Starrise at Corrivale

Chapter Five

THE PARTY STARTED fairly early that night. Normally shipboard protocol would have forbidden two parties one right after the other. But this situation was a little different, and the relief aboard-among both Star Force and marine staff-was so palpable that the captain gave her approval with very little trouble. Gabriel had one stop to make before the party. After giving it some consideration, he felt that the way to attract the least attention was to do exactly what he was supposed to be doing: delivering a message to someone in Engineering. Torine Meldrum down there was on his spatball team. He wrote her a note about the rescheduling of practice and then wrote eleven more notes to other teammates, slipping them into message boxes outside people's rooms or delivering them by hand to those he knew to be on duty. Additionally, he wrote one note not to a teammate, and as he passed by Jake on the way out of Engineering, he saw that Jake got it without anyone seeing.

Then he changed into his most formal uniform, getting ready to go to the signing celebration. When he came out of his room, there was a folded note in his own message box. He opened it. For the one who mentioned ghosts, said the note. Deliver unlabeled. Out of the note fell a little datachip: another message, encoded.

Gabriel, suddenly apprehensive, looked at it for a moment. All of this covert moving in the shadows and keeping secrets made him very uneasy, but he decided that he was only a low link on a long chain of authority. Surely his superiors knew what they were doing. So he went back to his desk, found an envelope into which he slipped the chip, then folded it down and activated the seal. The paper melted into itself, seamless. It was a matter of a few minutes to make his way downdecks to the second ambassador's quarters. She was not there, so Gabriel slipped the envelope into the slot of her message box and went off to the party, wondering what it had all been about.

The partying down in the reconverted main briefing room was unusually wild, at least by shipboard standards. There was a lot more singing than usual-at least what passed for singing-and the jokes were louder than normal. Everything, movement, talk, even the eating and drinking, had a slight edge about it. The edge of the sword just sheathed, Gabriel thought. Relief. He was feeling it himself. He was a marine and liked to fight, but there was something about this particular fight that he would have found distasteful. Maybe because I've become too familiar with the details. One part of his mind immediately resolved not to get involved with the details any more. Another part denounced the first one as a coward. To shut them both up, he headed over toward the bar where he heard at least one familiar voice. Big Mil from Callirhoe was standing there having a talk with Charles, who was in front of the bar for a change. Mil was looking very amused and slightly outraged, enough so that Gabriel suspected Charles had told Mil about the Squadron Special. Some of the spatball team began to appear as well when they saw Gabriel there. All had an eye to telling their team captain that he was a little too intense about what was supposed to be a sport.

"This is the second time you've rescheduled the meeting," Torine said, having arrived a little after coming off duty. "Can't we just sort this out when we do our normal five on five game at the weekend? Don't you think some of us have other concerns?"

"Of course he doesn't," Dietmar said, looming his blond self up from behind the bar. "In his own mind, we are all as conscientious and duty-struck as our little Gabe."

The others made various disgusting choking noises. Gabriel rolled his eyes. "All right, all right, all of you, it can wait until the weekend! But don't you want to beat the Starfies?" "Depends on how the money goes," someone muttered.

From around them, applause started. The group looked up and saw Delvecchio standing in the doorway- a little hesitant, almost shy. She wore a loose wine-colored robe of simple cut rather than the elegant attire she favored during the delegations. She came in, and the applause got louder. The marines and Star Force people assembled all clapped and cheered for her as they would have for a victorious captain newly returned from a successful campaign.

She took it graciously then went to sit down. A Star Force officer brought her a drink, and the partying started to get back into its normal mode. Gabriel, though, looked at Delvecchio, looked at her face, and was not entirely sure he liked what he saw.

Somebody tapped Gabriel on the shoulder. He turned, surprised. It was just Mil. He held out his hand.

"What?"

"Here."

Confused, Gabriel put his hand out. Mil dropped something black into it. "It's your luck thing," Gabriel said. "I know. I want you to have it." "Huh?"

"No, seriously, take it. I saw you were interested in it yesterday." "I can't take that; it's yours! Mil, really, don't. Tomorrow you'll be sorry."

"No, I won't. Oh, go on! I'm getting tired of the thing. It keeps getting in my way, and I've almost lost it a couple times this month anyway. Doesn't matter." He grinned. "The news just came through. I'm being discharged in a month. Back to home sweet Damrak. Gonna go home and pile me up some cash. No, really, Gabriel! Take it. Every ounce I have to ship home is going to cost me big credits. I'm letting almost everything go but my discharge clothes and a sack to carry home my back pay."

"But-"

Mil just shook his head, closed Gabriel's hand around the black stone, grinned at him, and walked off. Gabriel looked after him, opened his mouth to say something, and then was surprised and distracted by the flush of heat coming from the little thing. The faint glow was coming from inside the stone again, pulsing gently, and as he opened his hand again he saw that the warmth kept time with the light. "Isn't that pretty," said the little soft voice from off to one side. He looked up in surprise to see the ambassador standing beside him, looking curiously at what he held. "It's a life crystal of some kind, isn't it? I've heard of them, but I've never actually seen one." She poked it gently. He offered it to her, and Del-vecchio took it and cupped it in her hand, looking at the way it echoed her pulse. "Where did you get it?"

"Another of the marines gave it to me. Mil, over there. The big red-headed guy." Delvecchio nodded. "A few of the Verge worlds have these," the ambassador said. "It's some kind of slightly electroactive silicate, a natural 'chip,' apparently. There are beaches where you can pick them up by the thousands. Must be lovely at night." "But it only glows when you hold it."

"So it does," Delvecchio said and glanced around, handing the stone back to Gabriel without really looking. "Well, isn't everyone having a good time?"

Except you, Gabriel thought, but kept his peace as regarded that, even though the ambassador herself was obviously making no particular attempt to look cheerful. "Yes, ma'am," Gabriel said.

She gave him a slightly sharp look. "You know," she said, "sometimes it's possible to be more observant than is good for you. Well, not that I haven't been tempting you to that blessed state as it is," she sighed.

"I still wish I knew why this has happened now," Delvecchio said, very softly.

"What?" Gabriel said after a moment. He was still recovering from the odd little episode with Mil.

"Collusion," she said. "I said they had been talking to each other."

"You didn't tell me that."

"I wanted to see if you might pick it up yourself." Gabriel looked away in embarrassment.

"No," she said, very lightly touching his arm, "don't feel bad that you didn't. I wasn't too sure myself until someone very fortuitously brought me proof. It would have been a lucky guess, no more, until about an hour before we started. And there were other pieces of information that helped me." Her eyes glinted at him. "Anyway, you did very well today. Don't stop tomorrow when they have to go back."

iit t, ii I wont.

"And as for me," Delvecchio said, "very early this morning we'll be returning for the signing ceremony." She sighed. "I'm sorry you won't be able to be there. It is likely to be too high-powered an event for me to indulge myself with your presence. Notice would be taken, which at the moment would be unwise. But after it's all over, I'll be coming back aboard to be ferried home again, and we'll have time to achieve closure on all this. I'll want to give you contact information for some people who'll be interested in, shall we say, this informal training period, when you get out of the service at last."

Gabriel shook his head, a little in disbelief, a little in gratitude. "Ma'am, you've gone to a lot of trouble for me."

"It's been mutual," Delvecchio said. "And people took this same kind of trouble for me once upon a time, when my career was new. This is my chance to pay the favor forward. I'll talk to you later in the week, then."

She walked away.

The rest of the party was not much different from the one that had preceded it. Gabriel left about midnight, headed for his quarters, stripped off, took a sober pill just in case-even though he had had very little to drink-and went to sleep.

Then there was thunder. The bombs falling, ending in a sudden flash of light. But they were not the usual bombs. Or rather, there was only one explosion instead of what had become almost a monotony of crashes and rumbles, and only one light. The screams he knew, but the voices were different, and the sound faded away almost immediately so that one irrationally calm and detached part of his mind said, air first, then vacuum: explosive decompression-One voice he heard that he recognized, though not from Epsedra. As the vacuum swallowed it he thought how strange it was to hear that serene, sedate voice cry out at something that, for once, for just this once, had surprised it. But that was wrong, that was impossible. A growing feeling of how wrong all this was, the wrongness shifting swiftly into horror, It wasn't like this, it wasn't-! And the light was all wrong too. Not the repeated flashes, but just one-fading, swiftly gone like the sound, with only the burning of ice and dying fire left. Gabriel fought for breath, but there was none, only ice in his lungs. Ice sheeting over burnt skin, ice clouding and clotting eyes that could no longer blink or see. He struggled, couldn't move, couldn't-

Gabriel flailed around among the bedclothes for a moment and found that there were no bombs, no ice, no fire, only someone pounding furiously on his door. And no light. He waved for it, staggered to his feet, opened the door.

There were two other marines there, people whom he knew slightly-security staff with sidearms. He stared at them.

"What?"

"Get dressed, sir," one of them said, as if the word "sir" left a bad taste in his mouth, "and come with us." As quickly as he could Gabriel threw on his uniform, the everyday duty fatigues rather than the now wrinkled dress blues that he had tossed across the desk. He was slightly annoyed and more than a little uneasy that the two security soldiers stood in the doorway watching him the entire time. When he was ready, they took him by the arms, one on each side, and marched him to the Bridge. It was not a place where marines went all that often-even Gabriel, in his slightly privileged position, did not make a habit of going there. It was very much Star Force territory, and the two services were careful not to trespass on one another's preserves aboard ship. It was a long narrow room, heavily shielded, since it would be the first part of the ship that an enemy would fire at in combat. A dozen or more officers monitored various screens and holodisplays, occasionally entering commands by datapad or voice relay. Despite the buzz of activity, the entire Bridge was unusually silent, subdued. The few who spoke among themselves did so in whispers. In the middle of the long narrow corridor was the center seat. It was empty at the moment.

The straight slim shape in the Star Force uniform, standing in front of the center seat, turned to him.

Elinke Dareyev looked down from the slight eminence on which the seat rested, gazing down at Gabriel with a face as still as that of a carved statue. She looked at him like someone who did not know him, had never known him. It was a stranger's face on the body of a friend.

"Lieutenant Connor," she said, "do you know why you have been brought here?"

"Captain, I-I don't know what you're-"

She turned to her first officer. "Play it," she said and turned away from Gabriel to look at the holographic display platform.

The air above the platform curdled into light, settled into a view of Phorcys, the white-streaked dun of the planet turning beneath. Nothing happened in that view for a while. Then a streak of silver dropped into it. The view zoomed in closer to the gleaming shape. It was a dull white rectangular box with a wedge-shaped cockpit attached to the front. One of the Star Force shuttles, heading for the planet's surface. Down and down it dropped, sliding into the haze of atmosphere- -and then came the bloom of light, sudden and eye-hurting even against the new planetary day. Glitter. Bright sparks suddenly spangled Phorcys's dun and white face and tracked on past it, up into the starlit darkness of space past the planet's terminator. A tiny but disastrous meteor burned itself out in the cold, reducing itself slowly to tiny glittering points of shattered or molten metal.

Gabriel went first hot then deadly cold inside. A slight ringing started in his ears and his knees suddenly felt weak as the significance of who had been on the shuttle dawned on him.

"There were no survivors," said Captain Dareyev as the hologram faded. "The dead include Ambassador Lauren Delvecchio, Second Ambassador Areh Wuhain, diplomatic assistants Elle Masterton and Enrique Delrio; Marine Lieutenant Hal Quentin Rostrevor-Malone-"

Gabriel would have sunk into a crouch on the floor, if he could have, but his muscles would not obey him, not even as regarded something as simple and desirable as collapse. Even his weak knees seemed to have locked. Hal. What were you doing there? Hal! And the ambassador!

"You are known by the command of this ship to be affiliated with Concord Intelligence," said Elinke. "Various members of this ship's crew have confirmed that you were asking many questions regarding the shuttle crew and passenger dispositions this morning while such assignments were being made. Other members of the crew have confirmed seeing you delivering unspecified materials to personnel involved in the ongoing treaty negotiations."

"Captain," Gabriel said. Could she really be suggesting what he thought she was? "Please, let me explain! This is all a-"

"Lieutenant," said Captain Dareyev, "Second Lieutenant Lemke David was aboard that shuttle, performing as navigator."

Oh no, Gabriel thought, but his mouth was too dry to let the words out. His mind was suddenly blank. There was nothing to say. Again and again he saw the flash of light, the streak of white-hot fire descending into the atmosphere. Again he heard Delvecchio's surprised scream, then silence. "Remove him to custody," Captain Dareyev said. "He is to be held on suspicion of murder, pending the conduct of the investigation. Phorcys has claimed trial rights since the crime occurred in their atmospheric space. Since law begins with atmosphere, we have ceded trial rights to them. You will be transferred there tomorrow," she said. "The investigation is already under way. The trial will begin within three days."

She turned her back, standing very straight, very still. Her normally fair complexion was deathly pale in the dim lights of the Bridge.

The guards, other marines, hustled Gabriel away with the firm hands of men who are furious with shame, shame of their own, wishing they could rub that shame out... and unable to. Gabriel understood the feeling well enough, though from the inside.

The next few days shaded into one another in that strange kind of fugue experience that sometimes follows a great shock. Gabriel had undergone a similar experience after Epsedra: days in which time seemed either to slow down to an imperceptible crawl or in which it suddenly advanced in lumps that Gabriel couldn't remember. And there was no way to tell when a day started or ended. He had gone from the barely perceptible "day" of Concord shipboard life with its light- and dark-cycles, to a permanent day inside a bare, white-walled, windowless cell deep within the bowels of some Phorcyn law enforcement facility.

Even contemplating escape was no particular comfort, for Phorcys was a cold, cheerless world, and Duma, the capital city, exemplified this. The few buildings that Gabriel had seen during his escort from the landing shuttle to the holding facility were all crafted from rounded, brown stone and black steel, all of them designed to be easily accessible and to retain heat. The architects had not taken beauty into consideration. The entire city had seemed to hug the ground in an effort to avoid the stinging, freezing curtains of sleet that sheeted down from the leaden roof of the sky. The streets were straight, narrow, and in need of a serious cleaning. The few ash-colored trees that he had seen were squat, leafless, and altogether bedraggled.

With nothing but a comfortless pallet and a sanitary bowl for company, Gabriel sat or lay about for those first few hours and did his best not to think. Whenever he tried to work things out in his mind, thought became suddenly drowned in a repetition of that bright flash of light, the scream suddenly silenced forever, and the strangely beautiful sparkling motes of debris as they dispersed into the upper atmosphere. The only other image he could conjure was Elinke's accusing, hate-filled stare. Everything within his cell was glarelessly but brilliantly lit, making restful sleep almost impossible. Food arrived in the cell fairly regularly, and Gabriel ate it more out of a sense of the need to keep himself nourished and alert than from any kind of enjoyment.

What also arrived fairly regularly were interrogators. Some of them were male and female officers from Star Force, some of them were marine, and some of them were Phorcyn. At first he had waited for them eagerly, looking forward to the chance to defend himself. Later, when he'd had some experience of how little any of them let him speak during any given session, Gabriel lost a lot of the eagerness. It was all so wearing, and they all asked the same questions over and over again. After the first day or so of giving the same answers over and over again, Gabriel started to realize that there was going to be no trial... at least not one with presumption of the defendant's innocence. The civilized practices of the Orion League, with its rigorous upholding of the citizen's rights, seemed a long way off now. He began to realize how much he could miss something that he had formerly taken for granted. Gabriel was on entirely the wrong side of the stellar nations for this case.

At least he had counsel, though he wasn't sure about what that was going to be worth. When he first saw the little man, all bundled up in the swathings of silk that were Phorcyn business wear, he was somewhat impressed. Dor Muhles looked smart, spoke well, and seemed like he might be of help. But Gabriel soon found that mostly what Muhles intended was to help Gabriel plead guilty. He was convinced of Gabriel's guilt and considered his defense a waste of time and taxpayers' money, though he avoided saying so directly. There was apparently some ethical constraint against it.

At least Muhles brought word to Gabriel once a day of the evidence against him as the investigation unfolded. The merely circumstantial material was sifted through first while the forensic work was still going on. Gabriel began to understand with a sinking heart how so many details of his behavior, which with Delvecchio alive would have seemed minor and unimportant, now looked damning: Gabriel's presence on the shuttles, the questions he had been asking, the people he had been watching so carefully. It all looked very suspicious, if one were already convinced that Gabriel had been up to something. The worst of it was that not one of the investigators or interrogators seemed even slightly interested in the interchange with Jake, no matter how many times Gabriel reminded them that this was his Intelligence connection aboard ship. The captain had to know about him.

Then, around the fourth day of the investigation, the forensic data began to filter in, along with eyewitness testimony to support it. The second ambassador had made a note of the chip she received- though not of its contents-in her dispatch to the Grid-based diplomatic network. Her last dispatch, as it turned out. What its contents had been, the dispatch did not say, merely that it was in her possession. Meanwhile, sweeps of the area of space with ramscoop-based "sniffers" had picked up traces of clathrobutinol, a high-yield explosive used in some mining and manufacturing processes. Taggant analysis on the explosion remnants had begun at once, but at the moment the provenance of the explosive was of secondary importance. Much more important was the fact that when searches were conducted, small packets of the same explosive were found in all of Falada 's other shuttles, cleverly hidden near their drivecores in such a way as to pass for auxiliary fuel rods. Each of them was carrying a "receiver" chip similar to the message chip that the second ambassador had been carrying. The implication was clear enough. With all the shuttles rigged to explode in the presence of the proper trigger at the proper height above atmosphere, it wouldn't matter which of them the second ambassador- and almost certainly, her superior-were on. The result would be the same. And the trigger was the chip that Jake had given to Gabriel, the chip that Gabriel in turn had given the second ambassador. Gabriel had been duped into murdering them all. Hal, Lem, Delvecchio, all the others. Despair and rage warred within him, despair at the dawning certainty that he had little hope of proving his innocence, rage in knowing that the true perpetrators of the crime were still out there, still free, and very likely to get away with it.

It's not murder if I didn't mean it, said the space lawyer in the back of his brain. Manslaughter ... But manslaughter was bad enough, especially when the slaughtered included his best friend, a good acquaintance, and the ambassador. The question now remained whether the Phorcyns would kill him for it or simply confine him for the rest of his life.

"They gave you the benefit of the doubt," Muhles said as they were preparing to go to court the first day. "They let the investigation go for five days. Originally I thought they were going to stop at three." "Nice of them," Gabriel said, as they and what seemed a squadron of guards came out of the barren, windowless corridor leading from his cell. After passing through a heavily guarded security gate, they proceeded into a sealed bay somewhere in the prison facility. Waiting for them was a sleek and windowless flitter. Two guards, Muhles, and Gabriel climbed into it, and its door slammed shut. Gabriel could not find another word to say all the way to court. The word murderer kept echoing in his brain, blotting other thought out.

The courtroom to which they were finally escorted was unusually beautiful, at least on the inside. High- ceilinged and airy, the room had smooth walls of pale stone and even a thick rug or tapestry here or there. To Gabriel it seemed most beautiful because it had windows. Four tall, narrow windows faced each other along the walls, each slightly concave and tapering to a sharp point near the top. He could look out them and see daylight. The wrong color, he started to think, and then rejected the thought. The light of any star falling through genuine atmosphere, however pale and cold, looked good to him now. Some faint childhood memory of his father reading an old piece of poetry came to Gabriel, a fragment of a line:... maketh the light of the sun to fall on the good and the evil alike ... He sat there, looking at the thin watery sunlight of Phorcys coming down through its blue-green sky, and had no particular doubts about in which category the inhabitants of this courtroom had filed him.

The courtroom was crowded, mostly with Phorcyns. Besides the various legal personnel that crowded the upper court, a parade of journalists with their holographic imagers filled the cushionless pews. They were surprisingly quiet, talking in whispered murmurs amongst themselves. A small group of Star Force and marine legal officers sat stone-faced just in front of the crowd of journalists. In front of them, a cordon of braided ropes hanging between brass stands separated several rows of seats behind both the prosecution and defense tables. Upon these seats sat the witnesses who had been called to testify for the proceedings. Behind the prosecution sat a crowd of Star Force and marine personnel, some of whom Gabriel knew, but who nevertheless refused to look at him directly. Sprinkled among them were four or five Phorcyns whom Gabriel thought he recognized as members of the delegation from the peace talks. The area set aside for witnesses for the defense was empty.

Three judges looked down from the podium, a stark affair with three steps built of stone of different colors-symbolic, his defense counsel had told him, of guilt, innocence, and uncertainty, the last being the "initial state of the universe" according to some old Phorcyn myth. That was about the most useful information that Gabriel received from his defense counsel that day. Muhles seemed perfectly content to sit unquestioning and listen as the Phorcyn prosecution counsel, a tall and handsome woman with short, shaggy golden-red hair, called her witnesses one after another. The forensic evidence was presented, and various eyewitnesses were called. This included many marines-Mil and others from the party, and numerous Star Force personnel who had been assisting Hal with the work on the shuttles and the piloting of them on the day of the final negotiations between Phorcys and Ino. All, though some of them very unwillingly, admitted that Gabriel had been on numerous shuttles during the day, that he had had time alone in each of them over the course of the day, and that he had seemed eager to get on all the shuttles he could. Then excerpts of Gabriel's testimony to the interrogators were read, page after page. It seemed that Phorcyn law did not allow the accused to make a statement until the end of the trial, the rationale for this apparently was that no one could rebut until all the evidence had been presented. His own testimony seemed to Gabriel to have little effect. By the day's end it seemed obvious even to Gabriel that he must have been up to something. And right through everything, Muhles sat quietly and just let it all unfold. "When are you going to ask them something or cross-question somebody?" Gabriel demanded on the way back to the prison.

"Tomorrow, perhaps. It's not the right time yet."

"Yeah, well I'd like to get a second opinion on that. I want another counsel. What do I do to start the process of getting one?"

Muhles blinked at that, bemused. "You've already briefed counsel. Taking the time to do that again would hold up the trial, and the judges will never permit that. Besides, the court would never approve the extra expense."

"What price justice," Gabriel muttered to himself and to the white walls of his cell later that night. The cell where they kept him was warm enough, even without the shapeless one-piece coverall the prison officials had issued him-they had absolutely refused to allow him to keep his marine uniform, possibly through fear of his committing suicide by swallowing the buttons. He was being fed well enough, though the food was desperately tasteless. He longed for one of the meatrolls that he had been so unconsciously stuffing in his face only a week ago. The cell lacked even the minimum entertainment or Grid connections that most enlightened worlds would have allowed a prisoner. Gabriel, though, suspected he was himself most likely the entertainment for someone, somewhere. The room was certainly monitored, though he couldn't see how. Somewhere, he thought, people are betting on which way this trial will go. Maybe even some of my shipmates ...

The thought made Gabriel wince. He rolled over on the hard, white pallet-bed and stared at the bright ceiling. He had heard not a word from any marine aboard Falada, or anyone else for that matter, since he had been put on the shuttle and brought down here. Was he being held incommunicado? Or was it simply that no one aboard Falada wanted to have anything to do with him now? Or that Elinke wouldn't let them? It was within a captain's powers to approve or deny communications offship to her crew if she felt there was "good and sufficient reason." And from her point of view, there was more than enough reason. Oh, Lem. Poor Lena. And poor Elinke. A shiver of sound came from down the hall.

Gabriel's head came up. The soundproofing was not as perfect in here as they thought it was. One set of footsteps he could clearly hear: the usual security guard who patrolled this wing of the facility. But there was also another sound. More footsteps? But the rhythm was strange, and the footfalls were very light. The door opened. Gabriel stood up. That much courtesy at least he owed whoever might be turning up to see him. Well, not owed, but he was a marine, and some habits died hard.

The door slid open. The security guard was visible through it. He was looking peculiarly at Gabriel.

After a moment, he stepped aside.

And a fraal came stepping into Gabriel's cell.

The experience was momentarily so bizarre that Gabriel was aware of simply standing there with his mouth hanging open like a mindless thing as he and the fraal looked at each other. "I greet you, young human," said the fraal in a soft, breathy little voice.

"Greeting and honor to you as well," Gabriel said in passable fraal. His accent was probably hideous, but he and all his classmates had all the basic species greetings hammered endlessly into them in Academy, and no matter how bad his situation was at the moment, it was not so bad that he could not be polite. She was tall for a fraal, perhaps about five foot four, and very slender-limbed and delicately built. The initial impression of frail age was strengthened somewhat by the look of the single fall of silky, silver- gilt hair that she wore in a tail hanging from the back of her head-it was starting to come in dark at the roots. Slightly incongruous was the fire-blue satin skin jumpsuit she was wearing, a fashion possibly better suited to a First World's capital world rather than a jail cell on a planet in the Verge. But it set off her pearly skin impressively and highlighted her large, pupilless sapphire blue eyes. The overall effect was of elegant old age. Gabriel half expected to smell lavender.

What is it with me and older women lately? Gabriel thought, in some bemusement, then instantly shied away from the thought. The memory of Delvecchio, of that proud fierce life snuffed out, and (however inadvertently) at his hands, was too tender to bear much scrutiny at the moment.

The fraal had been looking Gabriel up and down as well for that moment or so. Now she turned to the Phorcyn security guard and said, "Thank you. You may leave us."

"Can't leave you alone with him, madam," said the guard.

The fraal looked at him mildly. "What will we do together, he and I, when you are gone?" she said. "Tunnel our way out? Fly through the ceiling? You have scanned me inside and out and have taken my satchel. You have taken everything from him but his garment, which I much doubt he will remove to hang himself with while I am here. I think you might go off to the surveillance room and listen to our every word from there, where you can sit in comfort and have something hot to drink at the same time.

Now depart, and return in ten minutes."

The guard blinked at that. He opened his mouth to object, and the fraal tilted her head and gave him a look that suggested to Gabriel (and perhaps to the guard) that this was in the nature of an intelligence test. After a moment the guard shrugged and went away, and the door slid shut. "Will you sit down, lady?" Gabriel said, standing up rather belatedly.

"I will stand for the moment," said the fraal. "At my age, I do not sit down unless I intend to stay that way for some time."

"Uh, all right," Gabriel said and sat down again, not arguing the point, though there was something in the tone of her voice that made Gabriel think this fraal might be joking with him. "I have come, young human," said the fraal, "with intent to do you a service, perhaps. If you will allow it."

Gabriel looked at her, shook his head. "I don't understand."

"Understanding is overrated," said the fraal mildly. "Much useful information is missed by those who seek answers too assiduously, at the expense of what else they might find along the road." "If understanding is overrated, then I should be going way up in your esteem right now," said Gabriel. "But how can I help you?"

"The turn of speech is human-cultural," said the fraal. "I know what is more on your mind at the moment is that you are the one in need of help."

Gabriel had to grin ruefully at that. "It does seem likely that I am about to be convicted of either murder or manslaughter," he said.

"Are you guilty of either?" said the fraal.

Gabriel looked at her in shock, such shock that he could say nothing.

"Wise," she said. "Silence holds more than merely secrets. Young human, tell me: when you leave here, what will you do?"

"Leave here!" Gabriel shook his head. "At the rate things are going, I doubt I will, except for a larger facility of the same kind, for a long stay or a short one."

She tilted her head, looked at him thoughtfully. "You mean you have no further plans?"

"No, I-excuse me." Gabriel felt his manners beginning to wear a little thin. "What exactly do you want with me?"

"Another four minutes," said the fraal and blinked slowly, twice, a meditative gesture. After a moment, she said, "Tell me why you think you are here."

"Because a lot of people died," Gabriel said, wondering why he was even bothering to answer her questions. Who was she? Where did she come from, what did she want, what was she doing here? "And they think I did it."

"You have killed people before," said the fraal.

"In the line of duty," Gabriel said, "yes. I am a soldier. Soldiers often kill people." He paused for a moment and said, "Honored, I don't know a lot of the fraal language. But does that language distinguish between 'killing' and 'murder'?"

She looked at him for a few moments. "Yes," she said.

"I have murdered no one," Gabriel said.

She made the slow side-to-side rocking of the head that Gabriel knew from the fraal who had lived near his family on Bluefall meant "yes," or "I understand." Footsteps outside.

"Ah," said the fraal.

The door opened. There was the security guard. "I thank you," the fraal said to him, and turning back to Gabriel, she made a little bow to him. Sitting, completely confused, he bowed back. "Perhaps again," she said, and pursed her thin little lips in a smile. Then she went out the door. The door closed.

Gabriel sat there, opened his mouth and closed it again, trying to make something-anything-of the past few minutes. Finally he gave up, trying to accept it as an interesting interval in what would otherwise have been a miserable evening.

All the same, when he finally got to sleep, the sleep was more uneasy even than it would have been, for the darkness that watched him in his dreams had an unnerving sense of sapphire blueness about it.