place on the cushions and put her ungently

down again, “and you can’t understand them, don’t think they’re

weak or dumb.” He glanced over at Tlelai, who stood nearby,

keeping an eye on things. Gabriel composed himself and closed his

eyes.

Tlelai he could feel nearby, like a heat source, but he was not

Gabriel’s chief interest at the moment. There was different kind of

energy source nearby, less familiar. Spiky, resistant, strong in many

ways, but also nervous. There, Gabriel thought, and bore in and down.

The shriek scared him. Gabriel had to blink and take a moment to

compose himself, for three sets of imagery were suddenly fighting it

out in his head. One was the real world, day, the edanweir and

himself, seen from a meter or so away— again Gabriel’s gut

twisted at the oddness of seeing himself “live” through

eyes that were not his. The second set of images was of the fight

over Rivendale, a set of controls in front of him, and burning hot in

his brain— four or five thoughts struggling for primacy.

Here’s my chance. This guy could kill him— but she

was not sure— I can’t let him just fall out of here, I need

some leverage. Wouldn’t it be simpler to kill him now? “Shot

while trying to escape.” No one would know. He’s just a traitor;

I don’t see why they—

The thoughts were muddled together in a mind in turmoil. Gabriel

gulped, for his mouth was suddenly starting to water and his stomach

was giving him difficulty, but there was yet another set of images. A

huge ship, armed and armored in extremis, seen from a smaller

vessel, going by very close— and a small man, saturnine,

seemingly speaking quietly with Gabriel, though it was DeLonghi’s

point of view that was the source of the image. Gabriel smiled grimly

at the sight of Lorand Kharls.

“I see,” Gabriel said, looking up at Delonghi, who was

pale and shaking. “Sorry that hurt. I would rather not hurt you,

but there’s a whole lot more, isn’t there?” He closed his eyes

again.

“No!” she screamed.

Gabriel opened one eye. “You’re sure?”

She was white with fury and fear. “I thought he might have

fired,” she said. “That was a chance I couldn’t take. You

were too valuable for other things.”

“What things?”

“I have no idea.”

A lie, but he was reluctant to do anything further until

his stomach calmed.

“You do have ideas,” Gabriel said, “but you

don’t agree with them, do you? Kharls gave you orders, but you have

problems with them. That’s the heart of all this, isn’t it? Loyalty.”

Gabriel grinned ferally. “Now you’re thinking, ‘What right has

he to even mention the word, considering what he did?’ What you think I did. That’s the difference between us. I know I’m innocent,

and I also know what you know … a little. Now I’ll find

out a little more.”

He closed his eyes.

“We were letting you run!” Delonghi said. “To see

where you would go.”

“Kharls was letting me run, you mean,” Gabriel

said. Sick as he felt, he laughed. “Do you really think I didn’t

know it?”

She looked amazed.

“I may be a cashiered marine,” said Gabriel, “but

it’s my uniform and my pension they took away, not my brains. What

isn’t plain is why you aren’t interesting in letting me run.

Who are you really working for?”

He had the satisfaction of seeing a terror more stark than any

previous one erupt in her eyes. It was hastily sealed over again, but

it gave him the wedge he wanted at the moment.

“Quite,” Gabriel said, “but he sent you anyway. Two

possibilities, then. He was waiting for you to come around to his way

of thinking en route … or when you caught up with me

and came to understand the situation. If so, you had a narrow escape.

He would have been very annoyed if you’d killed me.”

Sweat broke out on her face. “Or he was waiting for you to

reveal your real intentions. If you did, it was careless of you to

leave living witnesses at Rivendale.” One bead of sweat began to

trickle down her face. Gabriel raised an eyebrow, watching it with

interest. “There’s a third possibility, isn’t there?”

He gave her a small grim smile. “He sent you out here for us to get rid of, a tainted asset. No one would be surprised to hear

that Gabriel Connor shot you up. Your service comes away untarnished,

and I wind up with another black spot— something else for

Kharls to hold over my head while I run around scaring things out of

the bushes for him.”

At that she looked completely blank. Gabriel filed that away for

future reference.

“I suppose I’m going to have to talk to him about all this

some day,” Gabriel said. “If that last possibility turns

out to be true, then I am going to have a bone to pick with him. He’s

judge, jury, and executioner already by right of his position as

Concord Administrator. He doesn’t need me doing his clean-up jobs for

him. Let him find a marine still in uniform. In the meantime, I want

to know why he’s having me followed, and why Concord

Intel and VoidCorp Intel are playing tag-team chase-the-Connor with

each other. One cashiered traitor isn’t reason enough to come all the

way out to the edge of the Verge. The stakes are higher. What’s

the reason?”

She glared at him again. I’m not going to get anything further

right this minute, Gabriel thought, not with my guts acting like

this. He was having to concentrate on breathing slowly and deeply,

and he wasn’t sure how long his composure was going to last.

“We’ll talk later,” Gabriel said, “and that’s going

to be the last time we talk, Aleen Delonghi. If you don’t tell me

then what I want to know, you’d better make a note somewhere of what

you want put on your gravestone, because if I don’t kill you

accidentally in getting the information out, I will kill you

on purpose after we’re done. Not to do Lorand Kharls a favor either,

just consider it natural selection. I’ll be helping the universe make

sure that the next Intel officer to come along is smarter.”

Gabriel turned toward Tlelai. “Would you stick her in the

larder, brother?” he said. “I’ll talk to her again in a

couple of hours.”

“Shall we feed her?”

Gabriel thought about that. He hadn’t yet checked any of the

edanweir food for compatibility, and he didn’t want to kill Delonghi

by accident. Then his stomach twisted inside him at just the thought of food.

“No, let it wait for the moment,” Gabriel said. He

jumped up, grabbed the mass rifle, and hurried outside.

Chapter Eighteen

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ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES later he came back in and went to sit with

Enda. Her expression was rather curious.

“I threw up,” Gabriel said.

Enda looked at him with some compunction. “It is not easy

work,” she said, “mindwalking.”

“That’s not what I was doing. Otherwise the edanweir would

have been all over me. This was something else, wasn’t it?”

“That would be hard for me to say.”

Gabriel sat and rubbed his eyes wearily while considering that

phrasing. Enda could be very precise in her use of language

sometimes.

“Minds have barriers for good reasons,” Enda said.

“Violating them exacts its own price. Additionally, it takes

considerable strength to keep one’s own thoughts discrete from

another’s when those barriers are removed. There is always a danger

of everything suddenly running together in uncontrolled fusion. Even

between members of the same species, such fusions can cause madness.

Between species …” Enda shook her head. “Be

very careful, Gabriel. You are walking on uncertain ground.”

“I’ve been doing that ever since they cut me loose in that

courtroom on Phorcys,” Gabriel said. “Nothing new there.”

He looked uneasily out toward the door. “Meanwhile, I want to

get Sunshine under cover somewhere, and I want to push this

Delonghi woman’s ship off that cliff.”

“Surely not before going through it,” Enda said, “to

see what might be found.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Gabriel said, morose. “Probably

my electrolytes are just in an uproar after my guts turning

themselves inside out.”

That made Gabriel think of a chance remark of Doctor Delde Sota’s

about his electrolytes not so long ago. She had insisted that she

give him a checkup. The way his hair was going silver …

Do you need to be in its neighborhood for a certain length of

time? he wondered. Is there something that needs to happen to

activate this thing? He had no answers, and heaven only knew what

other changes were happening.

Gabriel took out the luckstone and looked at it. With no warning,

there came over him a peculiar moment of vertigo, in which the stone

was still— in which it was the only thing still. All

around it, things were being caused to move until it was in the right

position for something to happen.

Something …

He shook his head, and the illusion faded. “In any case,”

Gabriel said, “I may be able to get some results from her later.

If I don’t, she may be less trouble dead.”

Enda said nothing to that. “It is a shame Delde Sota is not

here,” she said. “She could quickly tell us everything

worth knowing about that ship without having to so much as open its

door.”

“No question of that, but the one thing we don’t need

here right now is any more aliens. The Eldest has been keeping his

ammo very dry, but I think much more pressure on him and he’s going

to act in what he sees as his people’s best interest.”

“At which point we would have to employ force to leave.”

Gabriel stared at the mass rifle. “We’d have to be quick

about it. They’re not stupid people, and I’d hate to do it. It would

ruin something special … and maybe make further good relations

with them impossible.”

Enda sighed. “Well, at least I begin to understand now why

these people were making no headway with the translation modules. I

have been watching you talk with them, and the conversations you

report have much more content than could possibly be packed into the

very few sounds they made. They do not really have a language as

such, do they? Or one with very few words. Their communal psionic

contact does most of the work.”

“I think so,” Gabriel said. “New concepts are

traded around by small groups meeting directly … and

apparently that happens a lot. I got the impression from Tlelai that

they have a lot of these airships, and when people can’t walk from

settlement to settlement, they fly where they’re going.”

He found himself wondering as he spoke whether the “island”

he had seen against the water of one of the inland lakes was in fact

an airship on its way somewhere. “It’s civilization without

cities,” Gabriel said. “I wouldn’t have thought it was

possible, but they seem to have found a way to manage it.” He

frowned. “If we don’t do something, all this is going to be

destroyed before anyone has a chance to understand it.”

*

Gabriel spoke briefly to the Eldest about finding somewhere to

hide Sunshine. The Eldest said he would look into it, and

Gabriel went for a long walk to the ship and back, wanting to stretch

his legs and get away from the image of DeLonghi’s white face,

furious, impotent, and terrified. He was going to have to see it

again at least once, and then, if she didn’t cooperate, he was going

to have to decide what to do with her. Locking her up in Sunshine was possible, but he resisted the idea. If she got loose, there would

be trouble.

When he got there, Gabriel almost didn’t go into the ship for fear

of booby trapping, but he didn’t think Delonghi had had time, and

even if she had, she struck him as too arrogant to have bothered. He

went in without trouble and fetched some more prepackaged food and

snacks for himself and Enda, along with one of the ship’s analysis

packs for alien foodstuffs— the amount of meat the edanweir

kept around the place had been making him hungry.

Having taken care to change the combination on Sunshine’s outer access, Gabriel took his time on the walk back, as the day’s

afternoon began shading into dusk. The lights were being turned up in

the longhouse when he got back and dropped off a ration pack for

Enda, and another one for Aleen DeLonghi, though this Gabriel gave to

the guard outside the larder. He didn’t yet want DeLonghi to see him.

Hungry but unwilling to settle in for the evening, he went out again

and stood in the common space outside the settlement’s houses.

Up on one of the hillsides to the west, silhouetted, he saw

someone he thought he knew. There was no visible path, but the one up

there knew the way, and Gabriel followed his thought. About twenty

minutes’ worth of hard climbing later, he was up on the westward

ridge, sitting on a stone near its crest with Tlelai, and looking

toward the sunset. One of the planet’s two moons rode the sky in a

sharp crescent.

“Your stranger,” said Tlelai, “did she help you?”

“Not much,” Gabriel said. “I want to get her out of

here as quickly as I can. I’m just not sure that she’ll cooperate.”

“What if she does not?”

“Hard choices, brother,” Gabriel said, and tucked

himself up on the rock, arms wrapped around his knees, the mass rifle

leaning against the stone.

“There have been nothing but such for us, lately,”

Tlelai said. His voice was sad. “Why us?”

“That’s the question of the month,” Gabriel said.

“What’s happening now,” Tlelai said, “would not

have been my choice. I had no desire toward the higher learnings,

toward science and art. I was a hunter. I was good at it. Life was

untroubled, if lonely. I lost my mate— you saw that, I think.”

The image did not recur, for which Gabriel was briefly thankful. “It

was a painful time, but I have been passing through it, and the pain

had been growing less. Life looked like it might be good again. Then

this happened.” Tlelai gazed away across the mountainous

terrain northward, away from the waterfall. “The sound of

strange weapons in the middle of the night, and strange creatures

killing each other.”

“You were ‘hearing’ me the way I heard you?”

Tlelai flicked his ears forward for “yes” and said,

“Thoughts I could not understand. Images that made no sense—

though they did not frighten me, because they were not unfamiliar to

you, but everything was desperately strange. When I first saw

you, I was scared but also eager, for finally someone had come who

could explain the things I was seeing.”

“It’d take a year’s worth of evenings,” Gabriel said. “I

don’t think we have them. One way or another, soon now, Enda and I

have got to leave. This Delonghi person is only the first to come

after us; others will follow. I’m sorry it’s turning out this way. It

never occurred to me that there would be people here.”

“Yet you came, and not just to this world,” Tlelai said.

“Here”

Gabriel nodded. That mystery was still much on his mind. He had

thought their coming to this part of the planet was mere chance,

Enda’s finger picking a spot on the sitting room display for its

potential scenic qualities. Now he was not so sure. That image came

back to him of everything moving, being moved, places and

events shifting configurations, while the luckstone stood still at

the middle of it all. What was actually doing the moving?

“Well,” Gabriel said, “it’s made things easier for

us two, anyway. I was going to ask you, though. Who is this person

that the Eldest sent for?”

“I know of her,” said Tlelai, “but I have never met

her. She is mahlahnwe ‘ir yaheinr.”

“I didn’t get that,” Gabriel said.

Tlelai waved his tail in slight exasperation. “I am not sure

how to explain it any more simply than that.”

“You said the Eldest was in charge of implementation of

history,” Gabriel said. “Is this lady like that?”

“Yes,” Tlelai said, “I think so, but history

backwards, not history forwards.”

Gabriel clutched his head in mock exasperation. Tlelai hissed with

laughter.

“Somehow the concept of backwards and forwards history were

slighted in my education,” Gabriel muttered. “Perhaps the

noble hunter Tlelai would stop his noise for half a second and

enlighten me.”

Tlelai stopped, looking off westward again. “Thank you so

much ” Gabriel said. “Now what the hell kind of—”

“Be quiet,” Tlelai said. His ears angled forward, then

sideways again. “Do you hear that?”

It was a high whine, a long way up. Now what? Gabriel

thought. It’s just not fair! There was no mistaking the sound of

system drives coming in, and the sound was no drive that Gabriel

recognized. A couple of the sounds, at least, spoke of engines bigger

than anyone he knew owned.

Gabriel sprang to his feet, his heart beginning to race. “Ships,”

he said. “Three, I think. I swear to space, as soon as we deal

with whoever this is, I’m going to dig Sunshine the deepest

hole you ever saw and dump her in it, and then I’m going to find a

way to chuck DeLonghi’s damned ship over the edge of that waterfall!

The things are a menace just parked out in the open like that.”

He picked up the mass rifle. “Tlelai, in the name of what little

community we’ve got, for your people’s sakes and mine, get back down

there right now and tell the Eldest to let Enda go, let her get back

to Sunshine! At worst she can get away and not trouble you any

more. At best she can get up there and help a little when the

shooting starts!”

“Shooting—”

“Brother, don’t even think about it, you wouldn’t last a

second against a ship with only those,” Gabriel said, glancing

at Tlelai’s beautiful rifle. “Though I really do want to try one

later— if we live. Go, run, hurry!”

Tlelai took off toward the settlement. Gabriel stood, waiting for

the first sight of something bearing down through the evening’s high

cloud. He started to run, too, the other way, down the far side of

the hill, away from the waterfall, away from the settlement, into

country he hadn’t seen before.

It was complete madness, but there was nothing else Gabriel could

do. Almost certainly, they had spotted Sunshine and DeLonghi’s

miserable ship. Gabriel was betting that they would find a moving

target more interesting than a sitting one, especially if it was

human, male, alone, and seemed overtly to match the description of

the man they were looking for.

Gabriel ran hard over the hill, down it and up the slope of the

next one, checking the mass rifle’s charge as he went. Full up. I

would have been nothing but a bag of blood and broken bones if she’d

fired this!

High above him, the drive notes of the ships changed, scaling

down. Definitely three of them, he thought, one smaller, two bigger,

if I’m any judge.

The sound dropped closer. One ship bloomed out of the cloud; it

was the other one that had been parked at Rivendale. Then another,

bigger ship followed with its partner. Both were long, sleek, nasty

vessels with too many guns … and both sported the black, gray,

and red VoidCorp logos on their tails.

One turned toward him. Gabriel came to the top of a hill,

shoulder-rolled down the other side, scrambled to his feet just

before hitting a big rock, and kept on going.

Plasma bolts hammered down on either side of him as the first of

the ships went over low. The stink of burning vegetation and scorched

earth filled the air as Gabriel flung himself down. His only

advantage was that these weapons weren’t suited for use against

people on terrain.

The first ship was coming about. The second and third seemed to be

heading toward the settlement. Gabriel shivered at the thought. As

the first ship finished its circle, he prepared himself, crouching in

what little cover he could find and feeling the adrenaline flush as

he had felt it before in combat. What he really wanted right now was

a mass cannon and an armored vehicle, but a mass rifle was terrific

against armor … as long as you had the range right and fired

at the right place. You just had to wait until the ship was right on

top of you and pick a spot where the armor was weakest. There was no

chance of bringing a ship down, but you could make one very unhappy.

All Gabriel could do was hope that these people had no idea he had

this weapon. It was a chance he would have to take. The ship came

around again, dived toward him, then came shallow as if trying to

hover over him and fire.

Oh, they wouldn’t, Gabriel thought. Would they? Yes!

He didn’t bother firing at the belly, which would be too well

armored. Instead, he took aim at one side pod, almost certainly an

external coolant tank.

Don’t wait for a better target, do it now!

He fired. A moment later, he saw what he wanted to see, a

white-silver spiff of vapor bursting out of the side of the pod. The

ship lurched, and Gabriel saw the other pod come around. He fired and

hit that one too.

The pod disintegrated in a deafening but surprisingly flame-free

explosion. The ship began to lift away from the ground, spiraling

slightly, breaking off the attack.

The second big ship came. Gabriel looked up into the gun ports

that were trained on him scarcely half a kilometer away. He lowered

his rifle and said goodbye to life.

And that ship blew up. The blast hammered him to the ground.

Gabriel had not registered the third scream of drive engines. The

ship producing them had outrun its sound. With a huge clap of

thunder, a narrow silvery shape came arrowing down out from the

evening sky and arced away just above the expanding cloud of falling

junk that had been the VoidCorp ship. Gabriel looked up at that shape

and swallowed.

Longshot!

She shot away, bolts from her plasma cannons hammering at the ship

that Gabriel had pinked with his mass rifle. Two big explosions

shattered the back of the ship. It came spiraling down again, harder

than any pilot would have dared. With a squeal and shout of bent and

tortured metal— though not with the characteristic crump sound Gabriel had been hoping for— the VoidCorp ship slammed

into the ground, spreading debris as it tore a trench in the earth.

Gabriel huddled down behind a slight rise in the turf. He was in

his element, though he desperately wished he had some armor less

permeable than his coverall. That third ship was still up there

somewhere, but he couldn’t think about that now— possibly

didn’t need to, for Helm was here. Gabriel concentrated on the

wrecked ship in front of him.

Come on out. Ship’s weapons won’t do any good now, even if they’re

working.

Another sound— from behind him, a rush and scuttle of feet—

and suddenly there were five or six edanweir riflers throwing

themselves down onto the blue-green bracken around him. Gabriel was

terrified for them, would have warned them off, but there was no

time.

A groan and scream of metal sounded as a lock was forced open, and

the VoidCorp ship’s little complement slowly came out firing heavy

charge rifles. Every one of them was armored and had heat-sensitive

sights.

On one side of him and the other, edanweir went down, but the

VoidCorp troops started doing the same. Their armor was good enough,

but it could not stop all the edanweir bullets, aimed with the

expertise of hunters who had to routinely hit a spot no bigger than a

few centimeters on an animal big enough to trample them. The VoidCorp

armor, like any other kind, had cracks and joints that could be

exploited.

While the edanweir continued to fire mercilessly, Gabriel

carefully picked his targets and let the mass rifle do the rest. As

far as it was concerned, ship’s armor was fair game, and personal

armor was so much tissue paper.

Shortly, nothing but smoke was moving in or around the wrecked

ship. Gabriel almost stood up, then heard engine noise again and went

flat on his face.

Two more ships. The sound combined with the low cloud had fooled

him. This one came in low, over the crashed ship. Too low, too slow!

Gabriel grinned, lifted the mass rifle, and picked his spot. The

third ship was a small ship, one he’d seen before … Miss Blue

Eyes’ ship. She couldn’t believe what had happened to the other

vessel and was coming in for a fast look. Gabriel fired, picking the

best spot on the nose, right under the pilot’s cabin.

The ship went by fifty meters above the ground, firing. Only

half-seen, mass beams stitched the ground, ripping and tossing turf

into the air, then stopped. A missile shot out from the clouds. The

ship turned and sped upward, trying to evade— but too late.

The missile struck with a blinding flash of light, and the ship

fell out of the air, still keeping some forward momentum. The craft

went down just as the thunder from the explosion reached Gabriel and

the edanweir. To Gabriel’s intense disappointment, the ship did not

burst into flames as it plowed into the ground.

Then came the other ship, firing as it headed straight down for

him. Gabriel cursed his luck for running out after such a nice run

and said goodbye to his life again.

Just as the plasma bolts began to come close enough to throw

burning turf and soil over Gabriel, Longshot swept down,

firing. Ignoring Gabriel and the edanweir, the ship broke away,

increased speed, and accelerated away. Helm chased the third ship

over in the general direction of the waterfall, then launched

something at it that Gabriel didn’t see, only heard. It screamed past

the settlement, and for a moment drowned out even the sound of the

falls.

The ship arced upward, trying to escape. The sound arced up after

it, and the resulting explosion was spectacular, a great blinding

bloom of yellow-red light. Super-heated vapor boiled up and fire

rained down into the veiling mist of the Downfall. Little chunks and

pieces tinkled down among the stones and were lost in the roar and

thunder of the water crashing into the gorge.

Something moved beside Gabriel. It was Tlelai, crawling to lie

shoulder to shoulder with him. For the moment Gabriel could only

spare him a glance as the last ship saw what had happened to the

other, spun itself rather clumsily on its yaw axis, and headed

straight up. Gabriel was confused to see Helm arrow past over the

gorge, ignoring it … and then he heard something that confused

him even more thoroughly.

Another ship! Not decelerating, either. The scream of wind

over airfoil surfaces up high told Gabriel that someone was coming in

hard and fast. A shape blossomed through cloud, silver-orange in the

early sunset, and laser beams lanced from it in blinding lines at the

VoidCorp ship.

Heading upwards still, that ship blew up. The accelerating,

burning fragments ascended gracefully for another hundred meters or

so before pausing in midair and then snowing back down to the ground

in sparkling shards and splinters that burnt briefly before they

tumbled and went out.

The attacking ship pulled out of the dive handsomely, ran off low

across the gorge, and then made a big broad turn and came back to

settle where Helm was already landing out of sight, most likely by

Sunshine. As the last ship turned and Gabriel got a better

view of the ship’s configuration, his mouth dropped open.

“Good God,” he said. “It’s Lalique.”

“What?” Tlelai said. “I didn’t understand.”

“Someone I know,” Gabriel said.

“I thought you said you knew all these people.”

“Not all personally,” Gabriel said, “but one of

these, one of the friends who came to help us, I didn’t know she was

coming.”

“The Eldest,” said Tlelai, “is not going to be

pleased.”

“He’s not the only one,” Gabriel muttered as Lalique settled out of sight. “Come on, brother, we’ve got one more

person to deal with here.”

They began to elbow their way toward the downed ship, though quite

shortly they would run out of cover.

The shape that they saw hiding behind the ship’s half-crushed

skids didn’t wait for them to come into full view. It started

shooting at them both, and the beams scorched past them with truly

unnerving accuracy. Though there was no seeing the shape’s eyes in

the last of the dusk’s light, the flashes from the lasers made it

plain that the silhouette shooting at them was that of the blue-eyed

woman.

Damn it, Gabriel thought, aggrieved. Why are all these women

trying to kill me? This isn’t fair. Marines are supposed to have all

the girls after them, sure, but not like this!

He was becoming very annoyed, for he and Tlelai were pinned down,

and he couldn’t use the mass rifle on her. He wanted to talk to her,

but one shot from the mass rifle would have ended any chance of

future conversation. Gabriel kept his head down and swore, trying to

work out what to do next.

“Brother,” Tlelai said, “does she need to be dead?”

“Am I tempted!” Gabriel said. “But no.”

“All right,” Tlelai replied. He waited a second, then

rose out from behind their cover and took aim with one swift motion.

An instant later, he fired.

Miss Blue Eyes shrieked and went down.

Tlelai looked regretful. “As you said, ‘they’ are not ‘us,’ “

he said. “All the same, it is a shame.”

They watched her for a moment, then Tlelai handed Gabriel the

little pistol Gabriel had given him, and together they cautiously

advanced. Gabriel was not sure what condition Blue Eyes might be in,

but when they got close enough to see what Tlelai had done to her,

Gabriel relaxed. She lay among several dead soldiers, her shin

shattered by Tlelai’s bullet. She had obviously fainted from the pain

and was losing a lot of blood.

It took a while to get the bleeding stopped and the wound bound.

Halfway through the process, Blue Eyes became conscious and began

cursing in a dry, furious shriek of pain and rage.

“I can’t believe this!” she yelled as Gabriel dragged

her to her feet. “I’ve been shot by a damned teddybear!”

“I should mention that they eat meat,” Gabriel said,

“and they are very universal in their tastes. They’ve had

someone from Concord Intelligence in their larder for a couple of

days now.”

She went white.

“We’ll see how you like it in there,” Gabriel

said. “Come on, Tlelai. Let’s take her back and add her to the

collection “

Chapter Nineteen

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AFTER GABRIEL AND Tlelai got back to the longhouse, the

interrogation went quickly. For one, Gabriel wanted to get over to

where the ships were to see Helm and Delde Sota as quickly as

possible, and also because he refused to let Miss Blue Eyes anywhere

near Sunshine’s phymech until she answered his questions.

“RS881 34PRM,” was all she would give of her name, and

Gabriel had to make do with that. “We came to rescue you,” RS881 34PRM said, trying to sound hurt. “Your partner

has been held in durance by these creatures—”

“Oh, come on!” Gabriel said. “Do you think I’m as

dumb as you are? You’ve been traipsing around after me since

Terivine, and I’m getting tired of it. As for being ‘rescued,’ I like

these people a lot better than I like you. They’re not going

to like you at all, but you’ll find that out soon enough.”

“It hardly matters,” RS881 34RPM muttered. “When

the reinforcements get here, the local population is not going to be

a big problem, not for long.”

The pain was certainly useful in this regard: it had pushed her

past caution. “So how long have you been up there?” Gabriel

said. “Orbiting the planet, spying everything out? Well, there’s

this consolation at least: you won’t have had time to send word back

of what you’ve found—”

RS881 34PRM laughed at him and said, “Word’s already gone

back. Not of what’s here. That can wait, but two cruisers will

be here in short order. Word went out five days ago that there was a

planet here, and you were headed for it. That was more than enough,”

she smiled sweetly, “and the reinforcements will be here any

minute now.”

Five days ago. It was not exactly the news Gabriel wanted,

but it certainty was better than not knowing. “Why me exactly?”

Gabriel asked.

RS881 34PRM laughed. “After what you’ve been up to on Grith,

after what you pulled in the Thalaassa system, what makes you think

you were going to enjoy an untroubled life? Some people decided the

universe would be better off without you. I agree with them

wholeheartedly. When you’re dead, gazump goes your exploration

contract, all perfectly legal, under salvage law.”

“I’m not dead yet,” Gabriel said.

She smiled.

“Still, it’s nice to see someone who has her mind made up,

after some of the people we’ve had through here lately. Never mind.”

He got up, looking for the Eldest, and finally saw him coming in the

main doors, looking very grave.

Gabriel went to meet him, passing Enda over on the side. “Helm

is here,” he said to her, and then said to the Eldest, “Sir,

the two remaining space vessels belong to friends of mine. They came

to help me, though I didn’t know they were going to.”

“We cannot have any more of this!” the Eldest said.

“There are too many aliens here as it is.”

“Sir, I know,” Gabriel said. “They will not trouble

you long, I promise you. May I bring my friends to meet you, briefly,

tomorrow morning?”

“Yes,” said the Eldest, “but brief it must be.

There is other business at hand.”

Gabriel glanced toward Enda. “Sir, I had hoped you might let

her go when this emergency began.”

“If matters had gone on ” said the Eldest, “I might

have done so. In the meantime, however—”

Gabriel saw that matters were going to stay as they were, and that

Enda was not yet in the clear. What am I going to have to do to get

her out of this?

“We are waiting for one more opinion, as you know,” said

the Eldest. “Ask me tomorrow.”

Gabriel bowed, and the Eldest passed inside, looking thoughtfully

at Miss Blue Eyes as he passed.

Gabriel sighed and turned to Tlelai, who had come down to stand

with him. “Tlelai,” he said, “I can’t waste any more

time with her. Would you have our cousins fetch the other one out? As

for this one …” He grinned. “Larder.”

“My pleasure, brother,” Tlelai said, and several

edanweir took hold of RS881 34PRM and pushed her down the hall. She

screamed all the way down, a sound abruptly dampened by the larder

door closing.

Shortly, other edanweir came up bringing Aleen Delonghi. “Take

her and welcome, cousin,” one of them said to Gabriel. “She

whines all day; it’s a weariness to listen to her.”

DeLonghi’s face changed significantly when she saw the look on

Gabriel’s face, and the scorched and muddied state he was in. “We’re

going back to my ship for the moment,” Gabriel said, “and

we’re going to have that talk I promised you. It won’t take long,

then we’re going to decide what to do about your ship, which

has become an attractive nuisance— as you are to a much lesser

degree— and whether or not you will actually be inside the ship

when we do it. Come on.”

He led the way, and the edanweir and Delonghi followed.

*

Gabriel came over that last hill to see Helm standing outside

Longshot and looking up in wonder at what could be seen of the

waterfall from the ships’ parking place, while Delde Sota came out of

the back lock and headed in his direction.

“Hold her here for a moment, would you, cousins?” he

said, and trotted down the hill toward him.

Helm turned as he came— and was perhaps unprepared when

Gabriel threw his arms around him and tried very hard to pick him up.

“Helm,” Gabriel muttered, “I don’t think I’ve ever

been so glad to see a ship in a crashdive in all my life.”

Helm grinned. “Gonna give yourself a strain like that,”

he said. “You need to work on your leverage.” He pushed

Gabriel away, but his look was warm. “Any time.”

Delde Sota joined them. “Conjecture: still breathing,”

she said, as Gabriel took her hand. “Grayer, though.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Gabriel said. “Right

now we have a problem. These people are very grateful to you, but

they don’t like offworlders, and the less time we all spend here, the

better. They’ve had a disagreement with Enda though, and I can’t

leave yet.”

“Complexities,” Delde Sota said. “Manageable.”

Helm looked up at the edanweir waiting on the ridge. “I had a

toy like one of those once,” he said.

Gabriel winced. “The resemblance would have been purely

coincidental, believe me. I’ll tell you, I’d buy a hundred of any toy

that could shoot like these people do. Delde Sota, one thing very

quickly. Would you go have a talk with that woman’s ship and see if

it’s set to blow up or do anything else antisocial? If it is, I want

to get rid of it, and I’ll blow it away right where it stands with

Sunshine, if I have to.”

“Opinion,” said Delde Sota: “wise for your age,

Gabriel Connor. Concord Intel vessel, boobytrapped, multiple mode.

Time elapsed explosion for failed return, tamper trap, lift trap,

other methods. Opinion: Aleen Delonghi (conjecture of proper name,

many aliases in computer) not a very trusting person.”

Gabriel wiped away sudden sweat from his forehead. “When

would it have gone off?”

“Estimated time: seventy minutes past.”

“Past what?”

“Terminology confusion. Plus seventy minutes.”

“Seventy minutes ago?”

“Correct.”

Gabriel stared. “How in the worlds did you—”

“Time check: Longshot has been in-system for six

hours.”

“Didn’t just want to rush in,” Helm said. “Probably

just as well that we didn’t. We saw our little friends arrive and

were able to keep out of their sensors by staying around the far side

of the planet. Can’t imagine why they didn’t break up their group and

map separately. They would have found us.”

“Arrogance,” Gabriel said.

“Conjecture: possible, but convenient,” Delde Sota said.

“Had ample time to reconnoiter/scan/analyze her ship before

action. Same avenues of attack available as at Rivendale.” She

glanced up at the hillside. “Option choice: explain so that

Delonghi understands what has happened? Or allow her to draw wildly

incorrect conclusions, such as system malfunction? Suggestion: two.”

Gabriel’s appreciation of Grid pilotry as practiced by the more

expert mechalus was growing by the moment. “Definitely two. Let

her think it’s some kind of accident. It’ll drive her crazy.”

“Good technology is magic,” Delde Sota said, with a sly

smile. “Would have delayed arrival to watch discovery of failure

of systems, but new visitors forced hand.”

“Believe me, I preferred you two right where you were,”

Gabriel said. “No wonder she was so twitchy all the way back!

She thought we were taking her straight back into an explosion …

or one that had malfunctioned and might go off at any minute.”

He raised his eyebrows. “She never said a word.”

“Suspicion: selfless desire to destroy traitor/accomplice

overcame fear?” Delde Sota said.

“With that one? I think it was probably more like spite, or a

sudden desire to commit suicide after messing up. Never mind. Did you

find out anything else about that ship that we need to know?”

Delde Sota shrugged. “Expensive,” she said. “Have

decanted all data files into Longshot’s computers for

convenience. Decryption ensuing. Estimate: six/eight hours.”

“I didn’t think anyone could break the Concord Intel

encryption—”

“Useful myth,” Delde Sota said. “Keeps people from

trying. System changed frequently. Structure of system means that

infrastructure and hardware remains the same. Without extensive

hardware changes, extensive software changes are limited ” She

shrugged again. “Makes my job easier. Addendum: scanned

Sunshine’s systems, computers, found nothing amiss. No

connections to physical tampering, though you should check for that.”

“Delde Sota,” Gabriel said, “you are the most

desirable of accessories.”

The doctor smiled at him, “Query: after the fact? Query:

brief errand, then entry?”

“By all means.”

She went off for a moment, and Gabriel waved for the edanweir to

bring Delonghi down. They handed her to Gabriel with some relief.

“Cousins,” he said to them, “when you get back,

please tell the Eldest I need to talk to him later. There are things

he needs to know.”

They agreed and left. Gabriel and Helm took Delonghi inside

Sunshine, and settled themselves into the sitting room.

Gabriel brought out some hot drinks and ration bars for Delonghi, who

accepted them and tried hard not to show how hungry she was. Gabriel

for his own part sipped his chai and tried to control the reaction to

being shot at, the inevitable shaking, which was starting already.

Helm simply sat there looking absolutely unrufflable, a human rock.

Gabriel watched DeLonghi’s eyes stealing toward the mutant and then

away again. It was fear or distaste or both.

Finally, about halfway through the second ration bar, Delonghi

said, rather diffidently, “What happened out there?”

“VoidCorp,” Gabriel said. “As I predicted.”

“What brought them here?”

“The same thing that brought you here, apparently,”

Gabriel said. “Me, at least on the surface, but Miss Blue Eyes,

that’s the VC operative— I can’t remember all those numbers at

the moment— claims that word that this planet was ‘live’ as a

destination went out five days ago. There’s a leak somewhere. Just

who did you report your departure to? Because, if what our Miss Blue

Eyes says is true, and I think it is, the word for the cruisers to

follow her in came right after that.”

Delonghi looked horrified.

“You people have a serious hole in your security somewhere,”

Gabriel said. “There’s the fourth possibility for you being sent

out this way … to reveal, or make plain, the source of the

leak. Someone back at headquarters who would have had to be told,

perhaps? Lo and behold, you turn up here, and your VC shadow turns up

hard on your heels. She didn’t hurry. She gave you a day or so down

here on your own to play around.”

He put his chai aside. “Now it’s time to get serious. I told

you I knew you didn’t come out here because of anything to do with my

trial or my supposed treason. You had another agenda, or at least an

additional one.” He took his hand out of his pocket and folded

his other hand over it, so as not to show the luckstone. It pulsed

warm.

The flash of fear he caught from Delonghi made the hair stand up

all over him. Gabriel tightened every muscle to keep from shuddering.

“I really don’t want to do it,” Gabriel said. “Don’t

make me. Don’t withhold information, and for all sakes don’t lie. Why

did Lorand Kharls send you here? Don’t say it was only to follow me.

I was only an excuse.”

She looked at Gabriel most reluctantly. Right then he heard a

flash of the fight going on in her mind, all muddled together: don’t

trust/told me to tell him/can’t be trusted/terror/enemy …

He swallowed hard, intent on hanging onto his composure.

“All right,” she said. “There have been some, well,

odd reports from travelers out this way. Independent shippers,

explorers, others. Little ships have been seen, little spherical

vessels, attacking isolated worlds or colonies and disappearing

again.”

She paused as Delde Sota came in and sat down in a spare fold-down

seat.

“She’s with us, as if you don’t know,” Gabriel said. “Go

on.”

Delonghi let out a breath. “These vessels have started to be

associated with a new life form, or rather, an exploitation of old

life forms … ones we know, sesheyans, humans, others. They are

dead … but they still function somehow. They are encased in

armor filled with some kind of chemical-laden acid slime or mucus

that apparently helps to keep them alive, but eventually destroys the

contents of the armor if it’s breached.” She frowned, that look

of distaste again. “Reports of these creatures have been more

frequent lately. Five months ago, a battalion of Concord Marines on

Arist uncovered several such creatures in the aftermath of a battle

with the klicks. The CO had reason to believe that the two species

may have been working in tandem “

“These things are working with klicks?” Gabriel

said, wide-eyed. As a former marine, Gabriel had heard little more

than rumors about the arachnid-like species that had been dubbed

“klicks,” but even those rumors chilled his blood. “Son

of a bitch. That’s all we need.”

“The reports haven’t made much sense,” Delonghi

continued, “but they’ve been consistent, which in itself is

troubling.”

Gabriel shook his head at her news, uncertain what to make of it.

“A couple of those reports are Enda’s and mine,” Gabriel

said. “Corrivale system, and also Thalaassa. Ask Delde Sota over

there. She did the autopsy on our first one.”

The woman did a double-take, “Excuse me,” she said. “The Delde Sota? As in—”

“Conjecture: positive identification, details better saved

for another time,” said Delde Sota. “Preference: to hear

your explanation. Might increase your life span.”

“You actually recovered a body?”

“Later!” said Gabriel. “Tell us. Time’s

short.”

Delonghi swallowed, obviously uneasy about what she was about to

say. “The authorities who know about these creatures have tagged

them with the name ‘kroath.’ “

“Why ‘kroath’?”

“It’s actually a bastardization of some Hatire word,”

she said. “One of the first reports of these creatures back in

2494 was from a Hatire supply ship destined for Diamond Point. The

vessel, decimated beyond recovery, was found drifting out by

Lecterion. The ship’s distress signal claimed that they were being

attacked by ch’roth”

“Ch’roth?” Gabriel struggled with the word.

Delde Sota broke in. “Statement: ch’roth, Hatire term

meaning ‘not being, not living, not existing.’ Addendum: can be

translated as ‘undead.’”

Delonghi nodded. “Naturally there is great concern about

them.”

“But not public,” Helm said, “otherwise there’d be

screaming from here to the Stellar Ring.”

“No one wants to cause a panic,” Delonghi said.

“Conjecture: no one wants enemy to know that knowledge about

them is current,” Delde Sota said. “Conjecture: may give

time for surveillance/investigation/intelligence-gathering.”

“That’s right,” Delonghi said. “The Concord wants

to find out what species is behind these creatures— their

making, as it were— and what their purpose is.”

Species singular or plural? Gabriel wondered. He had gotten a

definite impression from the Eldest that it was plural, but this was

certainly not information he was going to give to Delonghi. He was

also thinking, not of the small ships that had attacked them several

times, but of the very large one that had slipped out of drivespace

in the depths of the Thalaassa system. It had taken a long look at

them and had immediately slipped away again— impossible for a

ship to do without first recharging its stardrive, or so one would

have thought.

“Any conjectures as to that purpose?” Gabriel said.

She breathed out. “Conquest,” Delonghi said. “Plainly

not a kind we would like, but there may be other motivations.”

Gabriel found himself agreeing. For the meantime, he had to tell

Delonghi something in return for coming this far. Gabriel took a long

breath.

“They’ve been here,” he said. “Tell Lorand Kharls

that.”

“They have? When?”

“The recent past.” Gabriel was none too sure about the

exact dating himself. The edanweir did not keep watch over time by

calendar and clock as other species did.

“What did they do? How are there—”

“Survivors?” said Gabriel, rather bitterly, for normally

there were none after such an encounter … or none in the

normal sense. “They had nothing the visitors wanted.”

“But this world, it’s viable—”

Gabriel shook his head. “It would make you think that worlds

aren’t what they’re after,” he said. “Unfortunately, too

many others are. I’ve got to start thinking about them, now,

dammit.”

“Yes, well,” Delonghi said, for all the world as if she

wasn’t terribly concerned about the prospect of a couple of VoidCorp

cruisers arriving. “So that’s settled. Any further cooperation

you can give me in this matter will be appreciated. If you’ll just

let me go back to my ship, I’ll—”

“Your ship?” Gabriel laughed. “It blew up.”

Delonghi stared at him.

“Or it should have,” Gabriel said. “You think I

didn’t know? Really.” He smiled, just slightly. “You

want to be careful what you assume. No, I think you’ll find in the

morning that you’ve lost that ship, a lot more quietly, though, than

blowing it up along with my ship, me, and whoever else happened to be

nearby. When you get back and you file your expense accounts with

Lorand Kharls’s office, you can explain everything to him. Probably

he won’t dock your pay for it. He’s a reasonable man.”

The look of fury in her eyes was nearly enough to pay Gabriel back

for the annoyance she’d caused him so far.

“Helm, when we’re finished here, we have a data drop to do,”

Gabriel said, “and I don’t know if it’s going to be convenient

for us to drop her off on the way. Would you take Delonghi here back

to, say, Aegis, if you’re going that way? She can hitch a ride home

on a Star Force vessel from there.”

“No problem,” Helm said. “We’ll take care of her

security in the meantime.”

“Security?” Delonghi said. “What do you mean? I’ve

established my bona fides, I have a right to move freely around the—”

“Not on the edanwe planet, you don’t,” Gabriel said.

“Helm, remind me to ask Tlelai or the Eldest what their name for

the planet is. I can’t believe I missed that. Sorry, Delonghi. They

don’t want you here. They don’t want any of us here, even me, and I’m

in community, so you’re just going to have to deal with being kept

out of trouble, and frankly,” Gabriel added, “considering

my doubts about your bona fides, you’re getting off lucky. Who else are you working for besides Lorand Kharls?”

She said nothing. Gabriel was flooded with a storm of images and

emotions, mostly anger and fear. He closed his eyes for a moment,

trying to sort through everything he was seeing … then

realized that it was going to take him a while.

“Right,” Gabriel said, and opened his eyes again. What

was showing in DeLonghi’s face now was mostly fear. “That’s more

or less what I thought. Helm …”

Helm stood up and took Delonghi by the arm. She rose too, rather

stiffly.

“Thank you,” Gabriel said, “for not making it

necessary for me to kill you.”

Helm took her away. When the lift door had closed, Gabriel looked

over at Delde Sota and said, “Was I too mean to her?”

“Opinion: kinder than required,” Delde Sota said. Her

braid slipped up over the edge of the table and wrapped around his

wrist. “Have had this in mind for a while,” she said.

“Begins: physical evaluation. Stop twitching.”

“That’s not me,” Gabriel said, “it’s just that I

was in a fight. Oh, don’t look at me that way, you know what I

mean!”

“Statement: always a challenge to know that,” Delde Sota

said, and smiled.

Gabriel sat there, let the luckstone drop out of his hand, and

reached for his cup of chai.

“Negative,” said Delde Sota suddenly. “Please pick

up again.”

He did, with a shrug, and drank the rest of his chai. Just then,

Helm came back. “Thanks for taking her off my hands,”

Gabriel said. “I’ve been half afraid of what I might do to her.”

“Been that long, has it?”

“Helm …” Gabriel said warningly, then he

sighed. “Come to think of it, it has been that long.

Every woman I’ve seen recently has tried to kill me. All the rest

just want to sit and hold my hand.”

He gave Delde Sota a look.

Helm chuckled loudly. “Well, I scanned Delonghi for you,”

he said. “She’s clean. Either she didn’t have time to equip

herself with holdouts before you caught her, or she didn’t think she

needed to. Careless.”

“The second, I think.”

“Well, I locked her up in the secure small-cargo hold,”

Helm said. “She can bang around in there all she likes—

it’s built stowaway-proof to start with. What now?”

Gabriel rubbed his face and tried to think. “She’s out of the

way, at least. Now all I have to worry about is this other one. Miss

Blue Eyes. I’d give her to you too, if I could. The edanweir are not

precisely unfriendly, but they do not think the way we do, and

too many aliens could definitely spoil the soup at this point,

especially for Enda.”

Helm looked at him oddly. “Who puts aliens in soup?”

“Just something my mother used to say.”

“Now I see why you went into the marines,” Helm said.

“Even their cooking had to be better than hers.”

Gabriel punched Helm completely ineffectively in the shoulder.

“Anyway …”

“Why not just break Enda out?”

“It would be a mistake,” Gabriel said. “Don’t ask

me for specifics. I can’t give them to you. We have the weaponry to

do it, but I don’t have the will. Let’s let this come to a head in

its own time. If we have to …” He desperately hoped they

did not.

“All right,” Helm said. “One more day won’t matter

… will it?”

“Depends on tomorrow,” Gabriel said, “but, oh, am I

glad you two turned up when you did.” He glanced out Sunshine’s viewshield. “Now, as for her …”

“They left for the night,” Helm said. “Delde Sota

gave Angela a hint. They’ll come back in the morning.”

“Oh joy,” Gabriel said. “Well, thanks, Doctor …

you were right on the money.”

“Now what I want to know,” Helm said, “before we

all expire of exhaustion and excitement here, is what the hell the

delay was at the Lighthouse.”

Gabriel looked at him. “What delay?”

“You know. You not making up your mind until the last minute.

We hardly had time to get on one of the extra ships and say

‘goodbye.’ “

Gabriel shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t book until barely half an hour before the thing

left—”

“You’re off your head. We booked ten hours before it left!

Check the logs, or ask Enda tomorrow, if you don’t believe me.”

Helm sat there looking skeptical. “Well, somebody took

their time about releasing the news into Lighthouse’s Grid,”

he said. “We checked about every five minutes for the better

part of eight hours! I wasn’t going to get on that bloody thing until

I knew for sure that you were going. When I did know, it turned out

the spars were full, and there was no room in internal docking!

Longshot and Lalique wound up having to hitch on one of

those Star Force ships that run escort for the Lighthouse.”

He frowned. “No access to the interior, and one of those

exterior gun ports was trained on Longshot all the time. I

didn’t think much of it.”

“Opinion: could have spent whole time drinking and shopping,”

Delde Sota said mildly. “Terrible waste of five days.”

Gabriel had no idea what to make of this. Was someone on

Lighthouse trying to protect us somehow? he thought. And who?

And why? Though it would explain a few things. For one, ID cards that

got me into places not even Delde Sota should have been able to

manage.

“Helm, why didn’t you let us know you were coming along?”

“Thought it might be better for you if you didn’t know you

were being followed,” Helm said. “Anyone listening, or

dealing with you, would have had the same idea, then—

especially anyone listening to what you would otherwise have thought

were private communications.”

“Helm,” Gabriel said, “you mean you …”

He was in a turmoil, not knowing whether he liked or disliked the

idea that his friends were so concerned for him that they would lie

to him to help keep him safe. “Can’t I trust anybody?”

“If you mean, can you trust me to let you go off into the

middle of nowhere and get yourself shot up,” Helm said with a

smile, “then I suppose the answer is no, so just cope with it.”

Delde Sota stood up, unwrapped her braid from Gabriel’s arm and

stretched. “Intention: intermission/analysis period,” she

said, and slipped out of the cabin.

Gabriel looked after her, then back at Helm.

Gabriel nodded. “Look, I didn’t mean to give you trouble.

Forget it.”

“Besides,” Helm said, “a little extra help out here

might not hurt.”

“You’re right there,” Gabriel said. He got up.

“You going back there tonight?”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “I don’t like to leave Enda

alone there. Not that I’m afraid for her, but… you know, moral

support.”

“I do know,” Helm said.

“Yes,” Gabriel said, “you do.”

He punched Helm in the shoulder again, not quite as hard as the

last time, and went out.

*

It was a terrible night. Gabriel lounged by the fire in the

longhall, stretched out with his feet up on one of the benches under

the overhang of the fireplace. He tried desperately to sleep but

couldn’t. The thought of big ships, much too big for anything he and

Helm could cope with, was shivering up and down his spine.

The cruisers, VoidCorp cruisers, would be on their way right now.

They would have big stardrives, easily big enough to make one long

thirty light-year starfall to Eldala, not the two or three smaller

ones that might have given Gabriel time to come up with something.

Like what? he thought. Escape is no option. You get away fine, but

the edanweir are still here, sitting ducks. VoidCorp will come in

here and completely trash this beautiful place. It’ll be one big

corporate enterprise mine in a year. This people’s culture, all the

slow lovely things they do, the guns they don’t use on each other,

the airships they never thought of arming, the community …

it’ll be gone too, a precious thing changed forever. In a year, the

edanweir would be little more than slaves.

No. There was nothing to do but stand and fight. With what? Two

ships, maybe three, and a mass rifle.

Gabriel laughed, soft and bitter. Guiltily then, he looked up and

around to see if he had awakened anyone. He saw no signs of movement.

The edanweir and Enda were sound sleepers, and from here and there

around the room he caught the sound of snores. The things the

edanweir did, they did wholeheartedly. When they slept, they got on

with it, even if they might all be dead the next morning.

He turned and was suddenly surprised to see the Eldest sitting on

the opposite bench. Gabriel breathed out, unhappy. “Did I wake

you up, sir?”

“I was not sleeping,” said the Eldest and turned to the

fire. The flames’ golden light shone in his bronze-red fur, and his

long striped tail shimmered in the firelight as it twitched.

“Because of what will happen?”

“If I knew what would happen,” said the Eldest,

“I would be a happy edanwe, but I have not that power. A relief

to me, it is. I doubt I would care much for it. And you?”

“It would be good to know about it,” Gabriel said, “only

if it could then be changed.”

“It would not be what would happen then,” said

the Eldest, “and knowing it might not have served the same

purpose.”

Gabriel smiled, if wearily. “I should go down and see what

the VoidCorp agent is doing.”

“She sleeps,” said the Eldest, “but this is a

strange thing, that we keep having to put your folk in with the meat.

Some have been joking, claiming this may taint it.”

Gabriel laughed and said, “I’d be tempted to agree with you …

tonight, anyway. I am not terribly proud of my people at the moment.

There are many good ones, many thousands of millions of them, but

those don’t seem to be the ones who’re chasing me the hardest right

now.”

“We will then, I assume, need a bigger larder?” the

Eldest said.

Gabriel shook his head. “Sir, if you would take my advice,

you should take all your people and go far away from here, as

soon as light comes again. I would take my ship away, off the planet.

The one belonging to the first woman who came after me, that one I’d

destroy. At the bottom of the Downfall, it would take a lot of

finding.”

“With her,” said the Eldest, “you would do what,

exactly?”

Gabriel rubbed his face. “My friend will take her off planet

and send her back where she came from. As for the one in the larder

at the moment, I haven’t decided what to do with her.”

The Eldest folded his arms and stared into the fire. “My

problem,” he said, “is similar.” It was the first time

Gabriel could recall him speaking other than in the plural. “And

that one’s ship?”

“I would get rid of it too, if hiding alone were enough,”

Gabriel said, “but it’s not going to matter shortly. Those

coming to see what happened to her in her hunt for me will be many

times more powerful than anything you have seen … more like

the Others. They are of intent just as evil, and you should not stay

here to meet them.”

“The first hwoman” said the Eldest, “no one

will come after her?”

“Not with such speed. Her people are the more benevolent of

the two powers hunting me and would prefer not to interfere on a

settled world. She would doubtless be back among them long before

they sent to look for her. The second group, VoidCorp, works in a

very different way. They wouldn’t care about interfering one way or

the other.”

“A peculiar benevolence,” said the Eldest, “that

sends this hwoman to kill you.”

“I don’t believe they sent her to do that. She’s confused

with concerns of her own, and though she claims to act for them, her

action is not wholehearted.”

“So you still would not harm her if you did not have to?”

“I know how it is to be confused.” Gabriel leaned back

against the chair. “Some people might kill you for it, but I

won’t. It seems like overreaction.”

They sat there in quiet for a few minutes.

“Laidanwe” the Eldest said finally, as if trying

out the sound of a word.

Gabriel shook his head and took the luckstone out of his pocket.

He had been playing absently with it for a while. “It still

doesn’t make sense,” he said. “There seem to be some

concepts that just refuse to cooperate with my mindset—

something that won’t fit into the human head.”

He noticed the Eldest looking at the luckstone. Gabriel held it

out. “Want to look at it?”

The Eldest reached out his hand. For a moment as the stone passed

they were in contact, the pale five-fingered hand and the dark

six-fingered one, but the flash of enforced community that Gabriel

feared did not come. The Eldest looked at the stone in his palm, then

picked it up between the thumbs of the other hand, peering at it. It

glowed dully under the ashy outer coat, the faint radiance almost

lost in the firelight.

“Do you know how it does this?” Gabriel said. “How

it makes me able to hear Tlelai, and the rest of you?”

The Eldest swung his tail ‘no’ and said, “These things are

thought to be very old. Perhaps older on our world than we are,

though we have no way to be sure. We have never fully understood what

they were, where they came from, or even what they do. If they do

anything but glow …” He handed it back. “How did you

come by it?”

“A friend gave it to me. Not even a friend really, someone I

hardly knew. There are worlds, back in the part of space where I come

from, where these lie all along the beaches, millions of them, like

ordinary stones… or anyway, there are millions of stones that

look like this, but none of them act like this.”

“These are on your homeworld that you mentioned, this

‘Bluefall’?”

“Huh? Oh, no,” Gabriel said, “but beaches we have,

though. They’re about all we have.” He laughed. “Eldest,

nearly our whole world is water. Just here and there the land sticks

up, and not much of it. There are chains of islands, big and small,

and beaches strung all along them: white sand, or pink, or brown, or

sometimes black where the land was volcanic.” He leaned back and

sighed. “It can be a nice life there. The climate’s good. People

are friendly on those little islands. Neighbors help each other. You

have to, when the big storms come through. Sometimes things get hard

when fresh water gets scarce in the summer, but you help each other

through.” He looked up again. “Like here, when the big

snows come along.”

“Not just our little lakes,” the Eldest said, “but

a world of waters …”

” ‘Ocean’ is the word we use.”

The Eldest shook his head. “It makes no sense; I cannot hear

it.”

“You might have to see it,” Gabriel said, then he grew

quiet, because that seemed unlikely. It seemed unlikely that Gabriel

would ever see it again, either.

“I wish I might,” said the Eldest, “though I cannot

tell how that might ever happen. Certainly that must be a great

wonder, a world all covered with water.”

“It shines from space,” Gabriel said. “How it

shines …”

He fell silent. When he looked up again, the Eldest was gone …

and Gabriel wondered whether he had been dreaming.

Chapter Twenty

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VERY EARLY THE next morning, before the sun was up, Gabriel went

down to Sunshine, hoping for some quiet breakfast before the

great wise one who was expected turned up. He was not surprised to

see Lalique sitting next to Longshot. Gabriel sighed,

wishing that this particular interview could be avoided, and went on

down to the ships.

There was no sign of life aboard Lalique as yet. Gabriel

stood for a moment listening to the roar of water in the predawn

dusk, and then on a whim wandered down toward the place where he had

viewed the Downfall with Enda before.

There were two figures down there, indistinct in the morning

twilight and the mist, looking up into the torrent. Gabriel slowly

made his way down toward them. Grawl heard him coming first. She

turned and saluted him.

“Poetess,” Gabriel said. “Angela.”

“This is a great sight,” said Grawl. “No greater

there is in the worlds, perhaps.”

“It’s cold, though,” Angela said.

Gabriel had to grin a little at that. “You should see it here

when the winter closes in,” he said. “This tries to freeze,

they tell me. Once in a hundred years, it manages it. You don’t want

to know what the spring thaw sounds like “

“Might be worth hearing,” Angela said.

“I’d bring a jacket,” Gabriel said, “but I don’t

understand what you’re doing here.”

Angela gave him a look and said, “Helm talked us into it, not

that it took much doing. We got to talking after we went to Aegis for

repairs, and he said we owed you a favor. He had a point. You didn’t

have to stop for us.”

“It’s the law to stop when someone’s disabled,” Gabriel

said.

“Yes, well, there are lots of laws,” Angela said, “and

who obeys them all? Or even some of them? You did, though.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “I will duly note myself

down as an angel of mercy.”

“You’re so cynical,” Angela said. “Never mind. You

can consider the favor paid. I won’t say it wasn’t a pleasure! When

the doctor told us whose ships those were, we just settled in and had

ourselves a little party.”

“I saw that,” Gabriel said. “It was nice shooting.

You should be warned, though … there may be more. If favors

are paid, this might be a good time to get out while things are

quiet.”

“You trying to get rid of us?” Angela said.

Grawl looked at Gabriel disapprovingly and said, “There is a

battle toward, and it would be ill for my honor to forsake friends at

such time.”

“Yeah, well,” Gabriel said, “Miss Blue Eyes and her

crowd were one thing, but I think reinforcements may arrive shortly,

because they’ll have sent word back as to what they were going to

do.”

“Who’s ‘Miss Blue Eyes’?” Angela asked.

Gabriel laughed at the sudden sound of interest. “Oh, the

VoidCorp agent,” he said. “She was here ‘to rescue me.’ “

“I bet,” Angela said. “People are turning up here

with all kinds of excuses.”

“Tell me,” Gabriel said sourly. “Shortly half the

Star Force is probably going to turn up, and Customs and Excise, and

any other Intelligence organizations that have been slow getting the

news. In the one place around here that really just needs to be left

alone, but the worst of it is that there are a couple of VoidCorp

cruisers coming, and there’s not a damned thing in the world that can

be done about that.” He glanced up. “If I were you, honor

or no honor, I’d be out of here before then.”

Angela shrugged. “We’ll see.”

The flatness of it took Gabriel by surprise. “Look,” he

said, “Thanks. Thank you very much.” “You’re welcome,”

Angela said. Hurriedly, Gabriel turned and left.

*

He had no stomach for breakfast after all, but just went straight

back to the longhouse where Enda, ignoring her guards with good

grace, was combing her hair and putting herself in order for the day.

“Was there a problem?” she asked as he came in.

“Huh? No. Angela,” said Gabriel. He sat down and watched

Enda braid her hair. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think Helm

was trying to arrange something between us.”

“Us?”

“Between Angela and me.”

“Gabriel! Surely not,” Enda said.

“Well, he’ll be wasting his time if he is,” Gabriel

said. “She’s not my type.”

Enda gave him a look. “What is your type?”

Gabriel opened his mouth, then closed it again. Completely against

his will, his thoughts went back to Elinke Dareyev. “Whatever it

is,” he said, annoyed with both the memory and the prospect of

Angela, “not that. She doesn’t…” He shook his head.

“She doesn’t think ahead.”

“Ah, well,” Enda said, looking sideways at Gabriel with

her knowing smile, “that is a fault, I suppose.” She

finished putting her hair to rights and looked up at him. “By

the way,” she said, “I used the food tester kit that you

brought along, and so far I have found nothing which either of our

physiologies could not handle. The meat is very good; they

brought me an excellent stew last night.”

Gabriel smiled slightly. “Going to teach them to cook?”

“Oh, they have an excellent regional cuisine of their own,”

Enda said. “I might learn a few things from them.”

If they let you live, Gabriel thought.

He turned his head then, hearing a faint buzzing from outside.

“The airship?” Enda asked.

“I think so. Wait here, I’ll be back shortly.”

He went out into the morning, sighing a little at the sight of the

settlement contrasted with the way it had been just the day before.

There were bits of torn and burnt metal everywhere, scorch marks on

the ground, a faint smell of burning hanging everywhere.

Typical, Gabriel thought. Humans arrive on a world and mess it up

within hours.

Edanweir were already gathering near the landing area, and slowly,

from the southwest, Gabriel saw the shape of the airship approaching,

glinting bronzy-gold in the morning as it came in to land. The

volunteer landing crew went out to catch the ropes with the ease of

much practice.

The Eldest came up to stand by him, Tlelai following behind him.

Gabriel nodded as the airship was made fast, and what turned out to

be a total of about ten edanweir started getting out. When they had

disembarked with various packages and other belongings, the airship

took off again.

“It will cruise nearby until the mahlahnwe’ir yahein is done,” Tlelai told him.

Gabriel nodded, watching the passengers disperse, wondering where

the one was who would decide Enda’s fate. He was distracted from this

as, among the people coming in their general direction, he saw that

one of the passengers was hardly into her second fur yet. Along with

various others who stopped by the Eldest and bowed before moving on,

this pair, a little one with mother or father— Gabriel still

didn’t know how to tell or whether the difference even mattered here—

came over too. The older one made a respectful bow. The little one

just looked up at him, big-eyed.

“This is only the second child I’ve seen here,” Gabriel

said softly to Tlelai. “Male? Female?”

“She,” Tlelai said.

She was more like a little ball of red-and-cream-colored down than

anything else, and Gabriel was completely charmed by her.

He thought of a picture of a fox cub he had seen once—

little blunt muzzle, little merry eyes, big sharp ears too big for

the head. This one was like that. She had a long way to go yet before

she grew into her ears. As he looked down at her, the little edanwe

turned and saw Gabriel. She went a few steps over to stand in front

of him, just staring.

He smiled.

“Hello there,” Gabriel said, and got down on one knee so

that the two of them would be more at a level. He looked up at the

Eldest. “Sir, do you pick children up here?”

“Hold them, you mean? Of course.”

“Would you like me to pick you up?” Gabriel said.

She put her little furry arms up to him immediately. Gabriel

lifted her up carefully. She was heavier than she looked, a fairly

substantial child. He jogged her a little in his arms and turned so

that she could look around her from a height.

“What a little bundle you are,” Gabriel said, smiling

more broadly as she tried to grab some of his hair.

She didn’t do too well; it was still too short. He wasn’t entirely

sure what this people’s normal life span might be, but this little

creature was certainly nowhere near latency, the time that a human

would recognize as the threshold of adolescence. If she were human,

she might have been about five.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

She looked at him and said, “Mahlahnwe’ir yahein.”

Gabriel’s eyes widened. He turned to the Eldest.

Unaccountably, he had turned his back. Gabriel glanced at Tlelai,

then looked at the little armful again. The small edanwe gazed at him

with little clear eyes that were absolutely cheerful and unconcerned.

The world looked good to her; plainly, the world was good to

her. Her sense of community was untroubled. Looking into those

innocent eyes, Gabriel was suddenly heartsore at the idea that she

might not be able to live in a world like that much longer, that her

world was changing around her—

Things do change, but not that way.

The thought blazed into Gabriel’s mind, irresistible, whiting

everything out in a sheer blast of certainty. Not power. She had

that, but she was not using it. Gabriel, staggered as he was, tried

to find another word for what he felt in her— then stopped,

realizing that humans are so unused to complete and untainted

certainty that when they encounter it, they immediately try to

describe it as something else. Arrogance, foolhardiness, folly. This

was none of those. The little edanwe was hardly old enough to know

what any of those meant. What she had, straight from the depths of

time, was certainty of what to do, which way to go, what should next

be done.

It was like looking into the sun. Gabriel could not bear it, and

covering his eyes would not have helped, even if he could have moved

a muscle. Something was looking through her at him: a knowledge that

the edanweir possessed or were possessed by. In all the adults it was

deeply buried, and Gabriel had only suspected its presence in a

shadowy way. In this child it looked out through her like someone

buried very deep, in a safe place, peering out into the world through

a lens that, for the moment, was clear. It would not always be so,

but this time, everything had begun to move together in the right

way.

This was what the Others had come looking for and had

failed to find. When their mindwalkers had gone abroad, part of the

edanweir’s horror and disgust for them came of the strangers not

being in community, and from the Others’ callous disregard for the

sanctity and privacy of mind as they searched for whatever it was

they hunted. The rest of it had to do with this buried knowledge,

this ancient will, the presence of which the edanweir themselves had

not suspected. Deep in their history, they had become, or had been

made into, a hiding place for something … and that something,

now threatened, was determined not to be found. A force that even the

edanweir had not suspected, something long latent at the bottoms of

their minds, rose up at the touch of the Others’ mindwalkers and

killed them. It killed the edanweir too— little consolation to

them. The Others withdrew in confusion, probably thinking that this

species presented unexpected problems and had nothing useful to offer

them anyway, except as a sort of early warning system, giving the

Others news about any other species that might come wandering through

this so far unnoticed system.

Now the old will that had killed the Others’ mindwalkers rose up

to sit in judgment on Gabriel. There was no way he could have hidden

anything from it. He stood frozen, blinded and helpless as he felt

the power massing, but in his pocket, untroubled, something quietly

began to glow.

It was as if the world under him rumbled, a roar like the

Downfall, of recognition and resolve. This was the time. The slow,

vast movement of configurations had moved into the correct shape. Now

it could begin to happen.

As for the ones who would make it so—

Everything whited out again, so that Gabriel was lost. It took a

while for him to recover his own feeling of self. He was still

frozen, but now, trapped in the middle of this ancient power, he was

suddenly aware that it was not just a time that it had been awaiting,

but the coming of a particular object combining with a set of

circumstances, a pattern into which all the pieces had finally fallen

into place. He was part of it. He had been judged and found, not

specifically wanting, but at least to be in the right place at the

right time.

He started to get some feeling back in his body, and vision began

to return. Suddenly Gabriel was not feeling quite so heartsore about

changes to this world, now that he began to suspect what lay at the

heart of it. He wondered if it was all of them he should be

sorry for: VoidCorp, the Concord, all the other forces that were

about to throw themselves against this old silent rock, not knowing

what underlay it.

— and the knowledge that this was not even anything like the

most major storehouse of this old power, another one, far greater,

lay not too far away, not that far away at all.

His ears started to ring as hearing started to come back. Where?

She didn’t know. The information had not been left all in one

spot. That would have been most unwise and would have made it too

easy for both sides, for those from whom it needed to be hidden; for

those for whom it was intended, in their greatest need. They would

find it… or else they wouldn’t.

It’s your problem now.

Gabriel blinked. He was standing, not outside in the air, but in

the longhouse, by Enda’s little nest of cushions. He was still

holding the little edanwe, who was industriously pulling his beard.

Enda’s guards were gone, and Enda was lying unconscious among the

cushions with a shocked expression on her face.

Gabriel reeled, but found his balance. “Enda—”

“She is all right,” Tlelai said. “It’s over,

brother.”

“You may go where you will,” said the Eldest, who also

stood there, “but we hope you will stay. There seems to be much

to be done.”

Gabriel swallowed and put the Mahlahnwe’ir yahein down.

Yipping happily, she ran out into the sunshine again, and her parent

went after her in a hurry.

Gabriel looked after her in astonishment, then turned back to the

Eldest. “Does this mean you’re not going to kill either of us

now?”

“Yes,” said the Eldest, “it does “

Gabriel noticed that there was no disclaimer attached to the

statement, no “Oh, we would never have done that.” The gaze

of those old wise weary eyes rested in his and made it plain that,

had they needed to be killed, the edanweir would have done it. With

regret, yes … but without a moment’s delay.

“I understand you, sir,” Gabriel said. “I would

have done the same in your position. Let us not waste any more

concern on the matter.”

“I was not going to,” said the Eldest, and smiled very

gently in the edanweir manner. “When your friend has recovered

herself, let us eat and drink, and then quickly, to council. For they

are coming …”

Chapter Twenty-One

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THINGS STARTED HAPPENING fairly quickly. Suddenly there seemed to

be more edanweir in the longhouse than Gabriel could remember, and

there seemed to be an increase of purpose, of hurrying, which by

itself surprised Gabriel. He had never before seen anyone there

hurry.

He put all this to one side for a while and sat with Enda for a

few minutes. She had begun to recover consciousness fairly quickly

after Gabriel had come back to himself again, and now she was sitting

up and had smoothed her clothes down and her hair back into place as

if nothing had happened, but Gabriel knew better.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

Enda bowed her head. “I wish I could completely describe it,”

she said, “but that would imply a certainty I do not feel. I was

judged, that I know.”

“Favorably,” Gabriel said.

“As you were,” said Enda, “otherwise I think

neither of us would now be breathing. If I was accepted, I think it

was on your behalf.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I would find it hard to say.” Again that very precise

phrasing, which was starting to make Gabriel wonder. “Gabriel, I

do not know what the luckstone is, but plainly it is much more than

we thought it was. Something here, or someone here— I

would use the term loosely, if it is ‘someone’ they have been dead a

long while— has been waiting for that stone to arrive, or one

like it, at least. Until it, and you, and I, and everyone here, and

this time and place and maybe this whole world could be examined,

nothing could happen.”

Gabriel looked at it, small and insignificant in his palm, not

glowing now, just a little oval matte-black stone. “It’s a

Glassmaker relic, isn’t it?”

“It could be,” Enda said, “but it is possibly far

older and has nothing to do with those people. We know little enough

about the Glassmakers, whoever they were. In any case, something here

recognizes that… and now much on this world will alter.

Possibly much beyond it as well, but first there is the small matter

of those VoidCorp ships. They are certainly interested in killing

you; they will be delighted by this planet and its undefended people,

and they will be here any time—”

“I know,” Gabriel said. “Are you better? Can you

get up? We should go have this out with the Eldest.”

They went to him, off to one side where he was engaged in a

hurried council with about six of his people, including Tlelai. As

Gabriel and Enda came to them, the Eldest said, “We must go to

the place I’ve been shown, and you must come with us …

otherwise we will not be able to gain entry. Alarms have been

broadcast on the radio to our people, the worldwide alarm we last

used when the Others came. We have many underground places where we

winter, and as many as can make their way there are doing so now, but

we must make our way to the silent place with all haste. They are

coming, and it may only be a matter of a very few hours before they

arrive.”

“I think it is less, if I heard the warning right,” said

Tlelai. “They are close—”

“Did everyone hear that?” Gabriel said, confused.

“I thought it was just me.”

“It may have started that way,” said the Eldest, “but

it changed, after you were proved. Much has changed …” He

looked grave.

“I’ll go fetch our friends,” Gabriel said. “We’ll

bring the ships here, load them up, and leave right away. Any hole is

a good hole to hide in when VoidCorp’s coming.”

Tlelai stared at him. “VoidCorp?” he said. “Is that

your name for the Others?”

Gabriel stopped and stared. “Excuse me?”

“It is they who are coming,” said Tlelai. “That is

the message we were given. They have been alerted somehow. They are

coming back to make good on their threats.”

A great shiver went through Gabriel, but something else inside him

said, No they won’t.

“Right,” Gabriel said. “The first thing to do is

get under cover. After that… other plans, but first we run.

Enda, sit tight, I’ll be back shortly.”

He took off for the “parking place” at a run.

*

Helm, Angela, Grawl, and Delde Sota were having breakfast together

in Longshot, all very neighborly, when Gabriel burst in and

ruined it for them. Angela in particular was confused by Delde Sota

and Helm’s alarm at what Gabriel had to tell them. They started to

explain kroath to her, but she stopped them.

“We know about them,” she said. “Grawl was involved

with cleaning up after a skirmish at a colony-security job she worked

once. This is amazing— no one else believed us when we

mentioned the little round ships. We just gave it up after a while.”

“Enemies of life,” Grawl muttered, bristling. “I

will battle them with joy.”

“Them and VoidCorp both at once?” Angela said, sounding

dubious. “Hiding in a hole sounds more realistic for the moment,

partner, at least until some bigger guns turn up.”

“We could watch them fight it out,” Helm said.

“I’m more worried that they might get friendly,” Gabriel

said.

Helm stared at him. “You need that brain cleaned out, Gabe.

It gets disgusting sometimes.”

“Nasty thought, isn’t it?” he said. “Never mind

right now. We need all the ships we have handy. Delde Sota, can you

fly DeLonghi’s ship?”

“Affirmative,” the mechalus said. “Query: how many

edanweir here?”

“Thirty at the moment.”

“Let’s go,” Helm said.

Delde Sota caught Gabriel by the hand. “Intervention,”

she said. “Immediate. Advice: do not allow yourself to become

separated from that stone until further analyses can be conducted.”

“I don’t intend to,” Gabriel said, “believe me. Why?”

“Datum: considerable physiological changes in you over a very

short time,” Delde Sota said. “Difficult to analyze except

broadly. Initial diagnosis: early symbiotic relationship,

undifferentiated type. Implications: unknown. Suggestion: keep stone

close. Don’t rock the boat.”

Gabriel nodded and said, “I’ll keep that in mind. Come on,

let’s get these people out of here.”

“Hey,” Helm said. “What about you and Enda?”

Gabriel smiled, though it came hard at the moment. “We passed

the test,” he said. “Now we get to see if we’ll live out

the week.”

*

They landed outside the settlement, and edanweir with small bags

and bundles of belongings started streaming toward the ships and

getting in. While Gabriel was helping Helm load edanweir into

Longshot, one of the scouts came up to him and asked, “What

about the screaming hyuman?”

“The screa— ? Oh, Lord, Miss Blue Eyes,” Gabriel

said. “I completely forgot about her.” He did not say how

pleasant he found that, in retrospect. “We’ve got to get her out

of the larder and stick her in the phymech …” Gabriel

rubbed his eyes. “I wish I could just stick her in a hole and

forget about her.”

“That could be arranged,” Helm growled.

“No, not like that. I’d dump her in your hold with

Delonghi if I didn’t think it would be bad for interstellar

security.”

“They might do each other in,” said Helm, rather

hopefully.

“It would be too much to ask,” Gabriel said. “We’ll

take her, little though I like it.”

“Sounds like you’ve got enough on your plate at the moment,”

Helm said. “We’ll phymech her at our end. If Delde Sota can’t

mend her, she’s busted too bad to keep.”

“I’ll leave that decision to you,” Gabriel said.

They got back to loading edanweir. This took less time than

Gabriel had feared— these people seemed short on possessions,

although every one of them seemed to have a gun.

“This is a hunting camp,” Tlelai said to Gabriel with

some surprise, “didn’t you know? Oh, we dislike large groups,

yes, but we wouldn’t always live so isolated.”

Gabriel chuckled as he and Enda got into Sunshine. Tlelai

and the Eldest came in behind them, joining the six or seven edanweir

who were there already. They sealed the ship up, and Gabriel led the

Eldest back to the sitting room and showed him the holographic map

of—

Gabriel stopped then and turned to Tlelai. “Brother, it’s

late to be asking this, but what do call your planet?”

“The world, of course,” Tlelai said, somewhat bemused.

It came out. “Dhanwe’ll.”

“Danwell it is,” Gabriel said. “You’re going to

have to forgive some of our people their accents.” He turned

back to the Eldest, and said, “Sir, where are we going?”

Gabriel reached into the display and turned it. The Eldest picked

a spot about fifty kilometers away, one of those odd triangular

structures they had seen. “Of those places which might serve

your purpose,” he said, “this one is closest.”

“We’re on our way,” Gabriel said. He strapped himself

into the right hand seat and brought up the fighting field. “You

do not really think we might need that?” Enda said.

“The way my luck is running at the moment?” Gabriel

said.

They lifted off and headed westward, closely followed by Lalique,

Longshot, and DeLonghi’s ship. Fifty kilometers did not take long

even in atmosphere, but Gabriel sat in the fighting field all the way

and expected fire to start raining from the sky at any moment.

Five days ago … he thought, trying to work out where he had

been and what messages might have been traveling in what direction at

that point. The problem was that five days ago now felt like about a

century. He had been through a lot, and he was sure that worse was to

come, but that little splinter of certainty that had been driven into

his brain would not let him be. Something was happening. It

had been trying to happen for a long time, and a tremendous feeling

of anticipation was beating at the back of his mind.

Other effects less comforting were occurring as well. The way the

luckstone had begun to pulse in his pocket unnerved Gabriel. The

pulses came, went, and came again, and as they approached that

triangular structure, built on an otherwise inaccessible terrace

halfway up a mountain, the pulsing became much stronger. Gabriel

thought suddenly about the hole his luckstone had burned in

Sunshine’s decking. It had nothing to do with anything in the

local space, Gabriel thought. Angela was carrying stuff that came

from here. A few stones, she said. Mine responded to something she

was carrying. The way it’s responding now …

The four ships landed on the mountain terrace and began unloading

their passengers, including Miss Blue Eyes and Aleen Delonghi, both

of whom said very little. The edanweir, excited and interested, piled

out, chattering cheerfully to one another. Helm, though, looked

rather sour as he got out.

“Nice and exposed here,” he said. “Anybody could

come along and blow all four ships away.”

“We’ll have bigger problems than that shortly,” Gabriel

said, turning to look at the great flat triangle of stone that simply

lay there on the scrub and gravel of the terrace as if someone had

dropped it there. He walked up to the slab. It was about a meter

thick and about fifty meters on a side.

Gabriel looked over his shoulder. “Eldest?”

“We have never been able to enter these,” said the

Eldest. “We did not know they were anything to be entered.

Perhaps if you step out on it—”

Gabriel swung himself up on the stone, took a few steps …

stopped. Whatever the stuff was, it wasn’t stone. It chimed softly,

like a deep-voiced bell, with every step he took.

“Very strange …” Gabriel dropped to one knee on

it, taking the luckstone out and placing it on the surface. Nothing

happened.

“Well, now what?” he said. “If we can’t?”

“Ahem,” Enda said softly, and pointed.

In total silence, off to their left, the corner of the triangle

had sunk straight down into the ground, revealing an opening about

five meters wide, with a ramp reaching down into it.

Gabriel got down and walked with the others toward the ramp. They

all went down into the dimness. The ramp spiraled off to one side and

kept on spiraling down into a great silence and a huge space, to

judge by the echoes. A faint golden light from below grew steadily

stronger, or perhaps their eyes got more used to the dimness as they

went.

Gabriel turned and noticed that Delde Sota was strolling past him

with Miss Blue Eyes over her shoulder. Blue Eyes was unconscious.

“Pain?” Gabriel asked.

“Opinion: not to be trusted,” said Delde Sota. “Opinion:

affiliation suggests that some things are not good for her to see.”

“What about Delonghi?”

“Your call,” Delde Sota said.

Gabriel looked back at her. He had suspicions, but that was all

they were at the moment, and he preferred to have something more

concrete to go on.

“Let her stay conscious,” Gabriel said, “but keep

her secure.”

“Noted.”

Finally, they came out at what seemed to be the bottom level.

Gabriel glanced up, seeing the opening to the ramp closed behind

them. Light increased in the huge open space, which stretched back

well into the mountain. The ceiling could not be perceived at all,

though Gabriel knew in a general way where it had to be. The illusion

that there was no ceiling, just an endless darkness like

drivespace, was very strong.

They were in the middle of a vast smooth matte-dark floor, and

standing about it, here and there, were shapes of the same dark

stone, very simple, mostly geometrics: a pyramid or so, several erect

slabs, a rectangular column, and a perfect sphere. Everything looked

as if it was made of dark, smoky glass, but something told Gabriel

that the material was far, far stronger than any human substance.

Gabriel had the luckstone in his hand and was in no doubt about

the kinship. This was the same material, though it seemed a little

rough and unfinished.

A key, he thought, to this … and what else?

“No dust,” Angela said, dropping to a crouch and

brushing her fingers across the surface. “Either someone here’s

a real demon housekeeper, or the place hasn’t been opened since it

was built.”

“I’d buy that as a good guess,” Gabriel said, walking in

among the geometrical figures.

The sphere fascinated him. It was about two meters in diameter and

balanced perfectly on a spot about ten centimeters across.

Experimentally, he touched the luckstone to it, but nothing happened.

He walked on through that huge space, listening. There was a sense

here of tremendous restrained power, but everything was perfectly

silent. There was not even a hum in the walls or the floor to suggest

what was happening here.

Enda came up with him. “It is a control center of some kind,”

Enda said, “though what it is controlling, I would not care to

guess.”

“The planet,” Gabriel said. He walked on, listening.

There was a faint, faint whispering at the edges of his brain. This

was one of the places where the movement he had sensed from the

luckstone was being propagated. The dreams had hinted at this, but

only in veiled terms that Gabriel hadn’t understood. Now that he

walked in this place, it was beginning to find a way to speak to him

and to the other— a way to tell them what was needed.

Gabriel looked around and saw Tlelai making his way toward him.

His gun had been laid aside for the moment, and his eyes shone in the

growing golden glow. Here and there, some of the constructs standing

on the floor were awakening at their approach, beginning to pulse

slightly. The luckstone was doing the same as everything slowly began

to fit together, began to come into synch. The sourceless light, the

light in the air, began to dim now. The only light was coming from

the constructs.

Gabriel moved among them, waiting to see which way he was pulled.

Tlelai came with him; Enda had gone off in another direction. This

place, or others like it, would take it in turn to wake and manage

things here, manipulating the forces of the world, manipulating not

only the planet’s weather, but even its magnetic field and all the

other forces tangled around it. The planet itself had become a tool…

or a weapon.

Suddenly Gabriel had no difficulty understanding why this world

had been untouched for so long, why the first survey had failed, why

Angela hadn’t seen anything, and why the Others, powerful as they

were, had finally gone away. The planet itself, or something based

here, had made them do so, though perhaps more passively than in

other cases. It had altered the way energy passed through space for

hundreds of millions of kilometers around it. It had made the Concord

survey ship suffer all kinds of mechanical difficulties. It had

subtly affected everyone who had come here. Why is it allowing this

access now?

Not because there was no choice, it could have killed all of them:

him, Angela, Helm, all the others who had come there.

Why didn’t it do that to the Others?

None of them had the key. None of them had a luckstone— a

message … to tell something there that it was time, now.

Gabriel was a messenger and had been carrying the message

unwittingly. The message had been checked and found to be genuine.

Matters had proceeded as they were proceeding now, for the Others had

left silent methods of detection that called them back and had also

called others. Now, while they were mired in their certainties, was

the time to strike.

The darkening continued, and Gabriel looked up and could have

sworn that he saw something moving in the darkness. He blinked. An

illusion—

No illusion, Tlelai said, and Gabriel didn’t hear him speak

aloud at all this time. I saw it too.

Gabriel looked over at Enda. She stood there very still in the

midst of all this, or not so still, Gabriel realized. She was

trembling. It suddenly occurred to Gabriel that, for as long as they

had known each other, Enda had never touched the luckstone, not once.

It just seemed like one of her quirks, but now …

She went slowly over to one of the constructs. It was like a set

of upright mirrors made from very thick glass, but they were all

polished black. She touched one of them gingerly and jumped like

someone getting a shock. The construct’s surface came alive with

strange characters and symbols that were completely unfamiliar to

Gabriel.

“It is …” Enda gulped. “Whoever built this

construct, it recognizes when a fraal touches it. It would appear to

be a broadcast energy device, a sort of conduit. I do not know if it

can be correctly described as a weapon. Perhaps originally it might

have been used as a communications device, but it will serve our

purpose.”

“How can you be so sure?” Gabriel said.

She shivered and said, “It spoke to me. It remembers …”

And Enda would not look at him again.

“We’d better do something,” Gabriel said. “They’re

coming.”

“I will do this,” Enda said.

She went around the four mirrors, touching them one after another.

Slowly they lit from within, as Gabriel’s luckstone always did, with

that faint golden interior glow. But it grew brighter.

Enda stopped, looked over at Gabriel, and said, “If I

understand this correctly, it requires two or more to operate it, one

to direct the energy, one to target. It describes the targeting

routine as ‘going into the darkness.’ “

Gabriel smiled, though he was shaking all over. “I understand

that,” he said. “What do I need to do?”

“I believe simply touch one of these stones when I direct you

to”

He moved toward them. So did Tlelai.

“This,” said Tlelai, “is what we came for, eh,

brother?”

“I’d say so,” Gabriel replied.

Enda went into the center space between the stones. All of them

were shining now, and the golden light lent an unusually warm cast to

her features. Gabriel could not recall ever having seen such an

expression of fear and resolve together on a fraal’s face, or for

that matter, on a human’s. Enda went in among the stones like someone

going to her death—

She stopped there, looked up and around, then slowly she lifted

her hands, put one flat against one of the stones, and one flat

against the other.

Gabriel saw the stones move, saw them gradually lean in toward her

as if they were holding her in place as much as she was holding them.

His hand on the luckstone, Gabriel went up to one of the stones,

reached out to it… and hesitated. Now that he had finally come

to it, the end of the normal part of his life, the part he could not

ever return to again, like being a marine—

No. He would not admit that, but at the same time, this change was

bidding fair to become permanent. He could try to refuse it, but

something told him that refusal might maim him. He could accept it,

but accepting it might kill him.

He could see it in his mind, that sudden bright threshold over

which his life, or something that had invaded his life, was now

daring him to step. He would have preferred any other challenge,

anything physical, anything with a gun at one end of it and an enemy

at the other, anything that needed a charge downhill or single

combat. Give me that and I’m your man, but not this … not this

last step into the darkness, into the fire. There was no telling what

lay on the other side of it. It would be nice if it were something as

simple as death.

There were no guarantees of that. Suddenly, he found himself

envying his comrades who had died on battlefields: in the ice

crevasses of Epsedra, in the desert on Hardcore, blown apart, burned

to cinders, but for all that, safely dead, buried, honored, their end

known, their work done. There was no telling what would happen to him

if he accepted this challenge and took the step into the darkness and

the fire.

Everyone was watching, waiting to see what he would do. Tlelai,

across at the other stone, was waiting for him. Gabriel swallowed and

touched the stone. The darkness fell around him, and the fire …

*

He was not alone. Tlelai was there as well, and the two of them,

in this empty place of darkness, were giants of fire, their shapes

only vaguely reflecting their true forms, but still recognizably

human and edanwe. They looked around, trying to get their bearings in

the nothingness. Gabriel thought he heard a voice saying, I

remember, I remember too much.

I will not let it destroy this life! Nor these lives—

Enda? he said. He could not see her anywhere.

Here, Gabriel. Wait. Look around you.

He and Tlelai did. The darkness around them was not total. In it,

indistinct forms moved.

Something is coming, Tlelai said. Are those ships?

Gabriel peered through the darkness. Tlelai was right. Not so very

far away from them were the shadows of three huge round vessels, seen

dimly, as if through deep water. For the moment he and Tlelai could

see into drivespace, as if with eyes and needing no detector.

I am learning what to do now, Enda said. For your part,

you must tell me where and when they will come out of drivespace. You

must be sure. Once this is launched, it cannot be redirected.

Trust Enda to find a weapon, Gabriel said. She was

always better at gunnery than I was.

They peered through the darkness together. There are more of

them, Tlelai said.

Gabriel looked in the direction he was indicating. Much more

distant, there were other shapes coming: a pair of two and a group of

three. Even through the dark, wavering medium, they were all

identifiable as of stellar nations make, cruisers or better, and

Gabriel was slightly less concerned about them at the moment. The

ships in front of them, the ones plainly not from any known force in

the galaxy, were their big problem right now.

You’re right, Gabriel said, but they’re going to come

out after this first bunch … a good while after. We’ll

have to take care of them some other way.

He paused and concentrated on that eddying darkness in front of

them. Look, Gabriel said. You can see it if you look hard.

There’s a trace behind them, a wake. It seems to give an indication

of where they’re going to come out. It’s hard to see real space and

this space at the same time, but—

I see this space, Tlelai said. I see the real things of

the world, riding on it, like a leaf on water, and underneath it, the

way the other space bubbles up against it.

They both peered into the darkness, each working to see in his own

way. Have you found the place? Enda said. Hurry, I cannot

hold this long—

Three forces coming out, Gabriel said. Two big ships,

one smaller one. About a hundred of the kroath ships, divided among

the three.

I need a time as well.

You don’t want much, do you? Gabriel said. Time. How are

we supposed to judge that? There’s no—

There is, Tlelai said. I can see it coming. I can count

its coming by breaths, if that will help you.

Close enough, Enda said. Gabriel, how fast does an

edanwe breathe?

He realized that he didn’t have the slightest idea. It doesn’t

matter, Tlelai said. I can hear my heart beat. That may work

better. One, two, three, four, five—

Gabriel listened. About a hundred ten per minute, he said.

Tlelai! How many hundred and tens?

Seven—

They are close, Gabriel thought. Oh, God, what’re

we going to do?

A hundred and ten million kilometers, Enda said. It will

have to do. Gabriel, Tlelai, show me the places.

They indicated the three emergence spots. All right, Enda

said. I see what I must do. You must take the indicators I give

you and hold them on those spots. You must not let them move,

whatever happens, for those seven minutes. When I tell you, drop them

immediately.

Right, Gabriel said, and saw the three “indicators”

Enda meant, three bright spots of light that appeared in the darkness

before them.

He tried to reach out to one with his hands, and it moved as if

trying to avoid him. By moving in its general direction and holding

his hands out to control the energy flows, Gabriel guided it over to

where it was needed, over one of the “bubbling” emergence

points that he and Tlelai could see in the darkness. He held the

indicator there with some difficulty; it seemed to want to travel.

Tlelai got control of the other one and held it in place as well.

That left the third one. Gabriel tried to hold his one spot in place

while “grabbing” for the other as well, but the first one

started to slip.

No, let me, Tlelai said, and managed to hold it in place

together. There!

It stayed.

Hold them there, Enda said. I am setting up the energy

transfer now.

What will this do? Tlelai said.

I hope it will discommode them severely, said Enda. Hold

those indicators at all costs, do not let them slip.

She paused. Six minutes, Enda said. Starting …

now.

He could not remember ever having heard so passionless a voice

from her. Enda’s voice was usually so full of emotion: irony, humor,

compassion, everything suitable to the moment and carefully phrased.

Now all that was gone, replaced by a cool patience Gabriel was not

sure he liked. Neither did he like the sense of the darkness around

them, which shifted when Enda started her count. It pressed in. The

ships continued to make their slow way toward the world, slow and

intent, unhurried, like predators who know their prey cannot escape.

Gabriel started to feel as if he was trapped in this darkness with

them, that he could never get out.

He would stifle. He would die.

If I have to die, let me die in the light!

He had been in danger of death before, and he knew what to do

about it. He hung on. Tlelai was there as well, and they hung on

together, nothing but the feel and “sound” of each other’s

mind to keep them sane in the dark.

We’ll last. We’ll last, brother. We’ve been here before.

The fear built, but it was as much excitement now, that jittery

rush of adrenaline that came just before the charge. The pressure

built, but they could take it, they had been here, they had enough

practice … just. What had not been in their experiences before

was the terrible sense of some dark power trying to wrestle its way

out of their hands, like a snake or some strangling thing. The

indicator “spots” kept trying to jump out of place, and

trying again, and the two of them had to keep pushing them back. It

was hard, in the dark, and the fear was growing—

Five minutes.

Space began to seethe. Gabriel had not really thought of

drivespace as something that might have any kind of physical motion

associated with it, much less any kind of life. This version of

drivespace had none of the featurelessness that mere visual

examination suggested as you passed through. There were currents in

this, backwashes and eddies that had nothing to do with the ships

passing through it. The fabric of drivespace itself seemed to be

aware, somehow, of their presence, of their interference.

Or Something living in it did—

Four minutes.

It seemed to be pushing back at them, trying to make them lose

their grip.

Could a dimension of space be sentient? Gabriel wondered. Could it

possibly know what passed through? Was this just some natural

expression of some kind of force, or reaction to force, that normally

went uninterfered with in drivespace but was now perceptible because

they were in this strange alien machine?

Three minutes.

Either way, it was getting much harder to keep the circles where

they were supposed to be. They kept trying to slip.

Tlelai, Gabriel said, are you all right?

Holding … hard… brother…

Right. Hang on, and don’t get your tail in a twist, it’s just a

few minutes more.

Sudden hissing came from that fiery shape over in the darkness.

Why would I twist my tail?

Don’t laugh. You ‘re losing it!

I am not! More laughter. Mind your own!

They’re fine.

They were. The pressure was increasing, the fear was increasing,

drivespace writhed in their grip and tried to get away, the

indicators tried to leap out of position but weren’t allowed to. The

ones Gabriel was handling started to burn him, but he hung on. He had

been burned before. He had flung fire across this darkness in his

dreams and been burned, and he had not died of it.

I’m not going to mess up the performance that all those

experiences were rehearsals for. I’ve had guns burn me worse than

this, oh, God, I have, but I had to keep firing then, and I will not

let go now. I will not—

One minute!

Several long breaths went by … and then, above them, around

them, as if they were in the midst of it, came starfall.

Strange and terrible it was to Gabriel to see it from both sides,

from drivespace and real space, as if from underwater and above water

at the same time. The huge round shapes rose slowly and inexorably

out of drivespace, one starfall pure white, one deep blue, one

black-red like sunset before a storm. Gabriel knew that third ship.

If it was not the same ship that had risen out of drivespace to look

at Sunshine and then sunk immediately away again, it was its

sister. They were huge, dark green spherical vessels, shining and

wound about with strange cordlike structures, almost organic-looking,

like galled, puckered fruit. The “galls” started to shake

themselves free of the parent growths as all the starfalls completed

themselves, more and more of those deadly little spheres coming

loose, tumbling away into a formation around the parent vessels.

Let go now! Enda said. Hurry! Ten seconds.

Gun ports started to glow faintly with coronal discharge as the

ships readied their weapons. Gabriel burst out into a huge sweat, now

that he had a body to sweat with again. But he was still seeing the

view as if partially submerged in it, and the ships were there, huge,

rolling now to bring their weapons to bear on the planet.

Five seconds.

No! Gabriel cried. Not their world, no!

The big ships started to move, the small kroath vessels flashed

down toward the planet.

Now.

Everything abruptly blinked into blackness as the sun winked out.

From all around them a shriek of intolerable power went up, and

everything else in the cavern went dark, all but Enda and the

mirror-prism in which she was trapped like some creature anciently

immured in amber. She burned like a carbon element in an old lamp,

the air around her burned like plasma, the machine burned as if

molten inside. Everything else was darkness.

Then the light came. It was a light that Gabriel and Tlelai had

seen in their dreams, and which Gabriel had seen most recently when

the past looked out at him of the little edanwe’s mind: fire, the

whole voracious fire of a sun concentrated for a fraction of a second

into one beam, one ferocious pulse of energy that tore through the

formation of ships.

It struck them and there was no formation left, gone, exploded in

many small puffs of glitter and several large ones, totally

vaporized, and then even the vapor was gone, nothing left but atoms

stripped to ions and left glowing. Every ship was gone in a wink of

the sun, which was now shining again as if nothing had happened. In

the cavern, there was a shocked silence.

“Now that,” Helm’s voice said reverently out of

the dark, “is a weapon. I want one.”

That happened seven minutes ago, Enda said, but you had

to hold the aim. The beam runs down a conduit.

Suddenly she sounded terribly tired. I do not— she

said, and nothing more.

Light started to seep back again, and they all stood looking at

each other. Gabriel went to Enda and helped her out of the machine.

The structure itself was blackened— not the glossy matte-black

it had been before, but scorched and burned. Blue-green electricity

lanced across its surface with a crackling hiss, and smoke simmered

from the stone, even though it was cool to the touch. Enda herself

was slumped and looked worn and weary, as if a decade had come off

her life all at once.

“I do not think this machine will work again,” she said,

very faintly, as Gabriel helped her away. “If it was designed to

do what we used it for, then we did something wrong. Still, that may

be for the better, I think.”

“I’d say so,” Gabriel said, feeling a little wobbly

himself. “Let Helm find his own.”

He could not rest just yet. Gabriel looked up into the image of

the space above them, torn and roiling with a sudden ionization

nebula from the destroyed ships. It was glorious, but there was a

problem. Drivespace, unseen at the moment, still hid the vessels they

had sensed behind the first ones.

“A whole lot of electronic messages must have gone out five

days ago,” Gabriel said softly. “It’s going to take a month

to sort this security breach out.”

“She said two cruisers, did she not?” Tlelai said. “The

screaming woman I shot.”

“She did,” Gabriel said, peering into the darkness,

letting normal life fade away again as he put his hand into his

pocket and gripped the luckstone. His perception of the great pool of

drivespace came back, and in it the image of the two ships and the

three coming after them.

“Maybe we can still do something,” Gabriel said. “Come

on, Tlelai, let’s try it.”

They went and took hold of the dark-mirror columns from which Enda

had struck her blow. The stone seemed to pulse and hum discordantly

at their touch.

Gabriel gulped. “Enda, you did say we can’t use that again?”

“Even if we could, there is no time,” she said. “The

ships would be unlikely to stay where they are for eight minutes.”

“The ships?” the Eldest said.

“Our little ones? Not a chance,” said Gabriel. “Eldest,

we would all die trying. There are better ways.”

He stared into the darkness. It eddied, it flowed … Water.

The Downfall, and the irresistible thunder of it. The eddies in the

pool at the bottom … the way they spun things around …

“Come on, Tlelai,” Gabriel said. “Let’s try it”

He put his hands up against the stone and closed his eyes, shutting

out the light.

On the other side of the stone, Tlelai did the same.

What are we doing? Tlelai asked.

See how those two are going to come out first, and those three

are going to come out second, by maybe a couple of hours?

Yes.

What if we pushed the three in front of the two?

Tlelai shrugged his tail. Why not? Let’s try.

Gabriel gripped the luckstone in his hand and pressed it hard

against the slab he leaned against. Come on, he said to it.

I’ve danced to your tune all this while. Now you dance to mine.

Just this once.

He was fire again, a shape of fire, immense. So was Tlelai. It

would not last, though. The strain was too great, the fabric of

things was strained because of the imminent arrival of so many

objects from drivespace. The two of them reached up into that dark

liquid flow, splashed in it, moved it, changed one eddy, the one

containing the three ships— swept it past the other, pushed it

ahead. Nervous, they watched to see the pattern stabilize. There was

some rocking and backflowing, but slowly the flow smoothed itself

out, things rushed forward in the usual way … and the three

were ahead of the two.

Gabriel was suddenly exhausted. He fell away from the stone, and

Tlelai on his side did the same, staggering somewhat. “So now,”

he said, “we are safe for the moment.”

“For the moment, brother,” Gabriel said. “There are

going to be a lot of uncomfortable ones after this, but none as bad

as this has been … we’ll hope.”

He turned back to Enda, over whom Delde Sota was bending. The

fraal was sitting on the floor, looking very weary. As Gabriel and

Tlelai came back to her, she looked up and said, “A good day’s

work for all of us.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said, looking down at her and wondering,

What has she remembered that she can’t bear? Never mind her, am I

even going to be human at the end of this process?

He went over to the Eldest, who was watching them with an

expression that no one could read. “Sir,” Gabriel said, “it

might be well if your people stayed safe in here for a while, until

matters in space resolve themselves. It may take a while. We’ll go up

to the ships, and come down to let you know.”

The Eldest nodded. “This is the end of everything,” he

said, “is it not? The old world ends here.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said, “yes, but the new one will be

very full of wonders, and when you tire of those, you have much to

teach us. Do what you can.”

Together with Enda, Tlelai and the rest of them, Gabriel headed

for the ramp.

Chapter Twenty-Two

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SYSTEM COMMS GOT very lively about an hour later when three Star

Force vessels, all cruisers, burst out of drivespace and settled into

orbit around Danwell. They were about to send out the standard

all-channels hail to any explorers in the area, and were rather

surprised when Gabriel hailed them first.

“Uh, interested to know how you knew we were in the area,

Sunshine,” said the comms officer for one of the vessels,

a cruiser called Buday. “We weren’t informed that you

have drivespace detection.”

“We don’t,” Gabriel said. “Listen, Buday,

please be advised of two VoidCorp cruisers incoming to these

coordinates. I expect them here in about two hours. They are probably

here to pick up one of their operatives, who we would gladly turn

over to you. They doubtless have other intents toward this planet,

which is inhabited, repeat inhabited, by sentients.”

“Uh, roger that Sunshine,” said the comms

officer, suddenly sounding much more interested. “We’ll start

the usual protection protocols.”

There was a pause. Gabriel smiled gently, for this meant that,

since the Concord vessels were on the scene first, they could

implement cultural embargo immediately … and since they

outnumbered the VoidCorp vessels, the Corpses wouldn’t be able to do

a thing about it.

“Another message for Sunshine from Schmetterling command,” said the comms officer. “The Concord

Administrator’s compliments to Gabriel Connor, and he would be

pleased to see him at Mr. Connor’s earliest convenience.”

Gabriel’s smile went thin and amused. “My respects to the

administrator,” Gabriel said, “and if he would be so good

as to send down a gig, I will be glad to see him immediately.”

“Gig in twenty minutes. Sunshine,” the voice

replied.

Gabriel stood up, looked over at Enda, and said, “The sooner

the better.”

“What will you tell him?” Enda asked.

Gabriel chuckled. “As little as possible. I will also give

Aleen Delonghi a ride back with me … and Miss Blue Eyes as

well.”

“Wouldn’t Delonghi prefer to go back in her own ship?”

“I’m sure,” Gabriel said, “but having the person

she was supposed to be tailing drop her off in Kharls’s lap like a

lost package is a message he may remember. She certainly

will.” He grinned. “As for Blue Eyes, let Concord Intel

pump her out and hang her up to dry. Maybe they’ll find out something

about that leak, though I’m not so sure.” He stood up and

stretched. “I’d better get changed and get this over with.

Meanwhile, let’s get the edanwe out of here and back to the

settlement. I don’t want to give our new arrivals any reason to start

snooping around here.”

*

Half an hour later Gabriel was standing outside a plain door in

the corridor of the Star Force cruiser Schmetterling. The door

slid open, and a slim young man he had seen before gestured Gabriel

courteously in.

Gabriel entered the room, a plush carpeted place with artwork

hanging from the wood-paneled walls. A huge window spanned one wall,

giving a panoramic view of Danwell beneath the ship. There was a desk

in the middle of the room, and standing beside it was something

Gabriel had not seen before: a Concord Administrator in his state,

wearing his dark robes of office and holding his tri-staff. Kharls

bore little similarity to the small business-dressed man Gabriel had

seen once before in a bare little room aboard this ship.

Ever so slightly, Gabriel bowed. “Sir,” he said.

“There are a couple of matters I would like to discuss with

you,” Kharls said and gestured at a seat.

Gabriel took it. “I’m entirely at your disposal.”

“I doubt that,” Kharls said, sitting down himself.

“First of all: the laws of science appear to be misbehaving in

this area. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

“Sir,” Gabriel said, “I know I’m a bad influence,

but I don’t think I’m that bad.”

“Really,” Kharls said. “We spent only a hundred and

nineteen hours in this last starfall. As we both know, that is an

impossibility.”

“Someone counted wrong?” Gabriel said, his eyebrows up.

Kharls simply looked at him. “Second,” he said. “There

appears to have been some sort of space battle here in the very

recent past.”

Gabriel raised the eyebrows higher, a polite look.

“Weapons were used of such power that very little survived of

what might be as many as three capital ships,” Kharls said. “We

are interested in this event.”

“I may have missed it,” Gabriel said. “We were busy

with things down on the planet.”

“There will be an aurora tonight that no one could miss,”

Kharls said, rather drily. “I recommend it to you.”

He sat quiet for a moment, then said, “If such forces are

moving out in the Verge, it would be in the best interests for

everyone, Concord and otherwise, to know everything possible about

them. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“With respect, Administrator, no,” Gabriel said. “There

are forces and forces, and I am not convinced of the good intentions

of even the best intentioned among them. For example, the Concord

Intel agent to whom I gave a lift back … you had better watch

out for her. I think she may be working for another organization

besides yours or as well as yours.”

“Any thoughts on who?”

Gabriel looked at him. “Why should I volunteer any?” he

asked. “But no, no ideas that I trust. All the same, the

feelings I got from her on this subject were not positive. Watch

her.”

Kharls bowed his head slightly. “Meanwhile you’ve found an

inhabited planet… under rather unusual circumstances.”

“I would agree with you on that.” Gabriel folded his

hands. “This is a very complex culture, not blocked, but

slow-moving and deliberate. They have been selectively exploiting

steam and electricity for hundreds of years. Their concept of

progress is very different from our own— it has entirely to do

with the mind, with philosophy and the understanding of science.

Physical progress they see as something there’s no rush about.

Language is not a concept that they understand as we do. You will

need to select psionic technicians to work with them, when the

limited cultural contacts begin. In the meantime, though, they have

had a bad week, and I would keep away from them a while, and keep

others away from them.”

“Yes,” Kharls said. “About those others. It was our

understanding that you didn’t have stardrive detection equipment

aboard. How did you know that the VoidCorp ships were incoming?”

Gabriel smiled. “Bad news travels fast?”

Kharls glanced at the tri-staff leaning against the desk. “Mr.

Connor,” he said, “wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we

leveled with each other?”

“Perhaps it would, Administrator,” said Gabriel, “but

your business has not been about making life easier for me. I hardly

see why I should make yours easier for you.” He sat back and

said, “No, I think I might prefer to let matters rest as they

are at the moment. As for the edanweir, they’ve had a very bad time

of it… and creatures far worse than humans found them before

we did. I believe you know who we mean. Delonghi mentioned them to

me, though very reluctantly.”

“We do not know their species names yet,” said Kharls.

“though there seems to be a growing tendency to call them

‘kroath’ after some Hatire word. They seem to be external, but that

cannot be proven.” He looked narrowly at Gabriel. “The name

may blind us to something we very much need to know about them.”

“That’s as may be,” Gabriel said. “My agenda is not

yours— as you know very well, but I want these people

protected. I would stay a while, but I think my presence there

endangers them, so I will not be coming back any time soon. I want

them properly taken care of, and mostly I want them left alone. They

have a lot to teach us … if they survive, and if we do.”

“Ah,” said Kharls. “Well, that protection is one of

the reasons I’m here. Naturally there would be tremendous interest

from, well, certain sectors, in a planet so promising. It’s important

to see that no one gets carried away by the mere sight of it. If, as

you say, these— edanweir?— have recently been attacked by

forces we understand so little, it’s important to have someone here

who can defend them in the short term and establish a standing force—

a discreet one— for the long term.”

“I was going to ask what you were doing here at all,”

Gabriel said, “and in such force. I could almost think you

started heading in this direction as soon you discovered I had bought

an exploration contract.”

Kharls smiled and said nothing.

“Probably just paranoia on my part,” Gabriel said.

“Meanwhile, you know what I want from you.”

“A fair trial,” Kharls said, “so you say. Where’s

the evidence you’ve been promising me?”

“I’m beginning to collect it,” said Gabriel.

“There are ways in which matters could be sped up.”

Gabriel simply sat and looked at Kharls, and shook his head, like

someone who has expected a specific response and has not been

disappointed.

“Not on your terms,” said Gabriel. “Nothing on your terms. You’ve gotten enough out of me already … and

will, I’m sure, find ways to get more. Meanwhile, I have my own

business to attend to. Specifically,” he said, and got up, “I

have some mail to deliver to Coulomb. I wouldn’t mind hitching a

ride, if one of your ships are going that way. Otherwise …”

Kharls grinned at him in pure feral pleasure. It was a look that

would have given Gabriel a shiver under more ordinary circumstances.

He had the luckstone in his pocket, and he thought he could hear just

a whisper of intent, of concept, the way he would have heard it from

Tlelai: Let him run.

“Unfortunately I do not believe our schedule is likely to

take us in that direction,” said Kharls. He stood too. “A

diversion would be noticed and commented on. I am sorry not to be

able to help, this time. Perhaps some other. Your oaths, Connor, are

they still in order?”

Once again, it was a question he had no business asking. The man

was simply intolerable, yet Gabriel felt the faintest thread of

admiration creeping through him. This was power, yes, habituated to

itself and confident, but at the same time it was intelligent power—

brutal, occasionally, but in a considered fashion. There was some

part of Gabriel that could appreciate this, even when he was the

target.

“Enough in order,” said Gabriel, “not to have

killed Delonghi for you.”

There was that smile again, like that of one predator to another,

if such could smile over a shared joke, or perhaps a shared meal.

“Did she need it?”

“When we first met,” said Gabriel, “almost

certainly, but circumstance caused me to spare her. Afterwards, when

we spoke on Danwell, she may still have needed it, but it didn’t

happen.”

“Mercy?”

“Pragmatism,” said Gabriel, “or just a very full

schedule.”

“Not fear?”

Now it was Gabriel’s turn to grin, and he hoped the look was as

feral. “Administrator,” he said, “I hate to waste your

time.”

“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” said

Kharls.

“Be sure I’ll call you if there is,” Gabriel said. He

turned to the door, thinking of the luckstone, and of the whisper in

his mind that told him of other hideaways, and one far, far greater

than all the rest— and then he stopped.

“Oh,” he said. “One thing.”

Kharls watched him.

“I want to talk to you about a book called Dodgson’s Guide

to First Contacts”

Kharls had the grace to look confused.

*

It was maybe another hour before Gabriel was on Danwell again,

back at the settlement where the gig had dropped him at his request.

The edanweir were settling themselves back into their usual routine,

as much as they could after so bizarre a day. Gabriel was very glad

to take himself back to Sunshine for a few quiet moments.

There he found Enda in the sitting room, watering her bulb with some

concern.

“It has been shockingly neglected,” she said.

Gabriel sat down and felt a great weight roll off him, as if

everything was right again, as if everything had gone back to normal.

It was an illusion, but he enjoyed it, getting up and brewing himself

a cup of chai.

“It won’t die, will it?” Gabriel said.

“Oh, no,” Enda said. “It is tougher than that.”

She gave him a thoughtful look. “Like some others I know.”

Gabriel laughed very softly as he sat down with the chai. “Yes,”

he said, “there have been a lot of surprises this week. I was

surprised, certainly, and as for you …”

He trailed off. Enda looked at him.

“You kept telling me you didn’t have the training ‘that some

others had,’ ” Gabriel said. “Just what have you had?”

She did not look at him for some while. Finally, Enda met his

eyes. “Gabriel,” she said, “some time back, when we

first met, I avoided asking you many questions which I might in the

normal course of things have insisted on having answered. I do not

recall you complaining about that.”

Gabriel was quiet for a while. “No,” he said.

“So now … it would be a matter of comfort to me if,

for a while, you could avoid, in turn, pressing me for answers. I

have not had an easy time of it of late. I would appreciate some time

to recover my own grip on the world and the way things are going. I

promise you answers to everything, but not right now.”

He sighed. “You’ve done enough for me in letting me recover

my grip,” Gabriel said. “Though the gods know every time I

think I’m secure, I slip again. Just the way things are going, I

suppose.” He looked at the luckstone in his hand. “I have a

feeling they won’t go that way for long.”

“No,” Enda said. “When I first saw that, I thought

the same.”

He gave her a slightly surprised look. “Did you know what it

was?”

“Not at all clearly,” Enda said. She bowed her head, not

a gesture, just someone trying not to have to look at Gabriel. “When

I discovered that you had it … and then later when I started

to become suspicious of it… the thought crossed my mind that

it might somehow have been implicated in our meeting.”

“How do you mean?”

She lifted her head again, looking abashed— not an

expression Gabriel was used to seeing from Enda. “There are

forces moving among the worlds that I would not pretend to

understand,” she said. “I had suspected for some time that

perhaps that little stone was not as simple as the lightstones that

people find on some planets’ beaches, but without evidence of what it

might be instead, why raise doubts or alarms? Why make you nervous

about it? It never did anything dangerous that either of us saw until

it burned a hole in the pilot cabin’s deck.”

She sighed. “Now we see that forces we cannot understand are

moving. People are being moved, singly and in great numbers. Stellar

nations are being moved, fleets, armies— but to what purpose?”

She looked at the luckstone. “We are fortunate,” she

said. “We are standing in a place where we may someday be able

to find out, if our involvement with this great pattern of movement

does not kill us first. It may.”

“I was wondering,” Gabriel said, “whether the stone

somehow had something to do with what happened to me on

Falada, the deaths, Jacob Ricel, all the rest of it.”

“You will have time now,” Enda said, “a little time

anyway, to start to discover that. I would warn you, though, that I

think we are caught up in something big enough that it may grind down

our small personal concerns.”

“It’s going to have to be pretty good to do that,”

Gabriel said. “My concerns may be small, but they’re mine.

The universe comes second.”

“Does it?” Enda said. “Your actions would make one

think otherwise.”

Gabriel wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“Meanwhile,” Enda said. “What about the contract?”

“I’ve already taken care of that,” Gabriel said. “I’ve

licensed the exploration rights for Danwell back to the CSS. They’ll

handle them for the Concord, and we’ll get a continuing royalty,

while the Concord will make sure that VoidCorp finds it permanently

impossible to come along and try to get the locals to sign their

rights away. How delighted the Concord are that matters have brought

them to this area at such a sensitive time.” Gabriel put his

eyebrows up. “Have you considered what the odds on that would normally be?”

Enda smiled too. “We have been a useful excuse to some

people,” he said softly. “Probably we will be again. I am

sure that the Concord Administrator will follow us, as he has until

now, with great interest.”

“Especially now that he knows I’m holding out on him,”

Gabriel said.

Enda gazed at him.

“Oh, he knows,” Gabriel said. “I’m sure.” He

looked at the stone. “That … voice, that knowledge, said

there were more such repositories of ancient things, that there is

another one, a much greater one. ‘And not too far away,’ the little

edanwe said to me. These things were put away out here in the Verge …

maybe to keep them away from some enemy, maybe to save them for us? I

don’t know, but they have to be found. If this small armory is any

indication of what’s here, we have to find it. It may make the

difference between us losing or winning this war, for it’s a war

we’re in.”

Enda tilted her head. “It may as well have been a museum as

an armory,” she said. “We must keep our minds open about

that, but yes, it seems that both of us have become, in a strange

way, keys to a very old storehouse. Now all we have to do is find it…

find out what it is, where it is …”

“And keep the entire galaxy out of our hair while we try to

do it,” Gabriel said, “and try to work out who to give the

secret to at last.”

“Something of a challenge,” Enda said. “We had

better get started.”

*

They would be leaving the next morning, all of them together,

Gabriel and Enda in company with Helm, Delde Sota, Angela, and Grawl,

all heading for Coulomb. Gabriel said his goodbyes to the Eldest and

to Tlelai. They spent a good while sitting by the fire that night,

discussing what might happen in the future, and what had happened to

them both in the fire and the darkness. Finally, toward midnight,

Gabriel got up. He and Tlelai went out into the darkness together, as

Gabriel prepared to walk back to the ship’s parking place.

“Take care of them all, hunter,” Gabriel said, “and

the little one, the wise one”— he thought of that

blinding, innocent gaze— “tell her not to pull people’s

hair.”

“I’ll tell her that.”

Gabriel dropped to one knee to equalize the height difference.

They hugged each other hard. Gabriel stood up again, lifted a hand,

headed away, and then stopped suddenly.

“The word you called me …” he said. “The one

I couldn’t hear.”

“Laidanwe,” Tlelai said, “the one who brings

what must come.”

Gabriel looked at him. “Harbinger,” he said.

Tlelai switched his tail in the way that meant “yes” and

said, “Come back when you can, brother.”

“I will. Not soon, but I will.”

It was a long quiet walk in the dark, but Gabriel knew the way

extremely well by now. He came at last to the spot where Sunshine,

Longshot, and Lalique were parked together, paused, and

then went on past to the place where the waterfall roared its

loudest.

There in the darkness he stood and simply listened to it, the huge

noise, the drifting, pounding, shifting water, hammering down into

the gorge, irresistible. He thought of the darkness in the ancient

site under the mountain. He thought of the sense he had therein of

time reaching back beyond sight. It had been falling for thousands of

years. History, like the cataract, the vast moving majesty and weight

of the past, would fall for thousands of years more. It would hammer

down onto present history and the future, not to be stopped, not to

be turned aside by one man any more than one drop of water, caught in

the midst of that great fall, could turn the rest of it.

I am not a drop of water. I am a man. I know that I am in the

fall, the torrent of history.

Is it possible that being a man is enough? That being sentient,

being aware of the fall, is enough— not necessarily to turn the

great flow — but to change what starts to happen to it

afterwards? To have what I am, and what I do, be about something besides the senseless fall, besides surrendering to the

gravity of the situation?

He stood there, watching the water come roaring down, wearing away

the stones a drop at a time, and shouting down thought and reason and

everything else. Finally, Gabriel smiled. Probably better to

concentrate on being the drop and falling in the right place, he

thought, and let history take care of itself.

Right now, there’s Coulomb. After that… we’ll see what the

past has left for us to turn into the present.

He glanced at the luckstone in his hand, flipped it glowing in the

air, pocketed it, and made his way back to Sunshine.

Glossary

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Aegis - A G2 yellow star. The metropolitan center of the Verge.

AI - Artificial Intelligence. Sentient computer programming whose

sophistication varies from model to model.

Aleerin - see mechalus

Altai Services - An investigative and research firm based in

Tendril.

Alwhirn, Rae - An independent infotrader based in Sunbreak.

AU - Astronomical Unit. 150 million km

Austrin-Ontis Unlimited - A corporate stellar nation that is best

known as the leading arms dealer in the Stellar Ring. Most Austrins

view themselves as strong individualists with a deep sense of

altruism.

Bluefall - Capital planet of the Aegis system. Ruled by the

Regency government.

Builder - A section of fraal society that believes in integration

with other species and cultures.

CCC - see Concord Communications Commission.

cerametal - An extremely strong alloy made from laminated ceramics

and lightweight metals.

chai - tea

charge weapon -A firearm in which an electric firing pin ignites a

chemical explosive into a white-hot plasma propellant, thus expelling

a cerametallic slug at extremely high velocity.

CM armor - cerametal armor,

coldweek - The seven day ‘night’ of Rivendale.

Concord - see Galactic Concord.

Concord Communications Commission - A commission that regulates

all interstellar communication in the Verge, the Concord

Protectorates, and— theoretically— all of open space.

Concord Survey Service - A division of Star Force dedicated to

scouting, surveying, and first contacts.

Conker - A derogatory term for citizens of the Galactic Concord.

Connor, Gabriel - A former Concord marine lieutenant.

Corrivale - An F2 yellow-white star. Also the name of the system.

Coulomb - A red dwarf near the edge of the Verge.

CSS - see Concord Survey Service.

Dareyev, Elinke - Captain of Schmetterling.

David, Lemke - A Star Force second lieutenant navigator.

Diamond Point-The capital city of Grith.

Dormant Inc. - An investigative and research firm in Old Space.

drivecore - The central engine core of a stardrive.

driveplan - A plan filed with a star system’s traffic control

stating a ship’s planned destination, arrival time, and travel

intentions.

driveship - Any spaceship that is equipped with a stardrive.

drivespace - The dimension into which starships enter through use

of the stardrive. In this dimension, gravity works on a quantum

level, thus enabling movement of a ship from one point in space to

another in only 121 hours.

durasteel - Steel that has been strengthened at the molecular

level.

edanwe (pl. edanweir) - A sentient species native to Danwell.

Eldala - An unexplored system rumored to be somewhere past

Mantebron.

Enda - A fraal.

Epsedra - The site of a fierce battle involving Concord Marines.

Esephanne, Merielle - An inhabitant of Sunbreak.

eshk - A small aquatic bird native to Bluefall.

e-suit - An environment suit intended to keep the wearer safe from

vacuum, extreme temperatures, and radiation.

external - A term used to describe anything that originates beyond

known space.

Falada- A Concord Star Force Heavy Cruiser.

fraal - A non-Terran sentient species. Fraal are very slender,

large-eyed humanoids.

Galactic Concord - The thirteenth stellar nation. Formed by the

Treaty of Concord, Concord law and administration rule in the Verge,

which is delegated Open Space.

galya - A vine native to Grith which produces scented flowers.

gig - A colloquial term for any ship-to-ground shuttle. Any small

craft capable of transporting passengers or cargo from one place to

another. Most have gravity induction engines and a fuel range of no

more than 100 million kilometers.

gravity induction - A process whereby a cyclotron accelerates

particles to near-light speeds, thereby creating gravitons between

the particle and the surrounding mass. This process can be adjusted

and redirected, thus allowing the force of gravity to be overcome.

Most starships use a gravity induction engine for in-system travel.

Grawl - A weren poetess.

Grid - An interstellar computer network.

Grith - A moon of Hydrocus and the only habitable world in the

Corrivale system.

Gyrofresia ondothalis fraalii- see ‘Ondothwait’

Hammer’s Star - A yellow G5 star. The outermost Concord outpost in

the Verge.

Hatire Community - A theocratic stellar nation founded on the

principles of the generally anti-technology religion of the same

name.

Hatire faith - A religion that preaches ascendence through union

with the spirit of the Cosimir, a Precursor deity that the Hatire

adopted as their own. Most Hatire tend to hold attitudes antagonistic

to technology and abhor all forms of man-machine integration.

hesai - A Fraal word meaning ‘wrong’, incorrect not true.

holocomm - holographic communication.

holodisplay - The display of a holocomm that can be viewed in

either one, two, or three dimensions.

Humanity Reformation - A religion founded upon the belief that all

human faiths— and humans in general— are flawed.

Professing belief in a single deity, Reformers are expected to help

themselves and better the society in which they find themselves.

imager - A camera that records holographic, three-dimensional

images.

Inseer - A citizen of Insight.

Insight - A subsidiary of VoidCorp that broke away to form a

separate stellar nation. Citizenry is dominated by freethinking Grid

pilots who believe that humanity can reach its destiny only in

Gridspace.

Iphus - A planet in the Corrivale system.

Iphus Collective - A mining facility run by StarMech Collective on

Iphus.

JustWadeIn - A software program developed by Insight that allows

the user to learn space combat at ever-increasing levels of

difficulty.

kalwine - An alcoholic beverage similar in flavor to grape-based

wines, but made from kalgrain, a seed native to Sapphire.

Kharls. Lorand - A Concord Administrator.

klick - A hostile, arachnid-like external species of unknown

origin. Few facts are known about the klicks, though they are the

prime suspects for the destruction of the Silver Bell colony.

kroath - A hostile external species of unknown origin.

Lalique-Angela Valiz’s starship.

lanth cell - The standard lanthanide battery used to power most

small electronic equipment and firearms.

Lecterion - A gas giant of the Corrivale system.

Lighthouse-A huge space station capable of 50 light-year

starfalls that roams the Verge.

Longshot-Helm Ragnarsson’s weapon-laden starship.

Long Silence - That period of time when the Stellar Nations lost

contact with the Verge because of the Second Galactic War.

Lucullus - A binary star system in the Verge.

Mantebron - One of the outermost star systems of the Verge.

Mask B Bauble Studios - An entertainment production studio on

Bluefall,

mass weapon -A weapon that fires a ripple of intense gravity

waves, striking its target like a massive physical blow.

mass reactor - The primary power source of a stardrive. The

reactor collects, stores, and processes dark matter, thus producing

massive amounts of energy,

mechalus - The most common term used for an Aleerin, a sentient

humanoid symbiote species that has achieved a union between

biological life and cybernetic enhancements.

Melanchthon RGF - An investigative and research firm in Old Space.

Melek, Rov - An inhabitant of Sunbreak.

mhwada - A large, herbivorous herding beast native to Danwell.

mindwalker - Any being proficient with psionic powers.

neurocircuitry - Cybernetic implants intended to fuse electronic

or mechanical systems with a living biological entity.

neutralizer coat - A jacket designed to absorb light pulses from

electric or energy weapons.

Ondothwait - A plant. Scientific name: Gyrofresia ondothalis

fraalii.

Oraan - A fraal chef in Sunbreak.

Orion League - A heterogenous stellar nation founded on principles

of freedom and equal rights for all sentients.

Phorcys - A planet of the Thalaassa system.

phymech - An automated emergency medical system with a fairly

sophisticated AI system. Most phymechs come with fairly specialized

medical supplies— skinfilms, bandages, antiseptics, painkillers

and so on.

plasma weapon -A weapon that converts an electro-chemical mixture

into white-hot plasma and then utilizes a magnetic accelerator to

throw a blast of the plasma at the target. The super-heated plasma

explodes upon striking its target.

Quatsch -Rae Alwhirn’s starship.

Ragnarsson. Helm - A human mutant.

rail cannon - An electromagnetic accelerator that fires

projectiles at extremely high velocities.

ramscoop - A hydrogen collector.

Rand - Lorand Kharls’s assistant.

Regency Expansion Bureau - That segment of the Regency government

that oversees matters of infrastructure.

Rhynchus - The outermost planet of the Thalaassa system.

riglia - A sentient avian species native to Rivendale.

Rivendale - The only habitable world of the Terivine system.

rlin noch’i - The common garb of the mechalus. Consists of a

multi-pocketed smartsuit and soft boots.

RoanTech - One of the major manufacturers of stardrive engines.

sabot weapon -A firearm that uses electromagnetic pulses to

accelerate a discarding-rocket slug at hypersonic speeds.

Sapphire - Capital world of the Borealis Republic.

Schmetterling-A Concord Star Force Heavy Cruiser.

Sealed Knot, the - A mechalus symbol favored by medical

practitioners of that species.

seeker - The formal term given to initiates of the Orlamu faith.

sesheyan - A bipedal sentient species possessing long, bulbous

heads, large ears, and eight light-sensitive eyes. Most sesheyans are

about 1.7 meters tall and have two leathery wings that span between

2.5 - 4 meters. Sheya, the sesheyan homeworld, has been subjugated by

VoidCorp. However, a substantial population of ‘free sesheyans’ live

on Grith.

Se’tali - The chief port authority in Diamond Point.

Shei? -A Fraal interrogative meaning, ‘You call?’

Silence, the - see the Long Silence.

Silver Bell - A Borealin colony on Spes that was completely

annihilated by unknown forces in 2489 but has since been partially

rebuilt.

skinfilm - An artificial polymer membrane, usually only a few

molecules thick, that is often used for sanitary protection or

containment.

sniffer - A ramscoop detecting device.

Sota, Delde - A mechalus doctor and former Grid pilot.

spaceport - A planetary landing zone for driveships.

spee-g - short for specific gravity.

Spes - The innermost planet of the Hammer’s Star system.

spidermist - A multicellular, bioelectric creature native to

Rivendale.

stardrive - The standard starship engine that combines a gravity

induction coil and a mass reactor to open a temporary singularity in

space and thus allow a ship to enter drivespace. All jumps take 121

hours, no matter the distance.

starfall - The term used to describe a ship entering drivespace.

Star Force - The naval branch of the Concord military.

StarMech Collective - A high technology-oriented stellar nation.

starport - A zero-g, orbital docking zone for driveships.

starrise - The term used to describe a ship leaving drivespace.

stellar nations - The thirteen sovereign governing the Stellar

Ring, the center of which is Sol (Earth).

STG shuttle - Space-To-Ground shuttle.

Sunbreak -A city of Rivendale.

system drive - Any form of non-stardrive propulsion used for inner

system traffic.

Tendril - An F1 blue star. Also the name of the system.

Terivine - A trinary Verge system consisting of two G-class stars

and one K-class orange dwarf.

Thalaassa - An F2 yellow star. Also the name of the system.

Thuldan Empire - A militaristic, fiercely patriotic stellar nation

that considers the unity of humanity under the Thuldan banner to be

its manifest destiny. The largest of the stellar nations.

Tlelai - An edanwe hunter.

Treaty of Concord, the - The Treaty that ended the Second Galactic

War and formed the Galactic Concord.

tri-staff - The traditional weapon carried by Concord

Administrators.

Valiz, Angela - A human trader.

Verge, the - A frontier region of space originally colonized by

the stellar nations that was cut off during the Second Galactic War.

verjuice - A beverage made from the berry of the verrillia plant

in the Borealis Republic.

VoidCorp - A corporate stellar nation. Citizens are referred to as

Employees and all have an assigned number.

Wanderer - 1.) Fraal: A term used to describe that segment of

fraal culture that prefers life aboard their wandering city-ships

rather than settling down to mingle with other species.

2.) Sesheyan: Weyshe the Wanderer, a sesheyan deity.

warmweek - The seven day ‘day’ of Rivendale.

Watertower District - A posh district of Regency Island where Mask

Bauble studios is located.

weren - A sentient species native to the planet Kurg. Most weren

stand well over 2 meters tall, are covered in thick fur, and have

sharp claws. Male weren have large tusks protruding from the bottom

jaw.

About the Author

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DIANE DUANE was

born in Manhattan in 1952, a Year of the Dragon. She was raised on

Long Island, in the New York City suburbs. She wrote her first

unpublished novel when she was eight, illustrating it herself in

crayon. After many years of study in struggle, she stormed into the

science fiction world in 1979 with The

Door into Fire, published by Dell

Books.

Duane now lives with her husband in County

Wicklow in Ireland, along with four cats and several seriously

overworked computers. A Campbell Award nominee, Duane is the author

of nineteen acclaimed novels of science-fiction and fantasy. Five of

these were from the New York Times best-selling STAR TREK novels. She also authored a popular “Wizard” series of

young adult fantasies published by Delacorte/Dell.

In her spare time, Duane travels

(Switzerland being a favorite destination), studies German, dabbles

in astronomy, and spends time weeding the garden.

Alternity is a registered

trademark owned by TSR, Inc. Star*Drive and the Star*Drive logo are trademarks owned by TSR. Inc.

Contents

- Cover

- Copyright

- Preface

- Chapter 1

- Chapter 2

- Chapter 3

- Chapter 4

- Chapter 5

- Chapter 6

- Chapter 7

- Chapter 8

- Chapter 9

- Chapter 10

- Chapter 11

- Chapter 12

- Chapter 13

- Chapter 14

- Chapter 15

- Chapter 16

- Chapter 17

- Chapter 18

- Chapter 19

- Chapter 20

- Chapter 21

- Chapter 22

- Glossary

- Author Bio

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two