Diane Duane - Storm at Eldala

It was a good guess that someone at Diamond Point had been spying on Sunshine and her crew, watching to see where they were going. That information would have been no secret for a day and a half before their departure when they filed their starfall/starrise plan. Someone gets into a ship, Gabriel thought, and hurries here with the news that we're coming and what we're coming for. He recalled again the edgy sound in the port controller's voice when they had come in. 'The detectors told us you were coming."

Yes, Gabriel thought, and who else?

Who would have the funds and inclination to send someone all the way over here in a ship when a holomessage could have done as well? We could have been carrying a message like that ourselves, Gabriel thought, and we'd never have known it. It would certainly have been cheaper. But there had been a couple of hours between their arrival and Alwhirn's appearance at their table. Am I just being paranoid? Gabriel thought. Did he receive a message about us in the same load we brought in, or did he just hear gossip about us from the port people? In a place this small, a new infotrader suddenly turning up in the system would be discussed.

Gabriel sat down on one of Sunshine's landing skids and gazed out at the morning — cum — late afternoon. He hadn't slept well. It had been another of those dreams last night, a repetitive conflict of light and shadow. Flares of brilliance lashed out against some inward-pressing darkness, all of it haunted by unexplained feelings of fear and excitement. Gabriel took these dreams for some kind of obscure message from his subconscious, though he had no idea what the message might mean. Something to do with starrise and starfall, he thought. He was not yet sufficiently inured to them that the excitement of a jump failed to move him. While living in a Concord Cruiser that carried the marine complement of which he was part, Gabriel had gone through starrises and starfalls without comment. They were pilots' business, an insignificant artifact of getting where you were going. Now that Gabriel flew himself, suddenly drivespace was a serious part of the day, and he listened to whatever Helm or Enda might say about the fables and rumors of starfalls — what caused the differing color, which ones were supposed to be lucky… Gabriel shivered.

The sound of the lift coming down distracted him. Amazing how noises that would have been completely lost in the rumble at Diamond Point now seemed louder among the peaks and rolling mists. All sound fell into that moist quiet as if into a sack where they were dampened and lost. That silence seemed to say, There are very few of you. We can wait. Some day you will be gone.

"What a beautiful morning," Enda said. She walked out to join him, looking around at the swirling, churning mists and hugging herself against the cool dampness of the morning.

"Nnnh," Gabriel said. He disliked pouring cold water on her pleasures, but in his present mood he had trouble seeing the beauty.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Not really."

"That dream again?"

Gabriel shrugged. "I think so, but I may be getting used to it now." Not that it was any easier to bear while he was inside it. At least it doesn't make me wake up yelling any more. Enda nodded. "I am still thinking about our gentleman at table last night," she said. "Not much of a gentleman."

"Well, his manners were not the best. His reasons for being angry with us did not ring particularly true, either." She sat down on the skid next to Gabriel. "I cannot help feeling that he was more frightened than angry, but of what or whom?"

Gabriel shook his head. "Don't ask me until after I've had my chai," he said. "Come to think of it, don't bother asking then, either. I'm still wondering how we're going to pick up any business with this guy out poisoning people's minds against us, and whether it's realistic to think we're going to get any business at all when the place is this small."

"I would definitely wait until you have had your chai," Enda replied. "You should also walk around and talk to people. Our business is to see exactly what the other firms have been doing here, then examine which parts of the local market they may have missed."

Gabriel gave her a cockeyed look. "You sound like some kind of sales representative." She chuckled. "Well, so I was, once long ago."

Gabriel sat back against the upright of the landing skid and laughed at that. "I thought you were in suit maintenance."

"Oh, I did that too," Enda said. "Gabriel, when you live in a great spacegoing city, conscientious marketing is something you cannot ignore, especially when you tend to keep your contacts with other species to a minimum. You will not succeed if you go barging into established business relations between planets or between a planet and another free trading facility that serves it. Trade wars only make life harder for everyone. . and eventually people die of them. One must rather work to become part of a network, a cooperative structure." She looked out across the mountains. "Life among the stars is too hard as it is — resources all stretched too thin over the terrible distances, and communication much too difficult and expensive to waste on attempting to destroy infrastructure that others have built. To compete without an eye to your competitors' continued success as well as yours is to court disaster." Gabriel had to shake his head at that. "Enda, are all fraal as nice as you?"

Enda looked at him in some shock, then she began to laugh softly. "Many are far nicer. I have had my failures, which is one of the reasons I do not travel with my own kind any more. I thank you, Gabriel." She looked out into the mist, then turned to him again. "Meanwhile, you have driven out of my mind what I came out to tell you. There is more mail for you in the ship's system." "For me? Where from?"

Enda had pulled her hair down out of its long tail and began braiding it. To Gabriel, it looked like the braid Delde Sota used, which reflected the Sealed Knot of her particular medical profession — a four-strand braid with a strange sort of "hiccup" in its pattern.

"Some of the data we dumped came back to us through the local sorting facility," Enda said, weaving the long silver-gilt strands over and under one another, "at least, if I read the log files correctly. A good question whether I do. The software manuals are not exactly lucid, but certainly there is a packet of mail for you."

"Probably hate mail from our friend from last night."

Enda raised her eyebrows. "I hardly see why he would waste the money when he can deliver his hatred in person. But no. This was data we brought in with us."

"Huh," Gabriel said as he gazed over toward Longshot.

"No sign of them yet?"

Gabriel shook his head.

Enda shrugged. "After last night, I think that Helm did not care to sleep right away. He told me before we left Grith that he needed to do more work on his external security and surveillance fields. I doubt he would have felt comfortable about dropping off while his work was still incomplete." Gabriel shook his head. "I'm still not sure I understand why he's doing this. Coming over here for no particular reason, watching out for us this way. . "

Enda looked over toward Longshot as she finished her braid. "I would not care to hazard detailed guesses," she said. "But this time I doubt he is repaying Delde Sota any favors." "Think not?"

Enda turned away from Longshot, looking toward the eastern sky, which was gradually beginning to deepen toward something that would be dusk in another day and a half or so. "It must be a bitter life at times," she said softly, "being a mutant — having to hold your own worth like a shield in front of you, never knowing for certain what a 'normal' human might think. Friendship, even casual friendship that does not much touch the depths, could be a precious thing to someone in such circumstances." She gave Gabriel a look. "I would not say our dealings with Helm are all one-sided, or that we do not offer him something he much needs, though it might seem a light and easy gift to us."