by Diane Duane
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 nee
d 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.
