Diane Duane - Storm at Eldala

Enda's smile was small and prim. "Art comes in strange forms," she said, looking down at Longshot half a kilometer beneath them. "Helm? Shall we follow?"

They saw a tiny figure exit and walk around Longshot, looking carefully at the surroundings. The shape was carrying something that looked like a twig at this altitude and was probably capable of making a hole in a Concord cruiser.

"Yeah," Helm said, "you might as well. The locals are all looking out the windows now." Gabriel brought Sunshine in and down — perhaps not with the same expertise, but in the manner of someone unconcerned with the locals' opinions. He grounded her about three meters from Longshot, where the smaller ship's main guns covered her, and powered the drives down.

"Sunbreak control, good afternoon," Gabriel said, reckoning that it would safely be afternoon for another day and a half yet. "We have an infotrade cargo for you. Can we conclude port formalities and get the material away?"

"Formalities have already been concluded, Sunshine," said a man's voice down station comms. "We're not big enough to need much in the way of paperwork here: the detectors told us you were coming." Did his voice sound uneasy? Gabriel glanced at Enda. She reached into the 3D display between them and touched the "privacy" light.

"It is to be expected," she said. "Any world so isolated would normally have the best starfall detection hardware it could afford. They would have known the time and location of our arrival nearly as soon as we departed."

She slipped her finger away from the control-light, which dulled. "Thanks, Sunbreak," Gabriel said. "Then we'd like to dump, if you would pass us your authentication protocols. The dump addresses we have already."

Enda shifted the infotrade control systems into the front display. It filled with lines of code, as the two Grid systems— Rivendale's planetary-level one and Sunshine's local portable Grid — acknowledged one another's bona fides. The code display dissolved, leaving them with the message Discharging cargo. They watched the words blink. This was the part of the process that Gabriel dreaded — when the machines were in control, and being built by mortal beings in a universe where entropy was in force, could conceivably fail. If that happened, no one would blame the machines. It would be Gabriel and Enda who would be responsible. They could sue the people who installed the machinery and might someday recoup some of the losses they would have had to pay out of their own pockets for the lost data.

The display went black. Gabriel swallowed.

Darkness followed, for several seconds. Then, Discharge complete, said the display. Receiving facility backup complete and confirmed. Cleaning cycle begins. Gabriel sat back in his seat and said, "Look at me. I'm wringing wet."

He had never been clear about whether fraal sweated. Enda breathed out one long breath, and said, "It is nice when things work. Shall we go out and see about a meal?"

"Not until I shower," Gabriel said, unstrapped himself and went down the hall.

Some while later, Helm was coming up in the lift, and Gabriel was stretched out in one of the chairs in the sitting room in a clean singlesuit, while Enda looked over the local Grid access channels. They were spare — a few music channels, some solid or 3D entertainment, most of it stale.

"You could make some money," Gabriel said, "just bringing entertainment material in here."

"If we had cargo space to spare," Enda said, distracted by the list of local amenities, which was also brief. The lift door opened. "Look, there is a fraal restaurant here."

"Feeling the need for home cooking?" Helm said.

"Sweet heaven," Gabriel said. Helm was in a costume that could only be described as full battle armor — tunic and breeches and boots and armlets and greaves of dull refractory materials, shiny in places but mostly scarred with use, and huge pistols on both hips. "Helm, you look like a tank, but better armed."

"I always wear the armor on my first night out on a new planet," said Helm, grinning that innocent grin. "Saves me having to wear it later."

Enda laughed. "As for home cooking, I eat that every day; Sunshine is my home. I would simply be interested in seeing exactly how 'fraal' the cooking here is. Such a tiny settlement is not the kind of place you would expect to find cosmopolitan ingredients. For real fraal cooking, you would need such. We never saw a cuisine we did not borrow from."

She and Gabriel got up. "What is it like out, Helm?" Enda said. She too had chosen to wear a singlesuit, a plasma-blue number in which Gabriel had first seen her long ago, and which picked up the vivid blue of her eyes startlingly well.

"About nineteen. A little breeze."

"No need to bother with a wrap, then. Let's lock up. ."

They met Doctor Delde Sota on the blacktop at the bottom of the lift. She was standing and looking around her at the spectacular ebony or cream and ebony striped mountain vista, all gilded in the orange light that surrounded them. "Opinion: gravity level enjoyable," she said.

It was lighter than usual: about six tenths of a gee, and there was a slight tendency to bounce until one got used to how to put one's feet down. "I wouldn't overeat in this climate," Helm said, as they walked toward the port buildings and the road into town. "Don't think it would stay down long." Laughing and talking, they made their way into the heart of the settlement past the port buildings. Those were stone, but the business and leisure heart of the settlement was a mixture of stone and prefab. The little blocky apartment houses and shopping clusters were set amid carefully maintained but minimal landscaping, on ground which was little more than bare stone. They did not see many people — a few humans and some fraal, walking in small groups or heading home with bags or parcels of shopping from the local stores. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful, but also lonely — the influence of the terrible jagged peaks looking down from all sides, even in the subdued, prolonged afternoon light, was somber.

It couldn't much affect Gabriel's mood, though. He was too relieved. "It was easy," Gabriel said as they slowed down, hunting for Enda's fraal restaurant, which was supposed to be on the Main Thoroughfare. "The software really did handle it all."

"That was just one run," Enda said. "I would not be inclined to class this work as 'easy' just yet. We may have come out full, but will we go back that way? If we do not, the fine fat-looking profit we have made on this run will be undermined. If the message traffic we have brought with us from Grith does not generate some in the opposite direction, there will be no point in continuing this particular run. We will have to look elsewhere."

Gabriel nodded. "I know, but it's too soon to think about that. We just got here! Let's see what tomorrow brings."

The fraal restaurant turned out to be attached to one side of a kind of community center for the local inhabitants, a long low stonebuilt edifice, quarried from black basalt blocks and boasting a wide shallow-peaked roof of some other dark stone split in thin layers. Inside, there was light and talk; large round lights hung down over a great number of trestle tables spread over a wide expanse of stone floor. People, humans and fraal and a mechalus or two, glanced up with interest and bemusement from their meals or drinks as Gabriel, Enda, Helm, and Delde Sota came in and looked around. From off to their right came the smell of something aromatic frying. Gabriel thought it smelled like ginger. Dining tables were gathered there around a circular counter, and Enda sniffed the air with delight. "I swear, that is delya," she said, heading off in that direction. "What wonders the worlds hold!" The others followed her and found a table. The fraal gentleman who was doing the cooking came out to greet them, and he and Enda began a long conversation in their own language, with much bowing and waving of hands. After a moment the chef went off, and Enda looked at them all, slightly abashed. "He will be happy to bring you menus if you want," she said, "but I think we are onto something excellent here. Will you let me order for you?" "Everything but the booze," Helm said amiably. "That I leave to you with joy," Enda said.