Storm at Eldala

judge it accordingly… but not before.'

'You're telling me that you've purposely sent this operative out to make contact with enemy intelligence organizations—'

' 'Enemy' is such a narrowing term,' said Kharls. 'Who knows in what relationship the Concord will stand within, say, twenty or thirty years to any of the stellar nations that presently are not part of it? Or how matters will stand in the Verge? And even inside the Concord, as you well know, there's considerable difference of opinion about what nations and issues are most important. Nearlyinfinite difference of opinion.' He smiled grimly. 'Fortunately, my job is not about reconciling opinion, which is just as well, since that would be impossible. My job is to make things out here in the Verge work as well as they can for the moment, and to figure out how to make them work better still for the people who'll come out here to live, and those who are here already. In particular, my remit charges me to look out toward the edges of things, the unpoliced and untravelled spaces all around the Verge where situations are not as clear-cut as they are in toward the First Worlds — much less structured and more chaotic. The textbooks don't do much good out here for even the best-intentioned agent, ambassador, or ship's commander. One learns to strike out into the dark and try techniques that might seem foolish elsewhere.' Kharls sat back again, looking at his folded hands. 'I have no scruples about using agents who may seem tainted or chaotic to the textbook types. If that conceals such agents' true value, so much the better, for valuable assets, unfortunately, tend to be killed the most quickly. As regards the object of our discussion, however, you need to be clear thatI have not sent him anywhere. He is one of the very few genuinely free operatives I manage — if manage is even the word, since he completely rejects any idea that I have any such power over him.' 'Then he's a fool,' Delonghi said. 'Possibly, but he's also right.'

Delonghi kept her face still. Kharls watched this exercise with interest. 'See that,' he said, 'youstill don't believe me. I wonder if the ancients had an offense called'disbeliefdirect'?'

He got up, stretched, and stepped around to the big viewport that was the room's only other indulgence. 'If he draws the attention of other intelligence assets,' Kharls said, looking out into the starry blackness, 'that is all to the good. He is a lightning rod, Delonghi. He is being held out into the dark specifically to see what forces he attracts. But he is not to be seen as having no value simply because he is being used as a lightning rod. In the old days, the very best ones used to be made at least partially of precious metal.'

Kharls turned away from the viewport. 'Now, obviously you want to go out and have a personal look into this situation… and meddle.' Her face did not move at the word. 'Well, you were a talented meddler for some years, which is why you're here with me and my people at all. I suppose we can hardly blame you for wanting to revert to type.'

He sat down again. 'In short, I've decided to allow you to do so. I am instructing you to go and examine this situation personally.' Her eyes narrowed. Badly concealed triumph, which for the moment he declined to notice. 'With the following conditions. You are not to interfere in any way with the subject's free pursuit of his own objectives. You may try to determine what they are or what hethinks they are. I require you to report to me regularly on the details. You are to pay particular attention to the attempts of other intelligence organizations to interfere with him. You are not yourself to interfere with those attempts.'

'Even if they kill him?'

'They may look like they want to,' said Kharls softly, 'but I assure you, they do not. Theywill not either, unless someone fumbles badly. They are eager to find out whywe are so interested in him. As eager as you are, I dare say.'

Atthat, she did have the grace to blush. Kharls did not react to this either. 'You are to keep your own head down. Do not be noticed by them. For our own part, I want to know the sources oftheir interest — the motivations of whoever you find watching him or trying to affect him. No one spends so much time watching someone merely to discover what he knows that they don't. More often they watch to see what he knows thatthey know too… and what they fear for anyone else to find out.' She nodded.

'You will return on recall,' Kharls said. 'Consult with the colonel and the captain about your equipment and cover. Otherwise, go do your work.' 'Thank you, sir,' Delonghi said.

'I wouldn't,' Kharls said, 'until you come back with your job successfully completed.' She turned to go.

' 'Middle justice,' ' Kharls said softly. 'I always wondered about that one.'

He glanced up again. Hurriedly, she saluted him and left. The door slid shut behind her, leaving Kharls alone in his office.

She had her own agenda. Well, he had no interest in agents who didn't. The truly agendaless ones were too dangerous to trust with anything. It was always a risk, sending an operative out on really difficult business — especially since it was difficult to tell exactly how he or she would react. As he had said, he did not scruple to use the tainted or skewed asset when the moment came right. His job required him to use his tools — the lightning rod or the gun — with equanimity, to use them as effectively as their structures allowed, and to destroy them if necessary… and not to count the cost until the job was done. For Lorand Kharls, as he felt his way toward the secrets of the deadly and dangerous things that were slowly beginning to reveal themselves at the edges of the Verge, that would most likely be many years. For the lightning rod. .

… he would have to wait and see.

Gabriel was desperately busy for a week and a half. Arrangements had to be made with the data tank installers on Grith, and while that happenedSunshine had to be landed at Diamond Point and kept in bond, with all the nuisance that entailed — signing in and out every time you came aboard and executing a full 'incoming' inventory. Then came provisioning and victualling, with all those supplies having to be delivered to a different part of the bond facility, every box opened, every piece of replacement equipment checked. Then for the weaponry installation,Sunshine had to be taken out of bond again and trucked over to one of the unsealed parts of the port. Gabriel had laughed at the description of the area as 'low security.' He didn't think he had ever seen as many discreetly disguised missile launchers and energy weapons arrayed around a shipchandler's yard as he saw here.

This part of the work was easiest for Gabriel, for Helm came into his own here — never leaving the shipchandlery while anyone was working onSunshine, hanging over the mechanics' and engineers' shoulders, seeming to watch everything at once. They swore at him, but not too often. Everyone there knew that Helm was expert with weaponry, and though he did not seem to be 'carrying,' this impression could be a mistake.

'I never shot anybody for an honest mistake,' he'd joke with them. The installers would laugh and keep a close eye on Helm while he checked the installation schematics against the circuit-solids that were going in.

The gunnery work — a very hush-hush removal of the old plasma cannon energy conduits and their replacement with new ones and new software to match — took three days. It might have taken four if Gabriel had allowed what Helm wanted, the removal of the rail cannon, but at the last moment he decided to keep it. Helm argued the point, but not hard, perhaps detecting that Gabriel had something on his mind. He did, but he couldn't explain it and refused to try. He was nervous enough about the work being done on the plasma cannons. They were not legal and were being carried 'concealed' with flap ports typical of much more innocuous weapons covering them. The thought that someone whose silence had not been paid for might drop a word about those guns into the wrong ears was one that recurred more frequently to Gabriel the longer they stayed.

On the morning of the fourth day, they tookSunshine over to the other side of Diamond Point to a little private pad. There they left her under the supervision of guards whom Helm had hired while the data tanks were installed. All their shopping was done, so Gabriel had a day or so free — indeed, Helm told him to get lost, and Enda was nowhere to be found, still busy with lining up their infotrading contracts. Gabriel therefore spent a happy day doing tourist things, finally climbing up to the observation platform on the hundred- meter-high bluffs, a spot he had once visited as a marine and once again as a tourist a few months ago. Now he stood there in silence around sunset, watching as the huge reaches of Grith's tidal sea started to fill with the daily inrush. Despite all the activity in which he had been involved over the last few days, Gabriel's mind felt oddly empty, as if waiting for something to happen. He reached idly into his pocket and began to turn his luckstone over in his fingers. In some ways, the little stone was the last remnant of the life he'd led before being held for murder. Everything else from that pre-life was gone now… his uniforms, the notebooks for his studies, the various bits and