a moment of time. Gabriel was getting more competent with the system drive, and the third tune he flew straight into the loading portal like a beam from the plasma cannon's nose, dropped the ship in place with a certainty and speed that would have terrified him days before, tottered out, and started loading. Three quarters of an hour later he found another of the shift chiefs, a weren named Detaka, watching Enda put a last couple of small container loads into place while the loading machinery toddled off to do something else. Detaka was huge, even for a weren. Despite the slightly hunched over gait that seemed common among his species, the chief stood at least two and half meters tall, and his e-suit could not hide his thick, corded muscles. His e-suit's helmet, modified to fit his massive skull with its protruding tusks, looked almost comical, but Gabriel fixed his expression into polite seriousness. Detaka was not someone that any sane being would want to anger.
'You grow skilled,' pronounced the weren around his tusks, leaning down to look at Gabriel with some curiosity. 'You are Connor?' 'Sunshine, yes.'
'You defy what the others say of you,' Detaka said, straightening up and looking toward the portal again. 'You are always welcome to work with me.' And he was off, heading for another portal to look out and see where the next scheduled ship was.
Enda came over to Gabriel as the last machine rolled out and the cargo hold sealed itself up. ' 'What others say of you'?' she asked.
'Word must have gotten out,' Gabriel said. 'Well, we'll see what happens.'
They made their way back to Ino, rubbing their bruised and aching limbs but pleased that they were doing as well as they now were. It was harder to tell what was going on with Enda. Either for cultural reasons or because of some personal stoicism, she was only rarely a groaner and would mostly sit and look woeful. That evening and for the next day's travel toward Ino, Gabriel again did as he routinely had been doing, dividing his time between the gunnery software, learning to use its projected-virtual 3D view around the ship, and afterward spending as many hours as he thought they could afford on the Grid, roaming among the various news resources that covered Phorcys and Ino and other matters occurring in the Thalaassa system. He also routinely checked the news of Corrivale and other parts of the Verge.
Phorcys and Ino were in each others' newscasts and 'written' Grid media in a much different mode than they had been while Gabriel was still on Falada. Then, as part of his work with the ambassador, he had made it his business to keep an eye on what their planetary media were doing. Mostly they were slagging one another off. One day, for amusement's sake, Gabriel had asked the computer that was ancillary to the ship's Grid management system to do a word count on certain words that occurred in translation in both Inoan and Phorcyn news stories. The clear winners for that week were the two words translating as 'vile,' followed closely by 'machinations,' 'treacherous,' and 'enemy.' After that Gabriel had ordered the machine to prepare him a new Top Ten list each day, and he began watching that list with interest. To his amusement, when he told the ambassador about it so did she. He had also read and listened to the proceeds of the planet-wide 'talkrooms,' to which anyone with Grid access could contribute. All the inhabitants were breathing virtual fire at those on the other side of the argument (and sometimes at each other, for not agreeing vehemently enough about how bad the Phorcyns or Inoans were).
Toward the beginning of the serious talks, Gabriel had become very concerned, for the frequency of all the worst words in the media had gone way up. Now, though, Gabriel asked the ship's entertainment computer to conduct a similar survey, and to his complete astonishment, it only found the word 'treacherous' once. All the other words seemed to have vanished. There was now a great deal of talk from all the major commentators about 'the new era of cooperation,' the 'improved performance' of the former enemy, the 'long view,' the 'great strides toward closer relations.' That was surprising enough. But the planets' Grid talkrooms were still full of the discussion of the best way to get rid of all those devils on the other side. Apparently the Inoan or Phorcyn on the street had yet to be convinced by what his politicians were up to. This left Gabriel shaking his head. Boy, he thought, would Delvecchio have known what to make of this.
But maybe she would have known. Either way, it seemed like some kind of good sign. Or was it? There was always the status of the talkrooms. How do you have peace, finally, if the people in whose name it is being made don't believe in it or in each other? Still, he thought, from the outside at least, the news looks slightly better than it did before.
Encouraged, Gabriel went off to check on news on other subjects that were also important to him. One of them took a lot of finding. It was buried far down, not in news native to Ino's and Phorcys's own Grids. He found it in a copy transmitted from the much bigger, older Grid at Corrivale. Down in one of the many sections devoted to shipping, there was a small section labeled FLEET MOVEMENTS-as much of an 'official' announcement of its ships' whereabouts as the Concord usually made. It was normally issued for the sake of system ships that might want to hitch rides on capital ships set up for that kind of thing. Also attached to that list were some minor personnel notes, if they were thought to be germane to the movement. Here was just the one line that said: CSS Falada, out of Corrivale for Aegis, 5/9/2501, pursuant to R&R, promotions and staff reassignment, Capt. E. Dareyev. Gabriel sighed and glanced away to the next menu, telling the computer to hunt down the next reference. There she went, back to a more civilized part of the Verge, certainly to a more peaceful one. Good-bye, Elinke. There went the Falada, more to the point. If I was ever going to do any scene-of-the-crime work there, any evidence would certainly be long gone. May as well give up on that one. But the truth was that any evidence that might have helped his case was probably long gone by the time he went to trial. It would be interesting to find out how much of it had been preserved, if any at all was available, though Gabriel suspected that the only way to find out about that would be to return himself to Concord-managed space and turn himself in. Then he would discover quickly enough what the truth was ... and possibly die of it. No, he thought, not just today.
That night he roamed the Grids, and the next day until they made their drop at Ino. From the field there, as he had learned to do. Gabriel called administration on Eraklion to set up their next pickup . .. ... and was told there wasn't one.
His mouth dropped open. To be told there was no ore to be picked up at Ordinen was like being told there was a shortage of stars in the sky. But the person at the other end of the connection was most firm about it, if a little embarrassed. It was a grizzled, rather ill-kept woman whom Gabriel had become used to seeing on the comms any hour of day or night. She looked at him from the holodisplay and seemed to be trying to look impassive, but she could not quite manage it. 'Nothing for you, I'm afraid,' she said. 'What about later. Next week? Next month-' 'Nothing any more,' she said. 'Sorry.'
She shut down the communication, and Gabriel found himself sitting there and staring at the comms network's 'ready' screen. Enda came up from checking the just-finished decontam on the cargo hold and gazed at him with some resignation. 'No hint of why?' she said. 'Not to me.'
'Well,' Enda said, sitting down by him in the other 'sitting room' chair, 'this is perhaps the only drawback of short-term contracts. If they had tried to force us out while we still had a contract in effect, we could have taken them through the local labor courts, and they would still have had to employ us.' 'Which strikes me as a little dangerous under the circumstances,' Gabriel said. 'Never mind. Someone changed their mind about us. Or had it changed for them. By whom, I wonder?'
'It will probably be very difficult to find out,' Enda said. 'It is your choice whether we should spend the time.' She did not quite say 'waste,' but Gabriel caught the inference nonetheless. Gabriel sighed. 'Well, at the very least,' he said, 'if we're being barred from work here, we're going to have to go somewhere else.'
Enda nodded. 'Corrivale is closest, I suppose.' She tilted her head from side to side, got up, and slowly began to pace. This was something that Gabriel had never seen her do before, which he found slightly alarming. 'It is strange to see such happening here, though.' 'Why strange?'
Enda thought a moment, then said, 'It strikes me as the kind of gesture some people here might think would please the Concord, perhaps. Generally speaking, if I understand this system at all, people here are, by and large, not very sanguine about Concord presence.'
'It only takes one,' Gabriel replied. 'Anyway, there have to be some of them who're happy that the war has stopped.'
'Do there?' Enda said. 'Well, it would sound like a rational response, would it not? From what you have told me, there has been little enough rationality in this system.' She paced a little more.
'Well,' Gabriel said after a moment, 'you could make a case that if there's something odd going on here specifically directed at one or both of us, if we change systems it should follow us.'
Enda tilted her head back and forth, looking thoughtful. 'It would.'
