Diane Duane - Storm at Eldala

Gabriel nodded. It was not a subject he would normally have discussed with Helm. He had a feeling that one of the reasons their friendship worked was precisely because he didn't think about Helm being a mutant. "You may have something there. As for Delde Sota. . who knows why she does what she does? Though she is curious about most things."

"There was not much for her at Iphus, perhaps," Enda said, "even when it was busiest. Mechalus, too, have their problems with the world outside Aleer and the Rigunmor sphere of influence, people who feel that it's wrong to meddle with biological life. The Hatire are only the most outspoken of many." She shrugged. "Perhaps Delde Sota sees it as a worthwhile challenge to be out among those who live another kind of life. Perhaps something else is on her mind. Certainly she will have a chance to explore other modes of existence besides the strictly virtual or mechanical. There is not much to keep a former Grid pilot busy here." She looked out at the mists, which had begun to billow up almost to the level of the yoke between the two mountains. "Look," Gabriel said, gazing westward.

Enda followed his glance. Away off in the distance, in the high airs above the mist, they could see a few thin, twisting ribbons of translucence, writhing and weaving their way through the lengthening afternoon, catching the light of Terivine high above the mountains in brief gleams of tarnished gold. "Riglia," Enda said, and shivered.

"They won't bother us," Gabriel said. "They avoid this place, supposedly. Too many well-armed humans and others." "I would wonder," Enda said, standing up again. "I think I will have some chai myself." "Wait for me," Gabriel said. "I want a shower, and then I'll have a look at that mail."

As it happened, the mail came first, and the shower was forgotten as Gabriel sat down at the Grid panel and touched the controls that brought up the mail. He keyed in his passwords and then took a quick breath as the package of mail de-encrypted. "Altai!" he said. "It's from the research service."

Enda came to look over his shoulder, handed him a mug of chai, black as he preferred it, and stood sipping her own while Gabriel scrolled through the great blocks of text that suddenly began to spill out into the display.

"What is it?" she said. "They have used one of those hard-to-read typestyles again." "Ricel," Gabriel said. "They've finally turned up something on him."

"Ricel" was not the man's real name or his only name. He had served on board the Star Force cruiser Falada, to which Gabriel had last been posted. Ricel's position was ostensibly in engineering. Early on in Gabriel's assignment to Falada, he had been instructed by Concord Intelligence — to which he had been "seconded" — that Jacob Ricel was his shipboard contact, someone who might get in touch with him and have him investigate one matter or another. It had only happened once or twice. The problem was that the last intervention Ricel asked Gabriel to perform was the passing of a small data chip to someone aboard ship. The person in question was the assistant to the Ambassador Plenipotentiary dealing with the crisis in the Thalaassa system to which Falada had been sent to intervene. The data chip was not a message coded in solid form, as Gabriel had thought, but the trigger for a detonator in a shuttle transporting the ambassador and her party. Everyone aboard died. One of Gabriel's best friends, acting as marine security escort aboard that shuttle, had died.

The deaths had happened in atmosphere, so the government of the planet Phorcys demanded the right to conduct the trial, much to the annoyance of the Concord Marines. To their even greater annoyance, the trial body refused to convict Gabriel of the murders — though he had not been exonerated either. Gabriel's insistence that Ricel had given him the data chip and that Ricel was his Intel contact aboard the ship had been rejected by the marine prosecutors. Elinke Darayev, Falada's captain, had insisted that Ricel had not been Intel, and she should have known. This left Gabriel with the question: who was "Ricel"? Apparently he was now dead, due to a space suit accident, but Gabriel could not let matters rest there. He needed whatever information he could find on the man if he was to clear himself. Gabriel shook his head in combined annoyance and satisfaction. "I can't believe it. We spent six weeks with this stuff in our hold, and I never knew it. We have got to have a word with our sorting software." "I am not sure the software was at fault," Enda said. "We left in a rush, and there was no time to de-encrypt or sort the material. Next time we will leave in a more leisurely manner and do our sorting first."

"You bet," Gabriel muttered. The display flickered, and several images, each tagged below with more text, came up.

Gabriel took a deep breath. "Look at these," he said.

Three images rotated there. They were all the same if you looked past superficial differences. One of the images was clear, the other two grainy, but this had not bothered the AI software that Altai had been using to hunt through public records in the systems it had scanned. Gabriel had paid extra for the image search facility. Now he saw that the extra investment was beginning to pay off. "There were at least three of him at one time or another," Gabriel said quietly. "How many lives has this guy had?"

"Discovering that may take some time," Enda said, looking over his shoulder. "Does it not say there that 'Ricel' has died?"

"Yeah, well, I'm becoming suspicious about such claims when they're made about anyone attached to this face." Gabriel shook his head. "Why doesn't he change it?" "What?"

"His face. You'd think he would, if he really wanted to stay secret. Look at this one: a mustache, but that doesn't hide anything. And this one, the tattoos are a distraction, but take them off and it's still the same face. Why doesn't he have his nose done, or his hair color or skin color changed, or the hairline inhibited from 'life' to 'life'?"

Enda tilted her head to one side. "I have no answer for you, but it does seem to be the same man." Gabriel studied the four precis. "These span ten years," he said. "What was he doing in between? Where else was he that hasn't shown up yet?" He sighed. "These results aren't bad, but Enda, the price!" "You must not count the price," she said, "not while you are still hunting answers, not unless you value your peace of mind so cheaply. We are not without resources, and we made a healthy profit on this run." "Will we make another, though?" Gabriel said, sitting back. "Any offers on the return-leg screen this morning?"

She tilted her head sideways again, this time more slowly. "Nothing yet, but there is no need for buyers at this end to be sudden, especially not with Mr. Alwhirn in his present mood. If anyone wants to ship data with us, well enough; but they would have shipped with Alwhirn or I.I. before now. No one in so small a place is going to rush off to give their business to someone they have never seen before. Time will be taken to study us. Therefore we should be out and about today. We should see about resupplying." "With what? We're full up after Diamond Point—"

"You know that, and I know that, but the storekeepers here will not. Besides," Enda said with an amused look, "I want to find out where Oraan, our chef of last evening, is getting his vegetables. Canned they may be, but they are of high quality. If he is growing them, then we will be back here, infotrading or not." Gabriel got up and stretched, thinking about his shower. Enda gave the screen one last look, then went down the hall. After a moment, she stuck her head out of her cabin door and looked at him. "I wonder about these dreams you have been having. They seem to be making you circumstantial." "Maybe they have," Gabriel said, uncertain what she meant.