by Diane Duane
Gabriel was half ashamed of his own paralysis. I've been defining myself as a marine for so long that I've forgotten that there's anything else to be. Yet what else am I trained for? To fight, yes. Of course. But there are other ways to fight.
"I'm e-suit trained," Gabriel said finally, "to what would be an unusually high level of competence around here. That suggests a couple of possibilities: construction and mining." "For which you would either have to contract yourself out," Enda said, "or buy your own ship." Gabriel laughed hollowly at that prospect. "Though it could not merely be a system ship," said Enda. "Or so I would think. Even here, there is only so much belt work to be done and not that many large construction projects. Once work ran out, you would have to look elsewhere, and without a stardrive of your own you would be reduced to hitching a ride with whatever driveship comes along. If, however, one came by whose master thought it would be a good idea to make a little extra money by turning you over to the Concord." She shrugged one hand, a dry little gesture that Gabriel was learning to recognize as one of her favorites. "Unless of course you did genuinely wish to stay in this system, to 'settle' here." "Not the slightest chance," Gabriel answered, looking out the dive's one window into the evening. Snow was blowing by more emphatically on that stinging wind, now almost invisible in the growing dusk. He could still hear the wind, though, and it was not friendly. Space or the controlled environment of a ship- even if there was hard vacuum just centimeters away-now seemed infinitely preferable. "At the same time, I would have thought you would have preferred elsewhere," Enda remarked, "to this, the scene of your-shall we say?-fall from grace. No matter. We may have to stay here a little while regardless, for driveships do not fall from the sky merely for the wishing, much less ships which will actually perform the function that you have in mind. Time will be needed for customizing, ordering equipment, installing it___ "
And that was another thing. Gabriel shook his head, for plainly she had not gotten the message earlier. "Enda," he said, "there's one big problem with this. I don't have anything like the kind of money even for a good system ship. I can afford some kind of banger, maybe, but not a decent one, and certainly not a driver. It's not the best idea, just a dream. The only thing I'm going to be able to do is hire myself on to somebody."
"As what?" Enda asked. Gabriel looked at her mournfully. "Some kind of glorified security guard? 'Muscle,' I believe is one of the commoner usages. I suggest, Gabriel, that you would be wasted in this role."
"Wasted maybe," Gabriel said, "but employed."
Enda made a graceful gesture of negation. "Not in a fraal's lifetime of such employment would you make enough to buy a driveship. And I speak from experience, for I have functioned as 'muscle' in my time, though the way fraal reckon such is a little different from the way such jobs function in the human world." She bowed her head "no" in a thoughtful way. "Other options will have to be examined. Meanwhile, there is a fairly active used ship market in this system, and the lending institutions are occasionally sympathetic to the right kind of inducement."
Gabriel suspected that the inducement in question would also involve interest rates that would cripple anything sentient. "Enda, really, you don't get it. I can't-"
"Who said that yours would be the only capital to be called upon here?" she asked. As Gabriel opened his mouth, she lifted a finger. He went quiet. "Now," she said, "hearken. I am nearly three hundred years old, and I have seen little enough of this galaxy in my time. I am getting on in years-" "You don't look a day over two hundred," Gabriel said.
She gave him a fraal's demure smile, which drew the upper lip down over the lower and made her look like an ineluctably wise five-year-old for just a flash. "Gallantry," she said, "the last refuge of the incurably latent. Gabriel, I am of a mind to see the worlds, or some more of them, anyway, without the vagaries of public transport interfering with my schedule. Not that I have a schedule. Occasionally in the past I have considered buying a small driveship, but either finances were unsupportive or I did not desire to hamper myself with the company of those I did not trust. Now I have both the time and the inclination, and I do not find the financial climate unsupportive. And there is someone else involved with whom to share the ship, someone I trust."
The incurably latent? Gabriel stared at her and shook his head. Never mind- "Why would you trust me?" She blinked at him. "Because you have nothing left to lose," she said.
Over in the corner, the singing had reached a crescendo from which Gabriel thought it could not possibly increase. He shortly found himself wrong.
"Now my suit's in pawn,
And creds all gone,
And head's too sore for shakin';
I'll take my chip,
Get back on ship,
And blast when dawn is breakin'
Oh, Lord above, send down a dove-"
Gabriel let out just a breath or so of laughter, considering that the song must go back to the Solar Union, to judge by the reference to "creds" instead of Concord dollars. Enda shook her own head, a gesture identical among humans and fraal. "Just what is a dove, Gabriel?"
In his mind he heard the ambassador say, Some kind of bug that gets in bed with you, and he winced again. "It's a bird," he replied. "Some kind of predator, I think, to go by the bit about the beak being like a razor."
"So," Enda said after a moment. "A ship. Not freight, you think?"
Gabriel was tempted, but he shook his head. "Doesn't seem smart. Not at the physical level, even. A marginal system like this probably already has most of the freight traffic it can handle. Not the high- margin stuff like infotrading, either. Too many things that could go wrong for a company just starting out."
She nodded, pushing her plate away. "One engine breakdown leaves you with a cargo of stale data and a pile of lawsuits. Not to mention the cost of the encryption software and the purchase price of the first load and the fact that we cannot go near Concord space." She sighed as the singing dissolved into a welter of coughs, hiccups, and at last into silence.
"There's one thing we could certainly do if we had to stay in this system for a while," Gabriel said, looking out into the dusk. The snow had now vanished from sight, but he could still hear it ticking faintly against the window. "Mining."
Enda looked slightly surprised, glancing around her. "I would not have thought you would so quickly start to enjoy this kind of environment," she said. "Typical enough of the miners' bars you will find in the Belt. Many will be even less congenial."
Gabriel shook his head. "I don't care for it in the slightest," he said. "But it's a way to make steady money, if slow, and it will pay for other things." "Grid access?" Enda asked softly. He looked up sharply at that.
"Doubtless you could conduct those researches easily enough on-planet," Enda said. "No one needs a ship for such. But at the same time, were I in your position, I would always wonder whether someone was looking over my shoulder-someone with the Concord in mind, for good or ill." She looked at him with an expression of which Gabriel could make little. "There will have been people in this system who will have noticed your connection to the old ambassador, and who would wonder what further use could be made of you in one way or another. I am sure you would prefer not to be stuck here waiting for your door to be broken down by one authority or another."
"Space would be safer," Gabriel said as softly, "and as you say, more private." "Also," Enda added, "you will be wanting to do some investigation of your own."
Gabriel looked at her, trying to find out what was going on in her head, but there was no point in it-fraal could be astonishingly inscrutable when they chose to be, their pale, slender faces showing nothing at all. "Enda," he said finally, "I was bought. Or bought and sold. I have to find out by whom and why. Friends died because of it, my career is over because of it, and before I stop breathing, I will know what happened to me. I will clear my name, no matter what it takes."
Enda slowly tilted her head to one side, then to the other. "From where you now sit," she s
aid, "that will be a mighty undertaking. Even for a rich human, a powerful human, the kind of subterfuge that you wish to investigate would be difficult and dangerous. The more you discover, the more attention you will attract. attention from those who wish to see you tried in Concord space, or simply dead in whatever space is most convenient."
Gabriel looked around him. "Does this look like life to you?" he said. "Maybe death would be better." "There pride answers," Enda said, "but perhaps it would be unwise to chide you for the characteristic for which you were originally selected. That and the courage."
"In any case," Gabriel said, "I don't want to move on too far from here until I get a clearer sense ofjust what happened to me. The scene of the crime."
"The crime, if there was one," Enda said, "was perpetrated on a Star Force vessel that is by now very likely some starfalls away from here. That is a crime scene you will now have great difficulty examining."
"But it happened here," Gabriel said. He had been stirring this issue around in his mind for nearly as long as he had been out of that jail, a place that had made thinking difficult at best. "And I keep getting the idea that somehow it has to do with this system, with something the ambassador had found out or was about to find out."
"Other information that is going to be hard for you to come by now," Enda said, though not without some sympathy. "Are you sure this is something that you can realistically investigate? Or are you letting stubbornness interfere with reason because the stubbornness is more comfortable?" It was a thought that had occurred to Gabriel, and one that he had tried to examine closely rather than simply chucking it out of his mind at first impulse. "I don't think so," he replied. "There were a lot of things that the ambassador said to me over the space of the last few weeks that I heard and forgot about or half forgot. I can't get rid of the idea that at least one of them is important. I took a lot of notes on the things she said. I don't have them now; I won't get them back until the marines restore my personal effects, if they don't in fact just confiscate them. But I can't get rid of the idea that something she said is going to help me make sense of this."
Enda bowed her head. "May it be so," she said. "Even at best, I fear you will have a bad time finding out what you need to know. In the meantime, you must do other things, because if you follow this trail too quickly, surely whoever tried to kill you once by the legal pathway will try it again by means less formal. If you are right-if the person or people involved are in this system-they are watching you now." "So I'll be 'broken' for a while," Gabriel said and glanced around him. "Not that that's going to be a difficult illusion to maintain if I keep hanging around places like this."
Enda looked philosophical, an expression at which most fraal seemed to excel. "The food is not expensive," she said, "and probably will not kill us."
"Speak for yourself," Gabriel said, already beginning to wonder about some of the suspicious sounds coming from his stomach.
"The clientele may prove to be useful. Don't look that way! Some of these people are very likely involved with the used ship trade."
"Not in any way I want to know about," Gabriel muttered. "They all look like pirates to me." "I would think it would be protective coloration in a place like this," Enda said mildly. "It is we who stand out here, not they. But this too will redound to our favor, tomorrow or the next day, when we walk into a used ship foundry and find that we're known." "Who wouldn't know me?" Gabriel asked, only slightly bitter.
"You would be surprised," said Enda, "and though many people on Phorcys certainly will know you from the news coverage of the past days, in most cases it will work to your benefit. Many of the people we are most likely to deal with will be watching the transaction with great interest to see if there is a way they can use the information to their advantage. At the same time they will be eager to tell their less savory connections that they sold a ship to Gabriel Connor." She smiled again-a wicked five-year-old look. "They will of course also tell their connections how they cheated you."
Gabriel had to laugh just once at that. "The price of notoriety," he said. "Oh, well... if it means better service . . ."
"I do not know about 'better,' " Enda said. "But certainly rather more attentive. Are you finished there?" "I wish you could find another way to phrase that," Gabriel said as his stomach growled again, more loudly this time. It was suggesting pointedly that the material he had just offered it did not meet its present needs.
"We will work on my phrasing somewhere more private," said Enda, rising gracefully, "as well as on specs for this new... joint venture. Neither of us would want to discuss the specifics in front of the dealer. Let us find out who to pay and make our way back to the small palaces that await us." Gabriel got up and escorted her toward the door, where the proprietor was waiting for them with a tallychip in hand. Eyes rested thoughtfully on them as they went out. No knives, Gabriel thought, as they went out the door. Not this time. But maybe sometime soon.
Perhaps twenty light-years away, or several starfalls, depending on how one chose to reckon it, a man sat alone on a low couch in a room with rose-colored walls. One hand held a datapad in his lap, and he looked down the list written on it with a practiced eye. A two-meter-long tri staff, the signature weapon of a Concord Administrator, leaned against the wall next to him.
His room on board the light cruiser was plain, undecorated, and seemed scarcely above the quality that would have been found in a medium-grade officer's quarters. The man remembered how there had been complaints about that at first. There were people aboard any ship who could not cope with the idea that someone of his stature should not have a room to match it. He let them worry about that and not about what he was doing. It was less trouble to him that way.
Lorand Kharls was now seventy years old, and he took the Verge very personally. He had not been here, of course, for the earliest expeditions. That wave of exploration had begun when the StarMech Collective's ships first broached these spaces after the First Galactic War, colonizing the planets of the star called Tendril. Neither had he been here for the later colonizations of Aegis system by the Orions, or the Hatire's first seizure of Grith, or the settlements of Algemron system by the Thuldans and the Austrins. Kharls had been born more than twenty-five years after the Battle of Kendai, well into what the burgeoning nations of the Stellar Ring called the Long Silence. All through his childhood, during his schooling when he had first fallen in love with the concept of history as something that was happening now, and later as a young man starting his formal adult education, that silence had come back to haunt Kharls. What was happening out there? There had been no way to tell, not until the restoration of the stardrive-based communications relay near Hammer's Star had brought the desperate cry for help from the colony at Silver Bell ringing across space, seven years delayed. The ships of the stellar nations, and then those of the Concord, had gone out to find what had happened, and they had been unable to discover anything.
Long before that, still deep in the Silence, Lorand Kharls had gone into the Concord civil service. At first his intention had simply been to find out what he was good for. The numerous batteries of aptitude tests through which he had suffered had given his teachers some indication. Soon, rather against the odds for someone born on a third world, he had found himself at the Administrators' College on Ascension. Ten years he had spent there, then another ten years of field work at Senior Cadet level, before taking his first assignment as a Deputy Administrator in the Aegis system. They had told him it was difficult work, but he had hardly noticed. He had been enjoying himself too much, and besides, his eyes had already turned to other things. Kharls had become aware that if he did his work well he might finally be allowed to live in and investigate the great mystery that had haunted his young life: the Silence, and the places where it had fallen.
It was silent no longer in the Verge. It had stopped being silent by the time he was first assigned here, four years ago, as an early System Administrator for Corrivale. But two years after that he was
detached to more advanced duties as a Cluster Administrator, traveling among the stars within a ten-light-year diameter from Corrivale and watching the intricate interlacing of their cultures and governments- advising when he could, intervening when he had to, acting in his "final judicial" role no more than three times over the years since. When he was young and new to the job, he doubtless would have tried and executed that many criminals out in the backwaters of this or that star system in perhaps half a standard year. Now his job took him to places where the criminals were usually of high enough standing in the community that simply trying them and shooting them would have done little good. He had learned a lot of patience and a fair amount of wile moving among the politicians, and he had not had to shoot one yet. Usually there were more effective ways to intervene. Mostly they had to do with arriving in very large Star Force vessels with very large guns. A gun's vocabulary might be limited, but once it spoke there was some tendency for people to listen very carefully to whoever spoke next. Now a part of the Verge that Kharls took more personally than usual appeared to be having some teething troubles in its neighborhood. There were not that many other star systems in the immediate region of Corrivale. Corrivale itself had once been nothing all that important, that is, until the discovery of the sesheyan colony on Grith, the resurgence of the Hatire, and the inroads since made by VoidCorp. The place was getting crowded. Most specifically, it was getting crowded with power players. Their actions cast shadows a long way, often over people who did not deserve to have their lives shadowed. That was where, when possible, a Concord Administrator might step in and see what could be done. That time had now come to Kharls, so he would uproot himself from here (which would cause talk), resettle himself in another ship better suited to the duty he would assign it (which would cause much more talk), and then finally start "meddling."
