Storm at Eldala

people is working for which side.'

'And do what then?' Gabriel could imagine what Helm would suggest. 'Besides feed them disinformation.'

'All we can,' Enda said, 'keeping the information as mutually contradictory as possible. Indeed, it might be wise to find some way to split away from Helm and Delde Sota, so we can see which operative follows who where.' She smiled, a wicked look.

'I don't know if Helm's going to be wild about letting us go off on our own,' Gabriel said. 'If we have no load to take back to Grith, that might change,' said Enda. 'Meanwhile we must let Helm and Delde Sota know about this. We should go into town again, seeing and being seen. If we see our spies, we should make common cause with them as fellow visitors. Buy them a drink and hear their lies so that we may more carefully shape our own.'

The lift chimed. Enda moved to the lift column and touched the 'allow' panel.

'What would you know about lies?' Gabriel said. 'A nice respectable fraal like you…'

'Only that, in life as in marketing, they have their place,' Enda said. 'Though you must be willing to pay the price afterwards.'

The four of them went to lunch at the community center but didn't see the two people they wanted to see.

Instead, they had to console themselves with another meal of astonishing quality. Gabriel was amazed, for in his marine days he had eaten on much richer and well-visited planets, but rarely as well as he was doing here.

'It's not just the vegetables,' he said to Delde Sota as they fought over the last few spoonfuls of something brown but ineluctably delicious. 'Oraan is a genius.'

Gabriel managed to come up with a second spoon to get the last of whatever was in the bowl, but Delde Sota's braid came up and took it neatly out of his hand and held it out of reach. The braid had brushed Gabriel's hand in passing.

Now, amid Enda and Helm's laughter, Delde Sota said quietly, 'Query: adjusted electrolyte balance recently?'

Gabriel, confused, looked at her. She ate the last spoonful of sauce and put the spoon down. 'Analysis: body electrolytes are out of kilter,' she said. 'Just stress. .'

Delde Sota shook her head. 'Negation: not the kind of shifts that are stress-related. Diet changes?' 'Not until we got here. I've rarely eaten so many things that I didn't know what they were. Not even on a marine transport'.

Delde Sota looked wry as she said, 'Intention: to run full enzyme/endocrine series on you. Premature gray in family history?'

That brought Gabriel up short. 'No. You think they're connected?'

'Etiology: impossible to judge except on case-by-case basis. Insufficient data at the moment. Require more concrete information and analysis.'

'You were a Grid pilot once,' Gabriel said, thinking with some distaste about what that 'concrete information' was probably going to involve — blood and tissue samples and the like. Gabriel had always been able to cope with the sight of his own blood in battle, but in a clean quiet office full of ominous-looking medical instruments, blood became a completely different matter. 'Can't you just sneak into my old marine records?'

'Do not have to sneak,' Delde Sota said with an amused glint in her eye. As usual when dealing with medical issues, her language started to contain less of the mechalus dialect and become more common. 'Copies included in your vehicle registry seals aboardSunshine and in your present personal data and credit chip. However, that data is antiquated. New data is required.' Gabriel groaned. 'Do I have to be conscious for this?'

'Preferable,' said Delde Sota, 'especially for extraction of brain tissue. Hard to know whether one is in the right spot, otherwise. You are unlikely to miss it, in any case.'

Wide-eyed, Gabriel pushed back his chair. The end of Delde Sota's neurobraid came up and patted him on the wrist. She smiled at him and said, 'Stress may actually be a factor. Unable to recognize joke when presented with one. Examination can wait, but not too long. Some concern about physical status.' 'Uh,' Gabriel said. 'Uh, all right.' He was having trouble with the concept of the removal of his brain tissue. He liked it where it was.

Helm was glancing around and drinking kalwine as if it was much later in the day. 'No sign of them,' he said. 'Must have flown the coop.'

'Must have. Helm, what's a 'coop'?' Gabriel asked.

'It's a small hangar,' Helm replied. 'Haven't seen our cranky guy here, either. What's his name, Alwhere?'

'Alwhirn,' Enda said. 'No, he too is conspicuous by his absence.'

'Statement: no surprise, since departing plus minus twelve hours with data load,' said Delde Sota. Helm gave her a bemused look. 'You been in their system?'

Delde Sota looked innocent. 'Value judgment: hard to avoid,' she said quietly, 'since port scheduling system security similar to air in opacity and impermeability. ShipQuatsch in pre-loading cycle, purging tanks, overwriting data solids, usual security routines running.'

Gabriel knew that some mechalus Grid pilots did not even have to physically touch a computer to infiltrate it, but knowing that in the abstract and being presented with it as an accomplished fact were two different things.

'You could get in trouble for that!'

'Requirement: have to be caught first,' said Delde Sota. She lifted her glass and drank. 'Well, one less thing to worry about,' Helm said. 'What about us?'

'I have been up one side of the main street and down the other,' said Enda, 'and have found no one willing to ship data with us. Now we know why. Indeed I can hardly blame them when there is a scheduled departure imminent, and the local hauler is probably offering them better than usual rates to keep us from taking his business.'

'If you'd moved a little faster,' Helm growled as he downed another drink, 'we might not be sitting here with empty holds our only option.'

Enda looked annoyed. 'Helm,' she said, 'it was not /who slept in this morning.'

'It wasn'tmy business to be up early.I was up late taking care of you-know-what. If you had been a little sharper off the pad, we wouldn't have to—'

'Wait a minute, you can't talk to her tike that,' Gabriel said.

'Who says I can't, you runty little—'

It got loud and relatively content-free after that, but that was how they had planned it. Lunch was over, and the community center was beginning to empty out, but that process stopped as the inhabitants paused to watch a fraal, a mechalus, a human, and some kind of mutant all shouting at one another. Even Oraan the chef stopped in the middle of scouring a pan to watch the argument scale up. Enda caught Gabriel around the arm and dragged him away from Helm. Delde Sota, in turn, grabbed Helm and hauled him out of range of the other two. People seemed generally impressed by how strong Enda was, to be able to control such a big young man. She pushed him out the front door and marched him down the street, yelling at him like an annoyed grandmother. Behind her, at a distance, came the doctor with Helm roped up in her braid while the mutant blared threats and imprecations.

The two parties went into their separate ships and did not stir for the rest of the afternoon. Later that evening, Gabriel and Enda came out to go to dinner. They sat by themselves, looking sour and pained. The locals noticed this and commented quietly to themselves. A couple of others noticed this as well. One was a small, dark- haired woman with striking pale eyes. Another woman, dark-haired as well, but with brown eyes, was petite and dressed like someone from one of the Aegis worlds. They sat on opposite sides of the room and took no notice of one another. All their attention was on Gabriel and Enda, eating their dinner stiffly and in haste, like people anxious to get something over with and leave. Finally, they left without a backward glance. Shortly thereafter — though not so soon as to arouse any particular notice — one of the women, then another, went out as well.

'And?' Enda said down the comms to Helm a while later.

There was a slight pause, due to an extra layer of encryption that Delde Sota had laid into the ship-to-ship network channels.

'Nothing new,' Helm replied. 'Both of them are at their ships at the moment. They haven't filed any plans