Phorcyn security guard and said, 'Thank you. You may leave us.'
'Can't leave you alone with him, madam,' said the guard.
The fraal looked at him mildly. 'What will we do together, he and I, when you are gone?' she said. 'Tunnel our way out? Fly through the ceiling? You have scanned me inside and out and have taken my satchel. You have taken everything from him but his garment, which I much doubt he will remove to hang himself with while I am here. I think you might go off to the surveillance room and listen to our every word from there, where you can sit in comfort and have something hot to drink at the same time.
Now depart, and return in ten minutes.'
The guard blinked at that. He opened his mouth to object, and the fraal tilted her head and gave him a look that suggested to Gabriel (and perhaps to the guard) that this was in the nature of an intelligence test. After a moment the guard shrugged and went away, and the door slid shut. 'Will you sit down, lady?' Gabriel said, standing up rather belatedly.
'I will stand for the moment,' said the fraal. 'At my age, I do not sit down unless I intend to stay that way for some time.'
'Uh, all right,' Gabriel said and sat down again, not arguing the point, though there was something in the tone of her voice that made Gabriel think this fraal might be joking with him. 'I have come, young human,' said the fraal, 'with intent to do you a service, perhaps. If you will allow it.'
Gabriel looked at her, shook his head. 'I don't understand.'
'Understanding is overrated,' said the fraal mildly. 'Much useful information is missed by those who seek answers too assiduously, at the expense of what else they might find along the road.' 'If understanding is overrated, then I should be going way up in your esteem right now,' said Gabriel. 'But how can I help you?'
'The turn of speech is human-cultural,' said the fraal. 'I know what is more on your mind at the moment is that you are the one in need of help.'
Gabriel had to grin ruefully at that. 'It does seem likely that I am about to be convicted of either murder or manslaughter,' he said.
'Are you guilty of either?' said the fraal.
Gabriel looked at her in shock, such shock that he could say nothing.
'Wise,' she said. 'Silence holds more than merely secrets. Young human, tell me: when you leave here, what will you do?'
'Leave here!' Gabriel shook his head. 'At the rate things are going, I doubt I will, except for a larger facility of the same kind, for a long stay or a short one.'
She tilted her head, looked at him thoughtfully. 'You mean you have no further plans?'
'No, I-excuse me.' Gabriel felt his manners beginning to wear a little thin. 'What exactly do you want with me?'
'Another four minutes,' said the fraal and blinked slowly, twice, a meditative gesture. After a moment, she said, 'Tell me why you think you are here.'
'Because a lot of people died,' Gabriel said, wondering why he was even bothering to answer her questions. Who was she? Where did she come from, what did she want, what was she doing here? 'And they think I did it.'
'You have killed people before,' said the fraal.
'In the line of duty,' Gabriel said, 'yes. I am a soldier. Soldiers often kill people.' He paused for a moment and said, 'Honored, I don't know a lot of the fraal language. But does that language distinguish between 'killing' and 'murder'?'
She looked at him for a few moments. 'Yes,' she said.
'I have murdered no one,' Gabriel said.
She made the slow side-to-side rocking of the head that Gabriel knew from the fraal who had lived near his family on Bluefall meant 'yes,' or 'I understand.' Footsteps outside.
'Ah,' said the fraal.
The door opened. There was the security guard. 'I thank you,' the fraal said to him, and turning back to Gabriel, she made a little bow to him. Sitting, completely confused, he bowed back. 'Perhaps again,' she said, and pursed her thin little lips in a smile. Then she went out the door. The door closed.
Gabriel sat there, opened his mouth and closed it again, trying to make something-anything-of the past few minutes. Finally he gave up, trying to accept it as an interesting interval in what would otherwise have been a miserable evening.
All the same, when he finally got to sleep, the sleep was more uneasy even than it would have been, for the darkness that watched him in his dreams had an unnerving sense of sapphire blueness about it.
Chapter Six
HIS COUNSEL CAME to pick him up the next morning, and together they went back to the courtroom. Gabriel prepared himself for another long and uncomfortable day of little jabs of pain, one after another, as friends and acquaintances testified against him. What he had not been prepared for was the first name called after the court came back into session. 'Captain Elinke Dareyev.'
She walked to the little separate platform where witnesses stood and stepped up, looking out at the judges and nowhere else.
'Captain Elinke Dareyev,' said the prosecutor, stepping up to stand before her, 'do you swear by your oaths of office to tell the truth?' 'I swear,' Elinke said.
'Thank you,' said the prosecutor. 'You have heard the transcript of the testimony of the accused, concerning his claim that he was acting on the instructions of a fellow Intelligence officer, one Jacob Ricel.'
'Yes,' Elinke said.
'What is your reaction to that testimony?'
'That Jacob Ricel is not known to me as a Concord Intelligence operative,' Elinke said.
Gabriel flushed hot and cold and hot again. His first thought was, But she has to have known. She's the captain. Is she lying because I killed Lem? Is this simply revenge?
No answer to that one, but the other possibility also had to be considered: that she was telling the truth. I knew I'd been duped.
I plainly haven't realized how thoroughly I've been duped.
But now his brain was spinning with questions. If he wasn't Intelligence, then how did he know that I was? Have I been 'sold off as a slightly used intelligence asset? And who 'sold' me, and why, and why wasn't I told, and ... and ...
He pulled himself back to the moment. It was hard, nearly as hard as having to look at Elinke, standing there like a statue, elegant in black and silver, speaking levelly, looking at the judges but not at Gabriel. Never at him.
'You're quite sure of that?' the prosecutor said.
'Quite sure,' Elinke said.
'Thank you, Captain.' The prosecutor turned to glance at Muhles. Muhles made the graceful gesture with his hands that Gabriel was beginning to recognize as meaning 'I have no questions,' or in his case, 'Who cares? Let's just get this over with.'
Captain Dareyev stepped down and as she walked out of the courtroom, threw Gabriel one glance, just a single look, like a knife.
She was gone from the room, and it suddenly all became too much for Gabriel. He leaped up out of his seat and shouted at the judges, 'I want another counsel! This is a farce, I'm being framed here-' A restraining field immediately shimmered up around him, glued him in place, and slowly pushed him down onto his cold stone bench seat again. The centermost judge looked thoughtfully at Gabriel and said, 'Expression of violent tendencies and sentiments in the court is not permitted. The prisoner will be returned to his cell and may listen to the proceedings from there.'
And so it was done. Gabriel went back without even the dubious company of Muhles. He spent that afternoon
