loud human-tailored overshirt emblazoned with the words A PRESENT FROM GRITH in six languages and five different wavelengths' worth of ink. Gabriel did exactly this and wore the shirt until Enda began to complain of her sides hurting from laughter. 'Now we'll have dinner,' he said, and this time Enda was unable to argue with him. He remembered a nice place from when he had last been here. It was clean, and the food was good. They offered local specialties as well as plain simple things that you did not get a lot of in space, such as broiled meat. He found the bar-restaurant again, down a side street several blocks down from the Bluff Heights, and he and Enda sat themselves down at the beginning of the dinner hour and settled in for a long stay. Gabriel was ravenous. Enda, holding the menu, looked sidelong at Gabriel and bit the appetizer page experimentally. Teeth or no teeth, she made a dent. They ordered, and they ate. It was in all ways a noble dinner, most specifically because of the company and the talk. It was strange, though the two of them had plenty of time to talk on Sunshine, how sometimes long silences fell. Gabriel had taken a while to recognize that there was nothing angry or sullen about them. They were just Enda being quiet. Give her a change of venue, though, and she became positively chatty. That had happened tonight, and Gabriel reveled in it, getting her to tell him stories of the last hundred years' wanderings for her. She was reticent about the couple of hundred years before that, but the glow of the wine brought up the banked blue fire in her eyes tonight, and she told of old history with the worlds of the Orion League, of the way Tendril looks when it flares, of the dark places between the stars when the whole fraal city stops 'to hear what the darkness has to say.' They drank the wine, talked, laughed, and heard other people's laughter. And then Gabriel heard a voice he knew, and he froze.
Not until that moment did the colossal folly of this whole operation occur to him. Oh, no, let's go to Diamond Point, he had said to Enda. Hey, I know some good places to eat. This one is clean, and the service was good. And so he had brought them straight to the place he had visited as a marine. A place that other marines would be likely to visit as well, because it suited their high standards and those of others.
Like that fair-haired, delicately featured woman over there, the short one in the Star Force uniform who was just sitting down with a crowd of friends. Of all the bars for her to walk into ...
Gabriel gulped. Never mind her. Of all the bars for me to walk into ... For there was Elinke Dareyev. The glow of the wine went out in him like a blown-out candle. His first instinct was simple and shamed him. Hide! Nothing but trouble could possibly come of them meeting now, trouble for him in one of three major forms. First, he could be beaten to a pulp by Elinke herself-for he would not fight with her. Second, he could be beaten to a pulp by the other marines and Star Force people with her, friends of hers. He was sure he could no longer rely on any of them being friends of his. Finally, there was the possibility that something, anything that he might say to her, might somehow harm his case before the Concord when he finally got it into good enough shape to be presented. What if she gets the idea that it would be good to arrest me and haul me back up to-what's her ship's name?-and then drag me straight back to Concord space for trial.... With possibly an accident thrown in for good measure: 'Shot while trying to escape'
There was no time to act on any of these thoughts, though, for she turned and looked at him.
At first there was no recognition on her face, and Gabriel wondered what was the matter with her. Then it came. He realized that he now had that strange protection that comes with being seen by another person when you are not wearing the right clothes, not to mention a haircut grown far past marine regulation and a full beard and mustache that were a new addition. With those, and out of uniform, even those who had seen him every day might not have known him, but now Elinke did know. He saw recognition rise in her gaze. Maybe I should have left on the shirt that said A PRESENT FROM GRTTH.
She sat there frozen for a moment, while at her table the conversation went on. Then very slowly she stood up. To either side of her, her buddies looked at her oddly, wondering what the problem was. They looked the way she was looking. First one of them, then another, saw Gabriel.
Gabriel wondered if he should stand as well and then thought, No. No sudden moves.
Slowly she eased around the table and walked around it toward him. The others watched her, frozen, none of them speaking a word. Gabriel held very still. Then, as she came closer, very slowly he put his hands on the tabletop where everyone could see them and stood up.
'Gabriel?' Enda said.
'Not now,' he whispered.
Elinke walked up to the table and looked him in the eye. 'Captain Dareyev,' Gabriel said.
'Connor,' she said. He could rarely remember having heard any sound so cold as that one word. 'So what has the big man offered you?' she said.
Gabriel looked at her, trying to feel something besides hurt at that coldness, no matter how well deserved he knew it was from her point of view. 'I don't follow you.'
'Oh, very cagey,' she said. 'Very wise.' Her expression was sardonic. 'Probably he told you to keep quiet about your little discussions. Well, it won't help you. Sooner or later you'll slip and circumstances will change and someone will haul you back to Concord space to get what you deserve.' Meaning that you're not going to? Now what in the-? He put it aside. 'Captain Dareyev,' he said, wanting desperately to call her by the old friendly name but not daring to, 'I don't know what you're talking about, though I see you don't believe me.'
'Why should I?' she said, very quietly-and the voice was like that one look had been during the trial. A knife. 'When you killed Lena and lied about that too?'
He wanted to shout, I didn't kill him! But uncertainty stopped him. 'I didn't lie,' Gabriel said at last. 'I told the truth about what happened.'
'Oh, yeah,' Elinke said. 'The parts of it that suited your purpose. And twisted the judges into letting you live when you were guilty.'
'The verdict was 'not proven,'' Gabriel said, 'as you know-'
'Some verdict,' said Elinke scornfully. 'Not very enlightened in this day and age. Or too afraid to come down on one side or the other. There was a lot of political pressure surrounding your trial-or didn't you know? A lot of people high up on Phorcys wanted their justice system to give ours a black eye, and it did ... about the blackest they could have managed. And you played right along, being the good little prisoner, oh so put upon, declaring your innocence. The Phorcyns didn't dare declare you guilty-that would have made it look like they were in the Concord's pockets. But they didn't quite have the guts to declare you innocent either. The middle road was good enough to put us in our place and get you off their hands.'
Gabriel swallowed. This was all news to him.
'I really wish we were the kind of people who behave the way you did,' Elinke said, 'because the few of us here tonight could remove a blotch from the universe's face right now. I can't understand why that man would have anything to do with you. He's lowered himself in my esteem, that's for sure-not that it matters. Traitors and murderers will never prosper. Sooner or later, someone will give you your deserts and kill you. I wouldn't cross the street to stop it if it happened in front of me. And when I finally do hear about it, I'll track down your grave and dance on it.'
Gabriel simply looked at her, but the motion on his right startled him as Enda slowly stood, drawing herself up to her full five feet and gazing at Elinke.
'Young human,' she said, 'you make bitter charges against Gabriel, and you are wrong.' 'And who are you supposed to be?' said Elinke.
Enda looked at her with surprising gentleness. 'One who knows,' she said.
Elinke looked scornfully over at Gabriel. 'You make friends wherever you go, don't you?' she said. She turned to Enda and said, 'Watch out for yourself. Don't trust him. He tends to kill his friends.' 'Death comes to us all eventually,' the fraal said, 'and trust is no better than fear at warding it off.' Elinke's eyes widened a little, an old habit that Gabriel knew from of old when she had been caught a little off guard. 'Mottoes and mysticism won't do much good either,' Elinke snapped and turned away without another glance at Gabriel.
Gabriel sat down again very slowly, acutely aware of glances-some angry, some merely suspicious-from the table to which Elinke was returning. He was equally aware that some of the people there were now sitting in ways that suggested they were carrying sidearms to which they wanted ready access. They shouldn't be armed in port. They shouldn't be.
'Well,' Enda said softly after a moment, sitting down again beside Gabriel. She reached out for her wine. 'So that is Captain Dareyev. She is in great distress.'
'She is? What about me?' Gabriel muttered. His dinner was now like lead inside him, and the glow from half of two bottles of kalwine had burned in minutes to cinders.
