Storm at Eldala

you?'

Enda looked at him in some shock, then she began to laugh softly. 'Many are far nicer. I have had my failures, which is one of the reasons I do not travel with my own kind any more. I thank you, Gabriel.' She looked out into the mist, then turned to him again. 'Meanwhile, you have driven out of my mind what I came out to tell you. There is more mail for you in the ship's system.' 'For me? Where from?'

Enda had pulled her hair down out of its long tail and began braiding it. To Gabriel, it looked like the braid Delde Sota used, which reflected the Sealed Knot of her particular medical profession — a four-strand braid with a strange sort of 'hiccup' in its pattern.

'Some of the data we dumped came back to us through the local sorting facility,' Enda said, weaving the long silver-gilt strands over and under one another, 'at least, if I read the log files correctly. A good question whether I do. The software manuals are not exactly lucid, but certainly there is a packet of mail for you.'

'Probably hate mail from our friend from last night.'

Enda raised her eyebrows. 'I hardly see why he would waste the money when he can deliver his hatred in person. But no. This was data we brought in with us.'

'Huh,' Gabriel said as he gazed over toward Longshot.

'No sign of them yet?'

Gabriel shook his head.

Enda shrugged. 'After last night, I think that Helm did not care to sleep right away. He told me before we left Grith that he needed to do more work on his external security and surveillance fields. I doubt he would have felt comfortable about dropping off while his work was still incomplete.' Gabriel shook his head. 'I'm still not sure I understand why he's doing this. Coming over here for no particular reason, watching out for us this way. . '

Enda looked over toward Longshot as she finished her braid. 'I would not care to hazard detailed guesses,' she said. 'But this time I doubt he is repaying Delde Sota any favors.' 'Think not?'

Enda turned away from Longshot, looking toward the eastern sky, which was gradually beginning to deepen toward something that would be dusk in another day and a half or so. 'It must be a bitter life at times,' she said softly, 'being a mutant — having to hold your own worth like a shield in front of you, never knowing for certain what a 'normal' human might think. Friendship, even casual friendship that does not much touch the depths, could be a precious thing to someone in such circumstances.' She gave Gabriel a look. 'I would not say our dealings with Helm are all one-sided, or that we do not offer him something he much needs, though it might seem a light and easy gift to us.'

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 sheis 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 toFalada, 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