Storm at Eldala

Chapter Three

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 inSunshine 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 inSunshine 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 wordsGo 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 asLongshot came to rest on the pad beside them.

Gabriel was already in the left-hand pilot's seat, runningSunshine 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 intoSunshine'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 intoSunshine'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 overSunshine 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 asSunshine 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 justanyone 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 atthis 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 themact 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. Theonly 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 — theEnforcement 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 andLongshot 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 freighterDesert 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. AsSunshine 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 whichis 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 toSunshine'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. FromLongshot, 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 nosedSunshine 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 onLongshot'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 atLongshot half a kilometer beneath them. "Helm? Shall we follow?"

They saw a tiny figure exit and walk aroundLongshot, 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 broughtSunshine 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 fromLongshot, 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 andSunshine's local portable Grid — acknowledged one another's bona fides. The code display dissolved, leaving them with the messageDischarging 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, "Itis 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 exactlyhow '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, thatis 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 Iwas 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 Void Corp'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…