Diane Duane - Storm at Eldala

The dark eyes looked at him. "Welcome enough you are," the weren said in a soft rumbling voice, "here where any visitor is likely enough to be welcome, were he half your size." Gabriel nodded noncommittally. He wasn't sure if she had complimented or insulted him. "Cousin," said Enda, "well met on the journey."

The weren swept an arm low before her body. "Respected, starlight shine on your road as well."

Enda smiled. "A long road — nearly as long as yours. Kurg is far away indeed."

"Distance," said the weren, "is an artifact of the mind."

Angela chuckled and said, "Grawl and I ran into each other in Alaundril about a year ago. We've been together since. She was traveling. ."

"I was outcast," Grawl corrected.

Gabriel looked at her with surprise. "I can't imagine who would have had the nerve to throw you out of anywhere."

S he gave him a look that he hoped was a smile. "I was the daughter of warriors, the granddaughter of warriors," Grawl rumbled, "but I was a disgrace among my family." "In what manner?" Enda said.

Gabriel looked at Enda in shock, but Grawl lowered her head to Enda's level — a good way down — and said, softly, "I was the smallest of my kindred, the weakest, the poorest fighter, last-born, last in regard, but there was worse than that to come."

Gabriel looked up at her, easily two hundred kilograms of muscle and claws, and could do little but shake his head. She saw the movement and turned toward him. Hot breath blew about him with a peculiar cinnamony scent, ruffling his hair. "I am a poetess," Grawl whispered.

"Poetry is hardly an art scorned among the weren," Enda said. "What was your clan's objection with this?"

"There have been no artists of any note in my family for some generations," Grawl said. "My clan-sire felt that mine was an unsuitable calling for the daughter and granddaughter of warriors, and though the rest of the clan did not agree with him, he is our sire. When he said I had gotten the best of my brothers by skill and stealth and craft when I could not do so by force and fight, the other clan members dared not argue with him."

Then a sound came out of her the likes of which Gabriel had never heard. Weren laughter, the sound of a pot boiling, but a pot full of lava. "Get the best of them I did. None of them can wind words as I do. None of them could stand before me when I made satires upon them! I caused my eldest brother to go den-living from embarrassment, and my eldest sister to snatch her mate half bald, all by merely telling the truth about them in public, in meter, in the meeting-place of our people. Furious my family was, and they raged and shrieked in housemoot! They sought to tear me with their claws, but the claws of my words were sharper. They sought to blast me with their flintlocks, but the bullets of my scorn flew truer. Finally they gathered together outlawed me, and paid my way off planet." She smiled. The expression, even with those tusks, was surprisingly benign from such a massive creature. "Having received what I desired from them, I went out into the Old Night with a good heart and sought my hire in ships, doing security work. So we met, Angela and I, and we have done well together."

Gabriel glanced over at Angela during this. She had the expression of someone hearing a very familiar story.

'The meter is reminiscent of the sesheyan double-stave," Enda said, "though not as telegraphic." Grawl's eyes went wide. "You too are an artist!" she cried. "Always and far and wide the fraal are known for their sensitivity and craft."

And flattery, Gabriel thought, keeping his face straight. "About your stardrive. ." he said. Angela looked at him. "Don't tell me you know what's the matter with it already!" Gabriel laughed. "I wish. Does the drive have its own display panel?" "Yes," Angela said, "though I would think that it would display everything necessary up here." "So would I," Gabriel said, "but it doesn't. Can we go down and have a look at it?" "Certainly," Angela said. "Come on."

She led him down the hall and to the lift again, while behind them Enda and Grawl began to discuss poetry. "How long have you been out with this ship?" Gabriel asked Angela as the lift door slid open. "About a year and a half now," she replied. "I have a five year lease from the family. After that, if I can demonstrate a profit when I get back, I get another five years. Otherwise my little brother gets a turn." They stood in the lift, and it sank toward the hold level. "Have you been back home since?" Gabriel said. Angela shook her head. "Not a chance. I wanted to get the family out of my hair for a while. . find out what life without constant commitments hanging over your head looks like." She sighed as the lift door opened. "It's been refreshing. A little hectic, sometimes, but I wouldn't give it up. One way or the other I'm going to make the best of these five years, not get tied down, and roam around a good ways." Gabriel raised his eyebrows at that as she led him down a hallway that was twin to the one above them. "So how was Eldala?" he asked.

She stopped and stared at Gabriel in complete disbelief.

"Eldala," Gabriel said. "Did you get there, eventually?"

"Where did you hear about that?" she asked, more surprised than suspicious.

"We were in the Terivine system the other day. On Rivendale."

She looked at Gabriel uncomprehendingly. "So?"

"So were you, apparently. One of the locals mentioned you and where you were going."

"Well, yes, we were there, but—" Angela shook her head, started walking down the hall again. "I don't remember telling anyone about Eldala."

"Little guy named Rov something," Gabriel said. "He remembered that moderately well, and he remembered you well enough to wonder where you were. They're worried about you."

Now, as Angela paused by a sliding door and touched a combination onto the face of it, she looked completely confused. "Why would they be worried?"

The door opened, and they went in.

"You're kidding, right?" Gabriel said, pausing to look around the room. "It's just a small town, that settlement. They gossip about everything there. You told someone you were coming back through, and then you never came back. They think you're lying dead in a ditch somewhere."

The room was small, square and empty. The sealed main drive array took up the entire back wall, and a black metal panel with sealed the main access panel. Faired into the black metal was a big square panel of glass with a keypad at the top of it. Gabriel reached up, typed in the access command, and the entire diagnostic and drive system management directory rosette fanned out across the glass panel.

Angela leaned against the nearby wall. "It's so strange. I don't remember mentioning where I was going to anybody on Rivendale, although," she added, "we were partying a lot while we were there…" "Ah," Gabriel said as he studied the directory rosette. They got blitzed, told everybody where they were going, what they were going to do…

Gabriel was beginning to form some opinions about this girl, and they were not flattering. Rich, probably. Careless. Mouth like a ramscoop.

"Aha," he said, finding the spot he wanted on the rosette. Gabriel touched that petal, and it became the core of another "flower" of options, one of which was log play. He selected that one. His old friend Hal had been an e-suit engineer on Falada, and Hal's second rule — after the one about reading the dumb-ass documentation — was to read the dumber-ass logs as well. "If nothing else," Hal had said, "it makes you look like you know what you're doing, however spurious this impression may be." Gabriel began working his way through the stardrive's logs. It had a diagnostic program to help him with this. The program looked at the logs, then at what they should look like, and then it finally showed any major differences it found.